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Aflatoxin Detection in Pistachio Nuts: Conventional Methods, Emerging Technologies, and Critical Insights
Get PDFAflatoxin contamination in pistachios, caused by Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus, poses significant risks to food safety and global trade due to its carcinogenic properties. This review examines traditional detection methods such as High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay. Although these techniques are highly precise, they are costly, destructive, and impractical for smallholder farmers. Emerging nondestructive technologies enable rapid, accurate detection without destroying the sample, particularly when Hyperspectral Imaging (HSI) is combined with machine learning. Regulatory thresholds such as the European Union (EU) 8 µg/kg limit for AFB1 create challenges for producers and exporters, especially since HSI methods often lack the precision required for validated quantitative regression at this level on naturally contaminated pistachio kernels. High implementation costs, limited regulatory guidance, and calibration demands hinder its adoption. Climate change heightens contamination risks, calling for predictive models that integrate HSI with environmental data. To support equitable access, especially for smallholder farmers, reducing costs, standardizing protocols, and enhancing global cooperation are essential. These measures will strengthen food safety and regulatory compliance in pistachio production
Coach‐Perpetrated Interpersonal Violence: Witnessing, Perceived Harmfulness and the Role of Coaching Motivational Climate
Get PDFCoach‐perpetrated interpersonal violence can pose significant risks to athletes' development as well as psychological, physical and social well‐being worldwide. This study examined the perceived harmfulness of witnessed coach‐perpetrated interpersonal violence behaviours in the North Mediterranean region, alongside any associations with coaching climates (empowering and disempowering). Data were collected from 494 active coaches across Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain and Portugal through an online questionnaire where they reported witnessing and perceived harm of psychological, physical, instrumental and sexual violence, as well as their coaching climates. The analysis showed psychological violence as the most frequently witnessed form and physical violence being perceived as the most harmful one. An empowering coaching climate, characterised by autonomy support and positive reinforcement, correlated positively with higher perceived harm, especially for psychological and instrumental violence. Conversely, a disempowering climate, marked by control and punitive behaviours, correlated with lower perceived harm. Gender, coach education and professional status were found to influence coaches' perceptions, highlighting that cultural and structural complexities have a role towards interpersonal violence tolerance. The study underscores the critical need for culturally tailored safe sport initiatives, mandatory training of coaches in safe coaching behaviours and practices and proactive safeguarding measures to mitigate interpersonal violence across diverse sporting contexts. Culturally informed interventions need to challenge the normalisation of violence in coaching and encourage empowering climates that place athletes in the centre and prioritise their welfare
Relationality, Affect and the Wound of Race: A Conversation on an Artistic Intervention into Global Colonial Whiteness
Get PDFThis article takes the form of a conversation concerning the latest iterations of our ongoing artistic interventions into Whiteness1 as global coloniality and bodily enacted discomfort. We created two interconnected video installations—You Are Invited (Halász and Hunter 2023) and Disobedient Bodies: Disobedience in Five Acts (Halász and Hunter 2025)—which we have presented over the past two years in various White institutional spaces across the USA, South Africa, Mexico, and South Korea2. This conversation captures our thinking as it has developed in the making of the artworks and in a constant exchange with participants in the installations. Engaging with extended reflections of one participant who experienced the video installation You are Invited in the USA, we consider why we are invested in confronting global colonial Whiteness as white makers and how we grapple through our own ongoing investments in Whiteness as we seek to challenge it through our artistic practice. As an entry point into our discussion, we consider our use of the African American
writer James Baldwin’s 19533 essay “Stranger in the Village” in the artwork’s staging of a confrontation with the collective wound of race. We start here because critically analysing this use from the point of view of installation participants tells us something about the way Whiteness works through the tensions between representational and affective registers. If heeded, this tension can assist the move towards racialised accountability with care in artmaking. Where this tension is not heeded, it risks reproducing the same old White story
Understanding the current available workforce planning data for Occupational Therapists: A scoping review to support collaboration workforce planning in the Leeds Health and Care System
Get PDFIntroduction:
Strategic workforce planning is a priority for health and social care, and the city of Leeds is focused on localised planning to balance supply and demand and develop this based on changing needs of the system. There are gaps in data required for Occupational Therapy (OT) workforce modelling; therefore, we need to find out whether proxy data exist that can support this activity in Leeds.
Method:
This scoping review appraised existing OT workforce literature from five academic databases using a three-staged approach, capturing any degree of data relating to OT workforce from the last 10 years; evidence-based workforce data to be applied to workforce planning where actual workforce data is unavailable.
Results:
We included nine papers in this scoping review, organising available data under three headings: current capacity of OT workforce, OT workforce entering the health and care system and returning to practice OTs and outflows reflecting turnover data.
Conclusion:
Findings demonstrated significant gaps in available workforce data for Occupational Therapists to support collaborative workforce planning in the Leeds Health and Care System. The available data vary hugely limiting opportunities for proxy data utilisation. Improved consistency and quality of OT data are crucial to support future workforce planning
A smart secure virtual reality immersive application for alzheimer’s and dementia patients
Get PDFAlzheimer's disease (AD) poses significant challenges for the elderly, leading to cognitive decline, social isolation, and lower quality of life. Current interventions often require cumbersome wearable devices e.g. the camera-based monitoring that may raise privacy concerns. However, these issues are not fully addressed previously. To fill this gap, this research proposes a new framework in non-invasive combination of Virtual Reality (VR), Voice recognition, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to act as a supportive system for people with AD. The system provides a brand-new approach that tailored cognitive stimulation and companionship through the immersive VR scenarios, memory games, virtual trips, and an AI assistant together as a single platform. The AI-based assessment of the patient is employed to ensure that the experience is more relevant and helpful to the patient. The voice recognition is the most simple and easy user-interface. The security measures include access controls, encryption and continuous monitoring of cloud patient data. The initial study has been promising evidenced by the outcome of involving patients with Alzheimer's and dementia, their families, and clinicians. Participants reported heightened interest, better quality of life, less sense of isolation, and improved cognitive functioning, which have particularly achieved one of our goals, in patients' well-beings in mental healthcare. The research indicates a significant step forward enhancing the quality of support for both cognitive function and social interaction for older adults with AD and dementia. In comparison with other currently existing systems, our newly developed integrated framework has made additional contributions to the areas of AD in dynamic cognitive adaptation, bilingual interaction, and secure real-time personalized system
Capturing tourist experiences through time: An extended adaptation of the descriptive experience sampling method
No full textIn this research letter we reflect on a new mixed methods approach to gaining a deep understanding of shared tourism experiences and the memory of them. We combined an adaptation of descriptive experience sampling with self-recorded conversations and in-depth interviews. The method is described and critically reflected upon with suggestions for the future use of this approach within events and tourism research
The Discworld Mapp’d: Constructing competing narratives of inequality in science-fiction fandom
Get PDFTerry Pratchett’s authorial lens has focussed ever more on the human condition. In 2021, the books known by fans as the City Watch Trilogy, were adapted for television and have been attacked by fans for betraying Pratchett’s vision. In this paper, we explore how fans have attacked this BBC adaptation in public spaces online as part of their communicative leisure performativity. For some, changes in the internal motivations of key characters, plot changes, and the strange re-building of the city of Ankh-Morpork (guarded by Sam Vimes and the City Watch) is enough for them to reject it. For others, though, it is changing characters genders and ethnicities that has driven their refusal to endorse the programme. We show that this criticism is not justified: even though early Pratchett found humour in racial and sexual stereotypes, his later work is driven by a commitment to inclusion and a rejection of hegemony
Tyrosine supplementation is ineffective in facilitating soccer players’ physical and cognitive performance during high-intensity intermittent exercise in hot conditions
Get PDFTyrosine has been proposed to potentially provide ergogenic benefits to cognitive and physical performance in physiologically demanding environments. However research into its effectiveness on cognitive and physical performance during exercise in the heat has revealed mixed findings. This study examined the effects of a commonly employed dosage of tyrosine supplementation on soccer players’ physical and decision-making performance, cognitive appraisal, and affective states, during prolonged high-intensity intermittent exercise in hot conditions. Eight trained male soccer players completed a 92-minute high-intensity intermittent cycling sprint protocol whilst responding to soccer-specific decision-making tasks at various time points in 32°C (50%rh), in two counterbalanced conditions; tyrosine (150mg.kg-1) and placebo. No differences were found for peak power output (p = .486; 715 ± 98W vs 724 ± 98W, respectively), decision-making (p = .627; 86.9 ± 10.7% vs 88.6 ± 7.0%, respectively), cognitive appraisal (p = .693, 0.90 ± 0.42 vs 0.88 ± 0.39, respectively) nor affective states (p = .918; 1.15 ± 1.55 vs 1.14 ± 1.70, respectively) between tyrosine and placebo conditions. Also, no condition by time interaction effects were noted for these outcomes. In sum, tyrosine supplementation was ineffective for facilitating prolonged intermittent sprint (self-paced) activity, soccer-specific decision-making, and in alleviating perceptual strain, for soccer players’ exercising in the heat. However, future research may wish to consider alternative approaches for tyrosine supplementation (e.g., timing, dosage) or induce heightened physiological strain to extend on these findings
Social prescribing for adults with chronic pain in the U.K.: a rapid review
Get PDFIntroduction
Social prescribing links patients to community groups and services to meet health needs; however, it is uncertain what the benefits and impacts of social prescribing are for people with chronic pain. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) undertook a systematic review to investigate the clinical and cost effectiveness of social interventions aimed at improving the quality of life of people with chronic pain; no relevant clinical studies comparing social interventions with standard care for chronic pain were found, though the inclusion criteria for studies was narrow.
Objectives
To undertake a rapid review of all types of research and policy on social prescribing for adults with chronic pain in the U.K. (i) to describe the characteristics of relevant research and (ii) to synthesise data on impact.
Methods
A two-stage rapid review was planned. Stage (i) scoped and categorised knowledge from a comprehensive representation of the literature. In stage (ii), we undertook a descriptive synthesis of quantitative data along with a thematic analysis of qualitative data identified by stage (i).
Results
Of 40 full-text records assessed for inclusion, three met the inclusion criteria from academic databases. An additional five records were found in grey literature. Six records reported quantitative findings suggesting that social prescribing reduced pain severity and discomfort, pain medication and clinical appointments; and improved quality of life and ability to manage health. Five records captured qualitative data from interviews, case studies and anecdotal quotes that suggested positive impact on health and wellbeing; and increased self-efficacy in social prescribers undertaking training on pain.
Conclusions
There is tentative evidence that social prescribing improves health and wellbeing outcomes in adults with chronic pain and that there is a need to upskill social prescribers in contemporary pain science education. Research on the routes to referral, outcomes and impacts is needed.
Perspective
Social prescribing is valued and may be of benefit for people with chronic pain. There is a need to further develop and evaluate social prescribing services for people with chronic pain to enhance holistic patient centered care
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