Productivity of key informants for identifying blind children: evidence from a pilot study in Malawi.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the productivity of village-based 'key informants' (KIs) in identifying blind children. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ngabu subdistrict (population 101,000) of Chikwawa district was divided into KI catchment areas. KIs, selected by local village leaders, were trained to register children reported to be blind or with severe visual impairment. These children were clinically assessed at designated centres. RESULTS: In total, 44 KIs were selected and trained to cover 196 villages in Ngabu. They identified and referred 151 children, 37 of whom were blind (presenting vision <3/60 best eye). Overall, village leaders tended to choose female KIs (80%) compared to male KIs (20%); however, male KIs tended to be more productive, identifying 4.22 children each (compared to 3.23 for female KIs). Male KIs were 2.7 times more likely to identify blind children compared to female KIs. Only 25% of all identified blind children of school going age were in school. CONCLUSIONS: KIs may be effective in identifying blind children in the community; however, additional work is needed to determine who will be the most effective KI in a community and whether gender roles will limit interpretation of findings from KIs activities

AXES at TRECVID 2012: KIS, INS, and MED

The AXES project participated in the interactive instance search task (INS), the known-item search task (KIS), and the multimedia event detection task (MED) for TRECVid 2012. As in our TRECVid 2011 system, we used nearly identical search systems and user interfaces for both INS and KIS. Our interactive INS and KIS systems focused this year on using classifiers trained at query time with positive examples collected from external search engines. Participants in our KIS experiments were media professionals from the BBC; our INS experiments were carried out by students and researchers at Dublin City University. We performed comparatively well in both experiments. Our best KIS run found 13 of the 25 topics, and our best INS runs outperformed all other submitted runs in terms of P@100. For MED, the system presented was based on a minimal number of low-level descriptors, which we chose to be as large as computationally feasible. These descriptors are aggregated to produce high-dimensional video-level signatures, which are used to train a set of linear classifiers. Our MED system achieved the second-best score of all submitted runs in the main track, and best score in the ad-hoc track, suggesting that a simple system based on state-of-the-art low-level descriptors can give relatively high performance. This paper describes in detail our KIS, INS, and MED systems and the results and findings of our experiments

AXES at TRECVid 2011

The AXES project participated in the interactive known-item search task (KIS) and the interactive instance search task (INS) for TRECVid 2011. We used the same system architecture and a nearly identical user interface for both the KIS and INS tasks. Both systems made use of text search on ASR, visual concept detectors, and visual similarity search. The user experiments were carried out with media professionals and media students at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, with media professionals performing the KIS task and media students participating in the INS task. This paper describes the results and findings of our experiments

TRECVid 2011 Experiments at Dublin City University

This year the iAd-DCU team participated in three of the assigned TRECVid 2011 tasks; Semantic Indexing (SIN), Interactive Known-Item Search (KIS) and Multimedia Event Detection (MED). For the SIN task we presented three full runs using global features, local features and fusion of global, local features and relationships between concepts respectively. The evaluation results show that local features achieve better performance, with marginal gains found when introducing global features and relationships between concepts. With regard to our KIS submission, similar to our 2010 KIS experiments, we have implemented an iPad interface to a KIS video search tool. The aim of this year’s experimentation was to evaluate different display methodologies for KIS interaction. For this work, we integrate a clustering element for keyframes, which operates over MPEG-7 features using k-means clustering. In addition, we employ concept detection, not simply for search, but as a means of choosing most representative keyframes for ranked items. For our experiments we compare the baseline non-clustering system to a clustering system on a topic by topic basis. Finally, for the first time this year the iAd group at DCU has been involved in the MED Task. Two techniques are compared, employing low-level features directly and using concepts as intermediate representations. Evaluation results show promising initial results when performing event detection using concepts as intermediate representations

Creative and knowledge economies and their linkages with other economic sectors. An analysis for the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (MRB)

The increase in the last decades of the weight of the creative industries and knowledge-intensive sectors (KIS) in the economies of metropolitan areas is transforming the dynamics of urban development, for access of these sectors to agglomeration economies, such as skilled labor and good communication infrastructures. Polycentrism is helping in such a process. In this paper the interactions of the KIS with other economic sectors are analyzed in order to know the relationship between levels of economic dependence of economic sectors and their spatial patterns. In doing so, the input-output matrix of Catalonia, where is located the MRB, is analysed by means of multidimensional scaling techniques and compared to the geographical distance among sectors. Results suggest a little correlation between economic dependence and geographic distance from the different economic sectors, and a high correlation factor was found when considered in isolation of the KIS. This phenomenon could be the result of great economic dependence of all economic sectors to the KIS, which are located mostly in the center of all relations of the region's economy; consequently, KIS are localized geographically around the whole territory, although, more concentrated than others sectors.

Taxonomic results of the Bryotrop expedition to Zaire and Rwanda : 31., the Andean Daltonia latolimbata Broth. in Herzog in Africa

Daltonia latolimbata Broth. described in 1916 from the Bolivian Andes occurs also in the high African mountains, consequently is an Andean-Afroalpine species

Using primary health care (PHC) workers and key informants for community based detection of blindness in children in Southern Malawi.

BACKGROUND: There is great interest in providing primary eye care (PEC) through integration into primary health care (PHC). However, there is little evidence of the productivity of PHC workers in offering primary eye care after training and integration, and there is need to compare their effectiveness to alternative methods. The current study compared the effectiveness of trained Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) versus trained volunteer Key Informants (KIs) in identifying blind children in southern Malawi. METHODS: A cluster community based study was conducted in Mulanje district, population 435 753. Six clusters each with a population of approximately 70 000 to 80 000, 42% of whom were children were identified and randomly allocated to either HSA or KI training. From each cluster 20 HSAs or 20 KIs were selected for training. Training emphasized the causes of blindness in children and their management, and how to identify and list children suspected of being blind. HSAs and KIs used multiple methods (door to door, school screening, health education talks, village announcements, etc.) to identify children. Using the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates (eight blind children per 10 000 children); approximately 144 to 162 blind children were expected in the chosen clusters. Listed children were brought to a centre within the community where they were examined by an ophthalmologist and findings recorded using the WHO form for examining blindness in children. RESULTS: A total of 59 HSAs and 64 KIs were trained. HSAs identified five children of whom two were confirmed as blind (one blind child per 29.5 HSAs trained). On the other hand, the KIs identified a total of 158 children of whom 20 were confirmed blind (one blind child per 3.2 KIs trained). More blind boys than girls were identified (77.3% versus 22.7%) respectively. CONCLUSION: Key Informants were much better at identifying blind children than HSAs, even though both groups identified far fewer blind children compared with WHO estimates. HSAs reported lack of time as a major constraint in identifying blind children. Based on these findings using HSAs for identifying blind children would not be successful in Malawi. Gender differences need to be addressed in all childhood blindness programs to counteract the imbalance

The rise of consultancy and the prospect for regions

Reviews recent research on the growth of `knowledge-intensive services' (KIS), based on processes of consultancy. This trend is a significant symptom of new divisions of labour in the provision of key technical and business expertise especially to the corporate sector. KIS growth is regionally highly concentrated in all European countries, but their influence on patterns and rates of change in other sectors is perhaps becoming even more significant across all regions. Global consultancies, in particular, now link global, national and local sources of expertise, exerting a powerful influence on national and regional KIS through both competitive and collaborative processes. Important elements of economies, including small-medium firms, and peripheral regions may not benefit from these changes, thus accentuating patterns of unequal economic development.

STUDY ON THE ECONOMIC EFFECT OF PRODUCTION FREE FROM CHEMICAL USE

The assumption, that in case of production different from the conventional one, operational and production risk are increasing in farms, is supported by the calculations. Input/output relations undergo a change in each sector and this may have serious financial outcomes, which would importantly determine profit yielding capacity and efficiency of farming. The statement of Offermann and Nieberg is true of the cost structure, according to which essential cost difference between the two technologies can not be measured. By the aid of the calculation, it was successfully verified – in compliance with the opinion of Wookey – that organic production can be as profitable, as the conventional production or even more so. In contradiction to Bmvel’s data, it can be demonstrated, that even a revenues, surpassing the result of conventional production may be realized in organic farms. On the whole, the results obtained strengthen the standing-point of Szente, according to which the profit, originating from organic production may be higher, than that from conventional production, although it fails already to reach the saliently high values, which were characteristic of the earlier years. In production technology, upon the effect of the change in operational elements and elimination of chemical use, increased yield risk is to be taken into account, although at the same time, the possibility of a more successful operation will in-crease through the market premium price. Subsidy of each technology is different, which means, that allowances associated with the expectable future much better environment-saving technologies will further increase profitability. Also market changes may promote this process, since consumers and institutions become increasingly disposed to take a turn to goods, produced free from chemicals. It is indicated also by statistical data, that more and more producers are dealing with organic production and also the size of areas turned on organic farming is continuously increasing. The rhythm of the development of organic markets is still lagging behind this, but the possibility is open to the agricultural sector being in process of transition. Conventional agriculture is yet unable to produce commodities, suitable for satisfaction of all demands of consumers in every respect, and also efficiency and profitability of production are very low, several sectors can be operated with loss only.organic farming, turning on, profitability, Agribusiness, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,