Correlates of and Barriers to the Utilization of Health Services for Delivery in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The high maternal and neonatal mortality rates in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa can be attributed to the lack of access and utilization of health services for delivery. Data from the Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania show that more than half of the births in these countries were delivered outside a health facility. Institutional delivery was closely associated with educational level, family wealth, place of residence, and women's media exposure status, but it was not influenced by women's work status and their roles in decision-making (with the exception of Nigeria). Controlling for other variables, higher parity and younger women were less likely to use a health facility for delivery. Within each country, the poorer, less educated and rural women had higher unmet need for maternal care services. Service related factors (accessibility in terms of cost and distance) and sociocultural factors (e.g., did not perceive the need for the services and objections from husband and family) also posed as barriers to institutional delivery. The paper concludes with some suggestions to increase institutional delivery

Exploring users’ behavioral model in Web 2.0 applications - The moderating effects of hedonic versus utilitarian motivations

The Web 2.0 trend has enhanced the overwhelming demand for more pervasive human space in online social interaction. Therefore, it is imperative for the practitioners of Web 2.0 websites to understand users’ motivations to participate and develop specific services to stimulate a long-term usage. This study has proposed a research model that explores the factors affecting users’ intentions to use Web 2.0 applications. In addition, user’s usage motivations (i.e. hedonic versus utilitarian) are also compared. The results revealed that users’ intentions to use Web 2.0 applications is influenced by usefulness, ease of use, enjoyment, and social presence. In addition, users’ hedonic versus utilitarian motivations has the moderating influences on the research model

Bis(isocyanato-κN)bis­(1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)cobalt(II)

In the title complex, [Co(NCO)2(C12H8N2)2], the CoII atom, lying on a twofold rotation axis, is coordinated in a distorted octa­hedral environment by four N atoms from two chelating phenanthroline ligands and two N atoms from two isocyanate ligands in cis positions

Escalation of Commiement in Software Projects: An Examination of Two Theories

Escalation of commitment is common in many software projects. It stands for the situation where managers decide to continue investing in or supporting a prior decision despite new evidence suggesting the original outcome expectation will be missed. Escalation of commitment is generally considered to be irrational. Past literature has proposed several theories to explain the behaviour. Two commonly used interpretations are self-justification and the framing effect. While both theories have been found effective in causing the escalation of commitment, their relative effect is less studied. The purpose of this study is to further investigate the primary factor that causes the escalation of commitment in software project related decisions. An experiment was designed to examine whether the escalation of commitment exists in different decision contingencies and which theories play a more important role in the escalation. One hundred and sixty two subjects participated in the experiment. The results indicate that both self-justification and problem framing have effects on commitment escalation in software projects but the effect of self-justification is stronger. Significant interaction effect is also found. A commitment is more likely to escalate if the problem is framed positively

RETINAL VESSEL DETECTION USING SELF-MATCHED FILTERING

ABSTRACT Automated analysis of retinal images usually requires estimating the positions of blood vessels, which contain important features for image alignment and abnormality detection. Matched filtering can produce the best results but is difficult to implement because the vessel orientations and widths are unknown beforehand. Many researchers use Hessian filtering, which provides an estimate for vessel orientation through the use of three orientation templates. We propose a novel filtering approach, called self-matched filtering, which is based on the 180 • rotated version of the noisy vessel signal in the local neighborhood. We show that even though the proposed filter achieves half the signal-to-noise ratio of a matched filter, it does not require the estimation of the vessel scale and orientation, and can outperform Hessian filtering by up to a factor of two in terms of miss detection error