A comparative study of the influence of buoyancy driven fluid flow on GaAs crystal growth

A systematic investigation of the effect of gravity driven fluid flow on GaAs crystal growth was performed. It includes GaAs crystal growth in the microgravity environment aboard the Space Shuttle. The program involves a controlled comparative study of crystal growth under a variety of earth based conditions with variable orientation and applied magnetic field in addition to the microgravity growth. Earth based growth will be performed under stabilizing as well as destabilizing temperature gradients. The boules grown in space and on earth will be fully characterized to correlate the degree of convection with the distribution of impurities. Both macro- and micro-segregation will be determined. The space growth experiment will be flown in a self-contained payload container through NASA's Get Away Special program

The effect of a multi-component intervention on disrespect and abuse during childbirth in Kenya

Background Disrespect and abuse (D & A) during labor and delivery are important issues correlated with human rights, equity, and public health that also affect women’s decisions to deliver in facilities, which provide appropriate management of maternal and neonatal complications. Little is known about interventions aimed at lowering the frequency of disrespectful and abusive behaviors. Methods Between 2011 and 2014, a pre-and-post study measured D & A levels in a three-tiered intervention at 13 facilities in Kenya under the Heshima project. The intervention involved working with policymakers to encourage greater focus on D & A, training providers on respectful maternity care, and strengthening linkages between the facility and community for accountability and governance. At participating facilities, postpartum women were approached at discharge and asked to participate in the study; those who consented were administered a questionnaire on D & A in general as well as six typologies, including physical and verbal abuse, violations of confidentiality and privacy, detainment for non-payment, and abandonment. Observation of provider-patient interaction during labor was also conducted in the same facilities. In both exit interview and observational studies, multivariate analyses of risk factors for D & A controlled for differences in socio-demographic and facility characteristics between baseline and endline surveys. Results Overall D & A decreased from 20–13 % (p < 0.004) and among four of the six typologies D & A decreased from 40–50 %. Night shift deliveries were associated with greater verbal and physical abuse. Patient and infant detainment declined dramatically from 8.0–0.8 %, though this was partially attributable to the 2013 national free delivery care policy. Conclusion Although a number of contextual factors may have influenced these findings, the magnitude and consistency of the observed decreases suggest that the multi-component intervention may have the potential to reduce the frequency of D & A. Greater efforts are needed to develop stronger evaluation methods for assessing D & A in other settings

Purgative Texts: Religion, Revulsion, and the Rhetoric of Insurgency in Early Modern England

In this dissertation I explore the ways that writers of early modern religious and social polemic used humoral language in order that their texts were not only rhetorically powerful, but also served as efficacious humoral remedies in the form of "physic" or medicinal "cures." Specifically, I consider several examples of religio-political tracts that label themselves as "purgatives." Each of the treatises I examine claims to diagnosis and treat either the diseased individual and/or the distempered body politic. Both Stephen Gosson (School of Abuse 1579) and Martin Marprelate (Marprelate tracts 1588-9) label themselves as physicians or sugeons. Gosson offers his tract as curative medicine for an effeminate, phlegmatic body politic. Marprelate himself is a "mirror" of the deformity in the body politic and his text/body a "cure." The three defenses of womenJane Anger's Her Protection for Women (1589), Esther Sowernam's Esther hath Hanged Haman (1617), and Constantia Munda's Worming of a madde dogg (1617)represent written words as purges for the male writers they are answering. And, finally, The Lady's words have a potentially transformative effect on Comus in Milton's A Masque. Central to this project is the notion that words have humoral valences as do all substances that "issue" from the body. Through speech and writing people conveyed the very substance of their souls according to early modern physicians and religious leaders, whose treatise addresses the connection between the state of a person's body, soul, and words. Words, like the people who spoke them, could be "hot," bilious, choleric. The solution offered by the purgative text is the power to flush the body of corruption. Because textual arguments can carry humoral valences, they are not merely rhetorically persuasive, but potentially transformative on every level. Analyzing the humoral language in early modern polemic changes the way we are compelled to read similar language in other literary and non-literary texts, deepening our understanding of what it means to "change" a person's mind

You say you want a data revolution? Taking on food systems accountability

Dramatic improvements in data availability and quality are needed to meet the challenge of monitoring and analyzing food systems, so that appropriate policies and actions to improve human and planetary health can be identified and data-informed accountability mechanisms put in place to strengthen food systems governance. Studying food systems is complex due to diverse actors and interlinking processes that operate on multiple spatial and temporal scales, and their multiple outcomes, which may be subject to hidden feedback mechanisms and tradeoffs. However, descriptive research to characterize food system components and make comparisons across geography, income groups, and population groups is an important foundation. The first part of this article details a series of critical data gaps and limitations that are currently hindering food systems learning and accountability, also comparing these gaps across regions and income groups. The second part of the article introduces the Food Systems Dashboard, a new data visualization tool that aims to improve access to and usage of food systems-related data, thus strengthening the data value chain and better informing policies and actions intended to improve diets, nutrition, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability.1

Can Reproductive Health Voucher Programs Improve Quality of Postnatal Care? A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Kenya’s Safe Motherhood Voucher Scheme

This study tests the group-level causal relationship between the expansion of Kenya’s Safe Motherhood voucher program and changes in quality of postnatal care (PNC) provided at voucher-contracted facilities. We compare facilities accredited since program inception in 2006 (phase I) and facilities accredited since 2010-2011 (phase II) relative to comparable non-voucher facilities. PNC quality is assessed using observed clinical content processes, as well as client-reported outcome measures. Two-tailed unpaired t-tests are used to identify differences in mean process quality scores and client-reported outcome measures, comparing changes between intervention and comparison groups at the 2010 and 2012 data collection periods. Difference-in-differences analysis is used to estimate the reproductive health (RH) voucher program’s causal effect on quality of care by exploiting group-level differences between voucher-accredited and non-accredited facilities in 2010 and 2012. Participation in the voucher scheme since 2006 significantly improves overall quality of postnatal care by 39% (p=0.02), where quality is defined as the observable processes or components of service provision that occur during a PNC consultation. Program participation since phase I is estimated to improve the quality of observed maternal postnatal care by 86% (p=0.02), with the largest quality improvements in counselling on family planning methods (IRR 5.0; p=0.01) and return to fertility (IRR 2.6; p=0.01). Despite improvements in maternal aspects of PNC, we find a high proportion of mothers who seek PNC are not being checked by any provider after delivery. Additional strategies will be necessary to standardize provision of packaged postnatal interventions to both mother and new-born. This study addresses an important gap in the existing RH literature by using a strong evaluation design to assess RH voucher program effectiveness on quality improvement

The importance of food systems and the environment for nutrition.

Global and local food system transformation is necessary in order to ensure the delivery of healthy, safe, and nutritious foods in both sustainable and equitable ways. Food systems are complex entities that affect diets, human health, and a range of other outcomes including economic growth, natural resource and environmental resiliency, and sociocultural factors. However, food systems contribute to and are vulnerable to ongoing climate and environmental changes that threaten their sustainability. Although there has been increased focus on this topic in recent years, many gaps in our knowledge persist on the relation between environmental factors, food systems, and nutritional outcomes. In this article, we summarize this emerging field and describe what innovative nutrition research is needed in order to bring about food policy changes in the era of climate disruption and environmental degradation

Antiapoptotic herpesvirus Bcl-2 homologs escape caspase-mediated conversion to proapoptotic proteins

The antiapoptotic Bcl-2 and Bcl-x(L) proteins of mammals are converted into potent proapoptotic factors when they are cleaved by caspases, a family of apoptosis-inducing proteases (E. H.-Y. Cheng, D. G. Kirsch, R. J. Clem, R. Ravi, M. B. Kastan, A. Bedi, K. Ueno, and J. M. Hardwick, Science 278:1966-1968, 1997; R. J. Clem, E. H.-Y. Cheng, C. L. Karp, D. G. Kirsch, K. Ueno, A. Takahashi, M. B. Kastan, D. E. Griffin, W. C. Earnshaw, M. A. Veliuona, and J. M. Hardwick, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95:554-559, 1998). Gamma herpesviruses also encode homologs of the Bcl-2 family. All tested herpesvirus Bcl-2 homologs possess antiapoptotic activity, including the more distantly related homologs encoded by murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (gammaHV68) and bovine herpesvirus 4 (BHV4), as described here. To determine if viral Bcl-2 proteins can be converted into death factors, similar to their cellular counterparts, five herpesvirus Bcl-2 homologs from five different viruses were tested for their susceptibility to caspases. Only the viral Bcl-2 protein encoded by gammaHV68 was susceptible to caspase digestion. However, unlike the caspase cleavage products of cellular Bcl-2, Bcl-x(L), and Bid, which are potent inducers of apoptosis, the cleavage product of gammaHV68 Bcl-2 lacked proapoptotic activity. KSBcl-2, encoded by the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, was the only viral Bcl-2 homolog that was capable of killing cells when expressed as an N-terminal truncation. However, because KSBcl-2 was not cleavable by caspases, the latent proapoptotic activity of KSBcl-2 apparently cannot be released. The Bcl-2 homologs encoded by herpesvirus saimiri, Epstein-Barr virus, and BHV4 were not cleaved by apoptotic cell extracts and did not possess latent proapoptotic activities. Thus, herpesvirus Bcl-2 homologs escape negative regulation by retaining their antiapoptotic activities and/or failing to be converted into proapoptotic proteins by caspases during programmed cell death