Analysis of Mercury Concentrations in Indiana Soil to Evaluate Patterns of Long-Term Atmospheric Mercury Deposition

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Mercury (Hg) has proven to be a risk to the public, mainly through the consumption of fish. Because of this, many fish consumption advisories have been issued in Indiana. Although much is known about the global cycle of mercury, little is known about how local and regional emission sources of mercury impact local and regional mercury cycling. This study’s objective was to determine the scope of mercury concentration in central Indiana by using a broad grid of soil mercury measurements. Sampling was designed to capture the net retained mercury content in soils, and to determine whether spatial patterns in exist in soil mercury contents that could be related to emission sources of mercury and post-emission transport patterns from wind. Results from this study revealed significant differences in mercury concentrations for soils in central Indiana. The core of the study area, concentrated in the urban area of Indianapolis, exhibited soil mercury contents that were 20 times higher than values in the outskirts of the study area. The spatial pattern resembled a bulls-eye shape centered on Indianapolis, and with comparison to the reported Hg emission from local sources, including a coal-fired power plant, indicates a strong regional deposition signal linked to those emission sources but marked by wind-driven transport to the northeast. This effect of local emission sources resulting in local deposition indicates that limiting mercury emissions will have a net beneficial impact on local environmental quality and human health

Prevalence of blindness in Western Australia: a population study using capture and recapture techniques

Aim: To determine the prevalence of blinding eye disease in Western Australia using a capture and recapture methodology. Methods: Three independent lists of residents of Western Australia who were also legally blind were collated during the capture periods in 2008–9. The first list was obtained from the state-wide blind register. A second list comprised patients routinely attending hospital outpatient eye clinics over a 6-month period in 2008. The third list was patients attending ophthalmologists' routine clinical appointments over a 6-week period in 2009. Lists were compared to identify those individuals who were captured on each list and those who were recaptured by subsequent lists. Log-linear models were used to calculate the best fit and estimate the prevalence of blindness in the Western Australian population and extrapolated to a national prevalence of blindness in Australia. Results: 1771 legally blind people were identified on three separate lists. The best estimate of the prevalence of blindness in Western Australia was 3384 (95% CI 2947 to 3983) or 0.15% of the population of 2.25 million. Extrapolating to the national population (21.87 million) gave a prevalence of legal blindness of approximately 32 892 or 0.15%. Conclusion: Capture–recapture techniques can be used to determine the prevalence of blindness in whole populations. The calculated prevalence of blindness suggested that up to 30% of legally blind people may not be receiving available financial support and up to 60% were not accessing rehabilitation services

A review of capture-recapture methods and its possibilities in ophthalmology and vision sciences

Epidemiological information is expected to be used to develop key aspects of eye care such as to control and minimise the impact of diseases, to allocate resources, to monitor public health actions, to determine the best treatment options and to forecast the consequence of diseases in populations. Epidemiological studies are expected to provide information about the prevalence and/or incidence of eye diseases or conditions. To determine prevalence is necessary to perform a cross-sectional screening of the population at risk to ascertain the number of cases.The aim of this review is to describe and evaluate capture-recapture methods (or models) to ascertaining the number of individuals with a disease (e.g. diabetic retinopathy) or condition (e.g. vision impairment) in the population.The review covers the fundamental aspects of capture-recapture methods that would enable non-experts in epidemiology to use it in ophthalmic studies. The review provides information about theoretical aspects of the method with examples of studies in ophthalmology in which it has been used. We also provide a problem/solution approach for limitations arising from the lists obtained from registers or other reliable sources.We concluded that capture-recapture models can be considered reliable to estimate the total number of cases with eye conditions using incomplete information from registers. Accordingly, the method may be used to maintain updated epidemiological information about eye conditions helping to tackle the lack of surveillance information in many regions of the globe.- This study was supported by FCT (COMPETE/QREN) grant reference [PTDC/DPT-EPI/0412/2012] in the context of the Prevalence and Costs of Visual Impairment in Portugal: a hospital-based study (PCVIP-study) and FCT Strategic Funding UID/FIS/04650/2013. PLR is funded by FCT (COMPETE/QREN) grant reference [SFRH/BD/119420/2016]

Effects of Aging in Reaching and Grasping Movements: A Kinematic Analysis of Movement Context

Although several studies have investigated the effects of aging on aspects of motor planning and control, there remains a lack of consensus about the underlying mechanisms responsible for the motor slowing associated with aging. This may, at least partially, be due to the fact that few studies have kinematically examined both the transport and grasp components in both younger and older adults, and furthermore, even fewer have examined these movements when the context of the task is changed, such as when the movement is performed in isolation compared to when it is embedded in a sequence. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis was threefold: 1) to investigate how aging affects performance on a single reach-to-grasp movement, 2) to examine how movement context affects performance on the reach-to-grasp movement when it is performed alone or as the first movement in a two-movement sequence- in other words, are older adults able to plan the first motor task movement in anticipation of performing a subsequent task, and 3) whether younger and older adults are able to plan, execute, and modify that movement in accordance with the extrinsic properties of the subsequent movement task (near versus far target for second movement). To address this, the movement profiles of both younger (N=14; mean age= 20.7 years; 4 males, 10 females) and older (N=11; mean age= 75.1 years; 3 males, 8 females) healthy right-handed adults were compared on performing a reach-to-grasp movement under 3 different movement conditions: single-movement task, two-movement sequence to near target, and two-movement sequence to far target. For the two-movement sequence conditions, participants were instructed to reach and grasp the object (like the single-movement task), but then to move and place it on either a closer (near condition) or farther (far condition) target location. Overall, the results from this study are in agreement with the literature showing older adults to have slower movements in general and consistently taking longer to both initiate and execute the reach-to-grasp movement than the younger adults for all conditions. There were no other differences between groups on the single-movement condition. For all participants, the reach-to-grasp movement took longer when it was performed in isolation than when it was embedded as the first part of a two-movement sequence. This finding can be explained by the movement termination effect and is consistent with findings from studies on aiming movements showing that when the movement plan involves stabilizing the arm at the first target (single-movement) as opposed to merely slowing it down (two-movement sequence tasks), the constraint of achieving a stabile position imposes a greater demand, thus requiring the movement iv to be made more slowly. The results obtained from the study indicate that the movement termination effect is also seen in the context of prehensile movements and furthermore, this effect on performance persists with age. Not only do the findings from this study show that this effect persists with age, but also that this effect increases with age, as revealed by a Group by Condition effect for reaction time, movement time, and relative timing of the velocity profile, indicating greater changes in reaching performance between single- and two-movement conditions for the older adults than for the younger adults. Upon further examination of the details of the movement, it is apparent this movement termination effect is reflected in the ballistic phase of the movement. This last notion is inconsistent with previous studies, which showed the increased movement time associated with the movement termination effect was the result of changes in the amount of time spent in the deceleration phase toward the end of the movement rather than the beginning of the movement. Lastly, when reach-to-grasp performance was compared between moving to a near- compared to a far-target in the two-movement conditions, no differences were found between any of the movement features for either group. This suggests that the increased proportion of time spent in deceleration for the dual-movement conditions compared to the single-movement condition in older adults is due to online feedback control for terminating the first movement rather than online planning of the second movement. Despite the changes seen in the transport component, the findings for the manipulation component indicate that the formation of the grasp and its relative coupling with the transport component remains intact with age

Young adolescents' perceived activity space risk, peer networks, and substance use

Adolescent substance use is a developmentally contingent social practice that is constituted within the routine social-environment of adolescents' lives. Few studies have examined peer networks, perceived activity space risk (risk of substance use at routine locations), and substance use. We examined the moderating influence of peer network characteristics on the relationship between perceived activity space risk and substance use among a sample of 250 urban adolescents. Significant interactions were found between peer networks and perceived activity space risk on tobacco and marijuana use, such that protective peer networks reduced the effect of activity place risk on substance use. A significant 3-way interaction was found on marijuana use indicating that gender moderated peer network's effect on activity space risk. Conditional effect analysis found that boys' peer networks moderated the effect of perceived activity space risk on marijuana use, whereas for girls, the effect of perceived activity space risk on marijuana use was not moderated by their peer networks. These findings could advance theoretical models to inform social–environmental research among adolescents.KEYWORDS: Activity space, Peer networks, Substance use, Gender differences, Urban adolescentsThis is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/health-and-place

The estimated prevalence of exposure to asthmagens in the Australian workforce

Background: There is very little information available on a national level as to the number of people exposed to specific asthmagens in workplaces. Methods: We conducted a national telephone survey in Australia to investigate the prevalence of current occupational exposure to 277 asthmagens, assembled into 27 groups. Demographic and current job information were obtained. A web-based tool, OccIDEAS, was used to collect job task information and assign exposure to each asthmagen group. Results: In the Australian Workplace Exposure Study – Asthma (AWES- Asthma) we interviewed 4878 participants (2441 male and 2437 female). Exposure to at least one asthmagen was more common among men (47 %) than women (40 %). Extrapolated to the Australian population, approximately 2.8 million men and 1.7 million women were estimated to be exposed. Among men, the most common exposures were bioaerosols (29 %) and metals (27 %), whilst the most common exposures among women were latex (25 %) and industrial cleaning and sterilising agents (20 %). Conclusions: This study provides information about the prevalence of exposure to asthmagens in Australian workplaces which will be useful in setting priorities for control and prevention of occupational asthma

Prisoners’ Families’ Research: Developments, Debates and Directions

After many years of relative obscurity, research on prisoners’ families has gained significant momentum. It has expanded from case-oriented descriptive analyses of family experiences to longitudinal studies of child and family development and even macro analyses of the effects on communities in societies of mass incarceration. Now the field engages multi-disciplinary and international interest although it arguably still remains on the periphery of mainstream criminological, psychological and sociological research agendas. This chapter discusses developments in prisoners’ families’ research and its positioning in academia and practice. It does not aim to provide an all-encompassing review of the literature rather it will offer some reflections on how and why the field has developed as it has and on its future directions. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first discusses reasons for the historically small body of research on prisoners’ families and for the growth in research interest over the past two decades. The second analyses patterns and shifts in the focus of research studies and considers how the field has been shaped by intersecting disciplinary interests of psychology, sociology, criminology and socio-legal studies. The final part reflects on substantive and ethical issues that are likely to shape the direction of prisoners’ families’ research in the future

Comparing deep‐end confinement in England & Wales and Norway

Extreme forms of custody represent the boundary points of state power. The configuration of the most restrictive corners of prison systems, and what goes on within them, is highly instructive in exposing the objectives, limits, and implications of state coercion at its most severe. Based on data collected in England & Wales and Norway, this article has two main aims. The first is to explore the degree to which “deep‐end” confinement differs between jurisdictions with different penal philosophies. The second is to understand how the most extreme form of confinement in each jurisdiction differs from the more typical carceral experiences within each system and its overall penal ethos. Empirically, then, the article seeks to shine light into the deepest dominions of both prison systems, illuminating the experiential texture of extreme forms of imprisonment. It concludes by asking what can be inferred about Nordic exceptionalism, and about deep‐end confinement more generally, by analyzing these domains

Comparing deep-end confinement in England & Wales and Norway

Extreme forms of custody represent the boundary-points of state power. The configuration of the most restrictive corners of prison systems, and what goes on within them, is highly instructive in exposing the objectives, limits and implications of state coercion at its most severe. Based on data collected in England & Wales and Norway, this article has two main aims. The first is to explore the degree to which ‘deep-end’ confinement differs between jurisdictions with quite different penal philosophies. The second is to understand how the most extreme form of confinement in each jurisdiction differs from the more typical carceral experiences within each system and its overall penal ethos. Empirically, then, the article seeks to shine light into the deepest dominions of both prison systems, illuminating the experiential texture of extreme forms of imprisonment. It concludes by asking what can be inferred about Nordic exceptionalism, and about deep-end confinement more generally, through analysing these domains.European Research Council grant 64869