Community-based research on the environmental and human health impacts of a laterite nickel mine and smelter in Sorowako, Indonesia

Community-based research between Memorial University of Newfoundland and the Indigenous Sorowako Association (KW AS) assessed the environmental and potential human health impacts of an operational three-decades old laterite nickel mine and smelter in Sorowako, Indonesia. An active air sampler and health questionnaire were used in this study to assess seasonal and diurnal patterns of air quality and prevalent health conditions. Air was sampled with the use of a high volume air sampler to determine average total suspended particulates (TSP) and airborne metal concentrations. Twelve-hour air samples were collected over approximately five days and five nights during both the dry and rainy seasons in six communities. The six communities were located at different distances and directions from the nickel mines and smelter. Air samples were also collected at a reference site located further away from the smelter during the rainy season only. The composition of various metals was analysed by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Twenty-four hour dust fall accumulation in approximately 20 households in the seven communities previously mentioned, as well as in 20 homes located on Lake Matano were recorded with an area standardized Kim wipe swipe. Communities closer to and downwind from the smelter had significantly higher mean TSP values in the day of the dry season than communities further away from the smelter. Average concentrations of nickel, cobalt and chromium were higher in the day than in the night in the dry season in communities closer to and downwind from the smelter. There was only a slight significant regression of airborne nickel concentration with increasing distance from the smelter in the day of the dry season (Linear r²= 0.276, p=0.006, Linear r²= 0.066, p=0.207) but not in the night of the dry season. Dust fall accumulation did not vary significantly among the communities, except in Kampung Baru, a site also exposed to sawmill dust. A confidential health questionnaire administered by community volunteers assessed potential links between prevalent health conditions and mining and smelting in the area. Twenty households were selected in a convenience sampling in the eight communities where dust fall accumulation was also studied. Adult and child versions of the questionnaire focused on respiratory and skin health conditions but also surveyed prevalence of other illnesses, and health determinants. Questionnaire responses showed that some health conditions typical of exposure to airborne particulates and nickel, such as asthma, rhinitis, and skin tumours, were more prevalent in areas closer to and downwind from nickel mining and smelting compared to Malili, a community located further away from the mines and smelter. Several positive correlations between ambient air pollution levels, dust fall accumulation in households, and health conditions typically found in nickel industrial areas suggested a potential human health impact of mining and smelting. The community-based investigation provided a foundation for the community to continually monitor, assess, and address environmental and health concerns

The Internet and Young People with Additional Support Needs (ASN):Risk and Safety.

The aim of this study was to investigate the understanding of online risks by young people with Additional Support Needs and this group’s ability to manage these risks. Six focus groups with 36 young people (13–18) were run in local schools. Discussions were recorded, transcribed and analysed using Framework Analysis. Two themes were identified ‘Identity and Connectedness’ and ‘Issues relating to Risk’. The theme ‘Issues relating to Risk’ is presented in the current article. Results showed that young people with ASN are aware of a range of risks online and have developed some strategies to manage these. Issues including supervision and the diverse range of ability within the population are also shown to present barriers to ensuring online safety. The results were discussed in light of literature relating to online risk, safety and potential psychological impact indicating that the internet may also provide important opportunities for young people with ASN to improve psychological well-being

Airy kernel with two sets of parameters in directed percolation and random matrix theory

We introduce a generalization of the extended Airy kernel with two sets of real parameters. We show that this kernel arises in the edge scaling limit of correlation kernels of determinantal processes related to a directed percolation model and to an ensemble of random matrices.Comment: figures improved; references and comments adde

Optimality regions and fluctuations for Bernoulli last passage models

We study the sequence alignment problem and its independent version,the discrete Hammersley process with an exploration penalty. We obtain rigorous upper bounds for the number of optimality regions in both models near the soft edge.At zero penalty the independent model becomes an exactly solvable model and we identify cases for which the law of the last passage time converges to a Tracy-Widom law

Forgotten Plotlanders: Learning from the survival of lost informal housing in the UK.

Colin Ward’s discourses on the arcadian landscape of ‘plotlander’ housing are unique documentations of the anarchistic birth, life, and death of the last informal housing communities in the UK. Today the forgotten history of ‘plotlander’ housing documented by Ward can be re-read in the context of both the apparently never-ending ‘housing crisis’ in the UK, and the increasing awareness of the potential value of learning from comparable informal housing from the Global South. This papers observations of a previously unknown and forgotten plotlander site offers a chance to begin a new conversation regarding the positive potential of informal and alternative housing models in the UK and wider Westernised world

Evaluating stance-annotated sentences from political blogs regarding the Brexit:a quantitative analysis

This paper offers a formally driven quantitative analysis of stance-annotated sentences in the Brexit Blog Corpus (BBC). Our goal is to identify features that determine the formal profiles of six stance categories (contrariety, hypotheticality, necessity, prediction, source of knowledge and uncertainty) in a subset of the BBC. The study has two parts: firstly, it examines a large number of formal linguistic features, such as punctuation, words and grammatical categories that occur in the sentences in order to describe the specific characteristics of each category, and secondly, it compares characteristics in the entire data set in order to determine stance similarities in the data set. We show that among the six stance categories in the corpus, contrariety and necessity are the most discriminative ones, with the former using longer sentences, more conjunctions, more repetitions and shorter forms than the sentences expressing other stances. necessity has longer lexical forms but shorter sentences, which are syntactically more complex. We show that stance in our data set is expressed in sentences with around 21 words per sentence. The sentences consist mainly of alphabetical characters forming a varied vocabulary without special forms, such as digits or special characters

Pooled analysis of WHO Surgical Safety Checklist use and mortality after emergency laparotomy

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist has fostered safe practice for 10 years, yet its place in emergency surgery has not been assessed on a global scale. The aim of this study was to evaluate reported checklist use in emergency settings and examine the relationship with perioperative mortality in patients who had emergency laparotomy. Methods In two multinational cohort studies, adults undergoing emergency laparotomy were compared with those having elective gastrointestinal surgery. Relationships between reported checklist use and mortality were determined using multivariable logistic regression and bootstrapped simulation. Results Of 12 296 patients included from 76 countries, 4843 underwent emergency laparotomy. After adjusting for patient and disease factors, checklist use before emergency laparotomy was more common in countries with a high Human Development Index (HDI) (2455 of 2741, 89.6 per cent) compared with that in countries with a middle (753 of 1242, 60.6 per cent; odds ratio (OR) 0.17, 95 per cent c.i. 0.14 to 0.21, P <0001) or low (363 of 860, 422 per cent; OR 008, 007 to 010, P <0.001) HDI. Checklist use was less common in elective surgery than for emergency laparotomy in high-HDI countries (risk difference -94 (95 per cent c.i. -11.9 to -6.9) per cent; P <0001), but the relationship was reversed in low-HDI countries (+121 (+7.0 to +173) per cent; P <0001). In multivariable models, checklist use was associated with a lower 30-day perioperative mortality (OR 0.60, 0.50 to 073; P <0.001). The greatest absolute benefit was seen for emergency surgery in low- and middle-HDI countries. Conclusion Checklist use in emergency laparotomy was associated with a significantly lower perioperative mortality rate. Checklist use in low-HDI countries was half that in high-HDI countries.Peer reviewe

Ultra-rare genetic variation in common epilepsies: a case-control sequencing study

BACKGROUND:Despite progress in understanding the genetics of rare epilepsies, the more common epilepsies have proven less amenable to traditional gene-discovery analyses. We aimed to assess the contribution of ultra-rare genetic variation to common epilepsies. METHODS:We did a case-control sequencing study with exome sequence data from unrelated individuals clinically evaluated for one of the two most common epilepsy syndromes: familial genetic generalised epilepsy, or familial or sporadic non-acquired focal epilepsy. Individuals of any age were recruited between Nov 26, 2007, and Aug 2, 2013, through the multicentre Epilepsy Phenome/Genome Project and Epi4K collaborations, and samples were sequenced at the Institute for Genomic Medicine (New York, USA) between Feb 6, 2013, and Aug 18, 2015. To identify epilepsy risk signals, we tested all protein-coding genes for an excess of ultra-rare genetic variation among the cases, compared with control samples with no known epilepsy or epilepsy comorbidity sequenced through unrelated studies. FINDINGS:We separately compared the sequence data from 640 individuals with familial genetic generalised epilepsy and 525 individuals with familial non-acquired focal epilepsy to the same group of 3877 controls, and found significantly higher rates of ultra-rare deleterious variation in genes established as causative for dominant epilepsy disorders (familial genetic generalised epilepsy: odd ratio [OR] 2·3, 95% CI 1·7-3·2, p=9·1 × 10-8; familial non-acquired focal epilepsy 3·6, 2·7-4·9, p=1·1 × 10-17). Comparison of an additional cohort of 662 individuals with sporadic non-acquired focal epilepsy to controls did not identify study-wide significant signals. For the individuals with familial non-acquired focal epilepsy, we found that five known epilepsy genes ranked as the top five genes enriched for ultra-rare deleterious variation. After accounting for the control carrier rate, we estimate that these five genes contribute to the risk of epilepsy in approximately 8% of individuals with familial non-acquired focal epilepsy. Our analyses showed that no individual gene was significantly associated with familial genetic generalised epilepsy; however, known epilepsy genes had lower p values relative to the rest of the protein-coding genes (p=5·8 × 10-8) that were lower than expected from a random sampling of genes. INTERPRETATION:We identified excess ultra-rare variation in known epilepsy genes, which establishes a clear connection between the genetics of common and rare, severe epilepsies, and shows that the variants responsible for epilepsy risk are exceptionally rare in the general population. Our results suggest that the emerging paradigm of targeting of treatments to the genetic cause in rare devastating epilepsies might also extend to a proportion of common epilepsies. These findings might allow clinicians to broadly explain the cause of these syndromes to patients, and lay the foundation for possible precision treatments in the future. FUNDING:National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and Epilepsy Research UK