Development of the Zimbabwe family planning program

Family planning was introduced in Zimbabwe as a voluntary movement in the 1950s. Volunteers formed a Family Planning Association in the mid-1960s. The government became interested in family planning in the late 1960s after analysis of the 1961 population census. It gave the Family Planning Association an annual grant, allowed contraceptives to be available through Ministry of Health facilities, and allowed nonmedical personnel to initiate and resupply family planning clients with condoms and pills. But before Zimbabwe achieved independence in 1980, family planning was viewed with great suspicion by the black majority, so the program's effectiveness was limited to the urban few. A new era began after independence. The new government took over theFamily Planning Association and changed its outlook completely. Through government and international donor support, the family planning program was restructured and expanded. The number of family planning personnel more than doubled in some units. More service delivery points were set up - particularly in rural areas. And the information, education, and communication and evaluation and research units were established. Through a World Bank-assisted project (with grant funding from Norway and Denmark), the Ministry of Health began strengthening its family planning capabilities. These efforts helped increase the contraceptive prevalence rate from about 14 percent in 1982 to 43 percent in 1988. But the program's growth is beginning to stall. More effort and resources are needed if the program is to grow or even maintain its present status. Particularly important are the following: designing innovative strategies to reach hard-to-reach populations; giving more emphasis to information, education, and communication, especially for men and youths, using multimedia; involving other sectors in the delivery of family planning services; broadening the mix of contraceptive methods (especially promoting long-term and permanent methods); making use of alternative family planning delivery systems, such as the use of depot holders, volunteers, and government extension workers; establishing a national population policy; and considering cost recovery and other measures for self-sustainment and program growth.Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,ICT Policy and Strategies,Gender and Health,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Adolescent Health

COMPETITOR FINANCIAL STATEMENT PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL ANDFINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF QUOTED MANUFACTURING FIRM IN NIGERIA

focus of the study is on competitor financial statement performance appraisal and its relationship with financial performance of manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The population of the study is the sixty-nine quoted manufacturing companies in the Nigerian Exchange Group, while sixty (60) of them were used as sample using the purposive sampling technique. The scope of the study covers the period 2014 -2023. Ex-post facto research design was adopted, with data obtained from the financial statements of the different companies involved in the study. Four (4) dimensions of financial performance were used for this study, which are net profit before tax, earnings per share, return on equity and return on assets against competitor financial statement performance appraisal. This led to the formulation of four (4) hypotheses that were tested using spearman rank correlation for the analyses. The results indicated that, while net profit before tax, return on equity and return on assets have significant relationship with competitor financial statement performance appraisal, earnings per share on the other hand, showed an insignificant relationship with competitor financial statement performance appraisal. The study therefore recommended that for companies intending to improve their net profit before tax, return on equity and return on assets, managers of manufacturing firms should engage more on competitor financial statement performance appraisal, while for companies intending to shore up the value of their earnings per share, competitor financial statement performance appraisal is not an option to engage in

Security culture, strategic approach and the implementation and operationalization of european security

A inclusão do termo “estratégia” no documento sobre Estratégia de Segurança Europeia (ESE), gerou um intenso debate sobre se a União Europeia (UE) é detentora, partilha ou se deve ter uma abordagem estratégica comum em matéria de política externa. O artigo revê o debate tradicional e actual sobre cultura estratégica, examinando a utilidade do conceito no contexto das dimensões de implementação e operacionalização da Política Comum de Segurança e Defesa (PCSD). O conceito de cultura estratégica é frequentemente empregue no âmbito das políticas de defesa dos Estados e das alianças formais encontrando‑se centrado em torno das percepções de ameaça e das condições de supremacia militar. Estas premissas não se adequam aos objectivos de segu‑ rança da UE, às suas práticas políticas e escolha de instrumentos de segurança. O artigo propõe uma distinção entre cultura de segurança e abordagem estratégica, relacionando‑as com os processos de implementação e operacionalização da PCSD. Esta perspectiva permite avaliar como é que os princípios orientadores da segurança Europeia informam a cultura de segurança da UE e o processo de transformação de princípios em instrumentos de política de segurança poderá determinar as condições para uma abordagem estratégica mais eficiente da UE no contexto da segurança internacional

COMPETITOR FINANCIAL STATEMENT PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL ANDFINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF QUOTED MANUFACTURING FIRM IN NIGERIA

focus of the study is on competitor financial statement performance appraisal and its relationship with financial performance of manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The population of the study is the sixty-nine quoted manufacturing companies in the Nigerian Exchange Group, while sixty (60) of them were used as sample using the purposive sampling technique. The scope of the study covers the period 2014 -2023. Ex-post facto research design was adopted, with data obtained from the financial statements of the different companies involved in the study. Four (4) dimensions of financial performance were used for this study, which are net profit before tax, earnings per share, return on equity and return on assets against competitor financial statement performance appraisal. This led to the formulation of four (4) hypotheses that were tested using spearman rank correlation for the analyses. The results indicated that, while net profit before tax, return on equity and return on assets have significant relationship with competitor financial statement performance appraisal, earnings per share on the other hand, showed an insignificant relationship with competitor financial statement performance appraisal. The study therefore recommended that for companies intending to improve their net profit before tax, return on equity and return on assets, managers of manufacturing firms should engage more on competitor financial statement performance appraisal, while for companies intending to shore up the value of their earnings per share, competitor financial statement performance appraisal is not an option to engage in

Friction Stir Processing of WE43 with In-situ Cooling

It is well known that friction stir processing refines the microstructure of metallic alloys by imparting severe plastic deformation under frictional heating. FSP routinely produces an ultra-fine grained stir zone, which leads to higher hardness and yield strength in a material, and overlapping passes of FSP can be deployed to process a large area of a workpiece. It is also well known that controlling excessive heat input to the material during friction stir processing can help reduce dynamic grain growth, which is detrimental to the resulting mechanical properties. This thesis aimed to enhance the extent of grain refinement achievable during friction stir processing of a vital magnesium alloy, i.e., WE43, by leveraging active cooling. In the present work, we compared the conventional FSP with cFSP and found that fine and ultra-fine grains of 3.3 ��m and 1.5 ��m were produced in the WE43 plate by the two processes. We elaborate on the effectiveness of incorporating a cooling system into the backing plate, which provides in-situ cooling during FSP (cFSP) and thus arrests the microstructure and can help avoid grain growth during processing. cFSP grains exhibit 104 HV hardness versus the 78 HV of the base metal and improved the ductility from 9.2% Elongation of BM to 33% Elongation. The results establish that cFSP has the potential to create high hardness and ductility without compromising the yield strength which opens avenues for future research and potential applications

COMPETITOR FINANCIAL STATEMENT PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL ANDFINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF QUOTED MANUFACTURING FIRM IN NIGERIA

focus of the study is on competitor financial statement performance appraisal and its relationship with financial performance of manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The population of the study is the sixty-nine quoted manufacturing companies in the Nigerian Exchange Group, while sixty (60) of them were used as sample using the purposive sampling technique. The scope of the study covers the period 2014 -2023. Ex-post facto research design was adopted, with data obtained from the financial statements of the different companies involved in the study. Four (4) dimensions of financial performance were used for this study, which are net profit before tax, earnings per share, return on equity and return on assets against competitor financial statement performance appraisal. This led to the formulation of four (4) hypotheses that were tested using spearman rank correlation for the analyses. The results indicated that, while net profit before tax, return on equity and return on assets have significant relationship with competitor financial statement performance appraisal, earnings per share on the other hand, showed an insignificant relationship with competitor financial statement performance appraisal. The study therefore recommended that for companies intending to improve their net profit before tax, return on equity and return on assets, managers of manufacturing firms should engage more on competitor financial statement performance appraisal, while for companies intending to shore up the value of their earnings per share, competitor financial statement performance appraisal is not an option to engage in

MMR-Mamba: Multi-Modal MRI Reconstruction with Mamba and Spatial-Frequency Information Fusion

Multi-modal MRI offers valuable complementary information for diagnosis and treatment; however, its utility is limited by prolonged scanning times. To accelerate the acquisition process, a practical approach is to reconstruct images of the target modality, which requires longer scanning times, from under-sampled k-space data using the fully-sampled reference modality with shorter scanning times as guidance. The primary challenge of this task is comprehensively and efficiently integrating complementary information from different modalities to achieve high-quality reconstruction. Existing methods struggle with this: 1) convolution-based models fail to capture long-range dependencies; 2) transformer-based models, while excelling in global feature modeling, struggle with quadratic computational complexity. To address this, we propose MMR-Mamba, a novel framework that thoroughly and efficiently integrates multi-modal features for MRI reconstruction, leveraging Mamba\u27s capability to capture long-range dependencies with linear computational complexity while exploiting global properties of the Fourier domain. Specifically, we first design a Target modality-guided Cross Mamba (TCM) module in the spatial domain, which maximally restores the target modality information by selectively incorporating relevant information from the reference modality. Then, we introduce a Selective Frequency Fusion (SFF) module to efficiently integrate global information in the Fourier domain and recover high-frequency signals for the reconstruction of structural details. Furthermore, we devise an Adaptive Spatial-Frequency Fusion (ASFF) module, which mutually enhances the spatial and frequency domains by supplementing less informative channels from one domain with corresponding channels from the other.10 pages, 5 figur

Business cycle dynamics across Europe: a cluster analysis

JEL Classification: E32, E37This dissertation aims to analyze the dynamics of business cycles across European countries between 1960Q1 and 2016Q1. For such purpose we identify country-groups of national deviation cycles through Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering with the Ward’s method. The clustering technique suggests the existence of three country-groups, which include, aside from other countries, France and Spain in Cluster 1, United Kingdom and Denmark in Cluster 2 and Germany and Italy in Cluster 3. We execute an extensive analysis on business cycle stylized facts, synchronization and turning points detection over the clusters’ deviation cycles. Further on, we analyze the propagation of economic shocks through a VAR model, over which we study Granger-causalities, Impulse Response Functions and Forecast Error Variance Decomposition. Our results show that both Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 share similar cyclical characteristics when compared to Cluster 3. Nevertheless, Cluster 1 and Cluster 3 appear to be the most synchronous pair, and simultaneously verify the largest proportion of time spent in the same cyclical phase. We show that there has been an increasing business cycle synchronization in Europe since the beginning of the 90’s. The structural analysis shows that Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 have the strongest permanent cumulative shocks, whereas Cluster 3 induces not only the weakest impulses but also explains the smallest fraction of the counterparts’ forecast error variance decomposition. These conclusions question the "German Dominance" hypothesis and allow the identification of alternative major economic propellers in Europe.A presente tese pretende analisar as dinâmicas dos ciclos económicos na Europa no período compreendido entre 1960Q1 e 2016Q1. Como tal, procedemos à identificação de grupos de ciclos económicos nacionais através de Clusterização Hierárquica Aglomerativa com o método de Ward. A Clusterização sugere a existência de três grupos que incluem, além de outros países, França e Espanha no Cluster 1, Reino Unido e Dinamarca no Cluster 2, e Alemanha e Itália no Cluster 3. Analisamos as principais características, sincronização e cronologia de pontos de inflexão dos ciclos económicos dos clusters. Estudamos ainda a propagação de choques económicos com um modelo VAR, sobre o qual concluímos sobre causalidade à Granger, funções de impulso-resposta e decomposição de variância. Os resultados mostram que o Cluster 1 e Cluster 2 apresentam maiores semelhanças nas características dos seus ciclos quando comparados ao Cluster 3. Simultaneamente, o Cluster 1 e Cluster 3 apresentam quer o maior nível de sincronização quer a maior fração de tempo partilhada na mesma fase cíclica. Concluímos também que o nível de sincronização dos ciclos económicos na Europa apresenta uma tendência crescente, especialmente após os anos 90. A análise estrutural conclui que o Cluster 1 e Cluster 2 produzem os choques permanentes mais fortes, enquanto que o Cluster 3 induz os impulsos mais fracos, além de explicar a menor parte da decomposição de variância do erro de previsão dos restantes. As presentes conclusões questionam a hipótese de "Domínio Alemão" e permitem a identificação de outros propulsores económicos na Europa