The Electrochemical Kinetics of the Evolution of Isotopically Enriched Gases and the Mechanism of the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

This work describes a method which follows, by mass spectrometry, the kinetics of gas evolution from an isotopically enriched electrode surface. The mechanisms of both 18O16O and 4D 2 evolution were investigated by this technique. 34O 2 evolution was studied on platinum, NiCo2O4 and lithiated CO3O4 electrodes in alkaline electrolyte, and additionally on platinum electrodes in acid electrolyte. The kinetics were found to be consistent with a mechanism of oxygen evolution which involved successive oxidations on a single site or reaction via a bridge structure. It was found, in all cases, that the total number of sites responsible for oxygen evolution were less than the total number of sites at the surface. Additionally, on NiCo2O4 electrodes the number of sites which showed enrichment decreased with aging of the electrode, in agreement with evidence from its cyclic voltammogram. Tafel slopes and cyclic voltammograms are reported for each electrode. On each substrate the amount of enrichment detected was less than would have been expected from the degree of enrichment of the electrolyte. This is most readily explained on consideration of the proposed mechanism of oxygen evolution, where the first step involving oxide formation is rate determining on platinum and NiCo2O4 (high overpotential). The intermediate oxide species formed being rapidly removed as oxygen was evolved. On materials in which the metal was initially in a trivalent state, a mechanism involving a bridge structure between this trivalent site and a second site is postulated; its formation being rate determining at low overpotential on NiCo2O4. This method was extended to follow the mechanism of hydrogen evolution on both platinum and platinised hydrogen tungsten bronzeelectrodes. The kinetics of the removal of an adsorbed deuteron were consistent with a second order recombination and found to be fast (k = 0.02 +/- 0.02 s-1 at 25&deg;C on platinum). Experiments on platinised hydrogen tungsten bronze electrodes confirmed the existence of a synergistic effect in this system. <p

Health, education, and social care provision after diagnosis of childhood visual disability

Aim: To investigate the health, education, and social care provision for children newly diagnosed with visual disability.Method: This was a national prospective study, the British Childhood Visual Impairment and Blindness Study 2 (BCVIS2), ascertaining new diagnoses of visual impairment or severe visual impairment and blindness (SVIBL), or equivalent vi-sion. Data collection was performed by managing clinicians up to 1-year follow-up, and included health and developmental needs, and health, education, and social care provision.Results: BCVIS2 identified 784 children newly diagnosed with visual impairment/SVIBL (313 with visual impairment, 471 with SVIBL). Most children had associated systemic disorders (559 [71%], 167 [54%] with visual impairment, and 392 [84%] with SVIBL). Care from multidisciplinary teams was provided for 549 children (70%). Two-thirds (515) had not received an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP). Fewer children with visual impairment had seen a specialist teacher (SVIBL 35%, visual impairment 28%, χ2p < 0.001), or had an EHCP (11% vs 7%, χ2p < 0 . 01).Interpretation: Families need additional support from managing clinicians to access recommended complex interventions such as the use of multidisciplinary teams and educational support. This need is pressing, as the population of children with visual impairment/SVIBL is expected to grow in size and complexity.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes of COVID-19: The PAN-COVID study

Objective To assess perinatal outcomes for pregnancies affected by suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods Prospective, web-based registry. Pregnant women were invited to participate if they had suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between 1st January 2020 and 31st March 2021 to assess the impact of infection on maternal and perinatal outcomes including miscarriage, stillbirth, fetal growth restriction, pre-term birth and transmission to the infant. Results Between April 2020 and March 2021, the study recruited 8239 participants who had suspected or confirmed SARs-CoV-2 infection episodes in pregnancy between January 2020 and March 2021. Maternal death affected 14/8197 (0.2%) participants, 176/8187 (2.2%) of participants required ventilatory support. Pre-eclampsia affected 389/8189 (4.8%) participants, eclampsia was reported in 40/ 8024 (0.5%) of all participants. Stillbirth affected 35/8187 (0.4 %) participants. In participants delivering within 2 weeks of delivery 21/2686 (0.8 %) were affected by stillbirth compared with 8/4596 (0.2 %) delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection (95 % CI 0.3–1.0). SGA affected 744/7696 (9.3 %) of livebirths, FGR affected 360/8175 (4.4 %) of all pregnancies. Pre-term birth occurred in 922/8066 (11.5%), the majority of these were indicated pre-term births, 220/7987 (2.8%) participants experienced spontaneous pre-term births. Early neonatal deaths affected 11/8050 livebirths. Of all neonates, 80/7993 (1.0%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions Infection was associated with indicated pre-term birth, most commonly for fetal compromise. The overall proportions of women affected by SGA and FGR were not higher than expected, however there was the proportion affected by stillbirth in participants delivering within 2 weeks of infection was significantly higher than those delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection. We suggest that clinicians’ threshold for delivery should be low if there are concerns with fetal movements or fetal heart rate monitoring in the time around infection

Correction to: Cluster identification, selection, and description in Cluster randomized crossover trials: the PREP-IT trials

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Students Learn about Documentation throughout Their Teacher Education Program

Study groups and learning circles can offer a systematic way for early childhood teachers to interact about their work and create a culture of professional development. This paper describes how faculty systematically followed a collaborative co-inquiry process in order to improve a new early childhood interdisciplinary teacher preparation program. The team met on a regular basis throughout one academic year, with the stated objective of infusing observation/documentation knowledge and skills in a coherent and systematic way throughout the students’ program of studies. The group created a template of the cycle of inquiry, which could apply to all courses, and analyzed the documentation process along a series of skill dimensions: (1) level that students are expected to achieve (awareness, application, refinement/integration); (2) focus of the students’ observations (who, what, where, when, how); (3) width of the lens of observation (e.g., focused narrowly on one dimension of behavior or widely on a whole classroom environment); (4) intended audience of the completed documentation (e.g., children, parents, professional colleagues); and (5) finished product of documentation (e.g., project panel, memory book, slide presentation). The co-inquiry process allowed the faculty to improve the ways that the program helps students move from an awareness level toward a practitioner level in using observation and documentation. The students’ reflections and finished work suggest how they learned to promote children’s learning, partner with parents, and come to think of themselves as “professionals” in their field

On Aboriginal Representation in the Gallery

Originating from a series of workshops held at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Vancouver Art Gallery in March 2000, the 24 essays in this book address the subject of Aboriginal representation in the gallery. The authors analyse issues stemming from the production, collection and exhibition of historical and contemporary Aboriginal art. Includes the programme for the workshop series. Text in English, with a French abstract. List of illustrations. Notes on contributors. Circa 450 bibl. ref

Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes of COVID -19: coreporting of common outcomes from PAN-COVID and AAP-SONPM registries

Objective Few large cohort studies have reported data on maternal, fetal, perinatal and neonatal outcomes associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infection in pregnancy. We report the outcome of infected pregnancies from a collaboration formed early during the pandemic between the investigators of two registries, the UK and Global Pregnancy and Neonatal outcomes in COVID‐19 (PAN‐COVID) study and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Neonatal–Perinatal Medicine (SONPM) National Perinatal COVID‐19 Registry. Methods This was an analysis of data from the PAN‐COVID registry (1 January to 25 July 2020), which includes pregnancies with suspected or confirmed maternal SARS‐CoV‐2 infection at any stage in pregnancy, and the AAP‐SONPM National Perinatal COVID‐19 registry (4 April to 8 August 2020), which includes pregnancies with positive maternal testing for SARS‐CoV‐2 from 14 days before delivery to 3 days after delivery. The registries collected data on maternal, fetal, perinatal and neonatal outcomes. The PAN‐COVID results are presented overall for pregnancies with suspected or confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infection and separately in those with confirmed infection. Results We report on 4005 pregnant women with suspected or confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infection (1606 from PAN‐COVID and 2399 from AAP‐SONPM). For obstetric outcomes, in PAN‐COVID overall and in those with confirmed infection in PAN‐COVID and AAP‐SONPM, respectively, maternal death occurred in 0.5%, 0.5% and 0.2% of cases, early neonatal death in 0.2%, 0.3% and 0.3% of cases and stillbirth in 0.5%, 0.6% and 0.4% of cases. Delivery was preterm (< 37 weeks' gestation) in 12.0% of all women in PAN‐COVID, in 16.1% of those women with confirmed infection in PAN‐COVID and in 15.7% of women in AAP‐SONPM. Extreme preterm delivery (< 27 weeks' gestation) occurred in 0.5% of cases in PAN‐COVID and 0.3% in AAP‐SONPM. Neonatal SARS‐CoV‐2 infection was reported in 0.9% of all deliveries in PAN‐COVID overall, in 2.0% in those with confirmed infection in PAN‐COVID and in 1.8% in AAP‐SONPM; the proportions of neonates tested were 9.5%, 20.7% and 87.2%, respectively. The rates of a small‐for‐gestational‐age (SGA) neonate were 8.2% in PAN‐COVID overall, 9.7% in those with confirmed infection and 9.6% in AAP‐SONPM. Mean gestational‐age‐adjusted birth‐weight Z‐scores were −0.03 in PAN‐COVID and −0.18 in AAP‐SONPM. Conclusions The findings from the UK and USA registries of pregnancies with SARS‐CoV‐2 infection were remarkably concordant. Preterm delivery affected a higher proportion of women than expected based on historical and contemporaneous national data. The proportions of pregnancies affected by stillbirth, a SGA infant or early neonatal death were comparable to those in historical and contemporaneous UK and USA data. Although maternal death was uncommon, the rate was higher than expected based on UK and USA population data, which is likely explained by underascertainment of women affected by milder or asymptomatic infection in pregnancy in the PAN‐COVID study, although not in the AAP‐SONPM study. The data presented support strong guidance for enhanced precautions to prevent SARS‐CoV‐2 infection in pregnancy, particularly in the context of increased risks of preterm delivery and maternal mortality, and for priority vaccination of pregnant women and women planning pregnancy. Copyright © 2021 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd