Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72). / The objectives of the study is to estimate baseline characteristics, survival, and factors associated with mortality and losses to follow-up in patients on antiretroviral therapy (ART), and compare the periods before (early) and after (late) 3 months on treatment.

The present longitudinal study examines a natural population of threespine sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus form Little Mud Lake in British Colombia, Canada to determine if individual fish within a given population exhibited a preference for finding prey on the bottom of the lake, prey floating in the water column of the lake, or prey in other microhabitats of the lake. Foraging behaviors were recorded to determine the presence of individual specialization within the focal sympatric population. Comparing the proportion of strikes on various microhabitats for multiple individuals shows that individual specialization is present within the focal population of sticklebacks. Data shows that some fish prefer the feed on benthic prey while others prefer to feed on prey found on the surface of the water. Diet preferences were also compared to morphology to determine if individual fish traits had a relationship to preferred foraging location. Length of the longest gill raker and protrusion length results showed a relationship to limnetic-like and benthic-like feeding behaviors. / text

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Earlier studies of the diet of frogs indicate that most adult frogs are mainly insectivorous. Overall, frogs are viewed more as generalists than specialists in terms of their diet. However, despite earlier studies, there are still gaps in our knowledge regarding what frogs tend to eat and the degree of specialization. The aim of this study was to investigate the diet choice of frogs in a tropical ecosystem. The present study was conducted in a well-known hotspot for frogs with 66 of the 156 known frog species in Borneo found in a protected area comprising of primary rainforest.   Frogs were caught in the field and their stomachs were flushed. The stomach content was retrieved, sorted to prey categories, and the diet analysed. In addition, the frogs were identified to species level. The frogs belonged to five families: Bufonidae, Dicroglossidae, Megophryidae, Microhylidae and Ranidae. My results show that the most common food source was ants, which constituted 63.7 % of the total food for all studied frog families. Termites, beetles and spiders made up 11.7 %, 4.2 % and 2.8 % of the total prey, respectively. The results from the analysis of Shannon’s diversity index supported two diet specialist families, the Bufonidae and Megophridae, which had a significantly lower mean diversity index compared to the generalist Dicroglossidae. To better reveal differences in frog’s diet in this ecosystem, further studies using larger sample size are needed.

Efficient large-scale scientific computing requires efficient code, yet optimizing code to render it efficient simultaneously renders the code less readable, less maintainable, less portable, and requires detailed knowledge of low-level computer architecture, which the developers of scientific applications may lack. The necessary knowledge is subject to change over time as new architectures, such as GPGPU architectures like CUDA, which require very different optimizations than CPU-targeted code, become more prominent. The development of scientific cloud computing means that developers may not even know what machine their code will be running on when they are developing it. This work takes steps towards automating the generation of code variants which are automatically optimized for both execution environment and input dataset. We demonstrate that augmenting an autotuning framework with a performance database which captures metadata about environment and input and performing decision tree learning over that data can help more fully automate the process of enhancing software performance.

Despite national governments striving for responsive health systems and the implementation of mechanisms and interventions to foster citizen feedback and participation in health, current evidence does not adequately address these mechanisms and interventions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). This mixed method descriptive and exploratory study ‘maps' types of health system responsiveness mechanisms and their functionality in the South African health system, with a focus on the Western Cape Province, based on the available descriptive evidence. Multiple forms of data are scrutinized and synthesized to provide a deeper, contextual understanding of ´formal´ mechanisms that are constituted or mandated into South African and Western Cape policies and guidelines. This research shows that while national, provincial and district policies make strong provisions for health system responsiveness, including mechanisms to foster citizen feedback, in reality, implementation is not standardised and sometimes non-functional. Many of these mechanisms also currently exist in isolation, failing to feed into an overarching strategy of health system responsiveness, where feedback mechanisms may complement one another and lead to quality improvement in the health system. While there are cases for effective and well-functioning mechanisms for receiving and responding to citizen feedback, government on all levels is often hampered by resources and other constraints. These findings have implications for health researchers as well as national and provincial policymakers, seeking to enhance health system functioning.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends the introduction of at least one single dose of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) in routine immunisation schedules to mitigate the risk of a polio virus type 2 reintroduction or re-emergence. As a result, there has been an increased demand and concurrent supply shortages of IPV worldwide resulting in poor access to IPV. With the phasing out of the oral polio vaccine and the pursuit of global eradication of polio, ensuring an adequate supply of IPV is of paramount importance. One of the strategies to improve access is the use of the fractional dose because of its dose sparing and cost reduction properties. This mini-dissertation presents a research protocol (Section A), scoping review (Section B) and journal formatted manuscript (Section C) for a systematic review and meta-analysis of fractional dose compared to standard dose inactivated polio vaccination in children. Section A describes the rationale for the review, eligibility criteria, the search strategy and methods for data extraction and analysis. Section B is a scoping review that details the journey towards eradication of polio, the current state of IPV demand and supply and further explains the rationale for performing the systematic review. Section C is a manuscript that gives the results of the review after performing the methods outlined in Section A. The results showed that as the number of IPV doses increased the seroconversion rates for fractional dose and full dose IPV approximated each other such that at three doses the rates were similar. In conclusion, there is no difference in seroconversion between three doses of fractional dose IPV and three doses of full dose IPV. With the current IPV shortages, using fractional dose IPV instead of the full dose IPV can stretch supplies and possibly lower the cost of polio vaccination.

Increased migration is one of the main challenges impacting on health system performance. The World Health Organisation (WHO) framed responsiveness, fair financing, and equity as the intrinsic goals of a health system. In line with this framework, we attempted to map existing research on migration and health system performance. A qualitative systematic review was conducted. We followed the processes indicated for evidence mapping synthesis reviews, which included choosing the scope and research topic, searching, and selecting evidence, reporting findings, and identifying the evidence. We improved the primary review by first performing a brief scoping review, which served as the analytical basis for the systematic review extraction process. Articles found during the scoping review were evaluated again during the bigger systematic review phase. We refined the study's eligibility criteria as well as the data extraction items. Seventy-two articles were considered for the review. Out of this total (55/72) were published between 2016 and 2021. Our analysis showed fairness in financing, weak governance and leadership, the absence of a universally acceptable definition of migration, limited access of migrants to healthcare, equity, health worker attitude towards migrants, dignity, and health care quality to migrants as key challenges that affect health system performance. The mapping exercise shows more literature on migration and health system performance, but also shows gaps requiring urgent attention, including integration of the health system goals in implementing health interventions. We conclude that countries are recognising the challenges of migration on health system performance. Migration is slowly being included in national health policies in low- and middle- income countries, however challenges to implementation of such policies exist. Migration is recognised as a human right and the ethical obligation of health institutions. More agenda setting and funding for bridging work on migration and health system performance is recommended.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / Economic specialization manifests itself in many forms, so that it will be desirable at the outset to distinguish between the various ways in which producing units may be specialized or diversified. Specialization, as the term is used in economics, is the functional differentiation of production, or the division of the various operations of production into various parts performed by individual units of production. It follows from the definition that specialization can be divided into several different classifications, according to (1) the type of differentiation, and (2) the unit of production under conaideration. Two types of differentiation can be distinguished, one of which we shall call "technical specialization" and the other which we shall call "product specialization". Technical specialization is specialization in one or a few operations in the production of one good or of a number of goods, while product specialization may be defined as specialization in all of the operations in the production of a single good. Three units of production are considered in this paper: (a) the region, (b) the firm, and (c) the individual worker [TRUNCATED]

Birding, the act of observing birds in the outdoors, is a form of nature recreation and traditionally considered ecologically benign. Unfortunately, birders, in the pursuit of interactions with wild birds, can have negative impacts on birds and critical bird habitat. Often, competition for space or resources can create conflict among recreational users and bird conservation initiatives. People involved in maintaining birding recreation as well as ecological conservation include stakeholders such as birders, birding guides, and natural resource managers. Comparisons of negative impact perceptions were investigated among birder specialization categories, and between birders and other stakeholders. This study is a comparative analysis of how birding's negative impacts are perceived by the people involved in recreation and conservation. Further examination of the recreational specialization theory as an indicator for birders? perceptions of birding's negative impacts was also conducted. The purpose of such comparisons is to gain an understanding of different stakeholder needs to better serve and utilize the resources available. Justification for the study came from a series of structured interviews. Preliminary interviews with birding stakeholders identified perceived negative impacts from birding and conservation strategies to address those impacts. Separate on-site surveys, tailored for each of the three stakeholder groups, were conducted to assess stakeholder perceptions of birding's negative impacts to the ecology of the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. Survey results indicate that as birders progress in increased specialization, they more often perceive birding's negative ecological impacts. This means that the most intense birders recognize negative ecological impacts from birding more frequently than birders with less experience, investment, or lifestyle tendencies. Additional results indicate that birders, in general, perceive negative ecological impacts less frequently than bird managers and birding guides. These results are indicative of experience or education as a means to facilitate increased ecological awareness. Finally, all stakeholders supported education and outreach strategies for bird and bird habitat conservation. This study has provided scientific data analysis of birding's perceived negative impacts, as well as strategies for bird conservation. This work provides needed data on the human dimension of natural resource use conflicts for natural resource managers, who require better understanding of their constituents to accomplish recreational and conservation conflict management.