A Culturally-Sensitive Exploration of Adversity and Resilience Among Trinidadians

Research done by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as abuse, household challenges, and neglect were linked to later health risks in life and overall well-being (CDC, 2019). Adverse experiences occur worldwide in a variety of culturally-specific ways. Research involving youth in Trinidad and Tobago outlines emerging concerns with violence in homes, communities, and schools (Baker-Henningham et al., 2009). Currently, however, there is limited data on adverse experiences and their long-term impact in Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidadians (n = 79), born and lived in Trinidad till 18 years was surveyed, ranging from ages of 18-65, 11 males and 68 females. Participants were given a demographic survey, an ACEs questionnaire (Felliti et al., 1998), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC; Connor & Davidson, 2003). Male participants reported more ACEs than female with half of the male sample reporting four or more. Using Independent-Samples Mann Whitney U no significant differences were found by gender groups for ACEs Total, Emotional Abuse, Sex Abuse, Physical Abuse, Neglect, Exposure to Violence, and Resilience Total (CD-RISC). Whereas, using the Kruskal-Wallis Test significant differences were found between relationship status groups on physical abuse as well as differences between racial/ethnic groups on emotional abuse. Family SES history was moderately negatively corelated with Total ACEs, emotional abuse, neglect, physical abuse and being bullied. There was no significant relationship between total number of ACEs reported and Resilience, however, older individuals reported a higher level of resilience. These findings support the need for continued research exploring the adverse experiences in Trinidad and the role of resilience as a mediator

Going faster, going greener, going safer – a student led approach for safety management

© 2020 The Author(s). This an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Analysis of FDA warning letters issued to US medical device companies for CAPA related issues between 2013 and 2019

© Journal of Medical Device Regulation – 2023. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://globalregulatorypress.com/product/may-2023-volume-20-issue-2/ ​​​​​​

Overlapping Trade Agreements: Stepping Stones or Stumbling Blocks?

This paper analyzes the effect of overlapping Trade blocs on Trade Facilitation. Using the time, documents and costs incurred as trade facilitation indicators, simulations show interesting yet important effects of an increase in Regional Trade Agreements on trade costs. The results suggest that when it comes to increasing regional trade agreements by 1%, costs are associated with an increase via the number of documents needed to export, by 0.05%, but reduce time delays by 0.08%. Countries related to Custom Unions are negatively affected by an increase in Regional Trade Agreements, with results showing that these countries face an additional burden of documentary compliance both for exporting and importing by 0.09% and 0.13%. Costs of exporting and importing are however reduced by 0.13% and 0.07% respectively. Understanding these effects offers important insight into how countries can better negotiate trade deals that are geared towards wholesome reduction of trade costs, including non-tariff barriers to trade

Investigating the use of dasymetric techniques for assessing employment containment in Melbourne, Australia

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.This project studies employment containment in Melbourne, Australia. Employment containment is a measure of the proportion of people that work in a location close to their home. Recent urban planning policies in Melbourne have aimed to improve employment containment in the city’s suburbs. While there has been analysis of the rates at which people both live and work within broadly defined ‘local areas’, little work has been done to investigate employment containment using smaller and more uniform catchment areas as the unit of analysis. This research attempts such a finer scale analysis using dasymetric downscaling techniques. A regression modelling approach supported by land use data, alongside a binary dasymetric method, is used to develop fine scale estimates of employment distribution, while binary and populationdensity weighted methods are used to develop a fine scale estimate of working population distribution. For the employment distribution estimate, the Poisson model that distributed employment to employment-related land use classes produced the smallest error. However, the error produced by this model is still high. For the working population distribution estimate, the population-density weighted estimate is the more accurate of the approaches, and overall produced low error. For the employment containment analysis, a number of employment centres were randomly selected and an employment containment catchment has been derived from a 5 km2 commuting distance catchment. Commuting flows from an origin-destination matrix were areaweighted to estimate flows into the employment centre from the 5 km2 catchment. The method is found to be potentially useful; however inspecting the results of this employment containment calculation highlighted flaws in the current estimates that should be addressed before the measures can be used to further analyse employment containment in Melbourne. Improvements to this method would support urban strategic and transport planning analyses at a metropolitan-wide scale

“Hotspots” and “copycats”: a plea for more thoughtful language about suicide

LetterThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.The meta-analysis by Jane Pirkis and colleagues presents a useful contribution to knowledge about the effectiveness of interventions to prevent suicides in public places. I take issue not with the content of their work, but with its language. They use the term “hotspot(s)” no fewer than 30 times in their paper. For some years, this term has served to denote specific public sites that are frequently associated with acts of suicide, usually by jumping. Beloved of the media, its continued, uncritical use in scientific literature is concerning

Futuring Africa: Immature Men and the Utility of Hope in Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

The purpose of this paper is to provide a re-reading of Armah as a writer of decadence and frustration. I argue that such readings remain prejudiced since scholars rarely identify the philosophy of Kant as a particularly useful resource which will aid one to understand the full complexity of Armah’s vision for postcolonial Ghana. Drawing on Kant’s age of enlightenment, this paper redeems Armah’s debut of pejorism by locating the novel’s diagnostic function within the complex paradigms of maturity and immaturity. Thus, this paper examines the ambiguities of Armah’s characterization and how it strengthens the utopian sensibilities embedded in the text. The paper concludes that Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born remains therapeutic for the advent of the new nation

The Role of Bacteria Beta Glucuronidase Activity in Irinotecan-Induced Diarrhea

Chemotherapy-induced diarrhea is a common side effect but is an understudied area in cancer management. This problem is especially significant with irinotecan hydrochloride (CPT-11), a prodrug of SN-38 (7-ethyl-10-hydroxy camptothecin) used in treating metastatic colon cancer as well as other types of cancers (e.g., lung, pancreatic). It is reported that more than 80% of patients treated with irinotecan experienced diarrhea, with up to 40% experiencing severe (grade 3 and 4) diarrhea. Different anti-diarrhea medications (e.g., loperamide, octreotide, tincture of opium) have been recommended, but diarrhea is still a major concern in many patients treated with irinotecan as they do not respond well to these treatments. The disposition of irinotecan has been well studied. After being administered through intravenous infusion, irinotecan is mainly activated to SN-38 by carboxylesterase (CE) and then detoxified to SN-38 glucuronide (SN-38G) by UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) in the liver. Irinotecan and its metabolites are secreted into the intestine through biliary excretion, where SN-38G can be hydrolyzed back to SN-38 through the action of β-glucuronidase (β-GUS) produced by the intestinal bacteria. Accumulation of SN-38 in the intestinal tract then causes intestinal mucosal injury, resulting in delayed-onset diarrhea. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the role of intestinal bacterial β-glucuronidase (β-GUS) in irinotecan-induced diarrhea. Glucuronide hydrolysis by bacterial β-glucuronidase (β-GUS) is a well-known reaction. Typically, substrates will be incubated with fecal enzymes prepared from feces to determine bacterial β-glucuronidase (β-GUS) activity. Different methods have been reported for fecal enzyme preparation and different conditions have been used in incubating substrates with fecal enzymes. However, the method for enzyme preparation and the reaction conditions were not standardized and different conditions may affect the GUS activity. Therefore, we first used a standard GUS substrate pNPG and a natural glucuronide wogonoside as the substrate to determine how enzyme preparation procedure and reaction conditions will affect GUS activity. Mouse, rat, and human feces were tested. Fecal S9 fractions were prepared with sonication and without sonication (suspension). Different reaction conditions including, buffer pH, Mg2+ concentration, and feces collection time were tested. The relative reaction activity of pNPG, reaction rates, and reaction kinetics for wogonoside were calculated. The results showed that sonication increased total protein yield during enzyme preparation. Fresh feces showed the highest hydrolysis activities when compared to feces collected after 24hrs and after 7 days. The pH of the reaction system increased the activity in 0.69-1.32, 2.9-12.9, and 0.28-1.56 folds for mice, rats, and human at three different concentrations of wogonoside, respectively. The Vmax for wogonoside hydrolysis was 2.37±0.06, 4.48±0.11, and 5.17±0.16 μmol/min/mg and Km was 6.51±0.71, 3.04±0.34, and 0.34±0.047 μM for mouse, rat, and human, respectively. The inter-individual difference was significant (4-6 folds) using inbred rats as the model animal. Therefore, for an optimized hydrolysis reaction, sonication should be included in the preparation of the enzyme, fresh feces should be used to avoid activity loss and the buffer pH should be appropriate according to the species of the animal being used. To determine if SN-38G hydrolysis by bacterial GUS activity can be altered, we prepared fecal enzymes using feces collected from rats at different conditions including F344 rats at different ages (4 and 10 weeks old), different breed of rats (Pirc and F344), rats before and after irinotecan administration. The results showed that GUS activity is increased after the administration of irinotecan. Younger showed higher GUS activity when compared to the older ones and the increased in GUS activity noticed in the young rats increased by two folds after administration of Irinotecan. We, therefore, suspect that age may have a synergistic effect on diarrhea induced by CPT-11. Pirc rats, a type of rat that is known for inflammation of their colon mucosa showed higher GUS activity when compared with the wildtype (F344). This might be the reason why Pirc rat have a high incidence of diarrhea when CPT-11 is administered to them. Having determined that hydrolysis of SN-38G by bacterial GUS can be altered, we decided to see if this manipulation can result in reduced incidence of irinotecan-induced diarrhea. We established an irinotecan-induced diarrhea model using F344 rats. We used an herbal formula Xiao-Chai-Hu-Tang (XCHT) to treat the rats 3 days prior to CPT-11 injection and their fecal samples were collected for 9 days afterward. The results showed that with XCHT treatment (1.8g/kg p.o.), bacterial GUS against SN-38G hydrolysis was significantly decreased (Vmax 0.4umol/min/mg) when compared to that of the rats without XCHT treatment (Vmax 1.3umol/min/mg). In vitro study also showed that XCHT can also inhibit GUS activity. Toxicity results showed that with XCHT treatment, irinotecan-induced diarrhea was attenuated. Rats given XCHT treatment showed only grade 1 diarrhea for up to 9 days after CPT-11 injection and rats without XCHT treatment showed severe diarrhea (grade 3 and 4) by day 5 after CPT-11 injection. Therefore, it can be said that XCHT alleviates diarrhea by reducing the amount of GI microflora available to deconjugate SN-38G to SN-38

Role Talk Dalam Komunikasi Kelompok Pengurus Komunitas Kloss (Korea Lovers Surabaya)

Fenomena komunikasi kelompok pada penelitian ini terjadi dalam komunikasi kelompok kecil antar pengurus dari komunitas KLOSS (Korea Lovers Surabaya). Jenis komunikasi kelompok kecil yang muncul disebut role talk atau komunikasi peran, yang mengenalkan lima peran informal, yaitu: pemimpin tugas, pembimbing sosial-emosional, pusat negatif, pelepas ketegangan dan penyedia informasi. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana permainan peran informal dalam kepengurusan KLOSS terjadi, lewat gaya berkomunikasi masing-masing pengurus yang mencerminkan peran apa yang mereka mainkan.Jenis penelitian ini adalah deskriptif dengan pendekatan kualitatif, dengan pelaksanaan observasi dan wawancara secara mendalam. Yang menjadi informan dalam penelitian ini adalah empat dari sejumlah sembilan pengurus yang bersedia untuk meluangkan waktu menjadi informan. Dengan menggunakan metode studi kasus jenis tunggal, hasil dari penelitian ini adalah adanya role talk yang terjadi dalam kepengurusan KLOSS, yang ditandai dengan munculnya lima peran informal. Meskipun kelima peran tersebut dimainkan, terdapat beberapa kekurangan dalam permainan peran tersebut, seperti adanya role rigidity