Income, health, and well-being in rural Malawi

This paper attempts to isolate the causal link of income on health status and subjective well-being for the rural population in Malawi using three waves of household panel data spanning the period 2004-2008 from the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP) and the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH). Malawi is a low-income country with high background morbidity and mortality, as well as an AIDS epidemic, high fertility, and poor reproductive health. Instrumental variables and fixed effects strategies are used to try to address endogeneity of the income to health relationship. The analyses show that a 10% increase in income improves mean general health status of rural Malawians by 1.0% and mean subjective well-being by 1.2%.AIDS/HIV, income, Malawi, self-reported health, subjective well-being

NUTRITION INFORMATION AND HOUSEHOLD DIETARY FAT INTAKE

An endogenous switching regression model is used to examine how meal planner health knowledge affects dietary fat intake. Ethnicity, income, meal planner age, being on a low-fat diet, and other health awareness behaviors had significant effects on health knowledge. After controlling for differences in household and meal planner characteristics, intake of total and saturated fat was found to depend on health knowledge status.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Effect Of Incentivized Online Activities On E-Learning

AbstractWhen it comes to e-learning, the main concern is always the communication technology, instead of studying how the technology can work to enhance effective learning experience among learners (Stiles, 2000). This paper is an attempt to look beyond communication technology and examine the effect of online activities as an assessment incentive (motivation) on adult learners with particular reference to a specific e-course offered by the School of Arts and Social Sciences at SIM University (UniSIM), Singapore's only university for adult learners. In this case study, the overall continuous assessment was enhanced in the July 2008 semester by adding on online activity and the percentage of online activity (such as discussion board) was increased from 10% to 20% in the January 09 semester, while the qualitative feedback system was introduced in the July 09 semester. The researchers observe that these changes have resulted in an overall better performance by students in the continuous assessment component, while the deviation in students’ performance has been further lessened. It is also found that the students’ overall continuous assessment in online activities has improved after the instructors’ qualitative feedback system was introduced

An Interprofessional Curriculum on Antimicrobial Stewardship Improves Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Appropriate Antimicrobial Use and Collaboration.

BackgroundInappropriate antimicrobial use can threaten patient safety and is the focus of collaborative physician and pharmacist antimicrobial stewardship teams. However, antimicrobial stewardship is not comprehensively taught in medical or pharmacy school curricula. Addressing this deficiency can teach an important concept as well as model interprofessional healthcare.MethodsWe created an antimicrobial stewardship curriculum consisting of an online learning module and workshop session that combined medical and pharmacy students, with faculty from both professions. Learners worked through interactive, branched-logic clinical cases relating to appropriate antimicrobial use. We surveyed participants before and after the curriculum using validated questions to assess knowledge and attitudes regarding antimicrobial stewardship and interprofessional collaboration. Results were analyzed using paired χ2 and t tests and mixed-effects logistic regression.ResultsAnalysis was performed with the 745 students (425 medical students, 320 pharmacy students) who completed both pre- and postcurriculum surveys over 3 years. After completing the curriculum, significantly more students perceived that they were able to describe the role of each profession in appropriate antimicrobial use (34% vs 82%, P < .001), communicate in a manner that engaged the interprofessional team (75% vs 94%, P < .001), and describe collaborative approaches to appropriate antimicrobial use (49% vs 92%, P < .001). Student favorability ratings were high for the online learning module (85%) and small group workshop (93%).ConclusionsA curriculum on antimicrobial stewardship consisting of independent learning and an interprofessional workshop significantly increased knowledge and attitudes towards collaborative antimicrobial stewardship among preclinical medical and pharmacy students

Automatic reordering for dataflow safety of Datalog

Clauses and subgoals in a Datalog program can be given in any order without affecting program meaning. However, practical applications of the language require the use of built-in or external predicates with particular dataflow requirements. These can be expressed as input or output modes on arguments. We describe a static analysis of moding for Datalog which can transform an ill-moded program into a well-moded program by reordering clause subgoals, satisfying dataflow requirements. We describe an incremental algorithm which efficiently finds a reordering if it exists. This frees the programmer to focus on the declarative specification of their program rather than on the implementation details of external predicates. We prove that our computed reorderings yield well-moded programs (soundness) and that if a program can be made well-moded, we compute a reordering to do so (completeness).This work was supported by the EPSRC [grant number EP/M026124/1

Molecular mechanisms controlling complex traits in yeast

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Biology, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.A fundamental goal in biology is to understand how the information stored in DNA results in a cellular function. However, it is insufficient to study one variant of a particular DNA sequence because most people do not share identical genome sequences, and the differences in DNA sequence have functional consequences. In this thesis, I examine how natural variation in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome can affect cellular processes. This is done using deletion libraries to examine how mutations in the same gene but in two different genetic backgrounds of S. cerevisiae, S288c and [summation]1278b, can lead different phenotypes for two traits: gene essentiality and agar adhesion. We found that the genomes of the S288c and [summation]1278b strains are only as divergent as two humans in the population. However, analyses of deletion libraries in each strain revealed 57 genes have functions that are essential in one strain but not the other. Strain specific phenotypes are more pronounced for the trait of agar adhesion where 553 deletions have phenotypes that are specific to one strain or the other. Part of the difference is because the [summation]1278b strain requires the filamentation mitogen activated kinase pathway (fMAPK) for agar adhesion but the S288c strain does not. I found that S288c is able to bypass the fMAPK pathway because it contains an allele of the transcription factor RPI1 that promotes transcription of the gene FLO11. Characterization of the sequence differences between the S288c and 11278b alleles of RPIJ revealed that they differ in the number of intragenic tandem repeats. Examination of the genomes of both strains uncovered the possibility that expansions and contractions of intragenic repeats may be a general mechanism to quickly introduce genomic and phenotypic variation.by Brian L. Chin.Ph.D

Uncanny Valleys in Declarative Language Design

When people write programs in conventional programming languages, they over-specify how to solve the problem they have in mind. Over-specification prevents the language\u27s implementation from making many optimization decisions, leaving programmers with this burden. In more declarative languages, programmers over-specify less, enabling the implementation to make more choices for them. As these decisions improve, programmers shift more attention from implementation to their real problems. This process easily overshoots. When under-specified programs almost always work well enough, programmers rarely need to think about implementation details. As their understanding of implementation choices atrophies, the controls provided so they can override these decisions become obscure. Our declarative language project, Yedalog, is in the midst of this dilemma. The improvements in question make our users more productive, so we cannot simply retreat back towards over-specification. To proceed forward instead, we must meet some of the expectations we prematurely provoked, and our implementation\u27s behavior must help users learn expectations more aligned with our intended semantics. These are general issues. Discussing their concrete manifestation in Yedalog should help other declarative systems that come to face these issues