Ebola epidemic: when science is not enough

LSE’s Dr Bankole Falade examines how research on the oral polio vaccine controversy in Nigeria helps us to understand prevailing attitudes to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa

Scientific and non-scientific information in the uptake of health information: The case of Ebola

The Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa (2013–2016) claimed over 10 000 lives in less than 18 months. Low levels of familiarity with the disease, ease of transmission, scale of infection, gruesomeness of symptoms, lack of cure and high fatality rate created a global panic. From the perspective of the social psychology of communication and content analysis, this study examines media coverage of the crisis in Africa with a view to unpacking the scientific and non-scientific information that may have framed public understanding of the disease. Findings show that accepting scientific advice was not unproblematic, because of the similarity of early symptoms with known diseases such as Lassa, dengue and malaria fevers. Cultural and religious actors and beliefs posed a paradox for believers as the public assimilated disease prevention information into existing norms and practices. Rumours and conspiracy theories about Western governments and pharmaceuticals also contributed to the rejection of the scientific explanation of its origin. Fear of the devastating effects of the disease and the lack of a cure led to the stigmatisation of the infected and treatment centres and ultimately to public revolts. Findings show the importance of non-scientific information and actors in matters of health and illness in Africa

The AgResults Nigeria Aflasafe TM Challenge Project: 2019 Annual Report

This report documents the key activities that were carried under the AgResults Aflasafe Pilot Project during the 2018/ 2019 maize-growing season on the verification process to trigger premium payments for successfully harvested and aggregated Aflasafe™-treated maize

Cloud Computing and Quality of Service: Issues and Developments

Cloud computing is a dynamic information technology (IT) paradigm that delivers on demand computing resources to a user over a network infrastructure. The Cloud Service Provider (CSP) offers applications which can be accessed online to users. Such applications can be shared by more than one user. CSPs provides programming interfaces that allows customers to build and deploy applications on the cloud; as well as providing massive storage and computing infrastructure to users. Users usually have no control on how data is stored on the cloud or where the underlying resources are located. With this limited control, customers’ requirements and Quality of Service (QoS) expectations from CSPs are spelt out using a Service Level Agreement (SLA). It is thus imperative to have the adequate QoS guarantees from a CSP. This paper examines trends in the area of Cloud computing QoS and provides a guide for future research. A review and survey of existing works in literature is done in order to identify these Cloud QoS trends. The finding is that the ultimate expectation of any QoS metrics or model is the related to cost concern for both the CSP and user

I have faith in science and in God: common sense, cognitive polyphasia and attitudes to science in Nigeria

This study, of modern common sense in Nigeria, combines questionnaires and interviews to examine the compatibility and incompatibility of religion and science. Nigeria is a large country with a complex diversity of religious, ethnic and cultural practices that condition the reception and elaboration of science in everyday life. We find evaluative attitudes to science structured as ‘progress’, ‘fear’ and ‘mythical image’. Scientific knowledge and religiosity have a direct bearing on expectations of progress and feeling of fear and worry about science; mythical image is independent of this. Nigerians trust both scientific and religious authorities in contrast to other social actors. Many of the results are consistent with the hypothesis of cognitive polyphasia of scientific and religious knowing manifesting as a ‘hierarchy’, when one form is elevated over the other; ‘parallelity’, when both serve separate functions; and ‘empowerment’, where one enhances the other

Cloud Computing and Open Source Software: Issues and Developments

Cloud computing is a global paradigm that is offering useful services in virtually all spheres of human endeavor based on infrastructure made available to users on demand. The cloud provides on demand, elastic and scalable resources to meet the needs of users. The cloud has application deployed by cloud service providers that can be accessed by several users at the same time. Cloud computing also offers a programming environment that allows users deploy and run their own in-house applications. Massive storage and computing resources are also available on the cloud. There are currently open source applications that can be used to implement cloud applications. The source code which can be improved on and adapted for use is available to the user online. Such open source software tools allow the deployment of cloud for any type of domain. The study was executed by means of review of some literature available on cloud computing and open source software. This paper examines present trends in cloud computing and open source software and provides a guide for future research. In the present work, the objective is to answer the following question: what is the current trend and development in cloud computing and open source software? The review’s finding is that OpenStack provides the most comprehensive infrastructure in cloud computing and open source software

Universal and Non-Universal First-Passage Properties of Planar Multipole Flows

The dynamics of passive Brownian tracer particles in steady two-dimensional potential flows between sources and sinks is investigated. The first-passage probability, $p(t)$, exhibits power-law decay with a velocity-dependent exponent in radial flow and an order-dependent exponent in multipolar flows. For the latter, there also occur diffusive ``echo'' shoulders and exponential decays associated with stagnation points in the flow. For spatially extended dipole sinks, the spatial distribution of the collected tracer is independent of the overall magnitude of the flow field.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe