111,891 research outputs found
Environmental Lead Exposure in Children: a Problem of Developing Countries?
No full textEnvironmental exposure to lead, although not an important cause of mortality, represents one of the main causes of morbidity among children and adolescents. In general, rural communities are expected to have significantly lower blood lead levels (BLLs) than urban communities. However, this is not the case in populations living in the vicinity of lead mines and smelting facilities, where higher BLLs may occur, particularly among young children. Around 50% of Global lead production can be traced back to car battery recycling.
The aim of this study was to quantify blood lead levels (BLLs) of children living near a car battery smelting facility in Serbia, compare the levels with developed and developing countries’ standards, and identify the main determinants of lead exposure in this population. BLLs were quantified in 75 children from Zajača, a village where a car battery smelting factory is located, and 52 children from Paskovac, village 5 kilometers away from Zajača. The median BLL for both groups were 12 μg/dl, 7.60 μg/dl in children from Paskovac, and 17.5 μg/dl in children from Zajača. Even 87% of children from Zajača had the BLL above 10 μg/dl, which is comparable to urban schoolchildren in South Africa and Bangladesh. Although a European country, a candidate country for the European Union, BLLs of Serbian children were comparable to that of children living in developing countries and higher than those expected in children living near lead smelting facilities in developed countries
Improving the Quality of Toxicological Research Findings Using Modern Principles of Reproducible Research
No full textReproducibility represents the foundation of scientific work and publications, and the materials and methods section in each published article should allow any researcher to repeat the experiment in question and get the same or similar results. Nevertheless, in most scientific papers the data analysis procedure is rarely described well, and it often contains just the basic information on statistical procedures performed. We present all of the basic steps in doing reproducible data analysis, with all the advantages and disadvantages over the non-reproducible methods, on a case study of pesticide exposure and risk assessment. Data is imported from multiple sources (text, excel, access database), and basic description of acquired data, visual and numerical comparison between groups, and modelling of data acquired in real-life studies of pesticide exposure in agriculture are presented. The final products of the data analysis process, tables and figures which are ready for the revision process, are compiled using the R Language and Environment for Statistical Computing and additional packages. Considering the more strict requirements for funding and the increased competition, as well as the slow (but certain) move towards open access, open review and data exchange, doing data analysis the reproducible way will become inevitable in toxicology, as well as other scientific fields. Popularization and training on using free statistical and reproducible research tools should be a priority for young researchers entering this field, as this will result in the improvement of the quality of toxicological research, leading to easier publishing
The Importance of Open Data in Toxicological Research and Publishing
No full textEvery year thousands of toxicological studies are performed around the World. These studies are most commonly funded by Governmental, Non-Governmental agencies, Universities, Faculties, and in the last 50 years even more so by funds provided by research funding schemes such as the Horizon 2020 and the Framework Programmes in the European Union, or the National Institutes of Health in the United States. As part of these studies, thousands of experiments and field studies are done, collecting millions of tables of data ranging from genotypes and cell-culture reactions to chemical agents, to epidemiological data on populations from different towns and countries. In addition, governmental agencies and private companies measure a vast amount of parameters regarding the environment. Recently, a very specific risk has come to attention of research funders: the results of a specific research project are published in a peer review journal, thus satisfying the basic requirements of the project call, and the raw data which was collected remains buried (or lost) in the hard-disk of participating researchers. To resolve this situation, many institutions have adopted the „Open Data“ policy, which should allow the data collected by these institutions or projects funded by them to be freely available to use and re-use by others. This philosophy was also adopted by many journals which now allow the authors of published articles to store even the raw data in their online repositories. This new trend, which might soon become a rule in the scientific publishing world, considering there are journals specifically designed to store datasets and study protocols, increases the use of already collected data, facilitates data re-use and new discoveries, but also helps authors achieve a higher impact and recognition than by just publishing their work
Introduction to Pesticide Exposure Monitoring, Practical Guidance, and Perspectives
No full textThe use of pesticides has continued to grow since their introduction to modern agriculture, and more than 2 billion kilograms of these substances are used per year worldwide. Their main characteristic, that they impact living organisms, makes them a chemical hazard, and their use results in potential health risk, especially in agricultural workers. In agriculture, there is a notable instability of working conditions, disregard of good agricultural practices, and misuse of personal protective devices. Estimating the exposure and absorbed dose in this scenario is, therefore, extremely challenging. Pesticide field studies still represent the main way to collect real-life exposure data, to perform absorbed dose and risk assessment, and to verify the presence or absence of health effects from pesticide use. Here we present the main methods for pesticide exposure monitoring in real-life field conditions, with their advantages, disadvantages, and ways to improve them. Since most of the exposure in open field conditions comes from dermal exposure, OECD “patch” and “whole-body” methodologies are the two most widely used methods for exposure assessment. The main advantages of the “patch” methodology is that it preserves the real-life working conditions and allows the combined use of personal exposure and biological monitoring. The use of biological monitoring is limited in because of the lack of health-based occupational biological exposure limits. Ideally, a method to produce biological exposure limits for pesticide use in agriculture, similar to the ACGIH BEIs, could be developed taking into account skin as the main route of exposure in this setting
author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 – Supplemental material for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct
No full textSupplemental material, author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct by George Wood, Daria Roithmayr and Andrew V. Papachristos in Socius</p
Duration of Skin Exposure: a Neglected Variable in Absorbed Dose Assessment
No full textThe use of pesticides has become unavoidable in agriculture as it ensures the massive production of food crops and their global trade, as well as solves public health problems by eradicating vectors of human diseases such as malaria. Besides risk assessment done in the pre-marketing phase, field studies allow for the re-evaluation of exposure and risk in real-life working conditions, opening new possibilities for risk assessment and modeling. In agriculture, special attention must be given to the skin as the main route of exposure, but the fixed fractional approach to dermal absorption might not represent the perfect solution to absorbed dose assessment. Here we present a practical method for integrating the information on the duration of exposure into the absorbed dose assessment, using a group of mancozeb applicators as a case study. Assumption of an 8-hour exposure resulted in a gross overestimation of absorbed dose from hands’ exposure. Absorbed dose from body exposure was overestimated in those workers working less than 8 hours, but somewhat underestimated in those working more than 8 hours, which is common in agriculture. In total, an 80% reduction of the absorbed dose estimate resulted from the introduction of the duration of exposure as a factor. This reduction did not influence risk assessment significantly for substances with low toxicity such as mancozeb, but implications for modeling might be much more important
Square-planar copper(II) complexes with tetradentate amido-carboxylate ligands. Crystal structure of Na2[Cu(obap)]2.H2O. Strain and spectral assignments of complexes
No full textNovel N–N–N–O-type of tetradentate ligands H3obap (H3obap = oxamido-N-aminopropyl-N0-benzoic acid) and H3maeb
(H3maeb = malamido-N-aminoethyl-N0-benzoic acid) and the corresponding square-planar copper(II) complexes have been prepared
and characterized. The obap3 and maeb3 ligands coordinate to the copper(II) ion via four ligating atoms (three deprotonated
atoms: one carboxylate oxygen and two deprotonated amide nitrogens; one amine nitrogen) with in-plane square chelation. A
four coordinate, square-planar geometry has been established crystallographically for the binuclear Na2[Cu(obap)]2 Æ 2H2O complex.
Structural data correlating the square-planar geometry of the [Cu(obap)] unit and an extensive strain analysis are discussed
in relation to the information obtained for similar complexes. The infrared and electronic absorption spectra of the complexes are
discussed in comparison to the related complexes of known geometries. Antibacterial activity of ligands and copper(II) complexes
towards common Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria are reported as well
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
No full text“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Využití sociálních médií v B2B prodeji
No full textTato diplomová práce se zabývá tím, jak mohou B2B obchodníci využívat sociální média v prodeji. Na základě systematické rešerše literatury, autor zjistil, že akademici, zkoumající danou problematiku, navrhují další výzkum, a to: v kterých konkrétních krocích se dají využít sociální média v prodeji (Salo, 2017). Autor se na základě toho rozhodl zjistit, jaké sociální sítě, různé technologie a pluginy se dají využít v B2B prodeji - tzv. social sellingu. Social selling se v této práci týká primárně procesu akvizice a okrajově péčí o stávající zákazníky. Autor si vybral kvalitativní průzkum pomocí 10 hloubkových polo-strukturovaných rozhovorů, aby odhalil jak, která sociální média to jsou, tak i motivaci prodejců, proč tato média používat/nepoužívat. Aby autor dodržel správnost vyhodnocení výsledků, data byla analyzována pomocí Tématické analýzy, která v této studii vykrystalizovala 2 hlavní strategické přístupy v social sellingu. Tyto přístupy (tzv. Push a Pull strategie) obsahují praktické příklady a konkrétní aktivity, které mohou prodejci využívat v každodenní praxi. Tyto výsledky jsou prezentovány s důrazem na praktičnost a jednoduchost implementace. Tvoří proto hlavní přínos autorovo výzkumu. V poslední části autor zmiňuje výzvy a manažerská doporučení, které mohou obchodníci využít v každodenním pracovním životě.This diploma thesis focuses on social media usage in B2B sales. Based on the systematic literature review conducted by the author, he has found out that recent researchers (Salo, 2017) suggest further research in the area of how and in which sales phase should various social networking sites, technologies and plugins used. To further fill this research gap, author decided to identify these social media and their usage among B2B salespeople in the so-called social selling process. The social selling process in this thesis applies mainly to acquiring new prospects and tangentially to taking care of existing clients (follow-up step). Author has chosen a qualitative research method via conducting 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews to reveal these instruments as well as motivation of a sales person on why to use social media in the selling process. The collected data was analyzed using Thematic analysis to ensure the right procedure and to identify main themes which crystalized into 2 main strategic approaches in social selling. These approaches (Push and Pull) include practical examples of concrete activities which sales people can use in their daily jobs and are presented with focus on practicality and ease of implementation. These also form the main contribution of author`s research. In the last part, author mentions challenges in social selling and recommended managerial implications for salesforce
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