Open-defecation (OD) is one of the most widespread sanitation practices in low-income countries. This practice often causes diarrheal diseases and 760,000 deaths per year. To eradicate OD, several ...approaches have been developed, including Community-Led-Total Sanitation (CLTS) which is a participatory and community approach. The specificity of CLTS is that it is managed by the community itself, as its name implies, and that no subsidies or financial contributions from outside the community are used in the construction of the facilities. Although, the CLTS is effective in the short-term for eradicating OD, the long-term results are not encouraging: Open-Defecation-Free (ODF) communities revert to OD or partially use latrines. The present research is based on literature review and authors investigation in Burkina Faso. It was conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors that affect the sustainability of ODF-status leading to slippage in communities. It was found that these factors can be grouped into five categories: behavioral and social, technological, organizational, and vulnerability factors. The last one, socio-political factors, is a contribution from the authors as it was not reported in the literature yet. The authors have proposed graphical synthesis of all the slippage factors and their associated categories in the ODF-communities. Finally, authors have suggested that to sustain ODF-status of communities: include all stages of the sanitation value chain (SVC) in the CLTS, the follow-up activities after achieving ODF-status must be planned well in advance, sanitation marketing should be developed and the sanctions against the practice of OD have to be reinforced. Governments and donors should pay particular attention to the following options: raising awareness and regular monitoring after ODF certification, encouraging research on sustainable and pro-poor sanitation technologies, and building the capacity of implementing actors including facilitators. While obtaining ODF status is materialized by a sign with the status on it, this paper drew the attention of CLTS implementers to the lack of materialization of slippage when it occurs, and the absence of studies on the evolution of the community sanitation scale after ODF-status.
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Visualization of texture components using MTEX Rafailov, Gennady; Caspi, El'ad N.; Hielscher, Ralf ...
Journal of applied crystallography,
April 2020, Letnik:
53, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Knowledge of the appearance of texture components and fibres in pole figures, in inverse pole figures and in Euler space is fundamental for texture analysis. For cubic crystal systems, such as ...steels, an extensive literature exists and, for example, the book by Matthies, Vinel & Helming Standard Distributions in Texture Analysis: Maps for the Case of Cubic Orthorhomic Symmetry, (1987), Akademie‐Verlag Berlin provides an atlas to identify texture components. For lower crystal symmetries, however, equivalent comprehensive overviews that can serve as guidance for the interpretation of experimental textures do not exist. This paper closes this gap by providing a set of scripts for the MTEX package Bachmann, Hielscher & Schaeben (2010). Solid State Phenom.160, 63–68 that allow the texture practitioner to compile such an atlas for a given material system, thus aiding orientation distribution function analysis also for non‐cubic systems.
Knowledge of the appearance of texture components and fibres in pole figures, in inverse pole figures and in Euler space is fundamental for texture analysis; an MTEX‐based tool is presented to predict their appearance to enable subsequent quantitative texture analysis.
A basis of discrete harmonic functions for efficient representation and analysis of crystallographic texture is presented. Discrete harmonics are a numerical representation of the harmonics on the ...sphere. A finite element formulation is utilized to calculate these orthonormal basis functions, which provides several advantageous features for quantitative texture analysis. These include high‐precision numerical integration, a simple implementation of the non‐negativity constraint and computational efficiency. Simple examples of pole figure and texture interpolation and of Fourier filtering using these basis sets are presented.
This paper describes the discrete harmonics basis set on S2 and S3 spheres using the finite element method for texture representation.
Achieving the Open defecation free (ODF) status remains a major challenge in Uganda, yet it contributes significantly to child health improvement. Literature on social, cultural and behavioral ...aspects that influence the ODF status in rural Uganda is limited. The study therefore, explored perceived factors influencing the ODF status in rural South Western Uganda.
An exploratory study employing qualitative techniques and based on deductive analysis between month December 2020 and January 2021 was conducted. Seven Focus Group Discussions (FGDs and three Key Informant Interviews (KIs) were conducted in Kabale District, southwestern Uganda. Focus Group Discussion participants were mothers and fathers having children of 2 years and below while KIIs included local community leaders and health extension workers. Data was analyzed using a categorization matrix derived from the Risks, Attitudes, Norms, Abilities, and Self-regulation (RANAS) model which is comprised of contextual and psychological factors. Text was further categorized into high and low statements for attainment of ODF status.
The contextual factors influencing the Open Defecation Free status behavior included; farming activities far from home, financial constraints, rainy seasons, collapsible soft soils, and alcohol use. Psychological factors influencing ODF status included; perceived health risk for typhoid disease, low perceived severity for lack of ODF components, negative attitude of less value attached to ODF components, and a feeling of time wastage practicing ODF status behavior. The perception that the community has the ability to attain the ODF status was high. Although, the capability to maintain ODF was low when it comes to replacement of ODF component if stolen or destroyed.
Open Defecation Free status is influenced by contextual and psychological factors. Therefore, it's crucial for sanitation promotors to always identify such context specific factors in order to design sanitation and hygiene promotion interventions to address the ODF free status related challenges.
Online discussion forums (ODFs) offer students and teachers the opportunity to harness the endless power of the internet for educational purposes. This study investigates the impact of Edmodo as an ...asynchronous ODF on six of the most recurring reading comprehension skills in the TOEFL iBT test among Iranian learners. Online and offline treatments were given to 26 students in the experimental group and only offline treatments to 33 students in the control group. The statistical analysis of the data represents a large effect size (Partial η2=.234; r=.826; Partial η2=.397; r=.661) for identifying factual information, making inferences, guessing vocabulary from context, and inserting texts in the passage skills respectively, a moderate effect size (r=.363) for the understanding the rhetorical purpose of the passage, and a weak effect size (r=.156) for the identifying referential relationships between the words in the passage skills. The results tell us that Edmodo is effective in teaching reading comprehension skills by overcoming the usual time constraints and offering students autonomy in going online at the most convenient time and place. Finally, the findings are valuable for educational policymakers, curriculum designers, materials developers, language instructors, and language learners.
Many biological tissues contain an underlying fibrous microstructure that is optimized to suit a physiological function. The fiber architecture dictates physical characteristics such as stiffness, ...diffusivity, and electrical conduction. Abnormal deviations of fiber architecture are often associated with disease. Thus, it is useful to characterize fiber network organization from image data in order to better understand pathological mechanisms. We devised a method to quantify distributions of fiber orientations based on the Fourier transform and the Qball algorithm from diffusion MRI. The Fourier transform was used to decompose images into directional components, while the Qball algorithm efficiently converted the directional data from the frequency domain to the orientation domain. The representation in the orientation domain does not require any particular functional representation, and thus the method is nonparametric. The algorithm was verified to demonstrate its reliability and used on datasets from microscopy to show its applicability. This method increases the ability to extract information of microstructural fiber organization from experimental data that will enhance our understanding of structure-function relationships and enable accurate representation of material anisotropy in biological tissues.
There have been some approaches in tackling Open defecation both locally and globally, but nevertheless open defecation still exists. This study aimed at spatially assessing the practice of open ...defecation in the study area which serves as one of the ways towards achieving an Open Defecation Free (ODF) city. The data used in the study include primary and secondary data. These are; the coordinates of Open Defecation sites, public toilets, markets and schools which was acquired with the aid of Global Positioning System (GPS) and 2020 google earth satellite imagery. The coordinates acquired were plotted in ArcGIS 10.3 software to determine their spatial distribution. Hotspot analysis was applied to examine the level of practice of open defecation in the study area. Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation was used to identify the spread of practice of Open Defecation. The result shows that most dump sites has been converted to Open Defecation sites and are found to be very close to places with influx of people such as markets. In addition, the study shows that the existing public toilets are not sufficient and as a result, three new toilets were proposed. Furthermore, the study shows specifically that Araromi, Sabo, Stadium road, Imuagan, Odo Ikoyi, Oja Oshodi, Odo ikoyi, Ijemikin and Ajaye street were the major hotspots where open defecation is practiced in the study area. This study recommends a quick attention on the identified hotspot locations in the study area by the government and agencies working towards Open Defecation Free (ODF) city.
There have been some approaches in tackling Open defecation both locally and globally, but nevertheless open defecation still exists. This study aimed at spatially assessing the practice of open ...defecation in the study area which serves as one of the ways towards achieving an Open Defecation Free (ODF) city. The data used in the study include primary and secondary data. These are; the coordinates of Open Defecation sites, public toilets, markets and schools which was acquired with the aid of Global Positioning System (GPS) and 2020 google earth satellite imagery. The coordinates acquired were plotted in ArcGIS 10.3 software to determine their spatial distribution. Hotspot analysis was applied to examine the level of practice of open defecation in the study area. Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation was used to identify the spread of practice of Open Defecation. The result shows that most dump sites has been converted to Open Defecation sites and are found to be very close to places with influx of people such as markets. In addition, the study shows that the existing public toilets are not sufficient and as a result, three new toilets were proposed. Furthermore, the study shows specifically that Araromi, Sabo, Stadium road, Imuagan, Odo Ikoyi, Oja Oshodi, Odo ikoyi, Ijemikin and Ajaye street were the major hotspots where open defecation is practiced in the study area. This study recommends a quick attention on the identified hotspot locations in the study area by the government and agencies working towards Open Defecation Free (ODF) city.
While diffusion MRI (dMRI) is currently the method of choice to non-invasively probe tissue microstructure and study structural connectivity in the brain, its spatial resolution is limited and its ...results need structural validation. Current ex vivo methods employed to provide 3D fiber orientations have limitations, including tissue-distorting sample preparation, small field of view or inability to quantify 3D fiber orientation distributions. 3D fiber orientation in tissue sections can be obtained from 3D scanning small-angle X-ray scattering (3D sSAXS) by analyzing the anisotropy of scattering signals. Here we adapt the 3D sSAXS method for use in brain tissue, exploiting the high sensitivity of the SAXS signal to the ordered molecular structure of myelin. We extend the characterization of anisotropy from vectors to tensors, employ the Funk-Radon-Transform for converting scattering information to real space fiber orientations, and demonstrate the feasibility of the method in thin sections of mouse brain with minimal sample preparation. We obtain a second rank tensor representing the fiber orientation distribution function (fODF) for every voxel, thereby generating fODF maps. Finally, we illustrate the potential of 3D sSAXS by comparing the result with diffusion MRI fiber orientations in the same mouse brain. We show a remarkably good correspondence, considering the orthogonality of the two methods, i.e. the different physical processes underlying the two signals. 3D sSAXS can serve as validation method for microstructural MRI, and can provide novel microstructural insights for the nervous system, given the method’s orthogonality to dMRI, high sensitivity to myelin sheath’s orientation and abundance, and the possibility to extract myelin-specific signal and to perform micrometer-resolution scanning.
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●Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) probes myelin sheath’s periodic structure.●3D scanning SAXS (3D sSAXS) is applied on thin mouse brain sections.●We retrieve orientation distribution functions (ODFs) of myelinated axons per voxel.●We compare fiber ODFs from SAXS and diffusion MRI (dMRI).●3D sSAXS is a new tool to estimate fiber orientations and validate dMRI fiber ODFs.
The significance of the work by A. J. Hanson Acta Cryst. (2020), A76, 432–457 on finding the optimal alignment of pairs of spatial and/or orientation data sets is discussed.
The significance of the ...work by A. J. Hanson Acta Cryst. (2020), A76, 432–457 on finding the optimal alignment of pairs of spatial and/or orientation data sets is discussed.
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