Implementing and Evaluating the ‘space' of Participatory Radio as an Educational Intervention for Inclusion, Self-efficacy and Informal Learning

RadioActive101 is an international internet radio hub that is an educational intervention which gives a voice to disenfranchised groups throughout Europe (funded by the Nominet Trust in the UK and EU Lifelong Learning Programme). Through using radio to give a voice to these groups, such as at-risk and unemployed young people, schoolchildren in low-income areas and older people who have various challenges, RadioActive stimulates and facilitates inclusion, greater self-efficacy and informal learning of citizens who would otherwise be ‘left behind'

Antimicrobial management of the diabetic foot infections

USMF ”N. Testemiţanu” Catedra Chirurgie FECMF, Al XI-lea Congres al Asociației Chirurgilor „Nicolae Anestiadi” din Republica Moldova și cea de-a XXXIII-a Reuniune a Chirurgilor din Moldova „Iacomi-Răzeșu” 27-30 septembrie 2011Introducere. Infecția piciorului la un pacient cu diabet zaharat este cauza amputației la 25%-50% dintre ei, fiind mai înaltă în infecțiile profunde. Evoluția severă a procesului inflamator este consecința influenței tipului microorganismului etiologic, dereglării metabolismului, a neuropatiei şi a afectului macro- şi microvascular din diabet. Obiective. Evaluarea antibioterapiei curente a piciorului diabetic infectat în baza analizei a 38 cazuri consecutive de pacienți, tratați în secțiile de chirurgie generală şi reanimare septică a SCR Chişinău în perioada octombrie 2010 – mai 2011. Material şi metode. La internarea pacientului s-au prelevat analize microbiologice din plaga infectată. Până la primirea rezultatelor, antibioterapia a fost empirică. Ghidarea antibioterapiei s-a efectuat conform rezultatelor însămânțărilor ulterioare, prelevate săptămânal. Rezultate. Analiza datelor investigațiilor microbiologice primare demonstrează prezența monoculturilor în 16/38 (42%) cazuri şi a asocierilor microbiene la 22/38 (58%) pacienți. Dintre monoculturi, în 12 cazuri a fost depistat stafilococul auriu, dintre care în 5 (42%) cazuri microorganismul era sensibil la oxacilină, iar în 7 (58%) cazuri-rezistent la oxacilină. La 2 pacienți a fost depistat Enterococcus faecalis, rezistent la cefalosporine şi rifampicină, sensibil la ampicilină, amoxicilină,ofloxacină, doxiciclină, levomicetină,ciprofloxacină, moxifloxacină, vancomicină, imipenem, meropenem. Floră polimicrobiană a fost prezentată prin asocieri gram(+) şi gram (-) la 15 (68%) dintre ei, la 6 (27%) asocieri de microorganisme gram negative şi la 1(5%) pacient s-a depistat asociere de grampozitive. Concluzii: 1. Micloflora în piciorul diabetic este variată, constând preponderent din asocieri microbiene la pacienții tratați în alte spitale, fiind monomicrobiană la pacienții cu picior diabetic, internați prima oară. 2. Antibioterapia este foarte importantă în tratamentul piciorului diabetic infectat, dat nu poate substitui managementul chirurgical. 3. Datele studiului demonstrează necesitatea utilizării antibioticelor de ultimă generație în tratamentul infecției piciorului diabetic. .Background. Infection of the foot in patients with diabetes causes amputation in 25-50%, this rate being even higher in deep infections. Severe evolution of the inflammatory process is influenced by the type of microorganism, grade of metabolic impairment, diabetic neuropathy, diabetic micro-, and macro-vascular lesions. Objectives. Evaluation of the current antimicrobial therapy used in diabetic foot infections by analysis of 38 consecutive patients, treated in the departments of general surgery and septic intensive care unit of the Clinical Republican Hospital, Kishinau, in the period from October 2010 to May 2011. Material and method. At admission swabs from the wound, areas were collected in all patients. Initial antibiotic therapy was empiric prior to the pathogen identification. Afterward, the treatment was selected in accordance with the culture test performed weekly. Results. Analysis of the primary culture tests shows monomicrobial infection in 42% (16/38) of cases and microbial association in 58 % (22/38) cases. Monomicrobial infection was produced in 12 cases by Staph. aureus, which was sensible to oxacillin in 5 (42%) cases and resistant in 7 (58%) cases. Enterococcus faecalis resistant to cephalosporines and rifampicin was detected in 2 patients. This agent was sensible to ampicillin, amoxicillin, ofloxacin, doxycycline, levomycetin, ciprofloxacin, moxifloxacin, vancomycin, imipenem, meropenem. Polymicrobial infections were represented by gram-negative and gram-positive associations in 15 (68%) cases, only gram-negative bacteria in 6 (27%) patients, and pure gram-positive associations in one case (5%). Conclusions. 1. Diabetic foot infections are produced by variable pathogens. Patients referred from other hospitals present polymicrobial infection in contrast to patients at first admission who demonstrate monomicrobial culture. 2. Antibiotic therapy is very important in the complex treatment of diabetic foot infection, but it cannot substitute surgical treatment. 3. Data of this study demonstrate the necessity of the use of the last generation antibiotics in patients with diabetic foot infections

Star-shaped Magnetic-plasmonic Au@Fe3O4 nano-heterostructures for photothermal therapy

Here, we synthesize a Au@Fe3O4 core@shell system with a highly uniform unprecedented star-like shell morphology with combined plasmonic and magnetic properties. An advanced electron microscopy characterization allows assessing the multifaceted nature of the Au core and its role in the growth of the peculiar epitaxial star-like shell with excellent crystallinity and homogeneity. Magnetometry and magneto-optical spectroscopy revealed a pure magnetite shell, with a superior saturation magnetization compared to similar Au@Fe3O4 heterostructures reported in the literature, which is ascribed to the star-like morphology, as well as to the large thickness of the shell. Of note, Au@Fe3O4 nanostar-loaded cancer cells displayed magneto-mechanical stress under a low frequency external alternating magnetic field (few tens of Hz). On the other hand, such a uniform, homogeneous, and thick magnetite shell enables the shift of the plasmonic resonance of the Au core to 640 nm, which is the largest red shift achievable in Au@Fe3O4 homogeneous core@shell systems, prompting application in photothermal therapy and optical imaging in the first biologically transparent window. Preliminary experiments performing irradiation of a stable water suspension of the nanostar and Au@Fe3O4-loaded cancer cell culture suspension at 658 nm confirmed their optical response and their suitability for photothermal therapy. The outstanding features of the prepared system can be thus potentially exploited as a multifunctional platform for magnetic-plasmonic applications

U-Pb detrital zircon geochronology of the lower Danube and its tributaries; implications for the geology of the Carpathians

We performed a detrital zircon (DZ) U-Pb geochronologic survey of the lower parts of the Danube River approaching its Danube Delta- Black Sea sink, and a few large tributaries (Tisza, Jiu, Olt and Siret) originating in the nearby Carpathian Mountains. Samples are modern sediments. DZ age spectra reflect the geology and specifically the crustal age formation of the source area, which in this case is primarily the Romanian Carpathians and their foreland with contributions from the Balkan Mountains to the south of Danube and the East European Craton. The zircon cargo of these rivers suggests a source area that formed during the latest Proterozoic and mostly into the Cambrian and Ordovician as island arcs and backarc basins in a Peri-Gondwanan subduction setting (~600 -440 Ma). The Inner Carpathian units are dominated by a U-Pb DZ peak in the Ordovician (460-470 Ma) and little inheritance from the nearby continental masses, whereas the Outer Carpathian units and the foreland has two main peaks, one Ediacaran (570-610 Ma) and one in the earliest Permian (290-300 Ma), corresponding to granitic rocks known regionally. A prominent igneous Variscan peak (320-350 Ma) in the Danube’s and tributaries DZ zircon record is difficult to explain and points out to either an extra Carpathian source or major unknown gaps in our understanding of Carpathian geology. Younger peaks corresponding to arc magmatism during the Alpine period make up as much as about 10% of the DZ archive, consistent with the magnitude and surface exposure of Mesozoic and Cenozoic arcs

RadioActive Europe: promoting engagement, informal learning and employability of at risk and excluded people across Europe through internet radio and social media (RadioActive101)

RadioActive is an innovative education project that has developed and implemented a radical technology-enabled pedagogy to promote the inclusion, engagement and informal learning of excluded people, or those at-risk of exclusion, across Europe. It does this through harnessing primarily internet radio and also social media, or, as our motto states: "RadioActive101: Learning through radio, learning for life!" The project developed, implemented and is sustaining a pan-European Internet Radio platform, incorporating Web 2.0 ideas and features. This is linked to innovative community based pedagogies to address inclusion, employability and active citizenship in an original and exciting way, whilst recognising informal learning through electronic Open badges. The consortium was led by the University of East London (UK), with other partners from Portugal (CIMJ), Germany (UKL), the UK (Pontydysgu), Romania (ODIP) and Malta (KIC). These partners have direct links and ongoing collaborations with 13 primary Associate Partner organisations and a network of 39 mostly grass-roots organisations that facilitate access to the RadioActive101 participants, or 'radio-activists' as we define them. So the Associate Partners perform and deliver RadioActive 'on the ground' and are the vehicle for the learning experiences required for their production. These represent a particularly diverse range of groups and this was deliberate to allow us to test and refine our model, and show that it potentially works with virtually all excluded groups, and across Europe. We actively developed, implemented and ran five national RadioActive 'stations' (or hubs) that are accessible via the European Support Hub (ESH). Through making the radio shows the target groups (schools, vocational education, Higher Education, informal and adult education) are developing digital competencies and employability skills 'in vivo' that are transferable to the 21st Century workplace. These competencies and skills align with six of the EU Key Competencies for Lifelong Learning and we have developed a progression and accreditation model linking the key competencies to RadioActive activities and performances that are recognised through Open electronic 'badges'. These badges provide concrete recognition measures and represent proficiencies that are relevant to further education or employment in particular related to the knowledge and creative and digital industries. Evaluation findings were obtained through conducting a phased evaluation incorporating a full in depth ‘prototype’ evaluation in the UK during year one, a similar evaluation in Portugal and a smaller one in Germany in year two, that were followed by a broader and larger international survey of radio-activists (subjects) towards the end of the project. All these showed particularly positive and interesting results, such as the delivery of additional impact and value beyond the informal learning of technical and employability skills. Additionally, we found improvements in confidence, self-esteem and general self-efficacy of individuals, plus additional improvements in groups and organisations. It appears that once our excluded groups developed the confidence and competence to perform activities they often thought were beyond them, they seem then empowered, to learn many other things and to develop a number of key competencies. At the European and national levels we have produced an extensive amount of dissemination activities to make the RadioActive Europe project public and well known, and also won two additional funding awards towards the end of the project.Other exploitation activities include embedding locally and internationally, with the latter being realised through the establishment of an international Foundation that will also support and advise about funding models to support further expansion at the European level

RadioActive101 Practices

The RadioActive101 Practices publication is now complete (in both PDF and EPUB versions) following consultation with all our partners. The report contains many of the common practices developed and refined by participants and RadioActive researchers across this European partnership over the last two years. And there are several examples of the significant impact felt by some of the individuals who became ‘radio-activists’ along the way

Urban neighbourhood flood vulnerability and risk assessments at different diurnal levels

Diurnal changes within communities can significantly alter the level of impacts during a flood, yet these essential daily variations are not currently catered for within flood risk assessments. This paper develops a flood vulnerability and risk model that captures crucial features of flood vulnerability; integrating physical and socio‐economic vulnerability data, combined with a flood hazard analysis, to give overall flood risk at neighbourhood scale, at two different times of day, for floods of different magnitudes. The flood vulnerability and risk model, the resulting diurnal coastal flood vulnerability and risk indexes, and corresponding maps for the ward of Hilsea (Portsmouth, United Kingdom), presented within this paper, highlight three previously unidentified neighbourhoods in particular in the northwest of the Hilsea ward, which have the highest levels of risk during both time zones and for flood events of different magnitude. Critically, these neighbourhoods lie further inland and not directly on the Hilsea coastline, yet by analysing at this resolution (including diurnal impacts), substantial levels of underlying vulnerability were identified within these areas

A multi-component flood risk assessment in the Maresme coast (NW Mediterranean)

Coastal regions are the areas most threatened by natural hazards, with floods being the most frequent and significant threat in terms of their induced impacts, and therefore, any management scheme requires their evaluation. In coastal areas, flooding is a hazard associated with various processes acting at different scales: coastal storms, flash floods, and sea level rise (SLR). In order to address the problem as a whole, this study presents a methodology to undertake a preliminary integrated risk assessment that determines the magnitude of the different flood processes (flash flood, marine storm, SLR) and their associated consequences, taking into account their temporal and spatial scales. The risk is quantified using specific indicators to assess the magnitude of the hazard (for each component) and the consequences in a common scale. This allows for a robust comparison of the spatial risk distribution along the coast in order to identify both the areas at greatest risk and the risk components that have the greatest impact. This methodology is applied on the Maresme coast (NW Mediterranean, Spain), which can be considered representative of developed areas of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The results obtained characterise this coastline as an area of relatively low overall risk, although some hot spots have been identified with high-risk values, with flash flooding being the principal risk process