Recent advances in instrumental techniques for heavy metal quantification.

Heavy metals (HMs) are ubiquitous; they are found in soil, water, air, and all biological matrices. The toxicity, bioaccumulation potential, and deleterious effects of most of these metals on humans and the environment have been widely documented. Consequently, the detection and quantification of HMs in various environmental samples have become a pressing issue. The analysis of the concentrations of HMs is a vital component of environmental monitoring; hence, the selection of the most suitable analytical technique for their determination has become a topic of great interest in food, environment, and human health safety. Analytical techniques for the quantification of these metals have evolved. Presently, a broad range of HM analytical techniques are available with each having its outstanding merits as well as limitations. Most analytical scientists, therefore, adopt complementation of more than one method, with the choice influenced by the specific metal of interest, desired limits of detection and quantification, nature of the interference, level of sensitivity, and precision among others. Sequel to the above, this work comprehensively reviews the most recent advances in instrumental techniques for the determination of HMs. It gives a general overview of the concept of HMs, their sources, and why their accurate quantification is pertinent. It highlights various conventional and more advanced techniques for HM determination, and as one of its kind, it also gives special attention to the specific merits and demerits of the analytical techniques. Finally, it presents the most recent studies in this regard.

[Induced abortion between 14 and 16th: Clinical context and complications]. / Étude prospective sur 46 patientes de la pratique de l'IVG chirurgicale entre 14 et 16 SA : parcours de soins et complications.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to characterize the women's health care pathway and to evaluate the rate of complications during a surgical abortion according to the technique of dilatation and evacuation between 14 and 16 SA. METHOD: Single-center prospective study at the Armand Trousseau Hospital with inclusion of women who had an abortion between 14 and 16 GA in the Obstetrics & Gynecology Department of the Armand Trousseau Hospital between March 2 and October 31, 2022. RESULTS: Forty-six women underwent an abortion during this 8-month period. The average gestational age at which the abortions were performed was 15 weeks' gestation with an median delay of 14.0 days between the date of discovery of the pregnancy and the date of the abortion with more than half of the women (65.2 %, N=30) having consulted for the first time for an abortion request before 14 weeks' gestation. Of these women, 22 (48.9%) had to consult several hospitals before being treated. One woman (2.2% 95% CI [0.0-6.4]) had a haemorrhage defined by bleeding more than 500ml. Cervical suture for cervical tear was performed in four women (8.7% 95% CI [0.0-16.8]). There were no complications such as perforation, postoperative infection or surgical revision. No women were transfused. CONCLUSION: The introduction in our center of surgical abortion using the dilatation and evacuation technique performed between 14 and 16 weeks' gestation wasn't accompanied by significant morbidity. The women's pathway before the procedure probably contributed to the later performance of the abortion.

A review of wheat starch analyses: Methods, techniques, structure and function.

Wheat starch has received much attention as an important source of dietary energy for humans, an interesting carbohydrate and a polymeric material. The understanding of the structure and function of wheat starch has always been accompanied by newer technological tools. On the one hand, the general knowledge of wheat starch is constantly being enriched. On the other hand, an increasing number of studies are trying to add new insights to what is already known from two frontier perspectives, namely, wheat starch supramolecular structures and wheat starch fine structures (CLDs). This review describes the structure and function of wheat starch from the perspective of wheat starch analysis techniques (instruments).

An etude for post-pandemic practice: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practice methods and instrumental technique.

This paper considers how the pandemic-related concert-free time affected musicians' practice, specifically in relation to technique. A semi-structured interview was carried out on 22 musicians based in Switzerland (11 males, 11 females; 7 students, 15 non-students; 11 with school-aged children, 11 without school-aged children; 16 with teaching duties and 6 non-teachers). The amount of practice during the pandemic-related concert-free time was reported as different to usual by 91% and usual for only 9% of participants (p = 0.002). Forty-one percent of participants reported reduced, and 41% "fluctuating" amounts of practice. The proportion of practice time spent on technique was reported by 55% of participants to have increased and by only 9% to have decreased (p = 0.019). Of those who reported an increase in technique practice, 75% agreed this had a positive impact on technique, and only 8% disagreed (p = 0.037). Moreover, 58% considered this work to have changed their current and future practice. Participants were statistically more likely to report "never" watching online tutorials than "often" (p = 0.014), but, of those that did watch such material, 75% agreed that it had a positive impact upon their practice. Most participants created digital content during this period; only 5% produced no such material. An increased use of digital tools was reported by 55% of participants, 92% of whom described this as having a positive effect upon practice and only 8% were unsure (p = 0.022). However, in the unstructured discussion, the use of digital tools appears to be associated with mixed outcomes. Men reported significantly more frequent use of digital tools (91% vs. 45% describing this use as often, p = 0.038) and spent a larger proportion of time on technique relative to their pre-pandemic habits than women (p = 0.065); moreover, a trend indicated that more women than men created digital content in the form of tutorials (p = 0.095). The exceptional situation musicians experienced during the pandemic, which introduced new aspects to musical instrument practice, and accelerated changes already underway, could lead to future work that improves practice under "normal" conditions, and exposes discrepancies between certain demographic groups.

Instrumental Technique, Expressivity, and Communication. A Qualitative Study on Learning Music in Individual and Collective Settings.

In this paper, we present a qualitative study comparing individual and collective music pedagogies from the point of view of the learner. In doing so, we discuss how the theoretical tools of embodied cognitive science (ECS) can provide adequate resources to capture the main properties of both contexts. We begin by outlining the core principles of ECS, describing how it emerged in response to the information-processing approach to mind, which dominated the cognitive sciences for the latter half of the 20th century. We then consider the orientation offered by ECS and its relevance for music education. We do this by identifying overlapping principles between three tenets of ECS, and three aspects of pedagogical practice. This results in the categories of "instrumental technique," "expressivity," and "communication," which we adopted to examine and categorize the data emerging from our study. In conclusion, we consider the results of our study in light of ECS, discussing what implications can emerge for concrete pedagogical practices in both individual and collective settings.