Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA) is used on a daily basis as evidence in crime scene reconstruction. However, though the impact behavior of complex fluid droplets have been extensively studied, ...important questions still remain. We investigate the influence of surface roughness and wettability on the splashing limit of droplets of blood, a non-Newtonian colloidal fluid. Droplets of blood perpendicularly impacting different surfaces at different velocities were recorded with a high-speed camera. The recordings were analyzed as well as the surfaces characteristics in order to find an empirical solution because we found that roughness plays a major role in the threshold of the splashing/nonsplashing behavior of blood compared to the wettability. Moreover, it appears that roughness alters the deformation of the drip stains. These observations are key to characterizing features of drip stains with the impacting conditions, yielding a more complete forensic analysis in certain cases.
Social capital is considered important for resilience across social levels, including communities, yet insights are scattered across disciplines. This meta-synthesis of 187 studies examines ...conceptual and empirical understandings of how social capital relates to resilience, identifying implications for community resilience and climate change practice. Different conceptualisations are highlighted, yet also limited focus on underlying dimensions of social capital and proactive types of resilience for engaging with the complex climate change challenge. Empirical insights show that structural and socio-cultural aspects of social capital, multiple other factors and formal actors are all important for shaping the role of social capital for guiding resilience outcomes. Thus, finding ways to work with these different elements is important. Greater attention on how and why outcomes emerge, interactions between factors, approaches of formal actors and different socio-cultural dimensions will advance understandings about how to nurture social capital for resilience in the context of climate change.
To investigate the lifetime risk of first-time incident pelvic organ prolapse (POP) surgery with the intention of updating previous risk estimates that have been based on members of managed-care ...populations.
Age-specific incidence rates of first-time prolapse surgery between 1981 and 2005 were calculated based on 44,728-incident cases. We estimated the lifetime risk as the cumulative incidence to age 85 years based on a life-table method and using the most recent cross-sectional incidence rates for the period 2001-2005. Age-standardized rates by calendar year were also calculated to show the secular trend in prolapse surgery.
The lifetime risk of surgery for POP in the general female population was 19% based on the most recent cross-sectional rates, a figure higher than the 11-12% reported from U.S. managed-care populations.
There is a relatively high likelihood that a woman in Western Australia will undergo surgery for POP during her lifetime. If, as our results suggest, the burden of genital prolapse in general populations is higher than previously thought, there is justification for a stronger evidence base for prevention, early detection and intervention to reduce the personal and societal costs of these gynecological conditions.
II.
This paper explores the motivations and meanings of international student mobility. Central to the discussion are the results of a large questionnaire survey and associated in-depth interviews with ...UK students enrolled in universities in six countries from around the world. The results suggest, first, that several different dimensions of social and cultural capital are accrued through study abroad. It is argued that the search for 'world class' education has taken on new significance. Second, the paper argues that analysis of student mobility should not be confined to a framework that separates study abroad from the wider life-course aspirations of students. It is argued that these insights go beyond existing theorisations of international student mobility to incorporate recognition of diverse approaches to difference within cultures of mobility, including class reproduction of distinction, broader notions of distinction within the life-plans of individual students, and how 'reputations' associated with educational destinations are structured by individuals, institutions and states in a global higher education system that produces differentially mediated geographies of international student mobility.
Effect of Vildagliptin on Hepatic Steatosis Macauley, Mavin; Hollingsworth, Kieren G; Smith, Fiona E ...
The journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism,
2015-April, Letnik:
100, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Context:
Although dipeptidyl-peptidase-4 inhibitors exert their major action via an incretin mechanism, a favorable effect of vildagliptin on lipid metabolism remains unexplained.
Objective:
The ...objective was to examine hepatic triglyceride levels and insulin sensitivity on vildagliptin.
Design:
This was a 6-month, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.
Setting:
This was an outpatient study at a university clinical research center.
Patients:
Individuals with type 2 diabetes (n = 44) and glycated hemoglobin ≤7.6% on stable metformin therapy were included.
Intervention:
Intervention was vildagliptin 50 mg twice a day or placebo over 6 months.
Main Outcome Measures:
Main outcome measures were hepatic triglyceride levels and insulin sensitivity.
Results:
Mean fasting liver triglyceride content decreased by 27% with vildagliptin, from 7.3 ± 1.0% (baseline) to 5.3 ± 0.9% (endpoint). There was no change in the placebo group. The between-group difference in change from baseline was significant (P = .013). Mean fasting plasma glucose concentration decreased over the study period with vildagliptin vs placebo by −1.0 mmol/L (P = .018), and there was a positive correlation between these decrements and liver triglyceride in the vildagliptin group at 3 months (r = 0.47; P = .02) and 6 months (r = 0.44; P = .03). Plasma alanine aminotransferase fell from 27.2 ± 2.8 to 20.3 ± 1.4 IU/L in the vildagliptin group (P = .0007), and there was a correlation between the decrements in alanine aminotransferase and liver triglyceride (r = 0.83; P < .0001). Insulin sensitivity during the euglycemic clamp was similar in each group at baseline (3.24 ± 0.30 vs 3.19 ± 0.38 mg/kg/min) and did not change (adjusted mean change of 0.26 ± 0.22 vs 0.32 ± 0.22 mg/kg/min; P = .86). Mean body weight decreased by 1.6 ± 0.5 vs 0.4 ± 0.5 kg in the vildagliptin and placebo groups, respectively (P = .08).
Conclusions:
This study demonstrates that the dipeptidyl-peptidase-4 inhibitor vildagliptin brings about a clinically significant decrease in hepatic triglyceride levels during 6 months of therapy unrelated to change in body weight. There was no change in peripheral insulin sensitivity.
Engaging with Transformative Paradigms in Mental Health Whitaker, Louise; Smith, Fiona L.; Brasier, Catherine ...
International journal of environmental research and public health,
09/2021, Letnik:
18, Številka:
18
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
When graduates of Australian social work courses embark on a career in mental health, the systems they enter are complex, fragmented and evolving. Emerging practitioners will commonly be confronted ...by the loneliness, social exclusion, poverty and prejudice experienced by people living with mental distress; however, social work practice may not be focused on these factors. Instead, in accordance with the dominant biomedical perspective, symptom and risk management may predominate. Frustration with the limitations evident in this approach has seen the United Nations call for the transformation of mental health service delivery. Recognising paradigmatic influences on mental health social work may lead to a more considered enactment of person centred, recovery and rights-based approaches. This paper compares and contrasts influences of neo-liberalism, critical theory, human rights and post-structuralism on mental health social work practice. In preparing social work practitioners to recognise the influence of, and work more creatively with, intersecting paradigms, social work educators strive to foster a transformative approach to mental health practice that straddles discourses.
Radiance observations are typically affected by biases that come mainly from instrument error (scanning or calibration) and inaccuracies of the radiative transfer model. These biases need to be ...removed for successful assimilation, so a bias correction scheme is crucial in the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) system. Today, most NWP centres, including the Bureau of Meteorology (hereafter, "the Bureau"), correct the biases through variational bias correction (VarBC) schemes, which were originally developed for global models. However, there are difficulties in estimating the biases in a limited-area model (LAM) domain. As a result, the Bureau's regional NWP system, ACCESS-C (Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator-City), uses variational bias coefficients obtained directly from its global NWP system ACCESS-G (Global). This study investigates independent radiance bias correction in the data assimilation system for ACCESS-C. We assessed the impact of using independent bias correction for the LAM compared with the operational bias coefficients derived in ACCESS-G between February and April 2020. The results from our experiment show no significant difference between the control and test, suggesting a neutral impact on the forecast. Our findings point out that the VarBC-LAM strategy should be further explored with different settings of predictors and adaptivity for a more extended period and over additional domains.
A Long Way Home Beinart, William; Charlton, Julia; Coplan, David ...
07/2018
eBook
In no other society in the world have urbanisation and industrialization been as comprehensively based on migrant labour as in South Africa. Rather than focusing on the well-documented narrative of ...displacement and oppression, A Long Way Home captures the humanity, agency and creative modes of self-expression of the millions of workers who helped to build and shape modern South Africa. The book spans a three-hundred-year history beginning with the exportation of slave labour from Mozambique in the eighteenth century and ending with the strikes and tensions on the platinum belt in recent years. It shows not only the age-old mobility of African migrants across the continent but also, with the growing demand for labour in the mining industry, the importation of Chinese indentured migrant workers. Contributions include 18 essays and over 90 artworks and photographs that traverse homesteads, chiefdoms and mining hostels, taking readers into the materiality of migrant life and its customs and traditions, including the rituals practiced by migrants in an effort to preserve connections to “home” and create a sense of “belonging”. The essays and visual materials provide multiple perspectives on the lived experience of migrant labourers and celebrate their extraordinary journeys. A Long Way Home was conceived during the planning of an art exhibition entitled ‘Ngezinyawo: Migrant Journeys’ at Wits Art Museum. The interdisciplinary nature of the contributions and the extraordinary collection of images selected to complement and expand on the text make this a unique collection.
The Australian social work course accreditation standards aim to ensure graduates have an understanding of the social, cultural, and political structures that influence psychosocial wellbeing. Unlike ...the previous standards, the current standards do not require the curricula to address specific knowledge and skills for working with people who live with severe mental distress or mental health conditions that might result in diagnoses such as schizophrenia, personality disorders, and bipolar disorder. Anticipating the revision of curricula resulting from these recent changes to the accreditation standards, four social work academics from across three Australian universities engaged in a peer review of mental health social work curricula. By exploring the purpose, emphasis, and challenges in curriculum design, this stage of the review aimed to identify the positioning of future curricula to prepare graduates who embrace the complex array of opportunities and demands of social work practice in this field. Our investigations confirmed diversity in mental health social work practice, revealing mental health social work curricula must meet multiple and evolving agendas.
IMPLICATIONS
International calls for transformative approaches to mental health present opportunities for enhanced recognition of the social justice orientation of social work.
The absence of an accreditation requirement to address social work practice with people who live with severe mental distress or low prevalence mental health conditions might prove a regrettable gap in Australian Social Work Education Accreditation Standards 2021.
Further collegial discussion and debate about the beneficial outcomes of mental health social work curricula are desirable.
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