Knowledge, attitudes and practices of AIDS associated malignancies among people living with HIV in Nigeria.

UNLABELLED: INTRODUCTION: The epidemic of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa varies significantly across countries in the region with high prevalence in Southern Africa and Nigeria. Cancer is increasingly identified as a complication of HIV infection with higher incidence and mortality in this group than in the general population. Without cancer prevention strategies, improved cancer treatment alone would be an insufficient response to this increasing burden among people living with HIV (PLHIV). Although previous studies have noted low levels of awareness of cancers in sub-Saharan Africa none has examined the knowledge and perceptions of cancer among people living with HIV/AIDS. METHODS: Focus group discussions (FGD) and Key Informant Interviews (KII) were carried out in 4 high volume tertiary care institutions that offer HIV care and treatment in Nigeria. FGD and KII assessed participants' knowledge of cancer, attitudes towards cancer risk and cancer screening practices. RESULTS: The mean age (SD) of the FGD participants was 38 (2.8) years. Most participants had heard about cancer and considered it a fatal disease but displayed poor knowledge of the causes of cancer in general and of AIDs associated cancers in particular. PLHIV in Nigeria expressed fear, denial and disbelief about their perceived cancer risk. Some of the participants had heard about cancer screening but very few participants had ever been screened. CONCLUSION: Our findings of poor knowledge of cancer among PLHIV in Nigeria indicate the need for health care providers and the government to intervene by developing primary cancer prevention strategies for this population

Theoretical and Numerical Analysis of 3D Reconstruction Using Point and Line Incidences

We study the joint image of lines incident to points, meaning the set of image tuples obtained from fixed cameras observing a varying 3D point-line incidence. We prove a formula for the number of complex critical points of the triangulation problem that aims to compute a 3D point-line incidence from noisy images. Our formula works for an arbitrary number of images and measures the intrinsic difficulty of this triangulation. Additionally, we conduct numerical experiments using homotopy continuation methods, comparing different approaches of triangulation of such incidences. In our setup, exploiting the incidence relations gives both a faster point reconstruction and in three views more accurate.Comment: 27 pages, 5 Figures, 3 table

Seasonal variations in antibiotic resistance gene transport in the Almendares River, Havana, Cuba

Numerous studies have quantified antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) in rivers and streams around the world, and significant relationships have been shown that relate different pollutant outputs and increased local ARG levels. However, most studies have not considered ambient flow conditions, which can vary dramatically especially in tropical countries. Here, ARG were quantified in water column and sediment samples during the dry- and wet-seasons to assess how seasonal and other factors influence ARG transport down the Almendares River (Havana, Cuba). Eight locations were sampled and stream flow estimated during both seasons; qPCR was used to quantify four tetracycline, two erythromycin, and three beta-lactam resistance genes. ARG concentrations were higher in wet-season versus dry-season samples, which combined with higher flows, indicated much greater ARG transport downstream during the wet-season. However, water column ARG levels were more spatially variable in the dry-season than the wet-season, with the proximity of waste outfalls strongly influencing local ARG levels. Results confirm that dry-season sampling provides a useful picture of the impact of individual waste inputs on local stream ARG levels, whereas the majority of ARGs in this tropical river were transported downstream during the wet-season, possibly due to re-entrainment of ARG from sediments

Applying a Model of Public Management Reform to Tax Reform in a Post-Soviet Transition Country: The Case of the Kyrgyz Republic

The recent political and fiscal crises in Kyrgyzstan offer a good opportunity to rethink the objectives and the direction of tax reform. The tax system of the Kyrgyz Republic has changed substantially since 1991 including a shift of the tax structure towards indirect taxation, reduction in a number of taxes, and drastic decrease in tax rates. The thesis aims to identify and describe the main factors influencing tax reform in Kyrgyzstan during the first decades of transition to a market economy using important theoretical model of public management reform. So, it will critically review the applicability of a Pollitt-Bouckaert’s model in this context and implications for how the model could be adapted to fit the tax reform process in post-Soviet transition countries. Accomplishment of these goals would require a multiple methods approach based on the assumption that collecting diverse types of data sequentially in the embedded single-case study will provide more complete understanding of research questions than either quantitative or qualitative data alone. For the study of tax reform, the quantitative data are subjected to time-series analysis of the embedded units while the qualitative interviews remain critical in explaining the main proposition central to the entire case study. The study starts with the theoretical assumption that the factors identified in the model have significant effect on tax reform process. This basic proposition – the impact of socio-economic forces, political changes, administrative system, elite’s decisions, and chance events on the reform process – will be traced for each factor in ‘within-country’ explanatory case study. The fundamental part of this thesis is the Pollitt and Bouckaert’s model of public management reform, which will provide a framework for discussion of the main forces influencing the reform process. As a diagram of main factors of the public sector reform, this model will be further adapted and modified for tax reform purposes. However, the direction of tax reform in the Kyrgyz Republic cannot be understood completely without a good knowledge of the main legacies of the Soviet Union, the cultural and institutional features of centralized planning system, which have left a long-lasting impact on trajectory of the economic and political development in the country. Therefore, the model proposed by Pollitt and Bouckaert does not include other forces, which have substantial impact on reform. In particular, it needs to take more account of significant importance of the development partners in tax reform process.University of Central Asi

Average degree of the essential variety

The essential variety is an algebraic subvariety of dimension $5$ in real projective space $\mathbb R\mathrm P^{8}$ which encodes the relative pose of two calibrated pinhole cameras. The $5$-point algorithm in computer vision computes the real points in the intersection of the essential variety with a linear space of codimension $5$. The degree of the essential variety is $10$, so this intersection consists of 10 complex points in general. We compute the expected number of real intersection points when the linear space is random. We focus on two probability distributions for linear spaces. The first distribution is invariant under the action of the orthogonal group $\mathrm{O}(9)$ acting on linear spaces in $\mathbb R\mathrm P^{8}$. In this case, the expected number of real intersection points is equal to $4$. The second distribution is motivated from computer vision and is defined by choosing 5 point correspondences in the image planes $\mathbb R\mathrm P^2\times \mathbb R\mathrm P^2$ uniformly at random. A Monte Carlo computation suggests that with high probability the expected value lies in the interval $(3.95 - 0.05,\ 3.95 + 0.05)$.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, code included in source file

Difficulties and perspectives of incorporating Russian economy into the European economy and centripetal tendencies in the EU

The article determines current realia and potential possibilities and perspectives of Russian economy’s incorporation into the European one in the contexts of centripetal tendencies in the EU. As a result of the research, the authors have come to the conclusion on the growth of centripetal processes in the EU and stabilization of integration processes against this background as of now. The authors have made substantiated conclusion on the possibility for active incorporation of Russian economy into the European in view of personalized trade cooperation with specific members of the EU, not with the association as a whole.peer-reviewe

Marketing aspects of Russia-the European Union cooperation in the field of education

In the paper the authors identified the need and identified the benefits of the development of Russia-EU cooperation in the field of education in the context of globalization, marked barriers to the development of such cooperation conditions for its development. The authors also performed a comparative analysis of the state and the market model for cooperation between Russia and the European Union in the field of education in the context of globalization and the expediency of the transition to it. As perspective directions of cooperation between Russia and the European Union in the field of education in the context of globalization the authors developed and validated a complex marketing mix.peer-reviewe

An Analysis of the Reverse Weekend Anomaly at the Nairobi Securities Exchange in Kenya

The objective of this study is to investigate whether the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) exhibits the reverse weekend anomaly. The reverse weekend anomaly exists when Monday returns are significantly positive and larger than those on other days of the week. The data used in this study consisted of daily stock returns of 32 sampled companies listed continuously at the NSE from 1 January 2001 to 31st December 2005. Since the reverse weekend effect tends to be associated with stocks of large firms, the data set was split into two sub-samples for large and small companies. Then weekly stock returns were regressed on the daily stock returns for the two sub-samples and the full sample. The sign, magnitude and significance of Monday returns in relation to those of other days of the week were examined. The results show that Monday returns are highly significant but their coefficient is not positive. Hence there is no reverse weekend anomaly at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. This finding is attributed to the increasing efficiency of the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The findings of this study are consistent with the findings of Leuthold (1991) but contradict those of Brusa, Liu & Schulman (2005). Keywords: Weekend Anomaly, Reverse Weekend Anomaly, Efficient Market Hypothesis, Nairobi Securities Exchange, Keny