Conducting Interviews in Hermeneutic Research: An Example

In this paper, we discuss the conduct of an interview that was done as a demonstration of the character of interviews in hermeneutic research. This interview was conducted within the context of a graduate course on hermeneutics and involved one of the course professors and a volunteer doctoral student in the class. Although the interview did not occur within a research study, the content of the interview is genuine and not fabricated or acted. Offering the course in an online platform of Zoom allowed for the opportunity to record it and, as a result, we are able to discuss it as well as offer a link to the viewing of the actual interview. Keywords Hermeneutic research, interviewing, Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics, &nbsp

Model evaluation of target product profiles of an infant vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in a developed country setting

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major cause of lower respiratory tract disease in children worldwide and is a significant cause of hospital admissions in young children in England. No RSV vaccine has been licensed but a number are under development. In this work, we present two structurally distinct mathematical models, parameterized using RSV data from the UK, which have been used to explore the effect of introducing an RSV paediatric vaccine to the National programme. We have explored different vaccine properties, and dosing regimens combined with a range of implementation strategies for RSV control. The results suggest that vaccine properties that confer indirect protection have the greatest effect in reducing the burden of disease in children under 5 years. The findings are reinforced by the concurrence of predictions from the two models with very different epidemiological structure. The approach described has general application in evaluating vaccine target product profiles

Oxygen Loss from Simulated Galaxies and the Metal Flow Main Sequence : Predicting the Dependence on Mass and Environment

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 496, Issue 4, August 2020, Pages 4433–4441, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1904 ©: 2020 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We predict the mass fraction of oxygen lost from galaxies in a cosmological simulation as a function of stellar mass and environment at the present day. The distribution with stellar mass is bimodal, separating star-forming and quenched galaxies. The metallicity of gas and stars is self-consistently calculated using a chemical evolution model that includes supernovae type II and Ia, hypernovae, and asymptotic giant branch stars. The mass of oxygen lost from each galaxy is calculated by comparing the existing oxygen in gas and stars in the galaxy to the oxygen that should have been produced by the present-day population of stars. More massive galaxies are able to retain a greater fraction of their metals ($\sim 100$ per cent) than low-mass galaxies ($\sim 40 - 70$ per cent). As in the star formation main sequence, star-forming galaxies follow a tight relationship also in terms of oxygen mass lost -- a metal flow main sequence, ZFMS -- whereas massive quenched galaxies tend to have lost a greater fraction of oxygen (up to 20 per cent), due to AGN-driven winds. The amount of oxygen lost by satellite galaxies depends on the details of their interaction history, and those in richer groups tend to have lost a greater fraction of their oxygen. Observational estimates of metal retention in galaxies will provide a strong constraint on models of galaxy evolution.Peer reviewe

Using Cognitive Dissonance to Communicate with Hypocrites About Water Conservation and Climate Change

The effects of climate change can be mitigated by altering human behavior related to water conservation; however, many who are aware of climate change are not aligning their behavior to curb the impact. This research sought to explore the relationship between citizens’ beliefs, attitudes and behaviors regarding water conservation and their knowledge and beliefs regarding climate change to guide the development of effective communication campaigns focused on water conservation. Using cognitive dissonance theory and an adapted environmental attitudes and behavior quartet, this research focused on individuals who demonstrated high levels of climate change knowledge but did not engage in positive water conservation behaviors; referred to as Hypocrites. The findings revealed Hypocrites held different perspectives on climate change than the general public. They believed climate change was real and caused by humans but are doing little to curb their personal water use and are not taking personal action to mitigate the effects of climate change. The best communication sources to use in reaching these individuals was examined and discussed with recommendations offered for how to best engage the hypocritical group who should be most likely to change their water conservation behaviors

Chemical Stability and Reaction Kinetics of Two Thiamine Salts (Thiamine Mononitrate and Thiamine Chloride Hydrochloride) in Solution

Two types of thiamine (vitamin B1) salts, thiamine mononitrate (TMN) and thiamine chloride hydrochloride (TClHCl), are used to enrich and fortify food products. Both of these thiamine salt forms are sensitive to heat, alkali, oxygen, and radiation, but differences in stability between them have been noted. It was hypothesized that stability differences between the two thiamine salts could be explained by differences in solubility, solution pH, and activation energies for degradation. This study directly compared the stabilities of TMN and TClHCl in solution over time by documenting the impact of concentration and storage temperature on thiamine degradation and calculating reaction kinetics. Solutions were prepared containing five concentrations of each thiamine salt (1, 5, 10, 20, and 27 mg/mL), and three additional concentrations of TClHCl: 100, 300, and 500 mg/mL. Samples were stored at 25, 40, 60, 70, and 80 °C for up to 6 months. Degradation was quantified over time by high-performance liquid chromatography, and percent thiamine remaining was used to calculate reaction kinetics. First-order reaction kinetics were found for both TMN and TClHCl. TMN degraded significantly faster than TClHCl at all concentrations and temperatures. For example, in 27 mg/mL solutions after 5 days at 80 °C, only 32% of TMN remained compared to 94% of TClHCl. Activation energies and solution pHs were 21–25 kcal/mol and pH 5.36–6.96 for TMN and 21–32 kcal/mol and pH 1.12–3.59 for TClHCl. TClHCl degradation products had much greater sensory contributions than TMN degradation products, including intense color change and potent aromas, even with considerably less measured vitamin loss. Different peak patterns were present in HPLC chromatograms between TMN and TClHCl, indicating different degradation pathways and products. The stability of essential vitamins in foods is important, even more so when degradation contributes to sensory changes, and this study provides a direct comparison of the stability of the two thiamine salts used to fortify foods in environments relevant to the processing and shelf-life of many foods

Investigating Morphosyntactic Variation in African American English on Twitter

Early work on African American English (AAE) perpetuated myths that the language variety was uniform across regions and that it was spoken primarily by working class men, due to being conducted in inner city areas and examining a specific set of linguistic features. These sociolinguistic myths negatively impacted not only the field of linguistics but also how the public viewed AAE. Since then studies have looked at a broader range of geographical areas and demonstrated distinct local differences. Here we build on this line of research by analyzing relative incidences of 18 morphosyntactic features in relationship to geographic and social factors, at scale. Our data is a corpus of 224M geotagged tweets, which is five orders of magnitude larger than previous social media studies of AAE. We use machine learning methods to automatically detect linguistic features and to identify common patterns of variation across the features. Our results show that, contrary to sociolinguistic myths of uniformity, there is clear variation in AAE across both geographic and social dimensions. Regionally, we see a distinct spatially contiguous southern core which aligns with national-level phonological and lexical variation in AAE, although it is less variable. Across social groups, there is higher AAE usage in the rural south and in Black-Hispanic contact communities – both of which are groups currently underrepresented in the literature. This work provides a significant advance in descriptive work on AAE morphosyntax, presenting the first national-level description and analysis of overall grammatical variation in AAE in order to answer key questions about variation in AAE. More broadly, our methods demonstrate how machine learning tools can be applied to large-scale real-world data to help us gain a more representative understanding of language in marginalized communities

Characteristics of salivary telomere length shortening in preterm infants

ObjectiveTo examine the association between gestational age, telomere length (TL) and rate of shortening in newborns.Study designGenomic DNA was isolated from buccal samples of 39 term infants at birth and one year and 32 preterm infants at birth, term-adjusted age (40 weeks post-conception) and age one-year corrected for gestational duration. Telomere length was measured by quantitative real-time PCR. Demographic and clinical data were collected during clinic or research visits and from hospital records. Socioeconomic status was estimated using the deprivation category (DEPCAT) scores derived from the Carstairs score of the subject's postal code.ResultsAt birth, preterm infants had longer telomeres than infants born at term. However, there was no difference in telomere length between preterm infants and term infants at one year of age, implying that the rate of telomere shortening was greater in pre-term than term infants. Interestingly, TL at age 40 weeks post-conception in preterm infants was significantly longer than term infant TL at birth, suggesting that time since conception is not the only factor that affects rate of shortening. Several factors, including sex, fetal growth restriction, maternal age, maternal booking body mass index (BMI), mother education level and DEPCAT score, also differed between the preterm and term groups.ConclusionsPreterm infants have longer telomeres than term infants at birth. In the studied cohort, the rate of telomere shortening was greater in the premature group compared with the term infants. This finding agrees with previous studies using cord blood, suggesting that the longer TL in premature infants detected at birth do not persist and demonstrating that use of saliva DNA is acceptable for studies of telomere dynamics in infants. However, that the TL at age 40 weeks post-conception in preterm is longer than term infants at birth suggests that biological factors other than time since conception also affect rate of shortening