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A Survey of Health Workers in Ghana and Nigeria on the Potential Burden and Local Assessment of Executive Dysfunction Among Children.
Get PDFEarly identification of executive dysfunction in children by non-specialist through task-shifting is imperative to attaining universal health coverage in sub-Saharan Africa. We assessed the potential burden of executive dysfunction seen by local health workers, and the potential for integrating them into assessment for cognitive functioning of children within the local healthcare system. This study was a cross-sectional in-person and online survey of 133 health workers in rural and urban Ghana and Nigeria from primary, secondary and tertiary tiers of the healthcare system. Adolescents (11 - 18 years) were the most seen age-category in primary and secondary care and by non-specialists, while school-age children (6 - 9 years) and pre-schoolers (1 - 5 years) were most seen by specialists. In decreasing order of frequency, the reported conditions likely to be associated with executive dysfunction and the cadres of workers who saw them were epilepsy and seizure-related (all workers), brain injury and neurodevelopmental delay-related complaints (secondary care workers), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder related complaints (specialists in referral centres), anxiety-related complaints (specialists in primary care) and school difficulties-related complaints (secondary care workers and non-specialists). Adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder may be going unrecognised. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children/Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (not ecologically validated) and clinical history with Mental State Exam were the most common means of assessing cognitive functioning. Potential burden of executive dysfunction among children in Ghana and Nigeria is high, and involvement of non-specialist health workers in cognitive functioning assessment is needed
‘Royal’ road, ‘royal’ needs: a GIS-based approach to Achaemenid court logistics between royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis
Get PDFLevelling up: An anthology
Get PDFOur intention when we launched our levelling up blog series in early 2021 was to publish a series of short pieces to help stimulate the emerging debate about levelling up by bringing our research agenda to bear on the questions surrounding this emerging policy programme. Key themes that we wanted to consider included: questions around the definition of levelling up; the importance of considering inequality at different geographical scales; the difficulties of comparing different places; and the importance of measurement. Above all we wanted to examine how levelling up could be woven into all of the government’s policy programmes to ensure that they have a positive impact on the inequalities being felt by those hardest hit places. The subsequent blog series covers these themes and more, and this anthology brings together a number of these different pieces. Partly this is to counter the sometimes ephemeral nature of blog posts and ensure that these pieces get the attention they deserve, but also because we feel that bringing them together as a collection enables the blogs to talk to each other and for a number of common themes to emerge from the body of work. Our call is for government to listen to all stakeholders and give them the power to make decisions for their local and regional workforces and communities
A SET domain-containing protein and HCF-1 maintain transgenerational epigenetic memory.
Get PDFTransgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI) allows epigenetic information to pass across generations through mechanisms such as small RNAs and histone modifications. Histone methylation is often deposited by SET domain-containing methyltransferases. Some SET proteins lack catalytic activity but still regulate chromatin and gene expression. Here, we characterize SET-24, a catalytically inactive SET domain protein that localizes to germline nuclei and is essential for germline immortality in Caenorhabditis elegans. In set-24 mutants, small RNA-mediated epigenetic silencing is impaired. Proteomic, yeast two-hybrid, and pull-down assays show that SET-24 interacts with HCF-1, a chromatin factor linked to complexes like COMPASS, which deposits H3K4me3. Loss of SET-24 leads to increased H3K4me3 at transcription start sites of hundreds of genes. Although transcription remains largely unchanged, small RNA production is disrupted for about 30% of these genes. We propose that SET-24 preserves germline epigenetic memory by sustaining a chromatin environment that supports small RNA biogenesis across generations
Pooled Bewley Estimator of Long Run Relationships in Dynamic Heterogenous Panels
Get PDFUsing a transformation of the autoregressive distributed lag model due to Bewley, a novel pooled Bewley (PB) estimator of long-run coefficients for dynamic panels with heterogeneous short-run dynamics is proposed. The PB estimator is directly comparable to the widely used Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator, and is shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. Monte Carlo simulations show good small sample performance of PB compared to the existing estimators in the literature, namely PMG, panel dynamic OLS (PDOLS), and panel fully-modified OLS (FMOLS). Application of two bias-correction methods and a bootstrapping of critical values to conduct inference robust to cross-sectional dependence of errors are also considered. The utility of the PB estimator is illustrated in an empirical application to the aggregate consumption function
INTERNAL AUTOMORPHISMS AND ANTIMORPHISMS OF MODELS OF NF
Get PDFAbstract It is shown that every model of NF admits a permutation model containing an internal automorphism
"Corona cooking": the interrelation between emotional response to the first lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic and cooking attitudes and behaviour in Denmark
Get PDFFor this study, the authors measured attitudes toward shopping for food and cooking, before and during the first lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, among a sample of 526 Danish consumers, using an online survey. To analyse changes due to the lockdown, they applied a latent class Markov model, which revealed four states: middle of the road, love cooking (and like shopping), like shopping and cooking, and do not like shopping or cooking. In estimating transition probabilities, the findings reveal that most respondents remained in the same state before and during the lockdown, but those that changed were more likely to exhibit relatively higher liking of shopping and cooking. These states also reflect variations in people's food literacy and self-reported food consumption. Finally, respondents with stronger negative emotional reactions to the lockdown were more likely to change their states
Oligomerisation and stereoselective polymerisation of alkenes and alkynes using pyridyl-based Al(iii) catalysts.
Get PDFDealkylation of the dimers [R2Al(2-py')]2 (2-py' = 6-substituted pyridyl, R = Me, iBu) with [Ph3C][B(C6F5)4] gives the putative cations [RAl(2-py')2(µ-R)AlR]+ which can polymerise a range of alkenes with a high degree of stereoregularity (syndiotacticity in the case of polystyrene) and which cylotrimerise terminal alkynes to trisubstituted benzenes and a fulvene. This is the first report of stereoslective Al(iii) polymerisation and of the cyclotrimerisation of alkynes by static catalysis using a main group metal
Climate Justice or Climate Apartheid? The justice trade-offs of private solar investments for South Africa's just transition
Get PDFClimate scholarship and policy increasingly centre justice, acknowledging the uneven impacts of climate change, with global south countries and marginalised communities most vulnerable. Recently, ‘climate apartheid’ discourse has recognised that mitigation/adaptation strategies also (re)produce injustice. This highlights how the ‘climate privileged’ protect themselves from climate change impacts via strategies and technologies that exclude and further marginalise the ‘climate precarious’. We critically explore the value of climate apartheid discourse in South Africa, where global investment towards a just energy transition has contributed to alleviating the country’s energy crisis. South Africa’s renewable energy shift has been rapid, unprecedented, under-regulated, and highly uneven, dividing society between those with, and without, access to reliable energy. South Africa is also relevant for exploring climate apartheid as the ‘origin’ context, where reappropriating apartheid beyond its historical context is complex. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and survey responses, we examine the multifaceted motivations for, and impacts of, private household investments in renewable energy in urban South Africa. Wealthy households have shielded themselves from loadshedding (scheduled power cuts) through solar power investments, benefiting from tax incentives inaccessible to poorer households who remain dependent on an unreliable and unaffordable grid. While climate apartheid discourse highlights the gravity of South Africa’s energy divide, it risks vilifying individually rational actions and overlooks their contribution to energy transitions. We propose ‘justice trade-offs’ in recognition that climate action can drive environmental justice and social injustice, particularly at the household-scale where actions by the climate privileged may not directly and/or intentionally marginalise the climate precarious
235 nm and 255 nm light-emitting diode based Gbps optical wireless communications up to 30 meters.
Get PDFThe rapid development of AlGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has led to increasing interest in optical wireless communication (OWC) utilizing the unique properties of deep-ultraviolet (DUV) light. Ultraviolet-C (UVC) light, which spans wavelengths from 100 nm to 280 nm, is particularly interesting because shorter wavelengths scatter more strongly, making them potentially useful for non-line-of-sight (NLOS) OWC. Furthermore, the UVC region of the electromagnetic spectrum is 'solar blind', meaning there is little to no ambient interference . However, only limited research has explored OWC at wavelengths below 275 nm. In this study, we report OWC using AlGaN LEDs with peak emission wavelengths of 235 nm and 255 nm, respectively, achieving transmission distances ranging from 0.5 to 30 m and data rates of up to 2 Gbps. To the best of our knowledge, these results represent the first demonstrations of OWC using UVC LEDs with peak emission wavelengths below 260 nm