Information Revolution: How INFORMATION MANAGEMENT is CHANGING the Lives of Rural People

This book is about successes. It is about how certain individuals or organizations are changing the way communication works, how they are making a difference to the lives and livelihoods of rural people. We have chosen as examples about 40 organizations in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Given time, we could have covered more: if your organization is not covered, please don’t feel slighted. Paul Mundy; Jacques SultanThis book is about successes. It is about how certain individuals or organizations are changing the way communication works, how they are making a difference to the lives and livelihoods of rural people..

Tanzania: Logistic System Capacity and Site Readiness to expand PMTCT and Initiate ART

In September 2003, JSI/DELIVER conducted an assessment of the logistics system capacity and individual site readiness to provide PMTCT services and to initiate ART at selected public sector health facilities in Tanzania. The purpose of the assessment was to support government expansion of PMTCT from five pilot sites to 28 health facilities in five regions by addressing the logistics system constraints to ensuring a reliable and uninterrupted supply of the broad range of commodities required for PMTCT and ART, and by conducting an evaluation of the overall readiness of each site to provide these services. Several private providers, nongovernmental and faith-based organizations, and employer-based programs were included in the assessment to learn about PMTCT and ART in these sectors and to identify opportunities for public/private sector collaboration in expanding service delivery and ensuring effective commodity distribution. In addition, interviews with pharmaceutical company representatives and visits to retail pharmacies provided an overview of current commercial sector distribution of ARV drugs in Tanzania. The main findings showed an urgent need to build logistics management capacity within the central level MOH to—Coordinate multiple sources of rapidly increasing funding for commodity procurement. Strengthen commodity-forecasting capacity. Align procurement cycles and supplier lead times with the in-country supply pipeline and demand for services. At the facility level, assessment findings showed that individual site readiness is heavily constrained by the availability and quality of human resources; laboratory infrastructure and capacity; and lack of an established inventory control system and standardized pharmacy management procedures

Unmanned aerial vehicle based tree canopy characteristics measurement for precision spray applications

The critical components for applying the correct amount of agrochemicals are fruit tree characteristics such as canopy height, canopy volume, and canopy coverage. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based tree canopy characteristics measurement system was developed using image processing approaches. The UAV captured images using a high-resolution red-green-blue (RGB) camera. A digital surface model (DSM) and a digital terrain model (DTM) were generated from the captured images. A tree canopy height map was generated from the subtraction of DSM and DTM. A total of 24 apple trees were randomly targeted to measure the canopy characteristics. Region of interest (ROI) was generated across the boundary of each targeted tree. The height of all pixels within each ROI was computed separately. The pixel with maximum height was considered as the height of the respective tree. For computing canopy volume, the sum of all pixel heights from individual ROI was multiplied by the square of ground sample distance (GSD) of 5.69 mm·pixel−1. A segmentation method was employed to calculate the canopy coverage of the individual trees. The segmented canopy pixel area was divided by the total pixel area within the ROI. The results showed an average relative error of 0.2 m(6.64%) while comparing automatically measured tree height with ground measurements. For tree canopy volume, a mean absolute error of 0.25 m3 and a root mean square error of 0.33 m3 were achieved. The study estimated the possible agrochemical requirement for spraying the fruit trees, ranging from 0.1 to 0.32 l based on tree canopy volumes. The overall investigations suggest that the UAV-based tree canopy characteristics measurements could be a potential tool to calculate the pesticide requirement for precision spraying applications in tree fruit orchards

A new approach for two-terminal electronic memory devices - Storing information on silicon nanowires

open access articleThe work described in this paper focuses on the utilisation of silicon nanowires as the information storage element in flash-type memory devices. Silicon nanostructures have attracted attention due to interesting electrical and optical properties, and their potential integration into electronic devices. A detailed investigation of the suitability of silicon nanowires as the charge storage medium in two-terminal non-volatile memory devices are presented in this report. The deposition of the silicon nanostructures was carried out at low temperatures (less than 400 °C) using a previously developed a novel method within our research group. Two-terminal non-volatile (2TNV) memory devices and metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) structures containing the silicon nanowires were fabricated and an in-depth study of their characteristics was carried out using current-voltage and capacitancetechniques

Market Integration Shape Organic Farmers’ Organisation

Increasing consumption of organic products in globalised food chains will require the involvement of thousands more smallholder farmers in many regions of the world. A study of Egypt, China and Uganda identified the three key factors of property rights regimes, cultural differences and social organisation as determents of the supply chain organization and farmers’ degree of direct integration in the export markets. Patterns are emerging where smallholder farmers are being socially and economically linked to larger farmers who may do some processing before the raw materials are handed over to the contracting company. Where transactions costs are high, local communities may develop and contract out the land directly to exporting companies who farm using employees. Four organisational patterns are identified which each leads to different types of livelihood benefits for the producers; preliminary results indicate that income and a reliable market access is the dominant benefits

Treatment of Sigmoid Volvulus by Deflation Versus Surgery: A Single Site Report

Background: Although very common in developing regions like Africa, sigmoid volvulus (SV) has a much lower incidence in the West. There is a dearth of literature on the treatment of SV in countries with limited resources. This paper reports study results using a cohort of 200 SV patients in a low-income developing country. Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify the characteristics associated with length of hospital stay (LOS) in the largest sample of sigmoid volvulus patients drawn from a single site within a single year and to examine the effects of treatment complications and previous attacks of SV on LOS. Methods: Data from charts for a retrospective sample of 200 adult SV patients hospitalized in 2012 at Gondar University Hospital, Ethiopia, were statistically analyzed to determine LOS by patient characteristics and the effects of complications on LOS. Results: Among the 200 patients diagnosed with SV, the ratio of deflation to surgery was almost 2:1 ratio to surgery. The total patient days in the study were 856 days. Patients with LOS \u3e 5 days accounted for 79% of patient days. Patients with a maximum LOS of 30 days accounted for 10.5% of total patient days. The shortest LOS (1.36 days) was among patients who underwent sigmoidoscopic decompression only and had no treatment complications. Complications associated with surgery accounted for 10.6 to 17.0 LOS days. Age, gender, gangrene and previous attacks were not significantly associated with surgery. Among the study patients, there were only five cases of failed deflation followed by surgery. All but five of the patients with gangrene had surgery. Shock, stroke, abscess, sepsis and surgery significantly prolonged LOS. Patients (66%) had not experienced previous attacks. SV affected middle aged men more than the elderly men. Females had an excess relative risk (RR=1.62) for surgery but was not statistically significant due to the small number of females (n=15) in the study. Conclusion: Deflation was an effective treatment modality, while surgery was performed only when indicated and only on the critical cases. Patients who are treated with deflation may avoid surgery which can be associated with additional complications. Avoidance of surgery and complications can substantially reduce LOS with subsequent and system costs

Multiple Simultaneous Threats Detection in Distributed Systems

This research examines a simultaneous threats detection system for distributed systems that uses a hybrid identification fusion model. This hybrid model is comprised of mathematical and statistical data fusion engines: Dempster-Shafer, Extended Dempster-Shafer, and Generalised Evidential Processing (GEP). The simultaneous threats detection system produced threat detection rates of 56% using Dempster-Shafer whilst Extended Dempster-Shafer and Generalised Evidential Processing (GEP) achieved 80% and 95% threat detection rate. Thus, the simultaneous threats detection system can improve threat detection rates by 39% (i.e. 95% - 56%) simply by adopting a more effective hybrid fusion model. In terms of efficiency and performance, the comparison of the three inference engines of the simultaneous threats detection system showed that Generalised Evidential Processing is a better data fusion model than Dempster-Shafer or Extended Dempster-Shafer. In addition, the set cover packing technique was used as a middle-tier data fusion tool to determine the reduced size groups of the threat data. Set cover provided significant improvement and reduced the threat population from 2,272 to 295. This helped to minimise the complexity of evidential processing, and therefore reduced the cost and time taken to determine the combined probability mass of the multiple simultaneous threats detection system. This technique is particularly relevant to online and internet-dependent applications, including portals

Cyclotron production of high–specific activity 55Co and in vivo evaluation of the stability of 55Co metal-chelate-peptide complexes

This work describes the production of high–specific activity 55 Co and the evaluation of the stability of 55 Co-metal-chelate-peptide complexes in vivo. 55 Co was produced via the 58 Ni(p,α) 55 Co reaction and purified using anion exchange chromatography with an average recovery of 92% and an average specific activity of 1.96 GBq/μmol. 55 Co-DO3A and 55 Co-NO2A peptide complexes were radiolabeled at 3.7 MBq/μg and injected into HCT-116 tumor xenografted mice. Positron emission tomography (PET) and biodistribution studies were performed at 24 and 48 hours postinjection and compared to those of 55 CoCl 2 . Both 55 Co-metal-chelate complexes demonstrated good in vivo stability by reducing the radiotracers’ uptake in the liver by sixfold at 24 hours with ˜ 1% ID/g and at 48 hours with ˜ 0.5% ID/g and reducing uptake in the heart by fourfold at 24 hours with ˜ 0.7% ID/g and sevenfold at 48 hours with ˜ 0.35% ID/g. These results support the use of 55 Co as a promising new radiotracer for PET imaging of cancer and other diseases