Microfinance in Latin America and the Caribbean: 2008 Data Update

This note summarizes the results of a recently completed IDB survey of microfinance in the region. The survey includes information on microfinance activities in 25 countries as well as an initial review of effective interest rates charged to microfinance clients.Microbusinesses & Microfinance, Financial Sector

Impact of emergency care centralisation on mortality and efficiency: a retrospective service evaluation

Objective: Evidence favours centralisation of emergency care for specific conditions, but it remains unclear whether broader implementation improves outcomes and efficiency. Routine healthcare data examined consolidation of three district general hospitals with mixed medical admission units (MAU) into a single high-volume site directing patients from the ED to specialty wards with consultant presence from 08:00 to 20:00. Methods: Consecutive unscheduled adult index admissions from matching postcode areas were identified retrospectively in Hospital Episode Statistics over a 3-year period: precentralisation baseline (from 16 June 2014 to 15 June 2015; n=18 586), year 1 postcentralisation (from 16 June 2015 to 15 June 2016; n=16 126) and year 2 postcentralisation (from 16 June 2016 to 15 June 2017; n=17 727). Logistic regression including key demographic covariates compared baseline with year 1 and year 2 probabilities of mortality and daily discharge until day 60 after admission and readmission within 60 days of discharge. Results: Relative to baseline, admission postcentralisation was associated with favourable OR (95% CI) for day 60 mortality (year 1: 0.95 (0.88 to 1.02), p=0.18; year 2: 0.94 (0.91 to 0.97), p<0.01), mainly among patients aged 80+ years (year 1: 0.88 (0.79 to 0.97); year 2: 0.91 (0.87 to 0.96)). The probability of being discharged alive on any day since admission increased (year 1: 1.07 (1.04 to 1.10), p<0.01; year 2: 1.04 (1.02 to 1.05), p<0.01) and the risk of readmission decreased (year 1: 0.90 (0.87 to 0.94), p<0.01; year 2: 0.92 (0.90 to 0.94), p<0.01). Conclusion: A centralised site providing early specialist care was associated with improved short-term outcomes and efficiency relative to lower volume ED admitting to MAU, particularly for older patients

Play completion predicts fewer child psychological difficulties: A longitudinal study of mentalizing processes

Play therapy is widely used with children, including children who experienced sexual abuse. This longitudinal study examined whether more pretend play completion (PPC) at Time 1 predicted fewer child difficulties when this was assessed 3 years later at Time 2. Participants were 91 children (aged 3–8 at Time 1), including 51 children who experienced sexual abuse (child sexual abuse [CSA]). Play was coded with the Children’s Play Therapy Instrument, and child psychological difficulties were assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist. More PPC at Time 1 predicted fewer child psychological difficulties 3 years later at Time 2. This was the case in children who had experienced CSA as well as the comparison group, showing that PPC is predicts better psychological adjustment in both abused and nonabused children. The study provides the first longitudinal evidence of the important role of pretend play narrative completion in predicting less internalizing and externalizing difficulties. The findings have important clinical implications for play therapists. It suggests that interventions that encourage children to elaborate and complete their play narratives could facilitate agency and psychological adjustment, as well as recovery after trauma. This is in line with the idea that through play children discover that they can “play with reality” and gain control over how they tell their stories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved

Deformation and recrystallisation in low carbon steels

The annealing behaviour, including studies of recrystallisation kinetics and development of crystallographic texture, of two low carbon steels after different cold rolling reductions have been investigated using Optical Microscopy (OM), Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). The primary recrystallisation behaviour of 20, 50, 70 and 90% cold rolled Interstitial Free (IF) and High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) steels was studied. The HSLA was initially processed to give a volume fraction of about 0.2 of fine pearlite colonies, which acted as mechanically hard particles. The presence of such particles on the HSLA steel significantly reduced the temperature needed for recrystallisation by enhancing the recrystallisation and acting as nucleation sites by the Particle Stimulated Nucleation (PSN) mechanism. The inhomogeneous deformation and the local orientation changes introduced in the neighbourhood of the carbide particles (i.e. the particle deformation zone) were observed using TEM and selected area electron diffraction. The JMAK model was used to analyse the recrystallisation kinetics of the two steels. The experimental data plotted according to the JMAK model could be represented by straight lines with a JMAK exponent n falling in the range from 1.4 to 2.0. The development of crystallographic textures after cold rolling reductions and subsequent recrystallisation has been investigated. The texture development is shown to be largely dependent on the rolling reduction. With increasing rolling reduction, the annealing texture show gradual intensification of α- and γ-fibre components. However, the intensity of both fibres is weaker in the HSLA steel. Despite the dominance of PSN in HSLA steel, the recrystallisation textures were similar to that of the rolling textures with weaker intensity of both fibres. To help clarify the reasons for that, in-situ EBSD experiments of recrystallising HSLA steel deformed to 50% and 70% have been carried out. It shows that the formation of the nucleus seems to occur within the deformation zones in regions away from the particle surface leading to recrystallisation textures similar to that of the rolling textures (i.e. both α- and γ-fibre exist). The validity of this assumption has been confirmed by the use of Monte Carlomodelling. This model was used to simulate, in general way, and study the phenomenon of PSN during the recrystallisation process. The simulation shows the discontinuous evolution of the subgrains in the deformation zone to form recrystallisation nuclei around the particle. It shows also the subsequent growth of these nuclei to consume the matrix region around the particle. The simulation results are shown to match with the experimentally observed features of the recrystallisation phenomena in low carbon steel containing coarse cementite particles.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceSaudi Basic Industries CorporationGBUnited Kingdo

Increased material differentiation through multi-contrast x-ray imaging: a preliminary evaluation of potential applications to the detection of threat materials

Most material discrimination in security inspections is based on dual-energy x-ray imaging, which enables the determination of a material's effective atomic number (Z eff) as well as electron density and its consequent classification as organic or inorganic. Recently phase-based "dark-field" x-ray imaging approaches have emerged that are sensitive to complementary features of a material, namely its unresolved microstructure. It can therefore be speculated that their inclusion in the security-based imaging could enhance material discrimination, for example of materials with similar electron densities and Z eff but different microstructures. In this paper, we present a preliminary evaluation of the advantages that such a combination could bear. Utilising an energy-resolved detector for a phase-based dark-field technique provides dual-energy attenuation and dark-field images simultaneously. In addition, since we use a method based on attenuating x-ray masks to generate the dark-field images, a fifth (attenuation) image at a much higher photon energy is obtained by exploiting the x-rays transmitted through the highly absorbing mask septa. In a first test, a threat material is imaged against a non-threat one, and we show how their discrimination based on maximising their relative contrast through linear combinations of two and five imaging channels leads to an improvement in the latter case. We then present a second example to show how the method can be extended to discrimination against more than one non-threat material, obtaining similar results. Albeit admittedly preliminary, these results indicate that significant margins of improvement in material discrimination are available by including additional x-ray contrasts in the scanning process

Very early versus delayed mobilization after stroke: systematic review and meta-analysis

No abstract available

Systematic Review of Studies Using Conjoint Analysis Techniques to Investigate Patients’ Preferences Regarding Osteoarthritis Treatment

Background: The use of conjoint analysis (CA) to elicit patients’ preferences for osteoarthritis (OA) treatment has the potential to contribute to tailoring treatments and enhancing patients’ compliance and adherence. This review’s main aim was to identify and summarise the evidence that used conjoint analysis techniques to quantify patient preferences for OA treatments. Methods: A comprehensive search strategy was conducted using electronic databases and hand reference checks. Databases were searched from their inception until 10th June 2019. All OA and CA related terms were used to conduct the search. The authors reviewed the papers and used the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) checklist to assess the quality of the included studies. Results: The search identified 534 records. Sixteen records were selected for full-text review and quality assessment and all were included in the narrative data synthesis. All included studies suggested that the severity of symptoms influenced the patients’ preference for OA treatment. All included studies recognised CA as a useful method to investigate patients’ preferences concerning OA treatment. Conclusion: Patients preference for OA treatment is driven by the severity of patients’ symptoms and the desire to avoid treatment side effects and CA is a useful tool to investigate patients’ preferences for OA treatment

The Nature of Angular Momentum Transport in Radiative Self-Gravitating Protostellar Discs

Semi-analytic models of self-gravitating discs often approximate the angular momentum transport generated by the gravitational instability using the phenomenology of viscosity. This allows the employment of the standard viscous evolution equations, and gives promising results. It is, however, still not clear when such an approximation is appropriate. This paper tests this approximation using high resolution 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of self-gravitating protostellar discs with radiative transfer. The nature of angular momentum transport associated with the gravitational instability is characterised as a function of both the stellar mass and the disc-to-star mass ratio. The effective viscosity is calculated from the Reynolds and gravitational stresses in the disc. This is then compared to what would be expected if the effective viscosity were determined by assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium or, equivalently, that the local dissipation rate matches the local cooling rate. In general, all the discs considered here settle into a self-regulated state where the heating generated by the gravitational instability is modulated by the local radiative cooling. It is found that low-mass discs can indeed be represented by a local "alpha-parametrisation", provided that the disc aspect ratio is small (H/R < 0.1) which is generally the case when the disc-to-star mass ratio q <0.5. However, this result does not extend to discs with masses approaching that of the central object. These are subject to transient burst events and global wave transport, and the effective viscosity is not well modelled by assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium. In spite of these effects, it is shown that massive (compact) discs can remain stable and not fragment, evolving rapidly to reduce their disc-to-star mass ratios through stellar accretion and radial spreading.Comment: 13 pages, 44 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

PVP2011-57071 REVISED GUIDANCE ON RESIDUAL STRESSES IN BS7910

ABSTRACT A major revision of the British Standard BS7910 on &quot;Guide to Methods for Assessing the Acceptability of Flaws in Metallic Structures&quot; is being planned for issue in 2012. This paper provides an overview of the proposed revised guidance in relation to recommended weld residual stress profiles. As such, the paper is focussed on the proposed revised Annex Q of BS7910 which deals with residual stress distributions in as-welded joints

Multi-species integrative biclustering

We describe an algorithm, multi-species cMonkey, for the simultaneous biclustering of heterogeneous multiple-species data collections and apply the algorithm to a group of bacteria containing Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus anthracis, and Listeria monocytogenes. The algorithm reveals evolutionary insights into the surprisingly high degree of conservation of regulatory modules across these three species and allows data and insights from well-studied organisms to complement the analysis of related but less well studied organisms