Design and development of an integrated mHealth platform to improve kangaroo mother care in Kenya

Background and Significance: There are 15 million preterm births a year. Premature babies suffer the highest rates of newborn mortality, occurring primarily in low/middle-income countries (LMICs). Neonatal hypothermia (low body temperature) is a life-threatening complication, which is prevented by Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC), but in Kenya, a profound shortage of health workers and lack of resources are barriers to KMC. Our international team has developed an integrated platform (educational and data collection apps + biomedical device) to improve the implementation of KMC in health facilities. Methods: From August 2020 – February 2021, a multi-disciplinary team from the United States and Kenya utilized agile development (weekly scrum meetings) and human-and user-centered design techniques to develop high-fidelity wireframes (Figma) of Android apps which are designed to integrate with a patented self-warming biomedical device (US10390630B2; NG/PT/IC/2016/053394) that utilizes wireless sensors to track KMC babies, continuously monitor infant vital signs, and display physiological data on mobile phones/tablets. Results: High-fidelity wireframes have been developed for two user interfaces of an integrated app, NeoRoo. The NeoRoo-Family app is for KMC parents; the NeoRoo-HealthWorker app is built for nurses and doctors. NeoRoo-Family provides parental caregivers with: (a) automated monitoring of key vital signs for their baby; (c) ability to alert a clinician as needed; (c) tracking of KMC metrics and goals, such as number of hours of skin-toskin care completed in a week; and (d) educational resources for evidence-based newborn care. The NeoRoo- HealthWorker app interface enables clinicians to: (a) simultaneously track breathing, heart rate, temperature, and oxygen saturation for multiple KMC infants in real-time; (b) review each infant’s past clinical history and vital signs trends; (c) receive automated and parent-generated alerts; (d) support harmonized dissemination of key educational messages to families. Conclusions: By providing education, continuous thermal support, and integrated, automated vital signs monitoring for premature babies, via the NeoRoo mHealth platform, we hope to better equip parents and health workers in Kenya to: (1) prevent hypothermia; (2) automatically monitor vital signs in newborns; (3) track key KMC metrics; (4) promote more effective task-sharing among KMC teams. On-going work includes participatory design interviews and a usability assessment

Challenger Society for Marine Science: Increasing opportunity through an equity, diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility working group

The Challenger Society for Marine Science (CSMS) is the learned society for marine scientists based in the United Kingdom, with a membership of over 470 people from >100 institutions, across all academic career stages. Members of the CSMS have been interested in improving the representation of a diverse range of identities in UK marine science, largely driven by their own experiences of inequity in the discipline, such as the challenges faced by women (Hendry et al., 2020). The structural exclusion of individuals by race, sex, ethnicity, social class, disability, sexuality, and the compound sum of these factors can result in a lack of diversity during recruitment and poor retention. Since 2021, CSMS has formed the first UK-wide equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility (EDIA) working group for marine scientists, with the aim of coordinating action to address the causes of exclusion and to improve representation across the discipline. The group of 25 volunteers meets each month to discuss a topical agenda, and the chair of the working group sits on the council of CSMS, providing EDIA input from the working group on society-wide strategic decisions

FindAScienceBerth: Connecting Underrepresented Groups in Marine Science with Available Berths on Scientific Research Vessels

No abstract available

Sediment mobility modelling and hydrodynamic properties of maerl

Sediment mobility modelling is a useful tool for scientifically robust marine spatial planning and characterisation of the benthic disturbance regime. As a prerequisite to modelling sediment transport of free living coralline algae habitats known as maerl or rhodolith, it is necessary to know fundamental hydrodynamic properties of this biogenic sediment. Two hydrodynamic properties, settling velocity and critical bed shear stress of maerl from three contrasting hydrodynamic regimes, have been determined. In Chapter 2, the settling velocity of maerl has been experimentally measured and rigorously compared with theoretical models of settling velocity and detailed grain shape parameters. Quantitative modifications of the Ferguson and Church (2004) equation for settling velocity have been made by allowing the drag coefficient C2 parameter, which equates to the reciprocal of the convexity of the maerl grain, to vary with grain size. In Chapter 3, the critical bed shear stress of maerl is experimentally determined using three techniques; Law of the Wall, Turbulent Kinetic Energy and Reynolds Stress. The results show that maerl has a lower critical Shields parameter than quartz grains of an equivalent sieve diameter primarily due to their highly-irregular grain shape leading to greater drag experienced by the maerl grains and the relative grain protrusion. In Chapter 4, coupled hydrodynamic-wave-sediment transport models are computed using the DHI MIKE 21 suite of modelling tools and subsequently utilised to compute the spatially-varying tidally-induced sediment mobility and combined wave-current induced sediment mobility during calm and storm conditions. A grid of spatially-varying critical Shields parameter is computed for maerl areas and areas of Galway Bay with quartz siliciclastic sediments. Maerl is present at the periphery of wave-induced residual current gyres during storm conditions. The peak combined wave-current induced Mobilization Frequency Index during storm conditions is the key hydrodynamic parameter governing the distribution of maerl and siliciclastic sediments and is the most useful physical surrogate for maerl in predictive habitat suitability modelling studies. The thesis concludes by evaluating the utility of sediment mobility indices for marine spatial planning and for the design of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)

Critical bed shear stress and threshold of motion of maërl biogenic gravel

A determination of the critical bed shear stress of maerl is a prerequisite for quantifying its mobility, rate of erosion and deposition in conservation management. The critical bed shear stress for incipient motion has been determined for the first time for samples from biogenic free-living maerl beds in three contrasting environments (open marine, intertidal and beach) in Galway Bay, west of Ireland. The bed shear stress was determined using two methods, Law of the Wall and Turbulent Kinetic Energy, in a rotating annular flume and in a linear flume. The velocity profile of flowing water above a bed of natural maerl grains was measured in four runs of progressively increasing flow velocity until the flow exceeded the critical shear stress of grains on the bed. The critical Shields parameter and the mobility number are estimated and compared with the equivalent curves for natural quartz sand. The critical Shields parameters for the maerl particles from all three environments fall below the Shields curve. Along with a previously reported correlation between maerl grain shape and settling velocity, these results suggest that the highly irregular shapes also allow maerl grains to be mobilised more easily than quartz grains with the same sieve diameter. The intertidal beds with the roughest particles exhibit the greatest critical shear stress because the particle thalli interlock and resist entrainment. In samples with a high percentage of maerl and low percentage of siliciclastic sand, the lower density, lower settling velocity and lower critical bed shear stress of maerl results in its preferential transport over the siliciclastic sediment. At velocities ~10 cm s-1 higher than the threshold velocity of grain motion, rarely-documented subaqueous maerl dunes formed in the annular flume