Groundwater data management by water service providers in peri-urban areas of Lusaka

Groundwater management by water service providers in Lusaka, Zambia, includes borehole siting, drilling and on-going monitoring. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC) and devolved Water Trust managers, in order to assess their needs and collect their suggestions to improve data management. The research found that both the Water Trusts and LWSC lacked the capacity to fully utilize hydrogeological information. Prior to the research, none of the ten Water Trusts collected water level data. Four have started to collect data recently and another four have plans to, and they would like to share this data more widely

Photons from anisotropic Quark-Gluon-Plasma

We calculate medium photons due to Compton and annihilation processes in an anisotropic media. The effects of time-dependent momentum-space anisotropy of {\em Quark-Gluon-Plasma} (QGP) on the medium photon production are discussed. Such an anisotropy can results from the initial rapid longitudinal expansion of the matter, created in relativistic heavy ion collisions. A phenomenological model for the time-dependence of the parton hard momentum scale, $p_{hard}(\tau)$, and anisotropy parameter, $\xi(\tau)$, has been used to describe the plasma space-time evolution. We find significant dependency of photon yield on the isotropization time ($\tau_{iso}$). It is shown that the introduction of early time momentum-space anisotropy can enhance the photon production by a factor of $10 (1.5)$ (in the central rapidity region) for {\em free streaming} ({\em collisionally-broadened}) {\em interpolating} model if we assume fixed initial condition. On the other hand, enforcing the fixed final multiplicity significantly reduces the enhancement of medium photon production.Comment: 15 pages, 19 figures, few refs added, one new paragraph is added in introduction, published in Physical Rev.

Historical and Ethnographical Publications in the Vernaculars of Colonial Zambia: Missionary Contribution to the 'Creation of Tribalism'

This essay examines the chronology and attributes of literate ethno-history in Northern Rhodesia. While the earliest published authors were invariably members of missionary societies whose evangelical policies were predisposed towards the christianization of local chieftaincies, the expansion and Africanization of vernacular historiography from the late 1930s owed much to the intervention of the colonial government in the publishing sphere. A survey of their contents shows that vernacular histories and ethnographies mirrored the preconceptions and preoccupations typical of the times of their composition. By placing these texts in the political and economic context of the colony, and by providing new data on their wide circulation among literate Africans, the article contends that published ethno-histories were one of the principal cultural components of the process of crystallization of ethnic identities in the middle and late colonial era

Mechanisms to Ensure Pro-Poor Water Service Delivery in Peri-Urban and Urban areas

This report presents an overview of mechanisms for ensuring access to safe and affordable water services for the urban poor, as found in global literature. After presenting the main issues related to access to water services for the (peri-) urban poor in section 2, the report presents a number of options for improving utility-related water services to the poor in section 3, and options going beyond the utility in section 4. Finally, the conclusions of this report are presented in section 5

Trends of Zambia’s tuberculosis burden over the past two decades

Objectives:  To study trends in Zambia’s TB notification rates between 1990 and 2010 and to ascertain progress made towards TB control. Methods:  Retrospective review of TB notification returns and TB programme reports for the period from 1990 to 2010. Results:  Two distinct TB trend periods were identified: a period of rising trends up to a peak between 1990 and 2004 and a period of moderately declining trends between 2004 and 2010. Treatment outcomes improved over the two decades. Data on trends in paediatric TB, TB in prisoners and TB in pregnant women remain scanty and unreliable owing to poor diagnostic capability. There were no data available on trends on drug-resistant TB because of the lack of laboratory services to perform drug sensitivity testing. Conclusions:  The period of increasing TB between 1990 and 2000 coincided with an increase in HIV/AIDS. The period of slightly decreasing TB between 2004 and 2010 can be attributed to improved TB care, sustained DOTS implementation and improvement in TB diagnostic services. Newer diagnostics technologies for the rapid diagnosis of active TB cases and for drug-resistant testing, recently endorsed by the WHO, need to be implemented into the national TB programmes to detect more cases and to provide epidemiological and surveillance data from which to obtain an evidence base for guided investments for TB control. Alignment of TB and HIV services is required to achieve improved management outcomes