8 research outputs found
Reliability of the term 'support' in singing
No full textThe usefulness of a term depends on the extent to which it means the same thing to different people. In this investigation we examine the term 'support', commonly used in vocal pedagogy. Singing lessons given by co-author SS to five students at varying stages were recorded on DAT. By listening to these recordings, she selected 42 examples, each a few seconds long, that she found representative of different degrees of support ranging from perfect to nil. These examples were presented in random order to nine experts, all with a professional involvement in singing. Thirteen of the stimuli occurred twice in the test. Intra- and inter-rater reliability were found to be high, Cronbach alpha= 0.910, and mean correlation 0.743 (SD 0.137). These data support the assumption that the term support has a similar meaning to voice experts and should thus be useful in voice terminology.</p
Exploring metal detoxification and accumulation potential during vermicomposting of Tea factory coal ash: sequential extraction and fluorescence probe analysis
No full textMetal contamination from coal ashes (CAs) is widely recognized as a significant environmental concern. To learn more about metal detoxification and accumulation potential of earthworm species, metal-rich tea factory coal ashes (TFCA) were fed to Eisenia fetida and Lampito mauritii by employing a fluorescent tag detection method. Fascinatingly, on feeding fluorescence probed Zn and Cd along with cow dung to Eisenia fetida, the detection of the gut-proteins with a molecular mass higher than 100 kDa was a distinct evidence of metal binding. Significant increases were observed in the content of humified organic C [humic acid (HAC) and fulvic acid C (FAC)] and degree of humification during vermicomposting. Concurrently, considerably large amount of toxic metals (Cr, Cd, Pb, and Zn) was transformed from exchangeable to recalcitrant (organic matter and mineral bound) fractions. Moreover, total metal concentrations were reduced with high removal efficiency upon vermicomposting.The last author (KH Kim) acknowledges the support provided by the Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (Project title: Study on model development to control odor from pig pen, Project No. PJ01052101), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea. This study was also supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) (No. 2006-0093848). The second corresponding author (SS Bhattacharya) acknowledges the support from CSIR (Project no. 38 (1307) 14// EMR-II), India. We also thank Dr. Sandip Mukherjee, Mr. Subhendu Chatterjee, and Ms. Nazneen Hussain for their assistance in Western blotting and histological study
A Scoping Review of Hospital Volunteer Programs for Older Adults
No full textIntroduction
As a result of population ageing, the majority of hospital days in North American and European hospitals are accounted for by older adults, many of whom are frail and stay longer than younger patients. Hospitals are increasingly welcoming the establishment of volunteer programs that can facilitate the increased care needs of older patients.
Methods and Analysis
This scoping review aims to identify and synthesise the current literature on volunteer-based hospital interventions for older adults in high-income countries in North America and Europe. Given the breadth of existing research on volunteerism in different healthcare domains, a scoping review is suitable to address the above mentioned research questions and strategically map findings as they relate to interventions for older adults and hospital settings (e.g., acute care, emergency services, rehabilitation) (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005). This review will not focus on volunteer interventions in outpatient hospital settings, though the researchers recognise the significant role volunteers can have within these contexts. This protocol will follow the five-stage scoping review framework by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), which includes: (1) outlining the research questions of interest; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) selecting studies that meet inclusion criteria; (4) charting data/key results; (5) synthesising and report findings. This review will abide by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. It is intended that our scoping review will provide findings related to geriatric research, practice, and policy to improve volunteer programs for older adults in hospital settings.
We define high income countries in accordance to the World Bank (2021; https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups): Andorra, Greece, Poland, Antigua and Barbuda, Greenland, Portugal, Aruba, Guam,Puerto Rico, Australia, Hong Kong SAR China, Qatar, Austria, Hungary, San Marino, Bahamas, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Ireland, Seychelles, Barbados,Isle of Man, Singapore, Belgium, Israel, Sint Maarten (Dutch part), Bermuda, Italy, Slovak Republic, British Virgin Islands, Japan, Slovenia, Brunei Darussalam, Korea Rep., Spain, Canada, Kuwait, St. Kitts and Nevis, Cayman Islands, Latvia, St. Martin (French part), Channel Islands, Liechtenstein, Sweden, Chile, Lithuania, Switzerland, Croatia, Luxembourg, Taiwan China, Curaçao, Macao SAR China, Trinidad and Tobago Cyprus, Malta, Turks and Caicos Islands, Czech Republic, Monaco, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Nauru, United Kingdom, Estonia, Netherlands, United States, Faroe Islands, New Caledonia Uruguay, Finland, New Zealand, Virgin Islands (U.S.), France, Northern Mariana Islands French Polynesia, Norway, Germany, Oman, Gibraltar, Palau
Stage 1: Outline the research questions
The following research questions were developed by the senior author (SS) and first author (KMK) after consulting the existing literature. The primary research question is: What is the scope of existing empirical literature exploring the role of volunteers in hospital-based interventions for older adults? We will also ask three sub-questions: (1) what are the characteristics (i.e., role and functions) of volunteers included in interventions for older adults in hospital settings? (2) what key elements make up a successful volunteer program for hospitalized older adults?, (3) how do volunteer programs affect hospitalized older adults?
Stage 2: Identify relevant studies
The search strategy will be developed by the first (KMK) and senior author (SS) in consultation with a medical information specialist. The final search strategy was revised and formatted in consultation with one medical information specialist. The following four databases were selected: PsycINFO, OVID Medline, Ageline, and CINAHL Plus with Full Text. These databases were chosen due to their relevance to the field of geriatric research and practice, interdisciplinary healthcare, and volunteerism within the realm of healthcare. To enhance the scope and breadth of our findings, a hand search of the references from relevant articles will be conducted. In addition, a search for grey literature will be conducted by searching for relevant healthcare guidelines. Due to the evolution of hospital care, this scoping review will only include literature published since 1998-2022, as we have identified 1998 as the time period when seminal work was done looking at volunteer programs . We chose to focus on only high-income countries as hospital-systems may differ due to political, economic, societal and healthcare system needs.
Stage 3: Select studies that meet inclusion criteria
After compiling a complete list of relevant articles from the aforementioned databases, a review of the article title and abstract will be conducted by the main author (KMK) alongside a second reviewer. The same two reviewers will also review full-text articles. The senior author (SS) will resolve any questions or discrepancies during both stages of review. The online platform Covidence will be used to support efficient screening, article review and charting during this process.
Stage 4: Chart data/key results
Content will be reviewed and charted under the following headings: authors, year of publication, country where article was published, and/or country the research focuses on, name of journal, format of paper, implementation factors of the intervention identified, additional healthcare providers referenced in article, outlined implications for older adults and geriatric medicine, settings/care services focused on, outlined benefits of the volunteer intervention, and recommendations for implementing volunteer-based interventions in other hospital settings. A Sinai Health Systems information specialist who specialises in scoping reviews will also be consulted in developing the final data extraction strategy.
Stage 5: Synthesise and report findings
We will synthesize our findings narratively. Findings from this review will be disseminated through published scholarly material
Isolating shape from semantics in haptic-visual priming
No full textThe exploration of a familiar object by hand can benefit its identification by eye. What is unclear is how much this multisensory cross-talk reflects shared shape representations versus generic semantic associations. Here, we compare several simultaneous priming conditions to isolate the potential contributions of shape and semantics in haptic-to-visual priming. Participants explored a familiar object manually (haptic prime) while trying to name a visual object that was gradually revealed in increments of spatial resolution. Shape priming was isolated in a comparison of identity priming (shared semantic category and shape) with category priming (same category, but different shapes). Semantic priming was indexed by the comparisons of category priming with unrelated haptic primes. The results showed that both factors mediated priming, but that their relative weights depended on the reliability of the visual information. Semantic priming dominated in Experiment 1, when participants were free to use high-resolution visual information, but shape priming played a stronger role in Experiment 2, when participants were forced to respond with less reliable visual information. These results support the structural description hypothesis of haptic-visual priming (Reales and Ballesteros in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 25:644–663, 1999) and are also consistent with the optimal integration theory (Ernst and Banks in Nature 415:429–433, 2002), which proposes a close coupling between the reliability of sensory signals and their weight in decision making.This work was supported by a PhD scholarship to author AP from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/76087/2011), an Exchange Fellowship to author AAB from the Dr. Michael Quinn Memorial Fund, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, an NSERC (Canada) Discovery Grant to author JTE, and Grants to author SS-F from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PSI2010-15426 and Consolider INGENIO CSD2007-00012 Grants, the Comissionat per a Universitats i Recerca del DIUE-Generalitat de Catalunya (SRG2009- 092), and the European Research Council (StG-2010 263145)
Isolating shape from semantics in haptic-visual priming
No full textThe exploration of a familiar object by hand can benefit its identification by eye. What is unclear is how much this multisensory cross-talk reflects shared shape representations versus generic semantic associations. Here, we compare several simultaneous priming conditions to isolate the potential contributions of shape and semantics in haptic-to-visual priming. Participants explored a familiar object manually (haptic prime) while trying to name a visual object that was gradually revealed in increments of spatial resolution. Shape priming was isolated in a comparison of identity priming (shared semantic category and shape) with category priming (same category, but different shapes). Semantic priming was indexed by the comparisons of category priming with unrelated haptic primes. The results showed that both factors mediated priming, but that their relative weights depended on the reliability of the visual information. Semantic priming dominated in Experiment 1, when participants were free to use high-resolution visual information, but shape priming played a stronger role in Experiment 2, when participants were forced to respond with less reliable visual information. These results support the structural description hypothesis of haptic-visual priming (Reales and Ballesteros in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 25:644–663, 1999) and are also consistent with the optimal integration theory (Ernst and Banks in Nature 415:429–433, 2002), which proposes a close coupling between the reliability of sensory signals and their weight in decision making.This work was supported by a PhD scholarship to author AP from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/76087/2011), an Exchange Fellowship to author AAB from the Dr. Michael Quinn Memorial Fund, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, an NSERC (Canada) Discovery Grant to author JTE, and Grants to author SS-F from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PSI2010-15426 and Consolider INGENIO CSD2007-00012 Grants, the Comissionat per a Universitats i Recerca del DIUE-Generalitat de Catalunya (SRG2009- 092), and the European Research Council (StG-2010 263145)
The Crisis of Political Representation and New Modes of Participation
No full textThe text is dealing with the problem of political representation and modes of participation in Italy towards the end of 1960’s and mid-1970’s.
The author’s hypothesis is that the movement of non-institutional participation from the autumn of 1969 functioned as a relative stabilizer of the Italian society, because it represented the channel of para-legal mobilization of considerable portions of lower social classes and those belonging to declassed bourgeois, while that movement never had any destructive terrorist manifestations. In that phase of the movement the principal role was taken by groups of the New Left. In the transitory period towards 1970’s sindicates, which had been transformed and partially debureaucratized, took over the role of channeling dissenting tendencies of the working class and wide marginal strata of the society.
During the crisis of 1973 and along with strengthening of leftist parties (the Communist Party of Italy), tendencies aiming at non-institutional participation started vanishing. Owing to its incapability of entering the government, what made it hold the image of the protector of order and legality, while it as simultaneously the representative of demands of participation from the bottom, the alternative of action for the CPI and the New Left was becoming more and more circumscribed, coupled with the parallel enlargement of the field of »armed parties« and various modes of terrorist violence. Marginal social groups started envisaging their position as the permanent state to which the only possible reaction could be »the ubiquity of violence«.
In his analysis the author pays particular attention to the »index of marginalization«, and the degree of »marginalization« is measured in relation to: (a) instability of the social role, (b) deficient or inappropriate internalization of cultural norms of the society or of subcultural norms of a class, stratum or social role, (c) the distance from the center of the society, i.e. from the central social roles and positions of hierarchical stability, (d) perturbations affecting social roles, or those which affected them, (e) consciousness of the non-existence of any institutional protection (syndicates) and impossibility of self-articulation by means of political party, »indicate, or formalized pressure group, (f) the awareness of partial or total irrelevance of the role, or even complete deprivation of any social role which is socially recognized, protected and channelized.
Based on those indicators, a description of the marginal strata within the social structure is given, and an analysis of the status of the youth, of the disintegration of the New Left, of terrorism and all-reaching guerrilla. In his conclusion the author Ss giving a hypothesis on a strategy »against social diversion« and he is favouring concretization of the idea of self-management in all the spheres of social praxis
Role of nanocellulose in tailoring electroanalytical performance of hybrid nanocellulose/multiwalled carbon nanotube electrodes
No full textNanocellulose has emerged as a promising green dispersant for carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and there is an increasing trend in developing nanocellulose/CNT hybrid materials for electrochemical detection of various small molecules. However, there have been very few comprehensive studies investigating the role of nanocellulosic material properties upon the electroanalytical performance of the resultant hybrid electrodes. In this work, we demonstrate the influence of both nanocellulose functionalization and geometry, utilizing sulfated cellulose nanocrystals, sulfated cellulose nanofibers, and TEMPO-oxidized cellulose nanofibers. Transmission electron microscopy tomography enables direct visualization of the effect of nanocellulosic materials on the hybrid architectures. High resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy verifies that the chemical nature of CNTs in the different hybrids is unmodified. Electroanalytical performances of the different nanocellulose/CNT hybrid electrodes are critically evaluated using physiologically relevant biomolecules with different charge such as, dopamine (cationic), paracetamol (neutral), and uric acid (anionic). The hybrid electrode containing fibrillar nanocellulose geometry with a high degree of sulfate group functionalization provides the highest electroanalytical sensitivity and strongest enrichment towards all studied analytes. These results clearly demonstrate for the first time, the extent of tailorability upon the electroanalytical response of nanocellulose/CNT hybrid electrodes towards different biomolecules, offered simply by the choice of nanocellulosic materials.</p
Mineral Crystal Thickness in Calcified Cartilage and Subchondral Bone in Healthy and Osteoarthritic Human Knees
No full textOsteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease, where articular cartilage degradation is often accompanied with sclerosis of the subchondral bone. However, the association between OA and tissue mineralization at the nanostructural level is currently not understood. In particular, it is technically challenging to study calcified cartilage, where relevant but poorly understood pathological processes such as tidemark multiplication and advancement occur. Here, we used state-of-the-art microfocus small-angle X-ray scattering with a 5-μm spatial resolution to determine the size and organization of the mineral crystals at the nanostructural level in human subchondral bone and calcified cartilage. Specimens with a wide spectrum of OA severities were acquired from both medial and lateral compartments of medial compartment knee OA patients (n = 15) and cadaver knees (n = 10). Opposing the common notion, we found that calcified cartilage has thicker and more mutually aligned mineral crystals than adjoining bone. In addition, we, for the first time, identified a well-defined layer of calcified cartilage associated with pathological tidemark multiplication, containing 0.32 nm thicker crystals compared to the rest of calcified cartilage. Finally, we found 0.2 nm thicker mineral crystals in both tissues of the lateral compartment in OA compared with healthy knees, indicating a loading-related disease process because the lateral compartment is typically less loaded in medial compartment knee OA. In summary, we report novel changes in mineral crystal thickness during OA. Our data suggest that unloading in the knee might be involved with the growth of mineral crystals, which is especially evident in the calcified cartilage
