NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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Promoting regional coherence and cohesion amidst multiple assistive technology initiatives in Africa
No full textBackground: Appropriate provision of assistive technology services (ATS) and products are a global health issue and essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Sixth African Network for Evidence-to-Action on Disability (AfriNEAD) conference included a workshop on collaboration, cohesion and coherence in ATS delivery in Africa.
Objective: This article aimed to summarise the workshop proceedings and to provide some recommendations on how coherence and cohesion can be facilitated in assistive technology services in Africa.
Method: A round table and small group discussions on assistive technology were facilitated in the virtual space of the AfriNEAD conference. Organisations and role players in ATS and products in Africa participated as keynote speakers, round table members and in small group discussions.
Results: There was consensus amongst participants that cohesive collaboration must be facilitated. They further agreed that users must be central to future action. There are local, national and regional initiatives, but none of these have grown into an African assistive technology platform. World Health Organization (WHO) Africa can bring partners together and facilitate creation, officialisation and operationalising of a continental assistive technology platform, through building on the existing initiatives. The AfriNEAD disability research country working groups can act as in-country coordinating bodies for ATS and afford a possibility of a structured approach to assistive technology research.
Conclusion: It is time to break away from Western institutionalised biomedical ways of providing ATS in Africa. Africans must develop coherent, cohesive ATS driven by empowered users who build on Africa's strengths and addresses the continents' unique needs
The role of phone-based triage nurses in supporting older adults with multimorbidity to digitally self-manage – Findings from the ProACT proof-of-concept study
No full textBackground: Achieving patient-centred care necessitates supporting individuals to have more involvement in the self-management of their care. Digital health technologies are widely recognised as a solution to empower more effective self-management. However, given the complexity of multiple chronic condition (multimorbidity) management, coupled with changes that occur as part of the normal ageing process, human support alongside digital self-management is often necessary for older people with multimorbidity (PwM) to sustain successful self-management.
Methods: The aim of the study was to explore the role played by a clinical, nurse-led telephone triage service in responding to alerts generated by older adults using a digital health platform, ProACT, to self-manage multiple chronic conditions over a period of 1 year. Semi-structured interviews with participants with multimorbidity were carried out across four time points during the trial, while interviews and focus groups were conducted with triage nurses at the end of the trial. Thematic analysis was conducted on the resulting transcripts.
Results: Themes found in the data include the work of triage nurses; the benefits of triage support; tensions such as anxiety due to patient monitoring; and the relationship between triage nurses and participants.
Discussion: This work contributes to an understanding of how older adults with multimorbidity and triage nurses collaborate in multiple chronic disease self-management. Findings are discussed within the context of Hudon et al.'s patient-centred care framework and indicate that patient-centred care was achieved, with both PwM and triage participants reporting positive experiences, relationships and several benefits of the triage support alongside digital self-management
Home and nearby nature: Uncovering relational flows between domestic and natural spaces in three countries during COVID-19
No full textThis paper addresses the role of living spaces, neighborhood environments, and access to nearby nature in shaping individual experiences of health and well-being during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Key data is drawn from the GreenCOVID study across Spain, England and Ireland. The survey gathered contextual information about home environments, neighborhood spaces, and access to nature elements, and standardized measures of health and wellbeing between April and July 2020 (n = 3,127). The paper used qualitative data from the survey to document flows between home and nearby nature. These were framed as barriers/mediators with specific focus on differing interpretations of home as both trap and refuge, with additional dimensions of loss, disruption and interruption shaping the broad responses to the pandemic. By contrast nearby nature was an enabler/moderator of health and wellbeing, offering healthy flows between home and nature as well as respite and additional health-enabling factors. Differences were identified between the three countries but important commonalities emerged too, recognising the role nature plays as an asset both within and immediately beyond the home. The use of flow as metaphor also recognises the importance of embodiment and the elastic nature of connections between home and nearby nature for wellbeing. More broadly, flow provides a valuable way to trace affective relational geographers to develop a wider understanding of assemblages of health during pandemics
Temporal associations between insomnia and depression symptoms in adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-lagged path modelling analysis
No full textIt is well recognised that there is an intimate relationship between sleep and depression, with poor quality or short duration sleep associated with greater symptoms of depression. However, it is not clear from the current evidence base what the temporal relationship is between symptoms of insomnia and depression. Further, it is also unclear how the COVID-19 pandemic may impact on such relationships. In this study we have examined the longitudinal relationships between symptoms of depression and insomnia during the COVID-19 pandemic at two points separated by one year (April/May 2020 and March/April 2021) in a sample of 1032 Irish adults using a cross-lagged paths model. We report that there is a bidirectional relationship across time between depression and insomnia symptoms (β = -0.115 between Insomnia symptoms and subsequent depression symptoms and β = -0.163 between depression symptoms and subsequent insomnia symptoms; scales scored in opposite directions), and that these relationships persist when COVID-19 anxiety, age and sex are introduced into the model. Our analyses suggest that during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic that insomnia symptoms predicted depression symptoms one year later, and conversely that depression symptoms predicted subsequent insomnia symptoms
Effect of Mannan-rich fraction supplementation on commercial broiler intestinum tenue and cecum microbiota
No full textBackground
The broiler gastrointestinal microbiome is a potent flock performance modulator yet may also serve as a reservoir for pathogen entry into the food chain. The goal of this project was to characterise the effect of mannan rich fraction (MRF) supplementation on microbiome diversity and composition of the intestinum tenue and cecum of commercial broilers. This study also aimed to address some of the intrinsic biases that exist in microbiome studies which arise due to the extensive disparity in 16S rRNA gene copy numbers between bacterial species and due to large intersample variation.
Results
We observed a divergent yet rich microbiome structure between different anatomical sites and observed the explicit effect MRF supplementation had on community structure, diversity, and pathogen modulation. Birds supplemented with MRF displayed significantly higher species richness in the cecum and significantly different bacterial community composition in each gastrointestinal (GI) tract section. Supplemented birds had lower levels of the zoonotic pathogens Escherichia coli and Clostridioides difficile across all three intestinum tenue sites highlighting the potential of MRF supplementation in maintaining food chain integrity. Higher levels of probiotic genera (eg. Lactobacillus and Blautia) were also noted in the MRF supplemented birds. Following MRF supplementation, the cecum displayed higher relative abundances of both short chain fatty acid (SFCA) synthesising bacteria and SCFA concentrations.
Conclusions
Mannan rich fraction addition has been observed to reduce the bioburden of pathogens in broilers and to promote greater intestinal tract microbial biodiversity. This study is the first, to our knowledge, to investigate the effect of mannan-rich fraction supplementation on the microbiome associated with different GI tract anatomical geographies. In addition to this novelty, this study also exploited machine learning and biostatistical techniques to correct the intrinsic biases associated with microbiome community studies to enable a more robust understanding of community structure
The Worldwide C3S CORDEX Grand Ensemble: A Major Contribution to Assess Regional Climate Change in the IPCC AR6 Atlas
No full textThe collaboration between the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment
(CORDEX) and the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) provides open access to an unprecedented
ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) simulations, across the 14 CORDEX continental-scale
domains, with global coverage. These simulations have been used as a new line of evidence to assess regional climate projections in the latest contribution of the Working Group I (WGI) to the IPCC
Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), particularly in the regional chapters and the Atlas. Here, we present
the work done in the framework of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) to assemble a
consistent worldwide CORDEX grand ensemble, aligned with the deadlines and activities of IPCC
AR6. This work addressed the uneven and heterogeneous availability of CORDEX ESGF data by
supporting publication in CORDEX domains with few archived simulations and performing quality
control. It also addressed the lack of comprehensive documentation by compiling information from
all contributing regional models, allowing for an informed use of data. In addition to presenting
the worldwide CORDEX dataset, we assess here its consistency for precipitation and temperature
by comparing climate change signals in regions with overlapping CORDEX domains, obtaining
overall coincident regional climate change signals. The C3S CORDEX dataset has been used for
the assessment of regional climate change in the IPCC AR6 (and for the interactive Atlas) and is
available through the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS)
Millions of historical monthly rainfall observations taken in the UK and Ireland rescued by citizen scientists
No full textRecovering additional historical weather observations from known archival sources will improve the understanding of how the climate is changing and enable detailed examination of unusual events within the historical record. The UK National Meteorological Archive recently scanned more than 66,000 paper sheets containing 5.28 million hand-written monthly rainfall observations taken across the UK and Ireland between 1677 and 1960. Only a small fraction of these observations were previously digitally available for climate scientists to analyse. More than 16,000 volunteer citizen scientists completed the transcription of these sheets of observations during early 2020 using the RainfallRescue.org website, built using the Zooniverse platform. A total of 3.34 million observations from more than 6000 locations have so far been quality controlled and made openly available. This has increased the total number of monthly rainfall observations that are available for this time period and region by a factor of six. The newly rescued observations will enable longer and much improved reconstructions of past variations in rainfall across the British and Irish Isles, including for periods of significant flooding and drought. Specifically, this data should allow the official gridded monthly rainfall reconstructions for the UK to be extended back to 1836, and even earlier for some regions
Early warning signal for a tipping point suggested by a millennial Atlantic Multidecadal Variability reconstruction
No full textAtlantic multidecadal variability is a coherent mode of natural climate variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean, with strong impacts on human
societies and ecosystems worldwide. However, its periodicity and drivers are
widely debated due to the short temporal extent of instrumental observations
and competing effects of both internal and external climate factors acting on
North Atlantic surface temperature variability. Here, we use a paleoclimate
database and an advanced statistical framework to generate, evaluate, and
compare 312 reconstructions of the Atlantic multidecadal variability over the
past millennium, based on different indices and regression methods. From this
process, the best reconstruction is obtained with the random forest method,
and its robustness is checked using climate model outputs and independent
oceanic paleoclimate data. This reconstruction shows that memory in variations of Atlantic multidecadal variability have strongly increased recently—a
potential early warning signal for the approach of a North Atlantic
tipping point
Antiphase response of the Indonesian–Australian monsoon to millennial-scale events of the last glacial period
No full textAntiphase behaviour of monsoon systems in alternate hemispheres is well established at yearly and orbital scales in response to alternating sensible heating of continental landmasses. At intermediate timescales without a sensible heating mechanism both in-phase and antiphase behaviours of northern and southern hemisphere monsoon systems are recorded at different places and timescales. At present, there is no continuous, high resolution, precisely dated record of millennial-scale variability of the Indonesian–Australian monsoon during the last glacial period with which to test theories of paleomonsoon behaviour. Here, we present an extension of the Liang Luar, Flores, speleothem δ18O record of past changes in southern hemisphere summer monsoon intensity back to 55.7 kyr BP. Negative δ18O excursions (stronger monsoon) occur during Heinrich events whereas positive excursions (weaker monsoon) occur during Dansgaard-Oeschger interstadials—a first order antiphase relationship with northern hemisphere summer monsoon records. An association of negative δ18O excursions with speleothem growth phases in Liang Luar suggests that these stronger monsoons are related to higher rainfall amounts. However, the response to millennial-scale variability is inconsistent, including a particularly weak response to Heinrich event 3. We suggest that additional drivers such as underlying orbital-scale variability and drip hydrology influence the δ18O response
Philosophy of education in a new key: Future of philosophy of education
No full textWhat is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars
and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—
plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and
‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role
may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that
‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this
collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose (and do not categorise under
forced headings) diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We
have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these
philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and
ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and
unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and
how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the
future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is
embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experienc