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The efficacy of the paraprofessional-delivered Family Spirit home-visiting intervention for young American Indian mothers on maternal knowledge and infant behavior outcomes is supported. Participating mothers showed greater knowledge gains compared to non-participating mothers.

Iraq, formerly known as Mesopotamia, is the birthplace of agriculture. The recent war and instability have significantly impacted the country's agricultural production and knowledge support systems. To support revitalization of the Iraqi agricultural system, the USDA funded a consortium of five U.S. universities (Washington State University, University of California-Davis, New Mexico State University, Utah State University, and Texas A&M University as the lead institution) to provide training to agricultural extension personnel from Iraq. Each university had a specific training area. Washington State University was responsible for training in dryland cropping systems and delivered five separate sessions to Iraqis in several Middle East locations. Questionnaires distributed during each session guided subsequent training agendas and enhanced our understanding of extension and dryland cropping systems information needs in Iraq. There is great demand for training, technology, basic farm equipment, seed, and fertilizers, since current access to resources is insufficient to satisfy the country's needs. In addition to supplying inputs and equipment, further training should introduce methods for utilizing on-farm resources. There is also a clear need for better cooperation between Iraq's universities and extension agency, administered by the Iraq Ministry of Agriculture, in order to maximize the efficiency of research information transfer to farmers. (Contains 8 tables and 1 figure.)

Colleges and universities are increasingly using online education across North America. There is, however, a debate on the effectiveness of this new technology as a pedagogical tool. In this paper, using our experiences in teaching more than l0 online courses, we examine the role of online education, its advantages and disadvantages, methods of delivery, and discuss possible ways in improving the effectiveness of this new teaching instrument.

Migration is an important risk factor for malaria transmission for malaria transmission, creating networks that connect Plasmodium between communities. This study aims to understand the timing of why people in the Peruvian Amazon migrated and how characteristics of these migrants are associated with malaria risk. A cohort of 2,202 participants was followed for three years (July 2006 - October 2009), with thrice-weekly active surveillance to record infection and recent travel, which included travel destination(s) and duration away. Migration occurred more frequently in the dry season, but the 7-day rolling mean (7DRM) streamflow was positively correlated with migration events (OR 1.25 (95% CI: 1.138, 1.368)). High-frequency and low-frequency migrant populations reported 9.7 (IRR 7.59 (95% CI:.381, 13.160)) and 4.1 (IRR 2.89 (95% CI: 1.636, 5.099)) times more P. vivax cases than those considered non-migrants and 30.7 (IRR 32.42 (95% CI: 7.977, 131.765)) and 7.4 (IRR 7.44 (95% CI: 1.783, 31.066)) times more P. falciparum cases, respectively. High-frequency migrants employed in manual labour within their community were at 2.45 (95% CI: 1.113, 5.416) times higher risk than non-employed low-frequency migrants. This study confirms the importance of migration for malaria risk as well as factors increasing risk among the migratory community, including, sex, occupation, and educational status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.09.021 Byline: William Kuang-Yao Pan (a), Christine Erlien (b), Richard E. Bilsborrow (c) Abstract: Rural populations living in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon (NEA) experience the highest health burden of any region in the country. Two independent studies of colonist and indigenous groups living in the NEA are used to compare their morbidity and mortality experiences. Colonist data are from a probability sample of land plots in 1999, while indigenous data are from a representative sample of the five largest ethnicities (Quichua, Shuar, Huaorani, Cofan, Secoya) collected in 2001. Poisson regression was used to compare morbidity. Results indicate clear differences in health between populations. Indigenous groups had 30% higher probability of mortality and 63% higher incidence rate of all-cause morbidity compared to colonists. Vector-borne, chronic, gastrointestinal, and diseases of unknown origin were particularly high among indigenous groups. Factors associated with morbidity varied: morbidity rates were similar for the two youngest age groups (0-4 and 5-9), but indigenous people aged 15-39 and 40+ had almost double the morbidity compared to colonists; larger households, later months of data collection and less pollution were associated with less morbidity in both groups; better infrastructure access (electricity and roads) was generally associated with lower morbidity in both groups; and associations of land use were different by group with more cultivation of perennials and fewer annuals associated with less morbidity for colonists, but more for indigenous groups. These results demonstrate the health disparities that exist among indigenous and non-indigenous populations even when living in the same geographic region. Land use itself exemplifies the cultural and contextual differences that are evident in health, since land use decisions are related to broader demographic and economic factors that influence overall ecological and human health. Ongoing population-environment and/or environment-health research needs to recognize the broader factors involved when studying relationships between population health, development and deforestation. Author Affiliation: (a) The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of International Health, 615N Wolfe Street, E5545, Baltimore, MD 21205, United States (b) Duke University, Thompson Writing Program, Durham NC 27708, United States (c) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Biostatistics, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, United States Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research is made possible through grants from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (NCC5-295), the Mellon, Summit, and Compton Foundations, PROFORS (Proyecto Forestal, in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, funded by GTZ, the German foreign aid program), and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (HD07168 and HD054939). Financial support for the 1990 data collection was provided by the US National Science Foundation, the World Wildlife Federation, and the Carolina Population Center (CPC), with logistical support from several Ecuadorian government agencies, including CONADE (the former National Planning Agency), the Ministry of Agriculture, and IERAC (Ecuadorian Institute for Agrarian Reform and Colonization). We would like to thank all the families who participated in our surveys.

This correction notice addresses a graph in a study titled "Bioenergetic function is decreased in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of veterans with Gulf War Illness." The original graph may have been confusing for readers familiar with typical Seahorse mitochondrial stress test graphs. The corrected graph provides a more typical representation and does not change any major conclusions of the study. The corrected graph includes specific parameters related to oxygen consumption rate (OCR) and is divided into panels based on Kansas status and visit. The authors of the study are Joel N. Meyer, William K. Pan, Ian T. Ryde, Thomas Alexander, Jacquelyn C. Klein-Adams, Duncan S. Ndirangu, and Michael J. Falvo. [Extracted from the article]

We introduce a Bayesian non-parametric spatial factor analysis model with spatial dependency induced through a prior on factor loadings. For each column of the loadings matrix, spatial dependency is encoded using a probit stickbreaking process (PSBP) and a multiplicative gamma process shrinkage prior is used across columns to adaptively determine the number of latent factors. By encoding spatial information into the loadings matrix, meaningful factors are learned that respect the observed neighborhood dependencies, making them useful for assessing rates over space. Furthermore, the spatial PSBP prior can be used for clustering temporal trends, allowing users to identify regions within the spatial domain with similar temporal trajectories, an important task in many applied settings. In the manuscript, we illustrate the model's performance in simulated data, but also in two real-world examples: longitudinal monitoring of glaucoma and malaria surveillance across the Peruvian Amazon. The R package spBFA, available on CRAN, implements the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The current understanding of airborne tuberculosis (TB) transmission is based on classic 1950s studies in which guinea pigs were exposed to air from a tuberculosis ward. Recently we recreated this model in Lima, Peru, and in this paper we report the use of molecular fingerprinting to investigate patient infectiousness in the current era of HIV infection and multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB. Methods and Findings All air from a mechanically ventilated negative-pressure HIV-TB ward was exhausted over guinea pigs housed in an airborne transmission study facility on the roof. Animals had monthly tuberculin skin tests, and positive reactors were removed for autopsy and organ culture for M. tuberculosis. Temporal exposure patterns, drug susceptibility testing, and DNA fingerprinting of patient and animal TB strains defined infectious TB patients. Relative patient infectiousness was calculated using the Wells-Riley model of airborne infection. Over 505 study days there were 118 ward admissions of 97 HIV-positive pulmonary TB patients. Of 292 exposed guinea pigs, 144 had evidence of TB disease; a further 30 were tuberculin skin test positive only. There was marked variability in patient infectiousness; only 8.5% of 118 ward admissions by TB patients were shown by DNA fingerprinting to have caused 98% of the 125 characterised cases of secondary animal TB. 90% of TB transmission occurred from inadequately treated MDR TB patients. Three highly infectious MDR TB patients produced 226, 52, and 40 airborne infectious units (quanta) per hour. Conclusions A small number of inadequately treated MDR TB patients coinfected with HIV were responsible for almost all TB transmission, and some patients were highly infectious. This result highlights the importance of rapid TB drug-susceptibility testing to allow prompt initiation of effective treatment, and environmental control measures to reduce ongoing TB transmission in crowded health care settings. TB infection control must be prioritized in order to prevent health care facilities from disseminating the drug-resistant TB that they are attempting to treat., Introduction Seminal experiments demonstrating airborne tuberculosis (TB) transmission by droplet nuclei were performed by Riley and coworkers in the 1950s-1960s [1,2]. Guinea pigs acquired TB by breathing exhaust air from [...]

We evaluated prevalence of cystic echinococcosis (CE) in a central Peruvian Highland district by using 4 diagnostic methods: ultrasonography for 949 persons, radiography for 829, and 2 serologic tests for [...]