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HIV estimation using data from the demographic and health surveys (DHS) is limited by the presence of non‐response and test refusals. Conventional adjustments such as imputation require the data to be missing at random. Methods that use instrumental variables allow the possibility that prevalence is different between the respondents and non‐respondents, but their performance depends critically on the validity of the instrument. Using Manski's partial identification approach, we form instrumental variable bounds for HIV prevalence from a pool of candidate instruments. Our method does not require all candidate instruments to be valid. We use a simulation study to evaluate and compare our method against its competitors. We illustrate the proposed method using DHS data from Zambia, Malawi and Kenya. Our simulations show that imputation leads to seriously biased results even under mild violations of non‐random missingness. Using worst case identification bounds that do not make assumptions about the non‐response mechanism is robust but not informative. By taking the union of instrumental variable bounds balances informativeness of the bounds and robustness to inclusion of some invalid instruments. Non‐response and refusals are ubiquitous in population based HIV data such as those collected under the DHS. Partial identification bounds provide a robust solution to HIV prevalence estimation without strong assumptions. Union bounds are significantly more informative than the worst case bounds without sacrificing credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-response is a commonly encountered problem in many population-based surveys. Broadly speaking, non-response can be due to refusal or failure to contact the sample units. Although both types of non-response may lead to bias, there is much evidence to indicate that it is much easier to reduce the proportion of non-contacts than to do the same with refusals. In this article, we use data collected from a nationally representative survey under the Demographic and Health Surveys program to study non-response due to refusals to HIV testing in Malawi. We review existing estimation methods and propose novel approaches to the estimation of HIV prevalence that adjust for refusal behaviour. We then explain the data requirement and practical implications of the conventional and proposed approaches. Finally, we provide some general recommendations for handling non-response due to refusals and we highlight the challenges in working with Demographic and Health Surveys and explore different approaches to statistical estimation in the presence of refusals. Our results show that variation in the estimated HIV prevalence across different estimators is due largely to those who already know their HIV test results. In the case of Malawi, variations in the prevalence estimates due to refusals for women are larger than those for men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Access to electricity has the potential to improve the nutritional status of children by a variety of pathways such as increased wealth, reduced fertility through the change in time use, spread of information through technology such as TV, and improved health care services. Yet, the relationship between electrification and children’s nutritional status is rarely explored in the literature. We attempt to fill this lacuna by offering microeconometric evidence from rural Bangladesh, where a rapid expansion of electrification and significant improvement in children’s nutritional status were observed in the past two decades. We find that access to electricity has a positive impact on the nutritional status of children under five as measured by height-for-age Z -score (HAZ) by around 0.1–0.2 points using five rounds of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey from 2000 to 2014. Our results also appear to indicate that the quality of electricity may influence the size of this positive impact. While our analysis of causal pathways is limited by the data availability, it suggests that the positive impact of electrification partially comes from increased wealth. For some years, the positive impact can also be attributed to reduced fertility and information exposure through TV viewing. On the contrary, we find little evidence that the impact is attributable to the improvement of local health facilities. Our findings underscore the importance of evaluating infrastructure programs such as rural electrification from a broad perspective as their impacts may go well beyond the economic benefits considered in a typical cost–benefit analysis. This in turn may encourage governments to invest more in basic infrastructure, which is still severely lacking in Bangladesh and many other countries in the rest of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In this paper, we propose a new method of poverty decomposition. Our method remedies the shortcomings of existing methods and has some desirable properties such as time-reversion consistency and subperiod additivity. Our decomposition integrates the existing methods of growth-redistribution decomposition and sector-based decomposition, because it allows us to decompose the change in poverty into growth and redistribution components for each group (e.g., regions or sectors) in the economy. Our decomposition works well in cases where only partial data are available for some periods. It is also flexible and can be extended to have the following six components: population shift, within-region redistribution, between-region redistribution, nominal growth, inflation, and methodological change components. The empirical application of the six-way decomposition to the Philippines for the period 1985–2009 shows that important policies for poverty reduction may differ across regions. For example, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao would need growth-enhancing policies, whereas Eastern Visayas would need policies to improve the income distribution. Our decomposition method has a wide applicability and may complement the poverty profile approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We develop a parsimonious model of myopia with an infinitesimal period of commitment as an extension to a standard dynamic optimization in a continuous-time environment. We clearly distinguish the processes of planning future controls and choosing the current control, which makes the model both analytically and numerically convenient. In its application to a simple non-renewable resource extraction problem, we show that whether the terminal time is free or fixed determines the appropriateness of the approximation to myopic agents by constant discounting. We also show that the expiry of extraction permits may be useful in the presence of myopia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We simulate the impact of food inflation between June 2006 and June 2008 on poverty across different areas and between agricultural and non-agricultural households. We explicitly treat the spatial heterogeneity in food inflation and the differences in consumption and production patterns across households by merging household expenditure survey and price datasets at the provincial level or lower. Although some of the poor agricultural households may have escaped poverty, the poorest of the poor, whether they are in an agricultural household or not, are severely and adversely affected by the food inflation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: We compare commune-level poverty rankings in Cambodia based on three different methods: small-area estimation, principal component analysis using aggregate data, and interviews with local leaders. While they provide reasonably consistent rankings, the choice of the ranking method matters. In order to assess the potential losses from moving away from census-based poverty mapping, we used the concentration curve. Our calculation shows that about three-quarters of the potential gains from geographic targeting may be lost by using aggregate data. The usefulness of aggregate data in general would depend on the cost of data collection. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: When current decisions affect welfare in the far-distant future, as with climate change, the use of a declining pure rate of time preference (PRTP) provides potentially important modeling flexibility. The difficulty of analyzing models with non-constant PRTP limits their application. We describe and provide software (available online) to implement an algorithm to numerically obtain a Markov perfect equilibrium for an optimal control problem with non-constant PRTP. We apply this software to a simplified version of the numerical climate change model used in the Stern Review. For our calibration, the policy recommendations are less sensitive to the PRTP than widely believed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We explore the socioeconomic changes following implementation of an irrigation system in the Southeast Anatolia region of Turkey, and examines whether the improvement originally envisioned was achieved. We surveyed seven irrigated and eight non-irrigated villages in Sanliurfa Province, collecting several indicators at the household level, including crop patterns, household living standards, and access to water. Local perception of the irrigation project and decisions regarding water use also are examined. The irrigation projects have improved knowledge sharing of irrigation technology and helped to introduce the sharing of agricultural machinery. The projects also seem to have shifted the tribal hierarchy toward peer relationships. While positive changes are observed in irrigated villages, there remain socioeconomic problems that need to be addressed, such as water user association management and salinization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study aimed to identify factors associated with strut-adjusted volume implant (SAVI) displacement in accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using a SAVI device. We retrospectively analyzed computed tomography scans taken at the time of treatment planning and immediately before treatment in 61 patients (median age; 55 years, range; 40–85) treated with SAVI and determined the amount of SAVI displacement that occurred between the time from planning to the treatment. The displacement was calculated for the CT axis and SAVI axis, which is related to the SAVI structure. To investigate the cause of the displacement, multivariate analysis was performed on the calculated standard deviation and the insertion angle of SAVI with respect to the sternum in each cross-section, breast density, amount of air around the SAVI, and SAVI length inside the patient to obtain the β coefficient (p -value). On the CT coordinate system, positive correlations were observed between the SAVI insertion angle and air volume in the lateral (β coefficient:0.255–0.483) and rotational directions (β coefficient:0.341). On the SAVI coordinate system, positive correlations were observed between the SAVI insertion angle and air volume in all lateral (β coefficient:0.270–0.354) and rotational directions (β coefficient:0.294). A negative correlation was observed between the SAVI length inside the patient and the rotational direction (β coefficient: −0.262). SAVI insertion angle, the amount of the air outside SAVI and SAVI insertion length are factors which affect the displacement of the applicator. From the results, the applicator displacement and rotation must be < 3 mm and 10o in order to meet all the dose criteria. Thus, we should be aware of these factors during insertion of the device to avoid the problem in treatment delivery for the APBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Gender gap study in intrahousehold allocation of educational resources in Bangladesh. • Three-part model built for analyzing hou seholds with secondary school age children. • Profemale bias found in enrollment from double-difference and three-part models. • Promale bias found in total education expenditure and core share among enrollees. • Female Stipend Programs partially explain this contradirectional bias. Gender parity in education—an important global development goal—has been primarily measured through school enrollment, and the gender parity in education quality has received limited attention until recently. We address this issue by highlighting the intrahousehold allocation of education expenditure. We extend the hurdle model into a three-part model to enable decomposition of households' education decisions into enrollment, total education expenditure, and share of the total education expenditure on the core component, or items relating to the quality of education such as private tutoring. We apply this model to four rounds of nationally representative household surveys from Bangladesh, a country that offers a unique setting in South Asia with the Female Stipend Programs (FSPs), a nationwide gender-targeted conditional cash transfer program. We demonstrate a strong profemale bias in the enrollment decision but contrasting promale bias in the other two decisions, conditional on enrollment. We argue that this contradirectional gender gap is unique to Bangladesh and that it can be explained partly by the FSPs. Both the three-part model and a separate analysis of double-difference model show that the FSPs promoted girls' secondary school enrollment. However, the FSPs did not narrow the gender gap in the intrahousehold allocation of educational resources. Consistently, we find a gender gap in on-time completion of secondary school. Our findings collectively highlight the complex interplay of intrahousehold decisions and underscore the importance of minding the gender gap in the quality of education and implementing complementary policies to address it in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the emergence of monoclonal antibodies, the prognosis of patients with multiple myeloma (MM) with extramedullary disease remains poor. The present report describes a rare case of daratumumab-refractory MM that was successfully treated with elotuzumab, pomalidomide and dexamethasone. A 66-year-old male patient diagnosed with MM was treated with bortezomib, lenalidomide and dexamethasone, followed by high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation. Thereafter, the patient was treated with lenalidomide and dexamethasone as maintenance therapy. This was changed to daratumumab, bortezomib and dexamethasone when new paraskeletal lesions were identified, resulting in marked tumor shrinkage. After 15 months, an increase in serum monoclonal protein levels, development of a skeletal lesion in the right second rib and extramedullary disease of the right thoracic mediastinal lymph nodes were noted. Treatment with elotuzumab, pomalidomide and dexamethasone (EPd) resulted in expeditious symptomatic improvement and regression of the lesions. Notably, during daratumumab, bortezomib and dexamethasone treatment, lymphocyte counts gradually increased to a level at which elotuzumab was sufficiently effective. EPd might be a promising strategy for the treatment of patients with relapsed extramedullary MM while on daratumumab treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Carbonic anhydrase (CA) IX catalyzes the hydration of carbon dioxide into carbonic acid and participates in a variety of physiological and biological processes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic significance of CA IX expression in patients with lung adenocarcinoma. Standard immunohistochemical techniques were used to study CA IX expression in 134 patients who underwent curative resection for adenocarcinoma of the lung at our hospital between January 1995 and December 1996. We evaluated the correlations between CA IX expression levels on cancer cells and clinicopathological factors. CA IX expression was not observed in normal lung tissue or specimens from non-invasive adenocarcinomas. CA IX immunostaining was detected in 33 (24.6%) invasive adenocarcinoma cases. Poor differentiated histological phenotype (p =0.0015), pathological stage (p =0.0400), vascular invasion (p =0.0009) and lymphatic permeation (p =0.0050) were significantly related to CA IX expression. On univariate analysis, CA IX positive cases showed significantly shorter overall survival (p =0.0083) and disease-free survival (p =0.0122). In particular, the overall and disease-free survivals in stages I+II were significantly shorter in the CA IX positive than in the CA IX negative cases (p =0.0269 and 0.0011, respectively). Our results suggest that CA IX expression is strongly associated with tumor progression and indicates a poor prognosis for patients with stages I+II lung adenocarcinoma. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Energy transfer process in soda-lime glasses co-doped with Gd3+ and Eu3+, where a ground state of Gd3+, 8S7/2, was selectively excited to a 6IJ state by a 275-nm pulsed laser irradiation, was studied based on a time-resolved luminescence spectroscopy. The luminescence decay rate at 313nm (Gd3+: 6P7/2 → 8S7/2) was observed to be (1.5±0.2)×102 s−1 (τ =6.6±0.6 ms) without Eu3+ and to increase monotonously with increasing co-doped Eu3+ concentration, giving an apparent quenching rate constant of (5.0± 0.5)×10−18 ion−1 cm3 s−1 (≈(1.9±0.2)×103 mol%−1 s−1) for a 6P7/2 state of Gd3+ ion with Eu3+. The relaxation rate of a 6IJ state to a luminescent state 6P7/2 in Gd3+ ion was estimated to be (1.8±0.2)×106 s−1 from the rise rate at 313-nm luminescence (τ rise ≈ 0.56μs), which was observed to be almost independent of the Eu3+ concentration. The luminescence intensity from Eu3+ at 591nm and 613nm monotonously increased with increasing Eu3+ concentration up to 0.33-mol% Eu3+, while it started decreasing at concentration of Eu3+ higher than 0.33-mol%, which was interpreted in terms of the resonant energy transfer to nearby Eu3+ resulting in the excitation to the Eu3+–O− charge transfer states. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]