Coverage as a misleading development goal: the concept of water-person-years

Large sums of money have been poured into developing countries by donors, aid agencies and NGOs to improve people’s access to water. However, many of the constructed water sources have broken down or are dysfunctional. At the same time, donors, governments and NGOs rush to achieve coverage targets, ambitiously set and inaccurately measured. This paper proposes a new way of measuring the impact of investments. Assessing investments in “waterpersonyears” over a defined period of time, allows for a more efficient allocation of resources, and calls for a rethinking of the current development approach. Measuring in waterpersonyears is necessary in order to shift focus from new infrastructure development to operation and maintenance of existing water systems, something that is crucial for sustainability

Sustainability of rural water supplies through monitoring

Several years of experience from rural water supply projects in Uganda show the importance and potential of collecting and processing data at different stages and levels in the project process. Through established reporting and monitoring systems, the implementing agency and donors are provided with important information, both for a more effective follow up of the project and to document lessons learned that can benefit future projects. In addition, monitoring routines have shown to have an immense positive impact on the motivation of local communities to properly administrate, operate and maintain their water supply system, a key factor to achieve the overall goal of sustainability

Micro-filtration - a way to improve family health

Beside the fact that a huge effort still is needed to provide safe drinking water at community and family level, there are many different ways to make safe drinking water available and affordable for family use in low-cost countries and emergencies. Chlorination is the most common practice both for providing safe water at large-scale schemes for villages or urban settlements by batch treatment and for families by disinfecting the collected water with tablets. This way of providing safe water has many advantages mainly because it makes the water safe also during carrying it home and handling it at family place. The provision of safe water relies on the proper dosing of chlorine and the availability of chlorine in the respective form, such as powder, tablets, liquid gas, etc. However, chlorination has also been difficult to introduce due to the changes in water taste, which has often made the population to go back to non-treated traditional sources. Usually, an effort is needed in health education to make a community to accept and to welcome chlorinated water as a safer drinking water supply. In conclusion from many water projects, it can be said that the taste change of the drinking water is an underestimated obstacle in improving the health of a population by providing treated water

Replication and extension of rapid decompression of chimpanzees to a near vacuum

Decompression of chimpanzees to near vacuum and recover

Application of Scanning Electron Microscopy to the Study of Shark Dermal Denticles

Clear, high resolution scanning electron micrographs of shark dermal denticles are essential to allow the study of their morphology and micro-relief. Various techniques were tried to remove mucus and adventitious debris, including KOH, trypsin enzyme, and ultrasonication. In most species examined the best results were obtained with enzyme treatment followed by ultrasonication. For scanning electron microscopic examination it was found that 15 nm gold coating, or more, and 10 kV, or less, had to be employed to reduce charging of the denticles

Elemental and Ultrastructural Characteristics of the Egg Capsules of Nautilus Pompilius

Six pearly nautili (Nautilus pompilius) raised in captivity produced nonviable egg capsules which were examined using scanning electron microscopy ( SE M) and energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry (EDS). Macro and microscopic observations revealed two distinct and separate walls encircling the yolk sac. Both walls exhibited a porous appearance in cross-section. Protein analysis demonstrated the proteinaceous nature of nidimental gland secretions and egg capsule walls. EDS analysis of each wall shows the elemental composition to be identical in both, with each wall containing similar proportions of S, CI, Mg, Na, K, and trace amounts of Ca. X-ray mapping of Na and Cl along each wall surface suggests similar construction of both walls. EDS analysis of the nidimental gland secretions of the adult female nautilus have shown a composition similar to that of the egg capsule

Immediate results as entry point for community participation

Immediate results as entry point for community participatio

Piped water supply in a phased approach: a case study from Mozambique

A general assumption in the rural water supply sector is that investments should be made with a long time-frame and sustainability in mind. However, in reality it is difficult to access sufficient water and funds to build systems that can cater for rapidly growing small urban centres for the next 20 years within a short time frame. This paper describes the case of Quissanga in Mozambique, where rapid intervention was necessary due to regular cholera outbreaks, but where the nearest water source could not cater for long-term demand being an island aquifer. Even so, a piped system was put in place and the source’s capacity was later expanded through using an innovative technology in the form of a collector well. Using this phased approach, the community will be able to access critically necessary safe drinking water for 5 years while planning and fund-raising for the large project is taking place

Managing digital coordination of design: emerging hybrid practices in an institutionalized project setting

What happens when digital coordination practices are introduced into the institutionalized setting of an engineering project? This question is addressed through an interpretive study that examines how a shared digital model becomes used in the late design stages of a major station refurbishment project. The paper contributes by mobilizing the idea of ‘hybrid practices’ to understand the diverse patterns of activity that emerge to manage digital coordination of design. It articulates how engineering and architecture professions develop different relationships with the shared model; the design team negotiates paper-based practices across organizational boundaries; and diverse practitioners probe the potential and limitations of the digital infrastructure. While different software packages and tools have become linked together into an integrated digital infrastructure, these emerging hybrid practices contrast with the interactions anticipated in practice and policy guidance and presenting new opportunities and challenges for managing project delivery. The study has implications for researchers working in the growing field of empirical work on engineering project organizations as it shows the importance of considering, and suggests new ways to theorise, the introduction of digital coordination practices into these institutionalized settings

Who Watches the Watchmen? An Appraisal of Benchmarks for Multiple Sequence Alignment

Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is a fundamental and ubiquitous technique in bioinformatics used to infer related residues among biological sequences. Thus alignment accuracy is crucial to a vast range of analyses, often in ways difficult to assess in those analyses. To compare the performance of different aligners and help detect systematic errors in alignments, a number of benchmarking strategies have been pursued. Here we present an overview of the main strategies--based on simulation, consistency, protein structure, and phylogeny--and discuss their different advantages and associated risks. We outline a set of desirable characteristics for effective benchmarking, and evaluate each strategy in light of them. We conclude that there is currently no universally applicable means of benchmarking MSA, and that developers and users of alignment tools should base their choice of benchmark depending on the context of application--with a keen awareness of the assumptions underlying each benchmarking strategy.Comment: Revie