1,721,007 research outputs found
Distance threshold for the effect of urban agriculture on elevated self-reported malaria prevalence in Accra, Ghana
No full textIrrigated urban agriculture (UA), which has helped alleviate poverty and increase food security in rapidly urbanizing sub-Saharan Africa, may inadvertently support malaria vectors. Previous studies have not identified a variable distance effect on malaria prevalence from UA. This study examines the relationships between self-reported malaria information for 3,164 women surveyed in Accra, Ghana, in 2003, and both household characteristics and proximity to sites of UA. Malaria self-reports are associated with age, education, overall health, socioeconomic status, and solid waste disposal method. The odds of self-reported malaria are significantly higher for women living within 1 km of UA compared with all women living near an irrigation source, the association disappearing beyond this critical distance. Malaria prevalence is often elevated in communities within 1 km of UA despite more favorable socio-economic characteristics than communities beyond 1 km. Neighborhoods within 1 km of UA should be reconsidered as a priority for malaria-related care
Ethnic residential patterns as predictors of intra-urban child mortality in Accra, Ghana
No full textAs cities of developing nations absorb an increasing fraction of the world’s population increase, questions have arisen about the potential for emerging inequalities in health within places that are already suffering from inadequate infrastructure. In this paper we explore the pattern of child mortality inequalities (as a proxy for overall health levels) within a large sub-Saharan African city—Accra, Ghana—and then we examine the extent to which existing residential patterns by ethnicity may be predictive of any observed intra-urban inequalities in child mortality. We find that the spatial variability in child mortality in Accra is especially associated with the pattern of residential separation of the Ga from other ethnic groups, with the Ga having higher levels of mortality than other ethnic groups. Being of Ga ethnicity exposes a woman and her children to characteristics of the places in Accra where the Ga live, in which one-room dwellings and poor infrastructure predominate. At the individual level, we find that regardless of where a woman lives, if she is of Ga ethnicity and/or is non-Christian, and if she is not married, her risks of having lost a child are elevated
Neighborhoods and fertility in Accra, Ghana: an AMOEBA-based approach
No full textFertility levels remain high in most of sub-Saharan Africa, despite recent declines, and even in a large capital city such as Accra, Ghana, women are having children at a pace that is well above replacement level and this will contribute to significant levels of future population growth in the city. Our purpose in this article is to evaluate the way in which neighborhood context might shape reproductive behavior in Accra. In the process, we introduce several important innovations to the understanding of intraurban fertility levels in a sub-Saharan African city: (1) Despite the near explosion of work on neighborhoods as a spatial unit of analysis, very little of this research has been conducted outside of the richer countries; (2) we characterize neighborhoods on the basis of local knowledge of what we call vernacular neighborhoods; (3) we then define what we call organic neighborhoods using a new clustering tool—the AMOEBA algorithm—to create these neighborhoods; and (4) we then we evaluate and explain which of the neighborhood concepts has the largest measurable contextual effect on an individual woman's reproductive behavior. Multilevel regression analysis suggests that vernacular neighborhoods are more influential on a woman's decision to delay marriage, whereas the organic neighborhoods based on socioeconomic status better capture the factors that shape fertility decisions after marriage.<br/
Can we spot a neighborhood from the air? Defining neighborhood structure in Accra, Ghana
No full textSlums are home to a large fraction of urban residents in cities of developing nations, but little attempt has been made to go beyond a simple slum/non-slum dichotomy, nor to identify slums more quantitatively than through local reputation. We use census data from Accra, Ghana, to create an index that applies the UN-Habitat criteria for a place to be a slum. We use this index to identify neighborhoods on a continuum of slum characteristics and on that basis are able to locate the worst slums in Accra. These do include the areas with a local reputation for being slums, lending qualitative validation to the index. We show that slums also have footprints that can be identified from data classified from satellite imagery. However, variability among slums in Accra is also associated with some variability in the land cover characteristics of slums
The impact of human capital on regional labor productivity in Europe
Get PDFHuman capital, Labor productivity, Spatial Durbin model, Spatial externalities, European regions, C21, O18, O47, O52, R11,
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
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