Constructing Indices of Rural Living Standards in Northwestern Bangladesh

This study aimed to construct indices of living standards in rural Bangladesh that could be useful to study health outcomes or identify target populations for poverty-alleviation programmes. The indices were constructed using principal component analysis of data on household assets and house construction materials. Their robustness and use was tested and found to be internally consistent and correlated with maternal and infant health, nutritional and demographic indicators, and infant mortality. Indices derived from 9 or 10 household asset variables performed well; little was gained by adding more variables but problems emerged if fewer variables were used. A ranking of the most informative assets from this rural, South Asian context is provided. Living standards consistently and significantly improved over the six-year study period. It is concluded that simple household socioeconomic data, collected under field conditions, can be used for constructing reliable and useful indices of living standards in rural South Asian communities that can assist in the assessment of health, quality of life, and capabilities of households and their members

Active Amplification of the Terrestrial Albedo to Mitigate Climate Change: An Exploratory Study

This study explores the potential to enhance the reflectance of solar insolation by the human settlement and grassland components of the Earth's terrestrial surface as a climate change mitigation measure. Preliminary estimates derived using a static radiative transfer model indicate that such efforts could amplify the planetary albedo enough to offset the current global annual average level of radiative forcing caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases by as much as 30 percent or 0.76 W/m2. Terrestrial albedo amplification may thus extend, by about 25 years, the time available to advance the development and use of low-emission energy conversion technologies which ultimately remain essential to mitigate long-term climate change. However, additional study is needed to confirm the estimates reported here and to assess the economic and environmental impacts of active land-surface albedo amplification as a climate change mitigation measure.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures. In press with Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, N

Velocity-selective sublevel resonance of atoms with an array of current-carrying wires

Resonance transitions between the Zeeman sublevels of optically-polarized Rb atoms traveling through a spatially periodic magnetic field are investigated in a radio-frequency (rf) range of sub-MHz. The atomic motion induces the resonance when the Zeeman splitting is equal to the frequency at which the moving atoms feel the magnetic field oscillating. Additional temporal oscillation of the spatially periodic field splits a motion-induced resonance peak into two by an amount of this oscillation frequency. At higher oscillation frequencies, it is more suitable to consider that the resonance is mainly driven by the temporal field oscillation, with its velocity-dependence or Doppler shift caused by the atomic motion through the periodic field. A theoretical description of motion-induced resonance is also given, with emphasis on the translational energy change associated with the internal transition.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, final versio

Nanofabrication by magnetic focusing of supersonic beams

We present a new method for nanoscale atom lithography. We propose the use of a supersonic atomic beam, which provides an extremely high-brightness and cold source of fast atoms. The atoms are to be focused onto a substrate using a thin magnetic film, into which apertures with widths on the order of 100 nm have been etched. Focused spot sizes near or below 10 nm, with focal lengths on the order of 10 microns, are predicted. This scheme is applicable both to precision patterning of surfaces with metastable atomic beams and to direct deposition of material.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Development and Management of a Geographic Information System for Health Research in a Developing-country Setting: A Case Study from Bangladesh

In the last decade, geographic information systems (GIS) have become accessible to researchers in developing countries, yet guidance remains sparse for developing a GIS. Drawing on experience in developing a GIS for a large community trial in rural Bangladesh, six stages for constructing, maintaining, and using a GIS for health research purposes were outlined. The system contains 0.25 million landmarks, including 150,000 houses, in an area of 435 sq km with over 650,000 people. Assuming access to reasonably accurate paper boundary maps of the intended working area and the absence of pre-existing digital local-area maps, the six stages are: to (a) digitize and update existing paper maps, (b) join the digitized maps into a large-area map, (c) reference this large-area map to a geographic coordinate system, (d) insert location landmarks of interest, (e) maintain the GIS, and (f) link it to other research databases. These basic steps can produce a household-level, updated, scaleable GIS that can both enhance field efficiency and support epidemiologic analyses of demographic patterns, diseases, and health outcomes

Coherent matter wave inertial sensors for precision measurements in space

We analyze the advantages of using ultra-cold coherent sources of atoms for matter-wave interferometry in space. We present a proof-of-principle experiment that is based on an analysis of the results previously published in [Richard et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 91, 010405 (2003)] from which we extract the ratio h/m for 87Rb. This measurement shows that a limitation in accuracy arises due to atomic interactions within the Bose-Einstein condensate

Facilitating children's self-concept: A rationale and evaluative study

This study reports on the design and effectiveness of the Exploring Self-Concept program for primary school children using self-concept as the outcome measure. The program aims to provide a procedure that incorporates organisation, elaboration, thinking, and problem-solving strategies and links these to children's multidimensional self-concept. The results of this research support the notion that teachers and guidance counsellors need to establish a nonthreatening framework that allows them to discuss with children a range of relevant issues related to peer pressure, parent relations, self-image, body image, gender bias, media pressure, values and life goals, in a systematic, objective and cooperative manner. Within the paper, notions associated with self-concept maturation, 'crystallisation' of self-concept beliefs, cognitive differentiation and self-concept segmentation are reviewed

Highlights and Perspectives of the JLab Spin Physics Program

Nucleon spin structure has been an active and exciting subject of interest for the last three decades. Recent precision spin-structure data from Jefferson Lab have significantly advanced our knowledge of nucleon structure in the valence quark (high-x) region and improved our understanding of higher-twist effects, spin sum rules and quark-hadron duality. First, results of spin sum rules and polarizabilities in the low to intermediate Q^2 region are presented. Comparison with theoretical calculations are discussed. Surprising disagreements of Chiral Perturbation Theory calculations with experimental results on the generalized spin polarizability, \delta_{LT}, were found. Then, precision measurements of the spin asymmetry in the high-x region are presented. They provide crucial input for global fits to world data to extract polarized parton distribution functions. The up and down quark spin distributions in the nucleon were extracted. The results for \Delta d/d disagree with the leading-order pQCD prediction assuming hadron helicity conservation. Results of precision measurements of the g_2 structure function to study higher-twist effects are presented. The data indicate a significant higher-twist (twist-3 or higher) effect. The second moment of the spin structure functions and the twist-3 matrix element d_2 results were extracted. The high Q^2 result was compared with a Lattice QCD calculation. Results on the resonance spin-structure functions in the intermediate Q^2 range are presented, which, in combination with DIS data, enable a detailed study of quark-hadron duality in spin-structure functions. Finally, an experiment to study neutron transversity and transverse spin asymmetries is discussed. A future plan with the 12 GeV energy upgrade at JLab is briefly outlined.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Proceedings of Prague-Spin200

A C6orf10/LOC101929163 locus is associated with age of onset in C9orf72 carriers

The G4C2-repeat expansion in C9orf72 is the most common known cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. The high phenotypic heterogeneity of C9orf72 patients includes a wide range in age of onset, modifiers of which are largely unknown. Age of onset could be influenced by environmental and genetic factors both of which may trigger DNA methylation changes at CpG sites. We tested the hypothesis that age of onset in C9orf72 patients is associated with some common single nucleotide polymorphisms causing a gain or loss of CpG sites and thus resulting in DNA methylation alterations. Combined analyses of epigenetic and genetic data have the advantage of detecting functional variants with reduced likelihood of false negative results due to excessive correction for multiple testing in genome-wide association studies. First, we estimated the association between age of onset in C9orf72 patients (n = 46) and the DNA methylation levels at all 7603 CpG sites available on the 450 k BeadChip that are mapped to common single nucleotide polymorphisms. This was followed by a genetic association study of the discovery (n = 144) and replication (n = 187) C9orf72 cohorts. We found that age of onset was reproducibly associated with polymorphisms within a 124.7 kb linkage disequilibrium block tagged by top-significant variation, rs9357140, and containing two overlapping genes (LOC101929163 and C6orf10). A meta-analysis of all 331 C9orf72 carriers revealed that every A-allele of rs9357140 reduced hazard by 30% (P = 0.0002); and the median age of onset in AA-carriers was 6 years later than GG-carriers. In addition, we investigated a cohort of C9orf72 negative patients (n = 2634) affected by frontotemporal dementia and/or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; and also found that the AA-genotype of rs9357140 was associated with a later age of onset (adjusted P = 0.007 for recessive model). Phenotype analyses detected significant association only in the largest subgroup of patients with frontotemporal dementia (n = 2142, adjusted P = 0.01 for recessive model). Gene expression studies of frontal cortex tissues from 25 autopsy cases affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis revealed that the G-allele of rs9357140 is associated with increased brain expression of LOC101929163 (a non-coding RNA) and HLA-DRB1 (involved in initiating immune responses), while the A-allele is associated with their reduced expression. Our findings suggest that carriers of the rs9357140 GG-genotype (linked to an earlier age of onset) might be more prone to be in a pro-inflammatory state (e.g. by microglia) than AA-carriers. Further, investigating the functional links within the C6orf10/LOC101929163/HLA-DRB1 pathway will be critical to better define age-dependent pathogenesis of frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.Ming Zhang, Raffaele Ferrari, Maria Carmela Tartaglia, Julia Keith, Ezequiel I Surace, Uri Wolf ... et al