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

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

Long-term survival for a cohort of adults with cerebral palsy

The aim of this study was to investigate long-term survival and examine causes of death in adult patients with cerebral palsy (CP). A 1940–1950 birth cohort based on paediatric case referral allows for long-term survival follow-up. Survival is analyzed by birth characteristics and severity of disability from age 20 years (and age 2y for a subset of the data). Survival outcome compared with that expected in the general population based on English life tables. The main cohort consisted of 341 individuals, with 193 males and 148 females. Conditional on surviving to age 20 years, almost 85% of the cohort survived to age 50 years (a comparable estimate for the general population is 96%). Very few deaths were attributed to CP for those people dying over 20 years of age. Females survived better than males. However, females faced a greater increase in risk relative to the general population than did males. We conclude that survival outlook is good though lower than in the general population. The relative risk of death compared with the UK population decreases with age, although it shows some indication of rising again after age 50 years. Many more deaths were caused by diseases of the respiratory system among those dying in their 20s and 30s than would be expected in the general population. Many fewer deaths than expected in this age group are caused by injuries and accidents. For those people who die in their 40s and 50s, an increase in deaths due to diseases of the circulatory system and neoplasms is observed. More deaths than expected in this age group are due to diseases of the nervous system

A Program Evaluation of a Summer Program Designed to Reduce Summer Learning Loss

Public School Districts across the nation are facing the challenge of increasing student achievement. Learning that is lost over the summer has been found to be a key factor of why some students fall further and further behind their peers. Higher socio-economic students actually can make gains in reading over the summer, while students in poverty may lose one to two months of achievement. In mathematics, all students may experience a summer learning loss, while students in poverty may lose up to three months. Although students in poverty learn at similar rates as their peers during the school year, the losses incurred over the summers accumulate and have been found to be part of the reason for the achievement gap. School leaders know that quality summer learning programs may help keep student learning more continuous. The cuts in educational funding since the financial crisis of 2008 make it crucial for districts to know if money spent on summer programming is producing the desired results. The purpose of the program evaluation study was to evaluate the impact of one district’s summer learning program on achievement for invited students who attended the three-week program. The goal of the summer program was to combat summer learning loss in reading and math, as well as to help reduce the achievement gap in this district. Therefore, this program evaluation analyzed grade level mean scores in reading and math from pre-test to post-test for participating students. To evaluate summer learning loss, the study compared changes in achievement from spring to fall for participating students and similar students who were invited but chose not to attend. To determine any impact on the achievement gap in the host district, the study examined the third grade Nebraska State Accountability Assessments for reading and math for students who participated for two or more summers. This data was compared with similar students who were invited and chose not to attend. Further analysis was conducted using data for students in poverty who participated for two or more summers, as compared to all students and similar students in poverty who were invited and chose not to attend. Finally, parents are key stakeholders and this study looked at parent feedback regarding satisfaction with the program and the value of program offerings. The study found that participating students did make significant gains in reading from pre-test to posttest. In addition, no summer loss was found in reading achievement from spring to fall. In the area of mathematics, students in kindergarten grew significantly, yet the other grade levels experienced no significant change. From spring to fall, the study found that participating and non-participating students experienced significant loss. It was found that students who participated in the summer learning program for two or more years did not perform significantly different on the Nebraska State Accountability Assessments than non-participating students and all other students. Finally, parent feedback indicates that the majority of parents are satisfied with the program and they find the Family Day activities and resources to be helpful. This program evaluation indicates that the summer program has had a positive impact on reading achievement, but summer learning loss occurred in mathematics. The study suggests that district and program administrators may want to evaluate the instructional strategies and materials used for teaching math and revisions may be needed. Parent satisfaction was strongly agreed upon, but other areas on the parent survey suggest additional analysis. Further research may be warranted with regards to the impact on other participating students such as English Language Learners and racial sub-groups

The Dimension Six Triple Gluon Operator in Higgs+Jet Observables

Recently a lot of progress has been made towards a full classification of new physics effects in Higgs observables by means of effective dimension six operators. Specifically, Higgs production in association with a high transverse momentum jet has been suggested as a way to discriminate between operators that modify the Higgs-top coupling and operators that induce an effective Higgs-gluon coupling---a distinction that is hard to achieve with signal strength measurements alone. With this article we would like to draw attention to another source of new physics in Higgs+jet observables: the triple gluon operator $O_{3g}$ (consisting of three factors of the gluon field strength tensor). We compute the distortions of kinematic distributions in Higgs+jet production at a 14 TeV LHC due to $O_{3g}$ and compare them with the distortions due to dimension six operators involving the Higgs doublet. We find that the transverse momentum, the jet rapidity and the difference between the Higgs and jet rapidity are well suited to distinguish between the contributions from $O_{3g}$ and those from other operators, and that the size of the distortions are similar if the Wilson coefficients are of the same order as the expected bounds from other observables. We conclude that a full analysis of new physics in Higgs+jet observables must take the contributions from $O_{3g}$ into account.Comment: To appear as a Rapid Communication in Physical Review

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (NVP) is not just 'Morning Sickness' : data from a prospective cohort study

Background: Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy is usually called ‘morning sickness’. This is felt by sufferers to trivialise the condition. Symptoms have been described as occurring both before and after noon, but daily symptom patterns have not been clearly described and statistically modelled to enable the term ‘morning sickness’ to be accurately analysed. Aim: To describe the daily variation in nausea and vomiting symptoms during early pregnancy in a group of sufferers. Design and setting: A prospective cohort study of females recruited from 15 May 2014 to 17 February 2017 by Swiss Precision Diagnostics (SPD) Development Company Limited, which was researching hormone levels in early pregnancy and extended its study to include the description of pregnancy symptoms. Method: Daily symptom diaries of nausea and vomiting were kept by females who were trying to conceive. They also provided daily urine samples, which when analysed enabled the date of ovulation to be determined. Data from 256 females who conceived during the first month of the study are included in this article. Daily symptom patterns and changes in daily patterns by week of pregnancy were modelled. Functional data analysis was used to produce estimated symptom probability functions. Results: There was a peak probability of nausea in the morning, a lower but sustained probability of nausea throughout the day, and a slight peak in the evening. Vomiting had a defined peak incidence in the morning. Conclusion: Referring to nausea and vomiting in pregnancy as simply ‘morning sickness’ is inaccurate, simplistic, and therefore unhelpful

Local magnitudes and apparent variations in seismicity rates in Southern California

Redetermination of local magnitudes for moderate earthquakes recorded by the Southern California Seismographic Network (SCSN) from 1932 to 1990 has shown that the magnitudes have not been consistently determined over that time period. The amplitudes of ground velocities recorded on Wood-Anderson instruments were systematically overestimated prior to 1944 compared to present reading procedures, leading to a significant overestimation of local magnitudes. In addition, the change from human to computerized estimation of event magnitude from a suite of amplitudes in 1975 led to slightly lower event magnitudes for the time after 1975 compared to the time before. These changes contribute to an apparently higher rate of seismicity in the 1930s and 1940s than later in the catalog, which had been interpreted as a decrease in seismicity rate after the 1952 Kern County (M_w 7.5) earthquake. Wood-Anderson amplitudes have been reread and consistent magnitudes recalculated using uniform procedures for all earthquakes with a catalog magnitude of 4.5 and greater within the SCSN from 1932 to 1943 and those with a catalog magnitude of 4.8 and greater from 1944 to 1990 so as to create a complete list of all earthquakes with a modern local magnitude of 5.0 or greater. Using these new magnitudes, we find that the rate of M_L 5.0 and greater earthquakes in southern California over this 59-year period to be Poissonian, with no changes in rate significant above the 90% level. From this rate, in any 30-year period, the Poissonian probability of a M ≧ 6 earthquake is 99.7%, the probability of an M ≧ 7 earthquake is 65%, and the probability of an M ≧ 8 event is 18%

Fine Structure in 3C 120 and 3C 84

Seven epochs of very long baseline radio interferometric observations of the Seyfert galaxies 3C 120 and 3C 84, at 3.8-cm wave length using stations at Westford, Massachusetts, Goldstone, California, Green Bank, West Virginia, and Onsala, Sweden, have been analyzed for source structure. An algorithm for reconstructing the brightness distribution of a spatially confined source from fringe amplitude and so called closure phase data has been developed and successfully applied to artificially generated test data and to data on the above mentioned sources. Over the two year time period of observation, 3C 120 was observed to consist of a double source showing apparent super relativistic expansion and separation velocities. The total flux changes comprising one outburst can be attributed to one of these components. 3C 84 showed much slower changes, evidently involving flux density changes in individual stationary components rather than relative motion

Modernizing governance: leadership, red flags, trust and professional power

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Improved correction for the tissue fraction effect in lung PET/CT imaging

Recently, there has been an increased interest in imaging different pulmonary disorders using PET techniques. Previous work has shown, for static PET/CT, that air content in the lung influences reconstructed image values and that it is vital to correct for this 'tissue fraction effect' (TFE). In this paper, we extend this work to include the blood component and also investigate the TFE in dynamic imaging. CT imaging and PET kinetic modelling are used to determine fractional air and blood voxel volumes in six patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. These values are used to illustrate best and worst case scenarios when interpreting images without correcting for the TFE. In addition, the fractional volumes were used to determine correction factors for the SUV and the kinetic parameters. These were then applied to the patient images. The kinetic parameters K1 and Ki along with the static parameter SUV were all found to be affected by the TFE with both air and blood providing a significant contribution to the errors. Without corrections, errors range from 34-80% in the best case and 29-96% in the worst case. In the patient data, without correcting for the TFE, regions of high density (fibrosis) appeared to have a higher uptake than lower density (normal appearing tissue), however this was reversed after air and blood correction. The proposed correction methods are vital for quantitative and relative accuracy. Without these corrections, images may be misinterpreted