Tackling malaria, village by village: a report on a concerted information intervention by medical students and the community in Mifumi, Eastern Uganda

Background: Can an information intervention facilitated by information technology and carried out by an interdisciplinaryteam comprising medical students, technical experts, and the community itself make a positive contribution in reducing theburden of malaria at the village level? In Mifumi village in Eastern Uganda, MIFUMI Project, Makerere University College of Health Sciences Community Based Education and Service program (COBES), and the U.S. National Library of Medicine carried out a series of activities between 2007 and 2010.Methods: The team surveyed the community’s knowledge of malaria prevention and treatment; implemented a healthinformation intervention using tutorials in a variety of media; and observed the community’s use of previously distributedinsecticide treated nets (ITNs) using a digital pen application.Results: As a result of concerted education and outreach, the village residents have a good understanding of malaria preventionand treatment seeking behaviors. Leveraging the power of information technology and interdisciplinary teamwork,medical students and the denizens of a rural community were able to engage in an interactive experience of health educationand promotion.Conclusion: Preliminary observations suggest that a health information intervention in concert with a collaborative communityeffort of education and prevention can build capacity within a community to take control of its own health.Keywords: rural health education, malaria, informatic

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Microbial detergent compatible lipases

105-113Most of the companies are not currently manufacturing the detergents alone; they are producing enzyme-based detergents. More than 50% of the detergents produced in the developed countries presently contain enzymes to improve the detergency by removing tough stains. The role of a detergent lipase is to digest the lipidic molecules from the soiled substrates. Most of the chemical detergent ingredients are hazardous to human beings and cause pollution to the environment. The use of alkaline lipase in detergent formulations can reduce or substitute the use of these harmful ingredients in higher amounts. The detergent lipases active at ambient temperature are now preferred as the quality of the cleaned fabric is maintained and energy saved. Review papers on the production, purification, characterization and application of lipases in various industries are available, but no specific review on the microbial alkaline lipases or detergent compatible lipases. In the present review, screening, production and properties of detergent compatible lipases are reported with emphasis on the stability and compatibility of alkaline lipases in detergent and detergent constituents and the methods for examination of oil stain removal

A FEM-BEM coupling strategy for the modeling of magnetoelectric effects in composite structures

This paper deals with the modeling of devices based on magnetoelectric composite materials. These heterogeneous structures are made of ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials, the mechanical coupling of which allows obtaining magneto-electric effects exceeding by several orders of magnitude the response of single-phase components. A coupling of the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the Boundary Element Method (BEM) is used to model the behavior of magnetic effects, while classical FEM formulations are used for the electrical and mechanical problems. This coupling of numerical methods allows to avoid considering a free space domain around the active domain, and thus to use a single mesh for the magnetic, mechanical and electrical problems. This results in a consequent reduction of the number of unknowns, which is accompanied by shorter computation times compared to a pure FEM approach. The global algebraic system is solved by a block Gauss-Seidel type solver, which allows a good convergence of the multiphysics