Working with communities to increase the use of health services: an experience from Togo, West Africa

A project in Togo, West Africa, demonstrated that motivated and skilled district health teams can increase community involvement in promoting positive health behavior. Village health committees, village volunteers, health workers, itinerant health agents, and school teachers collaborated with district health personnel in village-wide efforts to increase the use of health services targeted to children under 5 years of age. The project also demonstrated that in areas where health services are accessible, high levels of service utilization can be achieved by villages through a combination of strategies that rely on person-to-person and group methods of communication. Village-level educational programs, which included theater, storytelling, patient education at health facilities, and child-to-child activities in schools contributed to improvements in immunization coverage levels in children 12-23 months of age after less than one year following the educational intervention. The major factors responsible for the success of the project are summarized,and issues related to project replication and diffusion are discussed."Health Education"--cover.Bibliography: p. 15-16

Controlling malaria in Francophone Africa: taking the initiative : a series of papers on the ACSI-CCCD Malaria Initiative

edited by Joseph F. Naimoli and Phuc Nguyen-Dinh."Malaria"--cover.Includes bibliographic references.United States Agency for International Development, Africa Regional Project 698-042

The Use of Dance/Movement Therapy in a Preschool Curriculum: Enhancing Kindergarten Readiness Skills

This thesis will focus on an internship project designed to integrate dance/movement therapy into the Early Childhood Center (ECC) at Sarah Lawrence College. The premise was that specific dance/movement therapy goals would enhance the ECC’s preschool curriculum by strengthening each child’s cognitive learning, supporting their developmental skills and preparing them for the transition to kindergarten. Activities were created addressing developmental skills needed for the transition from preschool to kindergarten. The various activities developed for the dance/movement therapy sessions focused on the development of one\u27s own sense of self and relational sense of self, impulse control, interpersonal boundaries, social skills and coping transitional/adjustment situations skills. The children\u27s developmental growth was monitored through observation then assessed during dance/movement therapy sessions and regular class activities. Their progress was tracked based on each child\u27s cognitive, social, emotional and physical skills baseline

Time-varying parameters Realized GARCH models for tracking attenuation bias in volatility dynamics

This paper proposes novel approaches to the modeling of attenuation bias effects in volatility forecasting. Our strategy relies on suitable generalizations of the Realized GARCH model by Hansen et al. (2012) where the impact of lagged realized measures on the current conditional variance is weighted according to the accuracy of the measure itself at that specific time point. This feature allows assigning more weight to lagged volatilities when they are more accurately measured. The ability of the proposed models to generate accurate forecasts of volatility and related tail risk measures, Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall, is assessed by means of an application to a set of major stock market indices. The results of the empirical analysis show that the proposed specifications are able to outperform standard Realized GARCH models in terms of out-of-sample forecast performance under both statistical and economic criteria

Time Varying Heteroskedastic Realized GARCH models for tracking measurement error bias in volatility forecasting

This paper proposes generalisations of the Realized GARCH model by Hansen et al. (2012), in three different directions. First, heteroskedasticity in the noise term in the measurement equation is allowed, since this is generally assumed to be time-varying as a function of an estimator of the Integrated Quarticity for intra-daily returns. Second, in order to account for attenuation bias effects, the volatility dynamics are allowed to depend on the accuracy of the realized measure. This is achieved by letting the response coefficient of the lagged realized measure depend on the time-varying variance of the volatility measurement error, thus giving more weight to lagged volatilities when they are more accurately measured. Finally, a further extension is proposed by introducing an additional explanatory variable into the measurement equation, aiming to quantify the bias due to effect of jumps and measurement errors

Time Varying Heteroskedastic Realized GARCH models for tracking measurement error bias in volatility forecasting

This paper proposes generalisations of the Realized GARCH model by Hansen et al. (2012), in three different directions. First, heteroskedasticity in the noise term in the measurement equation is allowed, since this is generally assumed to be time-varying as a function of an estimator of the Integrated Quarticity for intra-daily returns. Second, in order to account for attenuation bias effects, the volatility dynamics are allowed to depend on the accuracy of the realized measure. This is achieved by letting the response coefficient of the lagged realized measure depend on the time-varying variance of the volatility measurement error, thus giving more weight to lagged volatilities when they are more accurately measured. Finally, a further extension is proposed by introducing an additional explanatory variable into the measurement equation, aiming to quantify the bias due to effect of jumps and measurement errors

LA PROVA DEL DNA

La ritenuta potenzialità discriminativa della prova del DNA, sconta un effetto di mitizzazione del relativo risultato, che impone di riflettere sul reale peso che essa possiede all’interno del processo penale e sui limiti ad essa connessi. L’indagine genetica è approfondita da un punto di vista normativo, a partire dai primi momenti procedimentali, in riferimento alle tematiche della raccolta e del prelievo di materiale biologico, prospettando soluzioni de jure condendo che tengano conto della particolarità e complessità dell’indagine genetica e che si muovano nella direzione di apprestare opportune garanzie difensive. Alla luce di una necessaria comunicabilità dei saperi, in contesti così complessi e delicati, come gli accertamenti genetici, si porrà l’attenzione all’inquadramento scientifico, con l’obiettivo di rendere partecipe il giurista delle certezze e dubbi che animano l’analisi del DNA: soltanto attraversando la disciplina in punto di metodologia analitica, si potrà ben cogliere tutta la problematicità del tema. Sulla base del delicato rapporto tra scienza e processo penale, si affronterà il c.d. paradosso nella valutazione della prova scientifica, che non può che risolversi all’interno delle diverse scansioni processuali, ossia nel concreto dipanarsi della dialettica processuale sin dalle prime fasi di formazione del procedimento probatorio. Si tratterà della rilevanza del dato statistico che rientra nel patrimonio di conoscenza del giudice, legato alle insuperabili difficoltà di trasferire modelli probabilistici all’interno del processo, in una cornice orientata al principio dell’oltre ogni ragionevole dubbio

Wind Energy Siting in Kittitas County, Washington

Increasing renewable energy development is often seen as an essential tool for combating global climate change, yet despite widespread support in theory, renewable energy often faces problems at the implementation stage. In the state of Washington, where voters have expressed a desire for greater renewable energy by mandating that 15% of their electricity must come from renewable sources by 2020, conflicts arise between the goals of the state and the desires of the local communities. Understanding how and why communities respond the way they do to renewable energy proposals is critical in resolving these conflicts. This study draws upon social movement theories to understand how the concepts of threat, political opportunity, and resources influenced community response to wind power projects in Kittitas County, Washington. The findings show that the localized framing of threat, limited political opportunity, and limited resources contributed to opposition being largely project-specific, while the countywide framing of benefits, significant political opportunity, and well-mobilized resources allowed support to carry across projects. This study helps provide context for not only the nature of opposition to wind energy projects, but of support as well. In addition, this research can help understand how to best move forward with energy policy in Washington and ensure greater democratic participation in the wind energy siting process

The information content of sentiment indices for forecasting Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall in equity markets

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of public sentiment on tail risk forecasting. In this framework, we extend the Realized Exponential GARCH model to directly incorporate information from realized volatility measures and exogenous variables. Several indices related to social media and journal articles regarding the economy and stock market volatility are considered as potential drivers of volatility dynamics. An application to the prediction of daily Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall for the Standard & Poor's 500 index provides evidence that combining the information content of realized volatility and sentiment measures can lead to significant accuracy gains in forecasting tail risk

Dancing With Your Baby: The Experiences of the Breastfeeding Mother-Infant Dyad Discovered Through the Artistry of Symbolic Dance.

Dancing with your baby: The experiences of the breastfeeding mother-infant dyad discovered through the artistry of symbolic dance is a study that explored the experiences of the breastfeeding mother-infant dyad through the dance/movement therapy techniques mirroring, leading and following, image making, and symbolic dance. An art-based research study with the inquiries of the breastfeeding mother-infant dyad in mind, was designed with a phenomenological approach that included autobiographical narratives and embodied lived emotions and reflection, which allowed for the integration of dance and movement within the arts-based research realm. Interviews were conducted with each participant to provide an in-depth comprehension of their breastfeeding and postpartum experiences. The participants attended three open group discussions where they expressed their breastfeeding struggles and accomplishments, bonding with their child, and motherhood. Participants were asked to create gestural descriptors that described their breastfeeding experience, and through the image making process, participants choreographed a symbolic dance which was captured on film. Journal entries included written testimonial and self-portraits created through photography and visual art. Eight themes emerged from this study: loneliness, pain, tired, importance of nurturing their infant, guilt, grief, joy, and closure. The researcher’s embodied empathetic reflection to the mother-infant movement sequences were also captured on film and is accompanied with a voice over that addressed the participants feelings and thoughts, and the overarching themes. This study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic and provided participants insight in finding resilience during breastfeeding and nurturing their infants during stressful times through therapeutic movement, kinesthetic empathy, and artistic dance