Vitamin A supplementation in Tanzania: the impact of a change in programmatic delivery strategy on coverage.

BACKGROUND\ud \ud Efficient delivery strategies for health interventions are essential for high and sustainable coverage. We report impact of a change in programmatic delivery strategy from routine delivery through the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI+) approach to twice-yearly mass distribution campaigns on coverage of vitamin A supplementation in Tanzania\ud \ud METHODS\ud \ud We investigated disparities in age, sex, socio-economic status, nutritional status and maternal education within vitamin A coverage in children between 1 and 2 years of age from two independent household level child health surveys conducted (1) during a continuous universal targeting scheme based on routine EPI contacts for children aged 9, 15 and 21 months (1999); and (2) three years later after the introduction of twice-yearly vitamin A supplementation campaigns for children aged 6 months to 5 years, a 6-monthly universal targeting scheme (2002). A representative cluster sample of approximately 2,400 rural households was obtained from Rufiji, Morogoro Rural, Kilombero and Ulanga districts. A modular questionnaire about the health of all children under the age of five was administered to consenting heads of households and caretakers of children. Information on the use of child health interventions including vitamin A was asked.\ud \ud RESULTS\ud \ud Coverage of vitamin A supplementation among 1-2 year old children increased from 13% [95% CI 10-18%] in 1999 to 76% [95%CI 72-81%] in 2002. In 2002 knowledge of two or more child health danger signs was negatively associated with vitamin A supplementation coverage (80% versus 70%) (p = 0.04). Nevertheless, we did not find any disparities in coverage of vitamin A by district, gender, socio-economic status and DPT vaccinations.\ud \ud CONCLUSION\ud \ud Change in programmatic delivery of vitamin A supplementation was associated with a major improvement in coverage in Tanzania that was been sustained by repeated campaigns for at least three years. There is a need to monitor the effect of such campaigns on the routine health system and on equity of coverage. Documentation of vitamin A supplementation campaign contacts on routine maternal and child health cards would be a simple step to facilitate this monitoring

QCD axion and quintessential axion

The axion solution of the strong CP problem is reviewed together with the other strong CP solutions. We also point out the quintessential axion(quintaxion) whose potential can be extremely flat due to the tiny ratio of the hidden sector quark mass and the intermediate hidden sector scale. The quintaxion candidates are supposed to be the string theory axions, the model independent or the model dependent axions.Comment: 15 pages. Talk presented at Castle Ringberg, June 9-14, 200

On-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering and its applications

We review recent demonstration of stimulated Brillouin scattering in a chalcogenide photonic chip and its application to optical and microwave signal processing tasks. The interaction between light and sound via stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) was exploited in chalcogenide photonic circuits to achieve on-chip SBS slow and fast light, microwave photonic filters, and dynamic gratings using travelling-wave geometry. Using a ring-resonator geometry, photonic-chip based Brillouin laser was demonstrated. © 2013 SPIE

Measurements of neutral vector resonance in Higgsless models at the LHC

In Higgsless models, new vector resonances appear to restore the unitarity of the W_L W_L scattering amplitude without the Higgs boson. In the ideal delocalized three site Higgsless model, one of large prodcution cross section of the neutral vector resonance (Z') at the Large Hadron Collider is the W-associated production, pp \to Z'W \to WWW. Although the dileptonic decay channnel, l\nu l'\nu 'jj, is experimentally clean to search for the Z' signals, it is difficult to reconstruct the Z' invariant mass due to the two neutrinos in the final state. We study collider signatures of Z' using the M_{T2}-Assisted On-Shell (MAOS) reconstruction of the missing neutrino momenta. We show the prospect of the Z' mass determination in the channel, l\nu l'\nu 'jj, at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables; v2: references added, minor corrections, version published in JHE

Total absorption of visible light in ultrathin weakly absorbing semiconductor gratings

© 2016 Optical Society of America. The perfect absorption of light in subwavelength thickness layers generally relies on exotic materials, metamaterials or thick metallic gratings. Here we demonstrate that total light absorption can be achieved in ultra-thin gratings composed of conventional materials, including relatively weakly-absorbing semiconductors, which are compatible with optoelectronic applications such as photodetectors and optical modulators. We fabricate a 41 nm thick antimony sulphide grating structure that has a measured absorptance of A = 99.3% at a visible wavelength of 591 nm, in excellent agreement with theory. We infer that the absorption within the grating is A = 98.7%, with only A = 0.6% within the silver mirror. A planar reference sample absorbs A = 7.7% at this wavelength

Tailoring ferromagnetic chalcopyrites

If magnetic semiconductors are ever to find wide application in real spintronic devices, their magnetic and electronic properties will require tailoring in much the same way that band gaps are engineered in conventional semiconductors. Unfortunately, no systematic understanding yet exists of how, or even whether, properties such as Curie temperatures and band gaps are related in magnetic semiconductors. Here we explore theoretically these and other relationships within 64 members of a single materials class, the Mn-doped II-IV-V2 chalcopyrites, three of which are already known experimentally to be ferromagnetic semiconductors. Our first-principles results reveal a variation of magnetic properties across different materials that cannot be explained by either of the two dominant models of ferromagnetism in semiconductors. Based on our results for structural, electronic, and magnetic properties, we identify a small number of new stable chalcopyrites with excellent prospects for ferromagnetism.Comment: 6 pages with 4 figures, plus 3 supplementary figures; to appear in Nature Material

Natural Supersymmetry at the LHC

If the minimal supersymmetric standard model is the solution to the hierarchy problem, the scalar top quark (stop) and the Higgsino should weigh around the electroweak scale such as 200 GeV. A low messenger scale, which results in a light gravitino, is also suggested to suppress the quantum corrections to the Higgs mass parameters. Therefore the minimal model for natural supersymmetry is a system with stop/Higgsino/gravitino whereas other superparticles are heavy. We study the LHC signatures of the minimal system and discuss the discovery potential and methods for the mass measurements.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl