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Economic and political determinants of the South African labour share, 1971–2019
Get PDFThis study examines the drivers of the steady decline in South Africa’s private sector labour share between 1971 and 2019. The focus on South Africa is instructive as its distributional contestation is bounded in a matrix of racial conflict. Crucial reforms on trade, finance and welfare were undertaken since 1994, but the study finds little evidence that the extension of the franchise promoted egalitarianism, since white economic elites invested in de facto political power. This study employs an Unrestricted Error Correction Model to estimate the drivers of the private sector labour share, and the findings suggest that globalisation, financialisation and public spending have decreased the labour share, while the effects of education have been positive but insufficient to halt the decline
Methodologies, technologies, and strategies for acoustic streaming-based acoustofluidics
Get PDFAcoustofluidics offers contact-free manipulation of particles and fluids, enabling their uses in various life sciences, such as for biological and medical applications. Recently, there have been extensive studies on acoustic streaming-based acoustofluidics, which are formed inside a liquid agitated by leaky surface acoustic waves (SAWs) through applying radio frequency signals to interdigital transducers (IDTs) on a piezoelectric substrate. This paper aims to describe acoustic streaming-based acoustofluidics and provide readers with an unbiased perspective to determine which IDT structural designs and techniques are most suitable for their research. This review, first, qualitatively and quantitatively introduces underlying physics of acoustic streaming. Then, it comprehensively discusses the fundamental designs of IDT technology for generating various types of acoustic streaming phenomena. Acoustic streaming-related methodologies and the corresponding biomedical applications are highlighted and discussed, according to either standing surface acoustic waves or traveling surface acoustic waves generated, and also sessile droplets or continuous fluids used. Traveling SAW-based acoustofluidics generate various physical phenomena including mixing, concentration, rotation, pumping, jetting, nebulization/atomization, and droplet generation, as well as mixing and concentration of liquid in a channel/chamber. Standing SAWs induce streaming for digital and continuous acoustofluidics, which can be used for mixing, sorting, and trapping in a channel/chamber. Key challenges, future developments, and directions for acoustic streaming-based acoustofluidics are finally discussed
Integrated label-free erbium-doped fiber laser biosensing system for detection of single cell Staphylococcus aureus
Get PDFA critical challenge to realize ultra-high sensitivity with optical fiber interferometers for label free biosensing is to achieve high quality factors (Q-factor) in liquid. In this work a high Q-factor of 105, which significantly improves the detection resolution is described based on a structure of single mode -core-only -single mode fiber (SCS) with its multimode (or Mach-Zehnder) interference effect as a filter that is integrated into an erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) system for excitation. In the case study, the section of core-only fiber is functionalized with porcine immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies, which could selectively bind to bacterial pathogen of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). The developed microfiber-based biosensing platform called SCS-based EDFL biosensors can effectively detect concentrations of S. aureus from 10 to 105 CFU/mL, with a responsivity of 42.6 p.m./(CFU/mL) for the wavelength shift of the measured spectrum. The limit of detection (LoD) is estimated as 7.3 CFU/mL based on the measurement of S. aureus with minimum concentration of 10 CFU/mL. In addition, when a lower concentration of 1 CFU/mL is applied to the biosensor, a wavelength shift of 0.12 nm is observed in 10% of samples (1/10), indicating actual LoD of 1 CFU/mL for the proposed biosensor. Attributed to its good sensitivity, stability, reproducibility and specificity, the proposed EDFL based biosensing platform has great potentials for diagnostics
Organizational and Institutional Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFThis issue of American Behavioral Scientist deals with the various ways in which different kinds of organizations cope with the manifold challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, these articles map the challenges and opportunities encountered by a variety of organizations in a major public health crisis. The first section of the issue takes up the theme of adaptive crisis response in relation to two different kinds of organizations. This section begins with a comprehensive overview of U.S. nonprofit organizations’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second article expands on the theme of communication practices in organizations using digital communication platforms which facilitate constructive forms of disagreement or “creative conflict.” Both of these articles indicate the potential positive outcomes of entrepreneurial organizational response. In the next section, we turn to organizational responses hampered by digital inequalities. The first article addresses digital inequalities and eLearning during the pandemic in the country of Pakistan. The next article also uses a digital inequalities framework to probe infrastructural inadequacies faced by the criminal justice system in terms of hindrances to external communication for incarcerated populations during the pandemic. This pair of articles underscores the importance of infrastructure as a necessary element of successful crisis response. The third section of the issue continues with case studies of carceral institutions with the first article offering insight into strategies used by incarcerated people to generate a sense of normality despite pandemic disruptions. Finally, the issue closes with an article revealing the delicate balancing act which rural U.S. law enforcement carried out when competing imperatives made it extremely difficult to manage public health and public safety simultaneously
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Interventions to Improve the Follow-up Rate for Children With Visual Disabilities in an Eye Hospital in Nepal: Nonrandomized Study
Get PDFBackground:
Monitoring ocular morbidity among pediatric patients requires regular follow-up visits. We found that the follow-up rate was poor among children in our setting. Therefore, we intended to assess the effectiveness of 2 interventions—(1) counseling and (2) SMS text messaging and phone calls—to improve the follow-up rates.
Objective:
This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of 2 interventions, counseling and SMS and phone calls group, as well as a routine standard care for improving the follow-up rate of pediatric patients.
Methods:
A Nonrandomized, quasiexperimental design was used. Children (aged 0-16 years) with ocular conditions requiring at least 3 follow-up visits during the study period were included. A total of 264 participants were equally allocated to the 3 intervention groups of (1) counseling, (2) SMS and phone calls, and (3) routine standard care group. A 20-minute counseling session by a trained counselor with the provision of disease-specific leaflets were given to those in the counseling group. For the second intervention group, parents of children received an SMS text 3 days before and a phone call 1 day before their scheduled follow-up visits. Participants allocated for the routine standard care group were provided with the existing services with no additional counseling and reminders. Participants attending 3 follow-ups within 2 days of the scheduled visit date were considered compliant. The difference in and among the proportion of participants completing all 3 follow-up visits in each group was assessed.
Results:
The demographic characteristics of the participants were similar across the study groups. Only 3% (8/264) of participants completed all 3 follow-up visits, but overall compliance with the follow-up, as defined by the investigators, was found to be only 0.76% (2/264). There was no statistically significant difference in the proportion of follow-up between the intervention groups. However, the proportion of participants attending the first and second follow-ups, as well as the overall total number of follow-ups, was more in the SMS and phone-call group followed by the counseling group.
Conclusions:
We did not find any evidence on the effectiveness of our interventions to improve the follow-up rate. The primary reason could be that this study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. It could also be possible that the intensity of the interventions may have influenced the outcomes. A rigorously designed study during the absence of any lockdown restrictions is warranted to evaluate intervention effectiveness. The study also provides useful insights and highlights the importance of designing and systematically developing interventions for improving the follow-up rate and ensuring a continuum of care to children with visual disabilities in Nepal and similar contexts.
Trial Registration:
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04837534; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04837534
International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID):
RR2-10.2196/3157
Cognitive Behavioural Anger Treatment for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities: Effects of Therapist Experience on Outcome
Get PDFBackground:
Anger has been shown to be associated with aggression and violence in adults with intellectual disabilities in both community and secure settings. Emerging evidence has indicated that cognitive behavioural anger treatment can be effective in reducing assessed levels of anger and violent behaviour in these patient populations. However, it has been suggested that the effectiveness of these types of interventions is influenced by the experience and training of the therapists.
Method:
In this service evaluation study, the pre- and post-treatment and 12-month follow-up assessment scores of 88 detained in-patient adults with intellectual disabilities and forensic histories who received cognitive behavioural anger treatment were examined in order to investigate whether participants’ responsiveness to treatment was associated with treatment being delivered by qualified versus unqualified therapists.
Results:
Overall significant reductions in self-reported measures of anger disposition and anger reactivity were found with no significant time × therapist experience interaction effects. However, the patients treated by qualified therapists improved significantly on measures of anger control compared with those allocated to unqualified therapists.
Conclusions:
Male and female detained patients with intellectual disabilities and forensic histories can benefit from an individual cognitive behavioural anger treatment intervention delivered by qualified and unqualified therapists, but therapist experience may be important in supporting patients to develop more complex anger control coping skills
Low-Illumination Road Image Enhancement by Fusing Retinex Theory and Histogram Equalization
Get PDFLow-illumination image enhancement can provide more information than the original image in low-light scenarios, e.g., nighttime driving. Traditional deep-learning-based image enhancement algorithms struggle to balance the performance between the overall illumination enhancement and local edge details, due to limitations of time and computational cost. This paper proposes a histogram equalization–multiscale Retinex combination approach (HE-MSR-COM) that aims at solving the blur edge problem of HE and the uncertainty in selecting parameters for image illumination enhancement in MSR. The enhanced illumination information is extracted from the low-frequency component in the HE-enhanced image, and the enhanced edge information is obtained from the high-frequency component in the MSR-enhanced image. By designing adaptive fusion weights of HE and MSR, the proposed method effectively combines enhanced illumination and edge information. The experimental results show that HE-MSR-COM improves the image quality by 23.95% and 10.6% in two datasets, respectively, compared with HE, contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE), MSR, and gamma correction (GC)
New developments and environmental applications of drones: proceedings of FinDrones 2020, edited by Tarmo Lipping, Petri Linna and Nathaniel Narra, Cham, Springer International, 2022, vii+195 pp., £129.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-030-77859-0
Get PDFUnderstanding the relationship between income and mental health among 16- to 24-year-olds: Analysis of 10 waves (2009-2020) of Understanding Society to enable modelling of income interventions
Get PDFA substantial body of evidence suggests that young people, including those at the crucial transition points between 16 and 24, now face severe mental health challenges. In this article, we analyse data from 10 waves of a major UK longitudinal household cohort study, Understanding Society, to examine the relationship between income and anxiety and depression among 16- to 24-year-olds. Using random effects logistic regression (Model 1) allowing for whether the individual was depressed in the previous period as well as sex, age, ethnicity, whether the individual was born in the UK, region, rurality, highest qualification, marital status, employment status and attrition, we find a significant and inversely monotonic adjusted association between average net equivalised household income quintiles and clinical threshold levels of depressive symptoms SF-12 Mental Component Summary (MCS score ≤45.6). This means that being in a higher income group is associated with a reduced likelihood of clinically significant depressive symptoms, allowing for observable confounding variables. Using a ‘within-between’ model (Model 2), we find that apart from among those with the very highest incomes, increases in average net equivalised household income over the course of childhood and adolescence are significantly associated with reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression as measured by a higher SF-12 MCS score. Compared with previous reviews, the data presented here provides an estimate of the magnitude of effect that helps facilitate microsimulation modelling of impact on anxiety and depression from changes in socioeconomic circumstances. This enables a more detailed and complete understanding of the types of socioeconomic intervention that might begin to address some of the causes of youth mental health problems