Casting of Gold Nanoparticles with High Aspect Ratios inside DNA Molds

DNA nanostructures provide a powerful platform for the programmable assembly of nanomaterials. Here this approach is extended to synthesize rod-like gold nanoparticles in a full DNA controlled manner. The approach is based on DNA molds containing elongated cavities. Gold is deposited inside the molds using a seeded-growth procedure. By carefully exploring the growth parameters it is shown that gold nanostructures with aspect ratios of up to 7 can be grown from single seeds. The highly anisotropic growth is in this case controlled only by the rather soft and porous DNA walls. The optimized seeded growth procedure provides a robust and simple routine to achieve continuous gold nanostructures using DNA templating

Recruiting farm parents for a 6-week online child safety survey study using paid Facebook advertisements

Agricultural populations are a popular target for research due to the industry's dangerous conditions, unique work environments, and youth-including workforce. However, reaching and recruiting eligible participants is challenging and expensive when compared to other industries. We conducted a two-phase, multi-week paid advertising campaign on Facebook.com, varying delivery time, imagery, verbiage, and targeting methods to recruit U.S. farm parents for an online survey study investigating childhood agricultural safety. Advertisements were active for 4 weeks in fall 2021 and 3 weeks in winter 2022 at $1,500 per week. The fall recruitment targeted farm parents, depicting three farm-related images, while the winter recruitment targeted all parents, depicting farm-rescue trainings with firefighters. The fall recruitment garnered 5,535 link clicks with a reach of 233,690 ($1.07 per click). The winter recruitment garnered 8,602 clicks with a reach of 750,764 ($0.53 per click) and higher user engagement. A total of 1,439 participants began the screener questionnaire, a conversion rate of 10.18$64 USD. We successfully recruited our target sample size for this study. Notably, advertisement timing, imagery, and sampling frame likely affected performance. A screening questionnaire was imperative in identifying sham responses. These findings show that paid Facebook advertising can be a feasible recruitment tool to engage with a traditionally difficult to reach population with proper precautions and planning

Editorial: Safeguarding youth from agricultural injury and illness: international experiences

[Extract] Worldwide, agriculture is among the most dangerous industries and one of the few that involves children (<18 years-of-age) in the worksite as laborers or bystanders. Children are exposed to an array of agriculture-related hazards whether working or merely being present in the farm environment. From a public health and child advocacy perspective, safeguarding these young people from preventable disease and injury is important for many reasons. The negative impacts of a childhood agricultural disease or injury range from permanent disabilities, death, family disruptions, and economic hardships including the potential loss of a sustainable family farm enterprise. At the same time, growing up in an agricultural setting can lead to independent, hardworking, successful adults, who gain a range of benefits, including skill development, family time together, improved immune response, and other protective health factors

Regional surveillance of medically-attended farm-related injuries in children and adolescents

PurposeDue to numerous environmental hazards such as heavy machinery and large livestock, youth who live and work on farms are at high risk of injury, disability, and death. This study described a regional surveillance system for monitoring farm-related injuries in children and adolescents. As the risk of farm-related injuries are not exclusive to farm residents, trends in farm-related injuries over the previous 5 years were reported and compared between children/adolescents who did and did not live on farms in north-central Wisconsin.MethodsA retrospective cohort of child and adolescent patients of the Marshfield Clinic Health System was assembled. Incident farm-related injuries, including from agricultural work or other activities in a farm environment, were extracted from medical records from 2017 through 2021. Generalized linear models were created to compare age- and sex-adjusted farm-related injury rates by year.ResultsThere were 4,730 (5%) in-farm and 93,420 (95%) out-farm children and adolescents in the cohort. There were 65 incident farm-related injury cases in the in-farm group and 412 in the out-farm group. The annual incidence rate of farm-related injuries was higher in the in-farm group, but changes during the 5-year timeframe were not significant in either group. In the in-farm group, rates ranged from a high of 61.8 [95% confidence interval (CI): 38.3, 94.5] incident farm-related injuries per 10,000 children/adolescents in 2017 to a low of 28.2 (13.5, 51.9) injuries per 10,000 children/adolescents in 2018. In the out-farm group, rates ranged from 10.7 (8.3, 13.6) to 16.8 (13.7, 20.5) incident farm-related injuries per 10,000 children/adolescents per year between 2017 and 2021. The in-farm group had a higher proportion of injured males and heavy machinery injuries, while the out-farm group had more all-terrain vehicle injuries and pesticide poisonings.ConclusionFarm residency remains hazardous for children and adolescents, as injury rates were three times higher in the in-farm group and remained stable over 5 years. All-terrain vehicle injuries were high in both groups, and should be a priority in rural safety interventions. With additional adaptations to other states, this surveillance model could be scaled across other healthcare systems

Injuries and Fatalities Related to Skid Steers: 2015&ndash;2020

Skid steers are versatile self-propelled machines that are regularly used in a variety of recreational applications and occupational industries. They can be hazardous for both operators and bystanders. The purpose of this paper is to describe patterns of skid steer injuries in the US from 2015 to 2020. Data were obtained from Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) accident reports and the severe injury database. Agriculture-related incidents were obtained from AgInjuryNews. The study identified 312 skid steer-related injuries (2015&ndash;2020) in OSHA, with an additional 68 agricultural injuries identified using AIN. Construction, administrative and waste management, and agriculture industries were the top three industries with the highest number of injuries. Bystander workers experienced a higher number of injuries than operators. Contact with the machine was the most prevalent and more fatal than the other injury events. Agricultural skid steer injuries involved a broad age range of victims, from very young children to adults. These findings emphasize the need for improved safety engineering and clear safety guidelines for skid steer operators and those who are around skid steers. With the increased prevalence of skid steers across industries, it is imperative to have cohesive and comprehensive safety regulations, guidelines, and policy enforcement

Injuries and Fatalities Related to Skid Steers: 2015–2020

Skid steers are versatile self-propelled machines that are regularly used in a variety of recreational applications and occupational industries. They can be hazardous for both operators and bystanders. The purpose of this paper is to describe patterns of skid steer injuries in the US from 2015 to 2020. Data were obtained from Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) accident reports and the severe injury database. Agriculture-related incidents were obtained from AgInjuryNews. The study identified 312 skid steer-related injuries (2015–2020) in OSHA, with an additional 68 agricultural injuries identified using AIN. Construction, administrative and waste management, and agriculture industries were the top three industries with the highest number of injuries. Bystander workers experienced a higher number of injuries than operators. Contact with the machine was the most prevalent and more fatal than the other injury events. Agricultural skid steer injuries involved a broad age range of victims, from very young children to adults. These findings emphasize the need for improved safety engineering and clear safety guidelines for skid steer operators and those who are around skid steers. With the increased prevalence of skid steers across industries, it is imperative to have cohesive and comprehensive safety regulations, guidelines, and policy enforcement

Farm Suicides in Wisconsin, 2017–2018: Preliminary Findings and a Call for Future Research

Studies across the last few decades have consistently found farmers and farmworkers at an elevated risk of death by suicide compared to other occupational groups in the United States. Still, there is currently no comprehensive national surveillance system for agricultural-related injuries or suicides. For this study, we analyzed Wisconsin death certificate data from 2017 and 2018 to identify the burden of suicide among farmers and farmworkers. In 2017 and 2018, 44 farm-related suicides were identified, or 14.3 per 100,000 farmers and farmworkers. The median age of victims was 51.5 ± 20, and six (13.6%) were female. As these suicide cases were cross-checked, we found that none were identifiable solely from previously published news media or obituaries, indicating: (1) a clear need for a multi-sourced suicide data approach and inter-agency collaborations for future research, and (2) the need for a deeper investigation into the reporting of farm-related suicides. These data are necessary for informing state and local level policy, resource prioritization, and the evaluation of intervention efforts

Stakeholders’ Consumption of Agricultural Injury Reports from News Media: A Six-Year Analysis of Website Usage and Visitor Analytics

AgInjuryNews.org is a news report-based, online sentinel surveillance dataset that has provided publicly available news and media reports of agricultural injuries since early 2015. In the 6 years since its inception, AgInjuryNews.org has hosted 12,897 unique visitors and has collected 997 user account registrations. New users from geographic areas home to NIOSH-funded agricultural research centres were most prominent, with these centres returning in larger numbers, comparatively. Users were acquired mostly through web searches, collaborations with other agencies, and paid Facebook.com advertisements. Paid advertisements recruited 3792 visitors; however, retention, registrations, and on-site engagement from this source was low. This analysis shows that data consumption on AgInjuryNews.org is steadily growing. Similar self-hosted programs that provide data or digital resources to agricultural safety and health stakeholders should consider the integration of auditing and analytics tracking, including user registrations

Table_1_Regional surveillance of medically-attended farm-related injuries in children and adolescents.DOCX

PurposeDue to numerous environmental hazards such as heavy machinery and large livestock, youth who live and work on farms are at high risk of injury, disability, and death. This study described a regional surveillance system for monitoring farm-related injuries in children and adolescents. As the risk of farm-related injuries are not exclusive to farm residents, trends in farm-related injuries over the previous 5 years were reported and compared between children/adolescents who did and did not live on farms in north-central Wisconsin.MethodsA retrospective cohort of child and adolescent patients of the Marshfield Clinic Health System was assembled. Incident farm-related injuries, including from agricultural work or other activities in a farm environment, were extracted from medical records from 2017 through 2021. Generalized linear models were created to compare age- and sex-adjusted farm-related injury rates by year.ResultsThere were 4,730 (5%) in-farm and 93,420 (95%) out-farm children and adolescents in the cohort. There were 65 incident farm-related injury cases in the in-farm group and 412 in the out-farm group. The annual incidence rate of farm-related injuries was higher in the in-farm group, but changes during the 5-year timeframe were not significant in either group. In the in-farm group, rates ranged from a high of 61.8 [95% confidence interval (CI): 38.3, 94.5] incident farm-related injuries per 10,000 children/adolescents in 2017 to a low of 28.2 (13.5, 51.9) injuries per 10,000 children/adolescents in 2018. In the out-farm group, rates ranged from 10.7 (8.3, 13.6) to 16.8 (13.7, 20.5) incident farm-related injuries per 10,000 children/adolescents per year between 2017 and 2021. The in-farm group had a higher proportion of injured males and heavy machinery injuries, while the out-farm group had more all-terrain vehicle injuries and pesticide poisonings.ConclusionFarm residency remains hazardous for children and adolescents, as injury rates were three times higher in the in-farm group and remained stable over 5 years. All-terrain vehicle injuries were high in both groups, and should be a priority in rural safety interventions. With additional adaptations to other states, this surveillance model could be scaled across other healthcare systems.</p