9,538 research outputs found
Abstain or die: The development of HIV/AIDS policy in Botswana
This paper traces the development of policies dealing with
HIV/AIDS in Botswana from their beginning in the late 1980s to the current
programme to provide population-wide anti-retroviral therapy (ARV). Using
a variety of source material, including long-term ethnographic research, it
seeks to account for the failure of Western-inspired approaches in dealing
with the pandemic. It does this by looking at the cultural and institutional
features that have created resistance to the message and inhibited effective
implementation. The negative response to the first educational campaign
stressing condom use is described and contextualized in terms of Tswana
ideas of morality and illness. Nor, as was initially expected, did the
introduction of free ARV therapy operate to break the silence and stigma
that had developed around the disease. Take-up was very slow, and did not
operate to encourage widespread testing. In 2003, key policymakers in
Botswana began to argue for a break with the AIDS ‘exceptionalism’
position, with its emphasis on voluntarism, confidentiality and the human
rights of patients. This resulted in routine testing being introduced in 2004.
This links to a major argument running through the paper which is that the
failure of policy cannot be attributed solely to the nature of local populations.
Western cultural assumptions about ‘good practice’ also require critical
examination
Modern Crypto-Analysis of Polyalphabetic Ciphers Using a Genetic Algorithm
This project involved implementing a genetic algorithm to help automate the crypto-analysis of the Vigenere cipher
The governance of public bodies in times of austerity
Private sector governance arrangements have been imported into UK public bodies under the influence of New Public Management reforms. This paper draws on a cohort study of 14 public bodies to assess the appropriateness of this practice and the impact of fiscal austerity during the study period of 2010–16. Based on multiple sources, including interviews with Chairs and Chief Executives, it shows that, though similar to private corporate Boards in appearance, public Boards are often excluded from the strategy role. They are also vulnerable to the elastic definition of policy over which Ministers assert dominance, thereby blurring accountability. It demonstrates the tension between vertical accountability to government principals and horizontal accountability to stakeholders. During the study window, public bodies were abolished, broken up, merged, reconfigured or taken back into core government, as the UK Government imposed austerity measures to reduce the size of the fiscal deficit and to diminish government roles in delivery, financing and regulation of public services. Surviving public bodies in the study suffered deep budget cuts and less autonomy from central control. These findings are interpreted as evidence of the re-territorialisation of the UK public sector, with accruals accounting and accounting consolidation practices playing a facilitating role
Mitotic spindle scaling during Xenopus development by kif2a and importin α.
Early development of many animals is characterized by rapid cleavages that dramatically decrease cell size, but how the mitotic spindle adapts to changing cell dimensions is not understood. To identify mechanisms that scale the spindle during Xenopus laevis embryogenesis, we established an in vitro system using cytoplasmic extracts prepared from embryos that recapitulates in vivo spindle size differences between stage 3 (4 cells, 37 µm) and stage 8 (∼4000 cells, 18 µm). We identified the kinesin-13 kif2a as a driver of developmental spindle scaling whose microtubule-destabilizing activity is inhibited in stage 3 spindles by the transport receptor importin α, and activated in stage 8 when importin α partitions to a membrane pool. Altering spindle size in developing embryos impaired spindle orientation during metaphase, but chromosome segregation remained robust. Thus, spindle size in Xenopus development is coupled to cell size through a ratiometric mechanism controlling microtubule destabilization.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00290.001
Accounting for government guarantees: perspectives on fiscal transparency from four modes of accounting
Government guarantees are increasingly important as a policy instrument in public infrastructure investment and to assist the banking and financial sectors following the global financial crisis. This paper analyses how different modes of accounting characterize such guarantees in the contexts of public sector financial reporting, statistical accounting, budgeting and long-term fiscal projections. Guarantees are difficult to specify for accounting treatment and consistent conceptualization of liabilities. These difficulties make it attractive for governments to treat obligations as off-budget and off-balance sheet contingent liabilities, rather than recognize them in financial statements and statistical accounts. Miller and Power’s territorializing, mediating, adjudicating and subjectivizing roles of accounting are utilized to analyse the reporting of UK government guarantees. Provisioning for guarantees is complex in financial reporting statements and often absent in national accounts, a deficiency which Eurostat has attempted to address by devising the concept of standardized guarantees and by securing more disclosure of contingent liabilities. There is potential for future research especially where there is greater mediation between the four modes of government accounting
Magnetic fields in nearby galaxies
We describe a recent full-polarization radio continuum survey, performed
using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), of several nearby
galaxies in the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS) sample. The
WSRT-SINGS survey has been utilized to study the polarized emission and Faraday
rotation measures (RMs) in the targets, and reveals an important new
observational trend. The azimuthal distribution of polarized flux seems to be
intimately related to the kinematic orientation of galaxies, such that in
face-on galaxies the lowest level of polarized flux is detected along the
kinematic major axis. In highly inclined galaxies, the polarized flux is
minimized on both ends of the major axis, and peaks near the minor axis. Using
models of various three-dimensional magnetic field geometries, and including
the effects of turbulent depolarization in the midplane, we are able to
reproduce the qualitative distribution of polarized flux in the target
galaxies, its variation with inclination, and the distribution of RMs, thereby
constraining the global magnetic field structure in galaxies. Future radio
telescope facilities, now being planned and constructed, will have properties
making them extremely well-suited to perform vastly larger surveys of this
type, and are thereby poised to significantly increase our understanding of the
global structure of galactic magnetic fields. We discuss progress that can be
made using surveys which will be realized with these new facilities, focusing
in particular on the Aperture Tile in Focus (APERTIF) and Australian Square
Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescopes, both based on Focal Plane Array
(FPA) designs, which are expected to be particularly useful for wide-field
polarization applications.Comment: In proceedings of "Panoramic Radio Astronomy" conference held 2-5
June 2009, Groningen, the Netherlands. 6 pages, 2 figure
Design issues in cross-coupled inverter sense amplifier
This paper presents an analytical approach to the design of CMOS cross-coupled inverter sense amplifiers. The effects of the equilibrating transistors and the tail current source on the speed of the sense amplifier are analyzed. An analysis of the offset due to mismatch in various parameters is performed, showing that a complete offset analysis has to account for the cell and bitline structure. A new figure of merit for the offset in the sense amplifier and several new design insights are introduced
Furnace-tube contamination
Contamination in furnaces for fabricating wafers, and cleaning procedure
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