Points In Urban Area Research Articles

Do community level interventions work in the same way on incidence and longitudinal prevalence of diarrhoea among under five children in rural and urban slum settings? Insights from Stop Diarrhoea Initiative in India

# Background Childhood diarrhoea is one of the leading causes of under-five morbidity and mortality globally including India. The National Family Health Survey in India shows that prevalence of diarrhoea among under 5 children has increased from 9.0% in 2005-06 to 9.2% in 2015-16 reflecting no impact on prevalence in a decade. As the burden of diarrhoea is influenced by health behaviors and set of risk factors prevailing in an environment where people live in, the authors in this study attempted to understand how community based interventions on prevention, control and treatment of diarrhoea work in rural areas and urban slums differently. # Methods The methodology of this study comprise pre and post intervention survey and following cohorts of under five children for four weeks before and after one year of community based interventions including prevention, control and treatment of diarrhoea. The data analysis was done using an Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft Inc, Seattle WA, USA) and SPSS 2015 (IBM, New York NY, USA) and reported at 5% margin of error. # Results After the intervention, community behavior and healthy practices have shown improvement in both rural areas and urban slums such as around 20 percentage points more mothers can recognize diarrohea correctly in rural areas and around 28 percentage points more mothers washed their hands after cleaning child feces. The results also show that management of diarrhoea as per National Guidelines in India has also improved at the community level (around 3% points in rural area and 2% points in urban area). However, we noticed that comparative change in incidence is more in rural area than that in urban slums but change in longitudinal prevalence is more in urban slums than that in rural areas. # Conclusions In the rural areas reducing diarrohea incidence seems apparently simpler than in urban slums but treatment of childhood diarrohea in rural areas seems more challenging. For public health programme planning and policy making, differential approaches based on risk factors, access issues and community behavior should be considered for greater effectiveness.

Supply of schooling and dropout rates: Evidence from the Oportunidades programme in Mexico

AbstractIn this article we provide evidence that measures of school supply, such as quantity and quality at the local level, are important predictors of dropout behaviour among conditional cash transfer beneficiaries in Mexico. We use administrative records of the Oportunidades programme in both rural and urban areas to follow the schooling trajectory of a cohort of students from sixth grade to high school. Under half of rural beneficiaries attending sixth grade make it to the tenth grade. Our regression analysis indicates that the absence of a junior high school in a locality increases the probability of dropping out after sixth grade by 6.8 percentage points; the absence of a high school increases the probability of dropping out after ninth grade by 12.2 percentage points. This means that 16% of all rural sixth‐grade students would enter tenth grade if they had junior high and high schools in their localities. Attending a low‐quality junior high school increases the probability of dropping out after ninth grade by 13 percentage points in rural areas and 7.6 percentage points in urban areas.

Local System of Positioning Using a Wifi Network

The WiFi technology is widespread. To launch the WiFi network is very simply, thus, they meet so often. Knowledge of the location of the antennas Wi-fi is very important for internal localization (position fix of an object). System of positioning of Wi-fi (WPS) or WiPS/WFPS are used where GPS and GLONASS are unavailable because of different reasons including multipath and signal blocking indoors. Such systems include as well internal systems of positioning. Use of Wi-fi not for creation of a network, and (for example, positioning of devices on the WiFi network) is urgent for other purposes because there is a rapid growth at the beginning of the 21st century of wireless access points in urban areas. This article discusses practical application of a method of localization with use of WiFi of access points which is based on measurement of intensity of the received signal (indication of the received signal or RSSI). Here the device which executes the measurements necessary for system operation is described. Some formulas for computation of layout of the device are given. Results of system operation are considered with different layouts of access points in the given space and different environments.

The impact of migrant workers' remittances on the living standards of families in Morocco: A propensity score matching approach

This article attempts to assess empirically the impact of remittances on household expenditure and relative poverty in Morocco. We apply propensity score matching methods to the 2006/2007 Moroccan Living Standards Measurement Survey. We find that migrants’ remittances can improve living standards among Moroccan households and affect negatively the incidence of poverty. The results show a statistically significant and positive impact of hose remittances on recipient households’ expenditures. They are also significantly associated with a decline in the probability of being in poverty for rural households; it decreases by 11.3 percentage points. In comparison, this probability decreases by 3 points in urban area.

Probabilistic deployment of dissemination points in urban areas to support vehicular communication

This work presents a probabilistic constructive heuristic to support the design of roadside infrastructure for information dissemination in vehicular networks. We formulate this as a Probabilistic Maximum Coverage Problem (PMCP) and we intend to maximize the number of vehicles that get in contact with the infrastructure. We compare our approach with non-probabilistic MCP in simulated urban areas following a Manhattan-style topology with variable traffic conditions. The main contributions of this work are (i) the formal definition of the Probabilistic Maximum Coverage Problem, (ii) the application of PMCP to solve one instance of the problem of facilities allocation and (iii) the application of a probabilistic approach to model the volume of vehicles along the urban area, where the position of each vehicle is no longer considered deterministic, but it is treated as a probability function distributed over all the intersections. The vehicles no longer have a position. Instead, vehicles have a probability of being in a given position at a given instant of time. The results reveal that PMCP requires less dissemination points (DPs) to achieve similar coverage ratio than non-probabilistic MCP, while preserving the same samples deviation. Keywords: vehicular networks, maximum coverage problem, information dissemination.

Determination of Measurement Points in Urban Environments for Assessment of Maximum Exposure to EMF Associated with a Base Station

A base station (BS) antenna operates in accordance with the established exposure limits if the values of electromagnetic fields (EMF) measured in points of maximum exposure are below these limits. In the case of BS in open areas, the maximum exposure to EMF probably occurs in the antenna’s boresight direction, from a few tens to a few hundred meters away. This is not a typical scenery for urban environments. However, in the line of sight (LOS) situation, the region of maximum exposure can still be analytically estimated with good results. This paper presents a methodology for the choice of measurement points in urban areas in order to assess compliance with the limits for exposure to EMF.

Neglected increases in rural road traffic mortality in China: findings based on health data from 2005 to 2010

BackgroundRecent changes in rural road traffic mortality have not been examined in China although rural residents were reported as having greater risk of road traffic injury than urban residents. We aimed to examine changes in urban and rural road traffic mortality rates between 2005 and 2010 in China.MethodsMortality rates came from the publicly available health data of the Ministry of Health-Vital Registration System that is based on a national representative sample (about 10% of total population), including 41 surveillance points in urban areas (15 large cities and 21 middle/small cities) and 85 surveillance points in rural areas. The causes of deaths were coded using the Tenth International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). Linear regression was used to test the statistical significance of changes in mortality rates. We calculated the percent change in rates to quantify the change between 2005 and 2010, which was calculated as regression coefficient * 100 * 5 divided by the rate in 2005.ResultsIn rural areas, road traffic mortality increased by 70%, changing from 13.3 per 100,000 population in 2005 to 22.7 per 100,000 population in 2010. In contrast, the road traffic mortality merely increased by 4% in the study time period, rising from 13.1 to 13.9 per 100,000 population in urban areas. Both the increases in road traffic mortality from motor vehicle crashes and from non-motor vehicle crashes were larger in rural areas than in urban areas (106% vs. 4%; 29% vs. 3%).ConclusionThe tremendous increase in road traffic mortality in rural areas calls for urgent actions to reduce road traffic injuries to motor vehicle occupants, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians in in rural areas.

Addressing the social determinants of health through health system strengthening and inter-sectoral convergence: the case of the Indian National Rural Health Mission

Background: At the turn of the 21st century, India was plagued by significant rural–urban, inter-state and inter-district inequities in health. For example, in 2004, the infant mortality rate (IMR) was 24 points higher in rural areas compared to urban areas. To address these inequities, to strengthen the rural health system (a major determinant of health in itself) and to facilitate action on other determinants of health, India launched the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in April 2005.Methods: Under the NRHM, Rs. 666 billion (US$12.1 billion) was invested in rural areas from April 2005 to March 2012. There was also a substantially higher allocation for 18 high-focus states11States with weak public health indicators and/or weak health infrastructure. and 264 high-focus districts, identified on the basis of poor health and demographic indicators. Other determinants of health, especially nutrition and decentralized action, were addressed through mechanisms like State/District Health Missions, Village Health, Sanitation and Nutrition Committees, and Village Health and Nutrition Days.Results: Consequently, in bigger high-focus states, rural IMR fell by 15.6 points between 2004 and 2011, as compared to 9 points in urban areas. Similarly, the maternal mortality rate in high-focus states declined by 17.9% between 2004–2006 and 2007–2009 compared to 14.6% in other states.Conclusion: The article, on the basis of the above approaches employed under NRHM, proposes the NRHM model to ‘reduce health inequities and initiate action on SDH’.

A Novel Filtering Algorithm for Bare-Earth Extraction From Airborne Laser Scanning Data Using an Artificial Neural Network

The extraction of bare-earth points from airborne laser scanning (ALS) data and the generation of high-quality digital terrain models (DTMs) are important research challenges. In this study, a novel filtering algorithm based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) is proposed to extract bare-earth points from ALS data efficiently. An efficient set of conditions were defined to choose the training data semi-automatically when an expert user is not available. Four standard study sites were used to evaluate the performance of the method. The obtained results were compared with four popular filtering algorithms based on type I error, type II error, the kappa coefficient and the total error. First echoes were used in the proposed method to increase the reliable detection of vegetated areas. The proposed algorithm has an easy implementation procedure and low computational costs. The results obtained for both semiautomatic and supervised training data selection reveal acceptable accuracies, especially for type II errors. Use of this algorithm would lead to high-quality DTM generation using accurately identified bare-earth points in urban areas.

Extending 3G/WiMAX Networks and Services through Residential Access Capacity[Wireless Broadband Access

The transmit capacity of the access link that connects homes to the Internet is often not fully used, either because of a selected light subscription or because the user is not constantly online, leaving a surplus capacity. Many home networks are equipped with WLAN that can be received outside the walls of the home. This signal can be used to offer access to passing WLAN users who are sufficiently near the homes, potentially realizing a contiguous public radio coverage landscape of WLAN access points in urban areas. This article describes the challenges and solutions when using the surplus capacity available in broadband residential access for offering WLAN access to public subscribers, and how to integrate this solution with access and services offered by 3G and WiMAX.