Microfinance: A Field in Flux

Modern microfinance, a field reaching over 200 million clients worldwide, is undergoing considerable change. The market structure is shifting with organizations increasingly accessing commercial funding through both private placements and initial public offerings. Some markets have overheated and produced substantial criticism, exemplified by the crisis in Andhra Pradesh, India. Recent impact evaluations of microcredit in diverse countries, such as Bosnia, Mexico, and Morocco, are raising similar questions about what microfinance actually can achieve and how it can best meet the needs of the poor. The basic offering is being rethought in terms of products and services, with increased attention on microsavings, microinsurance, and mobile banking. The field can best be characterized as being in a state of flux, with institutions moving in new and, at times, contentious directions. This chapter is an overview of the current field of microfinance, drawing on both practitioner and academic resources. Sections 1 and 2 provide a brief introduction and clarification of microfinance terminology. Section 3 places microfinance in its historical context, reviewing predecessors such as informal community associations and state-owned development banks. Section 4 describes how the modern microfinance movement began in the 1970s and grew to its present form. In Section 5, the current landscape is then characterized in terms of scale, geographic coverage, institution size, and organizational type. Sections 6 through 8 summarize the most fundamental ongoing debates in microfinance: the critical features of modern microfinance; the appropriate role of commercialization; and the assessment of microfinance's impact. Sections 9 and 10 conclude with implications for the broader field of social finance based on lessons learned from the microfinance movement to date. Throughout the chapter, vignettes are included to illustrate the trends and concepts

Extended H? emission line sources from UWISH2

We present the extended source catalogue for the UKIRT Wide Field Infrared Survey for H2 (UWISH2). The survey is unbiased along the inner Galactic Plane from l ? 357° to l ? 65° and |b| ? 1.5° and covers 209 deg2. A further 42.0 and 35.5 deg2 of high dust column density regions have been targeted in Cygnus and Auriga. We have identified 33 200 individual extended H2 features. They have been classified to be associated with about 700 groups of jets and outflows, 284 individual (candidate) planetary nebulae, 30 supernova remnants and about 1300 photodissociation regions. We find a clear decline of star formation activity (traced by H2 emission from jets and photodissociation regions) with increasing distance from the Galactic Centre. About 60 per cent of the detected candidate planetary nebulae have no known counterpart and 25 per cent of all supernova remnants have detectable H2 emission associated with them

Biomarker Associations with Insomnia and Secondary Sleep Outcomes in Persons with and without HIV in the POPPY-Sleep Sub-study: a cohort study

STUDY OBJECTIVES: We investigated associations between inflammatory profiles/clusters and sleep measures in people living with HIV and demographically-/lifestyle-similar HIV-negative controls in the Pharmacokinetic and clinical Observations in PeoPle over fiftY (POPPY)-Sleep sub-study. METHODS: Primary outcome was insomnia (Insomnia Severity Index [ISI]≥15). Secondary sleep outcomes included 7-day actigraphy (e.g. mean/standard deviation of sleep duration/efficiency), overnight oximetry (e.g. oxygen desaturation index [ODI]) and patient-reported measures (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) sleep questionnaires). Participants were grouped using Principal Component Analysis of 31 biomarkers across several inflammatory pathways followed by cluster analysis. Between-cluster differences in baseline characteristics and sleep outcomes were assessed using Kruskal-Wallis/logistic regression/Chi-squared/Fisher's exact tests. RESULTS: Of the 465 participants included (74% people with HIV, median [interquartile range] age 54 [50-60] years), only 18% had insomnia and secondary sleep outcomes suggested generally good sleep (e.g. ODI 3.1/hr [1.5-6.4]). Three clusters with distinct inflammatory profiles were identified: 'gut/immune activation' (n=47), 'neurovascular' (n=209), and 'reference' (relatively lower inflammation; n=209). The 'neurovascular' cluster included higher proportions of people with HIV, obesity (BMI≥30 kg/m 2), and previous cardiovascular disease, mental health disorder, and arthritis of knee/hip relative to the other two clusters. No clinically relevant between-cluster differences were observed in proportions with insomnia (17%, 18%, 20%) before (p=0.76) or after (p=0.75) adjustment for potential confounders. Few associations were observed among actigraphy, oximetry and PROMIS measures. CONCLUSIONS: Although associations could exist with other sleep measures or biomarker types not assessed, our findings do not support a strong association between sleep and inflammation in people with HIV

IGAPS: the merged IPHAS and UVEX optical surveys of the northern Galactic plane

The INT Galactic Plane Survey (IGAPS) is the merger of the optical photometric surveys, IPHAS and UVEX, based on data from the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) obtained between 2003 and 2018. Here, we present the IGAPS point source catalogue. It contains 295.4 million rows providing photometry in the filters, i, r, narrow-band Ha, g, and URGO. The IGAPS footprint fills the Galactic coordinate range, |b| 5s confidence).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Multi-transcriptome analysis following an acute skeletal muscle growth stimulus yields tools for discerning global and MYC regulatory networks

Myc is a powerful transcription factor implicated in epigenetic reprogramming, cellular plasticity, and rapid growth as well as tumorigenesis. Cancer in skeletal muscle is extremely rare despite marked and sustained Myc induction during loading-induced hypertrophy. Here, we investigated global, actively transcribed, stable, and myonucleus-specific transcriptomes following an acute hypertrophic stimulus in mouse plantaris. With these datasets, we define global and Myc-specific dynamics at the onset of mechanical overload-induced muscle fiber growth. Data collation across analyses reveals an under-appreciated role for the muscle fiber in extracellular matrix remodeling during adaptation, along with the contribution of mRNA stability to epigenetic-related transcript levels in muscle. We also identify Runx1 and Ankrd1 (Marp1) as abundant myonucleus-enriched loading-induced genes. We observed that a strong induction of cell cycle regulators including Myc occurs with mechanical overload in myonuclei. Additionally, in vivo Myc-controlled gene expression in the plantaris was defined using a genetic muscle fiber-specific doxycycline-inducible Myc-overexpression model. We determined Myc is implicated in numerous aspects of gene expression during early-phase muscle fiber growth. Specifically, brief induction of Myc protein in muscle represses Reverbα, Reverbβ, and Myh2 while increasing Rpl3, recapitulating gene expression in myonuclei during acute overload. Experimental, comparative, and in silico analyses place Myc at the center of a stable and actively transcribed, loading-responsive, muscle fiber–localized regulatory hub. Collectively, our experiments are a roadmap for understanding global and Myc-mediated transcriptional networks that regulate rapid remodeling in postmitotic cells. We provide open webtools for exploring the five RNA-seq datasets as a resource to the field

Biomarkers of central and peripheral inflammation mediate the association between HIV and depressive symptoms

People living with HIV are at increased risk for depression, though the underlying mechanisms for this are unclear. In the general population, depression is associated with peripheral and central inflammation. Given this, and since HIV infection elicits inflammation, we hypothesised that peripheral and central inflammatory biomarkers would at least partly mediate the association between HIV and depressive symptoms. People living with HIV (n = 125) and without HIV (n = 79) from the COmorBidity in Relation to AIDS (COBRA) cohort were included in this study. Participants living with and without HIV had similar baseline characteristics. All participants living with HIV were on antiretroviral therapy and were virally suppressed. Plasma, CSF, and brain MR spectroscopy (MRS) biomarkers were measured. Using logistic regression models adjusted for sociodemographic factors, we found that participants with HIV were more likely to have Any Depressive Symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire [PHQ-9] score >4) (odds ratio [95% confidence interval] 3.27 [1.46, 8.09]). We then sequentially adjusted the models for each biomarker separately to determine the mediating role of each biomarker, with a >10% reduction in OR considered as evidence of potential mediation. Of the biomarkers analysed, MIG (-15.0%) and TNF-α (-11.4%) in plasma and MIP1-α (-21.0%) and IL-6 (-18.0%) in CSF mediated the association between HIV and depressive symptoms in this sample. None of the other soluble or neuroimaging biomarkers substantially mediated this association. Our findings suggest that certain biomarkers of central and peripheral inflammation may at least partly mediate the relationship between HIV and depressive symptoms

Effect of training traditional birth attendants on neonatal mortality (Lufwanyama Neonatal Survival Project): randomised controlled study

Objective To determine whether training traditional birth attendants to manage several common perinatal conditions could reduce neonatal mortality in the setting of a resource poor country with limited access to healthcare

Association between inflammatory biomarker profiles and cardiovascular risk in individuals with and without HIV

Background: People with HIV have an increased risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Inflammation and immune activation may contribute to this excess risk. Methods: We assessed thirty-one biomarkers in a subset of POPPY participants and identified three distinct inflammatory profiles: ‘gut/immune activation’, ‘neurovascular’, and ‘reference’ (relatively low levels of inflammation). Ten-year CVD risk predictions were calculated using the QRISK, Framingham Risk Score (FRS) and the Data Collection on Adverse effects of anti-HIV Drugs (D:A:D) algorithms. The distributions of CVD risk scores across the different inflammatory profiles, stratified by HIV status, were compared using median quantile regression. Results: Of the 312 participants included (70% living with HIV, median [interquartile range; IQR] age 55 [51–60] years; 82% male; 91% white), 146, 36, and 130 were in the ‘gut/immune activation’, ‘neurovascular’, and ‘reference’ cluster, respectively. The median [IQR] QRISK scores were 9.3% (4.5–14.5) and 10.2% (5.5–16.9) for people with and without HV, respectively, with similar scores obtained with the FRS and D:A:D. We observed statistically significant differences between the distributions of scores in the three clusters among people with HV. In particular, median QRISK (5.8% [1.0–10.7] and 3.1% [0.3–5.8]) scores were higher, respectively, for those in the ‘gut/immune activation’ and ‘neurovascular’ clusters compared to those in the reference cluster. Conclusions: People with HIV with increased gut/immune activation have a higher CVD risk compared to those with relatively low inflammation. Our findings highlight that clinically important inflammatory subgroups could be useful to differentiate risk and maximise prediction of CVD among people with HIV