Living with deafblindness during COVID-19:An international webinar to facilitate global knowledge translation

Arguably, individuals living with deafblindness are among the hardest hit by the effects of the corona virus disease of 2019 (COVID- 19), given the importance of the sense of touch for their ability to interact with the world. To address this challenge, it is imperative to facilitate the implementation of evidence- and experience-based recommendations, and to improve knowledge translation on a global scale. Deafblind International organized a webinar to provide a platform where participants could exchange experiences and solutions to overcome the challenges created by the arrival of COVID-19, in order to facilitate information exchange among stakeholders in deafblindness during this pandemic. We present an overview of its content here and place the summarized themes in context with existing research literature. Abstract submission was open for 4 weeks in May 2020, resulting in 30 submissions from 13 countries across 5 continents. Of the 26 presenter teams, 9 (35%) had a co-presenter that was living with deafblindness themselves. The number of individual participants across all sessions ranged from 55 to 140 (M = 98), with a total of 3709 session registrations overall, and the organizers estimate a total attendance of around 400 participants. Based on extensive field notes taken during the webinar, and repeated viewing of the recordings, qualitative description allowed the team to synthesize eight principal themes across the event: access to information, communication, service accessibility, adaptations to service delivery, online safety and security, physical distancing, mental health and research. The first Deafblind International webinar was able to fill an important gap by bringing together a variety of stakeholders in deafblindness across the globe. The event created a sense of group membership and peer support, brought the participants, researchers, the professionals as well as their service agencies closer together and generated a sense of hope and collaboration

Diabetes and Intellectual Disability: Perceptions from People with Disability and Their Supporters

Background: People with intellectual disability who have diabetes have few resources for themselves or their carers. There are multiple health issues present. The objective of the project was to describe the perceptions and experiences of living with diabetes as told by people with intellectual disability, their families and support staff. Methods: The project was a qualitative semi-structured interview study, conducted in southeast Queensland, Australia. There were 67 people involved - adults with intellectual disability (9), family of adults with intellectual disability (8), paid support staff of adults with intellectual disability (31), service co-ordinators (12), health professionals (6) and a worker in the sector (1). Focus group discussions were held with the participants. Their perceptions and experiences of living with and managing intellectual disability and diabetes were recorded and the themes of the discussions studied. Results: The findings revealed a number of shortcomings in relation to diabetes care in a population of people with intellectual disability and their families and support staff. There are higher than average support needs when diabetes is present. There is resentment at intrusion in their lives by diabetes from people with disability. There are feelings of fear and insecurity about diabetes in families and support staff. Families and support staff feel that generally they lack knowledge and also lack support from their organisations to manage both the intellectual disability and the diabetes. Conclusion: The general lack of confidence and knowledge about diabetes makes it difficult for people with intellectual disability and their families and support staff to function in an effective and satisfying way. There is a need for guidelines

An exploration into urban agriculture and rooftop gardens in Johannesburg

A research report submitted to the School of Architecture and Planning In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree: Master of Architecture in Sustainable and Energy Efficient Cities (MArch SEEC) University of the Witwatersrand October 2017.This study arises from the insight that the critical role of green infrastructure in urban areas is often not focussed upon at the same level and intensity as “standard” infrastructure such as roads, water and electricity. The key research question guiding the study revolves around whether urban agriculture should be included in the design process of buildings in Johannesburg, and how this could subsequently address the inter-relationships between city and building scale, aesthetics versus biodiversity as well as addressing the critical challenge of water scarcity through the process of greening the city. With this in mind, this study argues for a potential shift in land use control, whereby urban agriculture could be strictly regulated as a specific land use typology similar to the commonly recognised uses such as industrial, commercial or residential. An overall qualitative approach was undertaken using the theoretical underpinnings envisaged by Lehmann (2010) and the 15 principles of Green Urbanism, to gain an understanding of the role players and processes involved in the building cycle, as well as urban agriculture development. Key role players were identified, and interviewed, substantiating how policy insight is necessary in practice. The focus of this research report was on the building, and specifically the potential that buildings may offer a contribution towards green infrastructure, by providing such outcomes as passive thermal control and food security. Key comparisons were made between cities that go beyond the implementation of urban agriculture as an “extracurricular” activity, and fully embrace the holistic view of green urban development and sustainable cities. Examples have been taken from London, Toronto and Singapore regarding how rooftop gardens and urban agriculture have been included into the urban fabric. Johannesburg has a few initiatives, which are greatly reduced in scale when compared to these other cities, however, the local context needs to be considered when investigating the reason for this. Considering the importance of the benefits of such programmes (such as food security and job creation), it can be concluded that this inclusion of urban agriculture in the planning phase should be prioritised as an important intervention for urban development.MT 201

Human guanylate kinase (GUK1): cDNA sequence, expression and chromosomal localisation

AbstractGuanylate kinase (GK) catalyses the conversion of GMP to GTP as part of the cGMP cycle. In mammalian phototransduction, this cycle is essential for the regeneration of cGMP following its hydrolysis by phosphodiesterase. Mutations in different parts of this signalling cascade lead to retinal degeneration in humans. Protein studies have localized a locus for GK to a region of human chromosome 1 that also contains an autosomal recessive form of retinitis pigmentosa (RP12) and Usher's type 11a (USH2A). We report the sequence of this human GK (GUK1) and a further refinement of its localization to 1q32-41, placing it in the same interval as USH2A

Development and Evaluation of a Web Site about Diabetes for Adults with Mental Retardation

Objective: Our objective is to describe the development and evaluation of a tool for people with diabetes and mental retardation. The tool is also suitable for care providers. Methods: The design process was collaborative with adults with mental retardation, care providers, and professionals (n=76) in 39 focus groups. We based the content of the website primarily on the findings from those discussions, and secondly on evidence from the literature. An endocrinologist, a general practitioner, several diabetes educators, occupational therapists, nurses, nutritionists, podiatrists, service managers, clinical biochemists and a pharmacist reviewed the included material. All material used was evidence based. For the people with mental retardation we produced a site consisting largely of graphics and images - it addresses 14 areas of relevance in diabetes education and management. For the care providers the same site is used but with a different menu and with content of a higher literacy level. It addresses most of the education and management issues expressed as being of interest or causes of anxiety to care providers in the focus groups. To make sure the site was user-friendly we involved end-stage users and professionals in all stages of the development process. Results: We ran a trial of the tool for one month to evaluate its effectiveness with a group of 21 care providers and 6 people with both mental retardation and diabetes. The final design is the educational web site to be found at www.sph.uq.edu.au/diabetes. Each section can be printed out as a hard copy. Preliminary results are promising and the site is having about 750 pages accessed per month. The tool was well accepted as assessed by interviews by both people with mental retardation and their care providers. One third of care providers changed their behaviour in a wide range of areas of diabetes care after using the tool for a short time. Conclusion: The consultative process that we used in this project resulted in a unique and highly acceptable tool for patient and care provider education. Practice Implications: This website is designed for people with mental retardation and their caregivers. Those people who have low literacy skills, or are isolated from conventional service providers could also use find it practical

Detecting the Presence of COVID-19 Vaccination Hesitancy from South African Twitter Data Using Machine Learning

Very few social media studies have been done on South African user-generated content during the COVID-19 pandemic and even fewer using hand-labelling over automated methods. Vaccination is a major tool in the fight against the pandemic, but vaccine hesitancy jeopardizes any public health effort. In this study, sentiment analysis on South African tweets related to vaccine hesitancy was performed, with the aim of training AI-mediated classification models and assessing their reliability in categorizing UGC. A dataset of 30000 tweets from South Africa were extracted and hand-labelled into one of three sentiment classes: positive, negative, neutral. The machine learning models used were LSTM, bi-LSTM, SVM, BERT-base-cased and the RoBERTa-base models, whereby their hyperparameters were carefully chosen and tuned using the WandB platform. We used two different approaches when we pre-processed our data for comparison: one was semantics-based, while the other was corpus-based. The pre-processing of the tweets in our dataset was performed using both methods, respectively. All models were found to have low F1-scores within a range of 45$\%$-55$\%$, except for BERT and RoBERTa which both achieved significantly better measures with overall F1-scores of 60$\%$ and 61$\%$, respectively. Topic modelling using an LDA was performed on the miss-classified tweets of the RoBERTa model to gain insight on how to further improve model accuracy

Type 1 Diabetes Alters Lipid Handling and Metabolism in Human Fibroblasts and Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

Triggers of the autoimmune response that leads to type 1 diabetes (T1D) remain poorly understood. A possibility is that parallel changes in both T cells and target cells provoke autoimmune attack. We previously documented greater Ca2+ transients in fibroblasts from T1D subjects than non-T1D after exposure to fatty acids (FA) and tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα). These data indicate that metabolic and signal transduction defects present in T1D can be elicited ex vivo in isolated cells. Changes that precede T1D, including inflammation, may activate atypical responses in people that are genetically predisposed to T1D. To identify such cellular differences in T1D, we quantified a panel of metabolic responses in fibroblasts and peripheral blood cells (PBMCs) from age-matched T1D and non-T1D subjects, as models for non-immune and immune cells, respectively. Fibroblasts from T1D subjects accumulated more lipid, had higher LC-CoA levels and converted more FA to CO2, with less mitochondrial proton leak in response to oleate alone or with TNFα, using the latter as a model of inflammation. T1D-PBMCs contained and also accumulated more lipid following FA exposure. In addition, they formed more peroxidized lipid than controls following FA exposure. We conclude that both immune and non-immune cells in T1D subjects differ from controls in terms of responses to FA and TNFα. Our results suggest a differential sensitivity to inflammatory insults and FA that may precede and contribute to T1D by priming both immune cells and their targets for autoimmune reactions

The Grizzly, February 2, 1998

Ursinus to Receive Grant • New Position Causes Concern • Students Remember Joe Hastings • Who\u27s Who at Ursinus • Volkmer Honored • Opinion: American Democracy Under Siege • Jim Fielder\u27s Return Postponed • Ursinus Contributor Dies • Field Hockey Academic All-Americans Honored • Athletic Honor Roll: Asper Pins Down First Player Profile • Bears Fight For Conference Lead • Flying High with Women\u27s Gymnastics • Disgruntled Swimmers Express Concerns About Pool Closinghttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1412/thumbnail.jp

Outcomes of domestic violence screening at an acute London trust: are there missed opportunities for intervention?

Objectives: domestic violence screening is advocated in some healthcare settings. Evidence that it increases referral to support agencies or improves health outcomes is limited. This study aimed to (1) investigate the proportion of hospital patients reporting domestic violence, (2) describe characteristics and previous hospital attendances of affected patients and (3) assess referrals to an in-house domestic violence advisor from Camden Safety Net.Design: a series of observational studies.Setting: three outpatient clinics at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.Participants: 10?158 patients screened for domestic violence in community gynaecology, genitourinary medicine (GUM) and HIV medicine clinics between 1 October 2013 and 30 June 2014. Also 2253 Camden Safety Net referrals over the same period.Main outcome measures: (1) Percentage reporting domestic violence by age group gender, ethnicity and clinic. (2) Rates of hospital attendances in the past 3?years for those screening positive and negative. (3) Characteristics, uptake and risk assessment results for hospital in-house domestic violence referrals compared with Camden Safety Net referrals from other sources.Results: of the 10?158 patients screened, 57.4% were female with a median age of 30?years. Overall, 7.1% reported ever-experiencing domestic violence, ranging from 5.7% in GUM to 29.4% in HIV services. People screening positive for domestic violence had higher rates of previous emergency department attendances (rate ratio (RR) 1.63, 95% CI 1.09 to 2.48), emergency inpatient admissions (RR 2.27, 95% CI 1.37 to 3.84) and day-case admissions (RR 2.03, 95% CI 1.23 to 3.43) than those screening negative. The 77 hospital referrals to the hospital-based domestic violence advisor during the study period were more likely to be taken up and to be classified as high risk than referrals from elsewhere.Conclusions: selective screening for domestic violence in high-risk hospital clinic populations has the potential to identify affected patients and promote good uptake of referrals for in-house domestic violence suppor