Traditional patterns and modern dilemmas: designing locally appropriate health interventions

This paper describes the environmental, social, and economic conditions that contribute to the high rates of childhood mortality, morbidity, and malnutrition in Mbita Division, South Nyanza District. This information is used to recommend intervention programmes such as the introduction of improved weaning foods using local resources, improved sanitation and health care delivery, and implementation of community based health care. These interventions are intended specifically to address identified problems in a feasible and culturally appropriate manner. Ultimately, the solutions to community health problems are not technical, but lie with optimal use of human resources

Spanning forest polynomials and the transcendental weight of Feynman graphs

We give combinatorial criteria for predicting the transcendental weight of Feynman integrals of certain graphs in $\phi^4$ theory. By studying spanning forest polynomials, we obtain operations on graphs which are weight-preserving, and a list of subgraphs which induce a drop in the transcendental weight.Comment: 30 page

Biased Information Search in Homogeneous Groups: Confidence as a Moderator for the Effect of Anticipated Task Requirements

When searching for information, groups that are homogeneous regarding their members’ prediscussion decision preferences show a strong bias for information that supports rather than conflicts with the prevailing opinion (confirmation bias). The present research examined whether homogeneous groups blindly search for information confirming their beliefs irrespective of the anticipated task or whether they are sensitive to the usefulness of new information for this forthcoming task. Results of three experiments show that task sensitivity depends on the groups’ confidence in the correctness of their decision: Moderately confident groups displayed a strong confirmation bias when they anticipated having to give reasons for their decision but showed a balanced information search or even a disconfirmation bias (i.e., predominately seeking conflicting information) when they anticipated having to refute unterarguments. In contrast, highly confident groups demonstrated a strong confirmation bias independent of the anticipated task requirements

Community based development: potential and obstacles to implementation in Western Kenya

Primary Health Care (PHC) programmes attempt to put the responsibility for the design and implementation of rural development projects in the hands of local people. PHC programmes have been developed in acknowledgement of the failure of past top-down programme design. This paper describes two examples of PHC programmes intended for implementation in Mbita Division, south Nyanza; Community Based Health Care (CBHC), and income generating projects for women's groups. I argue that such programmes need to incorporate an understanding of the local sociological, ecological, and infrastructural constraints in the programme design. Implementing Community Based Health Care (CBHC) will necessitate enlisting active community discussion and participation at the outset, and ideally the local communities should bear some of the financial responsibility as well. Incorporating the traditional medical practitioners whose services are still valued will increase the efficacy of the programme. Attempts to support income generation projects for women's groups must acknowledge the lack of cooperation between women, which is fostered by changes in marriage patterns which break down kin ties between women. The absence of business management skills, low educational levels, and conflicting labour demands on women represent additional serious constraints to the success of income generating ventures. To address these local constraints programme should allow for more individualized participation rather than requiring cooperative ventures, and financial support would be better spent for conducting management training and study tours for women rather than allotments for project seed money

Phonon Thermal Transport of URu2Si2: Broken Translational Symmetry and Strong-Coupling of the Hidden Order to the Lattice

A dramatic increase in the total thermal conductivity (k) is observed in the Hidden Order (HO) state of single crystal URu2Si2. Through measurements of the thermal Hall conductivity, we explicitly show that the electronic contribution to k is extremely small, so that this large increase in k is dominated by phonon conduction. An itinerant BCS/mean-field model describes this behavior well: the increase in kappa is associated with the opening of a large energy gap at the Fermi Surface, thereby decreasing electron-phonon scattering. Our analysis implies that the Hidden Order parameter is strongly coupled to the lattice, suggestive of a broken symmetry involving charge degrees of freedom.Comment: 17 pages including figures, updated author institutions and acknowledgement

Selective self-categorization: Meaningful categorization and the in-group persuasion effect

Research stemming from self-categorization theory (Turner et al., 1987) has demonstrated that individuals are typically more persuaded by messages from their in-group than by messages from the out-group. The present research investigated the role of issue relevance in moderating these effects. In particular, it was predicted that in-groups would only be more persuasive when the dimension on which group membership was defined was meaningful or relevant to the attitude issue. In two studies, participants were presented with persuasive arguments from either an in-group source or an out-group source, where the basis of the in-group/out-group distinction was either relevant or irrelevant to the attitude issue. Participants' attitudes toward the issue were then measured. The results supported the predictions: Participants were more persuaded by in-group sources than out-group sources when the basis for defining the group was relevant to the attitude issue. However, when the defining characteristic of the group was irrelevant to the attitude issue, participants were equally persuaded by in-group and out-group sources. These results support the hypothesis that the fit between group membership and domain is an important moderator of self-categorization effects

Ferromagnetic phase transition for the spanning-forest model (q \to 0 limit of the Potts model) in three or more dimensions

We present Monte Carlo simulations of the spanning-forest model (q \to 0 limit of the ferromagnetic Potts model) in spatial dimensions d=3,4,5. We show that, in contrast to the two-dimensional case, the model has a "ferromagnetic" second-order phase transition at a finite positive value w_c. We present numerical estimates of w_c and of the thermal and magnetic critical exponents. We conjecture that the upper critical dimension is 6.Comment: LaTex2e, 4 pages; includes 6 Postscript figures; Version 2 has expanded title as published in PR

The structure of flame filaments in chaotic flows

The structure of flame filaments resulting from chaotic mixing within a combustion reaction is considered. The transverse profile of the filaments is investigated numerically and analytically based on a one-dimensional model that represents the effect of stirring as a convergent flow. The dependence of the steady solutions on the Damkohler number and Lewis number is treated in detail. It is found that, below a critical Damkohler number Da(crit), the flame is quenched by the flow. The quenching transition appears as a result of a saddle-node bifurcation where the stable steady filament solution collides with an unstable one. The shape of the steady solutions for the concentration and temperature profiles changes with the Lewis number and the value of Da(crit) increases monotonically with the Lewis number. Properties of the solutions are studied analytically in the limit of large Damkohler number and for small and large Lewis number.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, to be published in Physica

Exchange Anisotropy in Epitaxial and Polycrystalline NiO/NiFe Bilayers

(001) oriented NiO/NiFe bilayers were grown on single crystal MgO (001) substrates by ion beam sputtering in order to determine the effect that the crystalline orientation of the NiO antiferromagnetic layer has on the magnetization curve of the NiFe ferromagnetic layer. Simple models predict no exchange anisotropy for the (001)-oriented surface, which in its bulk termination is magnetically compensated. Nonetheless exchange anisotropy is present in the epitaxial films, although it is approximately half as large as in polycrystalline films that were grown simultaneously. Experiments show that differences in exchange field and coercivity between polycrystalline and epitaxial NiFe/NiO bilayers couples arise due to variations in induced surface anisotropy and not from differences in the degree of compensation of the terminating NiO plane. Implications of these observations for models of induced exchange anisotropy in NiO/NiFe bilayer couples will be discussed.Comment: 23 pages in RevTex format, submitted to Phys Rev B