At first sight, knowledge management for poverty-stricken countries appears to be a contradiction in terms. It sounds "high-tech" and not very applicable for "third world" countries that may not possess the necessary infrastructure. However, the aim of the paper is to show that this is not only false but that Knowledge Management (KM) has a big role to play. We begin by giving an introduction t...

Because of its ability to produce two clinically distinct disease entities (chickenpox and shingles), varicella zoster virus (VZV) is an unusual etiologic agent. Although in the past viral exanthems were mostly only of academic interest to the practitioner, the development of antiviral agents and the newly approved varicella (OKA) vaccine have increased the clinical significance. Also, with the...

Aged patients with dementia if not stricken by an acute disease sooner or later approach a terminal phase that is distinguished by a failure of spoon feeding. This condition induces great anxiety in the workers who care for these patients. The interaction between patient and care-worker during spoon-feeding failure is described by the psychological model of double-binding. Two serious consequen...

While health officials were understandably reluctant to implicate any specific food, others immediately observed that in the previous two years, approximately 2,500 North Americans had been stricken with cyclospora, almost exclusively linked to the consumption of fresh raspberries from Guatemala, and at almost the exact same time of year (Robertson, 1998). But something was different this year....

This paper describes efforts of NLP researchers to create a system to aid the relief efforts during the 2011 East Japan Earthquake. Specifically, we created a system to mine information regarding the safety of people in the disaster-stricken area from Twitter, a massive yet highly unorganized information source. We describe the large scale collaborative effort to rapidly create robust and effec...

As breast cancer is diagnosed in over a million patients a year it is a significant oncological issue. Treatment paradigms have shifted to emphasize breast preservation protocols. However, due to a lack of equipment and facilities this option is only rarely offered to poverty stricken patients and those in the developing world. Photodynamic therapy may play a role in allowing for greater breast...

The article deals with the classification of alternative water resources in terms of potential risks which is the prerequisite for incorporating these water resources to the emergency plans. The classification is based on the quantification of risks resulting from possible damage, disruption or total destruction of water resource caused by natural and anthropogenic hazards, assessment of water ...

The scale of the damage wrought on the population of Haiti by the recent earthquakes has resulted in almost unprecedented efforts to render aid to a disaster-stricken populace. After the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes, it is essential that aid work continues so that the infrastructure can be rebuilt, displaced people re-housed, food supplies unhindered and medical care optimised. This a...

Imagine the scene; the camera pans from a Petri dish of wriggling larvae to a sexy blonde scientist who is peering at the animals through a microscope. She looks up, terror-stricken, and says into the camera ‘My God, they’re evolving!’ While TV and movie scenes like this make most biologists chuckle, Australian conservation biologists who are working to contain an invasion of exotic cane toads ...

The recent global threat of a severe pandemic influenza outbreak has suggested that extracorporeal life support will begin to play an evolving role in the care of critically ill influenza stricken patients. The highly communicable attributes of influenza could result in widespread infection and an associated increased need for advanced life support. Supply and demand equilibrium may be abruptly...