Cost–benefit analysis of a PMTCT program in Mozambique

The costs and benefits of a HIV/AIDS PMTCT program in a Mozambican city were calculated. The provision and non-provision of infant feeding formula were considered, along with voluntary counselling and testing, and anti-retroviral treatment with Nevirapine. Costs were calculated in monetary units and benefits as deaths averted and disability-adjusted life years. The UNAIDS cost-effectiveness tool for evaluating ARV drug and substitute feeding interventions was used. The costs of the program were compared with the costs of treating HIV-infected children. With no infant feeding formula, there would be a total savings of US$5242 and a negative cost per DALY of US$1.53 without infant feeding formula. With formula, net annual costs would be US$141,268 and cost per DALY US$38.69. Citywide, each year 132 infant deaths would be averted by use of Nevirapine and eight averted by the breastmilk replacement program. All program options have reasonable cost-effectiveness ratios.     

Evaluation of the Children’s Advocacy Center Model: Efficiency,Legal and Revictimization Outcomes

This study compares the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) model with more traditional child protection services on several important outcomes such as substantiation of abuse, arrest and prosecution of the perpetrator, the efficiency of the multidisciplinary process and child revictimization rates. One hundred and eighty-four child abuse and neglect cases from a large metropolitan area in Florida comprised the sample. Cases were selected over a five year-period from three different modes of child protection services including a CAC. Similar outcomes were found between the CAC model and the Child Protection Team (CPT), a multidisciplinary model, which was first developed in Florida in 1978. In comparison with traditional child protective investigation, these models were associated with improved substantiation rates and investigation efficiency. Results are discussed in terms of the utility of CACs above and beyond the aspect of multidisciplinary coordination and whether the goals of the CAC model need to be redefined. Recommendations for further research in the areas of multidisciplinary team decision–making, the long-term impact of the CACs and the role of supportive professionals on the multidisciplinary team were made.     

Countermeasures for night work performance deficits: The effect of napping or caffeine on continuous performance at night

Napping and caffeine consumption, two common strategies for improving alertness and performance on the night shift, were investigated in two separate studies. Performance was measured with a simulated assembly line task (SALT) during a single night work shift. Both strategies proved beneficial. Performance and subjective alertness were improved following either a 2.3-h evening nap or ingestion of caffeine (4 mg/kg) prior to the work shift. The effects were noted particularly at the trough of circadian alertness. Although neither napping nor caffeine countered the strong circadian influence on performance and alertness in the early morning hours, both strategies attenuated their sharp decline. Further research is required to determine the generalizability of these findings beyond a single night shift and in different populations of workers, such as older age groups, or chronic caffeine users.     

The effect of the sex composition of jobs on starting wages in an organization: Findings from the NLSY

We show that individuals in a job with a higher percentage of females earn lower starting wages with an employing organization. This holds true with controls for individuals’ human capital, job demands for skill or difficult working conditions, and detailed industry. We use a measure of sex composition that applies to detailed jobs: cells in a three-digit census occupation by three-digit census industry matrix. We use pooled panel data from the 19791987 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The unit of analysis is the spell-the time in which a person worked for one organization. The dependent variable is the first wage in the spell. We use models with fixed-effects to control for unmeasured, unchanging individual characteristics; we also show results from OLS and weighted models for comparison. The negative effect on wages of the percentage female in one’s job is robust across procedures for black women, white women, and white men. For black men the sign is always negative but the coefficient is often nonsignificant.     

INFLUENCE DIAGNOSTICS IN PROPER DISPERSION MODELS

This paper discusses the application of influence diagnostic methods in univariate proper dispersion models. This class includes, in particular, continuous generalized linear models as well as other subclasses of continuous regression models. We emphasize the study of the local influence on the likelihood displacement and predictions from the models. Some of the diagnostics are illustrated by an example on directional data.     

Analysis of Uncertainties in Interactive Probabilistic Safety Analysis (PSA) Models

Probabilistic safety analysis (PSA) has been used in nuclear, chemical, petrochemical, and several other industries. The probability and/or frequency results of most PSAs are based on average component unavailabilities during the mission of interest. While these average results are useful, they provide no indication of the significance of the facility's current status when one or more components are known to be out of service. Recently, several interactive computational models have been developed for nuclear power plants to allow the user to specify the plant's status at a particular time (i.e., to specify equipment known to be out of service) and then to receive updated PSA information. As with conventional PSA results, there are uncertainties associated with the numerical updated results. These uncertainties stem from a number of sources, including parameter uncertainty (uncertainty in equipment failure rates and human error probabilities). This paper presents an analysis of the impact of parameter uncertainty on updated PSA results.     

Insects on urban plants: contrasting the flower head feeding assemblages on native and exotic hosts

Exotic plant species very often comprise a large proportion of urban floras. Because herbivorous insects depend on the presence of suitable host plants to maintain their populations, it is imperative to elucidate the relative importance of native and exotic hosts to understand the response of herbivorous guilds to urbanization. By using a plant-herbivore system composed of Asteraceae hosts and flower-head endophagous insects, we investigated whether the diversity and composition of herbivorous insects differs between native and exotic host-plant species in an urban environment. Although we found only seven exotic Asteraceae among the 30 species recorded, the overall abundance of exotics was considerably greater than that of native host plants. Overall, the exotic host species supported a small subset of the herbivore assemblage found on the native ones. The number of herbivore species per host species was significantly higher among the native plants, but we did not find a difference in herbivore abundance. Moreover, the higher taxonomic composition of herbivores on exotic Asteraceae was reduced, being composed of only three genera and two families from a total of 16 genera and six families of herbivores. These results provide support for the idea that plants outside of their original geographic distribution have lower loads of enemies than phylogenetically related native species. Our findings indicate that native host plants in urban areas play a critical role in supporting the native herbivorous insect fauna.     

Natural neighborhood networks — Important social networks in the lives of older adults aging in place

Neighborhoods are important places of aging and meaningful contexts of life for many older people. The overall aim of this study was to explore the public life of older people aging in place in order to understand neighborhoods as the material places where public life occurs, networks as the social places of public life, and to examine how these neighborhoods and networks influence the experience of aging and wellbeing. Adopting a friendly visiting methodology, data was collected over an 8-month period using participant observation, visual methods and an innovative interview technique called the “go along method”. Data were analyzed using grounded theory and a coding strategy that integrated textual, visual, and auditory data. Results provide insights into the micro-territorial functioning of neighborhoods and highlight third places and transitory zones as significant sites for older residents. Embedded within these places is a natural neighborhood network — a web of informal relationships and interactions that enhance well being and shape the everyday social world of older adults aging in place.     

Understanding the sex ratio in India: A simulation approach

The highly masculine sex ratio in India has increased substantially in the twentieth century, in contrast to most other countries in the world. Competing arguments alternatively posit under-enumeration, highly masculine sex ratios at birth, or excess female mortality throughout the life course as the factors underlying the level of the overall sex ratio; these arguments have not been resolved. Based on population projections that simulate population dynamics, our findings show that small differences in mortality at young ages, persisting over a long period, as well as a sex ratio at birth of 106 males per 100 females, result in a highly masculine population sex ratio.     

Welfare,work, and changes in mothers’ living arrangements in low-income families

Data from a two-wave survey of low-income families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio are used to replicate recent reports of a modest increase in the number of low-income children living in two-adult families and to analyze the increase. We find that most of the increase occurred through the addition of a man other than the biological father to the household and that more of it occurred through cohabitation than through marriage. Moreover, across the two waves, cohabiting and marital unions were highly unstable. We review research on stepfamilies and on instability in childrens living arrangements, and we conclude that the kinds of two-adult families being formed in these low-income central-city neighborhoods may not benefit children as much as policy-makers hope. In addition, we investigate the associations between marital and cohabiting transitions, on the one hand, and transitions into and out of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) receipt, employment, and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) usage between the two waves on the other. We find that marital transitions are related to TANF and employment transitions but that cohabiting transitions are not. We suggest that low-income mothers may view marriage as more of an economic partnership than cohabitation and may expect more of an economic contribution from a husband than from a cohabiting partner.