Sanitation and Health practices: A Positive Deviance study of three Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) host villages in Uganda

Background: Uganda is hard hit by poor access to clean water, lack of basic sanitary facilities and practices, and the high cost of health care, all contributing to a high toll of infection-related illness. Although Uganda has one of the most advanced, harmonized and coordinated water sectors in Africa, her progress in water supply, and sanitation has stagnated in the last few years. This stagnation factor is strongly attributed to the limited political prioritization of the sector, inadequate funding, poor O&M practices and limited translation of policy into practice at different levels of governance. Responding, in 2010 the Uganda government implemented a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme, using a participatory approach to empower communities to achieve better sanitation/health. Much can be learned from the experience of particular households in CLTS communities that managed to achieve significant sanitation improvements, despite ubiquitous deprivation. Conceptual framework: The study therefore, used the positive deviance (PD)' method/ approach as a conceptual framework to study such success. PD is an innovative public health strategy to learn from people whose uncommon but successful behaviours or strategies enable them to find better solutions to a problem than their peers, despite facing similar challenges and having no extra resources. In the Global South, earlier evidences point to the successful application of the PD in improving child nutrition and other public health challenges but until now, it had not been used as an approach to address the need for better sanitation. Using PD, this study examined sanitation achievements in households with best practice. Methods: Between June and September 2015, a qualitative case study was conducted in Nawango, Mpanga and Bule villages in Bulo sub-county, Uganda. These villages hosted the CLTS programme in 2013/2014 and emerged with varying results. Their variation inspired curiosity and offered the study several opportunities based on both cultural and socio economic diversities. The study then utilized a purposive sampling method in selecting experienced informants based on their association with the CLTS, position of significance in society and knowledge/participation in other past health programs. Using the local council chairpersons and village health teams as gatekeepers to these villages, both PD and non- PD households were recruitment. Field data were collected through semi-structured in-depth audiotaped interviews, and observations. Participants were 2 district health officers, 10 men, and 31 women in 41 households. Data was analyzed using Attride stirling's thematic network analysis. Results: Based on reported and observed sanitation and health care practices, the researcher identified 25 non-PD and 16 PD households in the 3 villages. In this context, PDs were those households who managed to practice better sanitation despite facing various health care challenges and the non- PDs were those households who despite having access to modern health care, VHTs, village drug points and health education, failed to practice better sanitation. This meant that non-PDs not only exposed their families, but the entire community to preventable sanitary diseases. Compared to non-PD households, PDs engaged in traditional sanitary/health practices where they consulted practitioners of traditional medicine such as birth attendants and traditionalist’s shrines to deal with infectious diseases e.g. diarrhea and malaria. For modern medicin e such as de-wormers, PDs visited Bulo health center III and village drug points to access treatments for under-fives and expectant mothers. The high costs of treating sanitary diseases among these destitute households, coupled with fear of coercions /shame from local leaders and village mates for indiscriminate defecation, forced PD households to practice better sanitation. PDs mentioned how they had learnt the benefits of sleeping under treated nets, washing hands with ash / soap, and eliminating open defecation from health education. For indigenous health ideas, PDs revealed how listening and learning from elders and extended families had enhanced their good sanitary practices. Conclusion: In the deprived villages studied, the use of PD was effective in identifying particular instances of good household sanitation practices amongst the majority of households that struggled less successfully to achieve good sanitation. Use of traditional medicine from birth attendants and traditionalist’s shrines, visiting Bulo health center III and village drug points for treatments, high costs of treatments coupled with fear of coercions /shame and health education meetings, triggered the PD behaviors discovered in the study. Indigenous health ideas from elders and extended families also motivated PD practices. These trigger factors could be studied and targeted in future interventions to improve sanitation in households in similar villages /locations. This study is thus the first to demonstrate he value of the PD method in community sanitation research in the Global South.Master of Philosophy in Health PromotionHEPRO350MPHEPR

Análisis del dossier genético de "La muerte bailando", un relato recuperado de Ramón del Valle-Inclán

«La muerte bailando», uno de los relatos recuperados de Ramón del Valle-Inclán y publicado en el volumen Valle-Inclán inédito (2008) por Joaquín del Valle-Inclán, está estrechamente vinculado al proceso de escritura de la última serie de su autor: El Ruedo Ibérico. Esta obra quedó inacabada por motivos todavía desconocidos y la recuperación del texto aquí objeto de estudio podría estar apuntando a su continuidad. Se ha realizado un primer acercamiento crítico a los materiales de génesis desprendidos de su proceso de escritura desde los presupuestos de la critique génétique, con el objetivo de ofrecer una descripción de su dossier genético que nos permita contribuir al conocimiento del modus operandi del autor al frente de su última obra, y más específicamente, al conocimiento de sus estrategias de escritura

Design, fabrication and applications of microplasma device

The feasibility of using microplasma device (MPD) as a non-thermal plasma source for hydrogen production to potentially replace conventional source of electricity for potable applications has been explored. The scaling theory for direct glow discharges along with the design approach, fabrication details and the experimental characterizations are presented for two types of device: Planar Geometry Microplasma Device (PGMPD), and Parallel Plane Electrodes Microplasma Device (PPEMPD). Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) and current-voltage characteristics of the two designs are described. Issues related to plasma stability and breakdown voltage are studied. It was found that the breakdown voltage of the designs is about 280 V, with a 30-sccm of argon flow rate. In addition it was found that a more durable electrode material is needed to improve the lifetime of the PPEMPD devices, which is limited to about 2 hours due to sputtering. Experimental runs have demonstrated a water vapor conversion to hydrogen using argon plasma at atmospheric pressure

Hysteresis in vibrated granular media

Some general dynamical properties of models for compaction of granular media based on master equations are analyzed. In particular, a one-dimensional lattice model with short-ranged dynamical constraints is considered. The stationary state is consistent with Edward's theory of powders. The system is submitted to processes in which the tapping strength is monotonically increased and decreased. In such processes the behavior of the model resembles the reversible–irreversible branches which have been recently observed in experiments. This behavior is understood in terms of the general dynamical properties of the model, and related to the hysteresis cycles exhibited by structural glasses in thermal cycles. The existence of a “normal” solution, i.e., a special solution of the master equation which is monotonically approached by all the other solutions, plays a fundamental role in the understanding of the hysteresis effects.Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica (Spain) through Grant No. PB98-112

Three-body Casimir-Polder interactions

As part of our program to develop the description of three-body effects in quantum vacuum phenomena, we study the three-body interaction of two anisotropically polarizable atoms with a perfect electrically conducting plate, a generalization of earlier work. Three- and four-scattering effects are important, and lead to nonmonotonic behavior.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, for the proceedings of the conference Mathematical Structures in Quantum Systems, Benasque, Spain, July 2012, to be published in Nuovo Ciment

Thermomagnetic properties at the nanoscale

This Thesis deals with the magnetic properties and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in the single-domain range. The motivation to carry out such work is based on the unusual magnetic properties that common materials exhibit in nanoscaled dimensions when they reach the single-domain size, often radically different and/or enhanced with respect to their bulk counterparts. These new properties have a wide range of technological applications, ranging from magnetic recording to biomedicine. In particular, the study of the MCE in these low-dimensional systems is of primordial importance both for refrigeration purposes of micro- and nano-electro mechanical systems, and for biomedical applications as magnetic agents for hyperthermia treatments. Characterizing the magnetic properties (and the MCE) in these reduced dimensions is very complex, since the magnetic response of the system is strongly dependent in several factors as size, shape, anisotropy, dipole-dipole interaction, etc, which make difficult to control the parameters ruling its behaviour, and consequently, limit their technological use. Furthermore, single-domain magnetic systems may exhibit superparamagnetic (SPM) behaviour depending on the specific conditions (applied magnetic field, temperature, magnetic anisotropy, size, shape, etc). SPM behaviour is the paramagnetic-like temperature dependence that single domain magnetic entities may exhibit at certain conditions, and it is evident that needs to be perfectly controlled depending on the specific applications we are interested in (for example, for magnetic recording purposes it is necessary to avoid SPM fluctuations, so that the magnetic information remains stable against thermal fluctuations). In this context, the use of a computational technique (Monte Carlo one in our case) arises as a very useful tool to study such magnetic nanostructures: on the one hand, with a MC method the characteristics of the system are perfectly controlled and, on the other hand, we can study problems with no analytical solution, as for example the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction. This is the main objective of the present work: with the help of a MC technique we can study different nanostructured systems, as randomly distributed nanoparticles systems or chain-like nanoparticle assemblies, and to investigate how the different parameter (magnetic anisotropy, size, shape, interparticle interactions, etc) rule its behaviour. This knowledge will then be applied to search for the optimizing MCE-based applications both for hyperthermia and refrigeration purposes