Design Guidelines for Collaboration and Participation with Examples from the LN4LD:Learning Network for Learning Design

This chapter presents some design guidelines to foster (active) participation in learning networks. ‘Lessons learned’ over a period of about five years are phrased as recommendations for future learning network implementations. We describe three generations of facilities designed to promote learning on the topic of educational modelling languages and IMS-Learning Design, going from a conventional website through a community site offering facilities for collaboration towards a blended learning network for the effective exchange of information. Having described some more general guidelines, the chapter focuses on the positive influence of introducing incentive mechanisms and face-to-face meetings on participation in the LN4LD (Learning Network for Learning Design). These successful interventions in real world experimentation are explained from theories about self-organization, social exchange and social affordances. Repeated measurements show the levels of both passive (accessing and reading information) and active participation (posting, replying and rating) to significantly increase as a result of both interventions. Both the use of incentive mechanisms and face-to-face meetings can therefore be considered as valuable ‘add-ons’ in the learning design of learning networks (LD4LN)

Market mechanisms and efficiency in urban dairy products markets in Ghana and Tanzania

This research report presents an analysis of the problems encountered in the milk markets in Ghana and Tanzania. It is based on a study carried out during 1999 and 2000 to identify and quantify the public health risks and economic performance in dairy product markets in these two countries. The study was led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Scientists from the University and Technology (Kumasi, Ghana), the Animal Research Institute (Accra, Ghana), Sokoine University of Agriculture (Morogoro, Tanzania) and the Natural Resources Institute (UK) collaborated in implementing the study. Funding was obtained from the UK Department for International Development-Livestock Production Programme (DFID-LPP). This report is divided into an executive summary and a main section. The summary highlights the methodology used and the main outcomes of the research. Chapter 2 addresses market mechanisms and efficiency and contains the results of the economic and structural analysis. The key findings and achievements of the study. The main report gives a detailed account of the markets. Chapter 3 deals with the milk-borne public health risks, and focuses on the results of laboratory testing of milk and dairy product samples; this chapter also uses some of the economic results in the analysis. Processing of traditional dairy products is the topic addressed in Chapter 4, with a focus on the traditional fresh cheese, wagashi, in Ghana. Chapter 5 presents the impacts of the training activities conducted during the study while Chapter 6 indicates ways in which the project contributed to meeting the research goal. The project team hopes that the technologies and strategies developed in this study will inform development in other similar production and market systems

What is 3C 324?

We report ground based and HST observations of the z=1.206 radio galaxy 3C 324, a prototypical example of the radio-optical ``alignment effect.'' While infrared images shows a simple, round object reminiscent of a giant elliptical galaxy, the HST images reveal a spectacular, linear chain of UV-bright subcomponents closely aligned with the radio axis. In light of the available data, we consider various scenarios to explain the properties of 3C 324, as well as evidence for the presence of dust which may obscure the central active nucleus and scatter its light to produce the polarized, aligned continuum seen in the rest-frame UV.Comment: 9 pages, uuencoded gzipped postscript. To appear in ``Galaxies in the Young Universe,'' ed. H. Hippelein, Springer Verlag. Revised version (hopefully) corrects postscript error which garbled the last pag

Toward a 21st-century health care system: Recommendations for health care reform

The coverage, cost, and quality problems of the U.S. health care system are evident. Sustainable health care reform must go beyond financing expanded access to care to substantially changing the organization and delivery of care. The FRESH-Thinking Project (www.fresh-thinking.org) held a series of workshops during which physicians, health policy experts, health insurance executives, business leaders, hospital administrators, economists, and others who represent diverse perspectives came together. This group agreed that the following 8 recommendations are fundamental to successful reform: 1. Replace the current fee-for-service payment system with a payment system that encourages and rewards innovation in the efficient delivery of quality care. The new payment system should invest in the development of outcome measures to guide payment. 2. Establish a securely funded, independent agency to sponsor and evaluate research on the comparative effectiveness of drugs, devices, and other medical interventions. 3. Simplify and rationalize federal and state laws and regulations to facilitate organizational innovation, support care coordination, and streamline financial and administrative functions. 4. Develop a health information technology infrastructure with national standards of interoperability to promote data exchange. 5. Create a national health database with the participation of all payers, delivery systems, and others who own health care data. Agree on methods to make de-identified information from this database on clinical interventions, patient outcomes, and costs available to researchers. 6. Identify revenue sources, including a cap on the tax exclusion of employer-based health insurance, to subsidize health care coverage with the goal of insuring all Americans. 7. Create state or regional insurance exchanges to pool risk, so that Americans without access to employer-based or other group insurance could obtain a standard benefits package through these exchanges. Employers should also be allowed to participate in these exchanges for their employees' coverage. 8. Create a health coverage board with broad stakeholder representation to determine and periodically update the affordable standard benefit package available through state or regional insurance exchanges

Structure and Function of the Hair Cell Ribbon Synapse

Faithful information transfer at the hair cell afferent synapse requires synaptic transmission to be both reliable and temporally precise. The release of neurotransmitter must exhibit both rapid on and off kinetics to accurately follow acoustic stimuli with a periodicity of 1 ms or less. To ensure such remarkable temporal fidelity, the cochlear hair cell afferent synapse undoubtedly relies on unique cellular and molecular specializations. While the electron microscopy hallmark of the hair cell afferent synapse — the electron-dense synaptic ribbon or synaptic body — has been recognized for decades, dissection of the synapse’s molecular make-up has only just begun. Recent cell physiology studies have added important insights into the synaptic mechanisms underlying fidelity and reliability of sound coding. The presence of the synaptic ribbon links afferent synapses of cochlear and vestibular hair cells to photoreceptors and bipolar neurons of the retina. This review focuses on major advances in understanding the hair cell afferent synapse molecular anatomy and function that have been achieved during the past years

Anemia prevalence in women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2018

Anemia is a globally widespread condition in women and is associated with reduced economic productivity and increased mortality worldwide. Here we map annual 2000–2018 geospatial estimates of anemia prevalence in women of reproductive age (15–49 years) across 82 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), stratify anemia by severity and aggregate results to policy-relevant administrative and national levels. Additionally, we provide subnational disparity analyses to provide a comprehensive overview of anemia prevalence inequalities within these countries and predict progress toward the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target (WHO GNT) to reduce anemia by half by 2030. Our results demonstrate widespread moderate improvements in overall anemia prevalence but identify only three LMICs with a high probability of achieving the WHO GNT by 2030 at a national scale, and no LMIC is expected to achieve the target in all their subnational administrative units. Our maps show where large within-country disparities occur, as well as areas likely to fall short of the WHO GNT, offering precision public health tools so that adequate resource allocation and subsequent interventions can be targeted to the most vulnerable populations.Peer reviewe

Para-infectious brain injury in COVID-19 persists at follow-up despite attenuated cytokine and autoantibody responses

To understand neurological complications of COVID-19 better both acutely and for recovery, we measured markers of brain injury, inflammatory mediators, and autoantibodies in 203 hospitalised participants; 111 with acute sera (1–11 days post-admission) and 92 convalescent sera (56 with COVID-19-associated neurological diagnoses). Here we show that compared to 60 uninfected controls, tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1 are increased with COVID-19 infection at acute timepoints and NfL and GFAP are significantly higher in participants with neurological complications. Inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-12p40, HGF, M-CSF, CCL2, and IL-1RA) are associated with both altered consciousness and markers of brain injury. Autoantibodies are more common in COVID-19 than controls and some (including against MYL7, UCH-L1, and GRIN3B) are more frequent with altered consciousness. Additionally, convalescent participants with neurological complications show elevated GFAP and NfL, unrelated to attenuated systemic inflammatory mediators and to autoantibody responses. Overall, neurological complications of COVID-19 are associated with evidence of neuroglial injury in both acute and late disease and these correlate with dysregulated innate and adaptive immune responses acutely