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The provision of and access to healthcare for pregnant women is a complicated labyrinth of social and health‐related issues. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a new approach by the Save the Mothers organization to stimulate changes leading to safer and healthier pregnancies for Ugandan women using a Master of Public Health Leadership (MPHL) as the mechanism for education, advocacy, and network development.

Save the Mothers developed and supports a modular, post‐graduate, multi‐disciplinary MPHL. This training is designed to develop public health leaders who create transformative local projects and networks of professionals advocating for safe motherhood and consequent decreased child mortality.

Students and graduates have begun to change the conditions in Uganda for women and children by promoting safe motherhood practices and policies. Examples include a journalist, a politician, a social worker, and a school principal who have brought the issues into their spheres of influence and practice. Measurement of the impact of this approach is ongoing.

This program provides a locally based, culturally appropriate approach to change, which could be adapted to a variety of other locales and development issues. This program permits practicing professionals to remain employed while undertaking advanced training, establishes the implementation of local projects, and links a graduate university program with diverse community leaders.

This unique approach within Africa may be a model for the development of multidisciplinary, education‐based initiatives to change conditions in developing countries using existing expertise and stimulating effective advancement through safe motherhood networks.

An image contrast enhancement is one of the most important low‐level image pre‐processing tasks required by the vision‐based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). This paper seeks to address this important issue keeping the real time constraints in focus, which is especially vital for the ADAS.

The approach is based on a paradigm of nonlinear‐coupled oscillators in image processing. Each layer of the colored images is treated as an independent grayscale image and is processed separately by the paradigm. The pixels with the lowest and the highest gray levels are chosen and their difference is enhanced to span all the gray levels in an image over the entire gray level range, i.e. [0 1]. This operation enhances the contrast in each layer and the enhanced layers are finally combined to produce a color image of a much improved quality.

The approach performs robust contrast enhancement as compared to other approaches available in the relevant literature. Generally, other approaches do need a new setting of parameters for every new image to perform its task, i.e. contrast enhancement. These approaches are not useful for real‐time applications such as ADAS. Whereas, the proposed approach presented in this paper performs contrast enhancement for different images under the same setting of parameters, hence giving rise to the robustness in the system. The unique setting of parameters is derived through a bifurcation analysis explained in the paper.

The proposed approach is novel in different aspects. First, the proposed paradigm comprises of coupled differential equations, and therefore, offers a continuous model as opposed to other approaches in the relevant literature. This continuity in the model is an inherent feature of the proposed approach, which could be useful in realizing real‐time image processing with an analog implemented circuit of the approach. Furthermore, a novel framework combining coupled oscillatory paradigm and cellular neural network is also possible to achieve ultra‐fast solution in image contrast enhancement.

This chapter extends the work of Baltagi, Bresson, Chaturvedi, and Lacroix (2018) to the popular dynamic panel data model. The authors investigate the robustness of Bayesian panel data models to possible misspecification of the prior distribution. The proposed robust Bayesian approach departs from the standard Bayesian framework in two ways. First, the authors consider the ε-contamination class of prior distributions for the model parameters as well as for the individual effects. Second, both the base elicited priors and the ε-contamination priors use Zellner’s (1986) g-priors for the variance–covariance matrices. The authors propose a general “toolbox” for a wide range of specifications which includes the dynamic panel model with random effects, with cross-correlated effects à la Chamberlain, for the Hausman–Taylor world and for dynamic panel data models with homogeneous/heterogeneous slopes and cross-sectional dependence. Using a Monte Carlo simulation study, the authors compare the finite sample properties of the proposed estimator to those of standard classical estimators. The chapter contributes to the dynamic panel data literature by proposing a general robust Bayesian framework which encompasses the conventional frequentist specifications and their associated estimation methods as special cases.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the justifying arguments of various Birmingham organisations between 1870 and 1914 in classifying and treating the unemployed. Using a capability approach, the paper will examine how employment policies in Birmingham during this period promoted or limited capabilities of work, life and voice. Finally, implications for labour market policies today will be discussed.

The theoretical framework for this paper will draw on the capability approach to a person's well‐being, developed by Amartya Sen and on theoretical and empirical developments of the capability approach by other authors such as Bonvin and Salais. This paper is based on historical archival research and analysis.

Birmingham was an exemplar of municipal social reform in late nineteenth century England, with the development of a range of public services such as education, electricity and public transport. However, the city's vision of civic reform was closely connected to the Liberal market logic of individual responsibility, and moral judgements of the unemployed served to multiply the categories and punitive treatments of the “undeserving”, separating the valid from the invalid citizen.

This case study of municipal employment policies in Birmingham at the turn of the twentieth century demonstrates the implications of moral judgements, classifications and treatments of the unemployed for people's capabilities in work and life, drawing connections to discourses of responsibility and citizenship today.

This study aims to explore how status differences relate to strained working relationships with co-workers and clients. Two statuses, gender and occupation, are examined using data from veterinarians and animal health technologists (AHTs). Competing perspectives regarding exposure to stressful relationships and access and effectiveness of work-related resources are considered.

An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design is used that combines quantitative survey data with open-ended qualitative data. The survey data are used to examine how interpersonal strain and access to work-related resources vary by status. The qualitative data are used to illustrate how strain is experienced by these workers and aids in interpreting the quantitative findings.

Status is linked to interpersonal client strain and access to resources. Challenging work is widely available to all three groups, but is more beneficial in reducing higher status veterinarians’ client strain. Autonomy is a scarce resource for the lowest status group (female AHTs), yet appears effective in reducing co-worker strain for everyone. Unexpectedly, work overload and market concerns appear to aggravate work-related strain and greater numbers of the lowest status group exacerbates interpersonal tensions with clients.

This paper contributes by examining stressful interactions experienced by two occupations who work side-by-side in the same employment settings, but who vary significantly by gender representation and occupational status. The authors argue that in addition to gender and occupational status, the organizational health of employing clinics and the feminization of veterinary practice may offer insights into how status differences are related to interpersonal conflict experienced in these work places.

The sensitivity of Canadian chartered banks to exchange rate risk is analyzed over the period 1988‐1995 through estimating the three‐factor asset pricing model (market, interest rate, and exchange rate). Results indicate that banks’ stock returns are sensitive to exchange rate risk and, mainly, to the US dollar relative to the Canadian dollar exchange rate. The sensitivity is, however, unstable over time. Moreover, there is an asymmetric response to exchange rate risk. Investors react more to a re‐evaluation of their portfolio after losses than to an appreciation after successive gains.

The archives of François Perroux deposited at IMEC bear witness to the fact that he has devoted, beyond his scientific production, great energy to the most material aspects of research: setting up and maintaining networks to publicize his work and that of other economists, either directly or through the institutes and the journals he headed; organize seminars and symposiums; take care of relations with colleagues and the press; create collections and journals; and so on.

In this chapter, we concentrate our attention on the archives relating to the management of the institutes, those attesting to the lines and themes of the producer’s research, and those concerning his important correspondence.

Thanks to the archives deposited at IMEC, it is possible to follow the development of the theoretical work of François Perroux by contextualizing it. They also show the itinerary of a Christian intellectual, whose attachment to social Catholicism constitutes a guiding thread and is reflected in all his activities. Finally, the archives illuminate his substantial role in the institutionalization of research in economics in the France of the twentieth century.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the aspects of social work for children, primarily in England.

It is based on reflections on research undertaken by the author prior to 1995 and after 2015.

The paper explores the interaction between people – effective leaders and practitioners – and systems.

It is an opinion piece, and does not present findings from a single study.

It urges systems that do not restrict the capability of practitioners.

The value of social work services at times of significant social disadvantage demands strong public policy attention.

The study draws on several research and case studies in over 20 English local authorities

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether official inquiries are an effective method for holding the medical profession to account for failings in the quality and safety of care.

Through a review of the theoretical literature on professions and documentary analysis of key public inquiry documents and reports in the UK National Health Service (NHS) the authors examine how the misconduct of doctors can be understood using the metaphor of professional wrongdoing as a product of bad apples, bad barrels or bad cellars.

The wrongdoing literature tends to present an uncritical assumption of increasing sophistication in analysis, as the focus moves from bad apples (individuals) to bad barrels (organisations) and more latterly to bad cellars (the wider system). This evolution in thinking about wrongdoing is also visible in public inquiries, as analysis and recommendations increasingly tend to emphasise cultural and systematic issues. Yet, while organisational and systemic factors are undoubtedly important, there is a need to keep in sight the role of individuals, for two key reasons. First, there is growing evidence that a small number of doctors may be disproportionately responsible for large numbers of complaints and concerns. Second, there is a risk that the role of individual professionals in drawing attention to wrongdoing is being neglected.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first theoretical and empirical study specifically exploring the role of NHS inquiries in holding the medical profession to account for failings in professional practice.