Submission to Bonsucro re Production Standard v5 (2019-21)

In July 2020, CCSI made a formal submission to Bonsucro, an international multi-stakeholder initiative and certification scheme concerned with promoting sustainable sugar cane production. The submission formed part of consultations for Bonsucro’s draft Production Standard version 5. CCSI’s submission focused on challenges associated with implementing, and auditing for compliance with, three aspects of Bonsucro’s draft standard, namely: Obtaining the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous and traditional communities when establishing or expanding sugar production operations Implementing transparent and participatory processes to assess, monitor, and evaluate the environmental and social impacts of new and existing projects; and Establishing accessible dispute resolution and grievance mechanisms that allow communities to raise and resolve problems. The submission proposed a concrete solution to complement Bonsucro operators’ efforts to more effectively meet that Standard in practice: a Basket Fund for Responsible Investment. A Basket Fund for Responsible Investment refers to an independently administered fund that receives financial contributions from multiple sources and then makes grants to pay for technical support – from civil society organizations, paralegals, organizers, non-legal experts, and lawyers, among others – for investment-affected communities. Financial contributors would include Bonsucro operators whose revenues exceed a certain threshold, potentially alongside such operators’ financiers, investors, large-scale suppliers, and customers, among others. By diversifying its sources of funding, a Basket Fund can achieve greater independence of community support, minimizing the risk of actual or perceived undue influence over the community or its support providers. The submission also noted that facilitating affected communities’ access to technical support through a Basket Fund would also benefit private sector organizations, given that a lack of community support increases the risk of grievances and conflict, which can result in material costs for companies and their investors

Electronic monitoring of adherence to inhaled medication in asthma

The main treatment of asthma is inhaled corticosteroids. However adherence to these medications in asthma is often poor, with low adherence associated with excessive health care costs and an increased risk of emergency room visits and mortality. Although various methods are used to indirectly assess adherence, all have significant limitations whether used in clinical or research practice. The recent development of electronic monitoring devices (EMDs) for use with inhalers presents an exciting opportunity to easily and accurately measure inhaler adherence. This article summarises the current devices available; for each device features and limitations are considered, followed by a review of both the current clinical literature and data on reliability and accuracy. An overall summary is also provided to aid comparison of capabilities between devices and future issues pertaining to the use of EMDs are discussed, including barriers to adoption, stakeholder involvement, novel methods of communicating adherence data, recording of data and cloud storage. Finally key areas that still require investigation are highlighted

Comprehensive User Engagement Sites (CUES) in Philadelphia: A Constructive Proposal

This paper is a study about Philadelphia’s comprehensive user engagement sites (CUESs) as the authors address and examine issues related to the upcoming implementation of a CUES while seeking solutions for its disputed questions and plans. Beginning with the federal drug schedules, the authors visit some of the medical and public health issues vis-à-vis safe injection facilities (SIFs). Insite, a successful Canadian SIF, has been thoroughly researched as it represents a paradigm for which a Philadelphia CUES can expand upon. Also, the existing criticisms against SIFs are revisited while critically unpackaged and responded to in favor of the establishment. In the main section, the authors propose the layout and services of the upcoming CUES, much of which would be in congruent to Vancouver’s Insite. On the other hand, the CUES would be distinct from Insite, as the authors emphasize, in that it will offer an information center run by individuals in recovery and place additional emphasis on early education for young healthcare professionals by providing them a platform to work at the site. The paper will also briefly investigate the implementation of a CUES site under an ethical scope of the Harm Reduction Theory. Lastly, the authors recommend some strategic plans that the Philadelphia City government may consider employing at this crucial stage

Delta opioid receptor stimulation mimics ischemic preconditioning in human heart muscle

AbstractOBJECTIVESThe objective of this study was to examine whether the delta (δ) opioid receptor isoform is expressed in the human heart and whether this receptor improves contractile function after hypoxic/reoxygenation injury.BACKGROUNDDelta opioid receptor agonists mimic preconditioning (PC) in rat myocardium, corresponding to known cardiac δ opioid receptor expression in this species.METHODSThe messenger RNA transcript encoding the δ opioid receptor was identified in human atria and ventricles. To evaluate the cardioprotective role of the opioid receptor, human atrial trabeculae from patients undergoing coronary bypass grafting were isolated and superfused with Tyrode’s solution. A control group underwent 90 min of simulated ischemia and 120 min of reoxygenation. A second group was preconditioned with 3 min simulated ischemia and 7 min reoxygenation. Additional groups included: superfusion with the δ receptor agonist (DADLE) (10 nM), with the δ receptor antagonist naltrindole (10 nM) and with the mitochondrial KATP channel blocker 5-hydroxydecanoate (5HD) (100 μM) either with or without PC, respectively. A final group was superfused with 5HD before DADLE. The end point used was percentage of developed force after 120 min of reoxygenation.RESULTSResults, expressed as means ± SEM, were: control = 32.6 ± 3.8%; PC = 50.5% ± 1.8∗; DADLE = 46.0 ± 3.9%∗; PC + naltrindole = 25.5 ± 3.9%; naltrindole alone = 25.5 ± 4.3%; 5HD + PC = 28.9 ± 7.4%; 5HD alone = 24.1 ± 3.0%; 5HD + DADLE = 26.9 ± 4.4% (∗p < 0.001 vs. controls).CONCLUSIONSHuman myocardium expresses the δ opioid receptor transcript. Stimulation of this receptor appears to protects human muscle from simulated ischemia, similar to PC, and via opening of the mitochondrial KATP channel

Kiewit Drone Progress Tracking Application

Kiewit is one of the largest construction companies in the world and has long pushed the standards for innovation within the construction industry. Kiewit operates on an initiative to be a data-driven organization. Construction projects track progress data for a variety of reasons, none more important than meeting contractual obligations. Keeping clients in tune with the status of a given project not only gives them peace of mind but also correlates directly with revenue. For solar projects, quantity claiming is done by walking up and down rows of solar panels, posts, and torque tubes across the project site and manually entering the status data. The project goal was to create a secondary automated version of the manual quantity claiming process for construction progress tracking. The Kiewit Drone Progress Tracking application serves as a digital management system that supports tracking the progress of solar panel construction sites in a more streamlined way. It hosts a machine learning model that was built in-house. It predicts the progress of the construction site based on drone-captured geo-location tagged images called GeoTIFFs. The application hosts these GeoTIFFs and allows for the creation and display of labels that ultimately help train and run the machine learning model. The development of this application will increase the training data used to impact the accuracy of the AI model, as well as improve accessibility and efficiency for the current solution and provide the platform for expansion to other construction project types