Child labour in Ghana: A study of law and policy in a global context.

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Social determinants of child abuse: evidence of factors associated with maternal abuse from the Egypt demographic and health survey

Background: Child abuse or maltreatment is a significant global public health problem of unknown global prevalence. About 40 million children aged 0-14 years require health and social care globally. The prevalence, determinants, and trends of national or global rates of child abuse and maltreatment are largely unknown. Methods: Data for this retrospective cross-sectional study were derived from the 2005 Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey (2005 EDHS), and included 19474 women aged 15-49 years. Multivariate logistic regression analyses by stepwise regression, backward method were used to determine the independent contribution of the possible social determinants of child abuse, with the direction and magnitude of associations expressed as odds ratios (OR) and their 95% confident interval levels (95% CI). Results: Identified determinants of child abuse included exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV), justifying wife beating, exposure to generational IPV, and such factors as younger age of the women, male sex, partners’ lower education, poverty, residence in urban areas, younger children, and residence in households with 3-5 children. Conclusions: Experience of IPV, mothers’ justification of wife beating, and generational IPV were associated with elevated odds of child abuse. Findings indicate possible high levels of unmet child protection needs, and stress the need for professionals working with children to employ culturally-sensitive methods in investigating social determinants of child abuse

Cardiac protein kinases: the cardiomyocyte kinome and differential kinase expression in human failing hearts

Aims. Protein kinases are potential therapeutic targets for heart failure, but most studies of cardiac protein kinases derive from other systems, an approach that fails to account for specific kinases expressed in the heart and the contractile cardiomyocytes. We aimed to define the cardiomyocyte kinome (i.e. the protein kinases expressed in cardiomyocytes) and identify kinases with altered expression in human failing hearts. Methods and Results. Expression profiling (Affymetrix microarrays) detected >400 protein kinase mRNAs in rat neonatal ventricular myocytes (NVMs) and/or adult ventricular myocytes (AVMs), 32 and 93 of which were significantly upregulated or downregulated (>2-fold), respectively, in AVMs. Data for AGC family members were validated by qPCR. Proteomics analysis identified >180 cardiomyocyte protein kinases, with high relative expression of mitogen-activated protein kinase cascades and other known cardiomyocyte kinases (e.g. CAMKs, cAMP-dependent protein kinase). Other kinases are poorly-investigated (e.g. Slk, Stk24, Oxsr1). Expression of Akt1/2/3, BRaf, ERK1/2, Map2k1, Map3k8, Map4k4, MST1/3, p38-MAPK, PKCδ, Pkn2, Ripk1/2, Tnni3k and Zak was confirmed by immunoblotting. Relative to total protein, Map3k8 and Tnni3k were upregulated in AVMs vs NVMs. Microarray data for human hearts demonstrated variation in kinome expression that may influence responses to kinase inhibitor therapies. Furthermore, some kinases were upregulated (e.g. NRK, JAK2, STK38L) or downregulated (e.g. MAP2K1, IRAK1, STK40) in human failing hearts. Conclusions. This characterization of the spectrum of kinases expressed in cardiomyocytes and the heart (cardiomyocyte and cardiac kinomes) identified novel kinases, some of which are differentially expressed in failing human hearts and could serve as potential therapeutic targets

A Delphi survey of practitioner’s understanding of mental capacity

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study considering the application of the Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). Practitioners from a range of professions were recruited to provide their views of how to respond to a variety of scenarios. GPs, nurses, social workers, physio/occupational therapists and care assistants were recruited to participate. Design/methodology/approach This study used the Delphi method to elicit participant views and generate consensus of opinion. The Delphi method recommends a large sample for heterogeneous groups, and round one had 98 participants from six different professional groups. Findings Participants did not respond consistently to the scenarios, but disagreed most significantly when patient decisions conflicted with clinical advice, and when to conduct a capacity assessment. These responses suggest that clinical responses vary significantly between individuals (even within settings or professions), and that the application of Mental Capacity Act (MCA) is complicated and nuanced, requiring time for reflection to avoid paternalistic clinical interventions. Originality/value Previous studies have not used a Delphi method to consider the application of MCA/DoLS. Because of this methods focus on developing consensus, it is uniquely suited to considering this practice issue. As a result, these findings present more developed understanding of the complexity and challenges for practitioner responses to some relatively common clinical scenarios, suggesting the need for greater clarity for practitioners

One Health concept for strengthening public health surveillance and response through Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training in Ghana

The lack of highly trained field epidemiologists in the public health system in Ghana has been known since the 1970s when the Planning Unit was established in the Ghana Ministry of Health. When the Public Health School was started in 1994, the decision was taken to develop a 1 academic-year general MPH course. The persisting need for well-trained epidemiologists to support the public health surveillance, outbreak investigation and response system made the development of the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme (FELTP) a national priority. The School of Public health and the Ministry of Health therefore requested the technical and financial assistance of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in organizing the Programme. The collaboration started by organizing short courses in disease outbreak investigations and response for serving Ghana Health Service staff. The success of the short courses led to development of the FELTP. By October 2007, the new FELTP curriculum for the award of a Masters of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology and Disease Control was approved by the Academic Board of the University of Ghana and the programme started that academic year. Since then five cohorts of 37 residents have been enrolled in the two tracks of the programme. They consist of 12 physicians, 12 veterinarians and 13 laboratory scientists. The first two cohorts of 13 residents have graduated. The third cohort of seven has submitted dissertations and is awaiting the results. The fourth cohort has started the second year of field placement while the fifth cohort has just started the first semester. The field activities of the graduates have included disease outbreak investigations and response, evaluation of disease surveillance systems at the national level and analysis of datasets on diseases at the regional level. The residents have made a total of 25 oral presentations and 39 poster presentations at various regional and global scientific conferences. The Ghana FELTP (GFELTP) has promoted the introduction of the One Health concept into FELTP. It hosted the first USAID–supported workshop in West Africa to further integrate and strengthen collaboration of the animal and human health sectors in the FETP model. GFELTP has also taken the lead in hosting the first AFENET Center for Training in Public Health Leadership and Management, through which the short course on Management for Improving Public Health Interventions was developed for AFENET member countries. The GFELTP pre-tested the Integrated Avian Influenza Outbreak and Pandemic Influenza course in preparation for introducing the materials into the curriculum of other FELTP in the network. The leadership positions to which the graduates of the program have been appointed in the human and animal Public Health Services, improvement in disease surveillance, outbreak investigation and response along with the testimony of the health authorities about their appreciation of the outputs of the graduates at various fora, is a strong indication that the GFELTP is meeting its objectives. Pan African Medical Journal 2011;10(Supp1):

Dynamical decoupling and noise spectroscopy with a superconducting flux qubit

The characterization and mitigation of decoherence in natural and artificial two-level systems (qubits) is fundamental to quantum information science and its applications. Decoherence of a quantum superposition state arises from the interaction between the constituent system and the uncontrolled degrees of freedom in its environment. Within the standard Bloch-Redfield picture of two-level system dynamics, qubit decoherence is characterized by two rates: a longitudinal relaxation rate Gamma1 due to the exchange of energy with the environment, and a transverse relaxation rate Gamma2 = Gamma1/2 + Gamma_phi which contains the pure dephasing rate Gamma_phi. Irreversible energy relaxation can only be mitigated by reducing the amount of environmental noise, reducing the qubit's internal sensitivity to that noise, or through multi-qubit encoding and error correction protocols (which already presume ultra-low error rates). In contrast, dephasing is in principle reversible and can be refocused dynamically through the application of coherent control pulse methods. In this work we demonstrate how dynamical-decoupling techniques can moderate the dephasing effects of low-frequency noise on a superconducting qubit with energy-relaxation time T1 = 1/Gamma1 = 12 us. Using the CPMG sequence with up to 200 pi-pulses, we demonstrate a 50-fold improvement in the transverse relaxation time T2 over its baseline value. We observe relaxation-limited times T2(CPMG) = 23 us = 2 T1 resulting from CPMG-mediated Gaussian pure-dephasing times in apparent excess of 100 us. We leverage the filtering property of this sequence in conjunction with Rabi and energy relaxation measurements to facilitate the spectroscopy and reconstruction of the environmental noise power spectral density.Comment: 21 pages (incl. 11-page appendix); 4 (+7) figure

Studies on the survival and germination of conidia of three entomogenous fungi

Imperial Users onl

Child Labour in Ghana: A Study of Law and Policy in a Global Context

This thesis is a study of child labour set within the context of globalization exploring the global challenges and local concerns