It Takes More than a Village: Building a Network of Safety in Nepal's Mountain Communities.

Purpose This report from the field details the ways that one small maternal child health NGO, which began its work in Tibet and now works in the mountain communities of Nepal, has established a model for integrated healthcare delivery and support it calls the "network of safety." Description It discusses some of the challenges faced both by the NGO and by the rural mountain communities with whom it partners, as well as with the government of Nepal. Conclusion This report describes and analyzes successful efforts to reduce maternal and infant mortality in a culturally astute, durable, and integrated way, as well as examples of innovation and success experienced by enacting the network of safety model

The Impact of Land Use on Nitrate-N Movement and Storage in the Vadose Zone of the Hastings’ WHPA

Nebraska has one of the largest agricultural economies in the United States and relies heavily on irrigation and fertilizer application to maintain crop yields. Over-irrigation and continuous application of nitrogen (N) in many areas has led to accumulation of nitrate-N in soils and sediments throughout the state’s vadose zone. Because nitrate-N is both persistent and mobile, groundwater concentrations in many areas of Nebraska and other agriculturally intensive states are increasing. Nitrate-N contamination of public and private drinking water supplies that utilize groundwater are of particular concern. Vadose zone sampling is an important method for rapidly assessing the effect of changing land use on potential groundwater contamination. In the current project, the occurrence and movement of nitrate-N was investigated using deep vadose zone soil cores collected from urban and irrigated farmland in the Hastings, NE Well Head Protection Area (WHPA) and compared to a previous study done at the same locations (R. Spalding & Toavs, 2011). Sampling previously collected sites allows for direct comparisons of current and historical nitrate-N profiles, potential movement, and can provide a method for evaluating effects of changing land use at the surface. Cumulative nitrate-N in the top 65 ft for urban irrigated lawns, pivot irrigated farmland, and gravity irrigated farmland had an average of 320, 540, and 700 total lbs-N/acre respectively. In farmland where irrigation changed from gravity to pivot application there was an average reduction of 170 lbs-N/acre in the top 55 ft of the profile over a five-year time span. This observation supports the use of sprinkler irrigation for more uniform water application, reducing potential leaching at the head and tail rows of gravity irrigated fields. While future studies are still needed, the importance of vadose zone monitoring in evaluating and protecting groundwater is beneficial in determining connections between surface activities and the underlying groundwater. Advisor: Daniel Sno

Elucidation of the osmoregulatory locus, ompRZ, in Erwinia chrysanthemi

Bibliography: pages 148-171.Bacteria are constantly faced with harsh environmental conditions to which they have to adapt. These adaptive mechanism generally involve the use of two-component sensory systems, comprising of sensor proteins interacting with their cognate response regulator proteins. To survive fluctuating environments such as osmotic conditions, certain bacterial species employ the ompR-envZ (ompB) two-component system to monitor and respond to the osmotic cue. The EnvZ protein functions as the sensor and relays information regarding changes to the external environment, to the response regulator, OmpR. OmpR, in turn, regulates the porins, OmpF and OmpC in a reciprocal manner, so that one porin predominates over the other, depending on osmotic conditions. Erwinia chrysanthemi, which causes "soft rot" in a wide range of economically important crops, has been demonstrated to contain porin-like proteins similar to OmpF and OmpC. The expression of these porins was regulated in a similar manner to OmpF and OmpC with respect to medium osmolarity. Furthermore, preliminary studies have shown that changes in osmolarity affect the expression of pathogenecity genes. Evidence for an osmoregulatory system analagous to the ompB system of Escherichia coli was, therefore, sought. Primers specific for conserved regions in ompR were designed and used to PCR amplify a 631 bp fragment from E. coli. This fragment was cloned into the vector, pBluescriptSk, and end-sequenced to confirm its authenticity. The same strategy was followed, using envZ-specific primers to generate an E. coli envZ clone. Southern hybridisation analyses, using an ompR probe, confirmed the presence of an ompR homologue in E. chrysanthemi. An E. chrysanthemi genomic library was thus constructed and screened and a clone homologous to the ompR probe was isolated. The resulting plasmid, pRZ69, was partially characterised and determined to have both envZ and ompR homologues resident. Southern hybridisation analyses were employed to localise the ompR and envZ genes on the plasmid. A 1200 bp EcoRV-Pst1 fragment containing the ompR homologue and a 2000 bp EcoRV-EcoRV fragment containing the envZ homologue, were subcloned into pBluescriptSk, generating the plasmids, pRS1 and pZS2 respectively

Sources of adverse selection in insurance markets with genetic information

In this thesis we quantify costs of adverse selection in insurance markets where there are multiple sources of adverse selection. We aim to find the relative impact of genetic information as one of these sources. Using new data on the effects of components of a polygenic model of breast cancer, we model adverse selection in a critical illness insurance market. We confirm the results of a previous study, which used a simpler polygene model without details of particular genes, that polygenes pose a greater source of adverse selection risk than the major genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2). In a start-up market for long-term insurance, we model the progression of adverse selection costs over time, where premiums are repriced to adapt to the information the insurer gains about its business mix from its claims experience. In a U.K. setting we find the greatest costs of adverse selection come from a hypothetical intermediate stage of dementia progression which is not visible to an insurer, while testing of the APOE gene poses very little risk. We find the U.K. government's proposed cap on care liability has very little impact on adverse selection costs, as it benefits a very small proportion of people