High-level Issues Research Articles

Impact of thermal spectrum small modular reactors on performance of once-through nuclear fuel cycles with low-enriched uranium

Small modular reactors (SMRs) may offer potential benefits relative to large light water reactors, such as enhanced flexibility in deployment and operation. However, it is vital to understand the holistic impact of SMRs on nuclear fuel cycle performance. The focus of this paper is the fuel cycle impacts of light water SMRs in a once-through fuel cycle with low-enriched uranium fuel. A key objective of this paper is to describe preliminary neutronics and fuel cycle analyses conducted in support of the US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Fuel Cycle Options Campaign. The hypothetical light water SMR example case considered in these preliminary scoping studies is a “cartridge type” one-batch core with slightly less than 5.0% enrichment.The high-level issues identified and preliminary scoping calculations in this paper are intended to inform decision makers regarding potential fuel cycle impacts of one-batch thermal-spectrum SMRs. In particular, this paper highlights the impact of increased neutron leakage and a reduced number of batches on the achievable burnup of the reactor. Fuel cycle performance metrics for the simplified example SMR analyzed herein are compared with those for a conventional three-batch light water reactor (LWR) in the following areas: nuclear waste management, environmental impact, and resource utilization. The metrics performance for such an SMR is degraded for the mass of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste disposed of per energy generated, mass of depleted uranium disposed of per energy generated, land use per energy generated, and carbon emissions per energy generated.Finally, it is noted that the features of some SMR designs impact three main aspects of fuel cycle performance: (1) small cores, which mean high leakage (there is a radial and an axial component); (2) a heterogeneous core and extensive use of control rods and burnable poisons; and (3) single-batch cores. But not all SMR designs have all of these traits. The approach used in this study is an example bounding case, and not all SMRs may be impacted to the same extent.

Student Privacy and Ed Tech (K-12) Research Briefing

Foundational changes at the intersection of technology, society, law, and behavior are disrupting and energizing large institutions, impacting the educational technologies and student privacy landscape at lightning speed. Greater levels of connectivity and participation are raising questions about how best to navigate new types of learning environments, how best to engage in data-driven decision-making, and how best to ensure channels for positive collaboration in decision-making. This research briefing builds upon student privacy research and activities, and aims to translate these into practical take-aways. The briefing provides a map of the current digital learning ecosystem in the U.S. primary and secondary space, surveys at a high-level critical issues in the ed tech and student privacy space, and outlines key tools and opportunities for decision-makers.

Music therapy for women survivors of intimate partner violence: An intercultural experience from a feminist perspective

This study arose from the growing number of women around the world subjected by their partner to domestic violence. These women suffer from issues of self-esteem, anxiety, identity crisis and high levels of depression, among other social and psychological symptoms. Some music therapists have demonstrated the effectiveness of music therapy techniques to improve the level of awareness of survivors, and to help with some of these symptoms. The author's aim is to share the results achieved after applying the multimodal approach to music therapy, to a sample of 17 women survivors of abuse: 7 Mexican and 10 Cuban, and to compare the cultural aspects involved.

The discourse on tool integration beyond technology, a literature survey

The tool integration research area emerged in the 1980s. This survey focuses on those strands of tool integration research that discuss issues beyond technology.We reveal a discourse centered around six frequently mentioned non-functional properties. These properties have been discussed in relation to technology and high level issues. However, while technical details have been covered, high level issues and, by extension, the contexts in which tool integration can be found, are treated indifferently. We conclude that this indifference needs to be challenged, and research on a larger set of stakeholders and contexts initiated.An inventory of the use of classification schemes underlines the difficulty of evolving the classical classification scheme published by Wasserman. Two frequently mentioned redefinitions are highlighted to facilitate their wider use.A closer look at the limited number of research methods and the poor attention to research design indicates a need for a changed set of research methods. We propose more critical case studies and method diversification through theory triangulation.Additionally, among disparate discourses we highlight several focusing on standardization which are likely to contain relevant findings. This suggests that open communities employed in the context of (pre-)standardization could be especially important in furthering the targeted discourse.

The Court of Justice of the EU Judgment on Data Protection and Internet Search Engines: Current Issues and Future Challenges

In Case C-131/12 Google Spain v. AEPD and Mario Costeja Gonzalez, issued on 13 May 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union made several important pronouncements about EU data protection law, and in particular recognized a right under the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46 for individuals to suppress links generated by Internet search engines (popularly referred to as the “right to be forgotten”). The Court’s holdings leave many important questions open, both in regard to technical legal issues and more high-level issues of general jurisprudential and societal importance. The Court also failed to take the significance of the case for the Internet into account. The judgment suffers from the Court’s traditionally minimalist style of argument and reluctance to adopt a more open and discursive style. The material and territorial scope of the right to suppress Internet search engine results are potentially much wider than the ability to implement the right effectively, suggesting that a way must be found to define the scope of the right in a way that is proportionate to the ability to implement it, if the judgment is to provide real protection in practice.

Landmark-Centric Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks in Mobile Delay Tolerant Environments

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have wide applications in many fields sharing common grounds as their major technical challenges. This paper focuses on a high-level information association issue and designs an efficient routing protocol accordingly for delay tolerant mobile sensor networks (DTMSNs). In this paper, after making an analysis about the effect of social network theory on forwarding scheme and node mobility, we exploit landmark, a new social-aware metric indicating the geographical location corresponding to a node interest or a node community. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work in which landmark is utilized to assist message forwarding in DTMSNs. Additionally, we propose the landmark-centric routing protocol utilizing the metric to accurately predict node mobility geographically. We can take full advantage of node mobility in our protocol while preserving the positive effects of existing social-aware metrics on protocol performance. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol achieves the highest packet delivery ratio outperforming SocialCast and doubling SGBR with more than 50% delivery cost reducing.

Facilitating the appropriate use of e-health solutions.

In this issue, the lead article proposes that e-health technologies should be used more broadly and that patients should have greater access to their information through such technologies. The Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) agrees with this statement and suggests that to facilitate the timely and appropriate adoption of new technologies among healthcare providers to enhance patient care, barriers in the existing regulatory, legislative and legal frameworks must be addressed. While much of the discussion to date on e-health has focused primarily on high-level issues regarding regulatory compliance, "privacy by design" and the e-health "panacea," CMPA suggests that there needs to be a refocus on achieving more concrete change and gains through consideration of the specific impact on the drivers of healthcare delivery. An integrated or holistic approach is required involving healthcare providers, regulators, legislators, stakeholders, ministries of health, privacy commissioners and the courts. To better leverage potential advantages, efficiencies and enhanced, safer care for our healthcare system, all parties must work together to develop an acceptable and flexible approach to the "appropriate use" of e-health technologies that will facilitate adoption by healthcare professionals in a manner that is consistent with the expectations of the profession and applicable standards of practice.

Harmony of the triads: A response to Nicholas Swindale.

Despite few misunderstandings, I thank Nicholas Swindale for his efforts in writing a lengthy review of Harmony, Perspective and Triadic Cognition (HPTC; Cook, 2012). He is precisely the type of reader I wanted to address-someone with broad knowl- edge in human psychology and an interest in the possibility of a general theory of the mind. Unfortunately, despite a history of abject failures misapplying sophisticated mathematical theory (sta- tistical mechanics, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, and so on) to the problems of mind, he seems to suffer from the scientoid delusion that formal mathematics is the key to psychological insight. He is therefore quick to dismiss the kinds of low-level mental associations that I argue are central to the way people actually think.With regard to his mixed evaluation of my proposal concerning triadic mechanisms, I would say that his accusations of occult numerology are truly off target. My proposal in HPTC is that concrete three-way associations have been amply demonstrated in the specifically human aspects of cognition related to music, art, language, tools, and attention. The essential point that Swindale repeatedly acknowledges and then repeatedly forgets is that: Fundamental cognitive triads at the heart of the outstanding talents of our species are necessary, but not sufficient, to produce the astounding behavioral accomplishments of human culture. The sufficiency argument will demand many more insights and en- cyclopedic knowledge that I do not possess, but the minimalist cognitive necessities are the issues that I have addressed in HPTC. I would remind Swindale that it took more than a half-century to proceed from the biological insight of the structure of DNA to the unraveling of the human genome, and much work still remains before we understand the genetic data that is in hand. In my view, cognitive neuroscience is now mature enough to elucidate funda- mental psychological processes- but it will take some time before a comprehensive theory of the human mind is established.In certain key subfields within human psychology, there is already clear evidence of triadic mechanisms (often, but not al- ways, unprecedented in the animal world) that are, to varying degrees of certainty, the starting points for our unusual cognitive and behavioral skills. A formal theory of the unique set of triadic processes (three-way Boolean logic?) is yet to be achieved, so it may be possible to put Swindale's intellect to constructive pur- pose, but I would nonetheless argue that the triadic arguments in HPTC are successful in clearing the way toward precisely that goal.The tonal combinations that result in the phenomena of musical harmony are undoubtedly the most easily perceived and most well-known of the perceptual triads, but the alignment of visual cues that lead to pictorial depth perception (light source/object/cast shadow or three similar objects aligned in linear perspective) is also empirically unambiguous. In linguistics, the three-way tree structure of the phrase lies at the heart of Chomsky's transfor- mational grammar. Its triadic nature has been discussed by Derek Bickerton (1990) and Guy Deutscher (2005), among others, but most of modern-day syntactic theory deals with the complexities of multiple recursively embedded phrases. Similarly, most empir- ical studies on social interactions address higher-level issues, but the underlying phenomenon known as joint has a well-understood triadic cognitive basis. See, for example, work by Michael Tomasello (2008) and Rebecca Saxe (2006, p. 235) who notes that such cognition requires representing triadic relations: You and Me, collaboratively looking at, working on or talking about This. In all of these cases, the psychophysics of the triadic phenomena has received much less attention than the more com- plex multiply embedded triads of real psychology, but there is an argument to be made that the first step in meaningful, reductionist, scientific analysis is identification of the core phenomena that can then be used to reconstruct larger-scale phenomena. …

Exploring a Quantum-Hebbian Approach Towards Learning and Cognition

Cognition, in all its diverse forms, can be attributed to the formation of specialized neural circuits in the brain. While in response to conscious experiences, arising due to sensory stimulation, neural assemblies are formed, conscious experience is itself an outcome of sustained synchronous firing of a neural assembly. This leads to a paradoxical situation or Neural Development Paradox: what comes first the conscious experience or the neural assembly? To have zero-lag synchronous activity amongst neurons of an assembly, which is needed for binding individual responses into a conscious percept, we need a very rapid source of communication between them. Axonal conduction delays amounting to several tens of milliseconds cannot account for the zero-lag synchrony across spatially separated brain an area that is required for STDP Hebbian learning to hardwire a neural assembly. Hence, an alternate means of instantaneous communication needs to be explored. According to the Penrose-Hameroff Quantum Approach towards consciousness, the microtubule cytoskeleton acts as a quantum computer whose collapsed states are conscious experiences manifesting in the form of an activated neural assembly. Neurons, whose microtubules are entangled, get connected by means of gap junctions, behaving like one giant neuron, firing in synchrony, seemingly breaking the Neural Development Paradox. By mental force of directed attention, Quantum Zeno effect can be instigated, as suggested by Von Neumann-Stapp, causing the activated state of the brain to stabilize till Hebbian learning strengthens the synaptic connections, giving way to a quantum explanation for the formation of neural assemblies, both intra-modality as well as inter-modality. In this paper we report our efforts towards building a simulation-mathematical model of Quantum-Hebbian Learning that attempts to interface classical Hebbian learning with quantum theoretic mechanisms of conscious experience to develop neural assemblies. Under the influence of a modulatory mental force of directed attention, the model is also able to address high level issues like mind wandering, zombie modes, volition etc. The model is an attempt to study the benefits of introducing the concept of duality in the formation of neural assemblies and understand how consciousness and attention influence the development of the brain. NeuroQuantology | September 2013 | Volume 11 | Issue 3 | Page 416-425

The HumBox: Changing educational practice around a learning resource repository

The HumBox is a learning resource repository for the Humanities educational community in the UK. Over the last three years the challenge for HumBox has been to act as not only a shared library for its community, but also to change the working practices of individuals in that community by encouraging them to work in a more open way and to actively share their materials and ideas with others. Getting users to engage with and adopt innovative systems is a well-known problem; with the HumBox our approach was to focus on user-experience (UX) design through agile development and ongoing participatory and co-design activities. In this paper we present a mixed-methods evaluation of the success of this engagement over the past three years, focusing especially on the way that users have appropriated the system and its services in order to solve real problems. Our evaluation reveals that for many HumBox users we have been successful in creating a technology that is invisible (meaning beneath the level of notice and concern) and that the result of this is less micro-appropriation (users adopting and using specific features in new ways) and more macro-appropriation (users adopting and adapting the site as a whole). We conclude that in the case of HumBox invisible technology coupled with the social framework of co-design and user engagement activities, has allowed a diffusion of ownership, and created a safe social and technical environment where the community can debate high-level issues, and that this has led to changes in both professional and pedagogical practice.

The AU Continental Early Warning System: From Conceptual to Operational?

Despite criticism from scholars, the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) at the African Union (AU) has recently made significant progress in its capacity to monitor, analyse, and provide warning of impending conflict situations in Africa. However, CEWS remains constrained by human resource limitations, inchoate cooperation and information sharing with the early warning efforts of regional organizations, and unsystematic coordination with the various AU organs focusing on peace and security. Additionally, although the early warning-early response gap is narrowing at the AU, early response mechanisms continue to be constrained by limited capacity and issues of political will, as high-level political disagreements and issues of sovereignty militate against effective preventive action. Based on over two-dozen interviews with senior-level CEWS and AU officials, along with other relevant stakeholders, this paper highlights recent operational progress, identifies remaining gaps, and forwards policy options for the AU and international community to build on the gains of CEWS.

German Spent Nuclear Fuel Legacy: Characteristics and High-Level Waste Management Issues

Germany is phasing-out the utilization of nuclear energy until 2022. Currently, nine light water reactors of originally nineteen are still connected to the grid. All power plants generate high-level nuclear waste like spent uranium or mixed uranium-plutonium dioxide fuel which has to be properly managed. Moreover, vitrified high-level waste containing minor actinides, fission products, and traces of plutonium reprocessing loses produced by reprocessing facilities has to be disposed of. In the paper, the assessments of German spent fuel legacy (heavy metal content) and the nuclide composition of this inventory have been done. The methodology used applies advanced nuclear fuel cycle simulation techniques in order to reproduce the operation of the German nuclear power plants from 1969 till 2022. NFCSim code developed by LANL was adopted for this purpose. It was estimated that ~10,300 tonnes of unreprocessed nuclear spent fuel will be generated until the shut-down of the ultimate German reactor. This inventory will contain ~131 tonnes of plutonium, ~21 tonnes of minor actinides, and 440 tonnes of fission products. Apart from this, ca.215 tonnes of vitrified HLW will be present. As fission products and transuranium elements remain radioactive from 104to 106years, the characteristics of spent fuel legacy over this period are estimated, and their impacts on decay storage and final repository are discussed.

Analyzing Corporate Social Entrepreneurship Specific to Knowledge Economy with a Focus on the Romanian Economic Context

The knowledge economy is defined, according to the World Bank, through the integration of its four main component elements: education and training, innovation systems, information infrastructure, economic incentives and institutional regime. The first part of the paper reconciles knowledge economy and corporate social entrepreneurship, while the second part focuses on the education and training, and innovation pillars of the knowledge economy, and more specifically it resorts to the framework of corporate social entrepreneurship as a transformational innovation strategy for company growth. The current investigation has been conducted by means of case study method having the following research question: “How does corporate social entrepreneurship manifest in corporations?”., accompanied by secondary research questions such as: “How does the company mobilize its resources to create an innovative product/ service/ approach in order to tackle the social issue?, How does the company contribute to local development?”. The findings revealed that the social issue of high levels of nitrates in the waters inspired the company to combine a testing tool (technological innovation) with marketing communication which eventually resulted in an innovative approach for the company to increase the loyalty of their customers and to reach out for new ones. The present paper has been developed based on the author’s doctoral research.

Proposing an Interoperable Framework among Cloud Providers

The popularity of cloud computing has increased in recent years and huge Information Technology companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM each have launched their own cloud infrastructures which have resulted in individual and island-like infrastructures. The clients of cloud services are growing and various businesses, organizations and individuals use cloud services for their different purposes. The tendency to use multiple providers simultaneously by the same client, migration from one cloud provider to another one and creating composite services using the provided services by various cloud providers, increases the need for interoperability among them. Using the concepts of interoperability in organizations, this research aims at proposing a framework which without any impact on the infrastructures and cloud providers’ platforms facilitates the interaction among them. This research discusses high-level issues of interoperability among cloud providers and helps architects to have an organized viewpoint about them.

Combustion characteristics of diesel HCCI engine: An experimental investigation using external mixture formation technique

In compression ignition engines, soot–NOx paradox is an extremely challenging unresolved issue. Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) is one of the most promising solution that combines the advantages of both SI and CI combustion modes. It gives high thermal efficiency similar to compression ignition engines and resolve the associated issues of high levels of NOx and PM simultaneously. In HCCI combustion, homogeneous mixture of air and fuel burns spontaneously throughout the combustion chamber, which reduces the total combustion duration due to very high rate of heat release. Determination of precise control parameters for controlling the ‘rate of heat release’ and ‘start of combustion’ are major research challenges in the development and deployment of this technology. In the present research, experiments were performed in a two cylinder engine, in which one cylinder is modified to operate in HCCI mode, while other cylinder operate in conventional CI mode. Homogeneous mixture preparation is the most challenging part for achieving diesel HCCI combustion. Low diesel volatility remains the main obstacle in preparing the homogenous fuel–air mixture therefore a dedicated device called ‘diesel vaporizer’ was developed. Exhaust gas recirculation (0%, 10% and 20%) was used for controlling the rate of heat release. To study the combustion behavior, experiments were performed at three different relative air–fuel ratios (λ=4.95, 3.70 and 2.56). Enrichment of fuel–air mixture enhances the rate of heat release and the location of peak of in-cylinder pressure shift towards BTDC side due to earlier start of combustion. This was effectively controlled by EGR for leaner HCCI combustion conditions. Exhaust gases diluted the homogeneous charge and presence of non-reactive species reduce the rate of combustion. It controls the peak in-cylinder temperature, which is a responsible for extremely low NOx formation. For richer fuel–air mixtures, EGR was relatively less effective due to dominance of ‘rate of heat release’, which was significantly high.

Effect of paddle grip on segmental fluid distribution in elite slalom paddlers

Issues of high levels of muscular asymmetry have been associated with injury risk, and therefore have potential implications for decremental performance at the elite sport level. The aim of this current study was to assess the relationship between the segmental fluid distribution and the paddle grip in elite male and female slalom kayakers and canoeists. Eighty-four world-cup competitors (61 males and 23 females) took part in the study. Impedance analysis was used to assess segmental fluid asymmetry. The effect of paddle grip (loose/fixed hand in kayakers, lower/upper hand in canoeists), morphological dominance (dominant/non-dominant) and discipline (canoe/kayak) were evaluated by repeated measures ANOVA. The findings indicated a significant effect of paddle grip in canoeists on morphological asymmetry in upper limbs (arm of lower paddle hand mean fluid distribution 3.28, s=0.43 litres; arm of upper paddle hand mean fluid distribution 3.19, s=0.41 litres; P=0.000, =0.33). The sternmen demonstrated higher asymmetry between the arms of upper and lower paddle hand (mean 0.11, s=0.04 litres, P=0.000, =0.80) than the bowmen (mean 0.04, s=0.06 litres, P=0.015, =0.44) in double-canoes. Significant morphological asymmetry was found also in kayakers but the effect of paddle grip was not substantial. The use of segmental impedance analysis may be a suitable diagnostic tool for assessing morphological changes, which can be related to paddling training. Likewise muscular asymmetry is associated with injury risk; the evaluation of morphological changes during the training process may be considered by sport trainers and physical therapists.

Immersive Environment: An Emerging Future of Telecommunications

This article surveys immersive communication environments and focuses on high-level issues and applications. The authors classify the immersive computing environments into three major categories: entertainment, business and society, and simulated learning and education.

HR Professionals in the Changed Business Scenario: Roles, Opportunities and Challenges

The changed global economic scenario has resulted in a paradigm shift in the role set of the human resource (HR) professionals. They no longer play advisory and supportive roles; rather, they tend to participate in the strategic decision-making process. But, the changes taking place in the global business environment often are not accompanied by the complementary changes in the HR management practices of the developing countries in Asia. Further, the current global recession has pushed many companies to quickly adjust their HR policies and practices for competitive advantage. It ultimately demands a complete transformed role for the HR professionals. The main purpose of the paper is to study the changing role, emerging opportunities and challenges for the HR professionals in recession. It would also study its effect on the HR policies and practices of the Asian countries. Apart from collecting data from both the primary and secondary sources, views and opinions of working executives of various companies have been extracted from phone calls, internet sites and conference proceedings regarding their actual role set. The HR is still focused on transactional activities and operating efficiencies than on high-level strategic issues. Recession has also affected the functional areas of the HR professionals to a great extent. Recession is perceived as an opportunity for the HR professionals than as a challenge. By exploring challenges and opportunities, the authors suggest new responsibilities for the HR professionals in recession. The study would help them to quickly adapt themselves to the difficult times.

Climate Change and Individual Decision Making: An Examination of Knowledge, Risk Perception, Self-Interest and their Interplay

In this essay, three separate yet interconnected components of pro-environmental decision making are considered: (a) knowledge, in the form of basic scientific understanding and procedural knowledge, (b) risk perception, as it relates to an individual’s direct experience of climate change and (c) self-interest, either monetary or status-driven. Drawing on a variety of sources in public policy, psychology, and economics, I examine the role of these concepts in inducing or discouraging pro-environmental behavior. Past researches have often overemphasized the weight of just one of those variables in the decision making. I argue, instead, that none of them alone is capable of bringing about the behavioral change required by the environmental crisis. Evidence shows that increasing the public’s scientific knowledge of climate change cannot unilaterally bring about a strong behavioral change. The same can be noticed even when knowledge is joined by risk-perception: deep psychological mechanisms may steer people towards inaction and apathy, despite their direct experience of the detrimental effects of climate change on their lives. Focusing on self-interest alone is similarly unable to induce pro-environmental behavior, due to a host of psychological factors. Instead, in all of the above cases an important missing ingredient may be found in providing the public with locally contextualized procedural knowledge in order to translate its knowledge and concern into action. The importance of this kind of practical knowledge has solid empirical and theoretical underpinnings, and is often overlooked in the climate-change debate that tends to focus on more high-level issues. Yet, for all its essential simplicity, it may carry important public-policy implications.

Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in Sri Lanka: Overview Study

Sri Lanka is well known for achieving high levels of human development at relatively low levels of GDP per capita. Successive governments have invested heavily in education, health and welfare programmes, and this has been associated with the country achieving levels of life expectancy and literacy that are comparable to industrial countries. However, these human development achievements and high levels of public expenditure on social welfare, have not eradicated deprivation. Factors contributing to the prevailing poverty levels include inadequate economic growth; low economic benefit trickle down to the poor; high state expenses on defence due to the prevailing secessionist conflict in the North; and inefficient allocation of resources to the deprived populations and regions in the country, based in part on a lack of differentiation of the poor. In the absence of systematic information on the chronically poor, the present study attempts to capture chronic poverty in Sri Lanka by examining general information on poverty and drawing conclusions on those who are likely to be among the chronically poor. Certain population groups that are likely to experience poverty over many years (or all their lives) are examined in this review. These include the internally displaced persons from the conflict, disabled, elderly, street children, employed children, female headed households and youth. The poor are also examined using a 'livelihood' framework. Examination of human capital in terms of education, health and nutrition show that despite free services, the poor have not always benefited, leading to low education, and poor health. In turn, these are associated with lower access to well paid employment as well as reduced labour productivity. Access to physical capital is also low for the chronically poor, in terms of infrastructure provided by the state, housing and productive assets such as land and irrigation facilities. The poor are also more prone to environmental problems such as rainfall, deforestation and soil degradation, with a depressing effect on their productivity and income. The chronically poor experience financial instability associated with low wages, low skills, seasonality of employment, employment opportunities limited to hired labour, deterioration of real wages, high food expenditure ratio, high expenditure on alcohol, inadequate income support from state poverty alleviation programmes and low access to credit facilities. Overall, the need for the government to redirect its welfare policies and programmes to more adequately assist the poor is apparent. At present the government is in the process of developing a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for Sri Lanka to address the issue of high levels of poverty in the country. However, certain information gaps with regard to the livelihoods of the poor and differentiation of the poor by deprivation levels for specific and effective interventions needs to be addressed. The review concludes with highlights of areas for future research on chronic poverty in Sri Lanka.