Meaning making

The unique physical and chemical properties of biochars make them promising materials for odor, gas, and nutrient sorption. Floating covers made from organic materials (biocovers) are one option for reducing odor and gas emissions from livestock manure lagoons. This study evaluated the potential of floating biochar covers to reduce odor and gas emissions while simultaneously sorbing nutrients from liquid dairy manure. This new approach has the potential to mitigate multiple environmental problems. Two biochars were tested: one made via gasification of Douglas fir chips at 650°C (FC650), and the other made from a mixture of Douglas fir [ (Mirb...

This paper examines how the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) concerned itself with ensuring democracy and participation in the construction of health policies. It aims to explain the meaning of health democracy, and its importance for making the right to health effective. The concern is that the decision on these politics of the bloc should be in harmony with the interests of their citizens, so as to identify ethical activity of the States in international relations. An analysis was made of the documents of constitution, and resolutions on health policy, of this bloc, and statements were found with objectives and principles about democracy and citizen participation; but no institutionalization of mechanisms that might make participative democracy in health operational was found...

Intracardiac leiomyomatosis (ICLM) is a rare condition in which the benign tumor extends into the right heart chambers through inferior vena cava. The best surgical approach still remains unclear.We present a retrospective cohort of 36 patients diagnosed with ICLM in Peking Union Medical College Hospital between 2002 and 2016.The mean patient age was 44.5 (range 25-55) years. The clinical manifestations were various, including shortness of breath, chest tightness, edema of the lower extremities, palpitations, syncope, etc...

The paper is an inquiry into the poetics of mourning and faith-based intervention in maladaptive grieving processes in Ethiopia. The paper discusses the ways loss is signified and analyses the meanings of ethno-cultural and psychospiritual practices employed to deal with maladaptive grief processes and their psychological and emotional after-effects. Hermeneutics provided the methodological framework and informed the analysis. The thesis of the paper is that the poetics of mourning and faith-based social interventions are interactionally based meaning making processes...

Indiscriminate defecation among young children and the unsafe disposal of their feces increases fecal contamination in the household environment and the risk of diarrheal disease transmission. Improved sanitary technology for children too young to use a latrine may facilitate safe feces disposal and reduce fecal contamination in the household environment. We assessed the acceptability and feasibility of child potties in rural Bangladesh in 2010. Our team introduced child potties into 26 households for 30 days, and conducted semistructured interviews, group discussions, and observations to assess the acceptability and feasibility of their use for parents and children...

BACKGROUND: We examined the association of chronic musculoskeletal pain with executive function in community-dwelling older adults. METHOD: This cross-sectional study recruited 234 community-dwelling older adults in Japan (mean age: 72.7, women: 62.8%). Chronic musculoskeletal pain was defined as having moderate or more severe pain lasting ≥ 3 months. Executive function was assessed using the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST), Trail Making Test (TMT) parts A and B, Letter Verbal Fluency Test (LVFT) and Category Verbal Fluency Test (CVFT)...

The term pulmonary hypertension refers to a serious condition characterised by high pulmonary vascular pressure, mainly as a consequence of various cardiac and respiratory diseases. Current clinical classification of pulmonary hypertension considers five distinct groups. Transthoracic echocardiography represents the first and most important noninvasive screening tool for estimating the probability of pulmonary hypertension. The diagnostic approach to pulmonary hypertension is supported by a proposed algorithm, which identifies the underlying cause...

Engaging recent social science work examining the truth making claims of science and biomedicine, this paper explores how biology is being localised in Brazilian cancer genetics. It draws from ethnographic fieldwork in urban regions of southern Brazil working with and alongside patients, families and practitioners in cancer genetic clinics. It examines how different sorts of 'local biologies' are articulated in the context of research, clinical practice and among implicated patient communities and the way these can 'recursively' move across different spheres and scales of social action to extend and transform the meaning of the biological...

Many ethicists writing about automated systems (e.g. self-driving cars and autonomous weapons systems) attribute agency to these systems. Not only that; they seemingly attribute an autonomous or independent form of agency to these machines. This leads some ethicists to worry about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps in cases where automated systems harm or kill human beings. In this paper, I consider what sorts of agency it makes sense to attribute to most current forms of automated systems, in particular automated cars and military robots...

BACKGROUND: Post-traumatic unilateral or bilateral sub-axial cervical spine dislocations with locked facets are quite common. In developing countries like India, many patients with cervical injuries report late due to many reasons like rural backgrounds, lack of infrastructures and skilled surgeons, unawareness, poor socioeconomic status, lack of transportation to the specialized center with proper facility, etc. Early management is essential to maximize better neurological outcome. Delayed or neglected presentation makes treatment more challenging...

BACKGROUND: Despite accumulating evidence about the harm of polypharmacy in family medicine, few studies have investigated factors related to polypharmacy. The objective of this study was to explore factors related to physicians' prescribing behavior. METHODS: We conducted a survey of physicians at 5 family medicine residency practices and a linked health record review of their patients ≥65 years old. The determinants of physicians' mean number of prescriptions and potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) were examined using a generalized linear model...

INTRODUCTION: Co-creative methods, having an iterative character and including different perspectives, allow for the development of complex nursing interventions. Information about the development process is essential in providing justification for the ultimate intervention and crucial in interpreting the outcomes of subsequent evaluations. This paper describes a co-creative method directed towards the development of an eHealth intervention delivered by registered nurses to support self-management in outpatients with cancer pain...

OBJECTIVES: To assess subjectively perceived, real-world benefits longitudinally for unilateral cochlear implant (CI) recipients in a multinational population treated routinely. To identify possible predictors of self-reported benefits. DESIGN: This was a prospective, multicenter, repeated-measures study. Self-assessment of performance at preimplantation and postimplantation at 1, 2, and 3 years using standardized, validated, local language versions of the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ), and the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 (HUI3) was performed...

A method for fast determination of the activity in soil samples by measuring a fresh soil core sample from both ends with an HPGe-detector is proposed. The method was tested by simulations, as well as by measurements on spiked soil samples. Both simulations and measurements showed that the geometrical mean of the count rates when the sample is measured twice, with the bottom and the top end, respectively, facing the detector closely resembles the count rate from a measurement on a homogenized sample. Therefore, an efficiency calibration for homogenized samples could be used even if the activity is highly inhomogeneous in the soil core, as is the case with fresh fallout...

With over 300 million active users, Twitter is among the largest online news and social networking services in existence today. Open access to information on Twitter makes it a valuable source of data for research on social interactions, sentiment analysis, content diffusion, link prediction, and the dynamics behind human collective behaviour in general. Here we use Twitter data to construct co-occurrence language networks based on hashtags and based on all the words in tweets, and we use these networks to study link prediction by means of different methods and evaluation metrics...

Research involving adolescent and young African American (AA) females has demonstrated that they face uncontrollable obstacles which can interfere with the negotiation of safer sexual behaviors. If these obstacles are perceived as uncontrollable, then these females may be at risk for the development of Learned Helplessness (LH). As the LH model predicts, if these obstacles are believed not to be in their control, it may lead to deficits in motivational or cognitive decision-making, deficits that could certainly influence their sexual risk taking behaviors...

BACKGROUND: Despite optimal medical treatment, including epilepsy surgery, many epilepsy patients have uncontrolled seizures. Since the 1970s interest has grown in invasive intracranial neurostimulation as a treatment for these patients. Intracranial stimulation includes both deep brain stimulation (DBS) (stimulation through depth electrodes) and cortical stimulation (subdural electrodes). This is an updated version of a previous Cochrane review published in 2014. OBJECTIVES: To assess the efficacy, safety and tolerability of DBS and cortical stimulation for refractory epilepsy based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs)...

We introduce inline digital holographic microscopy (in-line DHM) as a label-free technique for detecting tumor cells in blood. The optimized DHM platform fingerprints every cell flowing through a microchannel at 10 000 cells per second, based on three features - size, maximum intensity and mean intensity. To identify tumor cells in a background of blood cells, we developed robust gating criteria using machine-learning approaches. We established classifiers from the features extracted from 100 000-cell training sets consisting of red blood cells, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and tumor cell lines...

BACKGROUND: There is some evidence that functional performance and validated outcome scores differ according to the gender, age, and sport participation status of a patient after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. However, the impact of these three factors, and interaction among them, has not been studied across a large relatively homogeneous group of patients to better elucidate their impact. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: We reviewed a large cohort of patients who had undergone ACL reconstruction to determine if ROM, knee laxity, objective performance measures, and validated outcome scores differed according to (1) gender; (2) age; and (3) sport participation status...

PURPOSE: Resource limitations in low- and middle-income countries make the management of CNS tumors challenging, particularly in Brazil, a country with major disparities in socioeconomic status and access to health care. We aimed to evaluate cancer-related neurosurgical procedures in the public health care system. METHODS: On the basis of Brazil's public health system database, we collected data for neurosurgical procedures related to CNS tumors performed between January 2008 and November 2013...