Prevalence, risk factors and traditional treatments of genital prolapse in Manma, Kalikot district, Nepal : a community based population study

Background: Nepal is a small developing country sandwiched between India and China. Majority (Approximately 80 %) of the people still depend on the traditional medicine for their primary health care. According to World health organization (WHO), reproductive and sexual ill-health accounts for 33 % of the total disease burden in women globally. The global prevalence of genital prolapse (GP) is estimated to be 2 -20 % in women under age 45.The status of reproductive health of women in Nepal is very poor and uterine prolapse (UP) is a serious public health problem in Nepal. Data of uterine prolapse in Nepal are in scattered form and are very little. Study shows that more than one million of Nepali women suffer from uterine prolapse and the majority of these women are of reproductive age and among them two hundred thousand are in need of immediate surgery. Objective: The main aim of the study were to measure the prevalence of UP, the associated risk factors and documentation of the traditional remedies used by the women for the treatment of UP in the region. Setting: The study was carried out in a mid western hilly part of Nepal: Manma, village development committee (VDC), the capital of the Kalikot district. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted by using designed questionnaires during June 2010 –July 2010.Women above 15 years of age were selected by using systematic random sampling method. A total of 368 women participated in this study. Chi square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were done to explore the association of the risk factors. Result: The prevalence of uterine prolapse (UP) in our study was 22.6 %. The risk factors for uterine prolapse (p value < 0.05) were illiteracy, multi parity, poverty, home delivery, early age at marriage, less rest time period after delivery and smoking. Results also showed that the majority of women (63.9%) believe in Traditional Medicine for the treatment of Uterine Prolapse. Commonly used herbs reported were Cedrus deodara, Butea monosperma, Oxalis latifolia, Canabis sativa. Conclusion: The findings confirm the high prevalence of the uterine prolapse (UP) in the region. The majority of women were uneducated, multi parous (> 3), poor and smokers. The most common risk factors for uterine prolapse seem to be low education level, multi parity, poverty, malnutrition, early marriage, smoking habit, hard work and less rest immediate after delivery

Pre-Acquisition Characteristics of the Acquirers

Existing empirical literature has extensively analyzed post-acquisition performance of the acquirers to evaluate success of the takeover. The academic literature tends to agree that target shareholders benefit from takeovers; however takeovers benefits for acquiring firm’s shareholders have been questioned. A majority of empirical literature indicate acquisition announcements are associated with a decrease in acquiring shareholder’s wealth. While pre-acquisition characteristics of takeover targets have been extensively analyzed, empirical literature has not directly and comprehensively analyzed pre-acquisition financial and operating characteristics of the acquiring firms. In this paper, I examine pre-acquisition operating performance and governance characteristics of acquirers. Results suggest that bidders are large firms compared to their industry peers. I also find that bidders are characterized by low insider ownership, high institutional holding and high leverage, indicating higher outside monitoring of the managers. Bidders in general report superior operating performance as indicated by higher return on equity and lower operating expenses. Consistent with existing research, I found that the takeover announcement period abnormal returns are negative for bidders irrespective of their operating performance and governance characteristics

Tracking Errors of Exchange Traded Funds and Index Funds

Exchange traded funds (ETF) are one of the recent financial innovations widely viewed as significantly better investments than mutual funds given their lower fee structure and tax efficiency. Individual investors are increasingly using ETFs tracking most popular stock indices to achieve their investment goals. In some cases, investors are using these ETFs to replace index mutual funds in their long-term portfolios. Thus, it is important to compare the performance of widely held ETFs and index funds in terms of their ability to consistently track the underlying index. Another interesting research question is whether tracking errors of these two investment vehicles exhibit significant differences in the periods associated with high degree of uncertainty and volatility. Recent extreme volatility in the financial market provides a perfect setting to empirically test tracking efficiency of index ETFs and corresponding index mutual funds. In this paper we compare ETFs and Index funds performance during the period 2007-2012. This period has seen a significant increase in the ETFs both in terms of total net assets and total number of ETFs. We document a significant improvement in tracking ability of all the ETFs during the six year period. Our results suggests that for index funds perform relatively better than the corresponding ETFs in tracking large-cap and broad-market indices. In contrast, ETFs exhibit lower tracking errors compared to corresponding index funds for mid-cap indices, small-cap indices and for narrower indices tracking a segment of large-cap markets. These results support empirical and theoretical predictions in Guedj and Huang (2008). They argue that ETFs are better suited for narrower and less liquid underlying indexes. This is due to the “in kind redemption” feature of ETFs, which help them avoid flow-induced trading costs. Our results also document significant increase in tracking errors for both ETFs and index funds when market volatility is high, however their relative performance do not change. The volatility of daily returns for ETFs is lower than the volatility of daily returns of their underlying index and that of corresponding index funds during the entire sample period

Cost Optimization of Top Three Cloud Services Google, Azure and AWS using HybridCloud

The process of reducing your overall cloud spending by using your own available resources as add-onsfor the cloud infrastructure you are using for your business is Cloud cost optimization.This paper discusses the benefitsin terms of cost of applying distributed cloud computing technologies in the development of business. First, the conception of cloud computing is introduced, and then a hybrid cloud computing platform for business is designed.The distinguished characteristics of the proposed platform are then explained in detail, followed with the introductionto the new system of storage using remote hardware infrastructure and resources. An introduction to state-of-the-art products which can be used to build the proposed platform is given

Linear and cyclic sucrose reaction products, their preparation and their use

Sucrose ester and ether products, useful as food or beverage bulking agents, reduced calorie sweeteners, fat replacement agents, stabilizing agents, thickening agents and emulsifying agents; adhesives; biodegradable plastics and films; sizing agents for paper and textiles; ethical pharmaceuticals and new fibers are prepared by using a two-phase reaction system in which sucrose is dissolved in an alkaline, aqueous solution and an acidic reagent such as a bifunctional acid dichloride or epoxide is added to the sucrose in a water-immiscible organic solvent. Several types of products are produced: water-insoluble sucrose ester (ether) copolymers; water-soluble sucrose ester (ether) copolymers; sucrose ester (ether) dimers; and intramolecular, cyclic sucrose esters (ethers). These products can be further varied by using different kinds of acid dichlorides or epoxides that contain different kinds of functional groups. The reaction proceeds at the interface of the water/organic solvent solutions whereby there is imparted a specificity that restricts the reaction to the 6 and 6\u27 primary alcohol groups of sucrose. The reactions can be selected for each of the four basic types of products by controlling the various reaction parameters

Activated mono-, di-, and polysaccharides reaction products thereof, their preparation and uses

Reaction at the interface of an organic solution containing an acidic reactant and an aqueous alkaline solution containing nonreducing carbohydrates such as sucrose, sugar alcohols, cyclodextrins, and polysaccharides imparts a specificity to the reaction for one or more of the primary alcohol groups of the carbohydrate reactant. The resulting activated, nonreducing carbohydrate intermediate can then be converted to a series of substantially pure, low molecular weight reaction products, including a sucrose trimer and dianhydrosucrose, and to a series of substantially pure, higher molecular weight reaction products, including 6-O-sucro cyclodextrins and poly-6-O-sucro amylose

Financial Contagion and Market Liquidity: Evidence from the Asian Crisis

Models of financial crisis and contagion predict that an economic crisis turns into a crisis of market liquidity in the presence of borrowing constraints, information asymmetry and risk aversion. Based on the firm-level data on a sample of exposed and unexposed US stocks to the Asian currency crisis, we find a significant increase (decrease) in the crisis period bid-ask spreads (depth) and their volatilities for both the groups. While our results underscore the imprints of flight to quality, we detect little causal patterns in liquidity innovations. An important implication of our findings, as evidenced by the recent crisis, is that regulatory response to enhance liquidity during a crisis should not be limited to the industries and markets directly exposed to the crisis. Finally, we find that the deterioration in market liquidity provides a partial explanation for the crisis-induced abnormal returns

Projecting the impacts of illness on labour force participation: An application of Health&WealthMOD

Health&WealthMOD is the first Australian microsimulation model designed to determine the economic impacts of disease on older workers, aged 45 to 65 years. Chronic health conditions are known to be associated with early retirement. This paper describes an application of Health&WealthMOD to estimate the impact of this association on projected labour force participation to 2020 given the ageing population and long-term trend in chronic conditions. Due to ageing and disease trends, the number of people with chronic conditions in the 45-64 years age group was expected to rise to about 4.8 million by 2020, an increase of 82% from the 2003 population of the same age group. About 904,000 persons in the 45-64 age group were projected to be out of the labour force due to ill health in 2020, when only the ageing and population growth were considered. When trends in illness were captured, the figure was increased to about 1.2 million persons. This demonstrates that health is a major driver of labour force participation and retirement and that economic policies alone, with no consideration of health interventions to treat or prevent chronic illness, will only have a limited impact on labour force participation. Thus, it is important that the government focuses on both health policies and economic policies in order to make sure that there will be an adequate supply of labour force in future.impacts of illness, labour force, participation, Health&WealthMOD