A genotypic method for predicting rifampicin resistance in Mycobacterium leprae has been developed and rigorously tested on mouse footpad-derived and clinical specimens. A series of immobilized oligonucleotide capture probes can discriminate between wild type and mutant rpoB alleles, and positive controls are available for the most frequent mutation affecting Ser425. Two different non-radioacti...

Tumaini University at Iringa, Tanzania, started a new B.Sc. program in IT in 2007. In the course of planning and implementation of the program, we found out that standard ACM/IEEE IT curricula are not adequate for an IT program in a poor, developing country. The standard curricula describe, in detail, the competences that IT specialists in industrialized countries should possess, but the specia...

This paper discusses how an industrialized country could defend the living standard of its unskilled workers against the wage competition from immigrants. It shows that fixing social replacement incomes implies migration into unemployment. Defending wages with replacement incomes brings about first order efficiency losses that approximate the budget cost of the government. By contrast, wage sub...

Trauma is a major--and increasing--cause of death, especially in low- and middle income countries. In all countries rural areas are especially hard hit, and the distribution of physicians is skewed towards cities. To reduce avoidable deaths from injury all links in the chain of survival after trauma needs strengthening. Prioritizing in each country should be done by local researchers, but littl...

The paper analyzes how social barriers to communication affect economy-wide productivity and factor accumulation. Using a dynamic model of an economy that includes a reproducible capital stock (physical or human) and effective labor, a negative relationship is shown to exist between social barriers to communication and total factor productivity (TFP), per capita consumption and reproducible cap...

In this paper, we examine the implementation and difficulties when conducting genetics research in a rural, traditional West African culture within the frame of the United States' grounded research ethics. Research challenges are highlighted by Western researchers following U.S. Institutional Review Board (IRB) guidelines and practices in a non-Western country. IRB concepts are culture bound in...

The aim of this observational, population-based study was to compare subjective health complaints (SHC) in Norwegians, living in a Western welfare society, and Maasai people, living in rural Kenya under primitive conditions. An interview-based version of SHC inventory was used. Data from 320 Maasais were compared to data from 1243 Norwegians. The Maasais had significantly higher score than the ...

Infant mortality (IM) and birth outcomes, key population health indicators, have lifelong implications for individuals, and are unequally distributed globally. Even among western industrialized nations, striking cross-country and within-country patterns are evident. We sought to better understand these variations across and within the United States of America (USA) and Western Europe (WE), by c...

Innovation systems perspectives on agricultural research and technological change are fast becoming a popular approach to the study of how society generates, disseminates, and utilizes knowledge. The innovation systems literature represents a significant change from the conventional, linear approach to research and development by providing an analytical framework that explores complex relations...