The Hidden Costs Behind Cheap Clothing: Addressing Fast Fashion’s Environmental and Humanitarian Impact

The increasing speed at which social media trends come and go has caused fashion trends to accelerate in response to consumers’ ever-changing demands. To keep up with the latest fads, fast fashion companies design their clothing only to withstand a couple of uses before the item is no longer in good condition. The manufacture and discard of cheaply made clothing creates a variety of environmental issues. Brands conceal the treatment and compensation of their workers throughout the supply chain; the available information suggests that garment workers are mistreated. Finally, the disposal of these clothing items creates tension between the United States and the countries that ultimately assume its textile waste. The United States has done little to address these issues and currently has no legislation addressing the social and environmental decisions of the fashion industry, despite the industry’s social and environmental costs. This Note suggests that the United States enact a federal scheme to regulate the fast fashion industry by drawing on the European Union’s Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, California’s Garment Worker Protection Act, and New York’s proposed Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act

Grain Growth-Controlled Giant Permittivity in Soft Chemistry CaCu3Ti4O12 Ceramics

We report a dielectric constant of up to 5.4105 at room temperature and 1 kHz for CaCu3Ti4O12 (CCTO) ceramics, derived from multiphase powders (coprecipitation products), made by a ‘‘chimie douce’’ (coprecipitation) method, and then sintered in air. The sintered products are pure-phase CCTO ceramics. The high dielectric constant is achieved by tuning the size of grains and the thickness of grain boundaries. The grain growth is controlled by varying the concentration of excess CuO in the initial powder (calcined coprecipitation products) between 1 and 3.1 wt%. The dielectric constant of pure CCTO ceramics increases with the initial CuO concentration, reaching its maximum at 2.4 wt% of CuO. A further increase of excess CuO in powders results in a permittivity decrease, accompanied by the formation of CuO as a separate phase in the sintered products. The unusual grain growth behavior is attributed to a eutectic reaction between CuO and TiO2 present in the initial powder

Petite histoire des étangs du Ségala

Cet article retrace l'histoire naturelle et sociale des étangs du Ségala depuis le Moyen-Age ainsi que l'évolution pluriséculaire des multiples usages de ces étangs créés à l'origine pour des raisons à la fois religieuses, sociales et économique

Les étangs médiévaux de Midi Pyrénées (Armagnac et Ségala) : De nouveaux usages entre intensification ou préservation

Les étangs de l'Armagnac et du Ségala, milieux entièrement artificiels du Moyen-âge, espaces féodaux ou ecclésiastiques, à usages communautaires, étaient essentiellement voués à la production piscicole. A partir de la Révolution, puis au XIXe siècle et enfin XXe siècle, privés ou communaux, leurs usages se diversifient et/ou s'intensifient (nouveaux usages : pêche traditionnelle ; pisciculture intensive monospécifique, pêche no-kill, usages pédagogiques et récréatifs etc.). Ces nouveaux usages, sources de conflits ou parfois d'atteintes environnementales, sont aujourd'hui peu compatibles avec les enjeux et mesures Natura 2000 visant à préserver la biodiversité de ces milieux

Curriculum Integration of Pregnancy Termination and Family Planning in Didactic Medical Education

Background: Given that one in four women will seek an abortion before age 45, there is an urgent need to demystify abortion-related topics and expand providers’ foundational knowledge about pregnancy termination and family planning. An effective way of addressing gaps in women’s reproductive healthcare is integration of the public health importance, legal factors, and counseling surrounding family planning and pregnancy termination into medical school curricula in accordance with Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics (APGO) guidelines. Objective: Determine whether Indiana University School of Medicine’s (IUSM’s) current pregnancy termination and family planning curricula follow proposed APGO educational guidelines. Evaluate medical student preparedness and interest surrounding family planning and pregnancy termination. Methods: To assess the alignment between IUSM and APGO educational guidelines, session learning objectives (SLOs) from the didactic course Endocrine, Reproductive, Musculoskeletal, Dermatologic Systems (ERMD) syllabus were compared to the relevant APGO objectives. Data was collected through a survey via Qualtrics disseminated to all IUSM students which was intended to assess students’ feelings of preparedness providing accurate medical information regarding reproductive health topics, including contraception, abortion, ethical and legal implications of pregnancy termination, personal values clarification, and others, as well as interest in integrating those topics into IUSM curriculum. Results: Participants (n=303) were primarily female (61.72%) and White (74.43%) and included students who had completed the Reproductive Block of the Endocrine, Reproductive, Musculoskeletal, and Dermatologic Systems (ERMD) Course and the OB/GYN Clerkship (35.64%), only the ERMD Course (25.08%), or neither (39.27%). Across all levels of undergraduate medical education, the majority (60.80%) of students expected to learn about family planning and contraception in preclinical or clinical years of medical school. Overall, 85.67% of students believed that IUSM should enhance its reproductive and sexual health coverage in the current curriculum, including expanding family planning and contraception didactic training

Impact of cone-beam computed tomography for the identification and management of an oral portal of entry in patients with infective endocarditis. A Delphi study

Infective endocarditis (IE) is a rare and life-threatening disease. Cutaneous portal of entry (POE) is predominant for IE, but an oral POE is the second most frequent source. Thus looking for and treating an oral POE in IE patients is of critical importance in order to reduce the risk of IE relapse or recurrence. The objectives of this study were: 1) To reach a consensus on decision-making following the detection of an oral POE on cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) while they were not identified using the current recommended approach in IE patients (oral examination and orthopantomogram: OPT). 2) To determine whether this consensus differs when regarding the microbiology of IE. Twenty oral or maxillofacial surgeons participated to this Delphi study. The questionnaire was based on five radiological cases (OPT and matching CBCT) with two scenarios according to the objectives of detecting oral POE in an IE patient (curative in case of oral causative microorganism, and preventive if not) and different therapeutic approaches (surgical or conservative treatment, no treatment) for each of them. Consensus was defined as an agreement rate of ?75%. The response rate was?85%. After four rounds, consensus was achieved for all proposals. CBCT changed the decision-making of experts in four cases. In one case, the decision was influenced by the IE microbiology toward a more radical approach in case of oral causative microorganism. In IE patients, CBCT changed markedly the decision-making of experts by eradicating more oral POE than when using OPT. This could reduce the risk of IE relapse and recurrence

Student-Perceived Preparedness in Contraceptive and Abortion Counseling

Project Background: Upwards of 25% of women will seek an abortion by age 45; however, 17% of accredited American medical schools lack any formal abortion-related curriculum, and only 50% offer a clinical elective exposing students to abortion counseling and procedures. The gap between the large number of women seeking this care and the small amount of curriculum designed to prepare students to effectively counsel and provide this care is stark, and it represents an urgent area of study and curriculum re-design. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional survey of students at all levels of medical training to assess student-perceived level of preparedness to provide non-directive counseling on reproductive health topics, such as contraception and abortion. Preparedness was measured on a 6-point preparedness scale (1=very unprepared and 6=very prepared). Mean scores were analyzed as a whole and stratified by training level. We also performed a comparative analysis of the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics (APGO) abortion-related learning objectives (LOs) and the corresponding LOs in our didactic reproductive health course curriculum at our institution. Results: Our preliminary survey population (n=57) included majority female (66.7%) and underclassmen (MS1 = 42.1%, MS2 = 31.6%), and varied in intended specialty. Mean preparedness to provide contraception and abortion counseling score was 2.26±0.55. When stratified to include only students in their clinical years (MS3/4, dual degree), mean preparedness score only slightly increased to 2.97±0.75. Our curriculum analysis revealed that LOs from our didactic reproductive health course covered all 5 APGO LOs on Family Planning, but did not cover 2 of the 4 APGO LOs on Pregnancy Termination. Conclusions: We identified gaps in our institution’s Pregnancy Termination curriculum, as defined by the nationally recognized APGO LOs. We also identified that current didactic and clinical training at our institution inadequately prepares medical students to provide comprehensive reproductive health counseling to women, based on mean self-reported preparedness scores. The next step is to disseminate a more in-depth survey from Feb-Mar 2021 to the same student population to further evaluate student perceptions about preparedness for reproductive health counseling compared to preparedness to counsel about hypertension management to determine whether student preparedness in family planning significantly lags preparedness in other areas of medicine. Our ultimate goal is to positively influence curriculum enhancement in comprehensive reproductive health care at our institution

What We Mean When We Talk About Adherence In Respiratory Medicine

The Respiratory Effectiveness Group (REG; www.effectivenessevaluation.org) supported the Expert Adherence Panel Meeting at which many of the concepts presented in this paper were first discussed. REG also supported the manuscript submission costs. ALD, EvG, and MdB have received funding from the European Community's 7th Framework (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 282593. Teva supported the meeting costs at which the concepts in this paper were discussed by the co-authors and the open access publication fee for this article. The authors had full editorial control over the ideas presented.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Comparative Validation of Realtime Solar Wind Forecasting Using the UCSD Heliospheric Tomography Model

The University of California, San Diego 3D Heliospheric Tomography Model reconstructs the evolution of heliospheric structures, and can make forecasts of solar wind density and velocity up to 72 hours in the future. The latest model version, installed and running in realtime at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center(CCMC), analyzes scintillations of meter wavelength radio point sources recorded by the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory(STELab) together with realtime measurements of solar wind speed and density recorded by the Advanced Composition Explorer(ACE) Solar Wind Electron Proton Alpha Monitor(SWEPAM).The solution is reconstructed using tomographic techniques and a simple kinematic wind model. Since installation, the CCMC has been recording the model forecasts and comparing them with ACE measurements, and with forecasts made using other heliospheric models hosted by the CCMC. We report the preliminary results of this validation work and comparison with alternative models