Business Training for Microfinance Clients: How it Matters and for Whom?

We measure the impact of a business training program for female microentrepreneur clients of a group banking program in Peru. Using the credit with education model, we assigned clients randomly to either treatment or control groups. Treatment groups received thirty to sixty minute entrepreneurship training sessions during their normal weekly group banking meeting. These lasted between one to two years. Control groups remained as they were before, meeting weekly with the group banking program solely for making loan and savings payments. We find that intention to treat (ITT) led to higher repayment and client retention rates for the microfinance institution, improved business knowledge, and practices. More importantly, average business sales revenues also increase while revenues fluctuations were reduced. In addition, we find significant heterogeneity in the exposure of clients within the treatment group. Treatment on the treated (TOT) estimates, obtained using ITT as instrumental variable, show substantially larger effects.Microfinance, business training, adult education

On the impact of dimension-eight SMEFT operators on Higgs measurements

Using the production of a Higgs boson in association with a $W$ boson as a test case, we assess the impact of dimension-8 operators within the context of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory. Dimension-8--SM-interference and dimension-6-squared terms appear at the same order in an expansion in $1/\Lambda$, hence dimension-8 effects can be treated as a systematic uncertainty on the new physics inferred from analyses using dimension-6 operators alone. To study the phenomenological consequences of dimension-8 operators, one must first determine the complete set of operators that can contribute to a given process. We accomplish this through a combination of Hilbert series methods, which yield the number of invariants and their field content, and a step-by-step recipe to convert the Hilbert series output into a phenomenologically useful format. The recipe we provide is general and applies to any other process within the dimension $\le 8$ Standard Model Effective Theory. We quantify the effects of dimension-8 by turning on one dimension-6 operator at a time and setting all dimension-8 operator coefficients to the same magnitude. Under this procedure and given the current accuracy on $\sigma(pp \to h\,W^+)$, we find the effect of dimension-8 operators on the inferred new physics scale to be small, $\mathcal O(\text{few}\,\%)$, with some variation depending on the relative signs of the dimension-8 coefficients and on which dimension-6 operator is considered. The impact of the dimension-8 terms grows as $\sigma(pp \to h\,W^+)$ is measured more accurately or (more significantly) in high-mass kinematic regions. We provide a FeynRules implementation of our operator set to be used for further more detailed analyses.Comment: More operator coefficient choices explored, bugs in FeynRules implementation correcte

Neurofeedback Treatment for Traumatized Refugees - A Pilot Study

The aim of this quasi-experimental pilot study was to examine if neurofeedback is associated with a reduction in some of the common symptoms suffered by traumatized refugees who have been exposed to war and/or torture. Furthermore, an ambition was to develop and test methods for conducting research with this group. Twenty-one individuals were divided into either a treatment-group (n=12) or a non-equivalent control-group (n=9). No attrition occurred in the treatment-group, whereas 2 individuals dropped out of the control-group. The treatment consisted of 8-10 sessions of neurofeedback, over a time period of 10-15 weeks. Five instruments were used (the PTSD Checklist: Civilian Version, the Hopkins Symptom Checklist -25, the Symptom Checklist: Subscale Somatization and WHO-5 – Wellbeing Index and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index) to measure difference in symptom severity. The main analysis of the data was conducted using mixed-design MANOVA and ANOVA. The results indicated a significant improvement seen over time for the treatment-group when compared to a non-equivalent control-group, on 4 of the 5 instruments. Neurofeedback appears to be a promising treatment for individuals with PTSD, but more research needs to be conducted in a controlled setting before any claims can be made concerning efficacy. This study was conducted in cooperation with the Red Cross Center for Victims of War and Torture in Malmö, Sweden

Health and social care professionals’ attitudes to interprofessional working and interprofessional education:A literature review

The healthcare setting is a rich learning environment for students to experience interprofessional working (IPW) and interprofessional education (IPE). However, opportunities for IPE are limited, and student experiences of effective IPW are varied. This raises the question of how IPW and IPE are valued by health or social care professionals. A search of the literature was carried out to identify studies of health and social care staff attitudes to IPW and IPE. This review provides a summary of the main factors found to influence attitudes and the strengths and limitations of these studies. Professional background and prior IPE experience were identified as the influencing factors for which there is most evidence. The main limitations of the studies accessed included a focus on the value of IPE for staff, as opposed to students, and a limited number of studies considering the relationship between attitudes to IPW and the value placed on IPE. It is important that health and social care professionals lead by example by working collaboratively and providing students with opportunities for IPE. Identifying the variables influencing attitudes to IPW and IPE may assist in improving IPW and experiences of IPE for students learning in the healthcare setting.PostprintPeer reviewe

Developing a structured approach to furthering integrated care for the population of the Midland Health Board, Republic of Ireland: the ICON project / Susan Tucker, Veronica Larkin and Martina Martin

MHB / 200

Syndesmis patagonica n. sp. (Rhabdocoela: Umagillidae) from the sea urchin Arbacia dufresnii (Echinodermata: Echinoidea) in Patagonia, Argentina

The umagillid Syndesmis patagonica n. sp. is described from the intestinal tract of the sea urchin Arbacia dufresnii, which represents a new host record for the genus. The hosts were collected from the coast of Patagonia (Argentina), and S. patagonica n. sp. is the first species of Syndesmis reported from South America. Syndesmis patagonica n. sp. can be distinguished from all other species in the genus by the possession of a stylet that is extremely short (less than 50 µm long), and a combination of other characters including the position of the testes, body size, body color and host. An updated overview of the distribution of all species of Syndesmis is also presented.Fil: Brogger, Martin Ignacio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; ArgentinaFil: Ivanov, Veronica Adriana. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Cs.exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental. Laboratorio de Helmintologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

abYpap: Improvements to the Prediction of Antibody V H/V L Packing Using Gradient Boosted Regression

The Fv region of the antibody (comprising VH and VL domains) is the area responsible for target binding and thus the antibody’s specificity. The orientation, or packing, of these two domains relative to each other influences the topography of the Fv region, and therefore can influence the antibody’s binding affinity. We present abYpap, an improved method for predicting the packing angle between the VH and VL domains. With the large data set now available, we were able to expand greatly the number of features that could be used compared with our previous work. The machine-learning model was tuned for improved performance using 37 selected residues (previously 13) and also by including the lengths of the most variable ‘complementarity determining regions’ (CDR-L1, CDR-L2, and CDR-H3). Our method shows large improvements from the previous version, and also against other modelling approaches, when predicting the packing angle