6664 research outputs found
Sort by
Synthetic opioids in Poland—A cause for concern or a media distraction?
Get PDFBackground
The North American continent has been battling a major health crisis defined by opioids like OxyContin and fentanyl for over two decades now. In that time, it seemed that Europe is rather resilient to a similar problem, and heroin retained its position as a the most problematic opioid. This does seem to be changing and European media, including in Poland, is starting to report on growing popularity of synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
Methods
We use official data showing the number of prescriptions for synthetic opioids; data showing the percentage of people entering treatment due to different opioids; police data on drug interceptions as well as lab closures, and data on opioid related poisonings.
Results
The data demonstrates that although Polish physicians are increasingly more likely to prescribe synthetic opioids like OxyContin or Fentanyl, their problematic use remains low.
Conclusion
Poland currently does not seem to be in a position that resembles an early stage of an opioid crisis. With this article we want to calm a heated public debate that is currently taking place in Poland, and redirect attention to a much more substantial problem of synthetic cathinones
Sukuk for Sub-Saharan African Infrastructure Post-COVID-19
No full textSub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is currently confronted with a significant infrastructure deficit, exacerbated by the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the deadline for the United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals approaches, it becomes imperative to identify alternative funding sources for vital infrastructure projects in the region. Consequently, this research investigated the potential of sukuk, a form of Islamic finance, as an alternative means of financing infrastructure development in SSA. Drawing upon Lee’s socioeconomic conditions theory. Drawing upon Lee’s socioeconomic conditions theory, this study reveals that States in SSA can draw insights from the experience of Malaysia and adopt innovative sukuk-type bonds to generate necessary funding for critical infrastructure. Additionally, the chapter evaluated the necessity of establishing a supportive framework to facilitate sustained private-sector investment in infrastructure
Understanding the contribution of intellectual disabilities nurses. Paper 4 of 4 - Impacts of intellectual disability nursing interventions
Get PDFInternationally, there is a wide variety of roles and expectations for intellectual disabilities nurses, and the range of nursing interventions they undertake in this field has not been clearly identified. In this paper we report the impacts of intellectual nursing interventions from an online survey of intellectual disability nurses. An online survey, using voluntary response sampling was used to collect case study examples from 230 participants from seven countries. We identified 13 themes of the impacts, and 23 broad groups of case examples of intellectual disability nursing interventions with, pregnant women, children, adults, older adults, and people at the end of life. Awareness of the roles of intellectual disability nurses and their importance in addressing health inequalities and facilitating the use of mainstream services for people with intellectual disabilities will enable improved healthcare experience and healthcare outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities
Bispecific FpFs: a versatile tool for preclinical antibody development
Get PDFWe previously described FpFs [1 with combining low line] (Fab–PEG–Fab) as binding mimetics of IgGs. FpFs are prepared with di(bis-sulfone) conjugation reagents [3 with combining low line] that undergo disulfide rebridging conjugation with the accessible disulfide of each Fab (Scheme 1). We have now prepared bispecific FpFs [2 with combining low line] (bsFpF and Fab1–PEG–Fab2) as potential bispecific antibody mimetics with the intent that bsFpFs could be used in preclinical antibody development since sourcing bispecific antibodies may be challenging during preclinical research. The di(bis-sulfone) reagent [3 with combining low line] was first used to prepare a bsFpF [2 with combining low line] by the sequential conjugation of a first Fab and then a second Fab to another target (Scheme 2). Seeking to improve bsFpF synthesis, the asymmetric conjugation reagent, bis-sulfone bis-sulfide [1 with combining low line][6 with combining low line], with different thiol conjugation reactivities at each terminus (Scheme 4) was examined and the bsFpFs appeared to be formed at similar conversion to the di(bis-sulfone) reagent [3 with combining low line]. To explore the advantages of using common intermediates in the preparation of bsFpF families, we investigated bsFpF synthesis with a protein conjugation–ligation approach (Scheme 5). Reagents with a bis-sulfone moiety for conjugation on one PEG terminus and a ligation moiety on the other terminus were examined. Bis-sulfone PEG trans-cyclooctene (TCO) [2 with combining low line][8 with combining low line] and bis-sulfone PEG tetrazine (Tz) [3 with combining low line][0 with combining low line] were used to prepare several bsFpFs targeting various therapeutic targets (TNF-α, IL6R, IL17, and VEGF) and tissue affinity targets (hyaluronic acid and collagen II). Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) binding studies indicated that there was little difference between the dissociation rate constant (kd) for the unmodified Fab, mono-conjugated PEG–Fab and the corresponding Fab in a bsFpF. The Fab association rate (ka) in the bsFpF was slower than for PEG–Fab, which may be because of mass differences that influence SPR results. These observations suggest that each Fab will bind to its target independently of the other Fab and that bsFpF binding profiles can be estimated using the corresponding PEG–Fab conjugates
Decrypting Cryptocurrencies: An Exploration of the Impact on Financial Stability
Get PDFThis study aims to empirically examine the relationship between cryptocurrency and various facets of the financial system. It seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of how cryptocurrencies interact with, and influence, the stock market, the U.S. dollar’s strength, inflation rates, and traditional banking operations. This is carried out using linear regression models, Granger causality tests, case studies, including the collapse of the Futures Exchange (FTX), and the successful integration of Binance. The study unveiled a strong positive correlation between cryptocurrency market capitalization and key financial indicators like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Consumer Price Index, and traditional banking operations. This indicates the growing significance of cryptocurrencies within the global financial landscape. However, a mild association was found with the U.S. dollar, suggesting a limited influence of cryptocurrencies on traditional fiat currencies currently. Despite certain limitations such as reliance on secondary data, methodological choices, and geographic focus, this research provides valuable insights for policymakers, financial industry stakeholders, and academic researchers, underlining the necessity for continued study into the complex interplay between cryptocurrencies and financial stability
“Becoming restrained”: Conceptualising restrictive practices in the care of people living with dementia in acute hospital settings.
Get PDFThe use of restrictive practices within health and social care has attracted policy and practice attention, predominantly focussing on children and young people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities, and autism. However, despite growing appreciation of the need to improve care quality for people living with dementia (PLWD), the potentially routine use of restrictive practices in their care has received little attention. PLWD are at significant risk of experiencing restrictive practices during unscheduled acute hospital admissions. In everyday routine hospital care of PLWD, concerns about subtle and less visible forms of restrictive practices and their impacts remain. This paper draws on Deleuze's concepts of ‘assemblage’ and ‘event’ to conceptualise restrictive practices as institutional, interconnection social and political attitudes, and organisational cultural practices. We argue that this approach illuminates the diverse ways restrictive practices are used, legitimatised, and perpetuated in the care of PLWD. We examine restrictive practices in acute care contexts, understanding their use requires examining the wider socio-political, organisational cultures and professional practice contexts in which clinical practices occurs. Whereas ‘events’ and ‘assemblages’ have predominately been used to examine embodied entanglements in diverse health contexts, examining restrictive practices as a structural assemblage extends the application of this theoretical framework
The Impact of Knowledge Management and Innovation Implementation on Manufacturing Performance in Nigeria
No full textThe main goal of this study is to analyse the impact of knowledge management (KM)
and innovation implementation on the performance of the Nigerian manufacturing
sector. Understanding these elements' effects on the performance of the Nigerian
manufacturing industry is the primary goal. In addition, environmental uncertainties
associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and other cultural barriers to manufacturing
performance were analysed from a Nigerian cultural standpoint.
The study gathered quantitative and qualitative data from the Manufacturing
Association of Nigeria. To understand the relationship between knowledge
management variables (including KM enablers and processes), a structural equation
modelling analysis was conducted using SPSS AMOS 29 to determine the impacts of
knowledge management and innovation implementation on Nigerian manufacturing
performance.
Based on the study findings, the underperformance of the manufacturing sector was
due to inadequate government policy, inadequate infrastructure, financial capital
issues, inappropriate technology, intense global market competition, over-reliance on
foreign raw material supplies, the inadequate buying power of Nigerian customers, a
proliferation of taxes on manufactured goods in addition to a reduction in the number
of Nigerian goods exported. The study concludes that Nigerian manufacturing
companies can raise their levels of expertise by accumulating information and
knowledge acquired from prior experience from projects, training, and product
development research and development endeavours. Consequently, offering
solutions to the manufacturers improves their products and services, leading to high
productivity in Nigeria's manufacturing.
From a Nigerian cultural perspective, this research will contribute to managing existing
information and incorporating new ideas within the manufacturing sector. Furthermore,
the study will provide empirical evidence showcasing the significance of KM and
innovation implementation on the manufacturing performance of Nigeria
Listening as Contemplation: A reflexive thematic analysis of listening to modular-based compositions
No full textThis paper and the live demonstration that accompanies it constitute part of a practice-based autoethnography that focuses on an engagement with modular synthesizers in the process of composing electronic music. Driven by the author’s meditation practice, this study examines how modular-based practices might embody, articulate, and promote contemplative insights, i.e., experiential understandings that arise through meditation. To develop effective approaches for working with this concept, the author employs the enquiry cycle of self-reflection: an iterative approach borrowed from action research, divided into stages of planning, acting, and reflecting on action (Haseman, 2010). This entails developing bespoke hardware and software configurations alongside musical sketches, recording performances of those sketches, and reflecting on the recordings before repeating the cycle. In this process, different methods for capturing data are used at different stages of the cycle, including text-based logs, patch diagrams and audio-visual journals.
Based on autoethnographic data collected and analysed elsewhere, certain guiding principles for contemplative music making are established upon initiating the cycle. These include pattern-based repetition, gradual musical process, timbral transformation and a particular interest in spatial effects. These emphases are seen to reflect the Buddhist notion of emptiness, according to which all objects—both physical and imaginary—are empty of their own existence, products of a complex web of causes and conditions. Following these guidelines, the author suggests several modular-based tools and techniques. Sequencing, for one, is offered as a way of establishing patterns, whereas sequence operations and delay processes create permutations and a sense of polyphony through pattern-overlay. Working with the idea of space as material, the case of the Make Noise Erbe-Verb is examined due to its affordance of flexible voltage control over digital reverb parameters. Finally, the author examines working with the harmonic oscillator, a device that employs Pythagorean just intonation to create complex timbres.
Showcasing his contemplative approach for working with modular synthesizers, the author performs a selection of works in progress using the suggested setup. Much like the practice of vipassana, where attention is directed towards the flux of bodily sensations, the resultant pieces promote a shift from goal-oriented, teleological forms of listening to a moment-to-moment observation of sound as changing phenomenon
Outside Television: Fellini on Exposure and Attention in the Age of Abundance
Get PDFFederico Fellini had a long, rich and vexed relationship with television. He famously once dismissed it as ‘something that furnished a corner of the house’. Yet, as television’s diffusion grew exponentially in the second half of the twentieth century, he could not himself remain untouched by its ubiquity. Though adopting an increasingly critical stance towards the medium, and its commercialization, in the course of his career, Fellini nevertheless made several films for television and even, in the last decade of his life, a number of commercials for it. This article seeks to deepen the understanding of Fellini’s ambivalent position as a critic of television by looking at his late films. Less well known than his earlier works, these films crucially thematize the coincident developments of a globally plentiful televisual era – its age of ‘abundance’ taking off in the 1980s – and, more locally, of the commercialization of Italian broadcasting. The Voice of the Moon (1990) and Ginger and Fred (1986) in particular are intent on addressing a complex pervasiveness of television, as a form literally and figuratively ‘in the air’. Rooted both in the medium’s physical materiality and infrastructure and in its less palpable economic and socio-cultural machinery, this perceived – if not actual – pervasiveness of television crystallizes in these films in a quality that this article will describe as ‘outsideness’. Television is not simply presented as a form that has transcended what might have been its traditional domestic boundaries and spilled out into public spaces but also, more subtly, as a form whose materiality and organization contribute to its presence and diffusion ‘outside’. While Fellini’s cinema is generally seen as playfully – and obsessively – self-reflexive, here it will be foregrounded as a significant site of wider media reflection and critique. By connecting his work with critical perspectives about television, as well as newer networked media, the present discussion also seeks to consider how Fellini’s late films began to articulate concerns about immersion, exposure and the economies of attention that were soon to come more forcefully into the foreground of critical debates in media theory with the transition to digital, online forms. In so doing, as well as contributing to Fellini scholarship, this article also seeks to insert his work within debates on television and theories of media as, itself, a critical intervention
Rewriting the myth of invisibility: The presentation of older adults in Australian advertising
Get PDFOld age diversity and inclusion in branded communication has become an increasingly important topic in Australia. This chapter establishes why brands should care about old age equity, inclusion and diversity, followed by an investigation into the current presentation of older adults in Australian advertising. Adopting a promotional culture stance, this empirical study examines the social standing of older Australians, those aged 50 years and over, as reflected by advertising, and investigates the previous claims of scant attention, marginalisation and dismissal of this social group. A media content analysis of 1,050 print advertisements shows that while older adults as a whole are frequently presented, there are still intersectional aspects of old age that are neglected in contemporary Australian advertising, such as gender, ethnic and age diversity. Although brands are increasingly offering representations of older adults, this has yet to embrace a more authentic appearance of different experiences and backgrounds commensurate with Australian society. It is recommended that brands and advertising professionals in Australia take inspiration from other countries to accelerate their efforts for equity, diversity and inclusion in branded communication