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Barriers and facilitators of deceased organ donation among Muslims living globally: protocol for an integrative systematic review using narrative synthesis
Get PDFMuslims have been shown to have less favourable attitudes towards organ donation and are less likely to consent to donate their organs. While several studies have been undertaken globally to identify the barriers and facilitators of organ donation, no systematic review has synthesised this evidence to date. Therefore, this systematic review aims to identify the barriers and facilitators of organ donation among Muslims living globally. This systematic review will include cross-sectional surveys and qualitative studies published between 30 April 2008 and 30 June 2023. Evidence will be restricted only to studies reported in English. An extensive search strategy will be used in PubMed, CINAHL, Medline, Scopus, PsycINFO, Global Health and Web of Science, as well as specific relevant journals that may not be indexed in these databases. A quality appraisal will be undertaken using Joanna Briggs Institute quality appraisal tool. An integrative narrative synthesis will be used to synthesise the evidence. Ethical approval has been obtained from the Institute for Health Research Ethics Committee (IHREC) (IHREC987), University of Bedfordshire. The findings of this review will be disseminated widely through peer-reviewed journal articles and leading international conferences. CRD42022345100
Excessive reactive oxygen species induce transcription-dependent replication stress
Get PDFElevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) reduce replication fork velocity by causing dissociation of the TIMELESS-TIPIN complex from the replisome. Here, we show that ROS generated by exposure of human cells to the ribonucleotide reductase inhibitor hydroxyurea (HU) promote replication fork reversal in a manner dependent on active transcription and formation of co-transcriptional RNA:DNA hybrids (R-loops). The frequency of R-loop-dependent fork stalling events is also increased after TIMELESS depletion or a partial inhibition of replicative DNA polymerases by aphidicolin, suggesting that this phenomenon is due to a global replication slowdown. In contrast, replication arrest caused by HU-induced depletion of deoxynucleotides does not induce fork reversal but, if allowed to persist, leads to extensive R-loop-independent DNA breakage during S-phase. Our work reveals a link between oxidative stress and transcription-replication interference that causes genomic alterations recurrently found in human cancer
The tangible and intangible: dance and the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage
Get PDFThis article returns to issues raised in the pages of Dance Research regarding dance in the context of UNESCO’s 2003 adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Bakka and Karoblis’ article published in 2021 refuted the proposal made by Iacono and Brown in 2016 to replace the Convention’s term ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (ICH) with the concept of ‘living cultural heritage’. However, Bakka and Karoblis’ response was written in the spirit of ‘a discursive unity’ and, sharing in this spirit, I aim to consider both articles with the aim of highlighting how the discourses surrounding safeguarding ICH and those that consider dance as a significant part of culture might inform one another
Do research incentives promote researchers’ mental health?
Get PDFResearchers have a higher risk of anxiety and depression than the general population, so it is important to promote researchers’ mental health. Method: Based on the data from 3210 global researchers surveyed by the journal Nature in 2021, confirmatory factor analysis, OLS regression and other regressions were used to explore the research incentive dimensions and their effects on researchers’ mental health. Results: (1) Material incentive factors, work-family life balance factors, good organizational environment and spiritual motivation had significant positive effects on researchers’ mental health. (2) The spiritual motivation could better promote researchers’ mental health than the other factors. (3) Heterogeneity analysis showed that material incentive factors and spiritual motivation created more significant stimulating effects on the mental health of humanities and social sciences researchers. Work-family life balance factors were more effective in promoting the mental health of the mid-career group and the overtime group. Conclusion: Application of the four research incentives resulted in lower likelihood of anxiety or depression among researchers, and special attention should be paid to the role of the spiritual motivation. In order to promote researchers’ mental health, different incentives should be applied to different researcher groups to better improve researchers’ mental health
A conversation analytic study of calls to medical reception for doctor’s appointments
Get PDFA call to medical reception is regularly an entry point into primary health care services. Telephone-mediated interactions between patients and receptionists have been found to temper demand for doctor’s appointments and influence patient satisfaction ratings; yet little is known about what exactly happens to produce those effects. The present study asks how medical receptionists respond to telephone-mediated appointment requests. Audio recordings of 18 calls between receptionists and patients at a New Zealand University health care practice were collected, transcribed and examined in detail using conversation analysis. The findings reveal the complexity of telephone-mediated medical receptionist work which involves multiple engagements involving the caller and the on-line booking systems. The work has clinical components and evidence was found of receptionists’ orientations to the potential urgency of callers’ problems and how a triaging process was initiated. Overall, this study shows medical receptionists do skilful communicative work granting patient requests or progressing relevant courses of action in a clinically responsible way, thus delivering a valuable and unrecognised aspect of health care delivery. Keywords: primary health care; social interaction; mediated communication; telephone triage; qualitative, gendered wor
Insights into the spray impingement process from a gasoline direct injection fuel system fuelled with gasoline and ethanol
Get PDFParticulate Matter (PM) emissions have a negative impact on both climate change and human health. To control PM emissions emitted by vehicles with the Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) fuel system, increasing fuel injection pressure is being developed as a practical approach. In this paper, an experimental and numerical study was presented to thoroughly explore the entire development process of gasoline and ethanol impingement spray from a GDI injector under injection pressure of 10 MPa and 50 MPa. The results demonstrate that more droplets are predicted to distribute in the splash region with the increase of injection pressure ( ) from 10 MPa to 50 MPa, which helps improve air-fuel mixing quality and reduce PM emissions. The splash probability of gasoline droplets is about two percent higher than ethanol. By increasing from 10 MPa to 50 MPa, droplets with higher absolute normal velocity would promote the growth of impingement spray. The probability curves of droplet diameter are more concentrated in the smaller size range. Besides, the probability of relatively large droplets of gasoline is slightly lower than that of ethanol. Regarding the fuel film distribution, more folds and bulges can be seen at the boundary of fuel film with the increase to 50 MPa. Meantime, the film distribution becomes more scattered, which would benefit the homogeneity of air-fuel mixture. The film distribution area and boundary irregularity of gasoline are greater than those of ethanol, further promoting a homogeneous air-fuel mixture
Relevance and multimodal prosody: implications for L2 teaching and learning
Get PDFIn this paper, I build on Scott's relevance-theoretic account of contrastive stress (2021). Contrastive stress works as an extra cue to ostension in altering the salience of a particular constituent in an utterance and, as a result, the salience of one particular interpretation of that utterance. I draw on Scott’s argument that contrastive stress does not encode procedural meaning. Contrastive stress is unpredictable and, as such, it is in confounding the hearer’s expectations that it draws his attention to the accented word and prompt his search for different interpretive effects. I argue that contrastive stress is interpreted purely inferentially precisely because it is one of many pointing devices. It is to be interpreted by virtue of its interaction with other paralinguistic behaviours, all of which being different aspects of the same ostensive act of communication. This leads me to focus on the gestural nature of contrastive stress working as an act of pointing, which, as an ostensive communicative behaviour, conveys that if you look over there, you’ll know what I mean (Tomasello et al., 2007). Finally, I present the implications of analysing contrastive stress in its multimodal context – as prosodic pointing – for the teaching and learning of L2 prosodic pragmatics and the development of interpretive abilities in the L2 hearer’s mind
Responses of extreme climates in South Asia under a G6sulfur scenario of climate engineering
Get PDFUnder global warming scenarios, extreme climate events in South Asia will occur more frequently which will seriously threaten the safety of local residents. South Asia faces dual pressures of the obligation of carbon emissions reduction globally and the demand for a better life for huge populations. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) climate engineering provides a potential solution to this dilemma. We compared the evolution of 12 climate extreme indices under historical scenarios, two future scenarios (SSP245, SSP585) and an implementation scenario of SAI climate engineering (G6sulfur). We showed that the intensity and frequency of extreme climates under a G6sulfur scenario would be significantly higher than those under historical scenarios, and that the difference in extreme climates under three scenarios (SSP245, SSP585, and G6sulfur) would be widely varying, with some indices being considerably mitigated while others would reflect a worse set of circumstances than would be the case without SAI climate engineering. Therefore, SAI climate engineering is not an effective tool to mitigate future climate extremes in South Asia under global warming scenarios
An extended study of search user interface design focused on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
Get PDFGeert Hofstede’s classic cultural model has been studied and applied to website design for a number of years. In this paper we examine if Geert Hof-stede’s six cultural dimensions can also be applied to search user interface de-sign. Two user studies have been conducted to evaluate the culturally designed search user interfaces, and the findings are reported in this paper. Our first study comprised of 148 participants from different cultural backgrounds. The second study was smaller with 25 participants, also from different cultural back-grounds. The results from these studies have been analyzed to ascertain if Hof-stede’s cultural dimensions are suitable for understanding users’ preferences for search user interface design. Whilst the key findings from these studies suggest Hofstede cross-cultural dimensions can be used to model users’ preferences on search interface design, further work is still needed for particular cultural di-mensions to reinforce the conclusions
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