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Powders containing iron and other micronutrients are recommended as a strategy to prevent nutritional anaemia and other micronutrient deficiencies in children. We assessed the effects of provision of two micronutrient powder formulations, with or without zinc, to children in Pakistan. We did a cluster randomised trial in urban and rural sites in Sindh, Pakistan. A baseline survey identified 256 clusters, which were randomly assigned (within urban and rural strata, by computer-generated random numbers) to one of three groups: non-supplemented control (group A), micronutrient powder without zinc (group B), or micronutrient powder with 10 mg zinc (group C). Children in the clusters aged 6 months were eligible for inclusion in the study. Powders were to be given daily between 6 and 18 months of age; follow-up was to age 2 years. Micronutrient powder sachets for groups B and C were identical except for colour; investigators and field and supervisory staff were masked to composition of the micronutrient powders until trial completion. Parents knew whether their child was receiving supplementation, but did not know whether the powder contained zinc. Primary outcomes were growth, episodes of diarrhoea, acute lower respiratory tract infection, fever, and incidence of admission to hospital. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00705445. The trial was done between Nov 1, 2008, and Dec 31, 2011. 947 children were enrolled in group A clusters, 910 in group B clusters, and 889 in group C clusters. Micronutrient powder administration was associated with lower risk of iron-deficiency anaemia at 18 months compared with the control group (odds ratio [OR] for micronutrient powder without zinc=0·20, 95% CI 0·11–0·36; OR for micronutrient powder with zinc=0·25, 95% CI 0·14–0·44). Compared with the control group, children in the group receiving micronutrient powder without zinc gained an extra 0·31 cm (95% CI 0·03–0·59) between 6 and 18 months of age and children receiving micronutrient powder with zinc an extra 0·56 cm (0·29–0·84). We recorded strong evidence of an increased proportion of days with diarrhoea (p=0·001) and increased incidence of bloody diarrhoea (p=0·003) between 6 and 18 months in the two micronutrient powder groups, and reported chest indrawing (p=0·03). Incidence of febrile episodes or admission to hospital for diarrhoea, respiratory problems, or febrile episodes did not differ between the three groups. Use of micronutrient powders reduces iron-deficiency anaemia in young children. However, the excess burden of diarrhoea and respiratory morbidities associated with micronutrient powder use and the very small effect on growth recorded suggest that a careful assessment of risks and benefits must be done in populations with malnourished children and high diarrhoea burdens. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Preserving confidentiality of individuals in data disclosure is a prime concern for public and private organizations. The main challenge in the data disclosure problem is to release data such that misuse by intruders is avoided while providing useful information to legitimate users for analysis. We propose an information theoretic architecture for the data disclosure problem. The proposed framework consists of developing a maximum entropy (ME) model based on statistical information of the actual data, testing the adequacy of the ME model, producing disclosure data from the ME model and quantifying the discrepancy between the actual and the disclosure data. The architecture can be used both for univariate and multivariate data disclosure. We illustrate the implementation of our approach using financial data.

Research summary: Shareholder activism has become more widespread, yet the role of corporate governance as antecedent to shareholder activism remains equivocal. We propose a new conceptual model that characterizes the stochastic of observable shareholder activism as a compound product of two latent components representing (1) shareholder activists' propensity to target a company and (2) executives' propensity to settle activists' demands privately. Our model explicitly decouples corporate governance expectations for the two latent components embedded in activism process, and thus allows us to relax assumptions of homogenous shareholder interests and constrained managerial discretion where corporate managers are expected to negotiate privately and settle only value-creating activist demands. Bayesian analysis of zero-inflated Poisson regression reveals that corporate governance relationships with activism vary across shareholder demands and private settlements. Managerial summary: Increasing shareholder activism has generated debates as to whether activism promotes managerial accountability and responsibility or instead encourages managerial short-termism. Our research model allows for heterogeneous interests among a company's shareholders. We theorize and empirically investigate a broader role of corporate governance: governance mechanisms need to ensure that executives are not (1) ignoring activists' value-increasing demands or (2) accommodating activists' value-decreasing demands in a private, opaque manner that disenfranchises other shareholders. Our results indicate that corporate governance implications differ for visible shareholder demands in contrast with private activism. A plausible application of our model is that it provides estimates of the probability of the numbers of shareholder demands to be received by a firm and the probability of privately settling a demand.

BackgroundDespite evidence for the benefits of vitamin A supplementation (VAS) among children 6 to 59 months of age, the feasibility of introduction and potential benefit of VAS in the neonatal period in public health programmes is uncertain.ObjectiveThe primary objective was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of early neonatal VAS (single dose of 50 000 international units within 48–72 hours after birth) delivered through the public sector Lady Health Worker (LHW) programme in rural Pakistan and to document its association with a reduction in mortality at 6 months of age.MethodsA community-based, cluster randomised, placebo-controlled trial was undertaken in two districts of rural Pakistan. LHWs dispensed vitamin A/placebo in identical capsules to newborn infants within 48–72 hours of birth. Follow-up visits were undertaken at 1 week of age and every 4 weeks thereafter until 6 months of age.ResultsOf a total of 15 433 consecutive pregnancies among eligible women of reproductive age, 13 225 pregnancies were registered, 12 218 live births identified and 11 028 newborn infants reached by LHWs. Of these, 5380 (49%) received neonatal VAS and 5648 (51%) placebo. The LHWs successfully delivered the capsules to 79% of newborns within 72 hours of birth with no significant adverse effects. Although the proportion of days observed with symptoms of fever, diarrhoea or rapid breathing were lower with neonatal VAS, these differences were not statistically significant. Mortality rates in the two groups were comparable at 6 months of age.ConclusionsWhile our study demonstrated that neonatal VAS was safe and could be feasibly delivered by LHWs in Pakistan as part of their early postnatal visits, the overall lack of benefit on neonatal and 6-month morbidity and mortality in our population suggests the need for further evaluation of this intervention in populations at risk.Trial registration numberClinicalTrials.gov NCT00674089.

This book primarily deals with corporate restructuring through mergers and acquisitions (M&As). It critically examines all functions that must be performed in completing an M&A transaction. Domestic and cross-border M&A's are very similar in many respects even though differences between them also exist. The book includes discussions of international finance and multinational financial management, the topics that arise in cross-border M&A transactions. Given the increasing importance of China as the second largest economy in the world and Chinese companies' growing merger and acquisition (M&A) activities globally, we devote the last two chapters of the book to China's outward foreign direct investment and cross-border M&A activities. Moreover, the second volume includes the case studies regarding Chinese foreign direct investment both in Greenfield and acquisition forms give additional insights into challenging tasks of due diligence and post-merger cultural integration that foreign investors face. The M&A literature is a fragmented field of inquiry. The book brings together important, practical insights from this vast literature in a short, but cohesive form that has high managerial relevance.

Improving understanding of the pathogen-specific seasonality of enteric infections is critical to informing policy on the timing of preventive measures and to forecast trends in the burden of diarrhoeal disease. Data obtained from active surveillance of cohorts can capture the underlying infection status as transmission occurs in the community. The purpose of this study was to characterise rotavirus seasonality in eight different locations while adjusting for age, calendar time and within-subject clustering of episodes by applying an adapted Serfling model approach to data from a multi-site cohort study. In the Bangladesh and Peru sites, within-subject clustering was high, with more than half of infants who experienced one rotavirus infection going on to experience a second and more than 20% experiencing a third. In the five sites that are in countries that had not introduced the rotavirus vaccine, the model predicted a primary peak in prevalence during the dry season and, in three of these, a secondary peak during the rainy season. The patterns predicted by this approach are broadly congruent with several emerging hypotheses about rotavirus transmission and are consistent for both symptomatic and asymptomatic rotavirus episodes. These findings have practical implications for programme design, but caution should be exercised in deriving inferences about the underlying pathways driving these trends, particularly when extending the approach to other pathogens.

•Polio eradication remains a challenge in Pakistan and poor vaccine response in one of the factor.•The study presents that zinc supplementation has no effect on response to oral polio vaccine in infants.•This study demonstrates that zinc supplementation alone does not impact the immune response to OPV in infants.•Further research assessing multiple forms of intervention and nutritional markers is required. Polio eradication remains a challenge in Pakistan and the causes for the failure to eradicate poliomyelitis are complex. Undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, especially zinc deficiency, are major public health problems in Pakistan and could potentially affect the response to enteric vaccines, including oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). To assess the impact of zinc supplementation among infants on immune response to oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). A double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial was conducted in newborns (aged 0–14 days). Subjects were assigned to either receive 10mg of zinc or placebo supplementation daily for 18 weeks. Both groups received OPV doses at birth, at 6 weeks, 10 weeks and 14 weeks. Data was collected on prior immunization status, diarrheal episodes, breastfeeding practices and anthropometric measurements at recruitment and at 6 and 18 weeks. Blood samples were similarly collected to determine the antibody response to OPV and for micronutrient analysis. Logistic regression was used to determine the relationship between seroconversion and zinc status. Overall, 404 subjects were recruited. At recruitment, seropositivity was already high for poliovirus (PV) serotype 1 (zinc: 91.1%; control: 90.5%) and PV2 (90.0%; 92.7%), with lower estimates for PV3 (70.0%; 64.8%). By week 18, the proportion of subjects with measured zinc levels in the normal range (i.e. ≥60μg/dL) was significantly greater in the intervention group compared to the control group (71.9%; 27.4%; p<0.001). No significant difference in seroconversion was demonstrated between the groups for PV1, PV2, or PV3. There was no effect of zinc supplementation on OPV immunogenicity. These conclusions were confirmed when restricting the analysis to those with measured higher zinc levels.

This paper presents a flexible family which we call the a-mixture of survival functions. This family includes the survival mixture, failure rate mixture, models that are stochastically closer to each of these conventional mixtures, and many other models. The a-mixture is endowed by the stochastic order and uniquely possesses a mathematical property known in economics as the constant elasticity of substitution, which provides an interpretation for a. We study failure rate properties of this family and establish closures under monotone failure rates of the mixture's components. Examples include potential applications for comparing systems.

We use univariate and multivariate singular spectrum analyses to predict the rate of inflation as well as changes in the direction of inflation time series for the USA. We use consumer price indices and realtime chain-weighted gross domestic product price index series in these prediction exercises. Moreover, we compare our out-of-sample, h-step-ahead moving prediction results with other prediction results based on methods such as the activity-based non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment Phillips curve, auto-regressive AR(ρ) model, the dynamic factors model and random-walk models with the last as a naive forecasting method. We use short-run (quarterly) and long-run (1-6 years) time windows for predictions and find that multivariate singular spectrum analysis outperforms all other competing prediction methods. Also, we confirm the results of earlier studies that prediction of the rate of inflation in the USA during the period of the 'Great Moderation' is less challenging compared with the more volatile inflationary period of 1970-1985.