"The Impact of Malaria Eradication on Fertility"

The malaria eradication campaign that started in Sri Lanka in the late 1940s virtually eliminated malaria transmission on the island. I use the pre-eradication differences in malaria endemicity within Sri Lanka to identify the effect of malaria eradication on fertility and child survival. Malaria eradication increased the number of live births through increasing age specific fertility and causing an earlier first birth. The effect of malaria on the transition time to higher order births is inconclusive. Malaria could directly or indirectly affect survival probabilities of live births. I exploit the particular epidemiology of malaria that causes more severe sequelae during an initial pregnancy. I find differential changes in survival probabilities by birth order that are most likely due to the direct in utero effects of malaria. The increase in population growth after malaria eradication reconciles the contradictory findings in the macroeconomic and microeconomic literatures: the increased productivity and education from malaria eradication will only appear in aggregate measures like GDP per capita after a delay because of the initial increase in the population size.malaria, fertility, disease eradication

Politics and Religion: Identifying the Correlates of Support for Merging the Public and Separate School Systems in Ontario

This article explores the factors associated with support for a merger of Ontario’s two publicly funded school systems (secular and Catholic). Drawing upon survey data from over 2,000 Ontarians, it investigates the sociodemographic and attitudinal correlates of opinions toward school system reform. We find evidence that both political attitudes and religious identities are associated with school system attitudes, but that religious identity—specifically Catholicism—has a much more powerful impact. Our findings suggest that coalitions of support and opposition to a school system merger in Ontario are complex and not driven by a single obvious cleavage. Keywords: religious education, public opinion, OntarioCet article explore les facteurs associés à l’appui d’une fusion des deux systèmes scolaires publics de l’Ontario (laïque et catholique). En nous appuyant sur les données d’une enquête menée auprès de plus de 2000 Ontariens, nous étudions les corrélations sociodémographiques et attitudinales des opinions concernant une réforme du système scolaire. Nos recherches démontrent que les opinions politiques et les identités religieuses sont associées à différentes postures au regard du système scolaire, mais que l’identité religieuse – en particulier le catholicisme – a un impact beaucoup plus puissant. Nos conclusions indiquent que les coalitions qui soutiennent et s’opposent à une fusion des systèmes scolaires en Ontario sont motivées par des idéologies complexes et non par un seul clivage évident. Mots-clés : éducation religieuse, opinion publique, Ontari

Physical Activity of Osteopathic Medical Students

Context: Physical inactivity has been identified as one of the greatest current health burdens worldwide. In addition to physical activity’s primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention benefits related to many diseases, physical activity has been shown to be associated with improvements in concentration, memory, and performance on standardized tests. Studies on physical activity and medical education have suggested that given the scholastic demands required to become a physician, medical trainees may find it challenging to meet the recommended amounts of physical activity. Objective: To determine the extent to which osteopathic medical students (OMS) in the United States are meeting minimum recommendations for physical activity. Methods: Utilizing a cross-sectional design, in partnership with the Student Osteopathic Medical Association (SOMA) and Nova Southeastern University Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine (NSU-KPCOM), we conducted an online survey of third and fourth year OMS across USA, from August through December 2015. The survey collected self-reported data on frequency and duration of vigorous and moderate physical activity per week. Results: Most participants (60.7%) met or exceeded the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) physical activity guidelines of at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity per week. The OMS respondents’ mean of 215 minutes of physical activity per week significantly exceeded the ACSM recommendation ('p' = .000). Conclusions: OMS are well positioned to become physically active physicians and, in turn, promote physical activity in their patients. Future studies may look at barriers to physical activity in medical students and attempt to increase participation in active lifestyles in this population

Educator Incentives and Educational Triage in Rural Primary Schools

In low-income countries, primary school students often fall far below grade level and primary dropout rates remain high. Further, in some countries, educators encourage their weaker students to drop out before reaching the end of primary school. These educators hope to avoid the negative attention that authorities direct to a school when its students perform poorly on the primary leaving exams that governments use to certify primary completion and eligibility for secondary school. We report the results of an experiment in rural Uganda that sought to reduce dropout rates in grade six and seven by offering bonus payments to grade six teachers that rewarded each teacher for the performance of each of her students relative to comparable students in other schools. Teachers responded to this Pay for Percentile (PFP) incentive system in ways that raised attendance rates two school years later from .56 to .60. These attendance gains were driven primarily by outcomes in treatment schools that provide textbooks for grade six math students, where two-year attendance rates rose from .57 to .64. In these same schools, students whose initial skills levels prepared them to use grade six math texts enjoyed significant gains in math achievement. We find little evidence that PFP improved attendance or achievement in schools without books even though PFP had the same impact on reported teacher effort in schools with and without books. We conjecture that teacher effort and books are complements in education production and document several results that are consistent with this hypothesis

Changes in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthood

How was the evolution of our unique biological life history related to distinctive human developments in cognition and culture? We suggest that the extended human childhood and adolescence allows a balance between exploration and exploitation, between wider and narrower hypothesis search, and between innovation and imitation in cultural learning. In particular, different developmental periods may be associated with different learning strategies. This relation between biology and culture was probably coevolutionary and bidirectional: life-history changes allowed changes in learning, which in turn both allowed and rewarded extended life histories. In two studies, we test how easily people learn an unusual physical or social causal relation from a pattern of evidence. We track the development of this ability from early childhood through adolescence and adulthood. In the physical domain, preschoolers, counterintuitively, perform better than school-aged children, who in turn perform better than adolescents and adults. As they grow older learners are less flexible: they are less likely to adopt an initially unfamiliar hypothesis that is consistent with new evidence. Instead, learners prefer a familiar hypothesis that is less consistent with the evidence. In the social domain, both preschoolers and adolescents are actually the most flexible learners, adopting an unusual hypothesis more easily than either 6-y-olds or adults. There may be important developmental transitions in flexibility at the entry into middle childhood and in adolescence, which differ across domains

High Prevalence of Tuberculosis and Serious Bloodstream Infections in Ambulatory Individuals Presenting for Antiretroviral Therapy in Malawi

Background Tuberculosis (TB) and serious bloodstream infections (BSI) may contribute to the high early mortality observed among patients qualifying for antiretroviral therapy (ART) with unexplained weight loss, chronic fever or chronic diarrhea. Methods and Findings A prospective cohort study determined the prevalence of undiagnosed TB or BSI among ambulatory HIV-infected adults with unexplained weight loss and/or chronic fever, or diarrhea in two routine program settings in Malawi. Subjects with positive expectorated sputum smears for AFB were excluded. Investigations Bacterial and mycobacterial blood cultures, cryptococcal antigen test (CrAg), induced sputum (IS) for TB microscopy and solid culture, full blood count and CD4 lymphocyte count. Among 469 subjects, 52 (11%) had microbiological evidence of TB; 50 (11%) had a positive (non-TB) blood culture and/or positive CrAg. Sixty-five additional TB cases were diagnosed on clinical and radiological grounds. Nontyphoidal Salmonellae (NTS) were the most common blood culture pathogens (29 cases; 6% of participants and 52% of bloodstream isolates). Multivariate analysis of baseline clinical and hematological characteristics found significant independent associations between oral candidiasis or lymphadenopathy and TB, marked CD4 lymphopenia and NTS infection, and severe anemia and either infection, but low positive likelihood ratios (<2 for all combinations). Conclusions We observed a high prevalence of TB and serious BSI, particularly NTS, in a program cohort of chronically ill HIV-infected outpatients. Baseline clinical and hematological characteristics were inadequate predictors of infection. HIV clinics need better rapid screening tools for TB and BSI. Clinical trials to evaluate empiric TB or NTS treatment are required in similar populations

Global perspectives on observing ocean boundary current systems

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Todd, R. E., Chavez, F. P., Clayton, S., Cravatte, S., Goes, M., Greco, M., Ling, X., Sprintall, J., Zilberman, N., V., Archer, M., Aristegui, J., Balmaseda, M., Bane, J. M., Baringer, M. O., Barth, J. A., Beal, L. M., Brandt, P., Calil, P. H. R., Campos, E., Centurioni, L. R., Chidichimo, M. P., Cirano, M., Cronin, M. F., Curchitser, E. N., Davis, R. E., Dengler, M., deYoung, B., Dong, S., Escribano, R., Fassbender, A. J., Fawcett, S. E., Feng, M., Goni, G. J., Gray, A. R., Gutierrez, D., Hebert, D., Hummels, R., Ito, S., Krug, M., Lacan, F., Laurindo, L., Lazar, A., Lee, C. M., Lengaigne, M., Levine, N. M., Middleton, J., Montes, I., Muglia, M., Nagai, T., Palevsky, H., I., Palter, J. B., Phillips, H. E., Piola, A., Plueddemann, A. J., Qiu, B., Rodrigues, R. R., Roughan, M., Rudnick, D. L., Rykaczewski, R. R., Saraceno, M., Seim, H., Sen Gupta, A., Shannon, L., Sloyan, B. M., Sutton, A. J., Thompson, L., van der Plas, A. K., Volkov, D., Wilkin, J., Zhang, D., & Zhang, L. Global perspectives on observing ocean boundary current systems. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, (2010); 423, doi: 10.3389/fmars.2019.00423.Ocean boundary current systems are key components of the climate system, are home to highly productive ecosystems, and have numerous societal impacts. Establishment of a global network of boundary current observing systems is a critical part of ongoing development of the Global Ocean Observing System. The characteristics of boundary current systems are reviewed, focusing on scientific and societal motivations for sustained observing. Techniques currently used to observe boundary current systems are reviewed, followed by a census of the current state of boundary current observing systems globally. The next steps in the development of boundary current observing systems are considered, leading to several specific recommendations.RT was supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research at WHOI. FC was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. MGo was funded by NSF and NOAA/AOML. XL was funded by China’s National Key Research and Development Projects (2016YFA0601803), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41490641, 41521091, and U1606402), and the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (2017ASKJ01). JS was supported by NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (Award NA15OAR4320071). DZ was partially funded by the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA15OAR4320063. BS was supported by IMOS and CSIRO’s Decadal Climate Forecasting Project. We gratefully acknowledge the wide range of funding sources from many nations that have enabled the observations and analyses reviewed here