British Masculinity and Propaganda during the First World War

The purpose of this research is to address how the issue of masculinity functioned in British propaganda during the First World War, and how it affected individuals. Propaganda relied on prewar conceptions of masculinity to appeal to audiences for reasons such as enlistment or continued support for the war. Propaganda often amplified these conceptions of prewar masculinity, and men would internalize propaganda’s message. The British state, however, did not create propaganda uniformly, and there existed major differences between the goals of propaganda posters and propaganda films. It will be demonstrated that posters and film addressed separate issues despite reaching similar audiences, and that posters were more successful at affecting men’s sense of masculinity. Through showing how propaganda posters resonated with individuals, this paper highlights and reassesses the impact the propaganda poster had on contemporary British audiences

Educating the Professional Engineer of 2020: The Changing Licensure Requirements

Engineering education programs would be well served to align their curricula and program outcomes to the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam and Professional Engineer (PE) Exam specifications. These exams are required steps in the process of becoming a licensed engineer in most states. NCEES (the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing professional licensure for engineers and surveyors. It develops, administers, and scores these examinations used for engineering licensure. Starting in 2011, NCEES held survey-creation meetings with diverse teams to develop a draft survey containing the subjects in each discipline and establish consensus support. NCEES launched a web-based survey of technical society members, institution report recipients, deans and department heads of all EAC/ABET programs, PE and FE exam committee volunteers, and others; more than 7,000 people completed the survey. Respondents rated the importance of each topic area to indicate how important it is for a new engineer to have minimum competence in that area. Based on these survey results, a set of topics and associated weighting was proposed and approved. Starting in 2014 the various FE exams will contain some overlapping content (e.g., mathematics and engineering economics), but there will no longer be a common breadth portion. Each FE exam, including industrial engineering, will be a freestanding exam. The PE exam specifications have also been revised; the new specifications will be used beginning in 2013. This paper highlights these recent changes to the discipline-specific content of the industrial engineering (IE) exams and suggests possible resulting curriculum modifications. As the IE profession undergoes changes in its application of traditional principles and adds new areas of focus, it is timely that the FE and PE exam specifications have been revisited to reflect changing priorities within the profession. For academic departments to stay relevant and assist industrial engineering graduates to become PE licensed, modern curriculum should stay closely aligned to the FE and PE exam specifications but not attempt to teach to the test . The paper concludes with a discussion of how these specifications have been used to assess and update academic curriculum

Student exposure to cancer patients: an analysis of clinical logbooks and focus groups in clinical year medical students

Despite cancer being the leading cause of mortality, cancer education and patient exposure are lacking in many medical schools. The aim of this study was to evaluate the nature of cancer patient exposure, relative to the clinical setting for medical students on placement and to explore their experiences. Participants were asked to maintain a logbook of cancer patient encounters and were invited to attend a structured focus group upon completion of the academic year. Eleven students submitted logbooks (rr = 6.15%) and eight participated in the focus groups (4.47%). A total of 247 cancer patient encounters were recorded. Third-year students primarily saw cancer patients in surgery (18.62%) and general practice (8.50%), whilst final year students saw cancer patients most frequently in palliative care (35.22%) and ENT surgery (13.77%). Students highlighted that the quality of their interactions with cancer patients varied significantly between clinical settings. Outpatient clinics and surgical in-patients had the lowest level of interaction, with students having a predominantly observatory role. Repeated themes of uncertainty and awkwardness regarding history, examination and discussing death and dying were outcomes of the thematic analysis. Exposure to cancer patients remains highly variable and opportunistic. Students voiced concerns for preparedness to practice and many found it worrisome that they will likely examine a primary cancer when they have graduated, without having done so during their training. Our study suggests that a more structured approach to teaching and clinical exposure to cancer patients is required

Using Simulated Annealing to Solve the Daily Drayage Problem with Hard Time Windows

Drayage is the stage of the intermodal transport that deals with transport of freight on trucks among the intermodal terminal, and customers and suppliers that are located in its hinterland. This work proposes an algorithm based on simulated annealing heuristics to solve the operations of drayage. This algorithm has been used to solve battery problems, demonstrating the validity and suitability of its results, which were compared with exact method

Blueberry counteracts bv-2 microglia morphological and functional switch after lps challenge

Microglia, the innate immune cells of the CNS, respond to brain injury by activating and modifying their morphology. Our study arises from the great interest that has been focused on blueberry (BB) for the antioxidant and pharmacological properties displayed by its components. We analyzed the influence of hydroalcoholic BB extract in resting or lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated microglia BV-2 cells. BB exerted a protective effect against LPS-induced cytotoxicity, as indicated by cell viability. BB was also able to influence the actin cytoskeleton organization, to recover the control phenotype after LPS insult, and also to reduce LPS-driven migration. We evaluated the activity of Rho and Rac1 GTPases, which regulate both actin cytoskeletal organization and migratory capacity. LPS caused an increase in Rac1 activity, which was counteracted by BB extract. Furthermore, we demonstrated that, in the presence of BB, mRNA expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α decreased, as did the immunofluorescence signal of iNOS, whereas that of Arg-1 was increased. Taken together, our results show that, during the inflammatory response, BB extract shifts the M1 polarization towards the M2 phenotype through an actin cytoskeletal rearrangement. Based on that, we might consider BB as a nutraceutical with anti-inflammatory activities

Does Scarpa's Fascia Preservation in Abdominoplasty Reduce Seroma? A Systematic Review

Abdominoplasty is a widely utilized cosmetic surgery procedure. Despite its popularity, seroma formation remains a prevalent complication. Seroma can lead to extended recovery time, increased medical appointments, and the potential for infection or the need for additional surgical revision. Preserving Scarpa's fascia may mitigate the risk of seroma in patients following abdominoplasty. The goal of this systematic review was to determine the impact of preserving Scarpa's fascia on the occurrence of seroma and total drain output following an abdominoplasty procedure. This review searched academic literature in MEDLINE (via PubMed), EMBASE (OvidSP), and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) for clinical and observational studies published in peer-reviewed journals, from March 2022 to November 2022, that evaluated the impact of preserving Scarpa's fascia on postoperative seroma and total drain output during abdominoplasty. The primary outcomes of interest were seroma and total drain output, with secondary outcomes of interest including hematoma, time to drain removal, length of hospital stay, wound dehiscence, and infection rate. The systematic review of 8 studies, involving 846 patients, found that the preservation of Scarpa's fascia during an abdominoplasty procedure was associated with decreased seroma occurrence, reduced drain output, faster drain removal, and fewer infections. However, it did not affect the incidence of hematoma, hospital stay duration, or wound dehiscence. The preservation of Scarpa's fascia during an abdominoplasty procedure should be considered as a routine practice, because it has been shown to result in reduced seroma incidence rates and faster drain removal.</p

Medical communication and technology: a video-based process study of the use of decision aids in primary care

Background: much of the research on decision-making in health care has focused on consultation outcomes. Less is known about the process by which clinicians and patients come to a treatment decision. This study aimed to quantitatively describe the behaviour shown by doctors and patients during primary care consultations when three types of decision aids were used to promote treatment decision-making in a randomised controlled trial.Methods: a video-based study set in an efficacy trial which compared the use of paper-based guidelines (control) with two forms of computer-based decision aids (implicit and explicit versions of DARTS II). Treatment decision concerned warfarin anti-coagulation to reduce the risk of stroke in older patients with atrial fibrillation. Twenty nine consultations were video-recorded. A ten-minute 'slice' of the consultation was sampled for detailed content analysis using existing interaction analysis protocols for verbal behaviour and ethological techniques for non-verbal behaviour.Results: median consultation times (quartiles) differed significantly depending on the technology used. Paper-based guidelines took 21 (19–26) minutes to work through compared to 31 (16–41) minutes for the implicit tool; and 44 (39–55) minutes for the explicit tool. In the ten minutes immediately preceding the decision point, GPs dominated the conversation, accounting for 64% (58–66%) of all utterances and this trend was similar across all three arms of the trial. Information-giving was the most frequent activity for both GPs and patients, although GPs did this at twice the rate compared to patients and at higher rates in consultations involving computerised decision aids. GPs' language was highly technically focused and just 7% of their conversation was socio-emotional in content; this was half the socio-emotional content shown by patients (15%). However, frequent head nodding and a close mirroring in the direction of eye-gaze suggested that both parties were active participants in the conversationConclusion: irrespective of the arm of the trial, both patients' and GPs' behaviour showed that they were reciprocally engaged in these consultations. However, even in consultations aimed at promoting shared decision-making, GPs' were verbally dominant, and they worked primarily as information providers for patients. In addition, computer-based decision aids significantly prolonged the consultations, particularly the later phases. These data suggest that decision aids may not lead to more 'sharing' in treatment decision-making and that, in their current form, they may take too long to negotiate for use in routine primary car

Nurse-patient interaction and communication: a systematic literature review

Aim: The purpose of this review is to describe the use and definitions of the concepts of nurse-patient interaction and nurse-patient communication in nursing literature. Furthermore, empirical findings of nurse-patient communication research will be presented, and applied theories will be shown. Method: An integrative literature search was executed. The total number of relevant citations found was 97. The search results were reviewed, and key points were extracted in a standardized form. Extracts were then qualitatively summarized according to relevant aspects and categories for the review. Results: The relation of interaction and communication is not clearly defined in nursing literature. Often the terms are used interchangeably or synonymously, and a clear theoretical definition is avoided or rather implicit. Symbolic interactionism and classic sender-receiver models were by far the most referred to models. Compared to the use of theories of adjacent sciences, the use of original nursing theories related to communication is rather infrequent. The articles that try to clarify the relation of both concepts see communication as a special or subtype of interaction. Conclusion: The included citations all conclude that communication skills can be learned to a certain degree. Involvement of patients and their role in communication often is neglected by authors. Considering the mutual nature of communication, patients’ share in conversation should be taken more into consideration than it has been until now. Nursing science has to integrate its own theories of nursing care with theories of communication and interaction from other scientific disciplines like sociology

Energy efficient UV/H2O2 processes for conversion of pharmaceuticals in drinking water: effect of water quality

Previous research showed that surface water in the Netherlands may contain significant concentrations of organic micropollutants like pharmaceuticals. A model has been developed which can predict the conversion of a broad range of organic micropollutants in a UV/H2O2 process with low pressure UV lamps. This model also was applied to optimize UV reactors, which were tested at three Dutch locations, including two drinking water companies. It was observed that the model predictions were very accurate, that very high conversion could be obtained, and that the optimized UV reactors resulted in a 30-40% reduced energy demand of the process. Furthermore it was shown that the effect of pretreatment of the water, reducing the DOC content and increasing UV-T values, can improve reactor performance by 30-70%