Moving up the sanitation ladder with the help of microfinance in urban Malawi

Abstract We carried out a stated preference survey in Malawi to examine whether access to microfinance for sanitation would significantly increase the proportion of households upgrading to improved pit latrines or alternative improved sanitation technologies (urine diverting dry toilet, fossa alterna, pour flush). We presented a range of sanitation options at local market prices, initially without and then with a real microfinance option, to 1,300 households sampled across 27 low-income urban settlements in the two largest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre. When we gave respondents a microfinance option, the proportion of households stating an intention to install improved and unimproved pit latrines decreased significantly, while the proportion stating an intention to upgrade to alternative improved sanitation technologies increased significantly. However, households in the lowest wealth quintile were more likely to state a preference for unimproved pit latrines, suggesting that the benefits of microfinance for sanitation may not accrue equally across wealth strata. Organisations seeking to improve access to safely managed sanitation by promoting alternative sanitation technologies would succeed if households have access to affordable alternative sanitation technologies and microfinance for sanitation. However, poorer households would need more affordable improved sanitation technologies, flexible microfinance options and possibly targeted subsidies to gain access to safely managed sanitation.</jats:p

Carbon stable isotope analysis of cereal remains as a way to reconstruct water availability: preliminary results

Reconstructing past water availability, both as rainfall and irrigation, is important to answer questions about the way society reacts to climate and its changes and the role of irrigation in the development of social complexity. Carbon stable isotope analysis of archaeobotanical remains is a potentially valuable method for reconstructing water availability. To further define the relationship between water availability and plant carbon isotope composition and to set up baseline values for the Southern Levant, grains of experimentally grown barley and sorghum were studied. The cereal crops were grown at three stations under five different irrigation regimes in Jordan. Results indicate that a positive but weak relationship exists between irrigation regime and total water input of barley grains, but no relationship was found for sorghum. The relationship for barley is site-specific and inter-annual variation was present at Deir ‘Alla, but not at Ramtha and Khirbet as-Samra

Impact of Indian Total Sanitation Campaign on latrine coverage and use: a cross-sectional study in Orissa three years following programme implementation.

BACKGROUND: Faced with a massive shortfall in meeting sanitation targets, some governments have implemented campaigns that use subsidies focused on latrine construction to overcome income constraints and rapidly expand coverage. In settings like rural India where open defecation is common, this may result in sub-optimal compliance (use), thereby continuing to leave the population exposed to human excreta. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study to investigate latrine coverage and use among 20 villages (447 households, 1933 individuals) in Orissa, India where the Government of India's Total Sanitation Campaign had been implemented at least three years previously. We defined coverage as the proportion of households that had a latrine; for use we identified the proportion of households with at least one reported user and among those, the extent of reported use by each member of the household. RESULTS: Mean latrine coverage among the villages was 72% (compared to <10% in comparable villages in the same district where the Total Sanitation Campaign had not yet been implemented), though three of the villages had less than 50% coverage. Among these households with latrines, more than a third (39%) were not being used by any member of the household. Well over a third (37%) of the members of households with latrines reported never defecating in their latrines. Less than half (47%) of the members of such households reported using their latrines at all times for defecation. Combined with the 28% of households that did not have latrines, it appears that most defecation events in these communities are still practiced in the open. CONCLUSION: A large-scale campaign to implement sanitation has achieved substantial gains in latrine coverage in this population. Nevertheless, gaps in coverage and widespread continuation of open defecation will result in continued exposure to human excreta, reducing the potential for health gains

Emergent global patterns of ecosystem structure and function from a mechanistic general ecosystem model

Anthropogenic activities are causing widespread degradation of ecosystems worldwide, threatening the ecosystem services upon which all human life depends. Improved understanding of this degradation is urgently needed to improve avoidance and mitigation measures. One tool to assist these efforts is predictive models of ecosystem structure and function that are mechanistic: based on fundamental ecological principles. Here we present the first mechanistic General Ecosystem Model (GEM) of ecosystem structure and function that is both global and applies in all terrestrial and marine environments. Functional forms and parameter values were derived from the theoretical and empirical literature where possible. Simulations of the fate of all organisms with body masses between 10 µg and 150,000 kg (a range of 14 orders of magnitude) across the globe led to emergent properties at individual (e.g., growth rate), community (e.g., biomass turnover rates), ecosystem (e.g., trophic pyramids), and macroecological scales (e.g., global patterns of trophic structure) that are in general agreement with current data and theory. These properties emerged from our encoding of the biology of, and interactions among, individual organisms without any direct constraints on the properties themselves. Our results indicate that ecologists have gathered sufficient information to begin to build realistic, global, and mechanistic models of ecosystems, capable of predicting a diverse range of ecosystem properties and their response to human pressures

Tracheal Replacement Therapy with a Stem Cell-Seeded Graft: Lessons from Compassionate Use Application of a GMP-Compliant Tissue-Engineered Medicine

Tracheal replacement for the treatment of end-stage airway disease remains an elusive goal. The use of tissue-engineered tracheae in compassionate use cases suggests that such an approach is a viable option. Here, a stem cell-seeded, decellularized tissue-engineered tracheal graft was used on a compassionate basis for a girl with critical tracheal stenosis after conventional reconstructive techniques failed. The graft represents the first cell-seeded tracheal graft manufactured to full good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards. We report important preclinical and clinical data from the case, which ended in the death of the recipient. Early results were encouraging, but an acute event, hypothesized to be an intrathoracic bleed, caused sudden airway obstruction 3 weeks post-transplantation, resulting in her death. We detail the clinical events and identify areas of priority to improve future grafts. In particular, we advocate the use of stents during the first few months post-implantation. The negative outcome of this case highlights the inherent difficulties in clinical translation where preclinical in vivo models cannot replicate complex clinical scenarios that are encountered. The practical difficulties in delivering GMP grafts underscore the need to refine protocols for phase I clinical trials

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

The 'knowledge politics' of democratic peace theory

How do academic ideas influence US foreign policy, under what conditions and with what consequences? This article traces the rise, ‘securitisation’ and political consequences of democratic peace theory (DPT) in the United States by exploring the work of Doyle, Diamond and Fukuyama. Ideas influence US foreign policy under different circumstances, but are most likely to do either during and after crises when the policy environment permits ‘new thinking’, or when these ideas have been developed through state-connected elite knowledge networks, or when they are (or appear paradigmatically congenial to) foreign policymakers’ mindsets, or, finally, when they become institutionally-embedded. The appropriation of DPT by foreign policymakers has categorised the world into antagonistic blocs – democratic/non-democratic zones of peace/turmoil – as the corollary to a renewed American mission to make the world ‘safer’ through ‘democracy’ promotion. The roles of networked organic intellectuals – in universities and think tanks, for instance – were particularly important in elevating DPT from the academy to national security managers

Too close for comfort: spatial patterns in acorn barnacle populations

Spatial patterns in aggregations form as a result of the interplay between costs and benefits experienced by individuals. Such self-organisation of aggregations can be explained using a zonal model in which a short-range zone of repulsion and longer-range zone of attraction surrounding individuals leads to emergent pattern properties. The signal of these processes can be detected using spatial pattern analyses. Furthermore, in sessile organisms, post-settlement mortality reveals the relative costs and benefits of positions within the aggregation. Acorn barnacles are known to require contact with conspecifics for reproduction and are therefore believed to aggregate for this purpose; isolated individuals may also be more susceptible to abiotic stress and predation. At short distances, however, competition for space and resources is likely to occur. In this study spatial patterns of barnacles (Semibalanus balanoides L.) were analysed using pair-correlation functions. Individuals were dispersed at distances below 0.30 cm, but peak relative density occurred at a distance of 0.36 cm from conspecifics. This is much closer than required for reproductive access, implying a strong aggregative drive, up to the point of physical contact with neighbours. Nevertheless, analysis of dead barnacles illustrated that such proximity carries a cost as barnacles with many neighbours were more likely to have died. The inferences obtained from these patterns are that barnacles aggregate as closely as they can, and that local neighbourhood competition is a powerful determinant of mortality. These processes give rise to the observed pattern properties

Parasites and immunotherapy: with or against?

Immunotherapy is a sort of therapy in which antibody or antigen administrates to the patient in order to treat or reduce the severity of complications of disease. This kind of treatment practiced in a wide variety of diseases including infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, cancers and allergy. Successful and unsuccessful immunotherapeutic strategies have been practiced in variety of parasitic infections. On the other hand parasites or parasite antigens have also been considered for immunotherapy against other diseases such as cancer, asthma and multiple sclerosis. In this paper immunotherapy against common parasitic infections, and also immunotherapy of cancer, asthma and multiple sclerosis with parasites or parasite antigens have been reviewe

Stress-Induced Reinstatement of Drug Seeking: 20 Years of Progress

In human addicts, drug relapse and craving are often provoked by stress. Since 1995, this clinical scenario has been studied using a rat model of stress-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. Here, we first discuss the generality of stress-induced reinstatement to different drugs of abuse, different stressors, and different behavioral procedures. We also discuss neuropharmacological mechanisms, and brain areas and circuits controlling stress-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. We conclude by discussing results from translational human laboratory studies and clinical trials that were inspired by results from rat studies on stress-induced reinstatement. Our main conclusions are (1) The phenomenon of stress-induced reinstatement, first shown with an intermittent footshock stressor in rats trained to self-administer heroin, generalizes to other abused drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, nicotine, and alcohol, and is also observed in the conditioned place preference model in rats and mice. This phenomenon, however, is stressor specific and not all stressors induce reinstatement of drug seeking. (2) Neuropharmacological studies indicate the involvement of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), noradrenaline, dopamine, glutamate, kappa/dynorphin, and several other peptide and neurotransmitter systems in stress-induced reinstatement. Neuropharmacology and circuitry studies indicate the involvement of CRF and noradrenaline transmission in bed nucleus of stria terminalis and central amygdala, and dopamine, CRF, kappa/dynorphin, and glutamate transmission in other components of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system (ventral tegmental area, medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and nucleus accumbens). (3) Translational human laboratory studies and a recent clinical trial study show the efficacy of alpha-2 adrenoceptor agonists in decreasing stress-induced drug craving and stress-induced initial heroin lapse