Human African trypanosomiasis : current status and eradication efforts

Epidemics of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) in the 20th century led to millions of deaths. However, since the start of the twenty-first century, there is been a continued decline in the number of reported cases, due to increased investment and prioritisation of control efforts. Systematic screening of at-risk areas and widespread access to increasingly advanced diagnostics and treatments, along with much improved vector control, have all helped to make disease elimination achievable in the near future. Despite the progress, the danger of disease resurgence is well-known for HAT and continued surveillance and treatment availability is essential. Additionally, many uncertainties regarding HAT transmission remain and combine to make potential disease eradication a complete unknown

Screening strategies for a sustainable endpoint for Gambiense sleeping sickness

Background. Gambiense human African trypanosomiasis (gHAT, sleeping sickness) is a vector-borne disease typically fatal without treatment. Intensified, mainly medical-based, interventions in endemic areas have reduced the occurrence of gHAT to historically low levels. However, persistent regions, mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), remain a challenge to achieving the World Health Organization global elimination of transmission (EOT) target. Methods. Stochastic models of gHAT transmission fitted to DRC case data explored patterns of regional reporting and extinction. The time to EOT at a health zone scale (∼100,000 people) and how an absence of reported cases informs about EOT was quantified. Results. Regional epidemiology and level of active screening (AS) both influenced the predicted time to EOT. Different AS cessation criteria had similar expected infection dynamics and recrudescence of infection was unlikely. However, whether EOT has been achieved when AS ends, is critically dependent on the stopping criteria. Two or three consecutive years of no detected cases provided greater confidence of EOT compared to a single year (66-75% and 82-84% probability of EOT respectively compared to 31-51%). Conclusion. Multiple years of AS without case detections is a valuable measure to assess the likelihood that the EOT target has been met locally

Bilateral Trade and Islamic Sects

This paper explores the effects of religion and Islamic sects on bilateral trade activities by employing an extended version of the gravity model. A stratified sample of 33 countries for the average period 1996-99 is selected. Although gravity models have been extensively used in the literature, to the best of our knowledge, they have neither been used to examine the impact of Islamic sects on bilateral trade nor to estimate religion within a model that incorporates oil-exporting countries, culture, regional trading arrangements, and political freedomessential control variables for the specification of the model. Findings reveal that Muslim majority countries trade less than their Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or other counterparts. In addition, when disaggregating the Muslim sample into Sunni and Shia sects, results show that Sunni majority countries trade more than their Shiite counterparts. Other results and policy implications are discussed

Effects of Educational Cost Sharing on Primary Schools Management and Administration in Tanzania: A Case of Tunduru District in Ruvuma

This research aimed to investigate “Effects of educational cost sharing policy on primary schools management and administration” The study was held in Tanzania Tunduru district, Ruvuma region. The study surveyed various issues about educational costs especially related to cost sharing policy, for instance identifying educational stake-holders contributing to educational costs, the contributions, and satisfaction of stakeholders‟ contributions to school needs, setbacks or challenges in the implementation of cost sharing policy, its outcomes and its acceptability. Participants were the primary District Educational Officer, Ward Educational Coordinators, Head teachers, Classroom Teachers, Pupils, Parents and school committee members. Sampling techniques were purposive sampling for participants in the 5 randomly selected wards and 10 schools. Data were gathered through questionnaires and interviews. The results revealed that education costs are shared by the government, parents, community, Religious institutions and NGOs but their contributions does not satisfy school needs. Cost sharing contributes to improved school management, and education process as a whole. The study also revealed, although cost sharing face challenges like delay of contributions, dissatisfaction of resources and little social response, it is still acceptable. The researcher recommends, Parents and the community should be well sensitized of their responsibilities in the education policy. Educational decision makers should oversee on how to effectively run the nursery classes and School budgets should include pupils‟ treatments and sports and games facilitation, also other researchers should study in other places and educational levels

SOS employability: a support structure for language students

It is readily recognised that “study and residence abroad are significant contexts for second language learning and development” (Mitchell, Tracy-Ventura, & McManus, 2015, p. 1), but the Year Abroad (YA) also provides Modern Foreign Language (MFL) students with a unique opportunity to develop personal and professional skills. YA students go through what is often termed a ‘transformative experience’ (British Academy/UCML, 2012). However, the problem of skills self-recognition and articulation remains. Without strong support structures students struggle to understand these skills and how to talk about them. This case study explores the creation of an employability-focussed support structure for MFL undergraduate students centred on preparing for, getting the most out of, and articulating the ‘soft skills’ learnt from the YA. The study presents evidence from three core activities: 1) interviews with YA returners, now final-year students; 2) support through tailored employability modules; and 3) the launch of an interactive online resource for students who are on their YA

Dead Reckoning: A Multiteam System Approach to Commentaries on the Drake-S Equation for Survival

We used a multiteam system approach (MTS) to map the critical and constructive feedback from four invited Commentaries on Rock et al.’s (2023) probabilistic analysis of purported evidence for postmortem survival. The goal was to mine actionable insights to guide future research with the potential for important learnings or breakthroughs about the nature or limits of human consciousness and their relation to transpersonal psychology. The commentators’ input identified only a few measurable variables or empirical tactics that conceivably challenge or refine our latest Drake-S Equation for survival. However, a review of these suggestions using logical and statistical criteria revealed that none immediately upend our previous conclusion that the published effect sizes for various Known Confounds (including hypothetical living agent psi ) do not fully account for the published prevalence rates of Anomalous Experiences traditionally interpretated as survival. However, the commentators proposed several good recommendations for new studies that could eventually alter this calculus. Accordingly, we outline the architecture of a proposed cross-disciplinary research program that extends the present MTS approach and its collected insights and focuses strictly on empiricism over rhetoric in this domain. The results of this coordinated effort should likewise help to clarify a range of psychological and biomedical phenomena that speak to the nature and limits of human consciousness

Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing the Drake-S Equation for Postmortem Survival of Consciousness

This participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the ‘Drake equation’ to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., anomalous effects ) or refutes (i.e., known confounds ) the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of ‘living agent psi’ via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found that putative psi was a meaningful variable, although it along with other known confounds still did not account for 30.3% of survival-related phenomena that appear to attest directly to human consciousness continuing after physical (biological) death. Thus, the popular conventional variables that we measured here are seemingly insufficient to account for a sizable portion of the purported empirical data that has been interpreted as evidence of survival. Our conclusion is nonetheless tempered by several assumptions and limitations of our speculative exercise, which ultimately does not affirm the existence of an ‘afterlife’ but rather highlights the need for measurements with greater precision and/ or a more comprehensive set of quantifiable variables. Therefore, we discuss how our probabilistic approach provides important heuristics to guide future research in this highly controversial domain that touches both parapsychology and transpersonal psychology