A case study of government innovative programmes for increasing access to qualified health personnel in selected rural districts of Zambia

Objective: To document the experiences and lessons learnt from implementing innovative programmes that aim at increasing access to qualified health workers in Gwembe and Chibombo districts by Ministry of Health and participation of health workers.Methods: Qualitative analysis of the participation and satisfaction rates in retention and recruitment incentives for health workers in Gwembe and Chibombo Districts was conducted. Further document review of the current strategies implemented by the government was conducted with regards to them addressing the problems identified by the health workers based on a criterion that was developed. The study used primary and secondary data.Results: The findings indicated that there was high desire by the health workers to leave their current rural job postings and this was mainly due to issues related to their living and working conditions rather than the participation or satisfaction in the existing retention andrecruitment schemes. There was substantial turnover in the health workforces in both districts over the five-year period from 2005-2009, with annual losses ranging from 2 percent to 16 percent of the professional health workforce in each district. These losses were dues to death, retirement and redirection. Overall, there was also very little evidence and the quality of much of what existed was weak hence the difficult to ascertain if these interventions were contributing to an increase in access to qualified health workers in rural areas.Conclusion: To retain staff in the rural areas remains a challenge because of the high desire to leave exhibited by health workers. Bundled interventions therefore coupled with strong national leadership, governance and information systemsare key in ensuring skilled, motivated and supported health workers at the right place and time. In addition, a strong monitoring and evaluation system should be establised to provide evidence and lessons to ascertain which interventions are or are not working and inform further policy decisions on health workforce

Probability representation and quantumness tests for qudits and two-mode light states

Using tomographic-probability representation of spin states, quantum behavior of qudits is examined. For a general j-qudit state we propose an explicit formula of quantumness witnetness whose negative average value is incompatible with classical statistical model. Probability representations of quantum and classical (2j+1)-level systems are compared within the framework of quantumness tests. Trough employing Jordan-Schwinger map the method is extended to check quantumness of two-mode light states.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, PDFLaTeX, Contribution to the 11th International Conference on Squeezed States and Uncertainty Relations (ICSSUR'09), June 22-26, 2009, Olomouc, Czech Republi

Potentials of cellulosic wastes in media formulation

Potential use of cellulosic wastes as carbon and energy sources in selective media formulations was investigated. Two agar media, Czapek-Dox and Sabouraud’s agar, were modified by substituting theircarbon sources with cellulose, sawdust and sugarcane pulps. Then, two fungi; Aspergillus niger ANL301 and Penicillium chrysogenum PCL501, newly isolated from wood-wastes, were transferred to the unmodified and modified media and their growth was monitored for 120 h. Growth of the organisms on modified media containing sawdust and sugarcane pulp compared favorably with that obtained for the unmodified equivalents. Modified Czapek-Dox agar containing 2% (w/v) sawdust (Wood agar) and sugarcane pulps (Cane agar) gave 78.9 – 93.3% of the maximum growth obtained on Sabouraud’s agar. The modified Sabouraud’s agar containing sawdust (Wood-Pep agar) and sugarcane pulps (Cane-Pep agar) yielded 84.4 – 100% of the maximum growth on Sabouraud’s agar. Cellulose-containing media gave a lower level of growth (60.0 – 66.7%) of that obtained for the unmodified media

Conformal mechanics inspired by extremal black holes in d=4

A canonical transformation which relates the model of a massive relativistic particle moving near the horizon of an extremal black hole in four dimensions and the conventional conformal mechanics is constructed in two different ways. The first approach makes use of the action-angle variables in the angular sector. The second scheme relies upon integrability of the system in the sense of Liouville.Comment: V2: presentation improved, new material and references added; the version to appear in JHE

Inverse spin-s portrait and representation of qudit states by single probability vectors

Using the tomographic probability representation of qudit states and the inverse spin-portrait method, we suggest a bijective map of the qudit density operator onto a single probability distribution. Within the framework of the approach proposed, any quantum spin-j state is associated with the (2j+1)(4j+1)-dimensional probability vector whose components are labeled by spin projections and points on the sphere. Such a vector has a clear physical meaning and can be relatively easily measured. Quantum states form a convex subset of the 2j(4j+3) simplex, with the boundary being illustrated for qubits (j=1/2) and qutrits (j=1). A relation to the (2j+1)^2- and (2j+1)(2j+2)-dimensional probability vectors is established in terms of spin-s portraits. We also address an auxiliary problem of the optimum reconstruction of qudit states, where the optimality implies a minimum relative error of the density matrix due to the errors in measured probabilities.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, PDF LaTeX, submitted to the Journal of Russian Laser Researc

Griffiths singularities in the two dimensional diluted Ising model

We study numerically the probability distribution of the Yang-Lee zeroes inside the Griffiths phase for the two dimensional site diluted Ising model and we check that the shape of this distribution is that predicted in previous analytical works. By studying the finite size scaling of the averaged smallest zero at the phase transition we extract, for two values of the dilution, the anomalous dimension, $\eta$, which agrees very well with the previous estimated values.Comment: 11 pages and 4 figures, some minor changes in Fig. 4, available at http://chimera.roma1.infn.it/index_papers_complex.htm

Unitary and Non-Unitary Matrices as a Source of Different Bases of Operators Acting on Hilbert Spaces

Columns of d^2 x N matrices are shown to create different sets of N operators acting on $d$-dimensional Hilbert space. This construction corresponds to a formalism of the star-product of operator symbols. The known bases are shown to be partial cases of generic formulas derived by using d^2 x N matrices as a source for constructing arbitrary bases. The known examples of the SIC-POVM, MUBs, and the phase-space description of qubit states are considered from the viewpoint of the developed unified approach. Star-product schemes are classified with respect to associated d^2 x N matrices. In particular, unitary matrices correspond to self-dual schemes. Such self-dual star-product schemes are shown to be determined by dequantizers which do not form POVM.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, to appear in Journal of Russian Laser Researc

Symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measure and probability representation of quantum mechanics

Symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measures (SIC-POVMs) are studied within the framework of the probability representation of quantum mechanics. A SIC-POVM is shown to be a special case of the probability representation. The problem of SIC-POVM existence is formulated in terms of symbols of operators associated with a star-product quantization scheme. We show that SIC-POVMs (if they do exist) must obey general rules of the star product, and, starting from this fact, we derive new relations on SIC-projectors. The case of qubits is considered in detail, in particular, the relation between the SIC probability representation and other probability representations is established, the connection with mutually unbiased bases is discussed, and comments to the Lie algebraic structure of SIC-POVMs are presented.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX, partially presented at the Workshop "Nonlinearity and Coherence in Classical and Quantum Systems" held at the University "Federico II" in Naples, Italy on December 4, 2009 in honor of Prof. Margarita A. Man'ko in connection with her 70th birthday, minor misprints are corrected in the second versio

Naturally presented HLA class I-restricted epitopes from the neurotrophic factor S100-? are targets of the autoimmune response in type 1 diabetes

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) results from the destruction of pancreatic beta-cells by the immune system, and CD8(+) T lymphocytes are critical actors in this autoimmune response. Pancreatic islets are surrounded by a mesh of nervous cells, the peri-insular Schwann cells, which are also targeted by autoreactive T lymphocytes and express specific antigens, such as the neurotrophic factor S100-beta. Previous work has shown increased proliferative responses to whole S100-beta in both human T1D patients and the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse model. We describe for the first time naturally processed and presented epitopes (NPPEs) presented by class I human leukocyte antigen-A*02:01 (A2.1) molecules derived from S100-beta. These NPPEs triggered IFN-gamma responses more frequently in both newly diagnosed and long-term T1D patients compared with healthy donors. Furthermore, the same NPPEs are recognized during the autoimmune response leading to diabetes in A2.1-transgenic NOD mice as early as 4 wk of age. Interestingly, when these NPPEs are used to prevent diabetes in this animal model, an acceleration of the disease is observed together with an exacerbation in insulitis and an increase in S100-beta-specific cytotoxicity in vaccinated animals. Whether these can be used in diabetes prevention needs to be carefully evaluated in animal models before use in future clinical assays.-Calvino-Sampedro, C., Gomez-Tourino, I., Cordero, O. J., Reche, P. A., Gomez-Perosanz, M., Sanchez-Trincado, J. L., Rodriguez, M. A., Sueiro, A. M., Vinuela, J. E., Calvino, R. V. Naturally presented HLA class I-restricted epitopes from the neurotrophic factor S100-beta are targets of the autoimmune response in type 1 diabetes

Stability analysis and quasinormal modes of Reissner Nordstr{\o}m Space-time via Lyapunov exponent

We explicitly derive the proper time $(\tau)$ principal Lyapunov exponent ($\lambda_{p}$) and coordinate time ($t$) principal Lyapunov exponent ($\lambda_{c}$) for Reissner Nordstr{\o}m (RN) black hole (BH) . We also compute their ratio. For RN space-time, it is shown that the ratio is $\frac{\lambda_{p}}{\lambda_{c}}=\frac{r_{0}}{\sqrt{r_{0}^2-3Mr_{0}+2Q^2}}$ for time-like circular geodesics and for Schwarzschild BH it is $\frac{\lambda_{p}}{\lambda_{c}}=\frac{\sqrt{r_{0}}}{\sqrt{r_{0}-3M}}$. We further show that their ratio $\frac{\lambda_{p}}{\lambda_{c}}$ may vary from orbit to orbit. For instance, Schwarzschild BH at innermost stable circular orbit(ISCO), the ratio is $\frac{\lambda_{p}}{\lambda_{c}}\mid_{r_{ISCO}=6M}=\sqrt{2}$ and at marginally bound circular orbit (MBCO) the ratio is calculated to be $\frac{\lambda_{p}}{\lambda_{c}}\mid_{r_{mb}=4M}=2$. Similarly, for extremal RN BH the ratio at ISCO is $\frac{\lambda_{p}}{\lambda_{c}}\mid_{r_{ISCO}=4M}=\frac{2\sqrt{2}}{\sqrt{3}}$. We also further analyse the geodesic stability via this exponent. By evaluating the Lyapunov exponent, it is shown that in the eikonal limit , the real and imaginary parts of the quasi-normal modes of RN BH is given by the frequency and instability time scale of the unstable null circular geodesics.Comment: Accepted in Pramana, 07/09/201