Malaria intervention scale-up in Africa : effectiveness predictions for health programme planning tools, based on dynamic transmission modelling

Scale-up of malaria prevention and treatment needs to continue to further important gains made in the past decade, but national strategies and budget allocations are not always evidence-based. Statistical models were developed summarizing dynamically simulated relations between increases in coverage and intervention impact, to inform a malaria module in the Spectrum health programme planning tool.; The dynamic Plasmodium falciparum transmission model OpenMalaria was used to simulate health effects of scale-up of insecticide-treated net (ITN) usage, indoor residual spraying (IRS), management of uncomplicated malaria cases (CM) and seasonal malaria chemoprophylaxis (SMC) over a 10-year horizon, over a range of settings with stable endemic malaria. Generalized linear regression models (GLMs) were used to summarize determinants of impact across a range of sub-Sahara African settings.; Selected (best) GLMs explained 94-97 % of variation in simulated post-intervention parasite infection prevalence, 86-97 % of variation in case incidence (three age groups, three 3-year horizons), and 74-95 % of variation in malaria mortality. For any given effective population coverage, CM and ITNs were predicted to avert most prevalent infections, cases and deaths, with lower impacts for IRS, and impacts of SMC limited to young children reached. Proportional impacts were larger at lower endemicity, and (except for SMC) largest in low-endemic settings with little seasonality. Incremental health impacts for a given coverage increase started to diminish noticeably at above ~40 % coverage, while in high-endemic settings, CM and ITNs acted in synergy by lowering endemicity. Vector control and CM, by reducing endemicity and acquired immunity, entail a partial rebound in malaria mortality among people above 5 years of age from around 5-7 years following scale-up. SMC does not reduce endemicity, but slightly shifts malaria to older ages by reducing immunity in child cohorts reached.; Health improvements following malaria intervention scale-up vary with endemicity, seasonality, age and time. Statistical models can emulate epidemiological dynamics and inform strategic planning and target setting for malaria control

Indigenous People’s Detection of Rapid Ecological Change

When sudden catastrophic events occur, it becomes critical for coastal communities to detect and respond to environmental transformations because failure to do so may undermine overall ecosystem resilience and threaten people’s livelihoods. We therefore asked how capable of detecting rapid ecological change following massive environmental disruptions local, indigenous people are. We assessed the direction and periodicity of experimental learning of people in the Western Solomon Islands after a tsunami in 2007. We compared the results of marine science surveys with local ecological knowledge of the benthos across 3 affected villages and 3 periods before and after the tsunami. We sought to determine how people recognize biophysical changes in the environment before and after catastrophic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis and whether people have the ability to detect ecological changes over short time scales or need longer time scales to recognize changes. Indigenous people were able to detect changes in the benthos over time. Detection levels differed between marine science surveys and local ecological knowledge sources over time, but overall patterns of statistically significant detection of change were evident for various habitats. Our findings have implications for marine conservation, coastal management policies, and disaster-relief efforts because when people are able to detect ecological changes, this, in turn, affects how they exploit and manage their marine resources

The Peculiar Motions of Early-Type Galaxies in Two Distant Regions VI: The Maximum Likelihood Gaussian Algorithm

The EFAR project is designed to measure the properties and peculiar motions of early-type galaxies in two distant regions. Here we describe the maximum likelihood algorithm we developed to investigate the correlations between the parameters of the EFAR database. One-, two-, and three-dimensional gaussian models are constructed to determine the mean value and intrinsic spread of the parameters, and the slopes and intrinsic parallel and orthogonal spread of the Mgb'-Mg2, Mg2-sigma, Mgb'-sigma relations, and the Fundamental Plane. In the latter case, the cluster peculiar velocities are also determined. We show that this method is superior to ``canonical'' approaches of least-squares type, which give biased slopes and biased peculiar velocities. We test the algorithm with Monte Carlo simulations of mock EFAR catalogues and derive the systematic and random errors on the estimated parameters. We find that random errors are always dominant. We estimate the influence of systematic errors due to the way clusters were selected and the hard limits and uncertainties in the selection function parameters for the galaxies. We explore the influence of uniform distributions in the Fundamental Plane parameters and the errors. We conclude that the mean peculiar motions of the EFAR clusters can be determined reliably. In particular, the placement of the two EFAR sample regions relative to the Lauer and Postman dipole allows us to strongly constrain the amplitude of the bulk motion in this direction.Comment: 43 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

East Bay Coalition for the Homeless: Branding Study and Marketing Strategy

There are a number of potential positioning strategies. The two which make the most sense for the EBCH are to “position the EBCH away from others in the category” and to “position the EBCH as unique.” These strategies have the advantage of setting the EBCH apart from the other organizations that address homelessness. Occupying its own “position” in the minds of potential and current donors is not only an effective communications/marketing strategy but also a less costly one because it avoids head-to-head competition and comparisons

The Lick AGN Monitoring Project: Recalibrating Single-Epoch Virial Black Hole Mass Estimates

We investigate the calibration and uncertainties of black hole mass estimates based on the single-epoch (SE) method, using homogeneous and high-quality multi-epoch spectra obtained by the Lick Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) Monitoring Project for 9 local Seyfert 1 galaxies with black hole masses < 10^8 M_sun. By decomposing the spectra into their AGN and stellar components, we study the variability of the single-epoch Hbeta line width (full width at half-maximum intensity, FWHM_Hbeta; or dispersion, sigma_Hbeta) and of the AGN continuum luminosity at 5100A (L_5100). From the distribution of the "virial products" (~ FWHM_Hbeta^2 L_5100^0.5 or sigma_Hbeta^2 L_5100^0.5) measured from SE spectra, we estimate the uncertainty due to the combined variability as ~ 0.05 dex (12%). This is subdominant with respect to the total uncertainty in SE mass estimates, which is dominated by uncertainties in the size-luminosity relation and virial coefficient, and is estimated to be ~ 0.46 dex (factor of ~ 3). By comparing the Hbeta line profile of the SE, mean, and root-mean-square (rms) spectra, we find that the Hbeta line is broader in the mean (and SE) spectra than in the rms spectra by ~ 0.1 dex (25%) for our sample with FWHM_Hbeta < 3000 km/s. This result is at variance with larger mass black holes where the difference is typically found to be much less than 0.1 dex. To correct for this systematic difference of the Hbeta line profile, we introduce a line-width dependent virial factor, resulting in a recalibration of SE black hole mass estimators for low-mass AGNs.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 18 pages, 17 figure

Groundwater Laws and Regulations: A Preliminary Survey of Thirteen U.S. States (First Edition)

This report presents preliminary results of a study investigating the groundwater laws and regulations of thirteen U.S. states. The purpose of the project is eventually to compile and present the groundwater laws and regulations of every state in the United States that could then be used in a series of comparisons of groundwater governance principles, strategies, issues, and challenges. Professor Gabriel Eckstein at Texas A&M University School of Law and Professor Amy Hardberger at Saint Mary’s University Law School developed a matrix to ascertain chief components and characteristics of the groundwater legal regime of each state. Student researchers then used the matrix to respond to a standardized set of questions about the groundwater laws and regulations of a selection of states. Before continuing with assessments of the remaining states, Professors Eckstein and Hardberger present in this report the results developed thus far, and now seek feedback about the overall project, including its objectives, methodology, and preliminary results

Environment and Obesity in the National Children’s Study

Objective: In this review we describe the approach taken by the National Children’s Study (NCS), a 21-year prospective study of 100,000 American children, to understanding the role of environmental factors in the development of obesity. Data sources and extraction: We review the literature with regard to the two core hypotheses in the NCS that relate to environmental origins of obesity and describe strategies that will be used to test each hypothesis. Data synthesis: Although it is clear that obesity in an individual results from an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure, control of the obesity epidemic will require understanding of factors in the modern built environment and chemical exposures that may have the capacity to disrupt the link between energy intake and expenditure. The NCS is the largest prospective birth cohort study ever undertaken in the United States that is explicitly designed to seek information on the environmental causes of pediatric disease. Conclusions: Through its embrace of the life-course approach to epidemiology, the NCS will be able to study the origins of obesity from preconception through late adolescence, including factors ranging from genetic inheritance to individual behaviors to the social, built, and natural environment and chemical exposures. It will have sufficient statistical power to examine interactions among these multiple influences, including gene–environment and gene–obesity interactions. A major secondary benefit will derive from the banking of specimens for future analysis

Indigenous Knowledge and Long-term Ecological Change: Detection, Interpretation, and Responses to Changing Ecological Conditions in Pacific Island Communities

When local resource users detect, understand, and respond to environmental change they can more effectively manage environmental resources. This article assesses these abilities among artisanal fishers in Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands. In a comparison of two villages, it documents local resource users’ abilities to monitor long-term ecological change occurring to seagrass meadows near their communities, their understandings of the drivers of change, and their conceptualizations of seagrass ecology. Local observations of ecological change are compared with historical aerial photography and IKONOS satellite images that show 56 years of actual changes in seagrass meadows from 1947 to 2003. Results suggest that villagers detect long-term changes in the spatial cover of rapidly expanding seagrass meadows. However, for seagrass meadows that showed no long-term expansion or contraction in spatial cover over one-third of respondents incorrectly assumed changes had occurred. Examples from a community-based management initiative designed around indigenous ecological knowledge and customary sea tenure governance show how local observations of ecological change shape marine resource use and practices which, in turn, can increase the management adaptability of indigenous or hybrid governance systems