Disentangling the complex association between female genital cutting and HIV among Kenyan women

Female genital cutting (FGC) is a widespread cultural practice in Africa and the Middle East, with a number of potential adverse health consequences for women. It was hypothesised by Kun (1997) that FGC increases the risk of HIV transmission through a number of different mechanisms. Using the 2003 data from the Kenyan Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), this study investigates the potential association between FGC and HIV. The 2003 KDHS provides a unique opportunity to link the HIV test results with a large number of demographic, social, economic and behavioural characteristics of women, including women’s FGC status. It is hypothesised that FGC increases the risk of HIV infection if HIV/AIDS is present in the community. A multilevel binary logistic regression technique is used to model the HIV status of women, controlling for selected individual characteristics of women and interaction effects. The results demonstrate evidence of a statistically significant association between FGC and HIV, after controlling for the hierarchical structure of the data, potential confounding factors, and interaction effects. The results show that women who had had FGC and a younger or the same age first union partner have higher odds of being HIV positive than women with a younger or same age first union partner but without FGC; whereas women who had had FGC and an older first union partner have lower odds of being HIV positive than women with an older first union partner but without FGC. The findings suggest the behavioural pathway of association between FGC and HIV as well as an underlying complex interplay of bio-behavioural and social variables being important in disentangling the association between FGC and HIV

Fostering local adaptation platforms for agriculture: How context specific climate-smart villages (CSVs) can relate to local adaptation efforts.

Local adaptation platforms help empower sub-national and local government players, civil society organizations, and public-private partnerships in demonstrating the validity of agro-ecology-specific solutions to current and future climate change impacts. This brief discusses how Climate-Smart Villages, good examples of local adaptation platform, have served as centers for discovery, adaptation, learning, and sharing of climate-smart agriculture in local communities

Pathways to Attaining a Food Secure Philippines through a Competitive and Climate-Resilient Agri-Fisheries Sector

This document highlights the key messages drawn from climate adaptation efforts and events done with Philippines’ Department of Agriculture-Regional Field Offices (DA-RFOs) across the country. This brief, developed for the Climate Change Consciousness Week, offers DA a synthesis of lessons from the Adaptation and Mitigation Initiative in Agriculture (AMIA) village experience as a bankable model for establishing context specific, local adaptation platforms for developing and disseminating CRA technologies and processes. This brief also offers valuable policy insights for the Philippines’ National Adaptation Plan

The AMIA Experience: Supporting local actions for Climate Resilient Agriculture

The brief tackles how the Adaptation and Mitigation Initiative in Agriculture (AMIA) Program of the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture (DA) served as a platform for supporting local actions for climate resilient agriculture. The document discusses a number of key lessons emerging from the AMIA Village experience on the importance of local platforms for adaptation in the form of Climate-Smart Villages towards overall resilience building of the sector

Validation of the International Code Compliant Calculator (IC3) v3.10 Using the RESNET Verification Procedures

This report presents results from the testing and validation of the Energy Systems Laboratory’s web-based software tool - International Code Compliance Calculator (IC3), v3.10, using the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) verification procedures - RESNET Publication No. 07-003. It is the continuation of the previous 2009 RESNET validation report of IC3 v3.3. The IC3 software is a web-based tool to demonstrate compliance of single and multifamily residences with the Texas Building Energy Performance Standards (TBEPS) (i.e., the 2000 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) with the 2001 Supplement, the 2006 National Appliance Energy Conservation Act (NAECA) revisions, and the 2009 IECC). The user-interface of IC3 was designed to ensure simple and quick input through reduced user input fields and present a simplified output by only reporting the codecompliance as percent above or below code for locations in Texas. The RESNET verification procedure is a set of verification tests that are required for RESNET accreditation of IECC performance compliance software tools. It was developed to ensure the accuracy and comparability of software to be used for verification of tax credits, home energy ratings, and compliance with the IECC. The verification procedure applies to the 2004 supplement of the IECC and to the 2006 IECC. The home configurations and operating conditions for the Standard Reference Home and Rated Home are required to be adopted from RESNET (2007) or Section 404 of the IECC, supplemented by the 2006 Mortgage Industry National Home Energy Rating System Standards. To test the IC3 using the RESNET verification test suite, a special version of the Desktop DOE-2 Processor (DDP) spreadsheet was developed since the test runs for RESNET accreditation cannot be performed using the user interface of web-based IC3. The DDP spreadsheet is the ESL’s internal desktop version that utilizes the same DOE- 2 simulation procedures as the web-based IC3. The DDP spreadsheet has the flexibility to calculate compliance with other codes by auto-generating the corresponding standard reference designs, incorporates additional weather locations, and reports the simulation results in a pre-specified manner as well as modification of selected simulation inputs, which are not available in the user interface of IC3. The DDP spreadsheet can be uploaded to the ESL’s web server for processing, and the results can be downloaded after the processing to view the simulation results. The RESNET verification procedure consists of the five test suites: 1) Tier one of the HERS BESTEST; 2) IECC Code Reference Home auto-generation tests; 3) HVAC tests; 4) Duct distribution system efficiency tests; and 5) Hot water system performance tests. The specifications and acceptance criteria of each test suite and the test results of IC3 are presented in Section 2.1 to 2.5. The results show that IC3 is a code-compliant simulation program that conforms to the acceptance criteria for each test suite

Methodology for Calculating Cooling and Heating Energy-Imput-Ratio (EIR) From the Rated Seasonal Performance Efficiency (SEER or HSPF)

This report provides the recommendations to calculate cooling and heating energy-input-ratio (EIR) for DOE-2 simulations excluding indoor fan energy, from the rated cooling and heating seasonal performance efficiency (i.e., SEER or HSPF) that does include indoor fan energy1 to resolve two issues

Scanning-gate microscopy of semiconductor nanostructures: an overview

This paper presents an overview of scanning-gate microscopy applied to the imaging of electron transport through buried semiconductor nanostructures. After a brief description of the technique and of its possible artifacts, we give a summary of some of its most instructive achievements found in the literature and we present an updated review of our own research. It focuses on the imaging of GaInAs-based quantum rings both in the low magnetic field Aharonov-Bohm regime and in the high-field quantum Hall regime. In all of the given examples, we emphasize how a local-probe approach is able to shed new, or complementary, light on transport phenomena which are usually studied by means of macroscopic conductance measurements.Comment: Invited talk by SH at 39th "Jaszowiec" International School and Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors, Krynica-Zdroj, Poland, June 201

Transport inefficiency in branched-out mesoscopic networks: An analog of the Braess paradox

We present evidence for a counter-intuitive behavior of semiconductor mesoscopic networks that is the analog of the Braess paradox encountered in classical networks. A numerical simulation of quantum transport in a two-branch mesoscopic network reveals that adding a third branch can paradoxically induce transport inefficiency that manifests itself in a sizable conductance drop of the network. A scanning-probe experiment using a biased tip to modulate the transmission of one branch in the network reveals the occurrence of this paradox by mapping the conductance variation as a function of the tip voltage and position.Comment: 2nd version with minor stylistic corrections. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett.: Editorially approved for publication 6 January 201