Empowering Participation Within Structures of Dependency

Participatory Design (PD) seeks political change to support people's democratic control over processes, solutions, and, in general, matters of concern to them. A particular challenge remains in supporting vulnerable groups to gain power and control when they are dependent on organizations and external structures. We reflect on our five-year engagement with survivors of sex trafficking in Nepal and an anti-trafficking organization that supports the survivors. Arguing that the prevalence of deficit perspective in the setting promotes dependency and robs the survivors' agency, we sought to bring change by exploring possibilities based on the survivors' existing assets. Three configurations illuminate how our design decisions and collective exploration operate to empower participation while attending to the substantial power implicitly and explicitly manifest in existing structures. We highlight the challenges we faced, uncovering actions that PD practitioners can take, including an emphasis on collaborative entanglements, attending to contingent factors, and encouraging provisional collectives.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. In Participatory Design Conference 2022: Volume 1 (pp. 75-86

Prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in endangered captive Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) of Chitwan National Park in Nepal

In order to ascertain the comprehensive prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites among captive Asian elephants in Chitwan National Park, a cross-sectional investigation was conducted. A total of 103 samples was purposefully collected. Demographic details encompassing age and gender, along with epidemiological information concerning deworming status, timing intervals, and nutritional condition for both government-owned and privately-owned elephants, were procured through a structured questionnaire survey. The process involved microscopic identification and quantification of gastrointestinal parasites through sedimentation, centrifugal floatation, and MacMaster Egg Per Gram (EPG) count methods. The resultant data indicated an overall prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites at 47.57% (49 out of 103 samples). The dominant class of parasites observed was Nematodes (n=30, 61.22%), followed by Trematodes (n=14, 28.57%) and Cestodes (n=5, 10.20%). Six distinct parasite genera were identified with positive results: Strongylus (26.53%), Trichostrongylus (24.48%), Fasciola (16.35%), Paramphistomum (12.24%), Anoplocephala (10.20%), and Ascaris (10.20%). Notably, the prevalence was markedly higher in females (39.80%) in comparison to males (7.76%), with the disparity being statistically significant (p>0.05). Additionally, a noteworthy correlation was observed between parasite prevalence, age groups, and deworming history, with statistical significance (p<0.05). The Egg Per Gram (EPG) count analysis demonstrated that the majority (87.75%) of the positively identified samples exhibited mild infection (100-500 eggs), while a relatively low percentage (6.12%) displayed heavy infection (1000-1500 eggs). The mean EPG was calculated as (248.39 ± 54.25). Consequently, the heightened prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in captive elephants within Chitwan National Park underscores the necessity for targeted interventions to mitigate the risk of parasitic infestations

The future of care work: towards a radical politics of care in CSCW research and practice

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) have long studied how technology can support material and relational aspects of care work, typically in clinical healthcare settings. More recently, we see increasing recognition of care work such as informal healthcare provision, child and elderly care, organizing and advocacy, domestic work, and service work. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored long-present tensions between the deep necessity and simultaneous devaluation of our care infrastructures. This highlights the need to attend to the broader social, political, and economic systems that shape care work and the emerging technologies being used in care work. This leads us to ask several critical questions: What counts as care work and why? How is care work (de)valued, (un)supported, or coerced under capitalism and to what end? What narratives drive the push for technology in care work and whom does it benefit? How does care work resist or build resilience against and within oppressive systems? And how can we as researchers advocate for and with care and caregivers? In this one-day workshop, we will bring together researchers from academia, industry, and community-based organizations to reflect on these questions and extend conversations on the future of technology for care work

An Empirical Study of Activity, Popularity, Size, Testing, and Stability in Continuous Integration

A good understanding of the practices followed by software development projects can positively impact their success --- particularly for attracting talent and on-boarding new members. In this paper, we perform a cluster analysis to classify software projects that follow continuous integration in terms of their activity, popularity, size, testing, and stability. Based on this analysis, we identify and discuss four different groups of repositories that have distinct characteristics that separates them from the other groups. With this new understanding, we encourage open source projects to acknowledge and advertise their preferences according to these defining characteristics, so that they can recruit developers who share similar values

Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement Versus Surgical Valve Replacement in Low-Intermediate Surgical Risk Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is a viable alternative to surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in patients with severe aortic stenosis (SAS) who are at high risk for surgery. We sought to evaluate the outcomes of TAVR vs SAVR in low-intermediate risk patients with SAS. METHODS AND RESULTS: We performed random-effects meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and propensity-matched observational studies comparing TAVR vs SAVR for low-intermediate risk patients. Five RCTs and 5 observational studies with a total of 6891 patients (3489 TAVR patients; 3402 SAVR patients) were included. Pooled data from RCTs showed no significant differences in all-cause mortality between TAVR and SAVR at 30 days (risk ratio [RR], 1.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.73-1.47) and intermediate-term follow-up (RR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.67-1.10). A trend toward decreased mortality was found with TAVR using the self-expandable vs balloon-expandable valves (RR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.52-1.15 and RR, 1.91; 95% CI, 0.25-14.53, respectively) and transfemoral vs transthoracic approach (RR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.55-1.01 and RR, 2.09; 95% CI, 0.40-11.03, respectively). Compared to SAVR, TAVR was associated with similar risks of stroke (RR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.74-1.11) and myocardial infarction (RR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.71-1.41). Furthermore, risks of major vascular complications, moderate-severe paravalvular regurgitation, and new permanent pacemaker implantation were higher with TAVR, whereas SAVR was associated with higher rates of acute kidney injury, atrial fibrillation, and major or life-threatening bleed. Finally, the above results from RCTs were consistent with pooled analyses of observational studies. CONCLUSION: TAVR appears to be a suitable alternative for patients with SAS who are at low-intermediate risk for SAVR