Performance Assessment of Six Public Health Programs in Katsina State, Nigeria

This research aimed to evaluate the performance of six ongoing public health programs through core performance indicators in Katsina State, Nigeria. The healthcare delivery in Africa is mostly program-based. This requires that such programs need to be evaluated which may in turn help to identify any existing gaps towards the improvement of patients' access and coverage to their given service. We identified all active health facilities where our programs on malaria, Routine Immunization (RI), Family Planning (FP), Tuberculosis and Leprosy (TBL), HIV/AIDS, and Free Medicare (FMC) were being carried out. After that, a representative sample was derived to obtain data regarding five key performance indicators by using a Logistics Indicators Assessment Tool. Of 1,718 facilities, a total of 983 (57.22%) were visited, In other words, by assuming a normal distribution; each facility expectedly covers only 3,371 individuals. All programs provided different and diverse results on each indicator; however, the most obvious challenge was in the stock-out and demand vs. receipt of required medications. These are particularly for malaria, FMC, FP, and HIV. For instance, the stock-out lasted 222 days for malaria and 135 days for FP. Despite this, none of the programs had a lower than gold-standard near-term availability of required products. Program-based healthcare delivery is inadequate and ineffective unless the local system gets simultaneously developed. If required medications are not becoming available, optimal access, coverage, and benefits cannot be expected to be obtained. Clearly, Nigeria experiences a push system of meeting term supplies. Nigeria needs to strengthen its pharmaceutical system

Negocios bancarios en el límite: la crisis de las hipotecas basura y la novela de R. K. Narayan, The Financial Expert

According to Umberto Eco, «every story tells a story that has already been told» (Eco, 1985: 19). In this context, The Financial Expert, a novel written by R. K. Narayan in 1952 shares interesting analogies with significant events and persons in the postmodern world of finance during the last twenty years or so. Narayan’s understanding of the world of finance echoes recent phenomena like the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008, the Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff, a swindler during the 1990s, the Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis, etc. This paper traces analogies among them and thus opens up a fascinating world of intersections and cross-references. In this intricate world, the present and the past, the real and the fictional, the existing and the evolving – all interact with each other; and the pathways thus created invite our attention to the recurring economic phenomenon of bubble formation and its eventual burst. This paper rests on the premise that the exploration of the deeply-rooted analogical relationship between various texts can make the understanding of the world of finance more comprehensible.Según Umberto Eco (1985: 19), «todas las historias cuentan una historia que ya ha sido contada». The Financial Expert, escrita en 1952 por R. K. Narayan, presenta interesantes analogías con acontecimientos y personas significativas en el mundo financiero posmoderno de los últimos veinte años. El conocimiento del mundo financiero por parte de Narayan resuena con los recientes fenómenos de la bancarrota de Lehman Brothers el 15 de septiembre de 2008, el esquema Ponzi del estafador durante los años 1990, Bernard Madoff, la crisis de las hipotecas basura, etc. Este artículo explora las analogías entre tales hechos para descubrir un fascinante mundo de intersecciones y referencias cruzadas. En ese complejo mundo, el presente y el pasado, lo real y lo ficticio, lo existente y lo emergente, interactúan, invitándonos a reflexionar sobre el fenómeno recurrente de la formación y estallido de las burbujas financieras. El análisis de la profunda relación entre textos diferentes puede ayudar en la comprensión del mundo financier

Mode of Operation and Performance of Contract Farming of Cottonseed in Haryana

The quality of cottonseed matters most for the successful product development. The quality cottonseed production is monitored by the Haryana State Seed Certification Agency in the state. The study has reviewed the prevailing contract cotton farming models; has studied mode of operation of cotton contractual arrangements; has analyzed the production matrix, growth and contributions; and has discerned and quantified variations in intensive structure of public and private seed firms. It has used both primary and secondary data. Appropriate statistical tools, viz. exponential growth model, index, etc., have been used to study the data. All categories of farmers have been brought together under the management of private seed agency for production of cottonseed of a single variety on a large homogeneous block. Contract cotton farming has fully vetted the legal agreements with their growers. The public and private agencies pay incentive price to farmers which is higher than the prevailing market price. Farmers of private agency are free from the intricacies of input and output markets, receive all technology and technical know-how and have facilities for production and consumption loans, whereas farmers of public agency are trailed far behind in terms of these benefits. Private agency has flourished at the expanse of public agency since contract cotton is incentivised by private contractors under flexible and farmerfriendly production regime. The latest production technology, strong capital and management base of private seed agency have left the public agency behind in the competitive race. The study has concluded that favourable changes in socio-economic and legal framework of government policies have to be encouraged for the active participation of private sector in cottonseed business and contract cottonseed farming has emerged as a viable alternative farming in the post-WTO regime.Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management,

Genotype × Environment Interaction and Phenotypic Stability analysis of Linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) in Mid-Hills of North-West Himalayas

Stability performance of 30 linseed genotypes including commercial cultivars and elite lines (indigenous and exotic) was compared by using regression on environmental means for grain yield and its components under 5 different environments during rabi 2013-2014. Significant differences were observed among the genotypes for all the traits studied over all 5 individual environments. Genotype × environment interactions were highly significant for all the characters studied. E + (G × E) was significant for all the characters except the number of seeds per capsule. Mean sum of squares for environment (linear) showed significance for all the characters. Significant differences for G × E (linear) were observed for 5 traits viz., primary branches per plant, secondary branches per plant, aerial biomass yield per plant, seed yield per plant and 1000-seed weight. Based on mean performance, regression coefficient (bi) and deviation from regression (S2di) the genotype Him Alsi-2, KL-241 and Nagarkot was highly stable for seed yield (g) and number of capsules per plant was found most adaptive to overall environments. These promising genotypes may be utilized as donors in linseed improvement program for target ecosystems

Measures for Assessing the Readiness of Back-office Staff

Purpose—Public organizations deploy state-of-the-art technological advancements to facilitate sophisticated services to the citizens, businesses, and employees. The maturity of backoffice staff to adapt, use, and utilize these technological changes at the organizational level is a prerequisite to introduce cutting-edge services. This paper investigates the maturity of backoffice staff and proposes a conceptual framework, measurement constructs, and subsequent measures for the assessment.Methodology/Design/Research—Design methodology focuses on combining research with practice. An initial framework and measurement constructs are developed based on the literature review, which are further investigated by conducting a case study at Inland Revenue, Karachi to test the usability in practice using the directive content analysis qualitative method.Findings—the outcome of measurement reveals that though the proposed framework and measurement constructs i.e. roles; responsibilities; trainings; capacity building; capabilities; and attitude are relevant and useful to assess the back-office staff readiness, the measures to assess the constructs may vary in practice depending on the size, scope, and type of the public organizations.Research limitations/implications—although the proposed measurement constructs and measures proved to be useful for assessing the back-office staff maturity, the relationships among different measures and constructs affecting the staff readiness require further research.Practical implications—the case study was conducted at single public organization, which will be extended to multiple public organizations in practice. The extension will not to allow effective testing of the usability of the proposed conceptual framework and constructs, but will also broaden the benchmarking scope.Originality/Value—back-office staff education is discussed and described in the literature as well practice, but there is hardly any existing framework for the assessment and benchmarking of staff maturity. Often viewed in isolation, the practitioners hardly realize the long term intangible objectives to understand how research (literature) can help improve the maturity. Similarly, the academics also describe staff education at generic level, which may or may not be applicable to the different types of organizations. Therefore, we propose a conceptual measurement framework with constructs and subsequent measures and show that combining the research (literature) and practice (Inland Revenue, Karachi) provides deeper insights.Research type: Conceptual paper, Case study, Literature revie

A Comparative Study of Psychological Factor Among Female Athletes

Psychological needs play an important role in the promotion and demotion of tension, because any type of tension provide frustration and these frustrated needs leads towards aggressiveness in the individual, need of direct gain, power, and prestige, need for resolving ambiguous cries and for group belongingness and conformity are the main needs which appear to be of utmost importance. The most of the tensions are due to physical, social, cultural, religious, economic, political and psychological cause, and the stability of the tension has been found to be due to high competition, lack of common goals, lack of contacts, value conflict, ignorance, partiality, prejudices, conformity, and maladjustment and to achieve dominance by someone. The objective of this paper is to study to measure different kinds of tension viz. communal tension, caste tension, and religious tension cultural tension regional tension and language tension. For this purpose Fifty female athletes of age group 18-25 participated in south-west zone inter-varsity tournament of respective sport viz judo, badminton; table tennis, wrestling, swimming, and athletics, during 2007-2008 were selected as subjects for this study at random. COMPREHENSIVE SCALE OF TENSION by Dr. Rajeevlochan Bhardwaj was used. Reliability—IT POSSESS SPILT-HALF RELIABILITY OF .81 THROUGH Spearman Brown Formula and of .88 by Gutman Formula. The reliability of data was ensured through tools reliability as well as tester\u27s reliability. The information gathered was treated with ANOVA  (F-Ratio) technique was used for comparing all the six sports with respect to Locus of control\u27s-Score- All the scores of comprehensive tension scale are converted to T-Score to find out the level of tension in each of six sports and also in total. It is found from The findings that the study indicates that there is no significant difference among female players of Athletics, Weight Lifting, Judo, Badminton, Swimming and Table Tennis. &nbsp

Technical Report on Argo Data Processing

In this document, details of Argo program, data acquisition system and data processing are documented to serve as a reference for Argo data. Several plots are included to serve as quick reference. The data will be useful to describe major thermo-haline features in the Indian Ocean. In conjunction with other sources of data from various platforms, the data can be used for studying meso-scale structure and dynamics of upper ocean process. At smaller scales, the float temperature and salinity data will be useful to document the seasonal to intra seasonal variability of temperature, salinity and various other derived parameters. This temperature and salinity data can be useful for updating the climatology and for assimilation into ocean model for better forecasts

Prva potpuna sinteza i biološko vrednovanje himenamida E

A new potent bioactive, proline-rich cyclic heptapeptide hymenamide E (13) was synthesized using the solution phase technique by cyclization of the linear peptide Boc-Phe-Pro-Thr-Thr-Pro-Tyr-Phe-OMe (12) after proper deprotection at carboxyl and amino terminals. Linear peptide segment was prepared by coupling the tripeptide unit Boc-Phe-Pro-Thr-OH (10a) with the tetrapeptide unit Thr-Pro-Tyr-Phe-OMe (11a) using dicyclohexylcarbodiimide as the coupling agent and N-methylmorpholine as the base. Structures of all new compounds were characterized by IR, 1H NMR spectral data as well as elemental analyses. In addition, the structure of compound 13 was verified by 13C NMR, fast atom bombardment mass spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. The newly synthesized cyclopeptide was screened for its antibacterial, antifungal and anthelmintic activities against eight pathogenic microbes and two earthworm species. Compound 13 showed potent antifungal activity against Candida albicans and Ganoderma species comparable to that of griseofulvin as a reference drug and potent anthelmintic activity against earthworms Megascoplex konkanensis and Eudrilus species in comparison to piperazine citrate.Novi biološki aktivni ciklički heptapeptid himenamid E (13) sintetiziran je ciklizacijom linearnog peptida Boc-Phe-Pro-Thr-Thr-Pro-Tyr-Phe-OMe (12) nakon uklanjanja zaštitnih skupina sa C-terminalnih i N-terminalnih aminokiselina. Linearni peptidni segment pripravljen je spajanjem tripeptidne jedinice Boc-Phe-Pro-Thr-OH (10a) s tetrapeptidnom jedinicom Thr-Pro-Tyr-Phe-OMe (11a) u prisutnosti dicikloheksilkarbodiimida i N-metilmorfolina kao baze. Strukture novih spojeva potvrđene su IR i 1H NMR spektroskopijom i elementarnom analizom, a struktura spoja 13 i 13C NMR, spektroskopijom masa i diferencijalnom pretražnom kalorimetrijom. Novosintetizirani ciklopeptid testiran je na antibakterijsko, antifungalno i anthelmintičko djelovanje na osam patogenih mikroorganizama i dva parazita. Spoj 13 snažno djeluje antifungalno na gljivice Candida albicans i vrste Ganoderma i anthelmintički na nametnike Megascoplex konkanensis i vrste Eudrilus. Kao poredbene ljekovite tvari uporabljeni su grizeofulvin i piperazin citrat