Magister Public Health - MPH / Malaria is a health, social and economic burden in Nigeria and consistently ranks amongst the four most common causes of childhood deaths. Treatment of malaria is usually started at home; care is only sought from the health facility when the treatment is ineffective (McCombie, 1996). Patent medicine vendors (PMVs) have been identified as a widely patronized source for drugs used in the home treatment of malaria (Breiger et al, 2001; Goodman, et al, 2007; Salako et al, 2001). Inadequate or poor knowledge and practices in the use of anti-malaria drugs (AMDs) increases morbidity and mortality, undermines therapeutic efficacy, and promotes the emergence and spread of drugresistant malaria. Aim: The aim of the study was to describe and quantify the knowledge and self-reported practices of PMVs in the use of antimalarials, particularly artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), in a poor urban community in Lagos state, Nigeria. / South Africa

Males and age group 1 to 5 years show a much higher risk for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). We performed a case-only genome-wide association study (GWAS), using the Illumina Infinium HumanCoreExome Chip, to unmask gender- and age-specific risk variants in 240 non-Hispanic white children with ALL recruited at Texas Children’s Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. Besides statistically most significant results, we also considered results that yielded the highest effect sizes. Existing experimental data and bioinformatic predictions were used to complement results, and to examine the biological significance of statistical results. Our study identified novel risk variants for childhood ALL. The SNP, rs4813720 (RASSF2), showed the statistically most significant gender-specific associations (P < 2 x 10-6). Likewise, rs10505918 (SOX5) yielded the lowest P value (P < 1 x 10-5) for age-specific associations, and also showed the statistically most significant association with age-at-onset (P < 1 x 10-4). Two SNPs, rs12722042 and 12722039, from the HLA-DQA1 region yielded the highest effect sizes (odds ratio (OR) = 15.7; P = 0.002) for gender-specific results, and the SNP, rs17109582 (OR = 12.5; P = 0.006), showed the highest effect size for age-specific results. Sex chromosome variants did not appear to be involved in gender-specific associations. The HLA-DQA1 SNPs belong to DQA1*01:07and confirmed previously reported male-specific association with DQA1*01:07. Twenty one of the SNPs identified as risk markers for gender- or age-specific associations were located in the transcription factor binding sites and 56 SNPs were non-synonymous variants, likely to alter protein function. Although bioinformatic analysis did not implicate a particular mechanism for gender- and age-specific associations, RASSF2 has an estrogen receptor-alpha binding site in its promoter. The unknown mechanisms may be due to lack of interest in gender- and age-specificity in associations. These results provide a foundation for further studies to examine the gender- and age-differential in childhood ALL risk. Following replication and mechanistic studies, risk factors for one gender or age group may have a potential to be used as biomarkers for targeted intervention for prevention and maybe also for treatment.

The Ste20-like kinase SLK plays a pivotal role in cell migration and focal adhesion turnover. SLK activity is regulated by the LIM domain-binding proteins Ldb1/2. In addition to playing role in tumor initiation and progression, these proteins have been demonstrated to interact with LMO4. Therefore, this project assessed the ability of LMO4 to interact and regulate SLK activity. Results show that LMO4 can directly bind to SLK and activate its kinase activity. LMO4 can be co-precipitated with SLK following the induction of cell migration by scratch wounding. Cre deletion of LMO4 inhibits cell migration and SLK activation, and impairs Ldb1 and SLK recruitment to the leading edge of migrating cells. Src/Yes/Fyn-deficient cells (SYF) express very low levels of LMO4 and do not recruit SLK to the leading edge. Src-family kinase inhibition impairs SLK recruitment to the leading edge, suggesting that both expression of LMO4 and the recruitment of SLK to the leading edge require c-Src activity. In conclusion, cell migration and activation of SLK requires its recruitment to the leading edge by LMO4 in a Src-dependent manner. This study also investigated whether LMO4 deletion through MMTV-Cre-driven excision would impair mammary tumorigenesis in a PyMT mouse model of breast cancer. No difference in Overall Survival was observed between animals with and without LMO4 expression. Western blot analysis and IHC showed that tumors expressed LMO4 protein in animals genotyped as Cre-positive. This result suggests that expression of LMO4 is required for tumor initiation in the PyMT model of murine mammary carcinoma. This project has established a novel cytosolic role for the transcriptional co-activator LMO4 and validated it’s involvement in the regulation of SLK and cell migration. This pathway may provide a novel therapeutic strategy as LMO4 appears to be critical to the initiation and progression of breast cancer.

This study examines the effects of accuracy-only training and fluency training on retention of material learned. Two adolescent participants with traumatic brain injuries were taught to name 2 sets of lowercase Greek letters. Each of the 2 sets consisted of 7 letters. Practice and rate of reinforcement were controlled for in this study. Fluency trained letters showed higher retention (percent correct during retention checks) than the accuracy-only trained letters.

This research contributes to understanding the attitudes of Russian politicians towards sex education in schools and the kind of argumentation styles they use to oppose it. The paper is based on a framing analysis of the arguments of two important opponents to sex education: Pavel Astakhov, a Russian politician and former Children’s Rights Commissioner from 2009 to 2016; and Yelena Mizulina, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family Affairs, Women and Children since 2008, using online media sources in a ten-year period (2011-2021). The analysis finds that Astakhov’s most used frames are the disapproval of children’s exposure to new, different attitudes, the interference in Russian traditions by the West and the spread of a gender discourse in Russia. Mizulina focuses mainly on the unfitness of teachers since sex education should only be addressed by parents, and on the “right age” to start talking about it with young people. From the results, both politicians seem to strongly oppose comprehensive sex education (CSE), but Astakhov proposes to adopt a type of abstinence-only curriculum (AO), while Mizulina tries to completely discourage sex education of any kind for school-aged children.

The aim of Master’s thesis Control of the communication on the USB is realization hardware and software designed for microcontroller C8051F120 what is enabling recording of data on memory medium Flash drive. It includes study of USB, transfer protocols, which are needed and file system. The thesis deals about host type USB controllers and about USB controller MAX3421E fy Maxim, which has been choosen for development of software. It is required ability to create directories and files including recording data to file and ability of reading data from files in the file system FAT16.

The aim of the study was to replicate and validate the UEQ KPI introduced by Hinderks et al. (2019) in a context-only extension study by applying it to a product with high hedonic qualities, namely Netflix. The secondary research aim was to identify areas of improvement for Netflix’ user experience. An online survey was conducted with a positivist research philosophy and a deductive research approach in order to achieve the research aims. The chosen methodology proved to be appropriate and effective. The UEQ KPI was confirmed to be a valid methodology to evaluate products with high hedonic qualities. This study hence contributed to the validity of the UEQ KPI and to its generalisability. Certain areas of improvement and their perceived importance for Netflix’ UX were identified, listed from most to least promising: Efficiency, Stimulation and the Novelty. However, as the UEQ KPI is fairly new, more research on this topic is necessary to further validate it. Certainly, this topical development in UX research was proven to be a promising approach to assess the UX of products with different characteristics in a cheap, fast and accurate way.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an expanding interest in numerous industries for various applications. Increasing development of UAVs is happening worldwide, where various sensor attachments and functions are being added. The multi-function UAV can be used within areas where they have not been managed before. Because of their accessibility, cheap purchase, and easy-to-use, they replace expensive systems such as helicopters- and airplane-surveillance. UAV are also being applied into surveillance, combing object detection to video-surveillance and mobility to finding an object from the air without interfering with vehicles or humans ground. In this thesis, we solve the problem of using UAV on autonomous sites, finding an object and critical situation, support autonomous site operators with an extra safety layer from UAVs camera. After finding an object on such a site, uses GPS-coordinates from the UAV to see and place the detected object on the site onto a gridmap, leaving a coordinate-map to the operator to see where the objects are and see if the critical situation can occur. Directly under the object detection, reporting critical situations can be done because of safety-distance-circle leaving warnings if objects come to close to each other. However, the system itself only supports the operator with extra safety and warnings, leaving the operator with the choice of pressing emergency stop or not. Object detection uses You only look once (YOLO) as main object detection Neural Network (NN), mixed with edge-detection for gaining accuracy during bird-eye-views and motion-detection for supporting finding all object that is moving on-site, even if UAV cannot find all the objects on site. Result proofs that the UAV-surveillance on autonomous site is an excellent way to add extra safety on-site if the operator is out of focus or finding objects on-site before startup since the operator can fly the UAV around the site, leaving an extra-safety-layer of finding humans on-site before startup. Also, moving the UAV to a specific position, where extra safety is needed, informing the operator to limit autonomous vehicles speed around that area because of humans operation on site. The use of single object detection limits the effects but gathered object detection methods lead to a promising result while printing those objects onto a global positions system (GPS) map has proposed a new field to study. It leaves the operator with a viewable interface outside of object detection libraries.

Background: Social networking mobile applications are designed to socially connect users among each other to consume but also to produce content. Especially because these apps represent a high potential to acquire revenue streams through advertisements, but also to gain customer insights, companies are interested in entering this market by creating new social networking apps. However, switching costs for users are high due to the varied user base of established social networking apps. Accordingly, marketing strategies need to be created to enter the market to target users’ interests. One concept to do so is distributing invitations for the social networking app that can be shared among users. The invite-only strategy has been successfully used to establish themselves in the market by for example Facebook, but also recently with the social networking app Clubhouse. To apply it effectively the motivators of the users to initially adopt invite-only social networking apps are important to understand. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to generate an in-depth understanding of the motivators that foster the initial user adoption of social networking mobile apps based on the invite-only strategy. To investigate the motivators, it is crucial for this study to gain knowledge from the user perspective. In that case, we will contribute our derived knowledge to the theory of technology acceptance, scarcity in digital marketing, and virtual social networking apps. Research Question: Why do users initially adopt social networking mobile applications using an invite-only strategy? Method: Ontology – Relativism; Epistemology – Social Constructionism; Approach –Inductive; Data Collection – 14 Semi-Structured In-Depth Interviews; Sampling –Purposive, Convenience, Snowball; Data Analysis – Grounded Analysis Conclusion: As a result, a framework was derived depicting the main motivators for users to initially adopt invite-only social networking apps. Through our empirical data, we found out that Artificial Scarcity, Closed Network, and Social Influence motivate users to initially adopt invite-only social networking apps. Additionally, Contributing Factors were identified to influence the initial adoption, although they are not directly influenced by the invite-only strategy. The framework further describes the interrelations between the identified sub-categories affecting the initial adoption. We conclude that the main motivators are desire- and fear-driven. The framework can be used by marketers to design invite-only strategies more effectively and consistently to attract a large group of initial users and establish themselves in the market.

In todays Radiotherapy Treatment Planning, RTP, it is common to use Computed Tomography, CT, together with Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI, where CT provides electron density information and a geometrical reference, and where MRI provides superior soft tissue contrast. To sim- plify the workflow and improve treatment accuracy, research groups have demonstrated how to exclude CT and use a MRI-only approach. In this thesis, a method for spatial distortion analysis, ultimately enabling quality assurance, QA, of the spatial accuracy of MRI, was defined, tested and evaluated. A phantom was built to cover the entire clinical Field Of View, FOV, and 6mm-diameter fluid filled paintball markers were placed in a well-defined geometrical pattern within the phantom, and used as positive contrast. The phantom was imaged with a 3D Fast Gradient Echo sequence and a 3D Fast Spin Echo sequence. The markers were identified in the image data by a MATLAB-algorithm, and the location of the center of mass was calculated for each marker and compared to a theoretical reference. The location error was defined as the spatial distortion - a measurement of the spatial accuracy. Imaging parameters were altered and the effect on the spatial accuracy was analyzed. The spatial distortions were successfully measured within the entire (maximal) clinical FOV. It was shown that high readout bandwidth reduced distortions in the frequency encoding direction. These distortions could thus be attributed to B0-inhomogeneities. It was also determined that increasing the readout bandwidth to the maximum value reduced the maximum distortions in the frequency encoding direction to the same level as the maximum distortions in the other two phase-encoding directions of the 3D acquisitions. The voxel size had a very small effect on the spatial accuracy, enabling large voxelsize to be used when imaging the phantom, to decrease the scan time. The method was deemed capable of serving as a basis for QA of the spatial accuracy of large FOV MRI, which is needed in future MRI-only RTP approaches.