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Impact of COVID 19 Pandemic on Aviation Workers & The Aviation System
No full textWorker wellness and mental health is hugely important in safety critical systems such as aviation. Aviation workers need to be fit for duty and aware of all risks that compromise their health and wellbeing. Work has the potential to negatively impact on mental health particularly in the form of stress. The COVID 19 Pandemic has had impacts for people, communities, workplaces, and societies. The COVID-19 pandemic has put increased stress on aviation workers and the aviation industry.The industry has experienced a decrease in capacity. Many workers are working on reduced salary, furloughed,or have lost their jobs. This has had a detrimental impact on their sense of purpose and financial security. Those who are still working,are working in very different environments with additional stressors. People vary in relation to their ability to cope successfully with stress (including work-related stress). The practice of healthy behaviours strengthens a person’s resistance to stress.The substitution of maladaptive coping with more adaptive coping strategies is an important component of therapeutic interventions for work-related stress. Common adaptive stress coping strategies include exercise, the practice of relaxation techniques and seeking social support and/or social participation. Peer support programmes have been implemented by airlines for pilots. However, they are less commonplace for other aviation workers including maintenance and cabin crew.It is likely that some aviation workers may experience significant challenges during the period of being off work. Social isolation and confinement may lead some people to develop maladaptive coping strategies. If off work, some of the occupational barriers to maladaptive coping are not there (i.e.,intoxicant testing by employer). Further, the enablersof adaptive coping (i.e.,support from COVID Survey White Paper, CIHS, Confidential (March 12 2021) social network, access to peer support and access to support groups within the community) are not there. As such, the current COVID-19 pandemic poses a huge occupational health and safety risk.The Flight Safety Foundation has identified three operational scenarios to be managed during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. This includes (1) being at work during the COVID-19outbreak, (2) being off work and (3) returning to work
THE CATLIN MULTITYPE OF SUMS OF SQUARES DOMAINS
No full textGiven a sum of squares domain of finite D\u2
Disaffection Anger and Sarcasm: Exploring the Postrevolutionary Digital Public Sphere in Egypt
No full textThis article explores the digital public sphere in Egypt through a 3-pronged investigation. First, we examine the media sphere from an institutional point of view. Second, we undertake a qualitative analysis of comments left on popular news pages on Facebook. Third, we discuss the findings of 30 semistructured interviews with young people in Cairo. Our results indicate that the media system is characterized by increasing control that has now extended online, whereas the social media space is dominated by religious personalities and entertainment. Turning to the public, we found that most comments mobilized anger and insults or were ironic and sarcastic. Finally, the interviews point to a disillusionment with both the political sphere and the role of social media. Disaffection is therefore taken to represent the specific structure of feeling found in the postrevolutionary Egyptian mainstream digital public sphere, with publics appearing alienated and unwilling to engage politically
Microbial electrosynthesis: Towards sustainable biorefineries for production of green chemicals from CO2 emissions
No full textDecarbonisation of the economy has become a priority at the global level, and the resulting legislative pressure is pushing the chemical and energy industries away from fossil fuels. Microbial electrosynthesis (MES) has emerged as a promising technology to promote this transition, which will further benefit from the decreasing cost of renewable energy. However, several technological challenges need to be addressed before the MES technology can reach its maturity. The aim of this review is to critically discuss the bottlenecks hampering the industrial adoption of MES, considering the whole production process (from the CO2 source to the marketable products), and indicate future directions. A flexible stack design, with flat or tubular MES modules and direct CO2 supply, is required for site-specific decentralised applications. The experience gained for scaling-up electrochemical cells (e.g. electrolysers) can serve as a guideline for realising pilot MES stacks to be technologically and economically evaluated in industrially relevant conditions. Maximising CO2 abatement rate by targeting high-rate production of acetate can promote adoption of MES technology in the short term. However, the development of a replicable and robust strategy for production and in-line extraction of higher-value products (e.g. caproic acid and hexanol) at the cathode, and meaningful exploitation of the currently overlooked anodic reactions, can further boost MES cost-effectiveness. Furthermore, the use of energy storage and smart electronics can alleviate the fluctuations of renewable energy supply. Despite the unresolved challenges, the flexible MES technology can be applied to decarbonise flue gas from different sources, to upgrade industrial and wastewater treatment plants, and to produce a wide array of green and sustainable chemicals. The combination of these benefits can support the industrial adoption of MES over competing technologies.This work was performed on the framework of the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Pathfinder Award on “Hybrid Bio-Solar Reactors for wastewater treatment and CO2 recycling” (award nr. 19/FIP/ZE/7572PF). L.R.-A. and S.P. thank the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the grant agreement No 760431 (BIORECO2VER), the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia (ACCIÓ; COMRDI16-1-0061) and Spanish Ministry of Science (RTI2018-098360-B-I00). L.R.-A. acknowledge the support by the Catalan Government (2018 FI-B 00347) in the European FSE program (CCI 2014ES05SFOP007). S.P. is a Serra Húnter Fellow (UdG-AG-575) and acknowledges the funding from the ICREA Acadèmia award. LEQUiA has been recognized as consolidated research group by the Catalan Government with code 2017-SGR-1552. W.T. and P.F. acknowledge financial support from INTERREG Atlantic Area programme (Grant reference EAPA_190_2016), and P.F. acknowledges support from Royal Society Alumni programme. M.T. and H.V.M.H. acknowledge the financial support of Wetsus co-funders, i.e. the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, the Province of Fryslân, and the Northern Netherlands Provinces. P.C. acknowledges funding received from SERB, Govt. of India funded project (Grant Reference SRG/2019/00075)
Organic waste biorefineries: Looking towards implementation
No full textThe concept of biorefinery expands the possibilities to extract value from organic matter in form of either bespoke crops or organic waste. The viability of biorefinery schemes depends on the recovery of higher-value chemicals with potential for a wide distribution and an untapped marketability. The feasibility of biorefining organic waste is enhanced by the fact that the biorefinery will typically receive a waste management fee for accepting organic waste. The development and implementation of waste biorefinery concepts can open up a wide array of possibilities to shift waste management towards higher sustainability. However, barriers encompassing environmental, technical, economic, logistic, social and legislative aspects need to be overcome. For instance, waste biorefineries are likely to be complex systems due to the variability, heterogeneity and low purity of waste materials as opposed to dedicated biomasses. This article discusses the drivers that can make the biorefinery concept applicable to waste management and the possibilities for its development to full scale. Technological, strategic and market constraints affect the successful implementations of these systems. Fluctuations in waste characteristics, the level of contamination in the organic waste fraction, the proximity of the organic waste resource, the markets for the biorefinery products, the potential for integration with other industrial processes and disposal of final residues are all critical aspects requiring detailed analysis. Furthermore, interventions from policy makers are necessary to foster sustainable bio-based solutions for waste management.2022-07-1
OpenTCC: An open source low-cost temperature-control chamber
No full textMicrobial electrochemical technologies (MET) are emerging systems for environmental applications such as renewable energy production or pollution remediation. MET research often requires stable temperatures and low levels of electromagnetic interference. Due to the presence of electrical wires and sensors, heating MET using water jacket recirculation can raise safety issues, whereas heating coils may affect the results of electrochemical analyses. The proposed open-source temperature-control chamber (OpenTCC) aims to provide a low-cost solution for controlling temperature (in the range 20–55 °C) while simultaneously reducing the electromagnetic interferences caused by switching mode power supplies. OpenTCC consists of a light and cheap structure, incorporating eight heating pads and two Peltier-cooling modules powered by open-source electronic circuits. Its hardware is controlled by an Arduino microcontroller and a Python interface which provides data-logging and serve as a basis for programable temperature cycles. The system has a modular design to allow stacking several independent modules. OpenTCC provides a reliable and tunable temperature control at lower costs than currently available commercial temperature controllers and provides a platform for field-specific upgrades. Though optimized for MET, Open-TCC can be adapted to other laboratory applications due to its flexible design.The authors acknowledge Nicholas Waters (NUIG, Ireland) for his valuable input on the development of the Python user interface. This work has been financed by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Professorship Programme (award no. 15/RP/2763).Peer reviewe
Morphological and molecular assessments of bobtail squids (Cephalopoda: Sepiolidae) reveal a hidden history of biodiversity
No full textMolecular species delimitation assists taxonomic decisions for challenging species, like cryptic species complexes. Bobtail squids (Family Sepiolidae Leach, 1817) are a very diverse group of benthic and nektonic small to medium size cephalopods with many taxonomic questions to solve. In this study we provided new sequence data for 12 out 17 Mediterranean bobtail squid species including all the genera present i n the area. Other relevant species from other parts of the world were used as comparison. The combined use of several molecular species delimitation methods consistently showed a picture of hidden biodiversity within this family which hinders the use of molecular data isolated from morphological characters. On the one hand, those methods provided contrasting results for the number of recognized species of some morphologically well-defined species. We suggest this can be an effect of recent speciation phenomena followed by an intense morphological drift. On the other hand, cryptic biodiversity was detected among members of several monophyletic clades assigned to the same nominal species, pointing to recent speciation phenomena without a parallel morphological evolution. Although Mediterranean bobtail diversity has been extensively studied for more than a century, a new species of Stoloteuthis Verrill (1881) was discovered and described here, both using molecular and morphological methods. This new research stresses the necessity of combined morphological and molecular studies to correctly assess cephalopod diversity. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:57AFBB38-18EA-4F80-B1D4-73519C12694F.FÁF-Á was supported by an Irish Research Council—Government of Ireland Post-doctoral Fellowship Award (Ref. GOIPD/2019/460) and by a predoctoral fellowship of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, BES-2013-063551). Some specimens were collected on board the RV Hespérides during the research project MAFIA (CTM2012-39587-C04-03), funded by the MINECO (FEDER/EU), and on board the RV García de Cid during the research cruise FORMED (CGL2012-33989, MINECO). This study was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (OCTOSET project, RTI2018-097908-B-I00, MCIU/AEI/FEDER, EU) and the European Commission (SUMMER project, GA-817806)
Brain Health in Retired Professional Rugby Union Players with a History of Concussion/Head Impact Exposure
No full textRugby has one of the highest incidences of concussion among all full-contact sports. There has been a global increase in rugby participation, now estimated at over eight million people worldwide. With the introduction of professionalism in 1995, an increase in injuries at both amateur and professional level in northern hemisphere international rugby has coincided with increases in average body mass of rugby players by an estimated 25%. Hence,the modern game has larger, stronger players with greater body mass,experiencing larger impact forces, resulting in greater risk of head injury.Alongside increasing concussion incidence among professional rugby players in recent times due to greater awareness and higher rates of head injury reporting, the risks posed by repeated concussion have become a focus of scientific investigation and a major public health concern. Given the elevated risk of concussion in rugby, there is a need to investigate long‐term brain health outcomes in this population.There is emerging evidence suggesting associations between concussion and/ or head impact exposure and potential long term neurological impairments and neurodegenerative diseases.
In an effort to expand the limited evidence base in this field, the overall aim of this thesis was to explore the influence of a career of professional rugby on brain health in retirement. In pursuing this aim, two systematic reviews of the existing literature and five original studies were completed. Systematic Review I –the first review of brain health in retired professional rugby players aimed to establish the evidence regarding long-term neurocognitive functioning and mental health status of living retired rugby players. Nine studies met the inclusion criteria; the available evidence suggested some preliminary evidence for decreased cognitive functioning and a high mental health burden among retired rugby players. However, cautious interpretation of findings was needed as methodological biases reduced the overall quality of studies and limited the conclusions that could be drawn. The heterogeneity of outcome measures, participant characteristics and self-reported methods were among the noted study limitations. This review suggested that large gaps remain in the understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships between playing rugby and long-term brain health in retired players.
Given the limited studies found pertaining to retired rugby players specifically in Systematic Review I, a broader scope of the literature was undertaken in Systematic Review 2. The specific aim of the review was to appraise and synthesise the literature on the long-term cognitive health status of retired athletes. Evidence of poorer cognitive health among retired athletes with a history of concussion and head-impact exposure was found to be mixed. The results indicated that retired athletes with a history of sports-related concussion had declined cognitive performance in domains of memory, executive function and psychomotor function later in life. Retired athletes also appeared to have increased self-reported cognitive difficulties, but the paucity of high-quality, prospective studies limited the conclusions that could be drawn regarding cause-and-effect.In light of the findings from Systematic Review 1 and 2, cross-sectional Study I was conducted to investigate the validity of self-reported concussion history among professional rugby union players. Following on from this, the large cross-sectional Studies1I-V were conducted to explore (1) physical health (2) mental health (3) cognitive functioning and (4) multisensory processing among retired professional rugby players compared to retired professional rowers. Reliance on athlete self-reported concussion history is a limitation noted in the literature pertaining to long-term effects of concussion. A sample of 63 professional rugby union players were enrolled in Study I. Agreement between self-reported and clinically diagnosed concussions was found to be fair among the rugby players, with the average player under-reporting the number of clinically diagnosed concussions. Lifetime concussion history was found to be significantly negatively correlated with player self-report accuracy, with recall worsening as the number of lifetime concussions increased. However, the test re-test reliability of the Michigan TBI Identification Method was moderately strong. These findings suggest that there is a need for methodological improvements in concussion reporting and documentation among rugby players. Ninety-five retired athletes took part in Studies II-V; including 67 retired professional rugby players and 28 retired international rowers. The prevalence of overweight and obesity was found to be higher among the retired rugby players compared to the retired rowers in Study II. Indications of higher visceral and body fat and hypertension were also revealed among the rugby cohort. Significantly higher levels of pain and disability and alcohol usage was found among retried rugby players compared to rowers.Lower levels of exercise was found to be associated with greater levels of pain and disability, indicating that past participation in professional rugby may result in greater levels of pain and functional limitations in retirement. Results from this study highlight modifiable factors such as overweight and obesity and hypertension in retired professional rugby players which are associated with long-term risk of negative health outcomes.
Study III found that the point prevalence of depression among rugby players was 28%, which was higher than the rowers and the general population. The rugby group were found to have a significantly greater sense of athletic identity when compared to the rowers. Concussion history estimates were not associated with mental health indicators. However, multiple regression analysis revealed decreased satisfaction with life, decreased resilience, greater athletic identity and higher levels of pain and disability were significant predictors of depression among the rugby cohort. These factors were found to account for 67% of the variation in the chance of former rugby players having depression. Results demonstrated that the prevalence of mental health symptoms among former rugby players was 10% higher for alcohol misuse, 17% higher for depression, 13% higher for pain and disability and 20% higher for sleep disturbance compared to rowers.This study provides an insight into the estimate of mental health burden among retired professional rugby players. A combination of factors, including those which are unique to the elite athlete, alongside common stressors which affect the general population, make former professional rugby players an at-risk demographic for experiencing mental health issues.Interventions and strategies to prepare players for career transition may help to mitigate the risk of the occurrence of mental health symptoms and disorders in retirement. The association between the pain disability index and depression indicators suggests that interdisciplinary medical care and support for rugby players should be incorporated into the overall management of the transitioning player.Timely mental health diagnoses and management strategies, which are specific to this rugby population, are required.
In Study IV, the retired rugby players showed no reduction in performance on the CANTAB tests of neurocognitive functioning compared to retired rowers.Cluster-based analysis revealed no association between concussion history estimates and performance on CANTAB tests.Relative to rowers, rugby players performed significantly better in the domains and subdomains of attention and psychomotor speed and working memory assessed by the CANTAB, which revealed that the rugby players performed significantly better on tests of reaction time,motor speed, processing speed and visuospatial memory.Rugby players also performed significantly better than the general population on the same tasks based on normative data. Findings in the CANTAB tests of neurocognitive functioning revealed no overt negative impact of a concussion or years of exposure to rugby on performance. The fifth and final study of this thesis was conceptualised in response to the findings of the systematic reviews and the need for subtle tests in relation to concussion markers. The insights gained were integrated into completing, for the first time, a novel assessment of multisensory integration among retired professional rugby players using a robust audio-visual illusion paradigm-the ‘Sound Induced Flash Illusion Task’. This task provided a means of assessing multisensory‐integration,which may correlate with underlying concussive pathology and functional and structural cerebral disturbances. Compromised audio–visual integration or increased susceptibility to the sound induced flash illusion was found among former rugby players compared to the rowers. Concussion history estimates significantly predicted the odds of an accurate response suggesting that history of concussion may have a deleterious effect on multisensory integration efficiency. Visual illusions induced by sound may represent a valuable tool to explore the effects of concussion on aging rugby players. However, associations between susceptibility to the sound induced flash illusion and implications of repetitive sports related concussion need to be further investigated using large-scale comparisons.The current thesis employed comparisons across multiple measures and empirically validated measures of brain health and provides an insight intocognitive-perceptual measures and their applicability to future exploration of cognitive health and multisensory processing within retired professional rugby player cohorts.Healthy brain aging is known to be influenced by multiple factors both inert and environmental. The overall benefits of physical activity associated with sports participation are well established. However,in order to gain continued and optimal brain health benefits from exercise, it should be continued throughout the lifespan. Negative health-related factors and behaviours in retirement identified among rugby players in the current study, including; excessive alcohol usage, physical inactivity, sleep disturbance and pain and disability are known to adversely affect mental and cognitive health and increase the risk of neurodegeneration. Rugby players are a unique cohort of individuals. The results from the current study suggest that transition from professional rugby may present difficulties for players, particularly due to issues surrounding identity, pain and satisfaction with post professional rugby life.The transitional implications of retiring from professional rugby on brain health need to be explored further. A transitioning program from professional rugby for example could help protect players from the potential adverse consequences of abrupt physical, social and lifestyle changes associated with retirement.A proactive approach to management and education with regard to long-term physical health, particularly musculoskeletal morbidity, within professional rugby is required. Issues such as pain and disability associated with the physicality of professional rugby need to be addressed. The game of rugby is becoming more physical and players are required to have a larger body mass. Therefore, body composition changes which occur in retirement should be viewed in the context of known cardiovascular risk profiles among the general population.The current cross-sectional exploratory research provides information regarding cognitive performance of retired elite rugby players in the early stages of retirement from competition across multiple neurocognitive and perceptual domains. However, long-term follow-up would be required to delineate any negative impacts of concussion in this cohort as they age. Cognitive reserve and resilience owing to the young age of players may have influenced the current results
Intercultural readiness of nursing students: An integrative review of evidence examining cultural competence educational interventions
No full textWith the mounting reports of culturally insensitive care and the reported challenges nurses experience when caring for culturally diverse patients, developing the intercultural readiness of nursing students is a necessity. However, little is known as to the success of cultural competence educational interventions in undergraduate nursing curricula and there remains a lack of consensus within the literature as to how it should be structured,
organised and facilitated. Incorporating an integrative review method, this study synthesised international research on educational interventions used in preparing student nurses to care for culturally diverse patients. A systematic literature search of all published studies between 2013 and 2017, in CINAHL, Scopus, Medline, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, Education Source and PsycINFO databases were performed. The PRISMA checklist was used to guide the review process. Six hundred and twenty-four studies were screened for eligibility and the analysis of the fourteen included studies are presented within two overarching themes; increasing knowledge and understanding and developing commitment and confidence. Engaging student nurses in learning activities that
augment their understanding of, and commitment to, providing culturally competent care must include a variety of integrated culturally responsive pedagogical approaches made explicit and continuously developed across all learning opportunities
Structural evolution and the partitioning of deformation during basin growth and inversion: A case study from the Mizen Basin Celtic Sea, offshore Ireland
No full textThe Celtic Sea basins lie on the continental shelf between Ireland and northwest France and consist of a series of ENE–WSW trending elongate basins that extend from St George’s Channel Basin in the east to the Fastnet Basin in the west. The basins, which contain Triassic to Neogene stratigraphic sequences, evolved through a complex geological history that includes multiple Mesozoic rift stages and later Cenozoic inversion. The Mizen Basin represents the NW termination of the Celtic Sea basins and consists of two NE–SW-trending half-grabens developed as a result of the reactivation of Palaeozoic (Caledonian, Lower Carboniferous and Variscan) faults. The faults bounding the Mizen Basin were active as normal faults from Early Triassic to Late Cretaceous times. Most of the fault displacement took place during Berriasian to Hauterivian (Early Cretaceous) times, with a NW–SE direction of extension. A later phase of Aptian to Cenomanian (Early to Late Cretaceous) N–S-oriented extension gave rise to E–W-striking minor normal faults and reactivation of the pre-existing basin bounding faults that propagated upwards as left-stepping arrays of segmented normal faults. In common with most of the Celtic Sea basins, the Mizen Basin experienced a period of major erosion, attributed to tectonic uplift, during the Paleocene. Approximately N–S Alpine regional compression-causing basin inversion is dated as Middle Eocene to Miocene by a well-preserved syn-inversion stratigraphy. Reverse reactivation of the basin bounding faults was broadly synchronous with the formation of a set of near-orthogonal NW–SE dextral strike-slip faults so that compression was partitioned onto two fault sets, the geometrical configuration of which is partly inherited from Palaeozoic basement structure. The segmented character of the fault forming the southern boundary of the Mizen Basin was preserved during Alpine inversion so that Cenozoic reverse displacement distribution on syn-inversion horizons mirrors the earlier extensional displacements. Segmentation of normal faults therefore controls the geometry and location of inversion structures, including inversion anticlines and the back rotation of earlier relay ramps.Science Foundation IrelandPetroleum Infrastructure ProgrammeTullow Oi