Suchergebnisse

Colonial language discourse typically consists of evaluations concerning the respective merits of two or more languages, and the cultures they represent. This can serve as a warrant for imposing a 'superior' language. Although such discourse tends to be associated with the conquest of the New World and subsequent European expansion, there is evidence that in the case of Ireland – England's first overseas colony – an adversarial relation between English and Irish languages existed even before the Elizabethan period. Referring to English legislation, chronicles and other documents, this paper examines the norms, arguments and rhetorical strategies that were used to exert the dominance of English language in Ireland during late-medieval and early-modern times. In the latter half of the paper, the focus will shift to attempts to create, especially from the seventeenth-century onwards, a 'pro-Irish reversal' that used similar arguments and rhetoric to reclaim this denigrated language. Our suggestion is that these pro- and anti-colonial language discourses anticipate those that were used later on in colonial and postcolonial environments.

The global plan of reducing the number of new child HIV infections and a reduction in the number of HIV‐related maternal deaths by 2015 will require inordinate political commitment and strengthening of health systems in Sub‐Saharan Africa where the burden of HIV infections in pregnant women is the highest. Preventing HIV infection in women of child‐bearing age and unwanted pregnancies in HIV‐positive women forms the cornerstone of long‐term control of paediatric HIV infections. To achieve the goal of eliminating paediatric HIV infection by 2015, health systems strengthening to address prevention of mother‐to‐child HIV transmission cascade attrition and focusing on the elimination of breastmilk transmission is critical. Understanding the pathogenesis of breastmilk transmission and the mechanisms by which antiretroviral therapy impacts on transmission through this compartment will drive future interventions. Identifying and retaining HIV‐positive pregnant women in care and committed to long‐term antiretroviral therapy will improve maternal outcomes and concomitant reductions in maternal mortality. Research assessing the natural history of HIV infection and long‐term outcomes in women who interrupt antiretroviral therapy post‐weaning is urgently required. Data on the outcome of women who opt to continue the long‐term use of antiretroviral therapy after initiating therapy during pregnancy will determine future policy in countries considering option B+. The prevalence of antiretroviral resistance and impact on survival in infants who sero‐convert whilst receiving neonatal prophylaxis, or are exposed to maternal HAART through breastmilk at a population level, are currently unknown. In addition to the provision of biomedical interventions, healthcare workers and policy makers must address the structural, cultural and community issues that impact on treatment uptake, adherence to medication and retention in care.

A collection of interviews with the women of Thailand's 'entertainment' industry - the women who work in the bars and massage parlors in Pattaya and Bangkok. This is not a book 'about' them; it is a book by them. What they think about their lives, their work, their customers, their hopes and plans for the future. 31 women are interviewed, as is a local bar owner. Most of the women, despite limited education, are articulate and insightful about their roles in life. The women were eager to let people know how they felt

Persian Gulf War veterans have reported a variety of symptoms, many of which have not led to conventional diagnoses. We ascertained all active-duty U.S. military personnel deployed to the Persian Gulf War (552,111) and all Gulf War era military personnel not deployed (1,479,751) and compared their postwar hospitalization records (until 1 April 1996) for one or more of 77 diagnoses under the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) system. The diagnoses were assembled by the Emerging Infections Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and are here termed "unexplained illnesses." Deployed veterans were found to have a slightly higher risk of hospitalization for unexplained illness than the nondeployed. Most of the excess hospitalizations for the deployed were due to the diagnosis "illness of unknown cause" (ICD-9 code 799.9), and most occurred in participants of the Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program who were admitted for evaluation only. When the effect of participation in this program was removed, the deployed had a slightly lower risk than the nondeployed. These findings suggest that active-duty Gulf War veterans did not have excess unexplained illnesses resulting in hospitalization in the 4.67-year period following deployment.

Risk characterization is perhaps the most important part of risk assessment. As currently practiced, risk characterizations do not convey the degree of uncertainty in a risk estimate to risk managers, Congress, the press, and the public. Here, we use a framework put forth by an ad hoc study group of industry and government scientists and academics to critique the risk characterizations contained in two risks assessments of gasoline vapor. After discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each assessment's risk characterization, we detail an alternative approach that conveys estimates in the form of a probability distribution. The distributional approach can make use of all relevant scientific data and knowledge, including alternative data sets and all plausible mechanistic theories of carcinogenesis. As a result, this approach facilitates better public health decisions than current risk characterization procedures. We discuss methodological issues, as well as strengths and weaknesses of the distributional approach.

We propose an architecture appropriate for future Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) active homing seeker missiles with Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) capabilities. Our proposal enhances military targeting performance by extending ATR into the 3rd dimension. From a military and aerospace industry point of view, this is appealing as weapon effectiveness against camouflage, concealment and deception techniques can be substantially improved. Specifically, we present a missile seeker 3D ATR architecture that relies on the 3D local feature based SHOT descriptor and a dual-role pipeline with a number of pre and post-processing operations. We evaluate our architecture on a number of missile engagement scenarios in various environmental setups with the missile being under various altitudes, obliquities, distances to the target and scene resolutions. Under these demanding conditions, the recognition performance gained is highly promising. Even in the extreme case of reducing the database entries to a single template per target, our interchangeable ATR architecture still provides a highly acceptable performance. Although we focus on future intelligent missile systems, our approach can be implemented to a great range of time-critical complex systems for space, air and ground environments for military, law-enforcement, commercial and research purposes.

Emerging respiratory disease agents, increased antibiotic resistance, and the loss of effective vaccines threaten to increase the incidence of respiratory disease in military personnel. We examine six respiratory pathogens (adenoviruses, influenza viruses, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus pyogenes, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and Bordetella pertussis) and review the impact of the diseases they cause, past efforts to control these diseases in U.S. military personnel, as well as current treatment and surveillance strategies, limitations in diagnostic testing, and vaccine needs.

Background: Great strides have been made in decreasing paediatric human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In South Africa, new paediatric HIV infections decreased by 84% between 2009 and 2015. This achievement is a result of a strong political will and the rapid evolution of the country's prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) guidelines.Objectives: In this paper we report on the implementation of a large PMTCT programme in Soweto, South Africa.Methods: We reviewed routinely collected PMTCT data from 13 healthcare facilities, for the period 2002-2015. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage among pregnant women living with HIV (PWLHIV) and the mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) rate at early infant diagnosis were evaluated.Results: In total, 360 751 pregnant women attended the facilities during the review period, and the HIV prevalence remained high throughout at around 30%. The proportion of PWLHIV presenting with a known HIV status increased from 14.3% in 2009 when the indicator was first collected to 45% in 2015, p < 0.001. In 2006, less than 10% of the PWLHIV were initiated on ART, increasing to 88% by 2011. The MTCT rate decreased from 6.9% in 2007 to under 1% from 2013 to 2015, p < 0.001.Conclusion: The achievements in decreasing paediatric HIV infections have been hailed as one of the greatest public health achievements of our times. While there are inherent limitations with using routinely collected aggregate data, the Soweto data reflect progress made in the implementation of PMTCT programmes in South Africa. Progress with PMTCT has, however, not been accompanied by a decline in HIV prevalence among pregnant women.

Although a rich source of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) that may confer multiple health benefits, some fish contain methyl mercury (MeHg), which may harm the developing fetus. U.S. government recommendations for women of childbearing age are to modify consumption of high-MeHg fish to reduce MeHg exposure, while recommendations encourage fish consumption among the general population because of the nutritional benefits. The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis convened an expert panel (see acknowledgements) to quantify the net impact of resulting hypothetical changes in fish consumption across the population. This paper estimates the impact of fish consumption on stroke risk. Other papers quantify coronary heart disease mortality risk and the impacts of both prenatal MeHg exposure and maternal intake of n-3 PUFAs on cognitive development. This analysis identified articles in a recent qualitative literature review that are appropriate for the development of a dose-response relationship between fish consumption and stroke risk. Studies had to satisfy quality criteria, quantify fish intake, and report the precision of the relative risk estimates. The analysis combined the relative risk results, weighting each proportionately to its precision. Six studies were identified as appropriate for inclusion in this analysis, including five prospective cohort studies and one case-control study (total of 24 exposure groups). Our analysis indicates that any fish consumption confers substantial relative risk reduction compared to no fish consumption (12% for the linear model), with the possibility that additional consumption confers incremental benefits (central estimate of 2.0% per serving per week).

A social impact bond (SIB) is an innovative financing mechanism to attract investors to social programmes traditionally funded by governments. In this article, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), the authors describe the SAMRC's first foray into this new world of financing through a SIB to improve the health and quality of life of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). The AGYW SIB is in its preparatory phase and is scheduled for implementation in 2020. The authors describe the mechanism, including financial flows and the process of customising the SIB to meet the needs of AGYW, focusing on HIV prevention and treatment and the prevention and management of unintended pregnancies in schoolgoing AGYW. The authors outline an approach to designing the package of interventions, the metrics associated with such a programme and the business model. It is hypothesised that the proposed approach will lead to an improvement in programmatic outcomes, monitoring and evaluation tools and cost-effectiveness, and will develop key learning data for the future use of SIBs in health service delivery.