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An exploration of women’s decision-making processes around accepting or declining vaccinations in pregnancy: A qualitative descriptive study
No full textObjective: To explore women’s perceptions and experiences of accepting or declining vaccinations in pregnancy, and to identify factors that influence vaccination uptake. Design: A qualitative descriptive interview-based study. Setting: The maternity unit of a rural hospital in the Republic of Ireland. Participants: A purposive sample of eight women who were pregnant, aged 18 and over, who were receiving antenatal care through the public healthcare system. Half of the participants accepted vaccinations, while the other half declined, reflecting varying levels of vaccine hesitancy. Methods: Semi structured interviews (n=8) were conducted between July 2022 and August 2022 and analysed using thematic analysis. Findings: The study offers insight into women’s decision-making processes on vaccinations in pregnancy. Five main themes were identified (1). Maternal Instincts in the Shadow of Uncertainty, (2). Lack of Balanced Information, (3). Misinformation: Difficult to Ignore, (4). Navigating Fear and Social Pressures, (5). Perceived Benefits Outweighing Risk. Key conclusions: The decision-making process around vaccination in pregnancy is complex and multifaceted, influenced by various factors that can either hinder or promote uptake rates. Participants expressed complex emotions, associated fears and anxieties, and highlighted the necessity for more balanced and transparent dialogues with healthcare professionals. They emphasised the need for the dissemination of high-quality objective evidence from health authorities. This, they felt, would help facilitate genuine informed decision making, and ease the burden of feelings of uncertainty. Implications for practice: The provision of balanced, reliable, evidence-based information made available through multiple sources, alongside open and non-judgemental conversations with healthcare professionals is essential to support women in making informed decisions. Consequently, healthcare professionals require education and training to effectively communicate vaccination information clearly, empathetically, and in a way that is tailored to individual needs.</p
Antisolvent Crystallization of carbamazepine dihydrate: comparing constant growth rate, size-dependent growth, and growth rate dispersion models
No full textVarious models have been proposed to describe the kinetics of the processes involved in the continuous crystallization of pharmaceutical solutes. In many of these models, the growth rate of crystals (m/s) is assumed to be independent of the size of the crystals. While this assumption leads to reasonable correspondence between the simulated and experimental mean particle size and solute concentration at steady state, it fails to capture the spread of the particle size distribution (PSD) accurately, especially the tail toward the lower particle sizes. Two types of models, namely, dispersion of growth rate and size dependent growth rate, have been proposed for improving the accuracy in predicting PSD. In this work, we evaluated some of these variable growth rate models for simulating the continuous antisolvent crystallization of irregularly shaped carbamazepine dihydrate (CBZ-DH) crystals. The variable growth rate models (dispersion as well as size dependent growth) are implemented in a general-purpose population balance model (PBM) based on a tank-in-series framework. The PBM was used to simulate recently published experimental data from continuous antisolvent crystallization of CBZ-DH. Sensitivity analysis with respect to key parameters was carried out. Based on the comparison of the simulated and experimental results, specific recommendations on selecting a variable growth model have been made. The presented approach, model, and results will be useful for enhancing the fidelity of models of continuous crystallizers.</p
‘A Digital Archive of Ireland’s ordnance survey’: connecting collections for nineteenth-century Ireland
No full textA three-year digital humanities research project, a collaboration between Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), the University of Limerick (UL) and the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), gathered historic Irish Ordnance Survey (OS) maps and texts into a single freely accessible online resource for academic and public use. ‘A Digital Archive of Ireland’s Ordnance Survey’ was launched in June 2024 and is now available online https://dri.ie/os200/spotlight/os200. The First Edition Six-Inch OS maps with the OS Memoirs, Letters and Name Books were held in several GLAM institutions and public organisations, including Queen’s University Belfast Map Library, the Royal Irish Academy, Tailte Éireann (formerly the Ordnance Survey of Ireland), Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland, National Library of Ireland (NLI), National Library of Scotland (NLS) and Public Records of Northern Ireland (PRONI). The diverse nature of ownership and metadata presented several unique challenges and this paper will discuss how the project managed ownership of data, copyright and licensing. The final digitised sources were preserved in the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI). A key issue for this project was its cartographic nature. The emphasis on location data and the need for a web map interface created a special case study in the integration of spatial metadata within the repository. Issues arose surrounding the linking and correlation of spatial data across modern political boundaries as well as the historical development of these boundaries. Further challenges developed due to the high spatial resolution of the project’s location data, which presented over 60,000 location points.</p
Human factors considerations for critical maintenance tasks and their effect on the transition to digital documentation: an exploratory expert survey
No full textDigitised maintenance documentation will soon be the norm in aviation. Failure to correctly perform maintenance tasks may lead to aviation safety hazardous events. This article explores the views of aviation maintenance subject matter experts on errors affecting critical maintenance tasks and how views can inform transition to digitised documentation. This exploratory study offers a fresh view on human factors’ implications around critical maintenance tasks and their relation to digital documentation. A cross-sectional design method was utilised. Anonymous responses were collected with a mixed-methods questionnaire from convenience sample of participants from different aircraft maintenance and continuing airworthiness management organisations. Expert opinions of 25 aircraft maintenance and technical services engineers were recorded. All participants had personal experience with maintenance errors, where human factors attributed to these errors. They highlighted the lack of human factors’ awareness and the need to strengthen their contributory role in critical maintenance tasks. Participants’ views appeared divided in terms of challenges associated with digital documentation utilisation. Positive features emerged, such as critical maintenance tasks or duplicate/independent inspections’ highlighting, notes and warnings’ higher visibility, up-to-date documentation availability and better connectivity among activities. Negative themes concentrated on the tactile nature of paper and on the additional technology knowledge requirements.</p
AI revolution in insurance: bridging research and reality
No full textThis paper comprehensively reviews artificial intelligence (AI) applications in the insurance industry. We focus on the automotive, health, and property insurance domains. To conduct this study, we followed the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews. This rigorous methodology allowed us to examine recent academic research and industry practices thoroughly. This study also identifies several key challenges that must be addressed to mitigate operational and underwriting risks, including data quality issues that could lead to biased risk assessments, regulatory compliance requirements for risk governance, ethical considerations in automated decision-making, and the need for explainable AI systems to ensure transparent risk evaluation and pricing models. This review highlights important research gaps by comparing academic studies with real-world industry implementations. It also explores emerging areas where AI can improve efficiency and drive innovation in the insurance sector. The insights gained from this work provide valuable guidance for researchers, policymakers, and insurance industry practitioners.</p
Change in the prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among young Indians aged 15–24 years between 2015–16 and 2019–21: Insights from nationally representative surveys
No full textGlobally, the prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among adults in low- and middle-income countries is on the rise. However, the data on young people remains scarce. In this context, we analyzed data from two national-level cross-sectional surveys— NFHS–4, which included 272,966 individuals, and NFHS–5, which included 250,213 individuals—to assess changes in the prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among young Indians aged 15–24 years. Between 2015–2016 and 2019–2021, the prevalence of prehypertension increased significantly (p < 0.001), rising from 38.9% to 44.5% among men and from 21.1% to 26.9% among women. While hypertension prevalence among men increased from 5.2% to 6.2%, it remained stable at approximately 4.0% among women over the same period. Most states, with a few exceptions, exhibited an increase in prehypertension prevalence across both genders, and more than two-thirds of states also showed an increase in hypertension prevalence among men. High BMI was found to be strongly associated with both prehypertension and hypertension. The rising prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among young Indians aged 15–24 years is concerning and underscores the urgent need to develop targeted preventive strategies for this age group.</p
A multi-level systems perspective on (un)sustainable HRM in adult social care
No full textThis paper contributes to sustainable HRM theory, policy, and practice by applying and extending systems theory. A framing is developed and applied by triangulating data from 85 interviews with workers, managers, and other stakeholders (e.g., unions, employer representatives, charities) in adult social care, along with qualitative and quantitative secondary data sources. The findings highlight three main (un)sustainable HRM challenges shaped by inconsistencies between employment in the public and independent sectors: constrained system resources, disconnected career structures, and uneven voice patterns. The article contrib?utes to HR theory by re-framing “(un)sustainable HRM” to include how actors are constrained and/or supported by multi-level relationships between systems and sub-systems. The research advances policy and practice by proposing how more sustainable HRM approaches could be implemented.</p
Just a few bad apples: perceiving sexist men as non-typical to the larger category of men serves to maintain the gender hierarchy
No full textSocial problems, including those related to gender discrimination, are often simplistically attributed to a few ‘bad apples’ rather than systemic issues. This research explores one aspect of this under-investigated phenomenon by focusing on women's perceptions of sexist men. Three pre-registered correlational studies (n=647) explored whether women's tendency to perceive sexist men as non-typical (‘bad apples’) versus typical of the larger category of men is associated with benefits on intrapersonal and interpersonal levels but with costs on an intergroup level. At the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels, perceiving sexist men as non-typical was associated with a stronger feeling of well-being, more positive perceptions of men, and stronger social connectedness with men. However, at the intergroup level, it was associated with lower intentions to engage in collective action on behalf of women's issues. These findings suggest that perceiving the subgroup of sexist men as non-typical of the larger category of men is a perception that may contribute to maintaining the gender status quo. The societal and practical implications of this research are elaborated in the accompanying social impact statement. Please refer to the Supporting Information section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.</p
Findings of a National Survey on Birth in Ireland
No full textThis survey is part of a participatory health research project on birth in Ireland. The survey was conducted by a team of midwives, doulas, and mothers who are members of the Birth Rights Alliance Ireland (BRAI). One of the team members (Dr Susann Huschke) is also a health researcher at the School of Medicine, University of Limerick. The survey received ethics approval by the Education and Health Sciences ethics committee at the University of Limerick in November 2023 (approval number 2023_09_08_EHS).We created this survey in order to find out more about women and birthing people’s experiences of birth in Ireland. In Ireland, the vast majority of births take place in the medicalised settings of maternity hospitals where birth interventions such as inductions and C-sections are very common. The aim of the research is to find out more about the reasons for these rates of birth interventions: why is this happening, what information are birthing people given to make decisions about their birth and labour, and how do birthing people feel about their experiences of giving birth in Ireland?In this report, we provide an overall summary of the key survey findings, followed by more specific results from each sub-section of the survey. The appendix includes the entire list of questions asked in the survey and summary tables of the responses for each of the questions.We invited anyone who gave birth in Ireland between 2018 and 2023 to fill out the survey. The survey was run online on Qualtrics. A total of 3,824 people started the survey, although not all completed the entire survey. On average, respondents completed 77% of the survey. 2,522 respondents (66%) completed the entire survey. Some survey questions only applied to a subset of the respondents, e.g. questions relating to vaginal birth after a C-section (VBAC) and breech presentation, which led to fewer responses in these sections. In the appendix, we report the number of responses for each question separately.The survey included 20 open-ended questions where respondents could write free text responses. The number of responses to these questions ranged from less than 10 in the more specific questions to hundreds of responses in the more general questions. The exact number of responses for each open-ended question can be found in the appendix. Some responses contained a few words whereas others included detailed descriptions of experiences.We have included a selection of responses to some of these questions in this report. Responses were selected to represent the diversity of experiences and views for each question. Access to the anonymised data sets, which include all responses for the open-ended questions, may be granted by the research team to interested members of the public and to other researchers for the purpose of secondary data analysis. To ask for access to free text responses/qualitative data sets, please email Dr Susann Huschke: [email protected]</p
A computational fluid dynamics study of mass transfer in a large-scale aerated stirred bioreactor☆
No full textComputational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is exploited to study mass transfer in a specific stirred aerated bioreactor used in a cell culture process. The focus is on which empirical correlations from the literature can best be used for calculating the volumetric mass transfer coefficient kLa on the basis of the spatially distributed and/or average energy dissipation rate obtained in CFD simulations. This energy dissipation rate plays a key role in many of the empirical correlations which are reviewed in detail. CFD simulations are carried out using the finite volume (FV) ANSYS Fluent software as well as the Lattice Boltzmann (LB)-based code marketed by M− Star. In Fluent, we opted for a two-fluid approach and the realizable k − ε turbulence model, while M− Star models the turbulence by a Large Eddy Simulation and tracks individual bubbles in a Lagrangian way. Gassed power draw, air volume fraction, energy dissipation rate, and (kLa) are calculated in both codes and compared mutually as well as to experimentally measured data and analytical correlations available in the literature. The energy dissipation rate was underpredicted by Fluent, leading to lower breakup rates and an underprediction of kLa. The M− Star simulations also underpredict kLa although predicting much higher levels of energy dissipation. However, using a constant value for kL and just the volume-averaged a from Fluent or M− Star improved the results significantly, which then are in good agreement with the experimental kLa value.</p