trans-Bis(1,1,1,5,5,5-hexa­fluoro­pentane-2,4-dionato-κ2 O,O′)bis­(4-methyl-1,2,3-selenadiazole-κN 3)copper(II)

In the title compound, [Cu(C5HF6O2)2(C3H4N2Se)2], the CuII atom (site symmetry ) is coordinated by two O,O′-bidentate 1,1,1,5,5,5-hexa­fluoro-2,4-penta­nedione (hp) ligands and two 4-methyl-1,2,3-selenadiazole mol­ecules, resulting in a slightly distorted trans-CuN2O4 octa­hedral geometry in which the cis angles deviate by less than 3° from 90°. The selenadiazole plane is canted at 73.13 (17)° to the square plane defined by the penta­nedionate O atoms. The F atoms of one of the hp ligands are disordered over two sets of sites in a 0.66 (3):0.34 (3) ratio. There are no significant inter­molecular inter­actions in the crystal

Towards Computing Inferences from English News Headlines

Newspapers are a popular form of written discourse, read by many people, thanks to the novelty of the information provided by the news content in it. A headline is the most widely read part of any newspaper due to its appearance in a bigger font and sometimes in colour print. In this paper, we suggest and implement a method for computing inferences from English news headlines, excluding the information from the context in which the headlines appear. This method attempts to generate the possible assumptions a reader formulates in mind upon reading a fresh headline. The generated inferences could be useful for assessing the impact of the news headline on readers including children. The understandability of the current state of social affairs depends greatly on the assimilation of the headlines. As the inferences that are independent of the context depend mainly on the syntax of the headline, dependency trees of headlines are used in this approach, to find the syntactical structure of the headlines and to compute inferences out of them.Comment: PACLING 2019 Long paper, 15 page

Health impacts of exposure to second hand smoke (SHS) amongst a highly exposed workforce: survey of London casino workers

BACKGROUND: Casino workers are exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke (SHS) at work, yet remain at risk of being excluded from smoke-free legislation around the world. If the prime motivation for smoke-free legislation is the protection of workers, then a workforce experiencing ill-health associated with SHS exposure should not be excluded from legislation. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of respiratory and sensory irritation symptoms among a sample of casino workers, to identify any association between the reporting of symptoms and exposure to SHS at work, and to compare the prevalence of symptoms with that in other workers exposed to SHS. METHODS: A postal questionnaire survey of 1568 casino workers in London. Using multivariate analysis we identified predictors of respiratory and sensory irritation symptoms. RESULTS: 559 workers responded to the questionnaire (response of 36%). 91% of casino workers reported the presence of one or more sensory irritation symptoms in the previous four weeks, while the figure was 84% for respiratory symptoms. The presence of one or more sensory irritation symptoms was most strongly associated with reporting the highest exposure to SHS at work (OR 3.26; 1.72, 6.16). This was also true for reporting the presence of one or more respiratory irritation symptoms (OR 2.24; 1.34, 3.74). Prevalence of irritation symptoms in the casino workers was in general appreciably higher than that reported in studies of bar workers. CONCLUSION: Our research supports the need for comprehensive smoke-free legislation around the world, covering all indoor workplaces including casinos

The varved succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a candidate Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene series

An annually laminated succession in Crawford Lake, Ontario, Canada is proposed as the Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene as a series/epoch with a base dated at 1950 CE. Varve couplets of organic matter capped by calcite precipitated each summer in alkaline surface waters reflect environmental change at global to local scales. Spheroidal carbonaceous particles and nitrogen isotopes record an increase in fossil fuel combustion in the early 1950s, coinciding with fallout from nuclear and thermonuclear testing—239+240Pu and 14C:12C, the latter more than compensating for the effects of old carbon in this dolomitic basin. Rapid industrial expansion in the North American Great Lakes region led to enhanced leaching of terrigenous elements by acid precipitation during the Great Acceleration, and calcite precipitation was reduced, producing thin calcite laminae around the GSSP that is marked by a sharp decline in elm pollen (Dutch Elm disease). The lack of bioturbation in well-oxygenated bottom waters, supported by the absence of fossil pigments from obligately anaerobic purple sulfur bacteria, is attributed to elevated salinities and high alkalinity below the chemocline. This aerobic depositional environment, unusual in a meromictic lake, inhibits the mobilization of 239Pu, the proposed primary stratigraphic guide for the Anthropocene

Highlights of children with Cancer UK’s workshop on drug delivery in paediatric brain tumours

The first Workshop on Drug Delivery in Paediatric Brain Tumours was hosted in London by the charity Children with Cancer UK. The goals of the workshop were to break down the barriers to treating central nervous system (CNS) tumours in children, leading to new collaborations and further innovations in this under-represented and emotive field. These barriers include the physical delivery challenges presented by the blood–brain barrier, the underpinning reasons for the intractability of CNS cancers, and the practical difficulties of delivering cancer treatment to the brains of children. Novel techniques for overcoming these problems were discussed, new models brought forth, and experiences compared

Diamonds, gold and crime displacement: Hatton Garden, and the evolution of organised crime in the UK

The 2015 Hatton Garden Heist was described as the ‘largest burglary in English legal history’. However, the global attention that this spectacular crime attracted to ‘The Garden’ tended to concentrate upon the value of the stolen goods and the vintage of the burglars. What has been ignored is how the burglary shone a spotlight into Hatton Garden itself, as an area with a unique ‘upperworld’ commercial profile and skills cluster that we identify as an incubator and facilitator for organised crime. The Garden is the UK’s foremost jewellery production and retail centre and this paper seeks to explore how Hatton Garden’s businesses integrated with a fluid criminal population to transition, through hosting lucrative (and bureaucratically complex) VAT gold frauds from 1980 to the early 1990s, to become a major base for sophisticated acquisitive criminal activities. Based on extensive interviews over a thirty year period, evidence from a personal research archive and public records, this paper details a cultural community with a unique criminal profile due to the particularities of its geographical location, ethnic composition, trading culture, skills base and international connections. The processes and structures that facilitate criminal markets are largely under-researched (Antonopoulos et al. 2015: 11), and this paper considers how elements of Hatton Garden’s ‘upperworld’ businesses integrated with project criminals, displaced by policing strategies, to effect this transition

Evidence-Based Decision Making When Designing Environments for Physical Activity: The Role of Public Health

© 2016, The Author(s). The important role that the environment plays in health and well-being is widely accepted, as is the impact that the built and natural environment can have on levels of physical activity. As levels of physical activity are a key determinant of health, promoting physical activity through actions to improve the environment is a priority for public health action. The challenge for public health is to ensure that the way the environment is shaped and transformed by a range of professionals, organisations and agencies, maximises health gain in relation to health, including physical activity. This article discusses how the public health profession can and should contribute to generating and disseminating evidence to inform decision-making processes for designing environments to promote physical activity. There are significant challenges to building and applying the evidence base in this area. These include the complex environments in which interventions operate, disciplinary differences in approaches to evidence generation and use, and the fact that public health has little responsibility for environmental change. However, case studies of best practice, presented in the article, offer a snapshot of how challenges can be overcome, to build an accessible evidence base and help to improve the environment for the promotion of physical activity

A qualitative study to identify community structures for management of severe malaria: a basis for introducing rectal artesunate in the under five years children in Nakonde District of Zambia

BACKGROUND: Malaria is a serious illness among children aged 5 years and below in Zambia, which carries with it many adverse effects including anemia and high parasites exposure that lead to infant and childhood mortality. Due to poor accessibility to modern health facilities, malaria is normally managed at home using indigenous and cosmopolitan medicines. In view of problems and implications associated with management of severe malaria at home, rectal artesunate is being proposed as a first aid drug to slow down multiplication of parasites in children before accessing appropriate treatment. METHODS: A qualitative study using standardised in-depth and Focuss Group Discussions (FGDs) guides to collect information from four (4) villages in Nakonde district, was conducted between February and March 2004. The guides were administered on 29 key informants living in the community and those whose children were admitted in the health facility. Participants in the 12 FGDs came from the 4 participating villages. Participants and key informants were fathers, younger and older mothers including grandmothers and other influential people at household level. Others were traditional healers, headmen, village secretaries, tradtional birth attendants, church leaders and black smiths. FGDs and interview transcriptions were coded to identify common themes that were related to recognition, classification and naming of malaria illness, care-seeking behaviour and community treatment practices for severe malaria. RESULTS: Parental prior knowledge of the disease was important as the majority of informants (23 out of 29) and participants (69 out of 97) mentioned four combined symptoms that were used to recognise severe malaria. The symptoms were excessive body hotness, convulsions, vomiting yellow things and bulging of the fontanelle. On the other hand, all informants mentioned two or more of symptoms associated with severe malaria. In all 12 FGDs, participants reported that treatment of severe malaria commenced with the family and moved into the community as the illness progressed. Although treatment of severe diarrheal effects, were common among the winamwanga, no rectal medicines to treat severe malaria were identified. Apart from the anti-malarial fansidar, which was mentioned by 23 in IDIs and 40 in FGDs, participants and informants also frequently mentioned indigenous medicines provided by healers and other respectable herbalists for repelling evil spirits, once a child had severe malaria. Mothers were the important arms for administration of ant-malarial drugs in the villages. Referrals began with healers to CHWs, where no CHWs existed healers directly referred sick children to the health facility. CONCLUSION: Our findings showed that there is a precedent for rectal application of traditional medicine for childhood illness. Therefore rectal artesunate may be a well-received intervention in Nakonde District, provided effective sensitisation, to mothers and CHWs is given which will strengthen the health care delivery system at community level

Before and after study of bar workers' perceptions of the impact of smoke-free workplace legislation in the Republic of Ireland

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Objectives</it>: To compare support for, and perceptions of, the impacts of smoke-free workplace legislation among bar workers in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) pre- and post-implementation, and to identify predictors of support for the legislation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p><it>Setting</it>: Public houses (pubs) in three areas of the ROI.</p> <p><it>Design</it>: Comparisons pre- and post-implementation of smoke-free workplace legislation.</p> <p><it>Participants</it>: From a largely non-random selection, 288 bar workers volunteered for the baseline survey; 220 were followed up one year later (76.4%).</p> <p><it>Outcome measures: </it>Level of support for the legislation, attitude statements concerning potential impacts of the law and modelled predictors of support for the legislation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Pre-implementation 59.5% of participants supported the legislation, increasing to 76.8% post-implementation. Support increased among smokers by 27.3 percentage points from 39.4% to 66.7% (p < 0.001) and among non-smokers by 12.4% percentage points from 68.8% to 81.2% (p = 0.003).</p> <p>Pre-legislation three-quarters of participants agreed that the legislation would make bars more comfortable and was needed to protect workers' health. Post-legislation these proportions increased to over 90% (p < 0.001). However, negative perceptions also increased, particularly for perceptions that the legislation has a negative impact on business (from 50.9% to 62.7%, p = 0.008) and that fewer people would visit pubs (41.8% to 62.7%, p < 0.001). After adjusting for relevant covariates, including responses to the attitude statements, support for the ban increased two to three-fold post-implementation. Regardless of their views on the economic impact, most participants agreed, both pre- and post-implementation, that the legislation was needed to protect bar workers' health.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Smoke-free legislation had the support of three-quarters of a large sample of bar workers in the ROI. However, this group holds complex sets of both positive and negative perspectives on the legislation. Of particular importance is that negative economic perceptions did not diminish the widely held perception that the ban is needed to protect workers' health.</p

Enhancing access to reports of randomized trials published world-wide – the contribution of EMBASE records to the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in The Cochrane Library

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Randomized trials are essential in assessing the effects of healthcare interventions and are a key component in systematic reviews of effectiveness. Searching for reports of randomized trials in databases is problematic due to the absence of appropriate indexing terms until the 1990s and inconsistent application of these indexing terms thereafter.</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>The objectives of this study are to devise a search strategy for identifying reports of randomized trials in EMBASE which are not already indexed as trials in MEDLINE and to make these reports easily accessible by including them in the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in <it>The Cochrane Library</it>, with the permission of Elsevier, the publishers of EMBASE.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A highly sensitive search strategy was designed for EMBASE based on free-text and thesaurus terms which occurred frequently in the titles, abstracts, EMTREE terms (or some combination of these) of reports of trials indexed in EMBASE. This search strategy was run against EMBASE from 1980 to 2005 (1974 to 2005 for four of the terms) and records retrieved by the search, which were not already indexed as randomized trials in MEDLINE, were downloaded from EMBASE, printed and read. An analysis of the language of publication was conducted for the reports of trials published in 2005 (the most recent year completed at the time of this study).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Twenty-two search terms were used (including nine which were later rejected due to poor cumulative precision). More than a third of a million records were downloaded and scanned and approximately 80,000 reports of trials were identified which were not already indexed as randomized trials in MEDLINE. These are now easily identifiable in CENTRAL, in <it>The Cochrane Library</it>. Cumulative sensitivity ranged from 0.1% to 60% and cumulative precision ranged from 8% to 61%. The truncated term 'random$' identified 60% of the total number of reports of trials but only 35% of the more than 130,000 records retrieved by this term were reports of trials. The language analysis for the sample year 2005 indicated that of the 18,427 reports indexed as randomized trials in MEDLINE, 959 (5%) were in languages other than English. The EMBASE search identified an additional 658 reports in languages other than English, of which the highest number were in Chinese (320).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of the search to date have greatly increased access to reports of trials in EMBASE, especially in some languages other than English. The search strategy used was subjectively derived from a small 'gold standard' set of test records and was not validated in an independent test set. We intend to design an objectively-derived validated search strategy using logistic regression based on the frequency of occurrence of terms in the approximately 80,000 reports of randomized trials identified compared with the frequency of these terms across the entire EMBASE database.</p