The trypanosomatid evolution workshop London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

The trypanosome evolution workshop, a joint meeting of the University of Exeter and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, focused on topics relating to trypanosomatid and vector evolution. The meeting, sponsored by The Wellcome Trust, The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Disease of World Health Organization and the British Section of the Society of Protozoologists, brought together an international group of experts who presented papers on a wide range of topics including parasite and vector phylogenies, molecular methodology and relevant biogeographical data.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: a new century of malaria research

The global malaria situation has scarcely improved in the last 100 years, despite major advances in our knowledge of the basic biology, epidemiology and clinical basis of the disease. Effective malaria control, leading to a significant decrease in the morbidity and mortality attributable to malaria, will require a multidisciplinary approach. New tools - drugs, vaccine and insecticides - are needed but there is also much to be gained by better use of existing tools: using drugs in combination in order to slow the development of drug resistance; targeting resources to areas of greatest need; using geographic information systems to map the populations at risk and more sophisticated marketing techniques to distribute bed nets and insecticides. Sustainable malaria control may require the deployment of a highly effective vaccine, but there is much that can be done in the meantime to reduce the burden of disease.

Designs and model effects definitions in the initial stage of a plant breeding program

The objective of this work was to compare the relative efficiency of initial selection and genetic parameter estimation, using augmented blocks design (ABD), augmented blocks twice replicated design (DABD) and group of randomised block design experiments with common treatments (ERBCT), by simulations, considering fixed effect model and mixed model with regular treatment effects as random. For the simulations, eight different conditions (scenarios) were considered. From the 600 simulations in each scenario, the mean percentage selection coincidence, the Pearsons´s correlation estimates between adjusted means for the fixed effects model, and the heritability estimates for the mixed model were evaluated. DABD and ERBCT were very similar in their comparisons and slightly superior to ABD. Considering the initial stages of selection in a plant breeding program, ABD is a good alternative for selecting superior genotypes, although none of the designs had been effective to estimate heritability in all the different scenarios evaluated.

Nursing Supervision: Studying the “Case” of the phenomenon of interorganizational articulation Nursing School and Hospital

The history of this research found a suitable ethos not only by the route of the researcher, but also by the current public policies of modernization and reform that are capable of regulating and transforming the educational and health systems, as well as their professional groups. The reflection meantime developed had raised a clear perception of the organizational change processes by which they interfered with the interorganizational coordination between School of Nursing and Hospital, where internship supervision would be the main protagonist, supported by the meanings that intervening actors have assigned to them. In this context, the search for explicit epistemological and methodological choices leads to look more attentively at the problem, ascertaining it, taking into account the organizational dimensions. In this regard, the choice of a case study was related to the fact that the method allowed to answer the purpose of knowing and understanding the interorganizational coordination phenomenon between School of Nursing and Hospital, namely through the supervision of internships.

Cross-cultural differences in children's concepts of health and illness

INTRODUCTION: In spite of general agreement that cross-cultural research is needed in the health area, most existing investigations of children's development of health and illness-related concepts have involved samples from developed countries. The study examined the development of the concepts of health and illness as a function of subject's age, socio-economic status (SES), gender and grade level in a Brazilian sample of 96 elementary and junior high school students. METHODS: Subjects were interviewed individually and their ideas of health and illness were assessed through open-ended questions. Participants' answers were transcribed verbatim and subjected to content analysis. RESULTS: Chi-square analyses revealed significant age, school grade and SES-related differences in participants' concepts of health and illness. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The themes employed by subjects to define both health and illness were broadly consistent with those found by previous research. The study showed a predictable relationship between subject's age and school grade level and increasingly more highly differentiated and multidimensional concepts of health and illness. This investigation suggests that, for the most part, cross-cultural similarities in children's concepts of health and illness may be more striking than the differences.

Methodology in the epidemiological research of respiratory diseases and environmental pollution

There are complex and diverse methodological problems involved in the clinical and epidemiological study of respiratory diseases and their etiological factors. The association of urban growth, industrialization and environmental deterioration with respiratory diseases makes it necessary to pay more attention to this research area with a multidisciplinary approach. Appropriate study designs and statistical techniques to analyze and improve our understanding of the pathological events and their causes must be implemented to reduce the growing morbidity and mortality through better preventive actions and health programs. The objective of the article is to review the most common methodological problems in this research area and to present the most available statistical tools used.