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Structural Equation Model of Coping and Life Satisfaction of Community-Dwelling Older People during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFBackground
COVID-19 put older individuals at high risk for morbidity and mortality, isolation, reduced coping, and lower satisfaction with life. Many older adults experienced social isolation, fear, and anxiety. We hypothesized that successful coping with these stressors would maintain or improve satisfaction with life, a crucial psychological outcome during the pandemic. Our study investigated relationships between older people’s coping and life satisfaction during the pandemic and their optimism, sense of mastery, closeness with spouse, family, and friends, and vulnerabilities from frailty, comorbid diseases, memory problems, and dependencies in instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Methods
The study was based on a special COVID-19 sample of 1351 community-dwelling older adults who participated in the 2020 Health and Retirement Survey. A comprehensive structural equation modeling was used to test direct and indirect effects, with life satisfaction as the main outcome and coping as a mediator between the other variables and coping. Results
Most survey respondents were female and between the ages of 65–74 years. They averaged 1.7 chronic conditions, one in seven was frail, about one-third rated their memory as fair or poor, and about one in seven reported one or more difficulties in IADL. As hypothesized—older people with increased sense of mastery and optimism were better able to cope and had greater life satisfaction. In addition, close relationships with friends and with other family members besides the spouse/partner or children contributed to more successful coping, while the interpersonal closeness of all types contributed directly to greater life satisfaction. Finally, older people with more IADL limitations reported greater difficulty coping and lower life satisfaction, and those older people who were frail or had multiple comorbid diseases reported lower life satisfaction. Conclusions
Optimism, sense of mastery and closeness with family/friends promotes coping and life satisfaction, whereas frailty and comorbidities make coping more challenging and lead to lower life satisfaction particularly during a pandemic. Our study improves on prior research because of its nationally representative sample and formal specification and testing of a comprehensive theoretical framework
Students as Partners In the Library: Creating Meaningful Information Literacy Instruction Together
No full textIn an effort to create more student-centered and inclusive learning environments, instructors are using pedagogical approaches, such as students-as-partners (SAP), to bring student voices into the conversation about teaching and learning and to invite students to make meaningful choices about what happens in the classroom (Cook-Sather et al., 2019). Libraries can and should explore ways to incorporate SAP into our offerings (Salisbury et al., 2020). In libraries, student partners can become co-creators of information as they develop goals and curricula and bring interdisciplinary perspectives from across the institution to the development of information literacy (IL) programs. By inviting students into the pedagogical conversation, librarians can develop IL programming that is informed by authentic student experiences and is meaningful to students’ academic, personal, and professional lives (Boyd, 2014). In this session, presenters will describe efforts developing a new undergraduate IL research lab with students as partners. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore the benefits, opportunities, and challenges of adopting a SAP approach to developing or informing information literacy (IL) programming. In this interactive session, presenters will take turns sharing our experiences developing an IL research lab and asking attendees to envision relevant scenarios at their local institutions with others in attendance. The presenters will share logistical and conceptual challenges, as well as insights and practical suggestions that have emerged from the collaboration. Attendees will consider examples of SAP in different kinds of IL programming before evaluating opportunities to invite students to make meaningful contributions to their current or future programming. Attendees will leave this session with at least one actionable strategy for bringing students as partners into the development or refinement of IL programs at their institution.
By participating in this session, attendees will be able to do the following:
· Describe the benefits of involving students in the development of IL programming.
· Evaluate opportunities and challenges for incorporating student voices into their current or future IL programming.
· Identify actionable strategies for students to contribute to the development of IL programs and instruction at their institution
Untrained Bystanders Administering Drone-Delivered Naloxone: An Exploratory Study
Get PDFIntroduction:
Opioid overdose deaths continue to climb in the United States. Administering naloxone to an overdose victim can save their life, but rapid access to naloxone remains a barrier. Delivering naloxone to a bystander using a drone has potential to increase naloxone availability but there are still many uncertainties about this mode of delivery. Can an untrained bystander to an opioid overdose successfully administer drone delivered naloxone after viewing video instructions on the drone and how long does it take?
Methods:
This mixed-methods observational study, conducted in a controlled outdoor environment, simulated an opioid overdose using a mannequin (overdose victim) and panicked bystander. Untrained and medically naïve participants were instructed to call for help, move the drone from the landing spot to the mannequin, and follow the instructions provided by the drone to administer naloxone. Data was collected using video recordings, interviews, and an online survey. Time stamp data was extracted from the video for 2 time points: time for removing the naloxone from the drone and time to administer the naloxone. Interviews were audio recorded and analyzed using an inductive concept analysis approach. One interview question was coded as a binary response of anxiety/no anxiety and added to the demographic data.
Results:
The average time to remove and administer naloxone was 62 seconds. Anxiety during the activity was reported by 59% of the participants but there was no correlation between anxiety and time. The design of our drone and instructional video can be improved.
Conclusions:
We have established baseline times for completing steps in administering naloxone delivered by drone. We were able to successfully induce anxiety and have a baseline measure for what percentage of untrained bystanders may experience anxiety when involved with an emergency situation. Design of instructional materials and drone construction can contribute to anxiety and successful administration of naloxone
Assessing Germinating Seeds of Legume and Cereal Crops to Enhance Oxygen Depletion: A Novel Approach in Hermetic Storage
Get PDFHermetic storage systems are used around the world to reduce stored product losses. Scavenging residual oxygen in hermetic containers can further enhance their effectiveness in minimizing stored commodity losses. Our objective was to assess the effectiveness of germinating seeds of soybeans, rice, cowpeas, and corn in scavenging oxygen. There were six germination stages: seeds soaked for 24 h and allowed to grow for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 days (T1 to T6). Oxygen consumption was monitored for 30 h. Root length, the weight of mobilized seed reserve, and visual fungal growth were also assessed. The results showed that cowpeas in their fourth (T4), fifth (T5), and sixth (T6) germination stages were the most effective in scavenging oxygen to below 5% after only 12 h. Corn in its fifth (T5) germination stage took twice the time (24 h) of cowpeas (T4–T6) to reach 5%. Hypoxia affected the growth of radicle length and seed reserve mobilization in all crops except soybeans. Very minimal fungal growth was observed on germinating cowpea seeds under hermetic conditions. The fourth stage (T4) of germinating cowpeas has more potential as an oxygen scavenger because it requires less time to grow, and the seeds are easy to handle. Further research is needed to understand the role of seed weight and sizes, crop varieties, and genetic mechanisms that govern rapid oxygen consumption by germinating seeds among crops. Harnessing seeds as oxygen scavengers to reduce storage losses holds the promise of advancing the sustainable utilization of resources on smallholder farms
Hyperspectral Analysis for Discriminating Herbicide Site of Action: A Novel Approach for Accelerating Herbicide Research
Get PDFIn agricultural weed management, herbicides are indispensable, yet innovation in their modes of action (MOA)—the general mechanisms affecting plant processes—has slowed. A finer classification within MOA is the site of action (SOA), the specific biochemical pathway in plants targeted by herbicides. The primary objectives of this study were to evaluate the efficacy of hyperspectral imaging in the early detection of herbicide stress and to assess its potential in accelerating the herbicide development process by identifying unique herbicide sites of action (SOA). Employing a novel SOA classification method, eight herbicides with unique SOAs were examined via an automated, high-throughput imaging system equipped with a conveyor-based plant transportation at Purdue University. This is one of the earliest trials to test hyperspectral imaging on a large number of herbicides, and the study aimed to explore the earliest herbicide stress detection/classification date and accelerate the speed of herbicide development. The final models, trained on a dataset with nine treatments with 320 samples in two rounds, achieved an overall accuracy of 81.5% 1 day after treatment. With the high-precision models and rapid screening of numerous compounds in only 7 days, the study results suggest that hyperspectral technology combined with machine learning can contribute to the discovery of new herbicide MOA and help address the challenges associated with herbicide resistance. Although no public research to date has used hyperspectral technology to classify herbicide SOA, the successful evaluation of herbicide damage to crops provides hope to accelerate the progress of herbicide development
Extreme Cooling Via Sweeping Gas Membrane Distillation
No full textThermal desalination processes like membrane distillation (MD) aim to have rapid evaporation rates to provide large quantities of fresh water. These processes, which resemble counterflow-heat exchangers with membranes in the middle, conventionally seek to maximize vapor mass transfer while minimizing all other modes of heat transfer as “thermal losses.” However, we can reverse this fundamental design need to make an exceptionally high throughput heat dissipation device. By using thin thermally conductive membranes and extremely rapid air flow rates, membrane heat exchangers inspired by MD can dissipate heat several times faster than conventional air-cooled heat exchangers. We demonstrate this new approach with discretized numerical modeling, multiphysics simulations, and a successful experimental demonstration using a sweep gas membrane distillation configuration. The experimental results show that, feed temperature, feed flow rate, sweep gas flow rate are the most influencing among the operating parameters on permeate flux. The multiphysics numerical simulation is carried out in COMSOL 6.0. To evaluate the potential of sweeping gas membrane distillation unit as a heat exchanger, the feed outlet temperature, evaporative heat flux and mass flux are studied with varying membrane thermal conductivity (0.2 - 200 W/mK). The mass flux and evaporative heat flux decreases as membrane thermal conductivity increases. However, the feed outlet temperature initially drops where evaporative cooling contributes much more to heat loss. Further increasing thermal conductivity reduces temperature and vapor pressure gradient across the membrane and resulting in reduced evaporative cooling and increased feed outlet temperature. In this scenario, higher sweep gas flow rate is recommended to deliver sufficient cooling. However, large pressure drops must occur in the air stream to deliver sufficient cooling. Furthermore, the evaporated fluid must either be lost, or recovered with a large system, such as the absorbing bottle used here. Overall, such enhanced heat exchange may hold promise in air-cooled devices that require lightweight design or portability
The future of mobility-as-a-service: trust transfer across automated mobilities, from road to sidewalk
No full textWhile trust in different types of automated vehicles has been a major focus for researchers and vehicle manufacturers, few studies have explored how people trust automated vehicles that are not cars, nor how their trust may transfer across different mobilities enabled with automation. To address this objective, a dual mobility study was designed to measure how trust in an automated vehicle with a familiar form factor—a car—compares to, and influences, trust in a novel automated vehicle—termed sidewalk mobility. A mixed-method approach involving both surveys and a semi-structured interview was used to characterize trust in these automated mobilities. Results found that the type of mobility had little to no effect on the different dimensions of trust that were studied, suggesting that trust can grow and evolve across different mobilities when the user is unfamiliar with a novel automated driving-enabled (AD-enabled) mobility. These results have important implications for the design of novel mobilities
Stalking Oneself: The Fantasmatic Intersubjectivity of Google
Get PDFThis essay reads fictional and non-fictional accounts of digital stalking as signals of larger changes in intersubjectivity itself caused by Google. Most social media platforms trap users in imaginary relations, in which the other is encountered as a complete profile, but Google allows the searcher to locate an absence in the other in the form of a missing search result. As will be shown in an analysis of two contemporary novels whose first-person narrations center around Google-stalking, Caroline Kepnes’s You (2014) and Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy (2017), Google’s mode of intersubjectivity amounts to an endless tunnel with no light at its end, whose exploration only feeds the profits of digital capitalism. Through a comparison of real-life stalking and digital stalking, historical shifts in the subject’s relation to the Other are captured
“Love Thy Social Media!”: Hysteria and the Interpassive Subject
Get PDFAccording to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper will argue that we continually refrain from the very question(ing) that would call these companies to account: what does the algorithm desire? In approaching this question, this article will draw from Lacan’s ‘hysterical’ position in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization in social media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in social media algorithms. In so doing, the case will be made that an account of interpassivity can help lay bare the hysterical significance underscoring our digital subjectivization