Evaluating Community Change Programs

Author(s):  
Brett Theodos ◽  
Joseph Firschein
Keyword(s):  
2002 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-150
Author(s):  
Iain Walker
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (03) ◽  
pp. 4897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Padma Kumari J.* ◽  
Sheila Doris T. ◽  
Usha Krishnan K.

Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease, it occurs worldwide but is most common in tropical and subtropical countries. The magnitude of the problem varies from community to community. The serovars which cause the disease in a community change with adaptation to a new maintenance host and is epidemiologically important. Aims and Objectives: To determine the seroprevalence of leptospirosis in Chennai city. To identify the prevalent serovar in Chennai causing leptospirosis by using gold standard test Microscopic Agglutination Test (MAT). Methods: 1209 patients from Chennai, with fever of one-week duration and with signs and symptoms of Leptospirosis were the study population and were screened for Leptospirosis by Macroscopic Slide Agglutination Test (MSAT). The positive samples by MSAT were tested for the prevalent serovar and for confirmation by MAT and the results were analyzed statistically. Result: The seroprevalence of Leptospirosis is 17.8%. The prevalent serovar circulating in Chennai is L. grippotyphosa. Conclusion: Laboratory diagnosis is essential to confirm the current illness, and for epidemiological and public health reasons, namely to determine which serovar caused the infection, the likely source of infection and the potential reservoir and its location. This helps in control strategies.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 487
Author(s):  
Lillian Collins ◽  
Grant D. Paton ◽  
Sara A. Gagné

The urbanization of landscapes filters bird communities to favor particular species traits, driven in part by the changes that homeowners make to the amount and quality of habitat in yards. We suggest that an ultimate driver of these proximate mechanisms underlying bird community change with respect to urbanization is the likeability of species traits by urban residents. We hypothesize that bird species likeability, modulated by species traits, influences the degree to which homeowners alter the availability and quality of habitat on their properties and thereby affects species population sizes in urbanized landscapes. We refer to this new hypothesis as the Likeable, therefore Abundant Hypothesis. The Likeable, therefore Abundant Hypothesis predicts that (1) bird species likeability varies with species morphological and behavioral traits, (2) homeowners use trait-based likeability as a motivator to modify habitat availability and quality on their properties, and (3) residential habitat availability and quality influences species populations at landscape scales. We tested the first prediction of the Likeable, therefore Abundant Hypothesis using a survey of 298 undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who were asked to rank their preferences for 85 forest generalist and edge/open country songbird species grouped according to 10 morphological and behavioral traits. Survey respondents preferred very small, primarily blue or black species that are insectivorous, aerial or bark foragers, residents, and culturally unimportant. On the other hand, respondents disliked large or very large, primarily yellow or orange species that forage on the ground and/or forage by flycatching, are migratory, and are culturally important. If the Likeable, therefore Abundant Hypothesis is true, natural resource managers and planners could capitalize on the high likeability of species that are nevertheless negatively affected by urbanization to convince homeowners and residents to actively manage their properties for species conservation.


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