‘Taking the router shopping’: How low-income families experience, negotiate, and enact digital dis/connections

Within digital media scholarship, there are significant bodies of literature investigating forced disconnection (‘digital exclusion’) and voluntary disconnection (‘digital disconnection’) but there is little research addressing entanglements between them. This article explores how bringing together these bodies of literature through an empirical study offers new pathways and considerations for both areas. In doing so, we draw on qualitative data about the forms of disconnection experienced, negotiated, and enacted by low-income families in regional Australia before and during their participation in a digital inclusion initiative that provided them with Internet connections and laptops. We argue that their experiences illustrate the complex interplay of voluntary and involuntary factors that shape socially situated practices of disconnection. We also identify further implications for inclusion and disconnection research, including the need to recognise that within digital inclusion initiatives, participants’ non-use of provided technologies does not necessarily indicate failure but may instead be a positive outcome

Effect of grain boundary scattering on carrier mobility and thermoelectric properties of tellurium incorporated copper iodide thin films

Copper iodide (CuI) is a promising p-type transparent semiconductor with many potential applications in range of fields such as transistors, optoelectronics, solar cells, thermal sensors, and energy harvesting. We report compositional, structural, optical, electrical, and thermoelectric properties of optically transparent tellurium (Te) incorporated CuI films, (CuI)1-xTex where x=0–0.09, prepared by ion beam sputtering. The films are composed of γ-CuI with the presence of elemental tellurium clusters in films prepared with high Te concentration sputtering targets. The carrier mobility decreased from 6.9 ± 0.9 cm2V-1s-1 to 0.7 ± 0.1 cm2V-1s-1, and the electrical conductivity from 84.22 ± 8.45 Scm-1 to 3.97 ± 0.40 Scm-1 for the CuI and (CuI)0.91Te0.09 films, respectively, attributed to a transition from polar optical phonon to grain boundary scattering. The change in the mobility-limiting scattering mechanism decreased the power factor from 454 ± 57 μWm-1K-2 for the CuI film to 34 ± 4 μWm-1K-2 for the (CuI)0.91Te0.09 film. Our study shows that modulating the scattering mechanism in transparent thermoelectric materials is a powerful method to tune their thermoelectric properties

E-prescribing and access to prescription medicines during lockdown: experience of patients in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Background: Health services internationally have been compelled to change their methods of service delivery in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, to mitigate the spread of infection amongst health professionals and patients. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, widespread electronic delivery of prescriptions (e-prescribing) was enabled. The aim of the research was to explore patients’ experiences of how lockdown, changes to prescribing and the interface between general practices and community pharmacy affected access to prescription medications. Method: The research employed a mixed-method approach. This included an online survey (n = 1,010) and in-depth interviews with a subset of survey respondents (n = 38) during the first COVID-19 lockdown (March–May 2020). Respondents were recruited through a snowballing approach, starting with social media and email list contacts of the research team. In keeping with the approach, descriptive statistics of survey data and thematic analysis of qualitative interview and open-ended questions in survey data were combined. Results: For most respondents who received a prescription during lockdown, this was sent directly to the pharmacy. Most people picked up their medication from the pharmacy; home delivery of medication was rare (4%). Survey and interview respondents wanted e-prescribing to continue post-lockdown and described where things worked well and where they encountered delays in the process of acquiring prescription medication. Conclusions: E-prescribing has the potential to improve access to prescription medication and is convenient for patients. The increase in e-prescribing during lockdown highlighted how the system could be improved, through better feedback about errors, more consistency across practices and pharmacies, more proactive communication with patients, and equitable prescribing costs

Additional file 5 of Healthcare use attributable to COVID-19: a propensity-matched national electronic health records cohort study of 249,390 people in Wales, UK

Additional file 5: Table S4. Underlying plot data for figures 2 – 9. HR – Hazard Ratio, CI – Confidence Interval

Additional file 6 of Healthcare use attributable to COVID-19: a propensity-matched national electronic health records cohort study of 249,390 people in Wales, UK

Additional file 6: Fig S2. Survival for the full 6-month follow-up for the fatigue outcome. “General population” in the figure refers to the never tested population

Additional file 8 of Healthcare use attributable to COVID-19: a propensity-matched national electronic health records cohort study of 249,390 people in Wales, UK

Additional file 8: Table S5. Underlying life table data for death outcome only

Additional file 1 of Healthcare use attributable to COVID-19: a propensity-matched national electronic health records cohort study of 249,390 people in Wales, UK

Additional file 1: Table S1. Individual SARS-CoV-2 testing sites included under each testing location. AE – Accident & Emergency, CTU – Clinical Trials Unit, HC – Hospice Care, ICU – Intensive Care Unit

Additional file 2 of Healthcare use attributable to COVID-19: a propensity-matched national electronic health records cohort study of 249,390 people in Wales, UK

Additional file 2: Table S2. Location origins of the codes used to define the outcomes in the study. Additional notes also provided. ADHD – Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, OCD - obsessive compulsive disorder

Additional file 4 of Healthcare use attributable to COVID-19: a propensity-matched national electronic health records cohort study of 249,390 people in Wales, UK

Additional file 4: Fig S1. Shows ‘Love Plots’ for the main covariates before and after the propensity matching had taken place for community and hospital tested individuals. WIMD – Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation

Additional file 3 of Healthcare use attributable to COVID-19: a propensity-matched national electronic health records cohort study of 249,390 people in Wales, UK

Additional file 3: Table S3. Table of Codes under investigation