BACKGROUND Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake among school-age children has been low, particularly among rural children, even in jurisdictions in Canada where this immunization is publicly funded. Providing this vaccination at school may be convenient for parents and might contribute to increased vaccine uptake, particularly among rural children. We explore the construct of convenience as an adv...

Urbanisation currently threatens over one-third of the world’s known amphibian species. The main threats of urbanisation to amphibian populations are habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and isolation, and degradation of habitat quality. A complex array of interacting biotic and abiotic factors impact amphibians in urban and urbanising landscapes. These can lead to a decrease in species richness...

BACKGROUND Improvements in child survival have been very poor in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Since the 1990 s, declines in child mortality have reversed in many countries in the region, while in others, they have either slowed or stalled, making it improbable that the target of reducing child mortality by two thirds by 2015 will be reached. This paper highlights the implications of urban populati...

BACKGROUND Person-centered reproductive health care is recognized as critical to improving reproductive health outcomes. Yet, little research exists on how to operationalize it. We extend the literature in this area by developing and validating a tool to measure person-centered maternity care. We describe the process of developing the tool and present the results of psychometric analyses to ass...

Portraying urban functional zones provides useful insights into understanding complex urban systems and establishing rational urban planning. Although several studies have confirmed the efficacy of remote sensing imagery in urban studies, coupling remote sensing and new human sensing data like mobile phone positioning data to identify urban functional zones has still not been investigated. In t...

BACKGROUND Australians living in rural areas have lower incidence rates of renal replacement therapy and poorer dialysis survival compared with urban dwellers. This study compares peritoneal dialysis (PD) patient characteristics and outcomes in rural and urban Australia. METHODS Non-indigenous Australian adults who commenced chronic dialysis between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2010 accordi...

We propose an optimization approach to speed up the point matching process underlying the 3D reconstruction of complex urban scenes. We consider the Optical Flow technique for point matching and propose to introduce MMX and SSE2 instructions to accelerate significantly the matching process. Fast point matching allows using sub-pixel image resolution, which provides a more accurate estimation of...

A prominent example of LSM in urban sub-Saharan Africa is the Urban Malaria Control Program (UMCP), Dar es Salaam, initiated by the City Council in collaboration with Ifakara Health Institute and overseas academic institutions [1-2]. In 2004, mosquito surveillance systems were established and after one year of intensive baseline data collection (2005-2006), operational larviciding with Bacillus...

Combining the daily operations of the utilities, the latest computer technology and the professional technology of distribution network planning, a practical GIS (Geographical Information System) based computer decision-making support system with eight sub systems for urban power distribution network planning is introduced. The models and functions of the system are described. This system has b...