Struggling to a monumental triumph : Re-assessing the final stages of the smallpox eradication program in India, 1960-1980

The global smallpox program is generally presented as the brainchild of a handful of actors from the WHO headquarters in Geneva and at the agency's regional offices. This article attempts to present a more complex description of the drive to eradicate smallpox. Based on the example of India, a major focus of the campaign, it is argued that historians and public health officials should recognize the varying roles played by a much wider range of participants. Highlighting the significance of both Indian and international field officials, the author shows how bureaucrats and politicians at different levels of administration and society managed to strengthen—yet sometimes weaken—important program components. Centrally dictated strategies developed at WHO offices in Geneva and New Delhi, often in association with Indian federal authorities, were reinterpreted by many actors and sometimes changed beyond recognition

Constraints on the Origin of Gold in the Meguma Zone, Ecum Secum area, Nova Scotia

Gold occurs mainly in laminated bedding-parallel quartz veins in the Goldenvllle Formation metawacke-slate sequence. The bedding-parallel veins formed by hydraulic fracturing before the beds were folded. Subsequently, during development of the folds, en echelon quartz veins formed on the fold limbs, and perhaps in the latest stage of folding, saddle reef veins formed along fold hinges. All these vein types are locally auriferous, but gold was first deposited during formation of the bedding-parallel veins. Absence of any through-going system of "feeder" veins as well as the formation of hydraulic fractures indicate that the rocks were not permeable during vein formation, and the quartz and gold were derived locally from the host strata. RÉSUMÉ L'or présent dans la suite métawacke-schiste de la Formation Goldenvllle est localisé principalement dans des veines de quartz laminles et parallèls à la stratification. Ces veines parallèls ià stratification furent formées par fracture hydraulique avant le plissement des lits. Par la suite, pendant l'amplification des lits, des veines de quartz en échelon furent formées sur les flancs de plis et peut-être, pendant la phase finale de plisseaent, des veines en "gite de selle" se formèrent à la charnière de plis. Tous ces types de veines sont surifères par endroit mais l'apport initial de l'or date de la formation des veines parallèes à la stratification. L'absence de système de veines nourricières sinsi que la formation de fractures hydrauliques indiquent que les roches n'étalent pas perméables à l'époque de formation de veine et que le quartz et l'or sont de provenance locale. [Traduit par le journal

NALNET book system: Cost benefit study

The goals of the NASA's library network system, NALNET, the functions of the current book system, the products and services of a book system required by NASA Center libraries, and the characteristics of a system that would best supply those products and services were assessed. Emphasis was placed on determining the most cost effective means of meeting NASA's requirements for an automated book system. Various operating modes were examined including the current STIMS file, the PUBFILE, developing software improvements for products as appropriate to the Center needs, and obtaining cataloging and products from the bibliographic utilities including at least OCLC, RLIN, BNA, and STIF. It is recommended that NALNET operate under the STIMS file mode and obtain cataloging and products from the bibliographic utilities. The recommendations are based on the premise that given the current state of the art in library automation it is not cost effective for NASA to maintain a full range of cataloging services on its own system. The bibliographic utilities can support higher quality systems with a greater range of services at a lower total cost

Does academic self-concept predict further and higher education participation?

Despite the major increase in university student numbers in recent years there remains a strong negative socio-economic gradient in participation. The main reason for these differences has been shown to be educational factors, including prior attainment, family background and perceptions about costs and returns to education. In this paper, we examine the role of young people’s belief in their own academic ability (academic self-concept) as a way to explain differences in university participation rates. Using Next Steps data, we examine whether young people with higher academic self-concept are more likely to study A Levels, participate in further education and attend university. For those who do attend university, we examine whether young people with higher self-belief attend high status universities or study high status subjects. Results show that on average, controlling for prior attainment and other background characteristics, having high academic self-concept increases the odds in participating in A Level study, decreases the odds in taking part in further education, increases the odds in taking part in higher education (but the significance level disappears after taking A Levels is taken into account) and increases the odds of studying at a high-status university. While academic self-concept is an important predictor of later educational transitions, it does not entirely account for the social gradient in participation of university, further education or higher education. These findings have important policy implications for higher education participation and widening participation in particular

DataWarp: Building Applications which Make Progress in an Inconsistent World

The usual approach to dealing with imperfections in data is to attempt to eliminate them. However, the nature of modern systems means this is often futile. This paper describes an approach which permits applications to operate notwithstanding inconsistent data. Instead of attempting to extract a single, correct view of the world from its data, a DataWarp application constructs a collection of interpretations. It adopts one of these and continues work. Since it acts on assumptions, the DataWarp application considers its recent work to be provisional, expecting eventually most of these actions will become definitive. Should the application decide to adopt an alternative data view, it may then need to void provisional actions before resuming work. We describe the DataWarp architecture, discuss its implementation and describe an experiment in which a DataWarp application in an environment containing inconsistent data achieves better results than its conventional counterpart

Derivation of a Non-Local Interfacial Hamiltonian for Short-Ranged Wetting II: General Diagrammatic Structure

In our first paper, we showed how a non-local effective Hamiltionian for short-ranged wetting may be derived from an underlying Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson model. Here, we combine the Green's function method with standard perturbation theory to determine the general diagrammatic form of the binding potential functional beyond the double-parabola approximation for the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson bulk potential. The main influence of cubic and quartic interactions is simply to alter the coefficients of the double parabola-like zig-zag diagrams and also to introduce curvature and tube-interaction corrections (also represented diagrammatically), which are of minor importance. Non-locality generates effective long-ranged many-body interfacial interactions due to the reflection of tube-like fluctuations from the wall. Alternative wall boundary conditions (with a surface field and enhancement) and the diagrammatic description of tricritical wetting are also discussed.Comment: (14 pages, 2 figures) Submitted J. Phys. Condens. Matte

'First in Family' University Graduates in England

Universities around the world are attempting to increase the diversity of their student population. This includes individuals who are 'first in family' (FiF), those who achieve a university degree, but whose (step) parents did not. We provide the first large scale, quantitative evidence on FiF graduates in England using a nationally representative survey linked to administrative education data. We find that FiF young people make up 18 percent of a recent cohort, comprising nearly two-thirds of all university graduates. Comparing individuals with no parental higher education we show that ethnic minorities and those with higher levels of prior attainment are more likely to experience intergenerational educational mobility and become a FiF. Once at university, those who are FiF are more likely to study Law, Economics and Management and less likely to study other Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities than students whose parents are university graduates. We also find evidence that FiF students are less likely to graduate from elite universities and have a higher probability of dropping out, even after prior educational attainment, individual characteristics and socio-economic status are taken into account

Is 'First in Family' a Good Indicator for Widening University Participation?

Universities use ‘first in family’ or ‘first generation’ as an indicator to increase the diversity of their student intake, but little is known about whether it is a good indicator of disadvantage. We use nationally representative, longitudinal survey data linked to administrative data from England to provide the first comprehensive analysis of this measure. We employ parametric probability (logit) and non-parametric classification (random forest) models to look at its relative predictive power of university participation and graduation. We find that being first in family is an important barrier to university participation and graduation, over and above other sources of disadvantage. This association seems to operate through the channel of early educational attainment. Our findings indicate that the first in family indicator could be key in efforts to widen participation at universities

Engineering entanglement for metrology with rotating matter waves

Entangled states of rotating, trapped ultracold bosons form a very promising scenario for quantum metrology. In order to employ such states for metrology, it is vital to understand their detailed form and the enhanced accuracy with which they could measure phase, in this case generated through rotation. In this work, we study the rotation of ultracold bosons in an asymmetric trapping potential beyond the lowest Landau level (LLL) approximation. We demonstrate that while the LLL can identify reasonably the critical frequency for a quantum phase transition and entangled state generation, it is vital to go beyond the LLL to identify the details of the state and quantify the quantum Fisher information (which bounds the accuracy of the phase measurement). We thus identify a new parameter regime for useful entangled state generation, amenable to experimental investigation

Experimental demonstration of painting arbitrary and dynamic potentials for Bose-Einstein condensates

There is a pressing need for robust and straightforward methods to create potentials for trapping Bose-Einstein condensates which are simultaneously dynamic, fully arbitrary, and sufficiently stable to not heat the ultracold gas. We show here how to accomplish these goals, using a rapidly-moving laser beam that "paints" a time-averaged optical dipole potential in which we create BECs in a variety of geometries, including toroids, ring lattices, and square lattices. Matter wave interference patterns confirm that the trapped gas is a condensate. As a simple illustration of dynamics, we show that the technique can transform a toroidal condensate into a ring lattice and back into a toroid. The technique is general and should work with any sufficiently polarizable low-energy particles.Comment: Minor text changes and three references added. This is the final version published in New Journal of Physic