Associations of womens position in the household and food insecurity with family planning use in Nepal.

BACKGROUND: Women in Nepal have low status, especially younger women in co-resident households. Nepal also faces high levels of household food insecurity and malnutrition, and stagnation in uptake of modern family planning methods. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand if household structure and food insecurity interact to influence family planning use in Nepal. METHODS: Using data on married, non-pregnant women aged 15-49 with at least one child from the Nepal 2011 Demographic and Health Survey (N = 7,460), we explore the relationship between womens position in the household, food insecurity as a moderator, and family planning use, using multi-variable logistic regressions. We adjust for household and individual factors, including other status-related variables. RESULTS: In adjusted models, living in a food insecure household and co-residing with in-laws either with no other daughter-in-laws or as the eldest or youngest daughter-in-law (compared to not-co-residing with in-laws) are all associated with lower odds of family planning use. In the interaction model, younger-sisters-in-law and women co-residing with no sisters-in-law in food insecure households have the lowest odds of family planning use. CONCLUSION: This study shows that household position is associated with family planning use in Nepal, and that food insecurity modifies these associations-highlighting the importance of considering both factors in understanding reproductive health care use in Nepal. Policies and programs should focus on the multiple pathways through which food insecurity impacts womens reproductive health, including focusing on women with the lowest status in households

Investigating heuristic evaluation as a methodology for evaluating pedagogical software: An analysis employing three case studies

This paper looks specifically at how to develop light weight methods of evaluating pedagogically motivated software. Whilst we value traditional usability testing methods this paper will look at how Heuristic Evaluation can be used as both a driving force of Software Engineering Iterative Refinement and end of project Evaluation. We present three case studies in the area of Pedagogical Software and show how we have used this technique in a variety of ways. The paper presents results and reflections on what we have learned. We conclude with a discussion on how this technique might inform on the latest developments on delivery of distance learning. © 2014 Springer International Publishing

Agricultural and Finance Intervention Increased Dietary Intake and Weight of Children Living in HIV-Affected Households in Western Kenya.

We tested whether a multisectoral household agricultural and finance intervention increased the dietary intake and improved the nutritional status of HIV-affected children. Two hospitals in rural Kenya were randomly assigned to be either the intervention or the control arm. The intervention comprised a human-powered water pump, microfinance loan for farm commodities, and training in sustainable farming practices and financial management. In each arm, 100 children (0-59 mo of age) were enrolled from households with HIV-infected adults 18-49 y old. Children were assessed beginning in April 2012 and every 3 mo for 1 y for dietary intake and anthropometry. Children in the intervention arm had a larger increase in weight (β: 0.025 kg/mo, P = 0.030), overall frequency of food consumption (β: 0.610 times · wk-1 · mo-1, P = 0.048), and intakes of staples (β: 0.222, P = 0.024), fruits and vegetables (β: 0.425, P = 0.005), meat (β: 0.074, P < 0.001), and fat (β: 0.057, P = 0.041). Livelihood interventions have potential to improve the nutrition of HIV-affected children. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01548599

SAT based Enforcement of Domotic Effects in Smart Environments

The emergence of economically viable and efficient sensor technology provided impetus to the development of smart devices (or appliances). Modern smart environments are equipped with a multitude of smart devices and sensors, aimed at delivering intelligent services to the users of smart environments. The presence of these diverse smart devices has raised a major problem of managing environments. A rising solution to the problem is the modeling of user goals and intentions, and then interacting with the environments using user defined goals. `Domotic Effects' is a user goal modeling framework, which provides Ambient Intelligence (AmI) designers and integrators with an abstract layer that enables the definition of generic goals in a smart environment, in a declarative way, which can be used to design and develop intelligent applications. The high-level nature of domotic effects also allows the residents to program their personal space as they see fit: they can define different achievement criteria for a particular generic goal, e.g., by defining a combination of devices having some particular states, by using domain-specific custom operators. This paper describes an approach for the automatic enforcement of domotic effects in case of the Boolean application domain, suitable for intelligent monitoring and control in domotic environments. Effect enforcement is the ability to determine device configurations that can achieve a set of generic goals (domotic effects). The paper also presents an architecture to implement the enforcement of Boolean domotic effects, and results obtained from carried out experiments prove the feasibility of the proposed approach and highlight the responsiveness of the implemented effect enforcement architectur

Herbal extracts modulate the amplitude and frequency of slow waves in circular smooth muscle of mouse small intestine

Background: Herbal preparations like STW 5 (Iberogast(R)) are widely used drugs in the treatment of dyspepsia and motility-related disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. STW 5 is a phytotherapeutic agent consisting of a fixed mixture of 9 individual plant extracts. The electrophysiological mechanisms of action of STW 5 remain obscure. Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate whether herbal extracts influence electrophysiological parameters of the small intestine. For this purpose, the resting membrane potential (RMP) and the slow wave rhythmicity of smooth muscle cells of mouse small intestine were observed. Methods: Intracellular recordings of smooth muscle cells of the circular muscle layer of mouse small intestine were performed using standard microelectrode techniques. After dissection of the mucosa, the small intestine was placed in an organ bath and a microelectrode was applied on a circular smooth muscle cell. The RMP and the amplitude of slow waves were measured in millivolts. Results: The RMP of smooth muscle cells was - 59 +/- 1.3 mV. This RMP was significantly depolarized by STW 5 ( 9.6 +/- 1.6 mV); the depolarizing effects can be mainly attributed to the constituents of matricariae flos, angelicae radix and chelidonii herba. The basal frequency of small intestinal slow waves was 39.5 +/- 1.4 min(-1) and the amplitude was 23.1 +/- 0.9 mV. STW 5 significantly reduced the amplitude and frequency of the slow waves ( 11.7 +/- 0.8 mV; 33.5 +/- 3.4 min(-1)). This effect on slow waves represents the sum of the effects of the 9 phytoextracts. Whereas angelicae radix and matricariae flos completely blocked slow wave activity, Iberis amara increased the frequency and amplitude, chelidonii herba reduced the frequency and amplitude of the slow waves, mentae piperitae folium reduced the frequency and left amplitude unchanged and liquiritae radix, carvi fructus and melissae folium had no effects. Conclusion: Herbal extracts cause changes in smooth muscle RMP and slow wave rhythmicity, up to reversible abolition, by blockade of large conductance Ca2+ channels and other not yet identified mechanisms. In herbal preparations like STW 5 these effects add up to a total effect and this study indicates that herbal preparations which are widely used in dyspepsia and motility-related disorders have characteristic, reproducible, reversible effects on small intestinal electrophysiology. Copyright (C) 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel

Harnessing Poverty Alleviation to Reduce the Stigma of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa

Alexander Tsai and colleagues highlight the complex relationship between poverty and HIV stigma in sub-Saharan Africa, and discuss possible ways to break the cycle. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summar

Physics Analysis Expert PAX: First Applications

PAX (Physics Analysis Expert) is a novel, C++ based toolkit designed to assist teams in particle physics data analysis issues. The core of PAX are event interpretation containers, holding relevant information about and possible interpretations of a physics event. Providing this new level of abstraction beyond the results of the detector reconstruction programs, PAX facilitates the buildup and use of modern analysis factories. Class structure and user command syntax of PAX are set up to support expert teams as well as newcomers in preparing for the challenges expected to arise in the data analysis at future hadron colliders.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 7 pages, LaTeX, 10 eps figures. PSN THLT00

Energy-Efficient Work-Stealing Language Runtimes

Work stealing is a promising approach to constructing multithreaded program runtimes of parallel programming languages. This paper presents HERMES, an energy-efficient work-stealing language runtime. The key insight is that threads in a work-stealing environment – thieves and victims – have varying impacts on the overall program running time, and a coordination of their execution “tempo ” can lead to energy efficiency with minimal performance loss. The centerpiece of HERMES is two complementary algorithms to coordinate thread tempo: the workpath-sensitive algorithm determines tempo for each thread based on thief-victim relationships on the execution path, whereas the workload-sensitive algorithm selects appropriate tempo based on the size of work-stealing deques. We construct HERMES on top of Intel Cilk Plus’s runtime, and implement tempo adjustment through standard Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS). Benchmarks running on HERMES demonstrate an average of 11-12 % energy savings with an average of 3-4% performance loss through meter-based measurements over commercial CPUs. 1

Retinol deficiency and Dipetalonema viteae infection in the hamster

Following chronic retinol (vitamin A) deprivation leading to exhaustion of liver vitamin A reserves below 50 I.U. per liver hamsters were fed diets either deficient in ("Rd”: 250 I.U.A/kg in experiment I, 1000 I.U.A/kg in experiment II) or enriched with retinol ("Rw”: 10000 I.U.A/kg in experiment I and II). After 4 weeks some of the animals (36 in experiment I, 30 in II) were infected with 150 3rd-stage larvae of D. viteae, while clean animals were kept as controls. The retinol status, the immune response (indirect fluorescent antibody test: IFAT) and parasitological parameters were examined up to 8 (experiment I) and 12 weeks (experiment II) post infection (p.i.). Rd hamsters had levelling off of weight gain or weight loss, severely deficient retinol levels in serum and liver, and high mortality. Weight gain was less in infected than in uninfected hamsters, and the capacity of infected Rw animals to restore liver retinol was significantly lower than that of uninfected Rw animals. IFAT titres were similar in Rd and in Rw animals, but microfilaraemia was significantly enhanced at 8 and 10·5 weeks p.i. in Rd hamsters. While the number of worms recovered from Rd and Rw hamsters was similar, there was a significant increase in the ratio of female to male worms in Rd hamsters. Rd hamsters in experiment I produced 3·3 times the worm mass per 100 g body-weight than Rw hamsters. Also, the average mass per female worm was significantly higher in Rd than in Rw hamsters, and this parameter was negatively correlated with the liver retinol concentration in experiment I (r=−0·89). Retinol deficiency has a marked effect on growth and fertility of D. viteae in hamster

Estruturação de base cartográfica para apoio ao inVEST.

Editores técnicos: Marcílio José Thomazini, Elenice Fritzsons, Patrícia Raquel Silva, Guilherme Schnell e Schuhli, Denise Jeton Cardoso, Luziane Franciscon. EVINCI. Resumos