5,333 research outputs found
Closing the Sanitation Gap: The Case for Better Public Funding of Sanitation and Hygiene
Slow progress is being made towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal for sanitation despite the fact that investments in sanitation have significant health, educational and economic benefits. More action is needed to improve the quality and accountability of service delivery. This report presents and summarises all the latest information on benefits and costs of sanitation and lays out proposals for government and donor action to address the problem
Costs of publicly provided maternity services in Rosario, Argentina
This material is posted here with permission of the publishers, Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material must be obtained from the Publisher.Objective. This study estimates the costs of maternal health services in Rosario, Argentina. Material and Methods. The rovider costs (US114.62. The average cost of a caesarean section (105.61). A normal delivery costs less at the general
hospital and a c-section less at the aternity hospital. The average cost of an antenatal visit is 4.70. Direct costs are minimal compared to indirect costs of travel and waiting time. Conclusions. These results suggest the potential for increasing the efficiency of resource use by promoting antenatal care visits at the primary level. Women could also benefit from reduced travel and waiting time. Similar benefits could accrue to the provider by encouraging normal delivery at general hospitals, and complicated deliveries at specialised maternity hospitals.Josephine Borghi is funded by the Department for International Development through the Maternal Health Programme at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. This project was conducted for and funded by the Human Reproduction Programme at WHO, Geneva
Soil Survey Circular No. 1: Nitrogen From the Air
Summary1. Nitrogen is necessary for the growth of crops.2. Nitrogen is disappearing from cultivated soils.3. Maintain the nitrogen supply by growing legume crops.a. See to it that the soil is not sour.b. Inoculate the seed.4. Don’t burn stalks or straw, becausea. A ton of wheat straw contains 4.80 worth of nitrogen.c. A ton of corn stalks contains $6.40 worth of nitrogen
Entanglement Generation in the Scattering of One-Dimensional Particles
This article provides a convenient framework for quantitative evaluation of
the entanglement generated when two structureless, distinguishable particles
scatter non-relativistically in one dimension. It explores how three factors
determine the amount of entanglement generated: the momentum distributions of
the incoming particles, their masses, and the interaction potential. Two
important scales emerge, one set by the kinematics and one set by the dynamics.
This method also provides two approximate analytic formulas useful for
numerical evaluation of entanglement and reveals an interesting connection
between purity, linear coordinate transformations, and momentum uncertainties.Comment: 11 pages, submitted to PR
Rhetoric and Reality of Community Participation in Health Planning, Resource Allocation and Service Delivery: a Review of the Reviews, Primary Publications and Grey Literature
Introduction: This paper synthesises reports on community participation (CP) concept and its practicability in countries’ health service systems, much focus being on developing countries.Methodology: We narratively reviewed the published and grey literature traced from electronic sources and hard copies as much as they could be accessed.Findings: CP is a concept widely promoted, but few projects/programmes have demonstrated its practicability in different countries. In many countries, communities are partially involved in one or several stages of project cycles - priority setting, resource allocation, service management, project implementation and evaluation. There is tendency of informing communities to implement the decisions that have already been passed by elites or politicians. In most of the project/programmes, professionals dominate the decision making processes by downgrading the non-professionals or non-technical people’s knowledge and skills. CP concept is greatly misinterpreted and sometimes confused with community involvement. In some cases, the community participates in passive manner. There is no common approach to translate CP into practice and this perpetuates debates on how and to what extent to which the community members should participate.Conclusion: Persistent misconceptions about CP perpetuate inequalities in many countries’ health systems, suggesting more concerted measures towards making a desired difference
Shadowgraph techniques in transonic tests with powered nacelles
Shadowgraph photography techniques in transonic wind tunnel tests are described. The system was used in tests with powered nacelle rings to visualize the shock wave pattern in the exhaust flow. The technique is also used for installed nacelle tests on a floor mounted half model with a turbine powered fan engine simulator
A Decision Support Tool for Seed Mixture Calculations
Grassland species are normally seeded in mixtures rather than monocultures. In theory, seeding rates for mixtures are simply a sum of the amount of pure live seed (PLS) of each seed lot in the mix, an amount sufficient to ensure establishment and survival of each species. Mixtures can be complex because of the number of species used (especially in conservation and reclamation programs) and variations in seed purity and seed size. Soil limitations and seeding equipment settings need to be considered and in Canada, a metric conversion may be required. All these conditions make by-hand calculations of mixtures containing more than 3 species tedious and complicated. Thus, in practice, agronomists and growers use simple rules to set rates. The easiest rule is to estimate the mixture’s components as a percentage by weight of a standardized total weight of the seed required (e.g. 10% of 10 kg/ha). The resulting errors can be observed in the predominance of thin stands, the unexpected dominance of small seeded species and the added costs of interseeding to compete with weeds and fertilizer to increase yield. The objective of this project was to develop a decision support tool, a seed mixture calculator to simplify conversion and improve the estimates of seed required for individual seeding projects
Distribution and incidence of viruses in Irish seed potato crops
peer-reviewedVirus diseases are of key importance in potato production and in particular for the production of disease-free potato seed. However, there is little known about the frequency and distribution of potato virus diseases in Ireland. Despite a large number of samples being tested each year, the data has never been collated either within or across years. Information from all known potato virus testing carried out in the years 2006–2012 by the Department of Agriculture Food and Marine was collated to give an indication of the distribution and incidence of potato virus in Ireland. It was found that there was significant variation between regions, varieties, years and seed classes. A definition of daily weather data suitable for aphid flight was developed, which accounted for a significant proportion of the variation in virus incidence between years. This use of weather data to predict virus risk could be developed to form the basis of an integrated pest management approach for aphid control in Irish potato crops
Phase transition in the Countdown problem
Here we present a combinatorial decision problem, inspired by the celebrated
quiz show called the countdown, that involves the computation of a given target
number T from a set of k randomly chosen integers along with a set of
arithmetic operations. We find that the probability of winning the game
evidences a threshold phenomenon that can be understood in the terms of an
algorithmic phase transition as a function of the set size k. Numerical
simulations show that such probability sharply transitions from zero to one at
some critical value of the control parameter, hence separating the algorithm's
parameter space in different phases. We also find that the system is maximally
efficient close to the critical point. We then derive analytical expressions
that match the numerical results for finite size and permit us to extrapolate
the behavior in the thermodynamic limit.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
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