"From Unpaid to Paid Care Work--The Macroeconomic Implications of HIV and AIDS on Women's Time-tax Burdens"

This paper considers public employment guarantee programs in the context of South Africa as a means to address the nexus of poverty, unemployment, and unpaid work burdens--all factors exacerbated by HIV/AIDS. It further discusses the need for genderinformed public job creation in areas that mitigate the "time-tax" burdens of women, and examines a South African initiative to address social sector service delivery deficits within the government's Expanded Public Works Programme. The authors highlight the need for well-designed employment guarantee programs--specifically, programs centered on community and home-based care--as a potential way to help offset the destabilizing effects of HIV/AIDS and endemic poverty. The paper concludes with results from macroeconomic simulations of such a program, using a social accounting matrix framework, and sets out implications for both participants and policymakers.

How does the Smaller Alignment Index (SALI) distinguish order from chaos?

The ability of the Smaller Alignment Index (SALI) to distinguish chaotic from ordered motion, has been demonstrated recently in several publications.\cite{Sk01,GRACM} Basically it is observed that in chaotic regions the SALI goes to zero very rapidly, while it fluctuates around a nonzero value in ordered regions. In this paper, we make a first step forward explaining these results by studying in detail the evolution of small deviations from regular orbits lying on the invariant tori of an {\bf integrable} 2D Hamiltonian system. We show that, in general, any two initial deviation vectors will eventually fall on the ``tangent space'' of the torus, pointing in different directions due to the different dynamics of the 2 integrals of motion, which means that the SALI (or the smaller angle between these vectors) will oscillate away from zero for all time.Comment: To appear in Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplemen

Improving Availability of Mobile Code Systems by Decoupling Interaction from Mobility

Resource availability in pervasive environments is restricted by many either mobility- and/or security-related factors. Multi-agent systems deployed in such environments would have to rely on a potentially low number of hosts allowing and supporting the arrival and execution of foreign code. To address this issue, this paper proposes to decouple interaction of executing programs and services from the actual software mobility pattern used to realize this interaction. The proposed system (MoDeS - Mobility Decision System) dynamically decides on the best mobility method to implement a series of software interactions while satisfying the appropriate software constraints. The system takes as input an interaction plan and produces the corresponding mobility plan. A series of simulations were performed on single- and multi-hop scenarios which showed that MoDeS can significantly increase the availability of software interactions even in highly constraint environments.</p

Predictors of Wound Healing Following Revascularization for Chronic Limb-Threatening Ischemia

Objectives: After surgical or endovascular revascularization, some ischemic lesions will not heal, while some others will heal at a variable period of time from the intervention, indicating a multifactorial interaction between local and systematic "wound healing-promoting" factors. Our objective was to identify predictors of wound healing following revascularization for chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI). Methods: A literature review was performed to identify published research concerning clinical, biochemical, and noninvasive methods as predictors of wound healing time and wound-free period after surgical and endovascular revascularization for CLTI. Results: Our review indicated that potential predictors included local wound factors, wound depth, patient's comorbidities, medications, smoking and alcohol abuse, poor vessel runoff, and direct versus indirect revascularization. Among the clinical biomarkers, platelet-derived growth factor, transforming growth factor beta, basic fibroblast growth factor, tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin (IL) 1, and IL-6 have been proposed as potential predictors. Furthermore, the potential of noninvasive microcirculation assessment to predict proper wound healing has been the topic of extensive investigation. Among the novel methods, transcutaneous measurement of oxygen partial pressure, skin perfusion pressure, oxygen-to-see method, indocyanine green fluorescence imaging, and multispectral optoacoustic tomography have shown promising results. Conclusions: The risk factor profile of an ischemic lesion in the lower extremities with a delayed/failed healing response, following a successful revascularization, is not fully clarified. Although many predictors have been assessed so far, further research needs to be done to identify the optimal clinical and biochemical indices and the noninvasive technique assessing the microcirculation that is associated with complete wound healing.Peer reviewe