Role of social organizers in assisting farmer-managed irrigation systems: Proceedings of a regional workshop of the Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems Network held at Khon Kaen, Thailand from 15-20 May 1989

Farmer managed irrigation systemsRural sociologySocial participationOrganizations

South Asian Regional Workshop on Groundwater Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems and Sustainable Groundwater Management, Dhaka, Bangladesh 18-21 May 1992

Farmer managed irrigation systems, Groundwater management, Sustainability, Bangladesh

The Impact of Family Economic Structure on Dual-Earners’ Career and Family Satisfaction

The present study builds on the explanatory power of the “doing gender” perspective to understand the effects of family economic structure on the family and career satisfaction of husbands and wives. Using data from a two-panel, couple-level survey of full-time employed middle-class families in the Northeastern United States, we find that when wives’ earnings increase relative to their husbands’, their career satisfaction significantly increases whereas their husbands’ is significantly depressed. In contrast, family economic structure has little effect on women’ and men’s level of family satisfaction, although we find a significant reduction in family satisfaction among couples who have recently shifted towards a more equal-earner economic structure. Our findings underscore the importance of considering both husbands’ and wives’ attitudes towards work and career in understanding how “gender is done” in couples, and in addressing the resulting family and work relations and dynamics. Focusing on the disjuncture between longstanding gender norms and current employment and earning patterns, we highlight the potential impact of these findings for couples, counselors, and organizations

Performance measurement in farmer-managed irrigation systems: Proceedings of an International Workshop of the Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems Network, Mendoza, Argentina, 12-15 November 1991

Farmer managed irrigation systems / Performance evaluation / Performance indexes / Irrigation management / Case studies / Water distribution / Social aspects / Water users' associations / Tube wells / Indonesia / Pakistan / Bolivia / Israel / Mexico / Peru / Venezuela / Andean Region / Philippines / Nepal / Sri Lanka / India / Egypt / Portugal / Tanzania / Argentina / China / Bangladesh

Socioeconomic Inequalities in Mortality Rates in Old Age in the World Health Organization Europe Region

Socioeconomic adversity is among the foremost fundamental causes of human suffering, and this is no less true in old age. Recent reports on socioeconomic inequalities in mortality rate in old age suggest that a low socioeconomic position continues to increase the risk of death even among the oldest old. We aimed to examine the evidence for socioeconomic mortality rate inequalities in old age, including information about associations with various indicators of socioeconomic position and for various geographic locations within the World Health Organization Region for Europe. The articles included in this review leave no doubt that inequalities in mortality rate by socioeconomic position persist into the oldest ages for both men and women in all countries for which information is available, although the relative risk measures observed were rarely higher than 2.00. Still, the available evidence base is heavily biased geographically, inasmuch as it is based largely on national studies from Nordic and Western European countries and local studies from urban areas in Southern Europe. This bias will hamper the design of European-wide policies to reduce inequalities in mortality rate. We call for a continuous update of the empiric evidence on socioeconomic inequalities in mortality rate

Scaling Analysis of Affinity Propagation

We analyze and exploit some scaling properties of the Affinity Propagation (AP) clustering algorithm proposed by Frey and Dueck (2007). First we observe that a divide and conquer strategy, used on a large data set hierarchically reduces the complexity ${\cal O}(N^2)$ to ${\cal O}(N^{(h+2)/(h+1)})$, for a data-set of size $N$ and a depth $h$ of the hierarchical strategy. For a data-set embedded in a $d$-dimensional space, we show that this is obtained without notably damaging the precision except in dimension $d=2$. In fact, for $d$ larger than 2 the relative loss in precision scales like $N^{(2-d)/(h+1)d}$. Finally, under some conditions we observe that there is a value $s^*$ of the penalty coefficient, a free parameter used to fix the number of clusters, which separates a fragmentation phase (for $s<s^*$) from a coalescent one (for $s>s^*$) of the underlying hidden cluster structure. At this precise point holds a self-similarity property which can be exploited by the hierarchical strategy to actually locate its position. From this observation, a strategy based on \AP can be defined to find out how many clusters are present in a given dataset.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figures, Inria research repor

Do good health and material circumstances protect older people from the increased risk of death after bereavement?

This is an open access Article. Copyright @ 2012 The AuthorsAn increased risk of death in persons who have suffered spousal bereavement has been described in many populations. The impact of modifying factors, such as chronic disease and material circumstances, is less well understood. The authors followed 171,120 couples 60 years of age or older in a United Kingdom primary care database between 2005 and 2010 for an average of 4 years. A total of 26,646 (15.5%) couples experienced bereavement, with mean follow up after bereavement of 2 years. In a model adjusted for age, sex, comorbid conditions at baseline, material deprivation based on area of residence, season, and smoking status, the hazard ratio for mortality in the first year after bereavement was 1.25 (95% confidence interval: 1.18, 1.33). Further adjustment for changes in comorbid conditions throughout follow up did not alter the hazard ratio for bereavement (hazard ratio = 1.27, 95% confidence interval: 1.19, 1.35). The association was strongest in individuals with no significant chronic comorbid conditions throughout follow up (hazard ratio = 1.50, 95% confidence interval: 1.28, 1.77) and in more affluent couples (P = 0.035). In the first year after bereavement, the association between bereavement and death is not primarily mediated through worsening or new onset of chronic disease. Good health and material circumstances do not protect individuals from increased mortality rates after bereavement.This study was funded by a grant from the Dunhill Medical Trust

Interleukin-6 and interleukin-6 receptor secretion by chronic lymphatic leukaemia and normal B lymphocytes: effect of PMA and PWM

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and soluble interleukin-6 receptor (sIL-6R) were detected in supernatants of cultures of B chronic lymphatic leukaemia (CLL) lymphocytes. Phorbol-12-myristate 13 acetate (PMA) caused a decrease in the levels of IL-6 in 14 out of 16 cultures and an increase in levels of sIL6R in all 15 cases. The effect of pokeweed mitogen (PWM) was variable and not significant. The levels of IL-6 were below the detection limit (60 pg/ml) in sera of 13 CLL patients whereas sIL-6R was detected (13 ng/ml to 97 ng/ml) in the 13 sera. IL6 was not detected in cultures of unstimulated or stimulated with PMA or PWM normal human B cells. Levels of sIL-6R were minimal in cultures of normal B lymphocytes and were increased in PMA stimulated cultures. The results are consistent with the view that B-CLL cells produce spontaneously IL-6 which could act in an autocrine fashion to cause shedding of surface IL-6R and account for the correlation found between serum levels of sIL-6R and B-CLL lymphocyte numbers. The fall in levels of IL-6 in PMA stimulated CLL cultures might express masking or degradation of IL-6 after combination with the receptor

Role of social organizers in assisting farmer-managed irrigation systems

Farmer managed irrigation systemsRural sociologySocial participationOrganizations

Learning Behavioural Context

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.co