2,480 research outputs found
HIV self-testing practices among Health Care Workers: feasibility and options for accelerating HIV testing services in Ethiopia
Introduction: HIV is still an enormous global burden and it is also causing loss of huge health care workers (HCWs) on the already limited human resource capacity in health care services in Sub-Saharan Africa. Variety of methods of accelerating HIV testing is required to increase the rate of HIV testing and expand treatment services. Therefore, this study was aimed to find out the prevalence, feasibility and options of HIV self-testing practices in Ethiopia. Methods: A cross-sectional study design triangulated with qualitative method was conducted from February to May, 2012. The data was collected using a semi-structured pretested questionnaire and in-depth interview, at government and private health centers or clinics and hospitals. During the data collection all the available healthcare workers (HCWs) which encompass the internship students including: Medical, Health Officer, Nurses, Midwives and Laboratory students, and health professionals working in the selected health institutions were involved.Results: A total of 307 HCWs were included in the analysis and we found that 288(94.4%) of them were ever tested for HIV, of which majority 203 (70.5%) were tested by themselves though 244(80%) of the HCWs had motivation or interest to be tested by themselves. Generally, of the ever tested only 85(29.5%) were tested by the help of health care providers/counselors other than self. Regarding the place where the HCWs had the test, majority 136 (69.4%) tested by themselves at the health facility and the rest were tested at their home, office, market and church. The main reason stated for self-testing was the need for confidentiality for the test result, which was mentioned by 205(82%). Moreover, 35(14.0%) claims lack of time to access the ordinary counseling and testing services. Conclusion: This study depicts high rate of HIV self-testing practice among HCWs. This shows that HIV self-testing can be considered as one pillar to increase the HIV-testing services and a means for the HIV prevention and control policy, through increasing HIV testing uptake and awareness of HIV status. However, the implementation may require the role of different stakeholders and decision makers with further study to extend the options.Key words: HIV, VCT, self-test, health care workers, Ethiopi
How to Test for Diagonalizability: The Discretized PT-Invariant Square-Well Potential
Given a non-hermitean matrix M, the structure of its minimal polynomial
encodes whether M is diagonalizable or not. This note will explain how to
determine the minimal polynomial of a matrix without going through its
characteristic polynomial. The approach is applied to a quantum mechanical
particle moving in a square well under the influence of a piece-wise constant
PT-symmetric potential. Upon discretizing the configuration space, the system
is decribed by a matrix of dimension three. It turns out not to be
diagonalizable for a critical strength of the interaction, also indicated by
the transition of two real into a pair of complex energy eigenvalues. The
systems develops a three-fold degenerate eigenvalue, and two of the three
eigenfunctions disappear at this exceptional point, giving a difference between
the algebraic and geometric multiplicity of the eigenvalue equal to two.Comment: 5 page
Human Dynamics: The Correspondence Patterns of Darwin and Einstein
While living in different historical era, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) were both prolific correspondents: Darwin sent
(received) at least 7,591 (6,530) letters during his lifetime while Einstein
sent (received) over 14,500 (16,200). Before email scientists were part of an
extensive university of letters, the main venue for exchanging new ideas and
results. But were the communication patterns of the pre-email times any
different from the current era of instant access? Here we show that while the
means have changed, the communication dynamics has not: Darwin's and Einstein's
pattern of correspondence and today's electronic exchanges follow the same
scaling laws. Their communication belongs, however, to a different universality
class from email communication, providing evidence for a new class of phenomena
capturing human dynamics.Comment: Supplementary Information available at http://www.nd.edu/~network
Localization of Atiyah classes
We construct the Atiyah classes of holomorphic vector bundles using (1,0)-connections and developing a Chern–Weil type theory, allowing us to effectively compare Chern and Atiyah forms. Combining this point of view with the Čech–Dolbeault cohomology, we prove several results about vanishing and localization of Atiyah classes, and give some applications. In particular, we prove a Bott type vanishing theorem for (not necessarily involutive) holomorphic distributions. As an example we also present an explicit computation of the residue of a singular distribution on the normal bundle of an invariant submanifold that arises from the Camacho–Sad type localization
Modelling the observed properties of carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars using binary population synthesis
The stellar population in the Galactic halo is characterised by a large
fraction of CEMP stars. Most CEMP stars are enriched in -elements (CEMP-
stars), and some of these are also enriched in -elements (CEMP- stars).
One formation scenario proposed for CEMP stars invokes wind mass transfer in
the past from a TP-AGB primary star to a less massive companion star which is
presently observed. We generate low-metallicity populations of binary stars to
reproduce the observed CEMP-star fraction. In addition, we aim to constrain our
wind mass-transfer model and investigate under which conditions our synthetic
populations reproduce observed abundance distributions. We compare the CEMP
fractions and the abundance distributions determined from our synthetic
populations with observations. Several physical parameters of the binary
stellar population of the halo are uncertain, e.g. the initial mass function,
the mass-ratio and orbital-period distributions, and the binary fraction. We
vary the assumptions in our model about these parameters, as well as the wind
mass-transfer process, and study the consequent variations of our synthetic
CEMP population. The CEMP fractions calculated in our synthetic populations
vary between 7% and 17%, a range consistent with the CEMP fractions among very
metal-poor stars recently derived from the SDSS/SEGUE data sample. The results
of our comparison between the modelled and observed abundance distributions are
different for CEMP- stars and for CEMP- stars. For the latter, our
simulations qualitatively reproduce the observed distributions of C, Na, Sr,
Ba, Eu, and Pb. Contrarily, for CEMP- stars our model cannot reproduce the
large abundances of neutron-rich elements such as Ba, Eu, and Pb. This result
is consistent with previous studies, and suggests that CEMP- stars
experienced a different nucleosynthesis history to CEMP- stars.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication on Astronomy and
Astrophysic
The Status and Determining Factors to Develop Students Self-Regulated Behavior in Learning among Fourth Generation Universities in Ethiopia
The main objective of the present study was to assess the status and determining factors to develop student self-regulated behavior in learning among fourth generation universities in Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from primary and secondary source of data. The study employed random and purposive sampling techniques to select 270 instructors, 4 department heads and 6 well-experienced teachers. Data from the quantitative survey were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, t-test, analysis of variance and multiple regressions. Qualitative data was analyzed through thematic narration. The study found that the mean score of teacher’s practice of self-regulated behavior in learning was 2.72 and standard deviation 4.379. The independent samples t-test and One-way ANOVA indicated that, there was statistically significant mean difference in gender and educational statues of teachers’ in practice of self-regulated strategies. Women and teachers who had higher educational status performed better than other instructors. Multiple regression analysis indicated teachers’ negative attitude toward their profession and lack of commitment was significant factor for low development of self-regulated behavior in learning in fourth generation Universities in Ethiopia. However, pedagogical knowledge, teaching experience, age and educational was non- significant at P<0.05 level of significance
Dynamics in Several Complex Variables
In this chapter we shall describe the dynamics of holomorphic self-maps of taut manifolds, and in particular the dynamics of holomorphic self-maps of convex and strongly pseudoconvex domains. A main tool in this exploration will be provided by the Kobayashi distance
Distributed computation of transient state distributions and passage time quantiles in large semi-Markov models
Submitted versio
An Algorithmic Test for Diagonalizability of Finite-Dimensional PT-Invariant Systems
A non-Hermitean operator does not necessarily have a complete set of
eigenstates, contrary to a Hermitean one. An algorithm is presented which
allows one to decide whether the eigenstates of a given PT-invariant operator
on a finite-dimensional space are complete or not. In other words, the
algorithm checks whether a given PT-symmetric matrix is diagonalizable. The
procedure neither requires to calculate any single eigenvalue nor any numerical
approximation.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur
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