Challenges and Opportunities of Waste Collection in Caracas: Sucre Municipality Case Study

This paper provides an overview of solid waste management by local authorities in the Sucre municipality in Caracas, Venezuela. Sucre is currently faced with serious demographic, economic, social, urban, and administrative challenges in solid waste management. The municipality, called Petare, has one of the largest slums in Latin America. It is estimated that more than a million people live in Petare, and 30% live in poverty. Venezuela is also facing a political problem that has affected the solid waste management throughout the country. Local authorities in Sucre have worked with communities to develop solutions to confront these difficulties

Exploring the baseline knowledge and experience of healthcare professionals in the United Kingdom on Novel Psychoactive Substances

Submitted 28 january 2020. Reviwers' comments received 11 February 2020. Accepted 26 February 2020. Published 2 March 2020.Objective: This survey aimed to explore knowledge and experience on novel psychoactive substances (NPS) of healthcare professionals (HCPs). The study also aimed to assess how HCPs would like to improve their knowledge of NPS. Methods: Seventy paper questionnaires were disseminated in 2017 within continuing education events to pharmacists, nurses and general practitioners (GPs). Additionally, 127 online surveys were completed using the Qualtrics platform by other HCPs and mental health nurses in six United Kingdom (UK) independent mental health hospitals long-stay in-patient rehabilitation services. Two educational sessions involving pharmacists and GPs were also held in late 2017 and mid-2018. Knowledge of NPS by HCPs was evaluated prior to the start of the educational events. Evaluation forms were handed out post-sessions to garner feedback, especially on areas for improvement for future sessions. Statistical analysis of data was undertaken using SPSS (V.25). Results: Most HCPs reported only 'basic' to 'intermediate' NPS knowledge. Substance misuse service staff felt more informed, were more often consulted and had greater confidence regarding NPS compared to hospital and primary care professionals. A negative association was found between the age of the HCP and knowledge of NPS. Most participants expressed a need for regular training and updates as insufficient NPS-related information is currently received. Conclusions: An improvement within the self-reported knowledge of HCPs on NPS is evident in comparison to previous studies. Continued education of HCPs on NPS is fundamental for the provision of improved harm reduction services, which can enhance overall care for NPS service users.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Computer-Based Cognitive Retraining for Individuals with Chronic Acquired Brain Injury: A Pilot Study

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer-based cognitive retraining program, the Parrot Software, on improving cognitive deficits in memory and attention in individuals with a chronic acquired brain injury (ABI). Research Design: This study utilized a quantitative quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design. Participants: Eleven adults over 18 years of age who sustained a chronic ABI two or more years prior to participation in the study and demonstrated deficits in memory and attention were included. Only individuals with ABI due to traumatic brain injury, hemorrhagic cerebrovascular accident, or ischemic cerebrovascular accident were included. Method and Procedures: The study was conducted over a period of five months, during which participants completed a total of eight 60-minute sessions using the Parrot Software. The participants completed eight sub-programs in memory and attention. Pretest and posttest data were collected using the paper version of the Cognistat Assessment (2009). In order to control for bias and create inter-rater reliability, each researcher was trained in administering the standardized Cognistat Assessment (2009) and the Parrot software, and participated in the process of data collection and analysis. Results: A significant improvement was found in both memory and attention scores post-intervention. No significant correlations were found between memory or attention changes and age, years since injury, and education level. Conclusion: Computer-based cognitive retraining programs, such as the Parrot Software, may be effective in improving cognitive deficits in memory and attention in individuals with chronic acquired brain injury; however, further research is recommended to strengthen these findings and to investigate transfer to functional performance

Environmental identification of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi using the LSU rDNA gene region: an expanded database and improved pipeline

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF; Glomeromycota) are difficult to culture; therefore, establishing a robust amplicon-based approach to taxa identification is imperative to describe AMF diversity. Further, due to low and biased sampling of AMF taxa, molecular databases do not represent the breadth of AMF diversity, making database matching approaches suboptimal. Therefore, a full description of AMF diversity requires a tool to determine sequence-based placement in the Glomeromycota clade. Nonetheless, commonly used gene regions, including the SSU and ITS, do not enable reliable phylogenetic placement. Here, we present an improved database and pipeline for the phylogenetic determination of AMF using amplicons from the large subunit (LSU) rRNA gene. We improve our database and backbone tree by including additional outgroup sequences. We also improve an existing bioinformatics pipeline by aligning forward and reverse reads separately, using a universal alignment for all tree building, and implementing a BLAST screening prior to tree building to remove non-homologous sequences. Finally, we present a script to extract AMF belonging to 11 major families as well as an amplicon sequencing variant (ASV) version of our pipeline. We test the utility of the pipeline by testing the placement of known AMF, known non-AMF, and Acaulospora sp. spore sequences. This work represents the most comprehensive database and pipeline for phylogenetic placement of AMF LSU amplicon sequences within the Glomeromycota clade

Translating COGNISTAT and the Use of the Cognitive Interview Approach: Observations and Challenges

Cognitive functioning is a salient issue among people in the late adulthood stage where mental health declines with age. A common cognitive disability among elders is Dementia including Alzheimer’s disease. Cognitive screening tools such as the Mini- Mental Status Examination and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment are most commonly used to measure the cognitive ability areas leading to a diagnostic evaluation. COGNISTAT as a neuropsychological instrument is a recent screener being introduced to a few outpatient clinics. In this study; COGNISTAT is translated to Filipino for the first time using a rigorous procedure and pilot tested on elderly volunteers in local settings. The translation was done by an interdisciplinary team of a Geriatric Physician; a Speech Pathologist; and a Clinical Psychologist. The Filipino-translated COGNISTAT was administered to 22 elders in two batches using the cognitive interview method. Challenges were identified in the initial testing phase which has implications for future adaptations of foreign instruments

Unified Topological Inference for Brain Networks in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Using the Wasserstein Distance

Persistent homology can extract hidden topological signals present in brain networks. Persistent homology summarizes the changes of topological structures over multiple different scales called filtrations. Doing so detect hidden topological signals that persist over multiple scales. However, a key obstacle of applying persistent homology to brain network studies has always been the lack of coherent statistical inference framework. To address this problem, we present a unified topological inference framework based on the Wasserstein distance. Our approach has no explicit models and distributional assumptions. The inference is performed in a completely data driven fashion. The method is applied to the resting-state functional magnetic resonance images (rs-fMRI) of the temporal lobe epilepsy patients collected at two different sites: University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin. However, the topological method is robust to variations due to sex and acquisition, and thus there is no need to account for sex and site as categorical nuisance covariates. We are able to localize brain regions that contribute the most to topological differences. We made MATLAB package available at https://github.com/laplcebeltrami/dynamicTDA that was used to perform all the analysis in this study

Lifemirror:a reconsideration of cinema as a collective process between digital and organic networks

This thesis argues that cinema is going through a radical transformation. When cameras and screens become digitally networked a circuit is formed, not only between films and their audience, but to a shared reality in time. Crowdsourcing, cloud film and myriad mobile applications are bringing together individual perspectives in ways that render experience as collectively cinematic. This accelerating transition is further reflected in the increasing refinement of interactivity in social networks. Underlying these emergent practices remains the assumption that directing and editing film is fundamental to the experience of cinema. This practice-led thesis reconsiders the control function of film by reframing it as a temporal sense-connection between organic and digital networks. By iteratively replacing authorial film structuration with networked sensitivities, a collective psycho-mechanical quality of cinema is produced. I develop and question this emergent quality as a ‘network-image’ in relation to its creator-audience and ask how future development of the concept may realise wider socio-cinematic transformations. In this way, the thesis contributes a preliminary artefact and foundational theory intended to mobilise a practice and discourse for a network cinema. The thesis is theoretically informed by the philosophical frameworks of Giles Deleuze, and in particular his engagement with time through the lens of cinema. Using these ideas as a foundation, I identify the collective form of cinema as an evolutionary step in media consciousness. An experimental incarnation of this process is embodied in the submitted artefact, Lifemirror, a system that connects cameras to generate and observe film as a shared process in time rather than an authored production of time. As an audience-led incarnation of cinema, the films produced by the system challenge dominant models and reposition narrative as inherent to an environment unfolding through individually mobilised sense and contingency. As such, the research finds a temporally directed perceptual space between organic and digital networks that forms a distinct foundation for a ‘cinema-without-cinema’, a cinema-to-come in between networked movements that prefigures an engagement with co-conscious time

Predicting mental imagery based BCI performance from personality, cognitive profile and neurophysiological patterns

Mental-Imagery based Brain-Computer Interfaces (MI-BCIs) allow their users to send commands to a computer using their brain-activity alone (typically measured by ElectroEncephaloGraphy— EEG), which is processed while they perform specific mental tasks. While very promising, MI-BCIs remain barely used outside laboratories because of the difficulty encountered by users to control them. Indeed, although some users obtain good control performances after training, a substantial proportion remains unable to reliably control an MI-BCI. This huge variability in user-performance led the community to look for predictors of MI-BCI control ability. However, these predictors were only explored for motor-imagery based BCIs, and mostly for a single training session per subject. In this study, 18 participants were instructed to learn to control an EEG-based MI-BCI by performing 3 MI-tasks, 2 of which were non-motor tasks, across 6 training sessions, on 6 different days. Relationships between the participants’ BCI control performances and their personality, cognitive profile and neurophysiological markers were explored. While no relevant relationships with neurophysiological markers were found, strong correlations between MI-BCI performances and mental-rotation scores (reflecting spatial abilities) were revealed. Also, a predictive model of MI-BCI performance based on psychometric questionnaire scores was proposed. A leave-one-subject-out cross validation process revealed the stability and reliability of this model: it enabled to predict participants’ performance with a mean error of less than 3 points. This study determined how users’ profiles impact their MI-BCI control ability and thus clears the way for designing novel MI-BCI training protocols, adapted to the profile of each user