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Sustainability education: a classroom guide [book review]:by Stephen Scoffham and Steve Rawlinson, London, Bloomsbury, 2022, 277 pp., £17.99 (paperback), ISBN 978 1 350 26207-2
No full textreview of Sustainability education: a classroom guide , by Stephen Scoffham and Steve Rawlinson, London, Bloomsbury, 2022, 277 pp., £17.99 (paperback), ISBN 978 1 350 26207-
Drive-by air pollution sensing systems: challenges and future directions
Get PDFAir pollution has become a significant health, environmental and economic problem worldwide. The conventional approach of deploying fixed high-end air quality monitoring stations provides accurate measurements but can be expensive to deploy and maintain. As a result, the stations are typically deployed in a few strategic locations with various spatial interpolation or prediction models to estimate the air quality values from unsampled points. Recently, drive-by air quality sensing has emerged as a popular approach due to its dynamic nature, high spatial coverage, and low operational costs while providing high-resolution data. At the same time, drive-by sensing has introduced a range of novel research challenges in terms of spatial and temporal coverage, mobile sensor calibration, and deployment strategies. This paper provides a systematic review and analysis of the recent work in this area, focusing on vehicular platforms, deployment strategies, primary challenges, and promising research directions
Adaptive Bayesian learning for making risk-aware decisions: a case of trauma survival prediction
Get PDFDecision tree (DT) models provide a transparent approach to prediction of patient’s outcomes within a probabilistic framework. Averaging over DT models under certain conditions can deliver reliable estimates of predictive posterior probability distributions, which is of critical importance in the case of predicting an individual patient’s outcome. Reliable estimations of the distribution can be achieved within the Bayesian framework using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and its Reversible Jump extension enabling DT models to grow to a reasonable size. Existing MCMC strategies however have limited ability to control DT structures and tend to sample overgrown DT models, making unreasonably small partitions, thus deteriorating the uncertainty calibration. This happens because the MCMC explores a DT model parameter space within a limited knowledge of the distribution of data partitions. We propose a new adaptive strategy which overcomes this limitation, and show that in the case of predicting trauma outcomes the number of data partitions can be significantly reduced, so that the unnecessary uncertainty of estimating the predictive posterior density is avoided. The proposed and existing strategies are compared in terms of entropy which, being calculated for predicted posterior distributions, represents the uncertainty in decisions. In this framework, the proposed method has outperformed the existing sampling strategies, so that the unnecessary uncertainty in decisions is efficiently avoided
An innovative state-of-the-art health storytelling technique for better management of type 2 diabetes
Get PDFType 2 diabetes (T2D) is a chronic lifelong disease that requires long-term prevention and management strategies in a community setting. A health story is a novel technique that may be used as an effective tool for better prevention and management of T2D. The main objective of this study is to develop a story to be used as a social health technique based on contemporary scientific knowledge that may be used at a community level for better communication and management of T2D. A community-academic partnership was formed with a not-for-profit Nutrition Education, Awareness, and Training (NEAT) organization in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. We agreed to develop a story that may be used as a health and nutrition education communication tool for better management of patients with T2D. The following phases were followed during the story creation process: (1) the theory phase, (2) the modeling phase, and (3) the evaluation phase. Raters evaluated the story to determine its literary and scientific quality, comprehensiveness, and T2D specificity. The title of the story translated into English is "The Story of Diabetes-The Story of Success." It is text based and contains 86 pages in the local language, "Pashto," with an English translation. The story is divided into five chapters and describes the initial diagnosis, fear associated with the disease, issues related to referral to certified practitioners, the importance of a balanced diet, and related lifestyle habits. After story evaluation, the raters suggested its literary and scientific quality, comprehensiveness, and T2D specificity (Pearson correlation scores of >0.8). This unique story was created for T2D and found to be of significant quality in terms of its literary and scientific quality, as well as its comprehensiveness and diabetes specificity. As a result, it may be suggested that it can be used in subsequent studies to improve T2D management among adult patients
Sustaining resilience of healthcare workers and leaders during a pandemic: a protocol to support coping during the Covid-19 pandemic
Get PDFObjective: One way healthcare organisations can support their staff is through supervision. Supervision is typically defined as a process in which professionals receive support and guidance from more experienced colleagues. In this brief review we propose a tailored protocol for supporting support workers during a pandemic. Method: We collected narrative data from difference sources including a systematic meta ethnography and used expert advise in order to tailor the protocol. Results: This protocol can be used by management teams (e.g., senior support workers, team leaders, registered managers, and operation managers) without any prior experience of supervision. The protocol suggested includes a template with easy-to-follow instructions. Conclusions: It provides an easy step-by-step guide that simplifies the process whilst maintaining the depth needed to ensure effective supervision
Investigating the impact of London’s ultra low emission zone on children’s health: children’s health in London and Luton (CHILL) protocol for a prospective parallel cohort study
Get PDFBackground: Air pollution harms health across the life course. Children are at particular risk of adverse effects during development, which may impact on health in later life. Interventions that improve air quality are urgently needed both to improve public health now, and prevent longer-term increased vulnerability to chronic disease. Low Emission Zones are a public health policy intervention aimed at reducing traffic-derived contributions to urban air pollution, but evidence that they deliver health benefits is lacking. We describe a natural experiment study (CHILL: Children’s Health in London and Luton) to evaluate the impacts of the introduction of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) on children’s health. Methods: CHILL is a prospective two-arm parallel longitudinal cohort study recruiting children at age 6–9 years from primary schools in Central London (the focus of the first phase of the ULEZ) and Luton (a comparator site), with the primary outcome being the impact of changes in annual air pollutant exposures (nitrogen oxides [NOx], nitrogen dioxide [NO 2], particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5micrograms [PM 2.5], and less than 10 micrograms [PM 10]) across the two sites on lung function growth, measured as post-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV 1) over five years. Secondary outcomes include physical activity, cognitive development, mental health, quality of life, health inequalities, and a range of respiratory and health economic data. Discussion: CHILL’s prospective parallel cohort design will enable robust conclusions to be drawn on the effectiveness of the ULEZ at improving air quality and delivering improvements in children’s respiratory health. With increasing proportions of the world’s population now living in large urban areas exceeding World Health Organisation air pollution limit guidelines, our study findings will have important implications for the design and implementation of Low Emission and Clean Air Zones in the UK, and worldwide. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04695093 (05/01/2021).</p
Promoting a global culture of respectful maternity care
Get PDFRespectful maternity care (RMC) - a fundamental human right for all women - prioritizes autonomy and rights of pregnant and birthing women throughout the entire childbirth journey. Despite increasing acknowledgment of the importance of RMC for optimal maternal and new-born outcomes, women often experience disrespectful and abusive practices during pregnancy and childbirth. This Editorial points to the need for development of international guidelines for the implementation of RMC programs globally
Paper tensions: from flipbooks to scanners - the role of paper in moving image practices
Get PDFConcerning the materiality of reproduction and duplication in film, this chapter explores the overlap of moving image and paper technologies to examine aspects of film archiving. It presents an assemblage of paper-related moving image artefacts: paper prints, posters, flipbooks, optical printers, scanners, pre-cinematic, early and digital cinema technologies, to explore what we can understand about the moving image when viewed outside of the cinematic apparatus of screen and auditorium. By considering the moving image and its history in this way as overlapping mediums, we broaden our understanding of moving image technology in its material and immaterial aspects, exploring how subjects and technologies interact to produce what is permissible as film documents. Beginning with Elsaesser’s assertion that there is a need for a new mapping of the moving image in the wake of early cinema research to understand audiovisual media technologies better. This chapter utilises media archaeology and cultural techniques to explore the connections between print media, duplicating film and digital scanners, concluding that practices of archival film production and techniques of archival scanner operators in the process of duplication are dynamically co-created through spaces of exchange
A compact wideband millimeter-wave beam-scanning antenna array for Industry 4.0 and beyond applications
No full textIn this paper, a compact wideband series-fed 8-element linear antenna array is designed that covers the entire unlicensed 60 GHz band from 57-71 GHz. The linear 1 8 array has a simulated -10 dB impedance bandwidth of 35.21% (50.53 to 72.13 GHz). The peak realized gain of 8-element array is 13.3 dBi at 60.5 GHz. The gain variation is less than 1 dB from 57-66 GHz and the overall gain is above 11.5 dBi up to 71 GHz. Side-lobe levels are below -10 dB in both E and H-planes, with low cross-polarization levels. The proposed array also manifests frequency-dependent beam-scanning in the elevation plane (y-z plane) from -10° to +35°. The proposed array is suitable for millimeter-wave industrial applications which require high bandwidth and multi-gigabits-per-second data rate. The designed array can work on various 60 GHz communication protocols such as IEEE 802.11ad, IEEE 802.11ay, IEEE 802.15.3c, Wireless HD and ECMA-387
Long-term outcomes for students who attend alternative provision schools: analysis of a national dataset at national, regional, local and institutional levels
Get PDFLittle is known about the long-term outcomes of students who attend alternative provision (AP) settings. This study set out to analyse data published by the Department for Education which presents long-term education and employment outcomes for school pupils in England. After making comparisons by type of setting at the national level, this analysis focused on alternative provision at regional, local and institutional levels. Findings identify considerable differences in rates of sustained education and employment destinations for students who have attended AP. This suggests an AP setting with over four in 10 of their ex-students in stable education or employment after three years is performing well. Findings also suggest an important role for expectations, extended transitions and local coordination. This study presents a benchmark against which future studies of AP can measure long-term outcomes and providers of AP can judge their work
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