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Emissions of water-soluble polymers from household products to the environment:a prioritization study
Get PDFWater-soluble polymers (WSPs) are widely used in household products, including cleaning and personal care products. However, unlike insoluble plastic polymers, the environmental risks of WSPs are poorly understood. This study was performed to identify polymers in household use and characterize their emissions to the environment and key data gaps for prioritization. An inventory of polymers was developed and these were broadly grouped based on structure. Information from patents was combined with literature data to estimate down-the-drain emissions for each polymer. For the polymers with the highest emissions, predicted environmental concentrations for surface water and soil were estimated. A total of 339 individual polymers were identified and categorized into 26 groups. The polymers with the highest down-the-drain emissions were sodium laureth sulfate (1.6-3.4 g capita-1 day-1), styrene/acrylates copolymer (0.1-0.8 g capita-1 day-1), and monoethanolamine-laureth sulfate (0.4-0.8 g capita-1 day-1). An analysis of available fate and ecotoxicity data for 30 key high-emission polymers indicated that several are lacking in data. In particular, no data were found for styrene/acrylates copolymer and copolymer of polyethylene glycol/vinyl acetate, and the environmental fate of polyquaterniums and polyol ethoxylate esters has been understudied, particularly in light of their hazard potential. However, a lack of reporting of key polymer properties hinders analysis. We recommend increased transparency in reporting of polymer identities moving forward as well as experimental work determining fate, removal, and hazard of the prioritized high-emission polymers that are lacking in data
Play and passion: framing children’s rich moments of responding and making meaning
No full textPurpose
This short article takes the play and passion of children’s literacy as its focal point. Rather than orienting reading and writing around what should be taught or how children should respond and understand written text, in this short reflective essay we aim to explore the play and passion inherent in children’s literacy practices. We do not aim to precisely conceptualise or delineate the nature of play or passion but, instead, to trace the path of these ideas through seminal research studies within the field of New Literacy Studies as well as drawing on the authors’ fieldwork.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper begins with an exploration of foundational research in the field of new literacy studies, drawing attention to the abundant presence of children’s play and passion. Then, it visits two moments of play and passion from the authors’ fieldwork that suggest ways of thinking anew about children’s literacy practices beyond responding to text. The first, by Kenneth Pettersen, considers childhood collecting across home/pre-school settings in Norway; the second, by Stefan Kucharczyk, looks at children’s curatorship in Minecraft at an afterschool videogame club in the UK. This paper concludes with a proposed reimagining of literacy education, outlining implications for researchers, policymakers and practitioners.
Findings
These observed moments of collecting and gaming are analysed in the context of children’s play and passion. In both cases, we highlight how observing children following their passions and interests can challenge how we, as adult researchers, view their play and how we think about literacy. Rather than being in opposition to one another, our analysis of children’s collecting and worldbuilding account for the felt experience in children’s literacy practices.
Originality/value
Moving inside of two separate research studies, we give a bird’s eye view of what can be gained by observing and drawing out play and passion while children respond and make meaning through varied texts and objects in two different contexts. The article therefore is an invitation to think otherwise about reading and writing by embracing play and passion as children’s pathway into rich literacy moments
Incidence and survival of European adolescents and young adults diagnosed with sarcomas: EUROCARE-6 results
Get PDFBackground
Epidemiological data for sarcoma in adolescents and young adults (AYAs) and across age groups are limited. We aim to: 1) update sarcoma incidence, survival, and changes over time in European AYAs; 2) provide an updated comparison of sarcoma survival in AYAs versus children and mature adults.
Methods
We calculated crude incidence rates (IR) per 100,000 European population per year from 2006 to 2013. Using the period approach, we calculated 5-year relative survival (RS) for the follow-up period 2010–2014. We estimated changes in incidence and survival for bone sarcoma (BS) and soft tissue sarcoma (STS) subtypes in AYAs in the years 2000–2013.
Findings
In European AYAs, the IR was 0.81/100,000 for BS and 1.45/100,000 for STS. Five-year RS was 69 % and 65 % for BS and STS, respectively. Compared to children, AYAs had poorer survival for Ewing sarcoma of bone, synovial sarcoma, Ewing sarcoma of soft tissue and rhabdomyosarcoma. Compared to mature adults, AYAs had higher 5-year RS for all BS and for most of the STS subtypes. In AYAs, incidence increased for a few bone and soft tissue subtypes. Survival increased mainly for BS.
Interpretation
The reason for the better survival observed in AYAs compared to mature adults is probably multifactorial. The limited improvement of STS survival in AYAs may reflect the relative absence of new drugs for STS during the study period. The increase in RS for BS might relate to general improvements in radiological and surgical approaches and radiotherapy techniques
Differential effect of early response on outcomes in person-centered experiential therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of adult moderate or severe depression
Get PDFObjective: To investigate if Sessions 1–4 Patient Health Questionnaire–9 (PHQ-9) scores are associated with treatment outcome and if there is a differential effect between person-centered experiential therapy (PCET) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Method: A secondary data analysis of a prospectively registered and ethically approved pragmatic, noninferiority randomized controlled trial comparing PCET and CBT for the treatment of moderate or severe depression. Latent growth curve modeling was applied to data from 274 patients who received ≥ five sessions of therapy to investigate the association between change in Sessions 1–4 PHQ-9 scores on a binary end-of-treatment outcome (i.e., reliable and clinically significant improvement; RCSI) and on final-session PHQ-9 scores. Estimated power was 80%. Results: Change in Sessions 1–4 PHQ-9 scores was significantly associated with the probability of RCSI in the PCET condition (p = .002) but not the CBT condition (p = .156). Specifically, greater early treatment improvement and higher PHQ-9 scores at Session 1 were significantly associated with obtaining RCSI in PCET, but not in CBT; this relationship differed significantly between conditions (p = .007). Greater early treatment improvement was also significantly associated with lower final-session PHQ-9 scores (p < .001), but this relationship did not significantly differ across conditions (p = .121). Conclusions: Early session scores are associated with final-session depression scores, though PCET and CBT manifest distinctively different trajectories for patients achieving RCSI.
What is the public health significance of this article?
Routine outcome monitoring may be essential to detect early signs of patient-therapy misfit by Session 4 in PCET as a process-marker for reviewing and possibly increasing process-guiding interventions that provide clearer structuring during therapy. In CBT specifically, reviewing at Session 4 may help reduce the potential for patients dropping out, although early response may provide less of a cue to later outcomes for more severe patients
The persistence of failure in water, sanitation and hygiene programming: a qualitative study
Get PDFIntroduction: Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) causes millions of deaths and disability-adjusted life-years annually. Despite global progress towards universal WASH, much of WASH programming continues to fail to improve health outcomes or be sustainable in the longer term, consistently falling short of internal performance indicators and sometimes negatively impacting the well-being of local stakeholders. Although sector experts in high-income countries have often provided explanations for such failures, the opinions of those implementing WASH programming at the ground level are rarely published.
Methods: In 2020, we purposively recruited 108 front-line WASH professionals in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe to participate in 96 in-depth interviews, explaining why they believe WASH failure persists. Through participatory analysis, including framework analysis with additional axial coding and member-checking of our findings, we determined the core reasons for WASH failure as perceived by participants.
Results: Interviewees reported poor engagement and commitment of intended users, unrealistic and idealistic expectations held by funders and implementers, and a general lack of workforce and financial capacity as significant contributors to WASH failure. Our analysis shows that these issues stem from WASH programming being implemented as time and budget-constrained projects. This projectisation has led to reduced accountability of funders and implementers to intended users and a focus on measuring inputs and outputs rather than outcomes and impacts. It has also placed high expectations on intended users to sustain WASH services and behaviour change after projects officially end.
Conclusions: Our findings imply that WASH programming needs to move away from projectisation towards long-term investments with associated accountability to local governments and longitudinal measurements of WASH access, as well as realistic considerations of the needs, abilities and priorities of intended users. Funders need to reconsider the status quo and how adjusting their systems could support sustainable WASH services
Optimizing the zymogram of exogenous proteases in broiler diets by in vitro simulated gastrointestinal digestion and response surface methodology
Get PDFLow protein digestibility causes intestinal flora imbalance, wet litter, and nitrogen pollution. The present study aimed to explore the optimal zymogram of exogenous acid protease (ACP), neutral protease (NEP), alkaline protease (ALP), and keratinase (KEA) in corn-soybean based diets for broilers. The hydrolysis performances of the four monocomponent proteases were presented by enzymatic hydrolysate gross energy (EHGE) and improved dry matter digestibility (IDMD), which were tested via the in vitro simulated digestion method. The optimal combination of the four proteases was predicted by the response surface method. Results showed that the optimal zymogram for 1 to 3-wk-old broiler diet was 1.80 U/g ACP, 2.30 U/g NEP, 29.30 U/g ALP, and 2.80 U/g KEA, and the EHGE and IDMD reached 94.65 Cal/g and 2.54%. The optimal zymogram for 4 to 6-wk-old broiler diet was 1.50 U/g ACP, 1.90 U/g NEP, 31.53 U/g ALP, and 3.10 U/g KEA, and the EHGE and IDMD reached 92.29 Cal/g and 2.47%. The performances of the predicted optimal zymogram were further verified by in vitro simulated digestion method. Collectively, the combined use of four proteases could improve the protein digestibility in broiler diets, which had better effect than monocomponent protease
What can we learn about the impact of cancelled planned operations on waiting times? A case study using the 2017/18 winter flu postponement policy in England
Get PDFYOLO-behaviour: a simple, flexible framework to automatically quantify animal behaviours from videos
Get PDF1. Manually coding behaviours from videos is essential to study animal behaviour but it is labour-intensive and susceptible to inter-rater bias and reliability issues. Recent developments of computer vision tools enable the automatic quantification of behaviours, supplementing or even replacing manual annotation. However, widespread adoption of these methods is still limited, due to the lack of annotated training datasets and domain-specific knowledge required to optimize these models for animal research.
2. Here, we present YOLO-Behaviour, a flexible framework for identifying visually distinct behaviours from video recordings. The framework is robust, easy to implement, and requires minimal manual annotations as training data. We demonstrate the flexibility of the framework with case studies for event-wise detection in house sparrow nestling provisioning, Siberian jay feeding, human eating behaviours and frame-wise detections of various behaviours in pigeons, zebras and giraffes.
3. Our results show that the framework reliably detects behaviours accurately and retrieve comparable accuracy metrics to manual annotation. However, metrics extracted for event-wise detection were less correlated with manual annotation, and potential reasons for the discrepancy between manual annotation and automatic detection are discussed. To mitigate this problem, the framework can be used as a hybrid approach of first detecting events using the pipeline and then manually confirming the detections, saving annotation time.
4. We provide detailed documentation and guidelines on how to implement the YOLO-Behaviour framework, for researchers to readily train and deploy new models on their own study systems. We anticipate the framework can be another step towards lowering the barrier of entry for applying computer vision methods in animal behaviour
Seductive Spirits in Feminist Spaces: Demons and their Otherwise Possibilities
No full textNathanael Homewood’s Seductive Spirits recontextualizes and theorizes demons within deliverance Pentecostal worldmaking. By engaging Homewood’s work in dialogue with African feminist concerns, this article argues that Seductive Spirits rejects colonial and secularized feminist frameworks of the metaphorical spectral. This article suggests that by instead acknowledging ghosts, demons, and ancestors as merciful and material, Homewood’s work provokes further creative and decolonial possibilities for African feminists
Agent-based modelling of older adult needs for autonomous mobility-on-demand: a case study in Winnipeg, Canada
Get PDFAs the populations continue to age across many nations, ensuring accessible and efficient transportation options for older adults has become an increasingly important concern. Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) systems have emerged as a potential solution to address the needs faced by older adults in their daily mobility. However, estimation of older adult mobility needs, and how they vary over space and time, is crucial for effective planning and implementation of such service, and conventional four-step approaches lack the granularity to fully account for these needs. To address this challenge, we propose an agent-based model of older adults mobility demand in Winnipeg, Canada. The model is built for 2022 using primarily open data, and is implemented in the Multi-Agent Transport Simulation toolkit. After calibration to accurately reproduce observed travel behaviours, a new AMoD service is tested in simulation and its potential adoption among Winnipeg older adults is explored. The model can help policy makers to estimate the needs of the elderly populations for door-to-door transportation and can guide the design of AMoD transport systems
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