1,720,991 research outputs found
Awareness and acceptance of alternative interventions for malaria control among stakeholders in Tanzania: a community engagement process
No full textThesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyBackground: Despite great progress made over the past decade, malaria continues to be a significant threat to human health globally, where more than three billion people are at risk of malaria. Current malaria vector control tools have contributed to significant declines in malaria burden over the recent decades, but these interventions are rapidly reaching their limits due to challenges with resistance to public health insecticides and antimalarial drugs, changes in mosquito behaviours and sub-optimal access and compliance to malaria control interventions. It is increasingly recognized that alternative interventions are needed to supplement the current
interventions to speed up malaria control and elimination efforts. In order to ensure that new or alternative interventions are appropriate and effective, it is crucial that all key stakeholders are appropriately and adequately engaged. However, currently there is limited information on how alternative interventions may be perceived by the stakeholders, and limited information on the best strategies to engage the stakeholders in research and implementation of the interventions .
My PhD aimed to explore and assess awareness and acceptance of alternative interventions for malaria control and elimination among key stakeholders in Tanzania, as a first step towards developing a stakeholder engagement model towards effective malaria control and elimination in Tanzania.
Aims: The overall aim of the PhD was to assess awareness and perceptions of the alternative interventions for malaria control and elimination among key stakeholders in Tanzania, and to explore opportunities for improving malaria control and elimination efforts through stakeholder engagement. It had the following specific objectives: To explore opinions of stakeholders on the need and potential of alternative interventions for malaria control in Tanzania; 2. To investigate community perceptions regarding genetically-modified mosquitoes (GMMs) and their potential for
malaria control in Tanzanian villages; 3. To investigate key obstacles and opportunities relevant for effective rollout of larviciding for malaria control in southern Tanzania; and 4. To explore perceptions and recommendations for housing improvement for malaria control among in malaria endemic settings in southern Tanzania.
Methodology: An exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach was used, incorporating focus group discussions (FGD), key informant interviews (KII) and survey questionnaires. A series of FGDs were done with representatives of key stakeholder groups in the country to explore their views and opinions regarding the alternative technologies for malaria control. Preliminary findings from the FGD were used to develop a questionnaire to assess the baseline awareness and
acceptance of the alternative among the stakeholders. Key informant interviews (KII) were conducted with district malaria control officials to explore their awareness, experiences and perceptions of larviciding as an alternative malaria control intervention in Morogoro region.
Key findings: The following key findings were observed in this study: (i) There was an overall agreement among stakeholders that the Tanzanian government has made great efforts in malaria control over the past couple of decades. There was also an overall agreement that the current interventions were not sufficient to help achieve malaria elimination by 2030.
(ii) Larviciding was the most preferred alternative intervention to invest in by all stakeholder groups. However, its implementation was shadowed by a number of limitations including insufficient knowledge among the district and local implementers as well as inadequate funding, brought on by lack involvement of local organization in the implementation. (iii) Mosquito modification technology generated mixed views between the stakeholder groups. While community members, policy makers and regulators indicated varying degrees of support for this technology, research scientists expressed skepticism, question whether the country is ready for such an advanced technology. The concept of genetic modification was not new among the community members; they were able to draw similarities with their practices of cross-breeding domestic animals and using hybrid crop seeds. (iv) Housing improvement was the most understood and the most preferred alternative intervention among community members, who viewed it as the most sustainable intervention in eliminating malaria and many other infectious diseases. However, this intervention drew skepticism among policy makers, regulators and research scientists who questions its sustainability. (v) Effective stakeholder engagement was recommended as the most crucial determinant of success in malaria control and elimination efforts in Tanzania.
Conclusions: Different stakeholders preferred different interventions; however larviciding was overall the most accepted intervention. While implementation of larviciding has already commenced across the country, further research into this intervention revealed a number of gaps, which will need to be responded to for its success. Stakeholder engagement was recommended to be a crucial aspect in determining the success of the malaria control efforts in Tanzania. Effective stakeholder engagement is therefore an essential component in determining and implementing malaria control interventions. Stakeholders in this study propose engagement
methods that build equal partnership with all key actors of malaria control including local public and private organizations, and not only improve knowledge of malaria transmission and its control among the key players, but also take into account the needs and preferences of the targeted communities. Further research is needed to determine stakeholder engagement models that can be effective in different malaria endemic settings. Likewise, additional research is needed to thoroughly explore the potential of the other preferred interventions, i.e. housing improvement and mosquito modification technology in malaria control and elimination in Tanzania.PH
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
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