Bridging the Malnutrition Gap with Social Audits and Community Participation

There is an urgent need to increase coverage of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) particularly in Madhya Pradesh and to overcome governance failures, such as staff absenteeism, leakage of funds and supplies and false reporting of coverage. By increasing community participation, ownership of the scheme, and improving programme oversight, social audits can result in increased coverage as well as better accountability among service?providers and the relevant line departments. The bulk of experience with social audits comes from implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which mandates that social audits be conducted prior to fund release. There is also some experience of using social audits for ICDS in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. This article examines the experiences from those two states and draws lessons for its application in states such as Madhya Pradesh

Metamorphic exploration of an unsupervised clustering program

Machine learning has been becoming increasingly popular and widely-used in various industry domains. The presence of the oracle problem, however, makes it difficult to ensure the quality of this kind of software. Furthermore, the popularity of machine learning and its application has attracted many users who are not experts in this field. In this paper, we report on using a recently introduced method called metamorphic exploration where we proposed a set of hypothesized metamorphic relations for an unsupervised clustering program, Weka, to enhance understanding of the system and its better use

Quinstant Dark Energy Predictions for Structure Formation

We explore the predictions of a class of dark energy models, quinstant dark energy, concerning the structure formation in the Universe, both in the linear and non-linear regimes. Quinstant dark energy is considered to be formed by quintessence and a negative cosmological constant. We conclude that these models give good predictions for structure formation in the linear regime, but fail to do so in the non-linear one, for redshifts larger than one.Comment: 9 pages, 14 figures, "Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Science

The acceleration of the universe and the physics behind it

Using a general classification of dark enegy models in four classes, we discuss the complementarity of cosmological observations to tackle down the physics beyond the acceleration of our universe. We discuss the tests distinguishing the four classes and then focus on the dynamics of the perturbations in the Newtonian regime. We also exhibit explicitely models that have identical predictions for a subset of observations.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figure

Utilisation of an operative difficulty grading scale for laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background A reliable system for grading operative difficulty of laparoscopic cholecystectomy would standardise description of findings and reporting of outcomes. The aim of this study was to validate a difficulty grading system (Nassar scale), testing its applicability and consistency in two large prospective datasets. Methods Patient and disease-related variables and 30-day outcomes were identified in two prospective cholecystectomy databases: the multi-centre prospective cohort of 8820 patients from the recent CholeS Study and the single-surgeon series containing 4089 patients. Operative data and patient outcomes were correlated with Nassar operative difficultly scale, using Kendall’s tau for dichotomous variables, or Jonckheere–Terpstra tests for continuous variables. A ROC curve analysis was performed, to quantify the predictive accuracy of the scale for each outcome, with continuous outcomes dichotomised, prior to analysis. Results A higher operative difficulty grade was consistently associated with worse outcomes for the patients in both the reference and CholeS cohorts. The median length of stay increased from 0 to 4 days, and the 30-day complication rate from 7.6 to 24.4% as the difficulty grade increased from 1 to 4/5 (both p < 0.001). In the CholeS cohort, a higher difficulty grade was found to be most strongly associated with conversion to open and 30-day mortality (AUROC = 0.903, 0.822, respectively). On multivariable analysis, the Nassar operative difficultly scale was found to be a significant independent predictor of operative duration, conversion to open surgery, 30-day complications and 30-day reintervention (all p < 0.001). Conclusion We have shown that an operative difficulty scale can standardise the description of operative findings by multiple grades of surgeons to facilitate audit, training assessment and research. It provides a tool for reporting operative findings, disease severity and technical difficulty and can be utilised in future research to reliably compare outcomes according to case mix and intra-operative difficulty

Transposing tirtha: Understanding religious reforms and locative piety in early modern Hinduism

The paper deals with a historical and hitherto obscure case of de-commercialisation of sacred geography of India. Sahajanand Swami, an eighteenth century religious leader from Gujarat who became popular as Bhagwan Swaminarayan took an initiative to eliminate corruption in Dwarka, one of the most sacred destination in Hindu imagination. He also attempted to transpose the piety of Dwarka and recreate a parallel religious experience at Vadtal, an important site in Swaminarayan Hinduism. This process of making sacred sites more egalitarian is classified here as a 'religious reform'. The paper assesses this bivalent pursuit as an institutional reform within religion as well as a religious process in the context of piety, authority and orthodoxy. Through the example of Sahajanand Swami, it is argued to calibrate the colonial paradigm of reform that was largely contextual to social issues and western thought and failed to appreciate the religious reforms of that era. By constructing a nuanced typology of 'religious reform' distinct from 'social reforms', the paper eventually calls for a reassessment of religious figures who have significantly contributed in reforming the Hindu tradition in the medieval and modern era

Global perspectives on observing ocean boundary current systems

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Todd, R. E., Chavez, F. P., Clayton, S., Cravatte, S., Goes, M., Greco, M., Ling, X., Sprintall, J., Zilberman, N., V., Archer, M., Aristegui, J., Balmaseda, M., Bane, J. M., Baringer, M. O., Barth, J. A., Beal, L. M., Brandt, P., Calil, P. H. R., Campos, E., Centurioni, L. R., Chidichimo, M. P., Cirano, M., Cronin, M. F., Curchitser, E. N., Davis, R. E., Dengler, M., deYoung, B., Dong, S., Escribano, R., Fassbender, A. J., Fawcett, S. E., Feng, M., Goni, G. J., Gray, A. R., Gutierrez, D., Hebert, D., Hummels, R., Ito, S., Krug, M., Lacan, F., Laurindo, L., Lazar, A., Lee, C. M., Lengaigne, M., Levine, N. M., Middleton, J., Montes, I., Muglia, M., Nagai, T., Palevsky, H., I., Palter, J. B., Phillips, H. E., Piola, A., Plueddemann, A. J., Qiu, B., Rodrigues, R. R., Roughan, M., Rudnick, D. L., Rykaczewski, R. R., Saraceno, M., Seim, H., Sen Gupta, A., Shannon, L., Sloyan, B. M., Sutton, A. J., Thompson, L., van der Plas, A. K., Volkov, D., Wilkin, J., Zhang, D., & Zhang, L. Global perspectives on observing ocean boundary current systems. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, (2010); 423, doi: 10.3389/fmars.2019.00423.Ocean boundary current systems are key components of the climate system, are home to highly productive ecosystems, and have numerous societal impacts. Establishment of a global network of boundary current observing systems is a critical part of ongoing development of the Global Ocean Observing System. The characteristics of boundary current systems are reviewed, focusing on scientific and societal motivations for sustained observing. Techniques currently used to observe boundary current systems are reviewed, followed by a census of the current state of boundary current observing systems globally. The next steps in the development of boundary current observing systems are considered, leading to several specific recommendations.RT was supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research at WHOI. FC was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. MGo was funded by NSF and NOAA/AOML. XL was funded by China’s National Key Research and Development Projects (2016YFA0601803), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41490641, 41521091, and U1606402), and the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (2017ASKJ01). JS was supported by NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (Award NA15OAR4320071). DZ was partially funded by the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA15OAR4320063. BS was supported by IMOS and CSIRO’s Decadal Climate Forecasting Project. We gratefully acknowledge the wide range of funding sources from many nations that have enabled the observations and analyses reviewed here

Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States

Short-term probabilistic forecasts of the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States have served as a visible and important communication channel between the scientific modeling community and both the general public and decision-makers. Forecasting models provide specific, quantitative, and evaluable predictions that inform short-term decisions such as healthcare staffing needs, school closures, and allocation of medical supplies. Starting in April 2020, the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub (https://covid19forecasthub.org/) collected, disseminated, and synthesized tens of millions of specific predictions from more than 90 different academic, industry, and independent research groups. A multimodel ensemble forecast that combined predictions from dozens of groups every week provided the most consistently accurate probabilistic forecasts of incident deaths due to COVID-19 at the state and national level from April 2020 through October 2021. The performance of 27 individual models that submitted complete forecasts of COVID-19 deaths consistently throughout this year showed high variability in forecast skill across time, geospatial units, and forecast horizons. Two-thirds of the models evaluated showed better accuracy than a naïve baseline model. Forecast accuracy degraded as models made predictions further into the future, with probabilistic error at a 20-wk horizon three to five times larger than when predicting at a 1-wk horizon. This project underscores the role that collaboration and active coordination between governmental public-health agencies, academic modeling teams, and industry partners can play in developing modern modeling capabilities to support local, state, and federal response to outbreaks

Population‐based cohort study of outcomes following cholecystectomy for benign gallbladder diseases

Background The aim was to describe the management of benign gallbladder disease and identify characteristics associated with all‐cause 30‐day readmissions and complications in a prospective population‐based cohort. Methods Data were collected on consecutive patients undergoing cholecystectomy in acute UK and Irish hospitals between 1 March and 1 May 2014. Potential explanatory variables influencing all‐cause 30‐day readmissions and complications were analysed by means of multilevel, multivariable logistic regression modelling using a two‐level hierarchical structure with patients (level 1) nested within hospitals (level 2). Results Data were collected on 8909 patients undergoing cholecystectomy from 167 hospitals. Some 1451 cholecystectomies (16·3 per cent) were performed as an emergency, 4165 (46·8 per cent) as elective operations, and 3293 patients (37·0 per cent) had had at least one previous emergency admission, but had surgery on a delayed basis. The readmission and complication rates at 30 days were 7·1 per cent (633 of 8909) and 10·8 per cent (962 of 8909) respectively. Both readmissions and complications were independently associated with increasing ASA fitness grade, duration of surgery, and increasing numbers of emergency admissions with gallbladder disease before cholecystectomy. No identifiable hospital characteristics were linked to readmissions and complications. Conclusion Readmissions and complications following cholecystectomy are common and associated with patient and disease characteristics