ECONOMIC AND POLICY DETERMINANTS OF NATIONAL ABORTION RATES: A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY

Abortion is as old as humanity and exists in all cultures. The number and rate of abortions differ among countries and regions of the world. Some determinants of abortion may include economic indicators and policy restrictiveness. This study analyzes the economic and policy determinants of abortion by evaluating the association of income and policy on abortion rates. It uses a panel data regression to examine the association between income, Gini Coefficient and abortion rates. Gini Coefficient measures income inequality, and GNI represents a country’s income. Publicly available longitudinal data obtained from the World Bank, United Nations, United Nations Population Development United Nations Department of Economic Affairs, and Open Society Framework were used for Aim 1 of this study. Aim 1 hypothesizes that there will be a positive relationship between GNI and abortion rates and a negative relationship between Gini index and abortion rates. Panel Data analysis of Aim 1 reveals no statistically significant association between abortion rates and GNI on a global scale, and among high-income countries, and middle-income countries. However, a significant positive association between GNI and abortion rates was observed in low-income countries. Furthermore, the association between policy and abortion was evaluated by using a policy restrictiveness score, and the association between the scores and abortion rates was examined. A linear regression model was used to evaluate this association. Data for this aim were 2017 cross-sectional public data from the World Bank, United Nations, United Nations Population Development, United Nations Department of Economic Affairs, and Open Society Framework. Results from this analysis reveal a negative, no statistically significant association between the policy scores and abortion rates

Spaces of the informal economy: reimagining street trading through accessibility distribution analyses in Lagos

Street traders operate in and around spaces that facilitate optimal interactions with potential customers - a distribution pattern which coincides with the busiest and most central parts of a city. In Lagos, street trading is ubiquitous and its appropriation of public space is contentious for spatial governance. Attempts at regulation exacerbate the precarious status of street traders and are mostly unsuccessful, and this is due to the limited understanding of the spatiality of street trading. The locations where street trading thrives are thus investigated in this thesis to unravel what aspects of spatiality creates the milieu that encourages their activities - an area of research that has received little attention in recent years. The aim is to contribute to the discourse on inclusive urban practices and policies in developing country cities. In literature, the determinants of street traders workplace locations are referenced to externalities from locational centrality and potent human activity (Dewar and Watson 1990; Monnet et al. 2007; Skinner 2008b; Skinner 2008a; Dobson et al. 2009). However, this body of work has not employed a systematic analysis in the study of such locations. This gap in research is addressed by using a novel methodological framework known as ‘Spatial Design Network Analysis for Street-Based Enterprises’ (sDNA-sBEL), which combines the systematic analyses of multi-scale network accessibility distribution with morphological properties of urban form. As a principle of sDNA-sBEL, open-source data and freeware applications were used to ensure replicability and accessibility to a broader audience. The sDNA-sBEL analyses identified that the most prolific street trading locations in Lagos have high values of macro-scale betweenness – spaces traversed most frequently while Lagosians take the shortest routes for long distance (inter-city) vehicular journeys. However, other compositional spatial factors must coincide with macro-scale betweenness to sustain street trading

IMPLICATIONS OF URBANIZATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY IN DEVELOPING ECONOMY COUNTRIES: A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIA

ABSTRACT Environmental security is an offshoot of the principle of sustainable development which focuses on societal and global environmental sustainability and peace in the face of uncontrolled environmental degradations that are witnessed in different parts of the world. The urbanization tendency of different parts of the world mostly in developing economy countries sometimes has negative implications on its environmental security. The environmental security and sustainability of urban in most developing economy countries have been affected by inadequate planning, weak projections and insufficient funds. These subject urban societies in the face of continuous urbanization to myriad of problems and hazards that impinge on their growing populations. Therefore, this study uses Nigeria as a case in examining the urbanization tendency of developing economy countries in relation to its environmental hazards and problems. These at many times lead to human and public security threats. The study posits that urbanization trends affect the environmental security and sustainability of urban centers in Nigeria hindering among others its water security, food security and community ecological security. At the end, it advocates allstakeholders self inclusive urban environmental governance for the management of developing economy countries urban centers

Interrogating urban refugees spatialities – the case of Palermo

In the third quarter of 2016, about 183,000 refugees were granted protection status by EU Member states (Eurostat, 2017). Most of these refugees were settled in urban areas, and their participations in urban life has created multitudes of complex challenges which are rapidly evolving into minor crises. It is obvious the current European urban management, planning models, and methodologies are unable to provide resilient and dynamic responses to resolve this situation. Palermo presents a unique opportunity to study such tensions, and this paper proposes to explore how the dilapidated urban fabric around Palermo’s historic city centre can be reactivated by social integration programmes, facilitated by spatial interventions. The aim of our current research is to search for innovative urban and architectural design strategies that can respond to such emergency contexts, leveraging on Palermo’s vision for welcoming refugees and their subsequent attempts at social integration

Use of Chest X-ray in the Evaluation of Acute Cough in the Pediatric Emergency Department of an Inner-City Hospital

Background: Cough has been identified as one of the most common complaints at physician visits and accounts for an estimated 29.5 million annual outpatient visits [1]. Acute cough is defined as cough of less than 2 weeks in duration [2]. Current clinical practice guidelines have recommended against routine use of chest x-rays in evaluation of common causes of cough in the emergency department (ED) except in cases with significant respiratory distress or hypoxemia [3–5]. Despite these guidelines, there is still an increased use of chest x-ray in evaluation of children in the pediatric ED. We aimed to determine the prevalence of children presenting with acute cough in the pediatric ED, the proportion of these patients evaluated with chest x-ray, and to review their chest x-ray findings. Methods: The study was a retrospective cross-sectional study involving patients aged 1 month – 21 years presenting to the pediatric ED of BronxCare Health System with acute cough from January 2019 to December 2019. Data was extracted from the hospital’s Electronic Health Record. Frequency tables were used to describe sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, and chest x-ray findings. Results: Of the 30,014 patients who presented to the pediatric ED during the study period, 3560 (11.9%) had acute cough, of whom 949 (26.7%) had a chest x-ray done. Most of the patients with acute cough (75.6%) had no respiratory distress. Majority of them (68.4%) had fever for 1–14 days, and the most frequent cough duration was 2 days (28.7%). The most common chest x-ray finding was peri-bronchial cuffing (52.6%), while 33% of the chest x-rays were normal ('Table 1'). Most of the patients (70.4%) were discharged home. Conclusion: A significant proportion of children presenting with acute cough to the pediatric ED routinely have a chest x-ray done as part of their management, findings of which are mostly insignificant and contribute little to their care. We therefore recommend judicious use of chest x-ray and adherence to existing guidelines in cases of acute cough presenting to the pediatric ED

Systematic comparison of the functional physico-chemical characteristics and biocidal activity of microbial derived biosurfactants on blood-derived and breast cancer cells

Hypothesis The cytotoxicity of biosurfactants on cell membranes may be influenced by composition of their hydrophilic head and hydrophobic tails. It is hypothesised that they form mixed micelles which exert a detergent-like effect that disrupts the plasma membrane. The functional physico-chemical and biocidal characteristics of four biosurfactants were concurrently investigated to determine which of their structural characteristics may be tuned for greater efficacy. Experiments Rhamnolipid-95, rhamnolipid-90, surfactin and sophorolipid were characterised using FTIR, LC-MS, HPLC, surface tension and critical micelle concentration. Their biocidal activity against HEK 293, MCF-7 and THP-1 cell lines were investigated by MTT assay, using doxorubicin as cytotoxic control. Growth curves were established for all cell lines using trypan blue (TB) and MTT assays, corresponding doubling time (DT) and growth rate were obtained and compared. Findings HEK 293 cell-line had the highest growth rate amongst the three cell lines. For TB assay, growth of HEK 293 > THP-1 and for MTT, HEK 293 > MCF-7 while the DT was in the order of THP-1 > MCF-7 > HEK 293. Sophorolipid showed anti-proliferative activity comparable to doxorubicin on THP-1 > MCF-7 > HEK 293. THP-1 showed high sensitivity to sophorolipid with IC50 of 10.50, 25.58 and 6.78 (μg/ml) after 24, 48 and 72 hr respectively. However, sophorolipid was cytotoxic from 24-72 hr on HEK 293 cell lines with IC50 of 21.53, 40.57 and 27.53 μg/ml respectively. Although, doxorubicin showed higher anti-proliferative activity than all biosurfactants, it had poorer selectivity index for the same time durations compared to the biosurfactants. This indicates that biosurfactants were more effective for slowing the growth of the tested cancer cell lines and hence may be potential candidates for use in human cancer therapy. Physico-chemical characteristics of the biosurfactants suggest that their mechanism of action may be due to activity on the cell membrane