"Valorar el trabajo de farmworkers": A thematic analysis of input from farmworkers, advocates, and students in a community documentary project about the future of farm work.

Farm work is one of the nation's most hazardous occupations, and migrant and seasonal farmworkers face significant health inequities. Awareness and understanding of the needs of this population are crucial in assuring they receive appropriate support. Documentary programs can raise awareness of community member views to better inform services and advocacy efforts. Visions for the future of farm work were collected from farmworkers and persons supporting them through a community-based, participatory documentary project led by Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) from 2021 to 2022. Seventy-nine submissions from participants in North and South Carolina, including text responses and file uploads, were collected and thematically analyzed. Five themes were identified: (1) employment benefits and conditions, (2) living conditions, (3) health access and quality, (4) dignity and visibility of farm work, and (5) policy change for a better future. The visions for the future of farm work expressed by these agricultural workers, advocates, and students raise important implications for agricultural communities, public health practitioners, researchers, funders, and policymakers. Application of these findings in the development and delivery of public health services for farmworkers has the potential to positively impact the morbidity and mortality rates of this at-risk population.

Changes in wintertime visibility across China over 2013-2019 and the drivers: A comprehensive assessment using machine learning method.

Effective emission reduction measures have largely lowered the particulate concentration in China, but low-visibility events still occur frequently, greatly affecting people's daily life, travel, and health. In the context of carbon neutrality strategy and climate change, the mechanisms governing visibility changes may be undergoing a transformation. To address this critical issue, we have undertaken a comprehensive assessment by employing a novel approach that combines site observations, model-derived datasets, and machine learning techniques. Our analysis of the dataset shows varying degrees of improvement in wintertime visibility in regions such as North China, South China, and the Fenwei Plain over 2013-2019, but an unexpected deterioration (approximately 1 km yr-1) in central and southern China (CSC). We further elucidate key roles of PM2.5 reduction in these regions with visibility improvement; whereas the unsatisfactory visibility trend in CSC was caused by combined effect of relative humidity (RH) increase (47 %), aerosol hygroscopicity (κ) enhancement (9 %), and boundary layer (BLH) reduction (8 %), which greatly overwhelms the effect of PM2.5 reduction recently. Moreover, the study reveals a growing influence of RH on the wintertime visibility, reaching 40 % ± 24 % to the total contribution in 2019, while that of PM2.5 declined to 18 % ± 19 % and is expected to further diminish with emission reduction. Note those often-neglected factors-temperature, wind speed, BLH, and κ, account for over 40 % of the total contribution. Though the importance of aerosol hygroscopic growth to visibility was found decreasing recently, it retains non-negligible impacts on driving inter-annual visibility trends. This study yields innovative insights for air pollution control, underscoring the imperative of region-specific strategies to mitigate low-visibility events.

Public environmental attention, media coverage, and corporate green innovation: evidence from heavily polluting industries in China.

Against the background of building a multi-environmental co-governance system, it is of great importance to systematically explore how public environmental attention (PEA) affects corporate green innovation (GI). Based on the panel data of Chinese A-share listed enterprises of heavily polluting industries from 2013 to 2020, this paper empirically explores the role of PEA in GI and examines the moderating impacts of media visibility and media favorability. The results indicate that the higher degree of public environmental attention, the more corporate green innovation. After adopting alternative explained variable, instrumental variable analysis and other methods, this conclusion still remains robust. This study also finds that both media visibility (MV) and media favorability (MF) generate significantly positive moderating impacts on the relationship between PEA and GI. Moreover, threshold model tests show that with the increase of MV, the promoting effect of PEA on GI is significantly enhanced, while there exists no threshold for MF. Furthermore, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that PEA mainly prompts symbolic green innovation of enterprises, and the PEA-GI relationship is more obvious in non-state-owned companies and regions with higher marketization process.

Performance Evaluation of an IoT Sensor Node for Health Monitoring of Artwork and Ancient Wooden Structures.

In this paper, an IoT sensor node, based on smart Bluetooth low energy (BLE), for the health monitoring of artworks and large wooden structures is presented. The measurements from sensors on board the node are collected in real-time and sent to a remote gateway. The sensor node allows for the monitoring of environmental parameters, in particular, temperature and humidity, with accurate and robust integrated sensors. The developed node also embeds an accelerometer, which also allows other mechanical quantities (such as tilt) to be derived. This feature can be exploited to perform structural monitoring, exploiting the processing of data history to detect permanent displacements or deformations. The node is triggered by acceleration transients; therefore, it can also generate alarms related to shocks. This feature is crucial, for instance, in the case of transportation. The developed device is low-cost and has very good performance in terms of power consumption and compactness. A reliability assessment showed excellent durability, and experimental tests proved very satisfactory robustness against working condition variations. The presented results confirm that the developed device allows for the realization of pervasive monitoring systems, in the context of the IoT paradigm, with sensor nodes devoted to the monitoring of each artwork present in a museum or in a church.

Food justice and land justice in São Paulo: urban subsistence farming on the margins of the city.

By relying on the case of São Paulo, this article seeks to develop a critical look at urban farming and its potential for contributing to food justice. While this activity constitutes a means of subsistence for urban communities, it is also underlain by principles relating to land ownership, which tend to divert attention from its primary role in food systems. There is an important need first to fight against land inequalities and bad housing in São Paulo, before considering urban farming as a lever for food justice. For this study, I made use of qualitative surveys carried out between 2018 and 2022 in São Paulo, during which I conducted 118 interviews with farmers, consumers, shopkeepers, associations and politico-administrative institutions. My results show at first a socio-economic dichotomy between well-off city dwellers who use community gardens and farmers who practise urban farming on the margins of the city. I maintain that the issue of food justice affects the latter and is filtered through a policy of institutional action and visibility. In conclusion, I argue that urban farming is a potential lever for food justice which is still highly constrained by inequalities and land speculation in São Paulo.

Environmental Pollution Liability Insurance of Health Risk and Corporate Environmental Performance: Evidence From China.

Environmental pollution liability insurance (EPLI) is a type of insurance purchased by an enterprise to compensate the loss of the victims in the event of an environmental pollution incident. Although EPLI can realize the post-treatment of environmental pollution to a certain extent, there is still less understanding of whether EPLI can improve the environmental performance of enterprises. This study takes A-share listed companies in heavily polluting industries as the research object, determines the treatment group samples according to the Insurance coverage list published by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2014 and 2015, and then constructs the empirical test model. In order to ensure that there is no sample selection bias, the PSM method is used to preprocess the samples in this study to ensure the robustness of the conclusions. The empirical tests show that EPLI can significantly improve corporate environmental performance. Further analysis showed that higher public visibility is conducive to the positive environmental effects of EPLI. Compared with state-owned enterprises, non-state-owned enterprises have more significant implementation effects after introducing EPLI. On further examination, the result indicates that environmental pollution liability insurance can improve environmental performance by alleviating corporate financing constraints. The findings of this paper enrich the theory of the economic impact of environmental pollution liability insurance, which has some meaningful theoretical guidance for enterprises and policy makers.

Assessing the Capability of Government Information Intervention and Socioeconomic Factors of Information Sharing during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Country Study Using Big Data Analytics.

(1) Background: This study introduces a novel computational approach to examine government capabilities in information intervention for risk management, influential agents in a global information network, and the socioeconomic factors of information-sharing behaviors of the public across regions during the COVID-19 pandemic. (2) Methods: Citation network analysis was employed to gauge the online visibility of governmental health institutions across regions. A bipartite exponential random graph modeling (ERGM) procedure was conducted to measure network dynamics. (3) Results: COVID-19 response agencies in Europe had the highest web impact, whereas health agencies in North America had the lowest. Various stakeholders, such as businesses, non-profit organizations, governments, and educational institutions played a key role in sharing the COVID-19 response by agencies' information given on their websites. Income inequality and GDP per capita were associated with the high online visibility of governmental health agencies. Other factors, such as population size, an aging population, death rate, and case percentage, did not contribute to the agencies' online visibility, suggesting that demographic characteristics and health status are not predictors of sharing government resources. (4) Conclusions: A combination of citation network analysis and ERGM helps reveal information flow dynamics and understand the socioeconomic consequences of sharing the government's COVID-19 information during the pandemic.

Analytic modeling and risk assessment of aerial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus through vaping expirations in shared micro-environments.

It is well known that airborne transmission of COVID-19 in indoor spaces occurs through various respiratory activities: breathing, vocalizing, coughing, and sneezing. However, there is a complete lack of knowledge of its possible transmission through exhalations of e-cigarette aerosol (ECA), which is also a respiratory activity. E-cigarettes have become widely popular among smokers seeking a much safer way of nicotine consumption than smoking. Due to restrictive lockdown measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, many smokers and vapers (e-cigarette users) were confined to shared indoor spaces, making it necessary to assess the risk of SARS-CoV-2 virus aerial transmission through their exhalations. We summarize inferred knowledge of respiratory particles emission and transport through ECA, as well as a theoretical framework for explaining the visibility of exhaled ECA, which has safety implications and is absent in other respiratory activities (apart from smoking). We also summarize and briefly discuss the effects of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, vaccination rates, and environmental factors that may influence the spread of COVID-19. To estimate the risk of SARS-CoV-2 virus aerial transmission associated with vaping exhalations, we adapt a theoretical risk model that has been used to analyze the risks associated with other respiratory activities in shared indoor spaces. We consider home and restaurant scenarios, with natural and mechanical ventilation, with occupants wearing and not wearing face masks. We consider as "control case" or baseline risk scenario an indoor space (home and restaurant) where respiratory droplets and droplet nuclei are uniformly distributed and aerial contagion risk might originate exclusively from occupants exclusively rest breathing, assuming this to be the only (unavoidable) respiratory activity they all carry on. If an infected occupant uses an e-cigarette in a home or restaurant scenarios, bystanders not wearing face masks exposed to the resulting ECA expirations face a [Formula: see text] increase of risk of contagion with respect the control case. This relative added risk with respect to the control case becomes [Formula: see text] for high-intensity vaping, [Formula: see text], and over [Formula: see text] for speaking for various periods or coughing (all without vaping). Infectious emissions are significantly modified by mechanical ventilation, face mask usage, vaccination, and environmental factors, but given the lack of empiric evidence, we assume as a working hypothesis that all basic parameters of respiratory activities are equally (or roughly equally) affected by these factors. Hence, the relative risk percentages with respect to the control state should remain roughly the same under a wide range of varying conditions. By avoiding direct exposure to the visible exhaled vaping jet, wearers of commonly used face masks are well protected from respiratory droplets and droplet nuclei directly emitted by mask-less vapers. Compared to the control case of an already existing (unavoidable) risk from continuous breathing, vaping emissions in shared indoor spaces pose just a negligible additional risk of COVID-19 contagion. We consider that it is not necessary to take additional preventive measures beyond those already prescribed (1.5 m separation and wearing face masks) in order to protect bystanders from this contagion.

The visibility of breastfeeding as a sexual and reproductive health right: a review of the relevant literature.

BACKGROUND: Governments must protect and apply maximum feasible resourcing to the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding in order to meet their international legal obligations with respect to the human rights of women and children. However, governments across the world have consistently failed in these duties. Breastfeeding has been notably absent from mainstream feminist advocacy on sexual and reproductive health rights ('SRH rights'). Why is there this lack of focus on breastfeeding in feminist advocacy in this area? This review seeks to identify the extent to which the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding is visible within the SRH rights and the gender responsive budgeting literature. METHOD: A cross-disciplinary single scoping literature review of online and other databases was conducted to yield final samples of eighty-seven publications from the SRH rights literature and forty-four publications from the gender responsive budgeting literature. These publications were searched for references to breastfeeding. RESULTS: Only 21% of the sexual and reproductive health rights literature and just one gender responsive budgeting publication sampled referenced the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding. Where breastfeeding was mentioned in the publications reviewed it was, in general, brief and on the periphery of discussion. CONCLUSIONS: Reviews of the SRH rights literature and the gender budgeting literature both reveal an overwhelming absence of meaningful analysis on breastfeeding. The lack of attention to breastfeeding in the gender advocacy space represents a lost opportunity to advocate for the alleviation of the economic and social constraints imposed on breastfeeding women and caregivers.

Assessment of time irreversibility in a time series using visibility graphs.

In this paper, we studied the time-domain irreversibility of time series, which is a fundamental property of systems in a nonequilibrium state. We analyzed a subgroup of the databases provided by University of Rochester, namely from the THEW Project. Our data consists of LQTS (Long QT Syndrome) patients and healthy persons. LQTS may be associated with an increased risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD), which is still a big clinical problem. ECG-based artificial intelligence methods can identify sudden cardiac death with a high accuracy. It follows that heart rate variability contains information about the possibility of SCD, which may be extracted, provided that appropriate methods are developed for this purpose. Our aim was to assess the complexity of both groups using visibility graph (VG) methods. Multivariate analysis of connection patterns of graphs built from time series was performed using multiplex visibility graph methods. For univariate time series, time irreversibility of the ECG interval QT of patients with LQTS was lower than for the healthy. However, we did not observe statistically significant difference in the comparison of RR intervals time series of the two groups studied. The connection patterns retrieved from multiplex VGs have more similarity with each other in the case of LQTS patients. This observation may be used to develop better methods for SCD risk stratification.

Crash Diagnosis and Price Rebound Prediction in NYSE Composite Index Based on Visibility Graph and Time-Evolving Stock Correlation Network.

This study proposes a framework to diagnose stock market crashes and predict the subsequent price rebounds. Based on the observation of anomalous changes in stock correlation networks during market crashes, we extend the log-periodic power-law model with a metric that is proposed to measure network anomalies. To calculate this metric, we design a prediction-guided anomaly detection algorithm based on the extreme value theory. Finally, we proposed a hybrid indicator to predict price rebounds of the stock index by combining the network anomaly metric and the visibility graph-based log-periodic power-law model. Experiments are conducted based on the New York Stock Exchange Composite Index from 4 January 1991 to 7 May 2021. It is shown that our proposed method outperforms the benchmark log-periodic power-law model on detecting the 12 major crashes and predicting the subsequent price rebounds by reducing the false alarm rate. This study sheds light on combining stock network analysis and financial time series modeling and highlights that anomalous changes of a stock network can be important criteria for detecting crashes and predicting recoveries of the stock market.

Imunização e desigualdade de gênero: a construção da imagem da mulher nos primeiros atos de vacinação contra a covid-19 / Immunization and gender inequality: the construction of the image of women in the first vaccination acts against covid-19 / Inmunización y desigualdad de género: la construcción de la imagen de la mujer en los primeros actos de vacunación contra covid-19

O estudo tem por objetivo analisar as valências simbólicas identificadas em notícias publicadas no Portal G1 de todos os estados brasileiros sobre os primeiros atos de vacinação contra a covid-19, relacionando-os, em particular, às questões de raça e gênero com foco nas mulheres e sua posição na sociedade. Nessa perspectiva busca-se responder, sob a ancoragem da semiótica de Algirdas Julien Greimas, como a mulher foi representada em cada estado. Os resultados retratam as mulheres como sujeito social 'frágil' e 'dependente' do Estado como 'Pai-Provedor' ao lado do uso de mulheres negras representativas de 'minorias' que remetem a uma ideia de um Brasil diverso e miscigenado. As conclusões evidenciam que a visibilidade conferida à mulher nas campanhas de vacinação disputou espaço com representações de caráter sexista e racista.

The study aims to analyze the symbolic valences identified in news published on the G1 Portal from all Brazilian states about the first acts of vaccination against covid-19, relating them to issues of race and gender with a focus on women and their position in society. From this perspective, we seek to answer, under the anchorage of Algirdas Julien Greimas' semiotics, how women were represented in each state. The results portray women as a 'fragile' and 'dependent' social subject, from the State as a 'Father-Provider', alongside the use of black women representing 'minorities' that refer to an idea of a diverse and miscegenated Brazil. The conclusions show that the visibility given to women in vaccination campaigns disputed space with sexist and racist representations.

El estudio tiene como objetivo analizar las valencias simbólicas identificadas en las noticias publicadas en el Portal G1 de todos los estados brasileños sobre los primeros actos de vacunación contra el covid-19, relacionándolos, en particular, con cuestiones de raza y género, con un enfoque en las mujeres y su posición en la sociedad. Desde esta perspectiva, buscamos responder, bajo el anclaje de la semiótica de Algirdas Julien Greimas, cómo estaban representadas las mujeres en cada estado. Los resultados retratan a la mujer como sujeto social 'frágil' y 'dependiente' del Estado como 'Padre-Proveedor' junto con el uso de mujeres negras representativas de 'minorias' que remiten a una idea de un Brasil diverso y mestizo. Las conclusiones muestran que la visibilidad dada a las mujeres en las campañas de vacunación disputaba espacio con representaciones sexistas y racistas.

Laboratory medicine in the COVID-19 era: six lessons for the future.

The lockdown due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a major healthcare challenge, is a worldwide threat to public health, social stability, and economic development. The pandemic has affected all aspects of society, dramatically changing our day-to-day lives and habits. It has also changed clinical practice, including practices of clinical laboratories. After one year, it is time to rethink what has happened, and is still happening, in order to learn lessons for the future of laboratory medicine and its professionals. While examining this issue, I was inspired by Italo Calvino's famous work, "Six memos for the next millennium".But I rearranged the Author's six memos into "Visibility, quickness, exactitude, multiplicity, lightness, consistency".

Difference and Cluster Analysis on the Carbon Dioxide Emissions in China During COVID-19 Lockdown via a Complex Network Model.

The continuous increase of carbon emissions is a serious challenge all over the world, and many countries are striving to solve this problem. Since 2020, a widespread lockdown in the country to prevent the spread of COVID-19 escalated, severely restricting the movement of people and unnecessary economic activities, which unexpectedly reduced carbon emissions. This paper aims to analyze the carbon emissions data of 30 provinces in the 2020 and provide references for reducing emissions with epidemic lockdown measures. Based on the method of time series visualization, we transform the time series data into complex networks to find out the hidden information in these data. We found that the lockdown would bring about a short-term decrease in carbon emissions, and most provinces have a short time point of impact, which is closely related to the level of economic development and industrial structure. The current results provide some insights into the evolution of carbon emissions under COVID-19 blockade measures and valuable insights into energy conservation and response to the energy crisis in the post-epidemic era.

Type-I intermittency from Markov binary block visibility graph perspective.

In this work, the type-I intermittency is studied from the optimized Markov binary visibility graphs perspective. We consider a local Poincaré map such as the logistic map that is a simple model for exhibiting this type of intermittency. To consider the acceptance gate as G ≪ 0.01 , we show that the transition between laminar and non-laminar zones in type-I intermittency takes distinct phases and regions. According to their behavioral characteristics, we call them as pure, switching, threshold, trapping, and transforming phases for the laminar zone and initial, terminal reinjection, and chaotic burst regions for non-laminar zone. We investigate their properties based on statistical tools such as the maximum and the mean length of the laminar zone and also length distributions of the laminar zone. For further investigation, we study degree distribution of the complex network generated by type-I intermittency time series and finally, predict various behaviors of phases and regions by proposed theoretical degree distributions.

Dust emission source characterization for visibility hazard assessment on Lordsburg Playa in Southwestern New Mexico, USA.

In drylands around the world, ephemeral lakes (playas) are common. Dry, wind-erodible playa sediments are potent local and regional sources of dust and PM10 (airborne particles with diameters less than 10 µm). Dust clouds often cause sudden and/or prolonged loss of visibility to travelers on downwind roadways. Lordsburg Playa, in southwestern New Mexico, USA is bisected by Interstate Highway 10. Dust storms emanating from the playa have been responsible for numerous visibility-related road closures (including 39 road closures between 2012 and 2019) causing major economic losses, in addition to well over a hundred dust-related vehicle crashes causing at least 41 lost lives in the last 53 years. In order to improve understanding of the surfaces responsible for the dust emissions, we investigated the critical wind friction velocity thresholds and the dust emissivities of surfaces representing areas typical of Lordsburg Playa's stream deltas, shorelines, and ephemerally flooded lakebed using a Portable In-Situ Wind ERosion Laboratory (PI-SWERL). Mean threshold friction velocities for PM10 entrainment ranged from less than 0.30 m s- 1 for areas in the delta and shoreline to greater than 0.55 m s- 1 for ephemerally flooded areas of the lakebed. Similarly, we quantified mean PM10 vertical flux rates ranging from less than 500 µg m- 2 s- 1 for ephemerally flooded areas of lakebed to nearly 25,000 µg m- 2 s- 1 for disturbed delta surfaces. The unlimited PM10 supply of the relatively coarse sediments along the western shoreline is problematic and indicates that this may be the source area for longer-term visibility reducing dust events and should be a focus area for dust mitigation efforts.

Surface Reconstruction Assessment in Photogrammetric Applications.

The image-based 3D reconstruction pipeline aims to generate complete digital representations of the recorded scene, often in the form of 3D surfaces. These surfaces or mesh models are required to be highly detailed as well as accurate enough, especially for metric applications. Surface generation can be considered as a problem integrated in the complete 3D reconstruction workflow and thus visibility information (pixel similarity and image orientation) is leveraged in the meshing procedure contributing to an optimal photo-consistent mesh. Other methods tackle the problem as an independent and subsequent step, generating a mesh model starting from a dense 3D point cloud or even using depth maps, discarding input image information. Out of the vast number of approaches for 3D surface generation, in this study, we considered three state of the art methods. Experiments were performed on benchmark and proprietary datasets of varying nature, scale, shape, image resolution and network designs. Several evaluation metrics were introduced and considered to present qualitative and quantitative assessment of the results.

Building Parasitology Communities to Promote Gender Equality.

In an ideal world, there are equal opportunities for women to enter and progress in all scientific disciplines without bias or prejudice. Here, we share our experiences in building communities of women parasitology and offer easy-to-implement guidelines for scientists and institutions to overcome unconscious bias and create environments with better gender equality and diversity.

Analysis of musculoskeletal radiology fellowship websites.

OBJECTIVE: Due to the relative lack of standardization in the fellowship application processes for musculoskeletal radiology, program websites are of paramount importance as application resources. This study evaluates the comprehensiveness of these websites and the potential effects of program ACGME accreditation, region, and size on website comprehensiveness. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The websites of musculoskeletal fellowship programs listed on the Society of Skeletal Radiology website were assigned a validated comprehensiveness score based on the presence of 19 specific informative components pertaining to the program's characteristics. The correlations of comprehensiveness scores with program ACGME accreditation, region, and size were evaluated. RESULTS: A total of 90 musculoskeletal radiology fellowship program websites were reviewed, yielding a mean comprehensiveness score of 55.1% (10.5 out of 19 criteria). Only 3 of the 19 criteria-application information (88.9%), stand-alone webpage (87.8%), and affiliated hospital information (84.4%)-were present in more than 80% of all websites. Eleven criteria, most notably away rotation information (6.7% presence) and case log (0.0% presence), were absent from at least 50% of all websites. Program ACGME accreditation was correlated with significantly higher website comprehensiveness scores compared with non-accreditation (p = 0.087). CONCLUSION: There is lack of sufficient, useful information and standardization on the websites of MSK fellowship programs throughout the country. According to our review and analysis, addition of specific information regarding each fellowship program and implementing some type of standardization may optimize fellowship matching for both applicants and the programs.