Hard times: young people’s and young parents’ experiences of living through poverty in Luton

This research report is primarily concerned with the experiences of young people (16-24 years) and young parents bringing up children within the context of poverty in Luton. It is divided into three sections. Part One provides a general overview of poverty research in the UK. Part Two presents the findings from the study of young people and young parents’ experiences of poverty in Luton. Part Three discusses the implications of the findings presented and recommendations that arise from them. The overview of research presented in part one of this report is organised under the following headings: measures of poverty commonly adopted in UK poverty research; the extent of poverty in the UK including a short discussion of gender and ethnicity; attitudes to poverty amongst the general public; the impacts of poverty on children and families; poverty amongst young people; parenting in poverty; patterns of poverty. Part two of the report provides a brief description of the methodology adopted for this study and the sample amongst whom the research was conducted. Key findings are then summarised. Following this a thematic analysis of interview data is presented. This covers the following themes: how participants defined poverty; how participants explained poverty; the images of ‘poor people’ participants employed; whether participants considered they or their families were poor; participants’ descriptions of living through poverty; what participants thought the Local Authority should do to tackle poverty. Part three presents a discussion of the implications of the findings from this study and the recommendations that arise from them

An insight in to the awareness levels about Hepatitis C in the international South Asian students of University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom

A dissertation submitted in part fulfilment for the award of degree of Masters in Public HealthMigration all around the world is at its peak and it has brought a lot of challenges for Public Health system due to changing epidemiology of infectious diseases associated with migration. The paper is based on the possible un-noticed spread of Hepatitis C from South Asia to the United Kingdom because of low awareness levels of this disease in the immigrants especially students. The disease is more dangerous in contrast to Hepatitis A and B, as there is no vaccine to provide immunity against the Hepatitis C virus (HCV). Moreover, the costly and toxic treatment options can help in only fifty percent of the patients. It is thought that student’s involvement in risky behaviours make them more vulnerable to contract and transmit the disease. A Quantitative research approach has been used to conduct a cross-sectional, self administered questionnaire survey at the University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK to know about the knowledge of Hepatitis C in students. A total of 71 International South Asian students (53 males and 18 females) were included in the survey by snow ball sampling. Data was analysed by SPSS version 12.0 software (95% C.I, P<0.05), using chi-square test for statistical significance. Self reported knowledge of Hepatitis C was 69% and it decreased to just 39.4% self reported knowledge for symptoms and 38% for the self reported awareness about transmission of disease. 74.6% participants seemed to know that the disease can be transmitted by contaminated needles and 69% recognised blood as route of transmission for the disease. Only 64.8% of the participants were able to relate jaundice with possible Hepatitis C infection. Misconceptions and concerns about transmission of disease by close contacts such as kissing were shown by majority of the participants. Some participants (59.2%) knew about the transmission of HCV through contaminated shaving blades while only few (32.4%) agreed that it can be transmitted by sharing toothbrushes. Just 29.6% participants knew about sexual transmission and only 9.9 percent participants realised that there is no vaccine for the protection against HCV. Bangladeshi and Sri-Lankan were amongst least aware ethnic groups; Participants <30 years and males had least knowledge about the disease. Finding of the study are suggestive that the overall knowledge of Hepatitis C among International South Asian students is extremely low and insufficient. They might be at a high risk of contracting and transmitting the disease so they should be treated as high risk group for the disease. There is an urgent need of campaigns to improve the awareness levels about transmission of Hepatitis C in this group

Pro-poor intervention strategies in irrigated agriculture in Asia: poverty in irrigated agriculture: issues and options: Pakistan

Irrigated farming / Poverty / Irrigation management / Irrigation systems / Water policy / Water rights / Water law / Irrigation scheduling / Organizations / Social aspects / Households / Economic aspects / Expenditure / Irrigation programs / Performance evaluation / Water delivery / Equity / Models / Crop production / Productivity / Wheat / Pakistan

Role of infections, cigarette smoke and cytokines in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The precise sequence of events in COPD is not completely understood. Inflammation in the airways has been unanimously seen by researchers as a pivotal factor, and cigarette smoking without doubt is the main cause. Large proportions of heavy smokers, however, do not suffer with COPD, suggesting a role of additional risk factors, e.g., respiratory tract infections, in pathogenesis. The inflammatory response to cigarette smoke and infectious agents is determined by the host's genetic make up. Cigarette smoking, by altering the surface milieu of respiratory mucosa and by causing immunosuppression increases the susceptibility of individuals to infection with respiratory viral and bacterial pathogens. Virus infection has also been recognized as a susceptibility factor for secondary bacterial infection. An investigation into the role of individual genetic variations in inflammatory cell and cytokine production and non-host factors involved in COPD is the basis for development of more effective strategies to intervene in pathogenesis, progression and exacerbation of COPD. The aims of this work was to review the evidence for predisposing factors for COPD, with a particular emphasis on respiratory tract infections, and to examine those findings in relation to individual genetic variations and their interactions for induction of pro-inflammatory cytokine production in the respiratory tract. In vitro models were developed to measure cytokine responses to various agents implicated in COPD. These examined the interaction, antagonistic, indifferent, additive or synergistic, between cigarette smoke and infectious agents or their products on cytokine production. Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Moraxella catarrhalis and respiratory syncytial virus are common bacterial and viral pathogens isolated from this group of patients. A human monocyte cell line in a model provided a consistent means to examine these interactions, and human peripheral blood monocytes from blood donors were used to study the individual variations in the responses. Effects of virus infection on bactericidal activity of human monocytes common bacterial respiratory pathogens were also examined. An epithelial cell line and monocytes were investigated for the effects due to virus infection on expression of some of the surface antigens relevant to bacterial binding and immune response. The agents used in the study elicited inflammatory responses that could contribute to damage to the respiratory tract and these individual factors could be more harmful in combination. Monocytes from only a proportion of individuals exhibited extreme responses to these agents signifying the role of individual genetic make up in inflammatory processes. Virus-infected monocytes significantly decreased their ability to bind and kill bacteria. Compared with uninfected cells, fewer bacteria bound to virus-infected cells and intracellular bactericidal activity was also decreased. Virus-infected epithelial cells expressed more surface antigens that have been reported to bind respiratory tract bacterial pathogens, while virus-infected monocytes expressed these antigens at lower levels, which offered an explanation to their decreased bacterial binding and bactericidal activity. These experimental findings, taken together with the review of the literature presented in this work, suggested that exposure to a number of harmful factors for longer periods in individuals with certain genetic profiles for inflammation may cause significant damage to the respiratory tract resulting in COPD, and exacerbation in its course. Further work to examine the individual genetic make up and inflammatory cytokines in a population of patients with COPD compared with non-COPD smokers would be required to substantiate this hypothesis before investigating the possibility of therapeutic interventions to restrain or modify inflammatory process in COPD

RESOURCE USE AND FARM PRODUCTIVITY UNDER CONJUNCTIVE WATER MANAGEMENT IN PAKISTAN

The paper describes a study of canal and supplemental ground water used by 544 farmers for wheat crop in the Rechna Doab catchment of Pakistan. The main objective was to assess the on-farm financial gains through conjunctive water use. For econometric analysis, a linear relationship between the wheat production and different determinant variables was assumed. The results highlighted the problem of increased use of tubewells water in the saline zones that had resulted in the deterioration of the groundwater quality and led to the problem of permanent upconing of saline groundwater. Conjunctive water management increased the farm income by about Rs. 1000 and 5000 per hectare compared to only using the canal and tubewell water, respectively The results of financial analysis show that the net-gains were 30 percent higher on the farms using conjunctive water management as compared to the farms using only tubewell irrigation.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Techniques to Improve Energy Efficiency on Heterogeneous Multiprocessors under Timing and Quality Constraints

Traditionally, applications are executed without the notion of a computational deadline and often use all available system resources, which leads to higher\ua0energy consumption. User specification of Quality of Service (QoS) constraints,\ua0in terms of completion time and solution quality, opens up for allocation of\ua0just enough resources to an application to finish just in time and thereby save\ua0energy. Modern heterogeneous multiprocessor (HMP) platforms provide a\ua0set of configurable resources, including a frequency range of dynamic voltage\ua0frequency scaling (DVFS), one among a set processor types, and one or a\ua0plurality of processors of each type. They can be configured at run-time to\ua0open up new opportunities for resource management.This thesis presents techniques to reduce energy consumption under QoS\ua0constraints by allocating resources at run-time on heterogeneous multiprocessor platforms targeting sequential and parallel iterative and task-parallel\ua0applications. The proposed techniques rely on a progress-tracking framework\ua0that monitors and predicts how much time is left until the application finishes.\ua0Furthermore, the proposed framework enables the prediction of computation\ua0demand and performance requirements for future iterations or tasks.\ua0The first contribution of this thesis is a resource management technique,\ua0called SLOOP, targeting single-threaded applications. SLOOP allocates resources, i.e., processor type and DVFS, for each iteration to meet deadlines\ua0while using the prediction of computational demand and execution time.The second contribution of this thesis is a resource-management scheme, called SaC, for multi-threaded applications executing on HMPs, where resources\ua0also include the number of processors besides DVFS and processor type. SaC\ua0first chooses the most energy-efficient configuration that meets the deadline.\ua0The proposed technique collects execution-time slack over subsequent iterations\ua0to select a configuration that can save energy.The third contribution of this thesis is a resource manager, called Task-RM, for task-parallel applications executing on HMPs under QoS constraints. Task-RM exploits the variance in task execution times and imbalance between\ua0sibling tasks to allocate just enough resources in terms of DVFS and processor type. It uses an innovative off-line analysis to avoid redoing scheduling analysis\ua0at run-time.Finally, the fourth contribution is a scheme, called Approx-RM, that can exploit accuracy-energy trade-offs in approximate iterative applications. Approx-RM allocates an appropriate amount of resources while guaranteeing timing\ua0and solution quality specifications. Approx-RM first predicts the iteration count required to meet the quality target and then allocates enough resources\ua0on an HMP in terms of DVFS, processor type, and processor count to save\ua0energy while meeting a performance target