SAS2

Owners of livestock in Honduras have tried to organize themselves to negotiate milk prices, develop regional and export markets for their products, and address technical problems that arise. These attempts to organize have had uneven results. This Social Analysis Systems (SAS) case study examines member assessment of the milk producer’s co-op to arrive at a consensus that would help ensure that newer members of the organization appreciate the history and struggles of older members. This would encourage a sense of belonging among all members, enabling it to move forward in initiating new negotiations

Mojave Applied Ecology Notes Summer 2008

Soil climate project, rare plant monitoring, JFS update, granivory and Sahara mustar

Auditing Nicaragua’s anti-corruption struggle, 1998 to 2009

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Four social audits in 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2009 identified actions that Nicaragua could take to reduce corruption and public perception in primary health care and other key services.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In a 71-cluster sample, weighted according to the 1995 census and stratified by geographic region and settlement type, we audited the same five public services: health centres and health posts, public primary schools, municipal government, transit police and the courts. Some 6,000 households answered questions about perception and personal experience of unofficial and involuntary payments, payments without obtaining receipts or to the wrong person, and payments "to facilitate" services in municipal offices or courts. Additional questions covered complaints about corruption and confidence in the country's anti-corruption struggle. Logistic regression analyses helped clarify local variations and explanatory variables. Feedback to participants and the services at both national and local levels followed each social audit.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Users' experience of corruption in health services, education and municipal government decreased. The wider population's perception of corruption in these sectors decreased also, but not as quickly. Progress among traffic police faltered between 2006 and 2009 and public perception of police corruption ticked upwards in parallel with drivers' experience. Users' experience of corruption in the courts worsened over the study period -- with the possible exception of Managua between 2006 and 2009 -- but public perception of judicial corruption, after peaking in 2003, declined from then on. Confidence in the anti-corruption struggle grew from 50% to 60% between 2003 and 2009. Never more than 8% of respondents registered complaints about corruption.</p> <p>Factors associated with public perception of corruption were: personal experience of corruption, quality of the service itself, and the perception that municipal government takes community opinion into account and keeps people informed about how it uses public funds.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Lowering citizens' perception of corruption in public services depends on reducing their experience of it, on improving service quality and access and -- perhaps most importantly -- on making citizens feel they are well-informed participants in the work of government.</p

Risk factors for adverse events induced by immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer:a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can cause serious immune-related adverse events (irAEs). This study aimed to identify risk factors for all types of irAEs induced by ICIs in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), by systematic review and meta-analyses. METHODS: A systematic search was performed in Pubmed, Embase and Web of Science by two independent reviewers. Studies were selected that included patients with NSCLC and evaluated characteristics of patients with and without irAEs induced by ICIs. Quality and risk of bias of the selected studies were assessed. Random effects meta-analyses were conducted to estimate pooled odds ratios (ORs) for risk factors of developing all type of irAEs, and separately for pneumonitis, interstitial lung disease and severe irAEs. With the objective of exploring sources of heterogeneity, stratified analyses were performed by quality and region. RESULTS: 25 studies met the inclusion criteria. In total, the data of 6696 patients were pooled. 33 different risk factors for irAEs were reported. irAEs of interest were reported for 1653 (25%) of the patients. Risk factors related to the development of irAEs were: C-reactive protein, neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR), use of PD-1 inhibitor, high PD-L1 expression, an active or former smoking status, ground glass attenuation, and a better treatment response. CONCLUSION: The identified risk factors for the development of these irAEs are mostly related to the alteration of the immune system, proinflammatory states and loss of immunological self-tolerance. Patients identified as having a higher risk for irAEs should be monitored more closely

The Degenerate Parametric Oscillator and Ince's Equation

We construct Green's function for the quantum degenerate parametric oscillator in terms of standard solutions of Ince's equation in a framework of a general approach to harmonic oscillators. Exact time-dependent wave functions and their connections with dynamical invariants and SU(1,1) group are also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

Mojave Applied Ecology Notes Spring 2009

California desert managers group, vegetation monitoring in Death Valley, undergraduate research symposium at UNLV, response of Sahara mustard to water and disturbance, JFS updat

Depresión y ansiedad en pacientes hospitalizados en el servicio de Medicina Interna del Hospital Escuela Universitario de Honduras

Antecedentes y objetivo: La hospitalización no siempre es bien asimilada por los pacientes, generan-do síntomas de depresión y ansiedad. Considerando esto, el presente estudio analizó la prevalencia de síntomas de depresión y ansiedad, y su relación, en pacientes del servicio de Medicina Interna del Hospital Escuela Universitario (HEU), en Honduras. Además, se compararon los puntajes de ansiedad y depresión en base al sexo, presencia de hábitos tóxicos y experiencias previas de hospitalización de los informantes. Materiales y métodos: La investigación se enmarcó en un enfoque cuantitativo, no experimental, de corte trasversal. Tomando una muestra de 92 pacientes de las salas de Medicina Interna del HEU. La información se recolectó por medio del Cuestionario de Salud del Paciente-9 (PHQ-9), la Escala del Trastorno de Ansiedad Generalizada-7 (GAD-7) y una ficha de datos sociodemográficos. Resultados: El 67.4% de los pacientes presentó algún grado de sintomatología depresiva, siendo prevalentes los síntomas moderados (29.3%). El 51.1% de los pacientes presentaba ansiedad, predo-minando los síntomas leves (29.3%). Existe relación moderada, pero significativa, entre la depresión y la ansiedad de los evaluados. No se encontró diferencia significativa en los puntajes de depresión y ansiedad según el sexo del informante, la presencia de hábitos tóxicos o las experiencias previas de hospitalización. Conclusiones: Es necesario que los entes de salud pública realicen abordajes integra-les, en donde no sólo se enfatice el componente fisiológico, sino, además, el bienestar psicológico en pacientes no-psiquiátricos hospitalizadosBackground and purpose: Hospitalization is not always well assimilated by individuals, producing anxiety and depression. However, these psychological reactions in hospitalized patients may be unde-restimated and not considered in treatment or recuperation processes. Considering this, the purpose of this study was to analyze the dynamic between depression and anxiety in patients of the Internal Medicine department of the Hospital Escuela Universitario (HEU), in Honduras. Additionally, anxie-ty and depression scores were compared regarding the respondent’s sex, toxic habits, and previous hospitalizations. Materials and methods: A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional research method was used, taking a simple random sample of 92 patients from the Internal Medicine rooms of the HEU. Anxiety was measured through the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 Questionnaire (GAD-7) and depression was measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire- 9 (PHQ-9), demographic data was also collected by the researchers. Results: 67.4% of the patients presented some degree of depressive symptoms, particularly at a moderate level (29.3%). On the other hand, 51.1% of the patients presen-ted anxiety -at some level- with moderate symptoms being the most predominant (29.3%). Results suggest a moderate significant statistic relationship between depression and anxiety scores. No statis-tically significant difference was found in depression and anxiety scores regarding the respondent’s sex, presence of toxic habits or history of previous hospitalizations. Conclusions: Public health services should promote holistic approaches which not only rely on a physiological perspective, but also on the psychological wellbeing of non-psychiatric hospitalized patient

The Minimum-Uncertainty Squeezed States for for Atoms and Photons in a Cavity

We describe a six-parameter family of the minimum-uncertainty squeezed states for the harmonic oscillator in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. They are derived by the action of corresponding maximal kinematical invariance group on the standard ground state solution. We show that the product of the variances attains the required minimum value 1/4 only at the instances that one variance is a minimum and the other is a maximum, when the squeezing of one of the variances occurs. The generalized coherent states are explicitly constructed and their Wigner function is studied. The overlap coefficients between the squeezed, or generalized harmonic, and the Fock states are explicitly evaluated in terms of hypergeometric functions. The corresponding photons statistics are discussed and some applications to quantum optics, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and superfocusing in channeling scattering are mentioned. Explicit solutions of the Heisenberg equations for radiation field operators with squeezing are found.Comment: 27 pages, no figures, 174 references J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys., Special Issue celebrating the 20th anniversary of quantum state engineering (R. Blatt, A. Lvovsky, and G. Milburn, Guest Editors), May 201