9627 research outputs found
Sort by
‘Like flesh and a nail’: Rethinking the Nexus of Familial Ties and Armed Conflict
Get PDFThis article advances a feminist theorization of the critical nexus between family and armed conflict. It does so by examining the relationship between familial ties and women’s participation in fighting forces. We focus on two key questions: What are the familial ties that are constituted through conditions of war? And how do these ties shape women’s participation in armed groups, in various forms? Critical IR and feminist scholarship recognize that family sustains war symbolically and materially. Yet, what is missing is a theoretical conceptualization of the relationship between the diverse ties that constitute family in contexts of war and women’s participation in armed groups. Our novel framework – of militarized familial ties - conceptualizes familial ties as affective bonds that both emerge through and are transformed by war’s violence. This dynamic framing allows us, first, to systematically illustrate how familial ties shape key processes pursued by armed groups, including the recruitment and retention of fighters. And second, our framing offers crucial new insights into how the political subjectivities of women fighters intersect with familial ties. We offer a new typology of militarized familial ties to illustrate how pre-existing and emergent familial ties both condition, and are conditioned by, women’s participation in armed groups. We demonstrate the wider implications of our theoretical intervention by reflecting on long-term field research conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Nepal
Cost-effectiveness of swab versus tissue sampling for infected diabetic foot ulcers from the CODIFI2 randomised controlled trial
Get PDFThis multi-centre, Phase III, prospective, unblinded, two-arm parallel group, randomised controlled trial compared clinical (reported elsewhere) and economic outcomes of swab versus tissue sampling over a 52–104 week period.
Resource use was logged using case record forms and patient questionnaire at weeks 4, 12, 26, 39, 52 and 104, costed using laboratory and published sources from the UK NHS perspective, at 2021/2022 price-year. EQ-5D-3L questionnaires issued at these time points were used to derive quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs).
To account for imbalances such as age, a regression-based approach was used to estimate survival, expected costs and QALYs between the sampling arms. Available case analysis (ACA) and multiple imputation methods were applied for self reported missing data, and ACA for researcher-collected data (survival, hospitalisations and antibiotic use). Probabilistic sensitivity analysis was used to assess the uncertainty of economic results.
Results
We recruited 149 participants (75 swab, 74 tissue) from 21 UK sites, between 07 May 2019 and 28 April 2022 (last follow-up 28 April 2023). Planned sample size was 730 participants, for 90% power to detect 12.5% difference in healing at 52 weeks, but the trial stopped early due to low recruitment.
Expected QALYs in the swab-sampling arm were greater than in the tissue-sampling arm at weeks 26, 52 and 104.
The cost of tissue sampling was greater than of swabbing when including antibiotics and hospitalisation. Swab sampling participants had higher QALYs and lower costs across weeks 26–52, reducing slightly by week 104.
Conclusions
Because of higher costs, lower QALYs and lack of evidence of benefit, potentially due to the trial being underpowered, tissue sampling was dominated by wound swabbing in the cost-effectiveness analysis
Symptom Burden, Treatment Goals, and Information Needs of Younger Women with Pelvic Organ Prolapse: A Content Analysis of ePAQ-Pelvic Floor Free-Text Responses
Get PDFBackground/Objectives: Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is a common condition that significantly impacts quality of life. Research has focused largely on older women, while experiences of younger women remain relatively underexplored despite challenges unique to this population. Informed by the biopsychosocial model of illness, this study aims to assess the symptom burden, treatment goals, and information needs of younger women complaining of prolapse by analyzing questionnaire responses from an existing electronic Personal Assessment Questionnaire—Pelvic Floor (ePAQ-PF) dataset. Methods: Mixed-methods content analysis was conducted using free-text data from an anonymized multi-site ePAQ-PF dataset of 5717 responses collected across eight UK NHS trusts (2018–2022). A quantitative, deductive approach was first used to identify younger women (≤50 years old) with self-reported prolapse. ePAQ-PF scores for younger women with prolapse were compared with those aged >50 years, using Mann–Whitney tests. Free-text response data were analyzed inductively to qualitatively explore younger women’s symptom burden, treatment goals, and information needs. Results: Of the 1473 women with prolapse identified, 399 were aged ≤50 years. ePAQ-PF scores of the younger cohort demonstrated significantly greater symptom severity and bother than those aged >50, particularly in bowel, prolapse, vaginal, body image, and sexual health domains (p < adjusted threshold). Qualitative analysis undertaken to understand women’s concerns and priorities produced five health-related themes (physical health; functionality; psychosocial and emotional wellbeing; reproductive and sexual health; and healthcare journeys) and a sixth intersecting theme representing information needs. Conclusions: The findings highlight the substantial symptom burden of younger women with prolapse, as well as treatment goals and information needs specific to this population. The development of age-specific resources is identified as a requirement to support this group
Defining outcomes: exploring the perspectives of people who use aided augmentative and alternative communication to develop the content for a patient-reported outcome measure
Get PDFEvaluating clinical interventions is an important component of quality assurance and informs decision making about the funding and commissioning of health and care services. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are tools that evaluate health interventions from the perspective of people receiving care. There is no validated PROM tool that evaluates the impact of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) interventions. The current study was designed to understand what outcomes are important to people who use aided AAC. The study aimed to generate measurement items and to confirm the conceptual framework for a PROM for AAC. Seventeen participants aged 14 to 72 who use AAC were recruited. Each participant contributed to a one-to-one interview, informed by a topic guide developed in collaboration with a group of people with experience of using AAC. The research team used framework analysis to map data into an analytic framework informed by previous research. Analysis resulted in the development 33 items within seven domains that constitute the content for a PROM for AAC. The domains were mapped onto two conceptual models: Participation, including the Family of Participation-Related Constructs (fPRC), and the Communication Capability Approach. This research contributes rigorously developed PROM content grounded in the voices of people who use AAC and offers two conceptual frameworks to guide future tool development. It also raises critical questions about the theoretical underpinnings of AAC interventions and the need for outcome measures that reflect the evolving aspirations of users. The findings have implications for clinical practice, service delivery, and the ethical development of person-centred outcome measures in AAC
Efficacy of air cleaning units for preventing SARS-CoV-2 and other hospital-acquired infections on medicine for older people wards: a quasi-experimental controlled before-and-after study
Get PDFBackground: Nosocomial infections are costly, and airborne transmission is increasingly recognized as important for spread. Air cleaning units (ACUs) may reduce transmission, but little research has focused on their effectiveness on open wards. Aim: To assess whether ACUs reduce nosocomial severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), or other, infections on older adult inpatient wards. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental before-and-after study on two intervention–control ward pairs in a UK teaching hospital. Infections were identified using routinely collected electronic health record data during 1 year of ACU implementation and the preceding year (‘core study period’). Extended analyses included 6 months of additional data from one ward pair following ACU removal. Hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated through Cox regression controlling for age, sex, ward and background infection risk. The time that the ACUs were switched on was also recorded for Intervention Ward 2. Findings: ACUs were initially feasible, but compliance reduced towards the end of the study (average operation in first vs second half of ACU time on Intervention Ward 2: 77% vs 53%). In total, 8171 admissions for >48 h (6112 patients, median age 85 years) were included. Overall, the incidence of ward-acquired SARS-CoV-2 was 3.8%. ACU implementation was associated with a non-significant trend of lower hazard for SARS-CoV-2 infection [HR core study period 0.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.53–1.52; HR extended study period 0.78, 95% CI 0.53–1.14]. Only 1.5% of admissions resulted in other notable ward-acquired infections. Conclusion: ACUs may reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection to a clinically meaningfully degree. Larger studies could reduce uncertainty, perhaps using a crossover design, and factors influencing acceptability to staff and patients should be explored further
Blue hydrogen in the United Kingdom – A policy & environmental case study
No full textBlue hydrogen is one of the energy carriers to be adopted by the United Kingdom to reduce emissions to net Zero by 2050, and its use is majorly influenced by policy and technological innovations. With more than 10 blue hydrogen facilities planning productive offtake from 2025, there is an urgent need to confirm the viability of these proposed facilities to aid decarbonization and the path to conformity to policy regulation. This study discovers that the Acorn blue hydrogen facility can produce blue hydrogen within the low-carbon hydrogen standard set by the United Kingdom's government. In this study, a detailed examination of hydrogen production techniques is conducted using a lifecycle assessment (LCA) approach aimed to understand the environmental impact of producing 144 tons of hydrogen per day using the Acorn hydrogen facility as a case study. This was followed by a sensitive analysis embracing steam and oxygen consumption and methane leakages, the ability of the facility meeting the low carbon hydrogen standard, economics, and the externality-priced production costs that embody the environmental impact. A gate-to-gate LCA shows that the Acorn hydrogen plant must aim at carbon capture rates of >90 % to meet the set UK target of 20 gCO2e/MJLHV. The study further identifies from literature that the autothermal reforming (ATR) system with integrated carbon capture and storage (CCS) production technology as the most environmentally sustainable technology at present in comparison to commercially available options studied. This assessment helps to appraise the potential unintended causes and effects of the production of blue hydrogen that should aid future policy guidance and investments
'"What to Perform?" The figural possibilities of performance art history' translated by Roger McKeon as "Que performer?' Les possibilités figures de l'histoire de l'art-performance.
No full textI admit that the title of this article is a bit flirtatious, even bamboozling. What follows does not explicitly address the figural, nor does it offer a history of performance art. What is examined, however, are examples of Lyotard's work informed by a trace of the figural: What to Paint? Adami, Arakawa, Buren; Karel Appel, A Gesture of Color, and the exhibition Les Immatériaux. Lyotard's response to artworks and the questions they raise, however, bears no shortage of affinities with performance and the provocations of the practice of performance art. This proximity emerges from a style of writing and a curatorial approach that shifts chronology and calls attention to the possibilities of presence. The questions posed are never more than beginnings. What to Paint? questions the possibilities offered by painting, as that which other forms of expression seem incapable of producing. In the narrator's unusually autobiographical account "You," the event of presence is illustrated by an experience of a bicycle ride under the blue skies of a childhood in Vendée. This little story is continued throughout the first dialogical section "The Presence" to evoke the inarticulable. The interlocutor, "He," asks: "But confess that something, I do not say a thing, an object, but that an event, which is not a thing, but at least a caesura in space-time, takes place, and that it is this that must be "rendered…
The prosumption networks of Twitter users following the Premier League’s support for #BlackLivesMatter and the #WhiteLivesMatter response
Get PDFThough still of concern, racist abuse within the UK’s football (soccer) stadiums has declined. However, with the increasing significance of digital leisure in people’s lives, there is now a large amount of abuse related to football that is expressed through social media. Digital communities provide both the means of consuming leisure (watching football) and ‘talking’ about it with whoever will ‘listen’. Here we examine the social architecture of networks on Twitter as they emerged in response to two incidents in 2020. To do this, we adopt Social Network Analysis to reveal the prosumption networks that form around key ‘users’. Our article offers empirical insights into racial digital leisure, addresses what action is needed from sporting organisations and media platforms, and suggests avenues for future research
Co-Designing Recipe Resources to Support Healthy Eating in African-Caribbeans in the United Kingdom: An Academic and Community Partnership Approach
Get PDFIntroduction
The wealth of free food-based resources available to UK consumers on healthy eating and nutrition provides very limited illustrations of ethnic foods including African-Caribbean cuisines. This inequality in available resources limits the ability of African-Caribbean communities to effectively manage their health and reduces the cultural competence of health professionals.
Objective
The aim was to co-design healthier versions of several traditional African-Caribbean recipe resources by working in partnership with academics, a community-based Third Sector organisation, and their service-users.
Methods
Nutritional analysis software was used to theoretically modify the nutritional composition of popular traditional African-Caribbean recipes using recently produced analytical food composition data. Twelve recipes were theoretically modified to reduce the content of key nutrients and ingredients of concern (i.e., salt/sodium, free sugars), or increase those nutrients known to be at risk of lower than adequate intakes (i.e., iron, folate) within the UK African-Caribbean communities. Recipes were then prepared by community service-users (n = 12) of African-Caribbean ethnicity living in Leeds (UK) in the community service setting. The feasibility and acceptability of the recipes were evaluated by obtaining verbal feedback from service-users, following which recipes were further refined as appropriate.
Results
Modification resulted in a reduction in the overall energy (in the range of 23–188 kcal), fat (in the range of 0.1–13.7 g), saturated fatty acid (in the range of 0.1–2.9 g) and sugar (in the range of 0.2–8.3 g), provided by 100 g of the standard recipes. Similarly, modification resulted in the reduction in salt from about 63 to 0.01 g per 100 g edible portion of the standard recipe.
Conclusion
It is feasible to modify African-Caribbean recipes to be healthier and acceptable to consumers. Combined with improving access to food environments that make available healthy foods, the recipes are intended to support healthier eating with African-Caribbean foods
AutisTime: Imagined Friends and Borrowed Clocks
No full textThis experimental essay combines critical research with life writing and poetic forms to explore and begin defining ‘AutisTime’. As a choice, a state and a necessity, ‘AutisTiming’ is immersion within imagination. It involves daydreaming, is emphasised here as a root of creativity itself. The naming AutisTime is, in part, an answer to a question the author was frequently asked as a child, often with mild concern: What are you DOING all that time on your own in empty rooms? Against preconceptions that time alone for autistic people actually means loneliness, the essay positions autistic time alongside Anderson’s (1983) notion of simultaneity: the awareness and appreciation of shared co-existence beyond immediate living space. After discussing ‘imagined friendships’ with neurodivergent others in past, local settings, the focus grows global, to platform autistic voices (in particular from Black authors) alongside contemporary concerns in autism studies
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Leeds Beckett Repository? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!