Gender-based Violence: a resource document for services and organisations working with and for minority ethnic women

Gender-based Violence: a resource document for services and organisations working with and for minority ethnic women Click here to download PDF 492kb This is a publication of the Womens Health Council

Sexually transmitted infections, bacterial vaginosis, and candidiasis in women of reproductive age in rural Northeast Brazil: a population-based study

Population-based data on sexually transmitted infections (STI), bacterial vaginosis (BV), and candidiasis reflect the epidemiological situation more accurately than studies performed in specific populations, but such data are scarce. To determine the prevalence of STI, BV, and candidiasis among women of reproductive age from a resource-poor community in Northeast Brazil, a population-based cross sectional study was undertaken. All women from seven hamlets and the centre of Pacoti municipality in the state of Ceará, aged 12 to 49 years, were invited to participate. The women were asked about socio-demographic characteristics and genital symptoms, and thereafter examined gynaecologically. Laboratory testing included polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for human papillomavirus (HPV), ligase chain reaction (LCR) for Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae, ELISA for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), venereal disease research laboratory (VDRL) and fluorescent treponema antibody absorption test (FTA-ABS) for syphilis, and analysis of wet mounts, gram stains and Pap smears for trichomoniasis, candidiasis, and BV. Only women who had initiated sexual life were included in the analysis (n = 592). The prevalences of STI were: HPV 11.7% (95% confidence interval: 9.3-14.7), chlamydia 4.5% (3.0-6.6), trichomoniasis 4.1% (2.7-6.1), gonorrhoea 1.2% (0.5-2.6), syphilis 0.2% (0.0-1.1), and HIV 0%. The prevalence of BV and candidiasis was 20% (16.9-23.6) and 12.5% (10.0-15.5), respectively. The most common gynaecological complaint was lower abdominal pain. STI are common in women in rural Brazil and represent an important health threat in view of the HIV pandemic.

Nouveautés thérapeutiques 2008 en médecine interne hospitalière: perspective des chefs de clinique [Highlights 2008 in a university hospital-based internal medicine: the point of view from the chief residents]

Doctors must regularly adjust their patients' care according to recent relevant publications. The chief residents from the Department of Internal Medicine of a university hospital present some major themes of internal medicine treated during the year 2008, such as heart failure, diabetes, COPD, and thromboembolic disease. Emphasis will be placed primarily on changes in the daily hospital practice induced by these recent studies. This variety of topics illustrates both the broad spectrum of the current internal medicine, and the many uncertainties associated with modem medical practice based on evidence.

Nouveautés en médecine interne hospitalière 2007: perspective des chefs de clinique [Highlights 2007 in hospital-based internal medicine: the point of view from the chief residents]

L'année 2007 a été marquée par la publication de plusieurs études internationales concernant directement le quotidien de l'interniste hospitalier. Un résumé de ces travaux ne saurait être qu'un extrait condensé et forcément subjectif d'une croissante et dynamique diversité. Au gré de leurs lectures, de leurs intérêts et de leurs interrogations, les chefs de clinique du Service de médecine interne vous proposent ainsi un parcours original revisitant les thèmes de l'insuffisance cardiaque, du diabète, de l'endocardite, de la BPCO ou de la qualité des soins. Cette variété de sujets illustre à la fois le vaste champ couvert par la médecine interne actuelle, ainsi que les nombreuses incertitudes liées à la pratique médicale moderne basée sur les preuves. In 2007, several international studies brought useful information for the daily work of internists in hospital settings. This summary is of course subjective but reflects the interests and questions of the chief residents of the Department of internal medicine who wrote this article like an original trip in medical literature. This trip will allow you to review some aspects of important fields such as heart failure, diabetes, endocarditis, COPD, and quality of care. Besides the growing diversity of the fields covered by internal medicine, these various topics underline also the uncertainty internists have to face in a practice directed towards evidence.

A simulation-based algorithm for solving the resource-assignment problem in satellite telecommunication networks

This paper proposes an heuristic for the scheduling of capacity requests and the periodic assignment of radio resources in geostationary (GEO) satellite networks with star topology, using the Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) protocol in the link layer, and Multi-Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (MF-TDMA) and Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) in the physical layer.

Population based resource allocation: The use of hybrid risk adjustment

The emphasis on integrated care implies new incentives that promote coordinationbetween levels of care. Considering a population as a whole, the resource allocation systemhas to adapt to this environment. This research is aimed to design a model that allows formorbidity related prospective and concurrent capitation payment. The model can be applied inpublicly funded health systems and managed competition settings.Methods: We analyze the application of hybrid risk adjustment versus either prospective orconcurrent risk adjustment formulae in the context of funding total health expenditures for thepopulation of an integrated healthcare delivery organization in Catalonia during years 2004 and2005.Results: The hybrid model reimburses integrated care organizations avoiding excessive risktransfer and maximizing incentives for efficiency in the provision. At the same time, it eliminatesincentives for risk selection for a specific set of high risk individuals through the use ofconcurrent reimbursement in order to assure a proper classification of patients.Conclusion: Prospective Risk Adjustment is used to transfer the financial risk to the healthprovider and therefore provide incentives for efficiency. Within the context of a National HealthSystem, such transfer of financial risk is illusory, and the government has to cover the deficits.Hybrid risk adjustment is useful to provide the right combination of incentive for efficiency andappropriate level of risk transfer for integrated care organizations.

The three strands of intercultural polities: a comprehensive view. A critical review of Bouchard and Cantle recent books on interculturalism

Within the emerging policy debate on interculturalism we critically review two recent books in 2012: Bouchard’s L’interculturalisme: un point de vue quebecois, and Cantle’s Interculturalism: The New Era of Cohesion and Diversity. In my view, both contribute very directly to open a foundational debate on interculturalism. In addressing the point of convergence and the dividing lines of these two contributions, I will claim that in spite of having one core concept of interculturalism, there are, however, at least two basic conceptions that have to be interpreted in complementary ways: Bouchard’s essay represents the contractual strand, Cantle’s book the cohesion strand. At the end I would also suggest that these two strands do not manage to express explicitly that diversity can also be seen as a resource of innovation and creativity, and so can drive individual and social development. This view is based on the diversity advantage literature already informing most of the diversity debate in Europe and elsewhere. This is what I will call the constructivist strand. My ultimate purpose is to defend a comprehensive view, grounded on the argument that no one can have the sole authority to define intercultural policy, since the three strands can be applied at different moments, according to different purposes and policy needs. The challenge now is that policy managers be able to achieve a balance between these three policy drivers.

Modernizing human resource management : the importance of values-based leadership in the Canadian federal public service /

Over the past several decades, many theories have been advanced as to why efforts to reform the public service have met with only limited success. Clearly, the role of leadership with respect to reform must be examined, since successful organizational leaders should be extremely accomplished in the promotion and protection of the values that underlie decision-making. The issue of effective leadership is particularly significant for the future of the public service of Canada. Large numbers of public servants in the executive ranks are due to retire within the next five years. Given their central role, it is vital that there be enough dedicated and committed public servants to staff future vacancies. It is also essential that future public service leaders possess the competencies and values associated with a world-class public service and, a new type of public organization. Related to this point is the importance of people-management skills. People management in the public service is an issue that has historically faced - and will continue to face - major challenges with respect to recruiting and retaining the leaders it requires for its continued success. It is imperative that the public service not only be revitalized and be seen as an employer of choice, but also that the process by which it accomplishes this goal - the practice of human resource management - be modernized. To achieve the flexibility needed to remain effective, the public service requires the kind ofleadership that supports new public service values such as innovation and which emphasizes a "people- first" approach. This thesis examines the kind of public service leadership needed to modernize the human resource management regime in the federal public service. A historical examination of public service values is presented to help determine the values that are important for public service leaders with respect to modernizing human resource management. Since replenishing the 2 ranks of public service leaders is crucial to ensure the quality of service to Canadians, leadership that supports career planning will be a major focus of this paper. In addition, this thesis demonstrates that while traditional public service values continue to endure, innovative leaders must effectively reconcile new public service values with traditional values in order to increase the possibilities for successful reform as well as achieve business objectives. Much of the thesis is devoted to explaining the crucial role of post-bureaucratic leadership to successful reform. One of the major findings of the thesis is that leaders who demonstrate a blending of new public service values and traditional values are critical to creating effective employment relationships, which are key to modernizing human resource management in the federal public service. It will be apparent that public service leaders must ensure that an appropriate accountability framework is in place before embarking on reform. However, leaders who support new public service values such as innovation and empowerment and who emphasize the importance of people are essential to successful reform.

Continuation and discontinuation of local institution in community based natural resource management

Currently the push toward frontier areas, which until twenty years ago were still largely untouched by commercial agriculture, is taking place on a massive scale. This push is being driven not the least by global economic developments, such as the price increase of agriculture commodities like coffee and cocoa. In most cases the indigenous communities become trapped between the state monopoly in natural resource management and the competition for resources by external actors. In this processes the indigenous communities start to lose their access to resources. Another victim in this process is the environment where the natural resources are imbedded. International and national organizations working to conserve environment have became conscious of the important role that indigenous people could fulfill as partners in this endeavour. This partnership in struggle has produced a new discourse on the relationship between indigenous people and their environment. As a further consequence, programs were set up to develop what became known as Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) with its numerous variations. Based on a case study in a village on the eastern border of the Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, this study questioned the basic assumption behind the concept of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). Namely the assumption that communities living at the margin of forest are socially and culturally homogenous, still more or less egalitarian, and basically living in harmony with their natural environment. This study was inspired by the persistent critique – although still a minority – on the basic assumption the CBNRM from academicians and practitioners working through the Entitlement perspective. Another inspiration was the mounting critique toward the participatory approach. In its effort the study explore further the usefulness of certain approaches. One of the approach much relied on in this study was the local history of the community studied, through exerting oral and local written documents on local history, legends and local stories. These sources proofed quite capable in bringing the local history into the light. Another was the actor oriented approach, which later came to be supported by the concept of Social Pool Resources. The latter concept proofed to be useful as analytical instrument to integrate social institutions and the common pool resources, as a field of action for the different actors as human agencies.

Example Based Learning for View-Based Human Face Detection

We present an example-based learning approach for locating vertical frontal views of human faces in complex scenes. The technique models the distribution of human face patterns by means of a few view-based "face'' and "non-face'' prototype clusters. At each image location, the local pattern is matched against the distribution-based model, and a trained classifier determines, based on the local difference measurements, whether or not a human face exists at the current image location. We provide an analysis that helps identify the critical components of our system.

View-Based Strategies for 3D Object Recognition

A persistent issue of debate in the area of 3D object recognition concerns the nature of the experientially acquired object models in the primate visual system. One prominent proposal in this regard has expounded the use of object centered models, such as representations of the objects' 3D structures in a coordinate frame independent of the viewing parameters [Marr and Nishihara, 1978]. In contrast to this is another proposal which suggests that the viewing parameters encountered during the learning phase might be inextricably linked to subsequent performance on a recognition task [Tarr and Pinker, 1989; Poggio and Edelman, 1990]. The 'object model', according to this idea, is simply a collection of the sample views encountered during training. Given that object centered recognition strategies have the attractive feature of leading to viewpoint independence, they have garnered much of the research effort in the field of computational vision. Furthermore, since human recognition performance seems remarkably robust in the face of imaging variations [Ellis et al., 1989], it has often been implicitly assumed that the visual system employs an object centered strategy. In the present study we examine this assumption more closely. Our experimental results with a class of novel 3D structures strongly suggest the use of a view-based strategy by the human visual system even when it has the opportunity of constructing and using object-centered models. In fact, for our chosen class of objects, the results seem to support a stronger claim: 3D object recognition is 2D view-based.

A DHT-Based Grid Resource Indexing and Discovery Scheme

This paper presents a DHT-based grid resource indexing and discovery (DGRID) approach. With DGRID, resource-information data is stored on its own administrative domain and each domain, represented by an index server, is virtualized to several nodes (virtual servers) subjected to the number of resource types it has. Then, all nodes are arranged as a structured overlay network or distributed hash table (DHT). Comparing to existing grid resource indexing and discovery schemes, the benefits of DGRID include improving the security of domains, increasing the availability of data, and eliminating stale data.

Inside the competences evaluation, the stress tolerance of students. An empirical study based on conservation of resources theory

Competence development is considered a preventive strategy of burnout. At an organizational context some competences could be linked as precursors or consequences. In self-assessment of competence development, students perceive stress tolerance as a priority competence to ameliorate. Moreover employers and recruitment consultants agree that this is a new authentic challenge for organizations. The main reasons of this result are debated, this study should consider the importance of competence development from a holistic point of view. In addition it considers the exploration of the relationship between stress tolerance and competence development, according to Conservation Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll 1988, 1989, 1998, 2004) where the resource loss is considered the principal component in the stress process

A beginner's guide to referencing books based on the Harvard system

An interactive tutorial on how to reference books correctly. It begins with an example, and interactively draws the student through the stages of accessing the relevant information through to how to include the final citation in the bibliography. It concludes with a ‘test your knowledge’ set of activities. When you view this object note that the panel on the left generated by the repository can be dragged sideways to view the learning object full screen.