Well communities

Well Communities provides a framework for communities and local organisations (public, private and third sector) to work together to improve health and wellbeing, build resilience and reduce inequalities. Key concepts in engaging communities for social change and health improvement are integral to the Well Communities approach. These include whole systems, holistic and assets-based working, community engagement and community led action, community development and capacity building, co-production, positive psychology and empowerment. Through work over nine years with 33 of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in London, these concepts have been translated into a practical framework for actio

Children's Human Capabilities and Child Maltreatment

There are no known studies that have explored a conceptual basis for valorizing child maltreatment as a human development impediment using the Human Capability Approach. The pilot study assessed the prevalence of child maltreatment amongst 68 (N=219) school-aged children 12 – 17 years in one secondary school in Aruba using Nussbaum’s list of 10 central human capabilities. Among this sample, the prevalence of child maltreatment was at 100%. The most prevalent types of child maltreatment were emotional abuse (94.2%), physical abuse (88.4%), severe physical abuse (66.7%) and neglect (42%). Sexual abuse had the lowest prevalence rate at 18.8%. The levels of functionings achieved varied according to types of child maltreatment and their prevalence. Neglect, witnessing inter-parental violence and sexual abuse were associated with lower achievements on the combined 10 central human capabilities except for emotional abuse, physical abuse and severe physical abuse which reported highest prevalence.  These types of child maltreatment were too common and left little to no variability to calculate statistical relationships with the 10 human capabilities. These findings are disturbing and raise concerns about the normalization of abuse.  Further research is recommended to determine the contributing factors to widespread use of emotional and physical abuse and the potential for intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment. Future research is also recommended with a larger sample that may provide more meaningful analysis of the capability space of children affected by child maltreatment.No hay estudios conocidos que hayan explorado una base conceptual para valorizar al maltrato infantil como un impedimento para el desarrollo humano utilizando el Enfoque de Capacidad Humana. El estudio piloto evaluó la prevalencia del maltrato infantil entre 68 (N = 219) niños en edad escolar de 12 a 17 años en una escuela secundaria en Aruba utilizando la lista de Nussbaum de 10 capacidades humanas centrales. La prevalencia del maltrato infantil es del 100%. Los tipos de maltrato infantil más frecuentes fueron: el abuso emocional, con 94,2%, abuso físico 88,4%, abuso físico severo 66,7% y negligencia 42%. El abuso sexual tuvo la tasa de frecuencia más baja, en 18,8%. Los niveles de funcionamiento alcanzados variaron según los tipos de maltrato infantil y su prevalencia. La negligencia, presenciar la violencia entre padres y el abuso sexual se asociaron con logros más bajos entre las 10 capacidades humanas centrales combinadas, excepto el abuso emocional, el abuso físico y el abuso físico severo que tuvieron la prevalencia más alta. Estos tipos de maltrato infantil eran demasiado altos y dejaban poca o ninguna variabilidad para calcular las relaciones estadísticas con las 10 capacidades humanas. Estos hallazgos son inquietantes y generan inquietudes sobre la normalización del abuso. Se recomienda realizar más investigaciones para determinar los factores que contribuyen al uso generalizado del abuso físico y emocional y el potencial de transmisión intergeneracional del maltrato infantil. Se recomienda, además, realizar investigaciones futuras con una muestra más grande que pudiera proporcionar un análisis más significativo del espacio de capacidad de los niños afectados por el maltrato infantil

Acute respiratory distress syndrome following a biphasic anaphylactic reaction to morphine: a case report and review of the literature

Background: Biphasic anaphylactic reaction is a variant of the usual and more commonly seen monophasic anaphylactic reaction. However, recently it has been observed that biphasic anaphylactic reaction may not be as uncommon as previously believed. Furthermore, serious and life-threatening complications such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) may ensue that require prompt intervention.Case report: A 16-year-old boy is presented who was scheduled for bilateral orchidopexy under spinal anaesthesia. Anaesthesia was supplemented with i.v. midazolam 5 mg, ketamine 50 mg and morphine 5 mg. About 10 minutes after the administration of morphine, he developed an urticarial rash with mucocutaneous zones, which was promptly treated with i.v. hydrocortisone 100 mg stat.The patient was transferred to the ward after an uneventful surgery and anaesthesia. However, about six hours postoperatively he developed respiratory distress with SpO2 of 20% associated with shock with a blood pressure of 80/40 mmHg, and heart rate of 40 bpm. He was immediately resuscitated with endotracheal intubation, chest compression and i.v. adrenaline and admitted to the ICU. He was managed in the ICU with ventilatory support and inotrope and discharged to the ward after 12 days.Conclusion: A 16-year-old boy who developed a biphasic anaphylactic reaction secondary to morphine administered in the theatre was managed in the ICU and discharged to the ward after 12 days and home thereafter.Keywords: ARDS, biphasic anaphylactic reaction, morphin

Peas Please: Making a pledge for more veg

Research suggests that eating vegetables benefits both human health and the environment. However, in the UK, very few people are eating enough vegetables. This is contributing to the global burden of diet‐related disease and associated costs, as well as undermining the possibility of a sustainable UK food system. The Peas Please initiative was launched in 2017 to encourage organisations and businesses across the food system to pledge their commitment to helping the British public increase their vegetable consumption. Since the implementation of the Peas Please initiative 95 organisations have pledged to support Peas Please and, at the time of writing, an additional 89.9 million portions of vegetables have been grown, served and sold by pledgers. This article describes the Peas Please initiative and its rationale, highlights some of the key outcomes of the programme, and outlines next steps for increasing commitment to the programme

Productivity, heritability and stability analysis of a Moroccan sugar beet germplasm

Received: January 19th, 2021 ; Accepted: March 27th, 2021 ; Published: April 6th 2021 ; Correspondence: [email protected] testing is the second part of maternal recurrent selection scheme adopted by INRA-Morocco for the national sugar beet breeding programme. The objective of this study is sugar beet germplasm productivity, heritability and stability analysis. The studied material concern 18 half-sib families (HSF) preselected initially for their seed production potential. Trials were conducted using randomised complete blocks designs during, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2017/18 campaigns in two experimental fields of INRA-Morocco; Sidi Allal Tazi (34° 30' N, 6° 19' W) and Larache (35° 11’ N, 6° 09’ W). Evaluated parameters concern the vigour, root weight (RW), leaf biomass yield (LBY), and sugar content (Sc). Data analysis by comparative procedures explores different accordance degrees of HSF versus controls. Good vegetative growth was observed, 85.6% closer to the maximal indicated scale level. The RW was significantly influenced by the genotype and reached a maximum of 1.06 kg versus 1.08 kg average recorded by controls. Sugar content recorded mean was 20.97% in HSF versus 21.39% in the controls. Most of HSF revealed mean values close to Z-type variety. Estimated heritability was 0.5 for RW, 0.2 for the LBY, and 0.02 for Sc. Sugar content was influenced by the environment and explained by the AMMI model (73.6%) versus 53.9% and 44.4% for root weight and leaf biomass yield respectively. The AMMI stability values showed F11, F12, F16, and F17 families as the most performing and stable HSF. Results demonstrate the relevance of the maternal recurrent selection scheme of the on-going national breeding programme

Within-Camera Multilayer Perceptron DVS Denoising

In-camera event denoising reduces the data rate of event cameras by filtering out noise at the source. A lightweight multilayer perceptron denoising filter (MLPF) provides state-of-the-art low-cost denoising accuracy. It processes a small neighborhood of pixels from the timestamp image around each event to discriminate signal and noise events. This paper proposes two digital logic implementations of the MLPF denoiser and quantifies their resource cost, power, and latency. The hardware MLPF quantizes the weights and hidden unit activations to 4 bits and has about 1k weights with about 40% sparsity. The Area-Under-Curve Receiver Operating Characteristic accuracy is nearly indistinguishable from that of the floating point network. The FPGA MLPF processes each event in 10 clock cycles. In FPGA, it uses 3.5k flip flops and 11.5k LUTs. Our ASIC implementation in 65nm digital technology for a 346 × 260 pixel camera occupies an area of 4.3mm 2 and consumes 4nJ of energy per event at event rates up to 25MHz. The MLPF can be easily integrated into an event camera using an FPGA or as an ASIC directly on the camera chip or in the same package. This denoising could dramatically reduce the energy consumed by the communication and host processor and open new areas of always-on event camera application under scavenged and battery power.Code: https://github.com/SensorsINI/dnd_hl

Who stays, who drops out?: Biosocial predictors of longer-term adherence in participants attending an exercise referral scheme in the UK

BACKGROUND: Exercise referral schemes are one of the most popular forms of physical activity intervention in primary care in the UK and present an opportunity to better understand the factors related to exercise adherence. But standard schemes tend to be delivered over a short period and so provide information about the factors associated with short-term adherence. This retrospective register-based study of a longer-duration scheme allowed investigation of longer-term adherence. METHODS: Social, physiological and anthropometric data were extracted from records of a cohort of ERS participants who had enrolled between 01 January and 31 December 2007 (n = 701). Characteristics of adherers and non-adherers were compared and potential predictors of longer-term adherence examined using binomial logistic regression. RESULTS: Significant adjusted odds ratios predicting longer-term adherence were found for age and medical condition. For every 10 year increase in age, the odds of people continuing exercise increased by 21.8% (OR = 1.02; CI = 1.00 to 1.04; p = 0.03). Participants referred with orthopaedic (OR = 0.25; CI = 0.07-0.94; p = 0.04), cardiovascular (OR = 0.18; CI = 0.05-0.70; p = 0.01) and other (OR = 0.20; CI = 0.04-0.93; p = 0.04) problems had significantly lower odds of adhering than those with metabolic conditions. CONCLUSION: Improved understanding of the factors that influence adherence to exercise referral schemes will enable providers develop better referral guidance and tailor schemes to better meet participants' needs. Longer-term schemes offer the opportunity to understand participants' likelihood of maintaining adherence to exercise

Understanding patient health-seeking behaviour to optimise the uptake of cataract surgery in rural Kenya, Zambia and Uganda: findings from a multisite qualitative study

Background Cataract is a major cause of visual impairment globally, affecting 15.2 million people who are blind, and another 78.8 million who have moderate or severe visual impairment. This study was designed to explore factors that influence the uptake of surgery offered to patients with operable cataract in a free-of-charge, community-based eye health programme. Methods Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with patients and healthcare providers in rural Zambia, Kenya and Uganda during 2018–2019. We identified participants using purposive sampling. Thematic analysis was conducted using a combination of an inductive and deductive team-based approach. Results Participants consisted of 131 healthcare providers and 294 patients. Two-thirds of patients had been operated on for cataract. Two major themes emerged: (1) surgery enablers, including a desire to regain control of their lives, the positive testimonies of others, family support, as well as free surgery, medication and food; and (2) barriers to surgery, including cultural and social factors, as well as the inadequacies of the healthcare delivery system. Conclusions Cultural, social and health system realities impact decisions made by patients about cataract surgery uptake. This study highlights the importance of demand segmentation and improving the quality of services, based on patients’ expectations and needs, as strategies for increasing cataract surgery uptake

Types of Social Capital and Mental Disorder in Deprived Urban Areas: A Multilevel Study of 40 Disadvantaged London Neighbourhoods

Objectives To examine the extent to which individual and ecological-level cognitive and structural social capital are associated with common mental disorder (CMD), the role played by physical characteristics of the neighbourhood in moderating this association, and the longitudinal change of the association between ecological level cognitive and structural social capital and CMD. Design Cross-sectional and longitudinal study of 40 disadvantaged London neighbourhoods. We used a contextual measure of the physical characteristics of each neighbourhood to examine how the neighbourhood moderates the association between types of social capital and mental disorder. We analysed the association between ecological-level measures of social capital and CMD longitudinally. Participants 4,214 adults aged 16-97 (44.4% men) were randomly selected from 40 disadvantaged London neighbourhoods. Main Outcome Measures General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Results Structural rather than cognitive social capital was significantly associated with CMD after controlling for socio-demographic variables. However, the two measures of structural social capital used, social networks and civic participation, were negatively and positively associated with CMD respectively. ‘Social networks’ was negatively associated with CMD at both the individual and ecological levels. This result was maintained when contextual aspects of the physical environment (neighbourhood incivilities) were introduced into the model, suggesting that ‘social networks’ was independent from characteristics of the physical environment. When ecological-level longitudinal analysis was conducted, ‘social networks’ was not statistically significant after controlling for individual-level social capital at follow up. Conclusions If we conceptually distinguish between cognitive and structural components as the quality and quantity of social capital respectively, the conclusion of this study is that the quantity rather than quality of social capital is important in relation to CMD at both the individual and ecological levels in disadvantaged urban areas. Thus, policy should support interventions that create and sustain social networks. One of these is explored in this article