Who Governs Public Health? Donor Retreat and the Shifting Spheres of Influence in Southern African HIV/AIDS Policy Making

For the last decade, discussions about who governs policy on prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS have revolved around  the  controversial  relationship  between Western  donors and  the  power  they  have  over  their  recipient governments. While these debates were once politically germane, recent trends show a decline of donor funding, as well as an increase of financial  ownership of the epidemic within Southern Africa. Commensurate with this shifting financial influence, some well‐governed, wealthy  African  states  are  beginning  to  deviate  from  global  M&E  (monitoring  and  evaluation)  indicators.  These  policy movements, away  from global M&E indicators, also  correlate with increases in HIV  prevalence, which  signals  the  need  for  further investigation into policy efficacy.  

Donor Agendas, Community Priorities and the Democracy of International HIV/AIDS Funding

Each year, donors channel $7.6 billion into HIV programming in affected countries. With this funding often comes significant control over interventions at country level, though there is considerable skepticism about the value of donor-driven strategies. Locally conceived approaches are believed to be more effective, but it is not always clear that donors are responding accurately or appropriately to the priorities of communities. Concept notes submitted to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by eight African countries were systematically measured to determine their responsiveness to community priorities. National Civil Society Priorities Charters were used as a measure of community-identified needs. Malawi’s concept note was by far the most responsive to civil society priorities and Zambia’s was the least. The concept notes were the most responsive to civil society priorities on key populations’ issues, and the least responsible on priorities related to voluntary medical male circumcision. Statistically significant relationships were found between the responsiveness of Global Fund concept notes and Afrobarometer indicators on democracy, participation and civic engagement. There was also a significant relationship found between the voice and accountability rankings from the World Governance Indicators. This makes a compelling case to show that a context of democracy is linked to civil society’s ability to influence HIV/AIDS funding decisions at national level. Understanding the factors which hinder or enable community-led program development is critical for a more effective HIV response

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex human rights in Southern Africa: A contemporary literature review

Individuals engaging in same-sex acts, individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/ or intersex (LGBTI), and individuals who do not conform to heteronormative ideals of gender and sexuality experience structural, institutional and individual discrimination and exclusion across the world. This is no different in Southern African countries. While LGBTI individuals are heterogeneous and face very specific challenges based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, race, class, ethnicity and other factors, they share experiences of structural, institutional and individual discrimination and marginalisation based on their sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). In most Southern African countries, same-sex activity remains criminalised, which further marginalises LGBTI individuals, and acts as an additional barrier to accessing public services and realising full civil and political rights. This contemporary literature review focuses on the state of LGBTI human rights in 10 Southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The purpose of this review is to contribute towards a strong evidence base and scientific foundation for informed programming in the region

Magyar Tanítóképző 30 (1915) 02

Magyar Tanítóképző A Tanítóképző-intézeti Tanárok Országos Egyesületének közlönye 30. évfolyam, Második füzet Budapest, 1915. február h

Magyar Tanítóképző 25 (1910) 06

Magyar Tanítóképző A Tanítóképző-intézeti Tanárok Országos Egyesületének közlönye 25. évfolyam, Hatodik füzet Budapest, 1910. június h

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Magyar Tanítóképző A Tanítóképző-intézeti Tanárok Országos Egyesületének közlönye 28. évfolyam, Kilencedik füzet Budapest, 1913. november h

The Tolman Surface Brightness Test for the Reality of the Expansion. V. Provenance of the Test and a New Representation of the Data for Three Remote HST Galaxy Clusters

A new reduction is made of the HST photometric data for E galaxies in three remote clusters at redshifts near z=0.85 in search for the Tolman surface brightness (SB) signal for the reality of the expansion. Because of the strong variation of SB of such galaxies with intrinsic size, and because the Tolman test is about surface brightness, we must account for the variation. In an earlier version of the test, Lubin & Sandage calibrated the variation out. In contrast, the test is made here using fixed radius bins for both the local and remote samples. Homologous positions in the galaxy image at which to compare the surface brightness values are defined by radii at five Petrosian eta values ranging from 1.0 to 2.0. Sersic luminosity profiles are used to generate two diagnostic diagrams that define the mean SB distribution across the galaxy image. A Sersic exponent, defined by the r^n family of Sersic profiles, of n=0.46 fits both the local and remote samples. Diagrams of the dimming of the with redshift over the range of Petrosian eta radii shows a highly significance Tolman signal but degraded by luminosity evolution in the look-back time. The expansion is real and a luminosity evolution exists at the mean redshift of the HST clusters of 0.8 mag in R_cape and 0.4 mag in the I_cape photometric rest-frame bands, consistent with the evolution models of Bruzual and Charlot.Comment: 51 pages, 16 tables, 15 figures, submitted to The A

Survey of highly non-Keplerian orbits with low-thrust propulsion

Celestial mechanics has traditionally been concerned with orbital motion under the action of a conservative gravitational potential. In particular, the inverse square gravitational force due to the potential of a uniform, spherical mass leads to a family of conic section orbits, as determined by Isaac Newton, who showed that Kepler‟s laws were derivable from his theory of gravitation. While orbital motion under the action of a conservative gravitational potential leads to an array of problems with often complex and interesting solutions, the addition of non-conservative forces offers new avenues of investigation. In particular, non-conservative forces lead to a rich diversity of problems associated with the existence, stability and control of families of highly non-Keplerian orbits generated by a gravitational potential and a non-conservative force. Highly non-Keplerian orbits can potentially have a broad range of practical applications across a number of different disciplines. This review aims to summarize the combined wealth of literature concerned with the dynamics, stability and control of highly non-Keplerian orbits for various low thrust propulsion devices, and to demonstrate some of these potential applications