Is Development Assistance for Health fungible? Findings from a Mixed Methods Case study in Tanzania

The amount of Development Assistance for Health (DAH) available to low- and middle-income countries has increased exponentially over the past decade. However, there are concerns that DAH increases have not resulted in increased spending on health at the country level. This is because DAH may be fungible, resulting from the recipient government decreasing its contribution to the health sector as a result of external funding. The aim of this research is to assess whether DAH funds in Tanzania are fungible, by exploring government substitution of its own resources across sectors and within the health sector. A database containing 28140 projects of DAH expenditure between 2000 and 2010 was compiled from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Creditor Reporting System (OECD-CRS) and AidData databases. Government health expenditure data for the same period were obtained from the Government of Tanzania, World Bank, public expenditure reviews and budget speeches and analysed to assess the degree of government substitution. 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Development Partners (DPs), government and non-government stakeholders between April and June 2012 to explore stakeholder perceptions of fungibility. We found some evidence of substitution of government funds at the health sector and sub-sector levels and two mechanisms through which it takes place: the resource allocation process and macro-economic factors. We found fungibility of external funds may not necessarily be detrimental to Tanzania's development (as evidence suggests the funds displaced may be reallocated to education) and the mechanisms used by DPs to prevent substitution were largely ineffective. We recommend DPs engage more effectively in the priority-setting process, not just with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoHSW), but also with the Ministry of Finance, to agree on priorities and mutual funding responsibilities at a macroeconomic level. We also call for more qualitative research on fungibility

Temporal attention as a Scaffold for Language Development

Language is one of the most fascinating abilities that humans possess. Infants demonstrate an amazing repertoire of linguistic abilities from very early on and reach an adult-like form incredibly fast. However, language is not acquired all at once but in an incremental fashion. In this article we propose that the attentional system may be one of the sources for this developmental trajectory in language acquisition. At birth, infants are endowed with an attentional system fully driven by salient stimuli in their environment, such as prosodic information (e.g., rhythm or pitch). Early stages of language acquisition could benefit from this readily available, stimulus-driven attention to simplify the complex speech input and allow word segmentation. At later stages of development, infants are progressively able to selectively attend to specific elements while disregarding others. This attentional ability could allow them to learn distant non-adjacent rules needed for morphosyntactic acquisition. Because non-adjacent dependencies occur at distant moments in time, learning these dependencies may require correctly orienting attention in the temporal domain. Here, we gather evidence uncovering the intimate relationship between the development of attention and language. We aim to provide a novel approach to human development, bridging together temporal attention and language acquisition

Endogenous temporal attention in the absence of stimulus-driven cues emerges in the second year of life

Podeu consultar dades primàries associades a l'article a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/113258Anticipating both where and when an object will appear is a critical ability for adaptation. Research in the temporal domain in adults indicate that dissociable mechanisms relate to endogenous attention driven by the properties of the stimulus themselves (e.g. rhythmic, sequential, or trajectory cues) and driven by symbolic cues. In infancy, we know that the capacity to endogenously orient attention progressively develops through infancy. However, the above-mentioned distinction has not yet been explored since previous studies involved stimulus-driven cues. The current study tested 12- and 15-month-olds in an adaptation of the anticipatory eye movement procedure to determine whether infants were able to anticipate a specific location and temporal interval predicted only by symbolic pre-cues. In the absence of stimulus-driven cues, results show that only 15-month-olds could show anticipatory behavior based on the temporal information provided by the symbolic cues. Distinguishing stimulus-driven expectations from those driven by symbolic cues allowed dissecting more clearly the developmental progression of temporal endogenous attention

Impact of automatic segmentation on the quality, productivity and self-reported post-editing effort of intralingual subtitles

This paper describes the evaluation methodology followed to measure the impact of using a machine learning algorithm to automatically segment intralingual subtitles. The segmentation quality, productivity and self-reported post-editing effort achieved with such approach are shown to improve those obtained by the technique based in counting characters, mainly employed for automatic subtitle segmentation currently. The corpus used to train and test the proposed automated segmentation method is also described and shared with the community, in order to foster further research in this are

Intramolecular Interception of the Remote Position of Vinylcarbene Silver Complex Intermediates by C(sp3)−H Bond Insertion

The trapping of the elusive vinylogous position of a vinyl carbene with an aliphatic C(sp3)−H bond has been achieved for the first time during a silver-catalyzed carbene/alkyne metathesis (CAM) process. A Tpx-containing silver complex first promotes the generation of a donor-acceptor silver carbene which triggers CAM, generating a subsequent donor-donor vinyl silver carbene species, which then undergoes a selective vinylogous C(sp3)−H bond insertion, leading to the synthesis of a new family of benzoazepines. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations unveil the reaction mechanism, which allows proposing that the C−H bond insertion reaction takes place in a stepwise manner, with the hydrogen shift being the rate determining step.We are grateful for financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PGC2018-097722-B-I00, PID2020113797RB-C21 and PID2020-113711GB-I00 MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and FPU grants to A.D.-J. and R.M.-C.) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (Project 2017SGR-39). We also thank Junta de Andalucía (P18-1536) and Universidad de Huelva (P.O.Feder UHU202024). A.P.Q. and A.P. are Serra Húnter Fellows and A.P. thanks ICREA Academia Prize 2019. M.A. thanks Junta de Andalucia for a postdoctoral fellowship. E.B. thanks Cátedra Cepsa-Universidad de Huelva for financial support

Large-area biomolecule nanopatterns on diblock copolymer surfaces for cell adhesion studies

Cell membrane receptors bind to extracellular ligands, triggering intracellular signal transduction pathways that result in specific cell function. Some receptors require to be associated forming clusters for effective signaling. Increasing evidences suggest that receptor clustering is subjected to spatially controlled ligand distribution at the nanoscale. Herein we present a method to produce in an easy, straightforward process, nanopatterns of biomolecular ligands to study ligand–receptor processes involving multivalent interactions. We based our platform in self-assembled diblock copolymers composed of poly(styrene) (PS) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) that form PMMA nanodomains in a closed-packed hexagonal arrangement. Upon PMMA selective functionalization, biomolecular nanopatterns over large areas are produced. Nanopattern size and spacing can be controlled by the composition of the block-copolymer selected. Nanopatterns of cell adhesive peptides of different size and spacing were produced, and their impact in integrin receptor clustering and the formation of cell focal adhesions was studied. Cells on ligand nanopatterns showed an increased number of focal contacts, which were, in turn, more matured than those found in cells cultured on randomly presenting ligands. These findings suggest that our methodology is a suitable, versatile tool to study and control receptor clustering signaling and downstream cell behavior through a surface-based ligand patterning technique

Nanopatterns of surface-bound ephrinB1 produce multivalent ligand-receptor interactions that tune EphB2 receptor clustering

Here we present a nanostructured surface able to produce multivalent interactions between surface-bound ephrinB1 ligands and membrane EphB2 receptors. We created ephrinB1 nanopatterns of regular size (<30 nm in diameter) by using self-assembled diblock copolymers. Next, we used a statistically enhanced version of the Number and Brightness technique, which can discriminate with molecular sensitivity the oligomeric states of diffusive species to quantitatively track the EphB2 receptor oligomerization process in real time. The results indicate that a stimulation using randomly distributed surface-bound ligands was not sufficient to fully induce receptor aggregation. Conversely, when nanopatterned onto our substrates, the ligands effectively induced a strong receptor oligomerization. This presentation of ligands improved the clustering efficiency of conventional ligand delivery systems, as it required a 9-fold lower ligand surface coverage and included faster receptor clustering kinetics compared to traditional cross-linked ligands. In conclusion, nanostructured diblock copolymers constitute a novel strategy to induce multivalent ligand-receptor interactions leading to a stronger, faster, and more efficient receptor activation, thus providing a useful strategy to precisely tune and potentiate receptor responses. The efficiency of these materials at inducing cell responses can benefit applications such as the design of new bioactive materials and drug-delivery systems

Protocol de prevenció i control de brots de toxiinfecció alimentària

Toxiinfecció alimentària; Control alimentari; Seguretat dels alimentsToxiinfección alimentaria; Control alimentario; Seguridad de los alimentosFood poisoning; Food control; Food safetyLes toxiinfeccions alimentàries constitueixen un important problema de salut, i la investigació dels brots que ocasionen és un aspecte fonamental de la vigilància epidemiològica d’aquest problema. Amb aquesta nova edició del protocol es pretén posar al dia la investigació d’aquests tipus de brots per tal millorar-ne la prevenció i el control

Identification of genomic regions associated with morphological traits in Murciano-Granadina goats

Resumen del póster presentado a la 37th International Conference on Animal Genetics (ISAG), celebrada en Lleida (España) del 7 al 12 de julio de 2019.Morphological traits are of great importance to dairy goat production given their strong incidence on milk yield and longevity. However, their genomic architecture has not yet been extensively characterized. Murciano-Granadina is one of the most important goat dairy breeds in Spain, and its breeding program includes the measurement of 17 morphological traits related to udder, feet and body conformation. Our aim was to identify genomic regions associated with these 17 different morphological traits by performing a genome-wide association analysis (GWAS). A total of 722 Murciano-Granadina female goats with linear evaluation records of each morphological trait were genotyped with the Goat SNP50 BeadChip. Raw phenotypes were corrected for fixed factors (farm, age, number of births and milking stage at the scoring date). After quality control of the data, genome-wide association analyses and chromosome-wide association analyses were performed by using the genome-wide efficient mixed-model association (GEMMA) software. We found no significant associations between the typed SNPs and the studied traits at the genome-wide level. However, the chromosome-wide analysis made possible to identify 3 SNPs associated with diameter and positioning of the nipples in chromosomes 26 and 28. Interestingly, one significant SNP on chromosome 26 was located downstream the FGFBP3 gene, which modulates FGFR signaling, one of the main pathways determining the proper development of mammary stem cells. With regard to body conformation, SNPs on chromosome 17 were found to be associated with the chest width. These SNPs mapped to the genes ZNF268 and ZNF827, which encode zinc finger proteins playing important roles in cell growth, proliferation, development, apoptosis, and intracellular signal transduction. Our results suggest a strong additive polygenic background for these morphological traits since we were unable to identify any region on the genome with major effects on their phenotypic variance

Risk factors associated with negative in-vivo diagnostic results in bovine tuberculosis-infected cattle in Spain

BACKGROUND Despite great effort and investment incurred over decades to control bovine tuberculosis (bTB), it is still one of the most important zoonotic diseases in many areas of the world. Test-and-slaughter strategies, the basis of most bTB eradication programs carried out worldwide, have demonstrated its usefulness in the control of the disease. However, in certain countries, eradication has not been achieved due in part to limitations of currently available diagnostic tests. In this study, results of in-vivo and post-mortem diagnostic tests performed on 3,614 animals from 152 bTB-infected cattle herds (beef, dairy, and bullfighting) detected in 2007-2010 in the region of Castilla y León, Spain, were analyzed to identify factors associated with positive bacteriological results in cattle that were non-reactors to the single intradermal tuberculin test, to the interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) assay, or to both tests applied in parallel (Test negative/Culture + animals, T-/C+). The association of individual factors (age, productive type, and number of herd-tests performed since the disclosure of the outbreak) with the bacteriology outcome (positive/negative) was analyzed using a mixed multivariate logistic regression model. RESULTS The proportion of non-reactors with a positive post-mortem result ranged from 24.3% in the case of the SIT test to 12.9% (IFN-γ with 0.05 threshold) and 11.9% (95% CI 9.9-11.4%) using both tests in parallel. Older (>4.5 years) and bullfighting cattle were associated with increased odds of confirmed bTB infection by bacteriology, whereas dairy cattle showed a significantly lower risk. Ancillary use of IFN-γ assay reduced the proportion of T-/C + animals in high risk groups. CONCLUSIONS These results demonstrate the likelihood of positive bacteriological results in non-reactor cattle is influenced by individual epidemiological factors of tested animals. Increased surveillance on non-reactors with an increased probability of being false negative could be helpful to avoid bTB persistence, particularly in chronically infected herds. These findings may aid in the development of effective strategies for eradication of bTB in Spain