Monitoring and evaluation of Guinea Worm Eradication

Dracunculiasis, or guinea worm disease is well-known for a number of reasons: its spectacular clinical manifestations (the emergence of a near-meter long worm from a painful cutaneous blister), the severe disease outbreaks which paralyze entire villages, and the striking traditional treatment which consists of laboriously rolling out inch after inch of the worm round a wooden stick. In the early 1980s, following the success of smallpox eradication, dracunculiasis was identified as the next candidate for eradication, since it could be tackled through simple preventive measures. Today, a successful global programme of eradication is underway in several countries. To appreciate the challenges of monitoring and evaluating the interventions, an understanding of the disease, the epidemiological situation and programme interventions is necessary; these aspects are therefore discussed. Then, based on the West and Central African experience, this article goes on to examine programme planning approaches and the monitoring and evaluation systems that were developed to track progress towards the global goal of eradication, notably community surveillance systems, formative evaluations, geo-reference database and mapping tools. Such monitoring and evaluation systems have several innovative elements unique to guinea worm eradication programmes and adapted to the requirements imposed by disease transmission patterns. There is evidence that the final efforts to eradicate guinea worm will be more costly, will take much longer than expected, and will require adequate and timely support in order to deal with the setbacks.     

Characterization of discrete populations through conditional expectations of order statistics

In this paper we give some properties of the expected values of any order statistic when one of its adjacent order statistics is known (order mean function) from a sequence of sizen of independent and identically distributed random variables with discrete distribution. Furthermore, we obtain the explicit expressions of the distribution from these order mean functions, and finally, we show the necessary and sufficient conditions for any real function to be an order mean function. We also add some examples of characterization of discrete distributions from the order mean functions. Partially supported by Consejería de Cultura y Educación (C.A.R.M.), under Grant PIB 95/90.     

A reply to W. H. James

Abstract The objection of W. H. James to my computation on p. 330, for the sample of Créteil, is valid. For reasons that are developed elsewhere in my paper, the current pregnancy of any woman was omitted in the elaboration of Table 6. Therefore, in order to derive continuation rates, we must re-include this pregnancy in each individual pregnancy history. Since women whose previous pregnancies ended in induced abortions had been excluded, we must do the same for women whose current pregnancy was interrupted by an induced abortion.     

The international transfer of foster parent selection and preparation technology: the example of the Netherlands and the United States

The biannual education conferences of the International Foster Care Organization "provide an opportunity for foster parents and agency staff to learn new ideas and share technical expertise.' Contacts between Dutch and American participants at the 1983 Education Conference led to the transfer and adaptation of an American foster parent selection-preparation program to the Netherlands. This article, based on a workshop presented at the 1989 Education Conference, describes the process and initial impact of this international experience.     

The impact of external,internal, and dual relational embeddedness on the innovation performance of foreign subsidiaries: Evidence from a developing country

As parts of a global network, foreign-owned subsidiaries enjoy privileged access to knowledge sources both internal (within their multinational group) and external (involving other organizations in the host location), and this has proven especially relevant in their assumption of greater creative responsibilities that increase the technological capabilities of their multinational group. This study investigates whether external and internal relational embeddedness are mutually reinforcing (complementary) or whether they act separately in explaining superior innovation performance of foreign-owned subsidiaries in terms of a greater propensity to obtain radical innovations. The empirical analysis uses both direct and indirect tests to evaluate the complementarity, as well as a rich firm-level panel data on foreign subsidiaries, extracted from a census of Colombian manufacturing firms for the period 2008–2014. Our findings reveal that external relational embeddedness in isolation (without internal embeddedness) has a positive impact on performance only in terms of incremental innovation, while internal embeddedness alone (without external embeddedness) has no effect on the innovation performance of subsidiaries. However, we find that a complementary and dynamic relationship exists between external and internal linkages to spur radical innovation outcomes, which in turn are related to the competence-creating roles in foreign subsidiaries as prior literature has shown.     

Critical capabilities for widening international new ventures’ geographical scope.

Current findings are still inconclusive with regard to the role played by the characteristics of social networks in INVs’ early geographical scope. This study analyses how entrepreneurial-oriented networks affect new ventures’ early geographical scope through critical capabilities. We have adopted a behavioural perspective to investigate the effect of social networks both on international new ventures’ geographical scope and on their critical capabilities such as absorptive and adaptive capabilities. Results from a sample of 183 Spanish international ventures confirm the importance of entrepreneurial orientation as a network characteristic for early geographical scope. Additionally, the positive effect of adaptive capability on new ventures’ early geographical dispersion has been confirmed but not so in the case of absorptive capabilities. Our results suggest that future research must be careful to assume international new ventures’ absorptive capability as a prerequisite to their cross-border expansion.     

Approximation algorithms and hardness results for labeled connectivity problems

Let G=(V,E) be a connected multigraph, whose edges are associated with labels specified by an integer-valued function ℒ:E→ℕ. In addition, each label ℓ∈ℕ has a non-negative cost c(ℓ). The minimum label spanning tree problem (MinLST) asks to find a spanning tree in G that minimizes the overall cost of the labels used by its edges. Equivalently, we aim at finding a minimum cost subset of labels I⊆ℕ such that the edge set {e∈E:ℒ(e)∈I} forms a connected subgraph spanning all vertices. Similarly, in the minimum label s – t path problem (MinLP) the goal is to identify an s–t path minimizing the combined cost of its labels. The main contributions of this paper are improved approximation algorithms and hardness results for MinLST and MinLP.     

Intergenerational Relationships and Union Stability in Fragile Families

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well being Study (N= 2,656), we examined the association between intergenerational relationships and parents' union stability five years after a baby's birth. Results showed that more amiable relationships between parents and each partner's parents, and more time children spent with paternal grandparents, were associated with increased odds that parents were co-residing by the time their focal child was age five. More time that children spent with maternal grandparents reduced union stability, although this result was not robust to methods that better address selection. These findings underscore the importance of the broader social contexts affecting couple stability. Findings further suggest that even amidst changing demographic conditions, intergenerational family ties are important for couples-and by extension-their children.