Extracting a representative loading spectrum from recorded flight data

One of the more important ingredients when computing the life of a structure is the loading environment. This paper describes the development of an aircraft loading spectrum that closely matches the service experience, thus allowing a more accurate assessment of the structural life. The paper outlines the flight loads data collection system, the procedures developed to compile and interpret the service records and the techniques used to define a spectrum suitable for structural life analysis. The areas where the procedures were tailored to suit the special situation of the USAF B-1B bomber are also discussed. the results of the methodology verification, achieved by comparing the generated spectra with the results of strain gage monitoring during service operations, are also presented

Taking opportunities, taking medicines:Antibiotic use in rural Eastern Uganda

The ways in which dimensions of health and healthcare intersect with economics and politics in particular contexts requires close attention. In this article we connect concerns about antibiotic overuse in Uganda to the social milieu created through policies that follow President Museveni's vision for a population who kulembeka, "tap wealth." Ethnographic fieldwork in rural Eastern Uganda illustrates how taking medicines in rural households reflects a wider landscape of everyday imperatives to "tap" opportunities in a context of acute precarity. We argue for a closer connection between medical and economic anthropology to push forward understanding of health, medicines and wellbeing in Africa

City of clones: Facsimiles and governance in Sao Paulo, Brazil

São Paulo is a megacity defined by formal and informal patterns of urbanization. Informally urbanized spaces are not absent of state intent, despite appearances. Grassroots-led social and spatial practices for survival, agency and self-governance contribute to the reproduction of urban political order in surprisingly unoriginal and routinely recognizable ways. This article argues that these unexceptional informal practices can be understood as ‘facsimiles’ of their formal institutional originals. Using the example of cloned cars the article shows that the facsimile and the original are the same in form and function. Facsimiles do not exist outside of political authority, but are a byproduct and a component of it. They are indistinguishable in their bureaucratic deployment, recognition and acceptance as part of social and spatial order. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage via https://doi.org/10.1177/001139211665729

Use of antibiotics to treat humans and animals in Uganda: a cross-sectional survey of households and farmers in rural, urban and peri-urban settings.

BACKGROUND: Use of antibiotics to treat humans and animals is increasing worldwide, but evidence from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is limited. We conducted cross-sectional surveys in households and farms in Uganda to assess patterns of antibiotic use among humans and animals. METHODS: Between May and December 2018, a convenience sample of 100 households in Nagongera (rural), 174 households in Namuwongo (urban) and 115 poultry and piggery farms in Wakiso (peri-urban) were selected and enrolled. Using the 'drug bag' method, participants identified antibiotics they used frequently and the sources of these medicines. Prevalence outcomes were compared between different sites using prevalence ratios (PRs) and chi-squared tests. RESULTS: Nearly all respondents in Nagongera and Namuwongo reported using antibiotics to treat household members, most within the past month (74.7% Nagongera versus 68.8% Namuwongo, P = 0.33). Use of metronidazole was significantly more common in Namuwongo than in Nagongera (73.6% versus 40.0%, PR 0.54, 95% CI: 0.42-0.70, P < 0.001), while the opposite was true for amoxicillin (33.3% versus 58.0%, PR 1.74, 95% CI: 1.33-2.28, P < 0.001).Veterinary use of antibiotics within the past month was much higher in Wakiso than in Nagongera (71.3% versus 15.0%, P < 0.001). At both sites, oxytetracycline hydrochloride was the most frequently used veterinary antibiotic, but it was used more commonly in Wakiso than in Nagongera (76.5% versus 31.0%, PR 0.41, 95% CI: 0.30-0.55, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Antibiotics are used differently across Uganda. Further research is needed to understand why antibiotics are relied upon in different ways in different contexts. Efforts to optimize antibiotic use should be tailored to specific settings

Antibiotic ‘entanglements’:Health, labour and everyday life in an urban informal settlement in Kampala, Uganda

Antibiotics are a routine part of everyday life in many contexts, contributing to the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Our ethnographic research documents the ways that antibiotics have become a key part of everyday life for precariously employed urban day-wage workers living in a large informal settlement in Kampala, Uganda. We found that for many people, their daily work and ongoing health was entangled with antibiotic use; that is, people showed us how their antibiotic use cannot be separated from the realities of living in a politically, economically and environmentally degraded ‘informal’ landscape. Thinking through entanglement as itself a politics, we show how limited political power, inability to demand change, and inequitable access to good health care, are associated with high rates of infection and disease, precarious work, and polluted environments. Antibiotics, we argue, have become a way to negotiate the inequalities written into these informal urban landscapes; their use entangled with ongoing relations with labour, environment and bodily suffering. Through this approach, we show how antimicrobials are used in society, with an attention to how vulnerabilities, risks, and forms of abandonment and exclusion shape their everyday use. Antibiotic use is entangled with everyday life in informal settlements, and the politics that produce ‘informality’. In Kampala today, the entanglement of antibiotics with life in informal settlements reveals how forms of urban segregation, life in ‘slums’ and their everyday acceptance, shape the pathways and uses of antimicrobials

The effect of a high-egg diet on cardiovascular risk factors in people with type 2 diabetes: the Diabetes and Egg (DIABEGG) study-a 3-mo randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Previously published research that examined the effects of high egg consumption in people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) produced conflicting results leading to recommendations to limit egg intake. However, people with T2D may benefit from egg consumption because eggs are a nutritious and convenient way of improving protein and micronutrient contents of the diet, which have importance for satiety and weight management. OBJECTIVE: In this randomized controlled study, we aimed to determine whether a high-egg diet (2 eggs/d for 6 d/wk) compared with a low-egg diet (<2 eggs/wk) affected circulating lipid profiles, in particular high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, in overweight or obese people with prediabetes or T2D. DESIGN: A total of 140 participants were randomly assigned to one of the 2 diets as part of a 3-mo weight maintenance study. Participants attended the clinic monthly and were instructed on the specific types of foods and quantities to be consumed. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in the change in HDL cholesterol from screening to 3 mo between groups; the mean difference (95% CI) between high- and low-egg groups was +0.02 mmol/L (-0.03, 0.08 mmol/L; P = 0.38). No between-group differences were shown for total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, or glycemic control. Both groups were matched for protein intake, but the high-egg group reported less hunger and greater satiety postbreakfast. Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) and monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) intakes significantly increased from baseline in both groups. CONCLUSIONS: High egg consumption did not have an adverse effect on the lipid profile of people with T2D in the context of increased MUFA and PUFA consumption. This study suggests that a high-egg diet can be included safely as part of the dietary management of T2D, and it may provide greater satiety. This trial was registered at the Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (http://www.anzctr.org.au/) as ACTRN12612001266853

Influence of carbon dioxide on growth and antibiotic susceptibility of coagulase-negative staphylococci cultured in human peritoneal dialysate

Used peritoneal dialysis fluid was collected from patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, and its pH and composition were assessed after incubation in either air or air with 5% CO2. Precipitation of calcium, magnesium, phosphate, and proteins occurred in the dialysis fluid incubated in air at 37 degrees C and was associated with a mean pH increase of 1.23 U. Incubation of dialysis fluid in air with 5% CO2 prevented precipitation and maintained pCO2 and pH levels at those found physiologically. Coagulase-negative staphylococcal strains isolated from patients with peritonitis tended to grow less well in dialysis fluid incubated in air than in dialysis fluid incubated in the carbon dioxide-enriched atmosphere. MICs of cefuroxime, ciprofloxacin, and vancomycin for seven strains of coagulase-negative staphylococci in dialysis fluid were markedly affected by atmosphere type (16 of 21 MICs). Of these 16 atmosphere-dependent MICs, 14 were at least fourfold higher in air than in air with 5% CO2

Pharmaceuticalised livelihoods: antibiotics and the rise of 'Quick Farming' in peri-urban Uganda

The 'livestock revolution' has seen the lives and livelihoods of peri-urban peoples increasingly intertwine with pigs and poultry across Africa in response to a rising demand for meat protein. This 'revolution' heralds the potential to address both poverty and nutritional needs. However, the intensification of farming has sparked concern, including for antibiotic misuse and its consequences for antimicrobial resistance (AMR). These changes reflect a micro-biopolitical conundrum where the agendas of microbes, farmers, publics, authorities and transnational agencies are in tension. To understand this requires close attention to the practices, principles and potentials held between these actors. Ethnographic research took place in a peri-urban district, Wakiso, in Uganda between May 2018 and March 2021. This included a medicine survey at 115 small- and medium-scale pig and poultry farms, 18 weeks of participant observation at six farms, 34 in-depth interviews with farmers and others in the local livestock sector, four group discussions with 38 farmers and 7 veterinary officers, and analysis of archival, media and policy documents. Wide-scale adoption of quick farming was found, an entrepreneurial phenomenon that sees Ugandans raising 'exotic' livestock with imported methods and measures for production, including antibiotics for immediate therapy, prevention of infections and to promote production and protection of livelihoods. This assemblage - a promissory assemblage of the peri-urban - reinforced precarity against which antibiotics formed a potential layer of protection. The paper argues that to address antibiotic use as a driver of AMR is to address precarity as a driver of antibiotic use. Reduced reliance on antibiotics required a level of biosecurity and economies of scale in purchasing insurance that appeared affordable only by larger-scale commercial producers. This study illustrates the risks - to finances, development and health - of expanding an entrepreneurial model of protein production in populations vulnerable to climate, infection and market dynamics