Exploring key-stakeholder perceptions on non-communicable disease care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya

Introduction: over one third of total Disability-Adjusted-Life-Years lost in Kenya are due to non-communicable diseases (NCD). In response, the Government declared significant commitment towards improving NCD care. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the burden on the already overstretched health systems in Kenya. The aims of this study are to assess whether health care providers perceived NCD care to be optimal during the pandemic and explore how to improve responses to future emergencies. Methods: this cross-sectional online survey included healthcare personnel with non-clinical roles (public health workers and policy-makers) and those delivering health care (doctors and nurses). Respondents were recruited between May and September 2021 by random sampling, completed by snowball sampling. Results: among 236 participants (42% in clinical, 58% in non-clinical roles) there was an overall consensus between respondents on NCD care being disrupted and compromised during the pandemic in Kenya. Detracted supplies, funding, and technical resources affected the continuity of NCDs’ response, despite government efforts. Respondents agreed that the enhanced personnel capacity and competencies to manage COVID-19 patients were positive, but noted a lack of guidance for redirecting care for chronic diseases, and advocated for digital innovation as a solution. Conclusion: this paper explores the perceptions of key stakeholders involved in the management of NCDs in Kenya to improve planning for future emergency responses. Gaps were identified in health system response and preparedness capacity during the pandemic including the perceived need to strengthen NCD services, with solutions offered to guide resilience efforts to protect the health system from disruption

To Each According to His Need? Variability in the Responses to Inequity in Nonhuman Primates

While it is well established that humans respond to inequity, it remains unclear the extent to which this behavior occurs in our nonhuman primate relatives. By comparing a variety of species, spanning from New World and Old World monkeys to great apes, scientists can begin to answer questions about how the response to inequity evolved, what the function of this response is, and why and how different contexts shape it. In particular, research across nonhuman primate species suggests that the response is quite variable across species, contexts and individuals. In this paper, we aim to review these differences in an attempt to identify and better understand the patterns that emerge from the existing data with the goal of developing directions for future research. To begin, we address the importance of considering socio-ecological factors in nonhuman primates in order to better understand and predict expected patterns of cooperation and aversion to inequity in different species, following which we provide a detailed analysis of the patterns uncovered by these comparisons. Ultimately, we use this synthesis to propose new ideas for research to better understand this response and, hence, the evolution of our own responses to inequity

Computational Homogenization of Architectured Materials

Architectured materials involve geometrically engineered distributions of microstructural phases at a scale comparable to the scale of the component, thus calling for new models in order to determine the effective properties of materials. The present chapter aims at providing such models, in the case of mechanical properties. As a matter of fact, one engineering challenge is to predict the effective properties of such materials; computational homogenization using finite element analysis is a powerful tool to do so. Homogenized behavior of architectured materials can thus be used in large structural computations, hence enabling the dissemination of architectured materials in the industry. Furthermore, computational homogenization is the basis for computational topology optimization which will give rise to the next generation of architectured materials. This chapter covers the computational homogenization of periodic architectured materials in elasticity and plasticity, as well as the homogenization and representativity of random architectured materials

<學界展望>一九三〇年代中國農村經濟研究の一整理

<div><p>A number of studies from the 1960s to 1990s assessed the symbolic competence of great apes and other animals. These studies provided varying forms of evidence that some species were capable of symbolically representing their worlds, both through productive symbol use and comprehension of symbolic stimuli. One such project at the Language Research Center involved training chimpanzees (<i>Pan troglodytes</i>) to use lexigram symbols (geometric visual stimuli that represented objects, actions, locations, and individuals). Those studies now are more than 40 years old, and only a few of the apes involved in those studies are still alive. Three of these chimpanzees (and a fourth, control chimpanzee) were assessed across a 10-year period from 1999 to 2008 for their continued knowledge of lexigram symbols and, in the case of one chimpanzee, the continued ability to comprehend human speech. This article describes that longitudinal assessment and outlines the degree to which symbol competence was retained by these chimpanzees across that decade-long period. All chimpanzees showed retention of lexigram vocabularies, although there were differences in the number of words that were retained across the individuals. One chimpanzee also showed continual retention of human speech perception. These retained vocabularies largely consisted of food item names, but also names of inedible objects, locations, individuals, and some actions. Many of these retained words were for things that are not common in the daily lives of the chimpanzees and for things that are rarely requested by the chimpanzees. Thus, the early experiences of these chimpanzees in symbol-rich environments have produced long-lasting memories for symbol meaning, and those competencies have benefited research in a variety of topics in comparative cognition.</p></div