Marabout women in Dakar : creating trust in a rural urban space

This rich ethnographic study explores the life and work of successful marabout women in Dakar. it is set against the background of their private family lives, of developments in Senegalese society, and of global changes. While including female experts in spirit possession and plant-based healing, it also gives a rare insight in the work of women who offer Islamic knowledge such as Arabic astrology, numerology, divination and prayer sessions. With the analysis of marabout women's work this study sheds light on the ways in which women's authority is negotiated, legitimated, and publicly recognised in Dakar. The study focuses especially upon marabout women's strategies to gain their client's trust. Reference to rural areas is a significant element in this process. This study thus contributes to an understanding of a gendered way in which trust ans skepticism are related to marabout's work and of the the role of a connection between Dakar and the rural areas therein.LEI Universiteit LeidenFSW - Global Connections --- Ou

Women Reconfiguring Esoteric Economies

This article examines the ways in which women construct expert status and gain authority as marabouts among a largely sceptical suburban population. The experiences of two female marabouts in surburban Dakar highlight how expertise is negotiated, legitimated, and publicly recognized. The author suggests that the women’s success can be explained by migration and urbanization: the suburban environment, filled with migrants looking for their livelihood in an insecure place, creates opportunities for women to engage actively in esoteric Islamic practices

Einfluss der Kombination von Flucytosin und Fluconazol auf die Empfindlichkeit von Candida Tropicalis–Isolaten

Die Minimale Hemmkonzentration gegen die Antimykotika Flucytosin (FCY), Fluconazol (FLC) und Voriconazol (VOR) von 273 unselektionierten Candida tropicalis–Isolaten der mykologischen Routinediagnostik wurde mittels Breakpointtest analysiert: Nach 48h zeigten sich gegen FCY 55,3% (bimodale Empfindlichkeitsverteilung), FLC 81% und VOR 71,4% (CLSI–Breakpoint) als sensibel. Ein Ausschluss von Stämmen für eine erweiterte Empfindlichkeitsbestimmung sollte frühestens nach einer Inkubationszeit von 48h erfolgen. Im Kreuztitrationstest von 29 gegen FCY bzw. FLC resistenten C.tropicalis–Stämmen waren 7 (RPMI) bzw. 4 (YST) Isolate mit der Fractional Inhibitory Concentration–Index–Bewertung Antagonismus vorhanden. Die MHK–Werte des Kombinationstests wiesen jedoch alle diese Isolate als sensibel bzw. intermediär sensibel aus. Von einem klinisch relevanten Antagonismus ist daher nicht auszugehen. Ein additiver/synergistischer Effekt fand sich nach 48h bei 6/11 (RPMI) bzw. bei 6/15 (YST) der Isolate

Analysis of linearized inverse problems in ultrasound transmission imaging

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the linearized inverse problem during the iterativesolution process of the ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem of image reconstruction for ultra-sound transmission imaging. We show that the conjugate gradient applied to normal equation(CGNE) method gives more reliable solutions for linearized systems than Tikhonov regular-ization methods. The linearized systems are more sensitive when treated by CGNE than byTikhonov regularization methods. The Tikhonov regularization is less effective at the be-ginning of the outer-loop iteration, where the nonlinearity is dominating while the conjugategradient for the linearized system stops earlier. Only when the linear approximation is goodenough to describe the whole system, Tikhonov regularization can fully play its role and giveslightly better reconstruction results as compared to CGNE in a very noisy case

Optical Relative Calibration and Stability Monitoring for the Auger Fluorescence Detector

The stability of the fluorescence telescopes of the Pierre Auger Observatory is monitored with the optical relative calibration setup. Optical fibers distribute light pulses to three different diffuser groups within the optical system. The total charge per pulse is measured for each pixel and compared with reference calibration measurements. This allows monitoring the short and long term stability with respect of the relative timing between pixels and the relative gain for each pixel. The designs of the LED calibration unit (LCU) and of the Xenon flash lamp used for relative calibration, are described and their capabilities to monitor the stability of the telescope performances are studied. We report the analysis of relative calibration data recorded during 2004. Fluctuations in the relative calibration constants provide a measure of the stability of the FD.Comment: 4 pp. To appear in the proceedings of 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, 3-11 Aug 200

Community pharmacists' perceptions on providing fall prevention services:A mixed-methods study

Background Pharmacists may contribute to fall prevention particularly by identifying and deprescribing fall risk-increasing drugs (FRIDs) in patients with high fall risk. Objective To assess community pharmacists’ perceptions on providing fall prevention services, and to identify their barriers and facilitators in offering these fall prevention services including deprescribing of FRIDs. Setting A mixed-methods study was conducted with Dutch pharmacists. Method Quantitative (ranking statements on a Likert scale, survey) and qualitative data (semi-structured interviews) were collected. Out of 466 pharmacists who were invited to participate, 313 Dutch pharmacists ranked statements, about providing fall prevention, that were presented during a lecture, and 205 completed a survey. To explore pharmacists’ perceptions in-depth, 16 were interviewed. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. The capability opportunity motivation-behaviour model was applied to interpret and analyse the findings of qualitative data. Main outcome measure Community pharmacists’ views on providing fall prevention. Results Pharmacists stated that they were motivated to provide fall prevention. They believed they were capable of providing fall prevention by FRID deprescribing. They perceived limited opportunities to contribute. Major barriers included insufficient multidisciplinary collaboration, patient unwillingness to deprescribe FRIDs, and lack of time. Facilitators included goal-setting behaviour, financial compensation, and skilled communication. Conclusion Despite the complex decision-making process in medication-related fall prevention, community pharmacists are motivated and feel capable of providing fall prevention. Opportunities for pharmacists to provide fall prevention services should be enhanced, for example by implementing multidisciplinary agreements. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11096-021-01277-4

CNN Architectures for Large-Scale Audio Classification

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have proven very effective in image classification and show promise for audio. We use various CNN architectures to classify the soundtracks of a dataset of 70M training videos (5.24 million hours) with 30,871 video-level labels. We examine fully connected Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), AlexNet [1], VGG [2], Inception [3], and ResNet [4]. We investigate varying the size of both training set and label vocabulary, finding that analogs of the CNNs used in image classification do well on our audio classification task, and larger training and label sets help up to a point. A model using embeddings from these classifiers does much better than raw features on the Audio Set [5] Acoustic Event Detection (AED) classification task.Comment: Accepted for publication at ICASSP 2017 Changes: Added definitions of mAP, AUC, and d-prime. Updated mAP/AUC/d-prime numbers for Audio Set based on changes of latest Audio Set revision. Changed wording to fit 4 page limit with new addition

Third Level Trigger for the Fluorescence Telescopes of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The trigger system for the Auger fluorescence telescopes is implemented in hard- and software for an efficient selection of fluorescence light tracks induced by high-energy extensive air showers. The algorithm of the third stage uses the multiplicity signal of the hardware for fast rejection of lightning events with above 99% efficiency. In a second step direct muon hits in the camera and random triggers are rejected by analyzing the space-time correlation of the pixels. The trigger algorithm was tested with measured and simulated showers and implemented in the electronics of the fluorescence telescopes. A comparison to a prototype trigger without multiplicity shows the superiority of this approach, e.g. the false rejection rate is a factor 10 lower.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, to be published in NIM A; 1 typo correcte

Improved limits on nuebar emission from mu+ decay

We investigated mu+ decays at rest produced at the ISIS beam stop target. Lepton flavor (LF) conservation has been tested by searching for \nueb via the detection reaction p(\nueb,e+)n. No \nueb signal from LF violating mu+ decays was identified. We extract upper limits of the branching ratio for the LF violating decay mu+ -> e+ \nueb \nu compared to the Standard Model (SM) mu+ -> e+ nue numub decay: BR < 0.9(1.7)x10^{-3} (90%CL) depending on the spectral distribution of \nueb characterized by the Michel parameter rho=0.75 (0.0). These results improve earlier limits by one order of magnitude and restrict extensions of the SM in which \nueb emission from mu+ decay is allowed with considerable strength. The decay \mupdeb as source for the \nueb signal observed in the LSND experiment can be excluded.Comment: 10 pages, including 1 figure, 1 tabl