Background: Female Genital Mutilation is still practiced in Ebonyi State in Southeast Nigeria, despite the complications that follows it and government legislation against the practice. Aim: To determine the impact of...Background: Female Genital Mutilation is still practiced in Ebonyi State in Southeast Nigeria, despite the complications that follows it and government legislation against the practice. Aim: To determine the impact of Culture, Beliefs, attitude and Peer Group Influence on the persistence Female Genital Mutilation practice in the State especially in the rural areas. Materials and Methods: Qualitative study that used Focused Group Discussion and In-depth interviews for data collection. Those willing and given consent were recruited into the group discussion according to age, marital status, educational level and their location in the state. In-depth interviews were used with the Stake Holders, Opinion Leaders, Traditional Rulers and the Clergy. Result: A total of 454 participants were recruited from the 13 local government areas of Ebonyi State but only 420 (92.5%) participated. The age ranges of participants were 25 to 35 years for single males and females while the married participants male and female were aged 35 to 70 years. One hundred single females (23.8%) and 94 single males (21.4%) participated while 97 (23.1%) married women and 95 (22.6%) married men participated. Out of the 26 health workers recruited only 22 (5.2%) participated. Four traditional rulers, 4 women leaders, 4 youth leaders and 2 clergy 12 (2.9%) in number had in-depth interviews. All the participants had knowledge of FGM and its practice. Rural health workers are getting more involved. ‘Female Genital Crushing’ is replacing actual cutting. The participants all agreed there is no benefit and the practice should stop. Conclusion: Female Genital Mutilation is secretly practiced and is getting replaced by “Female Genital Crushing” perpetrated by rural health workers as well as mothers, fathers, traditional birth attendants and the peer group playing a major role with low knowledge of the Law against Female genital mutilation.展开更多
Adolescents with inflammatory bowel disease face daily and long-term challenges that may be difficult for teenagers to manage. The developmental and psychosocial changes unique to this age group include becoming more ...Adolescents with inflammatory bowel disease face daily and long-term challenges that may be difficult for teenagers to manage. The developmental and psychosocial changes unique to this age group include becoming more autonomous and being more vulnerable to peer influence. These changes may lead to problems in medical management such as poor medication adherence and risky behavior. Being aware of these issues will help the medical team provide anticipatory guidance to address these concerns.展开更多
Focused on the seed region selection and homogeneity criterion in Seeded Region Growing (SRG), an unsupervised seed region selection and a polynomial fitting homogeneity criterion for SRG are proposed in this paper. F...Focused on the seed region selection and homogeneity criterion in Seeded Region Growing (SRG), an unsupervised seed region selection and a polynomial fitting homogeneity criterion for SRG are proposed in this paper. First of all, making use of Peer Group Filtering (PGF) techniques, an unsupervised seed region selection algorithm is presented to construct a seed region. Then based on the constructed seed region a polynomial fitting homogeneity criterion is applied to solve the concrete problem of doorplate segmentation appearing in the robot navigation along a corridor. At last, experiments are performed and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.展开更多
The key challenge of dynamic peer communication is how to realize secure and efficient group key manage-ment.A two rounds key agreement protocol for dynamic peer group(DPG)is proposed in this paper.The protocol,which ...The key challenge of dynamic peer communication is how to realize secure and efficient group key manage-ment.A two rounds key agreement protocol for dynamic peer group(DPG)is proposed in this paper.The protocol,which was obtained by combining the ElGamal encryption scheme with the ElGamal signature scheme,is efficient and simple.The protocol is proven secure against passive attack by using indistinguishable method.Moreover,both perfect forward secrecy(PFS)and key independence(KI)were achieved.Because the protocol is based on the broadcast channel,it is also suitable for key agreement in wireless communications,especially in ad-hoc networks.展开更多
文摘Background: Female Genital Mutilation is still practiced in Ebonyi State in Southeast Nigeria, despite the complications that follows it and government legislation against the practice. Aim: To determine the impact of Culture, Beliefs, attitude and Peer Group Influence on the persistence Female Genital Mutilation practice in the State especially in the rural areas. Materials and Methods: Qualitative study that used Focused Group Discussion and In-depth interviews for data collection. Those willing and given consent were recruited into the group discussion according to age, marital status, educational level and their location in the state. In-depth interviews were used with the Stake Holders, Opinion Leaders, Traditional Rulers and the Clergy. Result: A total of 454 participants were recruited from the 13 local government areas of Ebonyi State but only 420 (92.5%) participated. The age ranges of participants were 25 to 35 years for single males and females while the married participants male and female were aged 35 to 70 years. One hundred single females (23.8%) and 94 single males (21.4%) participated while 97 (23.1%) married women and 95 (22.6%) married men participated. Out of the 26 health workers recruited only 22 (5.2%) participated. Four traditional rulers, 4 women leaders, 4 youth leaders and 2 clergy 12 (2.9%) in number had in-depth interviews. All the participants had knowledge of FGM and its practice. Rural health workers are getting more involved. ‘Female Genital Crushing’ is replacing actual cutting. The participants all agreed there is no benefit and the practice should stop. Conclusion: Female Genital Mutilation is secretly practiced and is getting replaced by “Female Genital Crushing” perpetrated by rural health workers as well as mothers, fathers, traditional birth attendants and the peer group playing a major role with low knowledge of the Law against Female genital mutilation.
文摘Adolescents with inflammatory bowel disease face daily and long-term challenges that may be difficult for teenagers to manage. The developmental and psychosocial changes unique to this age group include becoming more autonomous and being more vulnerable to peer influence. These changes may lead to problems in medical management such as poor medication adherence and risky behavior. Being aware of these issues will help the medical team provide anticipatory guidance to address these concerns.
基金Supported by the National Hi-Tech R&D Program of China (No.2002AA423160)the Na-tional Natural Science Foundation of China (No.60205004)the Henan Natural Science Foundation (No.0411013700).
文摘Focused on the seed region selection and homogeneity criterion in Seeded Region Growing (SRG), an unsupervised seed region selection and a polynomial fitting homogeneity criterion for SRG are proposed in this paper. First of all, making use of Peer Group Filtering (PGF) techniques, an unsupervised seed region selection algorithm is presented to construct a seed region. Then based on the constructed seed region a polynomial fitting homogeneity criterion is applied to solve the concrete problem of doorplate segmentation appearing in the robot navigation along a corridor. At last, experiments are performed and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.90304009).
文摘The key challenge of dynamic peer communication is how to realize secure and efficient group key manage-ment.A two rounds key agreement protocol for dynamic peer group(DPG)is proposed in this paper.The protocol,which was obtained by combining the ElGamal encryption scheme with the ElGamal signature scheme,is efficient and simple.The protocol is proven secure against passive attack by using indistinguishable method.Moreover,both perfect forward secrecy(PFS)and key independence(KI)were achieved.Because the protocol is based on the broadcast channel,it is also suitable for key agreement in wireless communications,especially in ad-hoc networks.
