5,813,873 research outputs found

    Implications of insecticide resistance for malaria vector control with long-lasting insecticidal nets: trends in pyrethroid resistance during a WHO-coordinated multi-country prospective study.

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    BACKGROUND: Increasing pyrethroid resistance has been an undesirable correlate of the rapid increase in coverage of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) since 2000. Whilst monitoring of resistance levels has increased markedly over this period, longitudinal monitoring is still lacking, meaning the temporal and spatial dynamics of phenotypic resistance in the context of increasing ITN coverage are unclear. METHODS: As part of a large WHO-co-ordinated epidemiological study investigating the impact of resistance on malaria infection, longitudinal monitoring of phenotypic resistance to pyrethroids was undertaken in 290 clusters across Benin, Cameroon, India, Kenya and Sudan. Mortality in response to pyrethroids in the major anopheline vectors in each location was recorded during consecutive years using standard WHO test procedures. Trends in mosquito mortality were examined using generalised linear mixed-effect models. RESULTS: Insecticide resistance (using the WHO definition of mortality < 90%) was detected in clusters in all countries across the study period. The highest mosquito mortality (lowest resistance frequency) was consistently reported from India, in an area where ITNs had only recently been introduced. Substantial temporal and spatial variation was evident in mortality measures in all countries. Overall, a trend of decreasing mosquito mortality (increasing resistance frequency) was recorded (Odds Ratio per year: 0.79 per year (95% CI: 0.79-0.81, P < 0.001). There was also evidence that higher net usage was associated with lower mosquito mortality in some countries. DISCUSSION: Pyrethroid resistance increased over the study duration in four out of five countries. Insecticide-based vector control may be compromised as a result of ever higher resistance frequencies

    © 2012 INFORMS Overflow Networks: Approximations and

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    Motivated by call center cosourcing problems, we consider a service network operated under an overflow mechanism. Calls are first routed to an in-house (or dedicated) service station that has a finite waiting room. If the waiting room is full, the call is overflowed to an outside provider (an overflow station) that might also be serving overflows from other stations. We establish approximations for overflow networks with many servers under a resource-pooling assumption that stipulates, in our context, that the fraction of overflowed calls is nonnegligible. Our two main results are (i) an approximation for the overflow processes via limit theorems and (ii) asymptotic independence between each of the in-house stations and the overflow station. In particular, we show that, as the system becomes large, the dependency between each in-house station and the overflow station becomes negligible. Independence between stations in overflow networks is assumed in the literature on call centers, and we provide a rigorous support for those useful heuristics. Subject classifications: overflow networks; cosourcing; heavy-traffic approximations; separation of time scales

    The Implications of Densification Policies for Greater Resistencia (Argentina): an Assessment of Recent Experience

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    . Since 2001, Resistencia City Council has been promoting growth in building height by steering development towards built-up areas in central districts that already have complete infrastructure, through the implementation of the Ordinance 5403/01 - high density. If Ordinance 5403/01 is to be accomplished, with the proposed density of up to 2400 inhabitants, there is a need for 128 hectares of green open space at the neighborhood level (Pérez and Schneider, 2011). In the last 10 years, although the population growth of the city (16%) has been followed by an increase in the supply of greenfield per inhabitant (85%), this increase has not been reflected in the inner city areas, where there is a higher population density. This legislation does, however, include sections that make it possible to optimize this situation. This paper continues on from previous studies and attempts an analysis of the application of existing legislation that proposed the intensification of land use in built up core of Resistencia city. It is focused on an assessment of the scope of the implementation of this legislation, with an emphasis on the design of buildings which enable the supply of areas dedicated to leisure or recreation, which would allow a decompression in the demand for green spaces in the central area

    Eurobonds: The blue bond concept and its implications

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    The Blue Bond proposal, published in May 2010 (Bruegel Policy Brief 2010/03) suggests that sovereign debt in euro-area countries be split into two parts. The first part, the senior â??Blueâ?? tranche of up to 60 percent of GDP, would be pooled among participating countries and jointly and severally guaranteed. The second part, the junior â??Redâ?? tranche, would keep debt in excess of 60 percent of GDP as a purely national responsibility. This paper revisits the proposal, discusses its implications and addresses some of the comments and criticisms received in response to the proposal. This paper was prepared for the European Parliamentâ??s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, session of 21 March 2011 on the interaction between bank and sovereign debt resolution. Copyright remains with the European Parliament at all times.

    Implications of non-volatile memory as primary storage for database management systems

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    Traditional Database Management System (DBMS) software relies on hard disks for storing relational data. Hard disks are cheap, persistent, and offer huge storage capacities. However, data retrieval latency for hard disks is extremely high. To hide this latency, DRAM is used as an intermediate storage. DRAM is significantly faster than disk, but deployed in smaller capacities due to cost and power constraints, and without the necessary persistency feature that disks have. Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) is an emerging storage class technology which promises the best of both worlds. It can offer large storage capacities, due to better scaling and cost metrics than DRAM, and is non-volatile (persistent) like hard disks. At the same time, its data retrieval time is much lower than that of hard disks and it is also byte-addressable like DRAM. In this paper, we explore the implications of employing NVM as primary storage for DBMS. In other words, we investigate the modifications necessary to be applied on a traditional relational DBMS to take advantage of NVM features. As a case study, we have modified the storage engine (SE) of PostgreSQL enabling efficient use of NVM hardware. We detail the necessary changes and challenges such modifications entail and evaluate them using a comprehensive emulation platform. Results indicate that our modified SE reduces query execution time by up to 40% and 14.4% when compared to disk and NVM storage, with average reductions of 20.5% and 4.5%, respectively.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme under grant agreement number 318633, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Spain under contract TIN2015-65316-P, and a HiPEAC collaboration grant awarded to Naveed Ul Mustafa.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    Challenges for the euro area and implications for Latvia

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    This Policy Contribution reviews the major challenges faced by the euro area, and discusses recent initiatives and the way forward. Some implications are drawn out for Latviaâ??s euro accession, which is likely to be beneficial on balance. The euro area faces three major challenges: (1) high private and public debt in some of its parts together with a requirement for competitiveness adjustment that in some countries has barely started; (2) weak growth outlook; (3) continued banking-sector fragility that, with sovereign stress, feeds a negative feedback loop. The euro area has agreed many significant measures to overcome these problems, including the European Stability Mechanism and the fiscal compact. The 21 February agreement on Greece removes a major source of financial instability even though it is likely that further debt reductions will be needed. Significant concerns remain, the most important of which are the slow real economic adjustment and the largely unaddressed banking-sovereign fragility. The fiscal compact raises the issue of appropriate fiscal stabilisation tools at the euro-area level. Countries that will soon join the euro should actively shape the debate about the further development of the overall set-up. For Latvia, joining the euro makes sense because Latvia has kept its exchange rate fixed and has undergone internal adjustment. In its euro-area accession negotiations, Latvia should ensure that it does not participate in any of the currently ongoing financial assistance programmes. This Policy Contribution reproduces evidence given by Guntram B. Wolff to the Latvian parliamentâ??s European affairs committee, 22 February 2012.

    The Implications of Family Size on Students Educational Attainment in Cameroon

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    The purpose of this study is to find out the implications of family size on students educational attainment in Cameroon. To this effects educational attainment was capture through various levels of child education. The ordered probit model was use to estimate our result while data was Demographic Health Survey. The result shows that family size negatively and significantly affects child educational attainment while a child is more likely to attain primary education but less likely to attain both secondary and higher education relative a child from small family size. We recommend that the ministry of planning and urban development should passed a law limiting the number of children one should have so that more resources will be allocated per child which will go a long way to increase child quality

    Assessing the economic implications of Turkish accession to the EU

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    We explore the economic implications of Turkish accession to the European Union. We focus on three main changes associated with Turkish membership: (i) accession to the internal European Market; (ii) institutional reforms in Turkey triggered by EU-membership; and (iii) migration in response to the free movement of workers. Overall, the macroeconomic implications for EU countries are small but positive, through cheaper imports and the benefits from trade creation. Dutch exports increase by around 20% (550 million euro). Turkey experiences larger economic gains than the EU: consumption per capita is estimated to rise by about 4% as a result of accession to the internal market and free movement of labour. If Turkey would succeed in reforming its domestic institutions in response to EU-membership, economic growth in Turkey could increase more. In particular, tentative estimates suggest that consumption per capita in Turkey could rise by an additional 9%. These benefits would spill over to the EU. For instance, Dutch exports to Turkey would rise by another 1.8 billion euro and income by 500 million euro.
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