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Resilience in Marginalized Communities during Crises : A Literature Review of Communication Scholarship
No full textInfluence of Block Microstructure on the Interaction of Styrene-Maleic Acid Copolymer Aggregates and Lipid Nanodiscs
No full textInvestigation of the properties of membrane proteins (MPs) is essential to the successful development of medicines and biotechnology. However, their study is often complicated by denaturation caused by the use of detergents during conventional extraction methods. Copolymers of styrene and maleic acid (SMA) have shown promise in extracting MPs directly from cells while reconstituting lipid membranes into nanodiscs. Despite their potential, there remains a dearth of information on the precise interactions that take place between the copolymers and lipid membranes although they are known to be sensitive to small variations in copolymer composition or structure. We have used reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerisation to synthesise SMA copolymers with equivalent molar mass, but with inverted block sequences and end group termini. Through a range of experiments, including dynamic light scattering and small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) on SMA aggregates and nanodisc formation studies using UV-vis spectroscopy with both model DMPC lipids and E. coli membranes, the impact of both block distribution and end group chemistry on copolymer–membrane interactions was investigated. It was found that mismatched hydrophilic and hydrophobic end groups on the styrene block and alternating block, respectively, impeded membrane disruption and subsequent solubilisation. This highlights not only how the amphiphilic balance of these blocks is important for efficient nanodisc formation, but also how end groups influence these and may be optimised towards extraction of more challenging MPs. The work contributes to a better understanding of SMA behaviour and offers insight into how these nanomaterials may be better designed and tailored for specific applications
From biomonitoring studies to lowered occupational exposure limits for hexavalent chromium
No full textOccupational exposure to the carcinogen hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)] occurs during stainless steel production, welding, and chrome plating. Two sister-projects, SafeChrom and SAM-Krom, were initiated in Sweden and Denmark, respectively, to inform stakeholders, decision-makers and regulators on current occupational exposure to Cr(VI), and preventive measures prior to revision of national occupational exposure limits (OELs) for Cr(VI). Both studies were cross-sectional, involving exposed workers and controls. Cr(VI) exposure was assessed as inhalable Cr(VI), urinary Cr and Cr(VI) content in red blood cells. Both studies found increased air Cr(VI) concentrations associated with increased levels of urinary Cr and Cr(VI) in red blood cells. Air levels of Cr(VI), urinary Cr and blood levels of Cr(VI) were highest among Danish chrome platers. Furthermore, Cr(VI) exposure levels exceeding Danish OEL were found for trainees performing welding at a vocational school. Interviews with managers at Swedish workplaces indicated that OELs have an important role as baseline for acceptable exposures, but revealed low awareness of the socio-economic trade-offs for the Cr(VI) OELs. The two studies enabled evidence-based decision-making resulting in lower Cr(VI) OELs in Denmark and Sweden in 2025–2026, highlighting the value of a coordinated Nordic collaboration and stakeholder engagement in supporting evidence-based regulation
Selective privatisation and changing civic spaces in India : The government takeover of an erstwhile NGO-run child helpline
No full textMuch scholarship has critiqued the fact that non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as a result of global neoliberalism and consequential state retreat, have become private service providers of children’s protection rights. But how can we explain the situation when neoliberal states also undergo autocratisation and take back service provision from NGOs, while at the same time preserving the privatisation to for-profit companies? This tendency, I argue, can be conceptualised as ‘selective privatisation’. To make this point, this article draws on ethnography and policy analysis and showcases how India’s national helpline for children went from being an NGO-state partnership to a fully state-controlled service. When CHILDLINE was a NGO-state partnership, its employees experienced challenges such as limited job security and advocacy restrictions,but they still considered the partnership positive in terms of its ability to influence the state’s child protection policies. In the new state-controlled set-up, however, civil society is diluted to ‘volunteers’ and ‘communities’ who, without formal organisation and funding, do not have the means to walk the difficult but useful tightrope between being implementers and advocates. Instead, they are de facto silenced. The article thus contributes to the literature on ‘changing’ civic spaces by concentrating on the roles of non-profit private service providers for children in neoliberal and autocratising India
Pause for Thought : Systemic Functional Units and the Dynamics of Writing
No full textA central challenge in linguistics pertains to understanding how the polished, static form of a written text emerges from the messy, moment-by-moment decisions of the writer. While the structures of finished texts have been extensively theorized, and the real-time cognitive processes of writing have been widely studied, the relationship between these real-time processes and the functional linguistic structures produced during writing remains undertheorized and empirically underexplored. Understanding this relationship is essential for developing theoretically grounded models of how writers manage competing linguistic demands during composition. This thesis addresses this gap by bringing together two research traditions that have largely developed in parallel: Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and writing process research. While SFL provides a theoretical framework for understanding how meaning is structured through metafunctional organization and hierarchical linguistic units, empirical evidence for how such constructs emerge during the writing process has been limited. Conversely, from a writing process research perspective, pauses are a key behavioral indicator of underlying cognitive processes, revealing moments of planning, monitoring, and decision-making in real-time. As such, they offer a window into how writers construct meaning and structure text as it unfolds. Although writing process research has revealed much about the temporal dynamics of writing through keystroke logging, it has often lacked theoretically grounded frameworks for connecting the behavioral patterns during writing to the linguistic structures being produced. Through three empirical studies using keystroke logging methodology, this thesis examines pause patterns in relation to SFL-defined boundaries, addressing four research questions about the alignment between pause patterns and linguistic units, the relationship between metafunctional organization and pause distribution, SFL's contribution to production unit identification, and its role in understanding cognitive effort during writing. The results provide evidence for systematic alignment between pause behavior during writing and SFL-defined linguistic units. Functional context analysis demonstrated that pauses occurred disproportionately at boundaries of functional roles such as participants and processes in clauses, while thematic analysis revealed that thematic choices affected pause activity. A pre-task planning manipulation showed that cognitive effort redistributes rather than disappears, with planning reducing demands at lower-level boundaries while maintaining demands at higher-level discourse boundaries. Through pause analysis, the findings provide partial support for SFL theoretical constructs that demonstrate the psychological reality of metafunctional organization and offer methodological innovations for writing process research. The research contributes to both SFL theory and writing process research by showing that a metafunctional view of language reflects certain aspects of language processing, through which cognitive load distribution across different meaning-making tasks during the process of writing can be potentially better understood
Utility of the Swedish Anticholinergic Burden Scale in a memory clinic setting: a comparison with the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden scale
No full textAnticholinergic burden is associated with cognitive impairment, especially in older individuals with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. The objective of the study was to explore the use of drugs displaying anticholinergic properties and examine the utility of the newly developed Swedish Anticholinergic Burden Scale (Swe-ABS) in a memory clinic setting. A descriptive cross-sectional study, involving individuals ≥ 50 years of age attending a memory clinic in southern Sweden between September 2017 and September 2021. In total, 657 individuals, mean age 72.4 ± 9.0 years, 375 (57.1%) males, were included. The study population used 4805 medications at an average of 7.3 ± 4.3 per individual. A total of 448 (68.2%) participants used drugs with any anticholinergic effects identified with the Swe-ABS of whom 179 (27.2%) had a high anticholinergic burden (i.e., Swe-ABS ≥ 3). The corresponding figures for the established Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden (ACB) scale were 314 (47.8%) and 97 (14.8%) respectively. The mean Swe-ABS score was significantly higher than the mean ACB score (1.7 and 1.0; p < 0.05). Individuals < 75 years had a significant higher Swe-ABS score and ACB score than individuals ≥ 75 years (Swe-ABS: < 75 years: 1.94 ± 2.20 and ≥ 75 years: 1.50 ± 1.54; p < 0.05; ACB: < 75 years: 1.13 ± 1.57 and ≥ 75 years: 0.80 ± 1.14 p < 0.05). Within the study population, a total of 64 drugs not listed in the Swe-ABS were identified. This study highlights the prevalence of drugs with anticholinergic effects among individuals presumably vulnerable to muscarinic antagonism. The Swe-ABS, a risk scale for ascertaining the anticholinergic burden, seems to effectively identify a substantial proportion of drugs commonly used on the Swedish market. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov, TRN: NCT03208569, Registration date: 27 June 2017
