Fertility decline in North-Central Namibia

This study examines fertility decline in North-Central Namibia in the period 1960-2000. A Scandinavian-type parish-register system, established in the beginning of 20th Century and still in use, provided register-based data for fertility analysis. Fertility decline began in 1980, was rapid in the 1980s, levelled off in the early 1990s, started again in 1994 and continued until the year 2000. Fertility declined in every age group, except among the 15-19 year olds, whose fertility increased. Cohort fertility started to decline among the 1940-44 birth cohort. During the 1980s, fertility decline was associated with increasing age at first marriage and declining marital fertility, connected to e.g. the War of Independence. During the 1990s, an increase in both the use of contraceptives and HIV-prevalence contributed to the fertility decline.AIDS/HIV, cohort fertility, contraception, fertility decline, Namibia, parish registers, period fertility, Sub-Saharan Africa

Advanced simulation code for alpha spectrometry

A Monte Carlo code, known as AASI, is developed for simulating energy spectra in alpha spectrometry. The code documented here is a comprehensive package where all the major processes affecting the spectrum are included. A unique feature of the code is its ability to take into account coincidences between the particles emitted from the source. Simulations and measurements highlight the importance of coincidences in high-resolution alpha spectrometry. To show the validity of the simulated results, comparisons with measurements and other simulation codes are presented.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Nucl. Instr. and Meth.

Diabeettisen retinopatian hoito lasermenetelmällä : Potilasohjeiden laatiminen

Tämä opinnäytetyö on tuotokseen painottuva ja sen tarkoituksena on tehdä kirjalliset potilasohjeet Tampereen kaupungin erikoissairaanhoidon korva- ja silmäyksikköön. Ohjeet käsittelevät diabeettisen retinopatian hoitoa lasermenetelmällä. Työelämätaho halusi kaksi ohjetta, joista toinen lähetetään ennen toimenpidettä kotiin. Toisen potilasohjeen henkilökunta antaa potilaalle toimenpiteen jälkeen. Opinnäytetyön tehtävänä on selvittää millainen on hyvä potilasohje, mitä on retinopatia ja millaista laserhoito on. Opinnäytetyössä käsitellään silmän rakennetta ja toimintaa, joka auttaa selventämään diabeettisen retinopatian vaikutuksia silmässä. Diabeettinen retinopatia esiintyy verkkokalvolla ja sitä on kolmenlaista tyyppiä: taustaretinopatia, makulopatia ja proliferatiivinen retinopatia. Hoitomuotona on pääasiassa laserhoito, joka hidastaa sairauden etenemistä. Teoriaosuudessa keskitytään myös potilasohjaukseen sekä potilasohjeen laatimiseen. Jokaisella potilaalla on oikeus saada tietoa sairaudestaan ja mahdollisuus päättää omasta hoidostaan. Ohjauksen ja potilasohjeen avulla voidaan turvata hoidon onnistuminen ja sen jatkuvuus. Potilasohjauksessa täytyy ottaa huomioon potilaan yksilöllisyys, joka vaikuttaa ohjauksen sisältöön. Kirjallinen potilasohje tukee suullista ohjausta. Sen tulee olla ymmärrettävä ja tarpeeksi lyhyt, jotta potilas jaksaa lukea sen läpi. Huomiota tulee kiinnittää potilasohjeessa myös ulkoasuun ja yleiskielellisyyteen. Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena on potilaan tiedon lisääminen retinopatiasta ja laserhoidosta potilasohjeen avulla. Potilasohjeiden avulla turvataan hyvä ja turvallinen hoito. Lisäksi ne ovat hoitajan tukena potilasohjauksessa. Potilasohjeiden avulla hoitohenkilökunta kiinnittää enemmän huomiota potilasohjaukseen.The purpose of this thesis was to make two written patient guides. The idea came from the eye disease clinic of the specialist medical care unit in Tampere, which needed two patient guides. The first one will be sent to patients before and the other one after a procedure. The patient guides explain how diabetic retinopathy can be treated by laser treatment. The plan here was to clarify what retinopathy and laser treatment are, and to find out what is included in a good patient guide. There are three kinds of retinopathy: background retinopathy, macular edema and proliferative retinopathy. Laser treatment is the main treatment method in retinopathy. By using laser treatment it is possible to slow down the progress of the disease. The following questions were also considered: how to guide patients and how to make a patient guide. Every patient has the right to know what kind of a disease this is and a chance to decide how to treat the disease. With guidance and using the patient guide, success and continuity of treatment can be achieved. A patient’s guidance must be determined individually. A written patient guide supports spoken patient guiding. A patient guide must be written in general purpose language and it has to be short enough so that the patient can read and understand its message. The goal of this thesis was to increase patients’ awareness of retinopathy and laser treatment with a patient guide that can be used to achieve good and safe care. It is hoped that the patient guide will help nursing staff pay more attention to patient guidance

Exploring Pharmaceutical Mass Customization

The core purpose of therapeutic pharmaceutical products is to induce responses to various diseases in patients and thereby bring societal value; however, unmet medical needs currently prevail. Conventional treatment of these products predominantly embraces a one-size-fits-all design and is manufactured in a mass-production context. A mass-production context is driven by economies of scale, however, a one-size-fits-all product design challenges the satisfaction of individual patient needs. Pharmaceutical product customization thus aims to satisfy individuals’ treatment needs and thereby improve their therapeutic outcome; however, this implies a high product variety and low-volume production environment which challenges the cost-effective production with current mass-production platforms.To address this challenge of achieving the cost-effective production of customized pharmaceutical products, this thesis explores a unified approach to cost-effective design, manufacturing and supply of customized pharmaceutical products. For this purpose, the mass customization principles of product modularization, process flexibility and postponement are adopted and adapted in a pharmaceutical production context.This thesis proposes methodologies to design and model customized pharmaceutical products and production systems in a unified manner. Furthermore, customized product designs are proposed using product modularization as a design strategy and reconfigured pharmaceutical supply chain (SC) archetypes using postponement as a strategy for the cost-effective design, manufacturing and supply. The findings suggest that an increased degree of modularization in the pharmaceutical product increases the patient benefit and thus improves therapeutic patient outcomes. In addition, current mass production platforms do not display the process flexibility required for the cost-effective production of customized pharmaceutical products. Moreover, with an increased degree of postponement, opportunities for reduced production costs in the SC emerge. Finally, the cost-effective customization of pharmaceutical products requires an integrated approach of product modularization and postponement. While modeling the production system, this thesis, however, considers an SC from the manufacturer to the pharmacy and patient assessing contemporary cost-effectiveness. Future research directions should investigate societal consequences from a wider, spatial and temporal, health care system perspective

Ortho-Fluorination of azophenols increases the mesophase stability of photoresponsive hydrogen-bonded liquid crystals

Photoresponsive liquid crystals (LCs) whose alignment can be controlled with UV-Visible light are appealing for a range of photonic applications. From the perspective of exploring the interplay between the light response and the self-assembly of the molecular components, supramolecular liquid crystals are of particular interest. They allow elaborating the structure-property relationships that govern the optical performance of LC materials by subtle variation of the chemical structures of the building blocks. Herein we present a supramolecular system comprising azophenols and stilbazoles as hydrogen-bond donors and acceptors, respectively, and show that ortho-fluorination of the azophenol dramatically increases the thermal stability of the LC phases, an important characteristics in their further utilization in photonics. The systems exhibit fast photoinduced order-disorder transitions, and rapid recovery of the liquid-crystalline state once the light irradiation is ceased, due to the photochemical properties of azophenols

Renormalization of the weak hadronic current in the nuclear medium

The renormalization of the weak charge-changing hadronic current as a function of the reaction energy release is studied at the nucleonic level. We have calculated the average quenching factors for each type of current (vector, axial vector and induced pseudoscalar). The obtained quenching in the axial vector part is, at zero momentum transfer, 19% for the sd shell and 23% in the fp shell. We have extended the calculations also to heavier systems such as $^{56}$Ni and $^{100}$Sn, where we obtain stronger quenchings, 44% and 59%, respectively. Gamow--Teller type transitions are discussed, along with the higher order matrix elements. The quenching factors are constant up to roughly 60 MeV momentum transfer. Therefore the use of energy-independent quenching factors in beta decay is justified. We also found that going beyond the zeroth and first order operators (in inverse nucleon mass) does not give any substantial contribution. The extracted renormalization to the ratio $C_P/C_A$ at q=100 MeV is -3.5%, -7.1$%, -28.6%, and +8.7% for mass 16, 40, 56, and 100, respectively.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure

Shell-Model Effective Operators for Muon Capture in ^{20}Ne

It has been proposed that the discrepancy between the partially-conserved axial-current prediction and the nuclear shell-model calculations of the ratio $C_P/C_A$ in the muon-capture reactions can be solved in the case of ^{28}Si by introducing effective transition operators. Recently there has been experimental interest in measuring the needed angular correlations also in ^{20}Ne. Inspired by this, we have performed a shell-model analysis employing effective transition operators in the shell-model formalism for the transition $^{20}Ne(0^+_{g.s.})+\mu^- \to ^{20}F(1^+; 1.057 MeV) + \nu_\mu$. Comparison of the calculated capture rates with existing data supports the use of effective transition operators. Based on our calculations, as soon as the experimental anisotropy data becomes available, the limits for the ratio $C_P/ C_A$ can be extracted.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures include

The Causes of Changes in Fertility in Northern Namibia: Ovamboland,1927–2010, and Kavango Region,1935–1979

The main aim of this study was to analyse fertility change in Ovamboland (North-Central Namibia) (1927–2010) and the Kavango region (North-East Namibia) (1935–1979) in Northern Namibia. According to the results, the fertility change was quite similar in both areas: fertility declined during the 1950s compared to the preceding period, 1935–1949. We can assume that the main reason for this early fertility decline was changes in the number of migrant workers (out-migration), which caused changes in both the marriage age and birth intervals. In both Ovamboland and in the Kavango region, fertility increased from the late 1950s into the early 1960s and the fertility transition started at the end of the 1970s. In both areas, the increase in fertility during thelate 1950s and early 1960s was probably due to the improved health situation. Fertility transition started at the end of the 1970s, but mortality had already started to decline before that. The main causes of this declining fertility at the end of the 1970s and during the 1980s were improved access to modern methods of contraception and probably also the increased level of education. As a result of the HIV epidemic, mortality increased in Ovamboland at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s. The declining fertility in the same period was probably linked to this increased mortality due to AIDS, while the increased fertility after 2008 is, in turn, probably linked to management of the HIV epidemic