75 research outputs found

    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

    Get PDF
    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum

    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

    Get PDF
    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

    Meaning Behind the Metrics of Misery: Understanding Prevalence Estimates of Poor Mental Health in Two Samples of Older Rural Indonesians

    Get PDF
    Background: Late life is typically accompanied by unique physical and mental health challenges. Fewer older people are diagnosed with mood or anxiety-specific disorders than their younger counterparts. However, older people score more highly than younger people on symptom screens indicating high levels of clinically relevant depressive, anxiety, and nonspecific psychological distress symptoms which cause high morbidity, mortality, disability, and poor quality of life. The unique presentation of late life psychiatric syndromes, such as depression and anxiety, remain largely unaddressed in existing psychiatric nosology and measurement techniques, as do depictions of depression and anxiety across diverse cultural contexts. Very few studies exist investigating either the descriptive epidemiology of depression and anxiety among older adults living in low-middle income countries (LMIC) or the unique challenges of mental health measurement in LMIC contexts. This dissertation contributes to this developing evidence base by providing a critical analysis of point prevalence estimates of depression, anxiety, and nonspecific psychological distress (distress) symptoms in two samples of Indonesian rural older persons. Methods: We enumerated greater than or equal to 60-year-olds in 12 Indonesian rural villages as part of the Ageing in Rural Indonesia Study in 2015/16 (N=2526; sample 1). We re-enumerated two of the 12 villages surveyed in 2015 in 2017 (N=536; sample 2). Depressive and distress symptoms were each measured using three scales: PHQ-8/9, CES-D, GDS, and K6, DQ5 and SRQ-20 respectively. Anxiety symptoms were evaluated with the GAD-7. Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory were used to investigate the psychometric properties of symptom screens. We also undertook mixed effects modelling and Moderated Nonlinear Factor Analysis to identify sources of variability in prevalence estimates. Results: Commonly used cut points of short symptom screens used to approximate diagnostic depressive disorders produced estimates that typically lacked comparability (e.g., sample 2 point-prevalence 3.2%-39.9%). Psychometric analysis further identified mental health scales with better (PHQ-8/9, GAD-7, K6, DQ5) and poorer (GDS, SRQ) construct validity. Sources of variability in point prevalence estimates of depression, anxiety and distress symptoms were identified, and related to study design, cognitive ability, marital status, financial means, level of social support, lifestyle, and health related status. Pervasive non-invariance was identified in participant responses to scale items related to gender, literacy, and ethnicity. However, when modelled, measurement non-invariance did not substantially modify means. Females, respondents with lower literacy levels, and Batak and Sundanese sample villages had significantly higher levels of depression, anxiety, and distress symptoms. Conclusion: The practice of using existing mental health symptom screens combined with commonly used cut points as proxies for depression and anxiety in older rural Indonesians and other diverse populations should be avoided. Rigorous psychometric and diagnostic validation evidence should be ascertained. In the interim, better performing symptom screening tools (i.e., PHQ-8/9, GAD-7, K6, DQ5) may be used as measures of continuous symptom severity. Future research should focus on evaluating the distinctive and overlapping features of mental ill-health in specific subpopulations of Indonesians

    Triple Helix as a Strategic Tool to Fast-Track Climate Change Adaptation in Rural Kenya: Case Study of Marsabit County

    Get PDF
    AbstractThe lack of affordable, clean, and reliable energy in Africa's rural areas forces people to resort to poor quality energy source, which is detrimental to the people's health and prevents the economic development of communities. Moreover, access to safe water and food security are concerns closely linked to health issues and children malnourishment. Recent climate change due to global warming has worsened the already critical situation.Electricity is well known to be an enabler of development as it allows the use of modern devices thus enabling the development of not only income-generating activities but also water pumping and food processing and conservation that can promote socioeconomic growth. However, all of this is difficult to achieve due to the lack of investors, local skills, awareness by the community, and often also government regulations.All the above mentioned barriers to the uptake of electricity in rural Kenya could be solved by the coordinated effort of government, private sector, and academia, also referred to as Triple Helix, in which each entity may partially take the other's role. This chapter discretizes the above and shows how a specific county (Marsabit) has benefited from this triple intervention. Existing government policies and actions and programs led by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international agencies are reviewed, highlighting the current interconnection and gaps in promoting integrated actions toward climate change adaptation and energy access

    African Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation

    Get PDF
    This open access book discusses current thinking and presents the main issues and challenges associated with climate change in Africa. It introduces evidences from studies and projects which show how climate change adaptation is being - and may continue to be successfully implemented in African countries. Thanks to its scope and wide range of themes surrounding climate change, the ambition is that this book will be a lead publication on the topic, which may be regularly updated and hence capture further works. Climate change is a major global challenge. However, some geographical regions are more severly affected than others. One of these regions is the African continent. Due to a combination of unfavourable socio-economic and meteorological conditions, African countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. The recently released IPCC special report "Global Warming of 1.5º C" outlines the fact that keeping global warming by the level of 1.5º C is possible, but also suggested that an increase by 2º C could lead to crises with crops (agriculture fed by rain could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020) and livestock production, could damage water supplies and pose an additonal threat to coastal areas. The 5th Assessment Report produced by IPCC predicts that wheat may disappear from Africa by 2080, and that maize— a staple—will fall significantly in southern Africa. Also, arid and semi-arid lands are likely to increase by up to 8%, with severe ramifications for livelihoods, poverty eradication and meeting the SDGs. Pursuing appropriate adaptation strategies is thus vital, in order to address the current and future challenges posed by a changing climate. It is against this background that the "African Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation" is being published. It contains papers prepared by scholars, representatives from social movements, practitioners and members of governmental agencies, undertaking research and/or executing climate change projects in Africa, and working with communities across the African continent. Encompassing over 100 contribtions from across Africa, it is the most comprehensive publication on climate change adaptation in Africa ever produced

    Plants and Plant Products in Local Markets Within Benin City and Environs

    Get PDF
    AbstractThe vulnerability of agriculture systems in Africa to climate change is directly and indirectly affecting the availability and diversity of plants and plant products available in local markets. In this chapter, markets in Benin City and environs were assessed to document the availability of plants and plant products. Markets were grouped into urban, suburban, and rural with each group having four markets. Majority of the plant and plant product vendors were women and 88 plant species belonging to 42 families were found. Their scientific and common names were documented as well as the parts of the plant and associated products available in the markets. Most of the plant and plant products found in local markets belong to major plant families. Urban markets had the highest diversity of plants and plant products. Three categories of plants and plant products were documented. Around 67% of the plants and plant products were categorized as whole plant/plant parts, 28% as processed plant parts, while 5% as reprocessed plant/plant parts. It was revealed that 86% of these plants are used as foods, 11% are for medicinal purposes, while 3% is used for other purposes. About 35% of plants and plant products across the markets were fruits, which is an indication that city and environs are a rich source of fruits. The local knowledge and practices associated with the plants and plant products can contribute towards formulating a strategic response for climate change impacts on agriculture, gender, poverty, food security, and plant diversity

    Assessing, testing, and challenging the computational power of quantum devices

    Get PDF
    Randomness is an intrinsic feature of quantum theory. The outcome of any measurement will be random, sampled from a probability distribution that is defined by the measured quantum state. The task of sampling from a prescribed probability distribution therefore seems to be a natural technological application of quantum devices. And indeed, certain random sampling tasks have been proposed to experimentally demonstrate the speedup of quantum over classical computation, so-called “quantum computational supremacy”. In the research presented in this thesis, I investigate the complexity-theoretic and physical foundations of quantum sampling algorithms. Using the theory of computational complexity, I assess the computational power of natural quantum simulators and close loopholes in the complexity-theoretic argument for the classical intractability of quantum samplers (Part I). In particular, I prove anticoncentration for quantum circuit families that give rise to a 2-design and review methods for proving average-case hardness. I present quantum random sampling schemes that are tailored to large-scale quantum simulation hardware but at the same time rise up to the highest standard in terms of their complexity-theoretic underpinning. Using methods from property testing and quantum system identification, I shed light on the question, how and under which conditions quantum sampling devices can be tested or verified in regimes that are not simulable on classical computers (Part II). I present a no-go result that prevents efficient verification of quantum random sampling schemes as well as approaches using which this no-go result can be circumvented. In particular, I develop fully efficient verification protocols in what I call the measurement-device-dependent scenario in which single-qubit measurements are assumed to function with high accuracy. Finally, I try to understand the physical mechanisms governing the computational boundary between classical and quantum computing devices by challenging their computational power using tools from computational physics and the theory of computational complexity (Part III). I develop efficiently computable measures of the infamous Monte Carlo sign problem and assess those measures both in terms of their practicability as a tool for alleviating or easing the sign problem and the computational complexity of this task. An overarching theme of the thesis is the quantum sign problem which arises due to destructive interference between paths – an intrinsically quantum effect. The (non-)existence of a sign problem takes on the role as a criterion which delineates the boundary between classical and quantum computing devices. I begin the thesis by identifying the quantum sign problem as a root of the computational intractability of quantum output probabilities. It turns out that the intricate structure of the probability distributions the sign problem gives rise to, prohibits their verification from few samples. In an ironic twist, I show that assessing the intrinsic sign problem of a quantum system is again an intractable problem

    Evolutionary genomics : statistical and computational methods

    Get PDF
    This open access book addresses the challenge of analyzing and understanding the evolutionary dynamics of complex biological systems at the genomic level, and elaborates on some promising strategies that would bring us closer to uncovering of the vital relationships between genotype and phenotype. After a few educational primers, the book continues with sections on sequence homology and alignment, phylogenetic methods to study genome evolution, methodologies for evaluating selective pressures on genomic sequences as well as genomic evolution in light of protein domain architecture and transposable elements, population genomics and other omics, and discussions of current bottlenecks in handling and analyzing genomic data. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include the kind of detail and expert implementation advice that lead to the best results. Authoritative and comprehensive, Evolutionary Genomics: Statistical and Computational Methods, Second Edition aims to serve both novices in biology with strong statistics and computational skills, and molecular biologists with a good grasp of standard mathematical concepts, in moving this important field of study forward

    Rollins College Catalog 2018

    Get PDF
    • …
    corecore