Analyzing spatial disparities in access to health care: A methodology with application in Bangladesh

This paper develops a methodology for analyzing spatial disparities in access to health care in situations where the data base is limited, and applies it in the context of Bangladesh. The proposed indirect measures of inpatient and outpatient service utilization, and of quality of available services, seem to provide reasonably accurate, consistent, and interpretable results; these indices are combined into a composite index of relative access to health care. The form of the composite index and its components permits the incorporation of Sopher's disparity index into the methodology for measuring urban-rural disparities in relative access to health care. The empirical analysis based on subdivision level data revealed that Bangladesh's health care delivery system is, in general, characterized by extremely low level of access and a high degree of disparity in favor of urban areas, especially in terms of inpatient services. Spatial patterns of relative access and urban/rural disparity were perused through cartographic and statistical analyses; although clear-cut regional patterns did not emerge, the considerable spatial variations could be explained largely with reference to urbanization and density of population. Assuming improved level of access and minimal urban/rural disparity as basic policy goals a method to prioritize spatial units for future allocation of health sector resources is recommended.The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper by Dr. S. M. Bhardwaj, Professor of Geography, Kent State University.     

Land use alterations and its possible impact on premonsoon climatic variables

Changes in land surface characteristics have become a matter of great concern in the recent years. It is particularly important when the mesoscale phenomena control the climatic variables of a region. Gangetic West Bengal with its neighbourhood is such a region where during premonsoon season, mesoscale phenomena, i.e., sea breeze circulation and severe convective development, control the local climate of the season. It is also reported that a drastic changes in land use pattern has taken place in recent period over the region, which might affect the local climate, resulting in severe water crisis over the semi-arid part of the region. A detailed study has been undertaken to investigate the changes in land use pattern through satellite data over the area and its possible impact on the local climate through numerical modeling. Satellite (IRS-IC and Landsat 4 and 5) data shows a sharp change in dynamic vegetation during this period, which is due to, increased agricultural practices in the recent years. Mesoscale model indicates that agricultural practices hinder the development of sea breezes over the coastal and inland places, causing less incursion of moisture towards inland. This may be associated with less number of convective developments over the coastal and neighbouring places.     

In Situ Abiotic Detoxification and Immobilization of Hexavalent Chromium

Detailed site characterization data from the former electroplating shop at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Support Center, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, suggested that the elevated Cr(VI) in the capillary fringe area had contaminated the ground water at the site. Most of the mobile Cr(VI) is present in the capillary fringe zone of the aquifer under an oxidizing environment. Current literature suggests that the reduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) through in situ redox manipulation in the presence of a reductant is an innovative technique for remediating chromate-contaminated sediments and ground water. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of sodium dithionite in creating a reductive environment to remediate Cr(VI) present in soil. Sodium dithionite, a strong reductant, was injected into a small area of the vadose zone where elevated Cr(VI) was identified. Several striking changes observed in the target zone during the post-injection monitoring periods include a significant decrease in Eh(SHE), as much as ∼700 mV, absence of dissolved oxygen for 48 weeks, and the increase of Fe(II) concentrations. Results indicated that the in situ remedial treatment of Cr(VI) in the capillary fringe area was effective and consequently the concentration of Cr(VI) in ground water dropped below the MCLG level. This research demonstrated the effectiveness of in situ abiotic remediation by reducing Cr(VI) concentrations, mobility, and toxicity in soils and ground water within a short period of time. Therefore, sodium dithionite would be a feasible and cost-effective option for a full-scale remedial approach for the contaminated site at the U.S. Coast Guard Facility.     

Cretaceous volcanic rocks of the South Tethyan suture zone, Pakistan: implications for the Réunion hotspot and Deccan Traps

The location, ages, and geochemical characteristics of marine volcanic rocks preserved in the South Tethyan suture zone of Pakistan suggest that the Réunion hotspot was active off northwestern Greater India well before the emplacement, far to the south, of the Deccan flood basalts, the great bulk of which were erupted at 65-66 Ma and are widely believed to be associated with the hotspot’s plume-head phase. Most of the suture zone samples have Nd-Pb-Sr isotopic ratios (e.g. age-corrected ?_Nd(t)=+3.0 to +4.6) close to those expected for modern-type Réunion source mantle in the Late Cretaceous, and their incompatible element patterns resemble those of recent Réunion shield lavas. ⁴⁰Ar-³⁹Ar incremental heating yields ages of 73.4-72.0 Ma. Nevertheless, unless even older ages are discovered among the suture zone rocks, a pre-Deccan marine phase of Réunion hotspot activity on the Tethyan side of Greater India can be accommodated within the framework of the plume-head model.     

Indusion: Fusion of Multispectral and Panchromatic Images Using the Induction Scaling Technique

The fusion of multispectral (MS) and panchromatic (PAN) images is a useful technique for enhancing the spatial quality of low-resolution MS images. Liu recently proposed the smoothing-filter-based intensity modulation (SFIM) fusion technique. This technique upscales MS images using bicubic interpolation and introduces high-frequency information of the PAN image into the MS images. However, this fusion technique is plagued by blurred edges if the upscaled MS images are not accurately coregistered with the PAN image. In the first part of this letter, we propose the use of the Induction scaling technique instead of bicubic interpolation to obtain sharper, better correlated, and hence better coregistered upscaled images. In the second part, we propose a new fusion technique derived from induction, which is named ldquoIndusion.rdquo In this method, the high-frequency content of the PAN image is extracted using a pair of upscaling and downscaling filters. It is then added to an upscaled MS image. Finally, a comparison of SFIM (with both bicubic interpolation and induction scaling) is presented along with the fusion results obtained by IHS, discrete wavelet transform, and the proposed Indusion techniques using Quickbird satellite images.     

Seismic risk assessment for developing countries: Pakistan as a case study

Modern Earthquake Risk Assessment (ERA) methods usually require seismo-tectonic information for Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) that may not be readily available in developing countries. To bypass this drawback, this paper presents a practical event-based PSHA method that uses instrumental seismicity, available historical seismicity, as well as limited information on geology and tectonic setting. Historical seismicity is integrated with instrumental seismicity to determine the long-term hazard. The tectonic setting is included by assigning seismic source zones associated with known major faults. Monte Carlo simulations are used to generate earthquake catalogues with randomized key hazard parameters. A case study region in Pakistan is selected to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. The results indicate that the proposed method produces seismic hazard maps consistent with previous studies, thus being suitable for generating such maps in regions where limited data are available. The PSHA procedure is developed as an integral part of an ERA framework named EQRAM. The framework is also used to determine seismic risk in terms of annual losses for the study region.     

Vibration analysis of damaged and undamaged steel structure systems: cantilever column and frame

This paper presents the experimental and numerical studies conducted on a steel column and a steel frame structure using free vibration analysis. The effects of damages on structures were investigated, which were simulated by introducing multiple cracks at different locations in the experimental and numerical models. The acceleration responses of the test models, were recorded through an accelerometer, and were used to calibrate the numerical models developed in finite element based software. Modal frequencies of damaged and undamaged structures were compared and analyzed, to derive relationships for damaged and undamaged structures' frequencies in terms of crack depth. It was found that, due to the presence of cracks, the mechanical properties of a structure changes, whereby, the modal frequencies decrease. An approximately linear trend was observed for the frequency decrease with the increase in crack depth, which was also confirmed by the numerical models. The derived relationships were extended to further develop a mechanics-based damage scale for steel structures, to help facilitate structural health monitoring and screening of vulnerable structures.     

Turbulence Study Around Bar in a Braided River Model

Water Resources - Turbulent flow is a flow regime which is described by the anarchic property changes. This includes the rapid variation of pressure, high momentum convection and flow velocity in...     

A fast joint seismic data reconstruction by sparsity‐promoting inversion

Seismic field data are often irregularly or coarsely sampled in space due to acquisition limits. However, complete and regular data need to be acquired in most conventional seismic processing and imaging algorithms. We have developed a fast joint curvelet‐domain seismic data reconstruction method by sparsity‐promoting inversion based on compressive sensing. We have made an attempt to seek a sparse representation of incomplete seismic data by curvelet coefficients and solve sparsity‐promoting problems through an iterative thresholding process to reconstruct the missing data. In conventional iterative thresholding algorithms, the updated reconstruction result of each iteration is obtained by adding the gradient to the previous result and thresholding it. The algorithm is stable and accurate but always requires sufficient iterations. The linearised Bregman method can accelerate the convergence by replacing the previous result with that before thresholding, thus promoting the effective coefficients added to the result. The method is faster than conventional one, but it can cause artefacts near the missing traces while reconstructing small‐amplitude coefficients because some coefficients in the unthresholded results wrongly represent the residual of the data. The key process in the joint curvelet‐domain reconstruction method is that we use both the previous results of the conventional method and the linearised Bregman method to stabilise the reconstruction quality and accelerate the recovery for a while. The acceleration rate is controlled through weighting to adjust the contribution of the acceleration term and the stable term. A fierce acceleration could be performed for the recovery of comparatively small gaps, whereas a mild acceleration is more appropriate when the incomplete data has a large gap of high‐amplitude events. Finally, we carry out a fast and stable recovery using the trade‐off algorithm. Synthetic and field data tests verified that the joint curvelet‐domain reconstruction method can effectively and quickly reconstruct seismic data with missing traces.     

Assessment of future water provisioning and sediment load under climate and LULC change scenarios in a peninsular river basin,India

Assessment of the impact of changes in climate and land use and land cover (LULC) on ecosystem services (ES) is important for planning regional-scale strategies for sustainability and restoration of ES. The Upper Narmada River Basin (UNRB) in peninsular India has undergone rapid LULC change due to recent agricultural expansion. The impact of future climate and LULC change on ES in the UNRB is quantified and mapped using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST 3.3.0) tool. Our results show that water yield is projected to increase under climate change (about 43% for representative concentration pathway 4.5 for 2031–2040), whereas it is projected to decrease under the LULC change scenario. Sediment export is projected to increase (by 54.53%) under LULC change for 2031–2040. Under the combined effect of climate and LULC change, both water yield and sediment export are expected to increase. Climate change has a greater impact on projected water yield than LULC change, whereas LULC has greater impact on sediment export. Spatial analysis suggests a similar trend of variation in relative difference (RD) of ES in adjacent sub-basins. The quantified changes in ES provisioning will benefit future land management, particularly for operation of the Rani Avanti Bai Sagar Reservoir downstream of the UNRB.