BACKGROUND In 2010 the government of the republic of Zambia stopped training traditional birth attendants and forbade them from conducting home deliveries as they were viewed as contributing to maternal mortality. This study explored positive and negative maternal health related experiences and effects of the ban in a rural district of Kazungula. METHODS This was a phenomenological study and ...

This study compared the acute effect of ingesting bananas (BAN) versus a 6% carbohydrate drink (CHO) on 75-km cycling performance and post-exercise inflammation, oxidative stress, and innate immune function using traditional and metabolomics-based profiling. Trained cyclists (N = 14) completed two 75-km cycling time trials (randomized, crossover) while ingesting BAN or CHO (0.2 g/kg carbohydrat...

BACKGROUND In February 2003, a comprehensive ban on tobacco promotion came into effect in the United Kingdom, which prohibited tobacco marketing through print and broadcast media, billboards, the internet, direct mail, product placement, promotions, free gifts, coupons and sponsorships. OBJECTIVE To investigate the impact of the UK's comprehensive ban on tobacco promotion on adult smokers' aw...

Enforcing the ban on meat-and-bone meal in feed for farmed animals, and especially ruminants, is considered an important measure to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The authors describe current analytical methods for the detection and identification of animal tissues in feed. In addition, recently approved requirements, such as the ban of intra-species recycling (practice...

BACKGROUND On January 1, 2008, the French government implemented a national ban on indoor smoking in hospitality venues. Survey results indicate the indoor ban has been successful at dramatically reducing indoor smoking; however, there are reports of an increased number of outdoor hospitality spaces (patios) where smoking can take place. This study sought to understand if the indoor ban simply ...

BACKGROUND Introducing comprehensive smoke-free policies to public places is expected to reduce health costs. This includes prevented health damages by avoiding environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure as well as indirect health benefits from reduced tobacco consumption. METHODS The aim of this study was to estimate direct health costs of ETS exposure in public places and indirect health be...

Telemonitoring is emerging as a compelling application of Body Area Networks (BANs). We describe two health BAN systems developed respectively by a European team and an Australian team and discuss some issues encountered relating to formalization of clinical knowledge to support realtime analysis and interpretation of BAN data. Our example application is an evidence-based telemonitoring and tel...

We mapped overall malaria cases and located each field observed major malaria vector breeding habitat using Global Positioning System (GPS) instruments from September 2000 to October 2003 around the three malaria-endemic villages of Ban Khun Huay, Ban Pa Dae, and Ban Tham Seau, Mae Sod district, Tak Province, Thailand. The land-use/land-cover classifications of the three villages and surroundin...

System dynamics modeling allows us to examine various scenarios within a complex system. By using this approach we not only learn about the response of the system to test inputs which could never be tested in the real world, but we also learn to question our assumptions about the system itself. This leads to a better understand of its workings. This paper presents a preliminary system dynamics ...

In the past few years a lot of attention has been paid to the use of special logics to analyae cryptographic protocols, foremost among these being the logic of Burrows, Abadi and Needham (the BAN logic). These logics have been successful in finding weaknesses in various examples. In this paper a limitation of the BAN logic is illustrated with two examples. These show that it is easy for the BAN...