An unruly mélange? Coordinating external resources to the health sector: a review.

The past two decades have witnessed an upsurge in the number of external agencies involved in the health sectors of developing countries. Concomitantly, there has been an increase in the volume of resources transferred through multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental organizations to these health systems. Notwithstanding the beneficial impact of increased resources, recipients and donors are increasingly concerned about the effects of this trend.

Aid coordination for health sector reform: a conceptual framework for analysis and assessment.

Recent widespread interest in health sector policy and institutional reform in lower income countries has coincided with heightened concern for aid coordination. Because the health budgets of many low income countries are highly aid dependent, donors are strongly placed to make aid conditional on health care reforms. However, given the growing number and heterogeneity of multilateral, bilateral and international non-governmental donors operating in many of these countries, there is concern that if external efforts are not coordinated, the aims of health care reform--namely improving efficiency, effectiveness and equity--will not be met.

Avoiding hologram bending in photorefractive crystals.

Dynamic coupled-wave theory predicts the bending of recorded hologram phase planes in most photorefractive crystals. Bent holograms occur in LiNbO(3) and other photovoltaic crystals that are particularly interesting as holographic storage media and result in a reduced overall diffraction eff iciency. We show that hologram bending in LiNbO(3) can be avoided or at least sensibly reduced by use of an actively stabilized recording technique.

Pyroelectrically induced photorefractive effect in Sr(0.61) Ba(0.39)Nb(2)O(6):Ce.

Photorefractive properties of a cerium-doped strontium barium niobate single crystal (Sr(0.61)Ba(0.39)Nb(2)O(6)) are investigated with Q-switched light pulses (wavelength 532 nm).