Childbirth in South Sudan: Preferences, practice and perceptions in the Kapoetas

Background: Focus group discussions (FGDs) were designed to better understand the community’s views and preferences around maternity care to design a communications campaign to increase facility deliveries and skilled attendance at birth in the three county catchment areas of Kapoeta Civil Hospital.Methods: Twelve FGDs were conducted in Kapoeta South, Kapoeta East, and Kapoeta North counties. Four South Sudanese facilitators (two women, two men) were hired and trained to conduct sex-segregated FGDs. Each had 8-10 participants. Participants were adult women of reproductive age (18-49 years) and adult men (18+ years) married to women of reproductive age.Results: The majority of participants’ most recent births took place at home, though most reportedly intended to give birth in a health facility and overwhelmingly desire a facility birth next time. Husbands and the couple’s mothers are the primary decision-makers about where a woman delivers. More men than women preferred home births, and they tend to have more negative opinions than women about health facility deliveries. Though participants acknowledge that health facilities can theoretically provide better care than home births, fear of surgical interventions, lack of privacy, and perceived poor quality of care remain barriers to facility deliveries.Recommendations: Interventions encouraging facility births should target the decision-makers—husbands and a couple’s mothers. Improvements in quality of care are needed in health facilities. Developing social network interventions that circulate positive experiences about delivering in health facilities may be effective in changing public perception and decision-making about facility deliveries. Additional research and pilot testing is needed to more fully inform effective social and behavioural change strategies around maternal health in the Kapoetas in South Sudan.Keywords: Maternal health, childbirth, facility deliveries, behaviour change, qualitativ

The use of non-intrusive user logging to capture engineering rationale, knowledge and intent during the product life cycle

Within the context of Life Cycle Engineering it is important that structured engineering information and knowledge are captured at all phases of the product life cycle for future reference. This is especially the case for long life cycle projects which see a large number of engineering decisions made at the early to mid-stages of a product's life cycle that are needed to inform engineering decisions later on in the process. A key aspect of technology management will be the capturing of knowledge through out the product life cycle. Numerous attempts have been made to apply knowledge capture techniques to formalise engineering decision rationale and processes; however, these tend to be associated with substantial overheads on the engineer and the company through cognitive process interruptions and additional costs/time. Indeed, when life cycle deadlines come closer these capturing techniques are abandoned due the need to produce a final solution. This paper describes work carried out for non-intrusively capturing and formalising product life cycle knowledge by demonstrating the automated capture of engineering processes/rationale using user logging via an immersive virtual reality system for cable harness design and assembly planning. Associated post-experimental analyses are described which demonstrate the formalisation of structured design processes and decision representations in the form of IDEF diagrams and structured engineering change information. Potential future research directions involving more thorough logging of users are also outlined

Earthquake slip surfaces identified by biomarker thermal maturity within the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake fault zone.

Extreme slip at shallow depths on subduction zone faults is a primary contributor to tsunami generation by earthquakes. Improving earthquake and tsunami risk assessment requires understanding the material and structural conditions that favor earthquake propagation to the trench. We use new biomarker thermal maturity indicators to identify seismic faults in drill core recovered from the Japan Trench subduction zone, which hosted 50 m of shallow slip during the Mw9.1 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. Our results show that multiple faults have hosted earthquakes with displacement ≥ 10 m, and each could have hosted many great earthquakes, illustrating an extensive history of great earthquake seismicity that caused large shallow slip. We find that lithologic contrasts in frictional properties do not necessarily determine the likelihood of large shallow slip or seismic hazard

Assessing How Fish Predation and Interspecific Prey Competition Influence a Crayfish Assemblage

In northern Wisconsin lakes. the introduced crayfish 0rconectes rusticus is replacing 0. propinquus, a previous invader, and 0. virilis,a native crayfish. Herein, we explore how fish predation and competition interact to drive this change in crayfish species composition. In outside pools, we conducted selective predation experiments exposing crayfish to largemouth bass. Micropterus salmoides, to quantify patterns of crayfish vulnerability. To determine how interactions among crayfish influence susceptibility. we quantified shelter use and behavioral interactions among crayfish in aquaria and outside pools. At equal size, 0. virilis was more susceptible to fish predation than either of the invaders. 0. rusticus and 0. propinquus; the two invaders were equally susceptible to predation. However, sizes of these crayfish in the field are 0. virilis > 0. rusticus > 0. propinquus. Because fish predators prefer small crayfish. at unequal size, small 0. propinquus were more vulnerable to predation than large 0. rusticus. Thus, 0. rusticus can replace 0. propinquus due to natural size differences. Although 0. virilis grows larger than the invaders, it was more susceptible even when 3 mm larger. We hypothesized that 0. virilis, although large, participated in behaviors that increased its risk to predation. When provided with unlimited shelters, all three species increased refuge use under predatory risk. When shelters were limiting and fish present. 0. virilis was excluded from shelters by invaders. 0. virilis also participated in risky behaviors, such as increased activity and swimming. Both agonistic interactions with congeners and approaches by largemouth bass increased risky behaviors in 0. virilis. In addition, 0. virilis was innately less aggressive than invaders. Given these behaviors, 0. virilis was consumed at high rates and would be eventually replaced in lakes. In northern Wisconsin lakes, fish predation and crayfish-crayfish competition interact to influence crayfish replacements. Based on our results, largemouth bass predation modifies the outcome of interference competition among the three crayfishes and, in turn, competitive interactions among the crayfishes influence susceptibility to fish predation. We predict that 0. virilis should suffer high mortality to fish predation in the presence, rather than in the absence, of the two invading species. Our results support the hypothesis that, in areas of sympatry where predators are selective and prey species compete, predation and competition interact to determine community structure.This project was supported through NSF grant BSR 8907691 to R. A. Stein in collaboration with David Lodge and Ken Brown

A method for characterizing high acceleration movements in small-sided football

Small sided football is the most popular area of adult football in the UK, with an estimated 1.5m adults playing every week. Matches are played on smaller pitches using different rules to the 11-a-side game; this results in less stoppage time and a higher volume of ball activity per player. Despite these established differences in playing style and the increase in participation, the types and frequencies of movements performed are not fully understood due to the time consuming nature of current notational analysis methods. Understanding movements is of particular interest to researchers and developers seeking task representative protocols and products for small sided football. The importance of movement type, specifically those with high horizontal plane accelerations, has been demonstrated by recent findings linking traction and shoe stiffness to injury and performance in a number of team sports. In this paper we introduce a new motion analysis technique that uses a combination of inertial sensors and manual notational analysis to describe high acceleration movements in a repeatable and more time effective manner than previously published. A recreational 5-a-side team (mean ± SD: age 17.8 ± 0.26 years, body height 1.77 ± 0.05 m, body mass 74.23 ± 16.25 kg) were observed during one season at a commercial football centre. Player mounted sensors were used to identify 1824 high acceleration movements from three players in seven matches. These movements were then classified using operational definitions adapted from notational analysis literature. This paper outlines a high acceleration movement analysis technique, provides normative high acceleration movement profiles for three individual 5-a-side players, and suggests comparisons to published 11-a-side data. These movement profiles provide a foundation for footwear researchers and product designers to re-align their current practice or products from the 11-a-side game to this more popular style of football

Transits and secondary eclipses of HD 189733 with Spitzer

We present limits on transit timing variations and secondary eclipse depth variations at 8 microns with the Spitzer Space Telescope IRAC camera. Due to the weak limb darkening in the infrared and uninterrupted observing, Spitzer provides the highest accuracy transit times for this bright system, in principle providing sensitivity to secondary planets of Mars mass in resonant orbits. Finally, the transit data provides tighter constraints on the wavelength- dependent atmospheric absorption by the planet.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, submitted to proceedings of IAU Symposium No. 253 "Transiting Planets

The Evolutionary Origin of the Runx/CBFbeta Transcription Factors – Studies of the Most Basal Metazoans

BACKGROUND. Members of the Runx family of transcriptional regulators, which bind DNA as heterodimers with CBFβ, are known to play critical roles in embryonic development in many triploblastic animals such as mammals and insects. They are known to regulate basic developmental processes such as cell fate determination and cellular potency in multiple stem-cell types, including the sensory nerve cell progenitors of ganglia in mammals. RESULTS. In this study, we detect and characterize the hitherto unexplored Runx/CBFβ genes of cnidarians and sponges, two basal animal lineages that are well known for their extensive regenerative capacity. Comparative structural modeling indicates that the Runx-CBFβ-DNA complex from most cnidarians and sponges is highly similar to that found in humans, with changes in the residues involved in Runx-CBFβ dimerization in either of the proteins mirrored by compensatory changes in the binding partner. In situ hybridization studies reveal that Nematostella Runx and CBFβ are expressed predominantly in small isolated foci at the base of the ectoderm of the tentacles in adult animals, possibly representing neurons or their progenitors. CONCLUSION. These results reveal that Runx and CBFβ likely functioned together to regulate transcription in the common ancestor of all metazoans, and the structure of the Runx-CBFβ-DNA complex has remained extremely conserved since the human-sponge divergence. The expression data suggest a hypothesis that these genes may have played a role in nerve cell differentiation or maintenance in the common ancestor of cnidarians and bilaterians.National Science Foundation (IBN-0212773, FP-91656101-0); Boston University SPRInG (20-202-8103-9); Israel Science Foundation (825/07