Low resource innovations for sustaining service delivery: examples from districts in Malawi

Low-income countries have less funds to allocate for water, sanitation & hygiene (WASH) services, but those funds which are available should still be used to have the greatest service delivery reach possible. This paper shares examples from several District Water Development Offices in Malawi of innovations developed to sustain service delivery with the limited resources they do have. These approaches include using available funds to pay for lower-cost alternatives which achieve their objectives, using other networks existing in communities to increase their reach, and leveraging other sets of resources that exist in the area

Expanding the scope of ligand substitution from [M(S2C2Ph2] (M = Ni2+, Pd2+, Pt2+) to afford new heteroleptic dithiolene complexes

The scope of direct substitution of the dithiolene ligand from [M(S2C2Ph2)2] [M = Ni2+ (1), Pd2+ (2), Pt2+ (3)] to produce heteroleptic species [M(S2C2Ph2)2Ln] (n = 1, 2) has been broadened to include isonitriles and dithiooxamides in addition to phosphines and diimines. Collective observations regarding ligands that cleanly produce [M(S2C2Ph2)Ln], do not react at all, or lead to ill-defined decomposition identify soft σ donors as the ligand type capable of dithiolene substitution. Substitution of MeNC from [Ni(S2C2Ph2)(CNMe)2] by L provides access to a variety of heteroleptic dithiolene complexes not accessible from 1. Substitution of a dithiolene ligand from 1 involves net redox disproportionation of the ligands from radical monoanions, –S•SC2Ph2, to enedithiolate and dithione, the latter of which is an enhanced leaving group that is subject to further irreversible reactions

Parenting Programs for the Prevention of Child Physical Abuse Recurrence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Child physical abuse is an issue of global concern. Conservative estimates set global prevalence of this type of maltreatment at 25%, its consequences and cost to society escalating with increasing frequency and severity of episodes. Syntheses of the evidence on parenting programs for reducing rates of physical abuse recidivism have, to date, not been able to establish effectiveness. Paucity of data and inconsistent inclusion criteria in past reviews made meta-analysis often impossible or uninformative. The current systematic review updates prior reviews and overcomes some of the methodological issues they encountered by pooling trial-level data from a well-defined scope of trials of parenting interventions aimed at preventing the re-abuse of children by parents with substantiated or suspected physical abuse history. Randomized controlled trials and rigorous non-randomized designs were sought via nine online databases, two trial registries, several clearinghouses and contact with experts. A total of fourteen studies of variable quality were included in this review, four of which had outcomes that enabled meta-analysis. Overall, this review presents evidence supporting the effectiveness of parenting behavioral programs based on social learning theory for reducing hard markers of child physical abuse recidivism. Meta-analysis found that the absolute risk reduction in risk of recidivism was 11 percentage points less for maltreating parents who undergo parenting programs (RD = -0.11, 95% CI [-0.22, -0.004], p = 0.043, I 2 = 28.9%). However, the pooled effect size was not statistically significant when calculated as a risk ratio (0.76, 95% CI [0.54, 1.07], I 2 = 38.4%). Policy makers and practitioners should be made aware that this intervention method is backed by promising evidence featuring modest yet significant reductions in hard markers of child physical abuse, even though the methodological robustness of these findings should be further explored in future research

Expanding the Scope of Ligand Substitution from [M(S₂C₂Ph₂] (M = Ni²⁺, Pd²⁺, Pt²⁺) To Afford New Heteroleptic Dithiolene Complexes

The scope of direct substitution of the dithiolene ligand from [M­(S₂C₂Ph₂)₂] [M = Ni²⁺ (<b>1</b>), Pd²⁺ (<b>2</b>), Pt²⁺ (<b>3</b>)] to produce heteroleptic species [M­(S₂C₂Ph₂)₂L_<i>n</i>] (<i>n</i> = 1, 2) has been broadened to include isonitriles and dithiooxamides in addition to phosphines and diimines. Collective observations regarding ligands that cleanly produce [M­(S₂C₂Ph₂)­L_<i>n</i>], do not react at all, or lead to ill-defined decomposition identify soft σ donors as the ligand type capable of dithiolene substitution. Substitution of MeNC from [Ni­(S₂C₂Ph₂)­(CNMe)₂] by L provides access to a variety of heteroleptic dithiolene complexes not accessible from <b>1</b>. Substitution of a dithiolene ligand from <b>1</b> involves net redox disproportionation of the ligands from radical monoanions, ^–S^•SC₂Ph₂, to enedithiolate and dithione, the latter of which is an enhanced leaving group that is subject to further irreversible reactions

Supernarrative country distribution.

The table shows the country distribution of all supernarratives and narratives. The bigger the square, the more articles from the monitored sources of a given country have been assigned to the narrative in question. The colour represents the distribution of articles in percentile across the narrative. Using percentile allows us to display each source country’s ranking within each narrative, despite the different numbers of monitored sources for each country.</p

Query. Keyword-based query.

To tackle the COVID-19 infodemic, we analysed 58,625 articles from 460 unverified sources, that is, sources that were indicated by fact checkers and other mis/disinformation experts as frequently spreading mis/disinformation, covering the period from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022. Our aim was to identify the main narratives of COVID-19 mis/disinformation, develop a codebook, automate the process of narrative classification by training an automatic classifier, and analyse the spread of narratives over time and across countries. Articles were retrieved with a customised version of the Europe Media Monitor (EMM) processing chain providing a stream of text items. Machine translation was employed to automatically translate non-English text to English and clustering was carried out to group similar articles. A multi-level codebook of COVID-19 mis/disinformation narratives was developed following an inductive approach; a transformer-based model was developed to classify all text items according to the codebook. Using the transformer-based model, we identified 12 supernarratives that evolved over the three years studied. The analysis shows that there are often real events behind mis/disinformation trends, which unverified sources misrepresent or take out of context. We established a process that allows for near real-time monitoring of COVID-19 mis/disinformation. This experience will be useful to analyse mis/disinformation about other topics, such as climate change, migration, and geopolitical developments.</div

Evolution of anti-vax narratives.

The timeline shows the spread over time of “anti-vax narratives,” “anti-mandatory vaccination narratives,” and “anti-vax conspiracy theories”. (TIF)</p