Manipulation of Gaseous Ions with Acoustic Fields at Atmospheric Pressure.

The ability to controllably move gaseous ions is an essential aspect of ion-based spectrometry (e.g., mass spectrometry and ion mobility spectrometry) as well as materials processing. At higher pressures, ion motion is largely governed by diffusion and multiple collisions with neutral gas molecules. Thus, high-pressure ion optics based on electrostatics require large fields, radio frequency drives, complicated geometries, and/or partially transmissive grids that become contaminated. Here, we demonstrate that low-power standing acoustic waves can be used to guide, block, focus, and separate beams of ions akin to electrostatic ion optics. Ions preferentially travel through the static-pressure regions ("nodes") while neutral gas does not appear to be impacted by the acoustic field structure and continues along a straight trajectory. This acoustic ion manipulation (AIM) approach has broad implications for ion manipulation techniques at high pressure, while expanding our fundamental understanding of the behavior of ions in gases.

An assessment of federal alcohol policies in Canada and priority recommendations: Results from the 3rd Canadian Alcohol Policy Evaluation Project.

OBJECTIVE: To systematically assess the Canadian federal government's current alcohol policies in relation to public health best practices. METHODS: The 2022 Canadian Alcohol Policy Evaluation (CAPE) Project assessed federal alcohol policies across 10 domains. Policy domains were weighted according to evidence for their relative impact, including effectiveness and scope. A detailed scoring rubric of best practices was developed and externally reviewed by international experts. Policy data were collected between June and December 2022, using official legislation, government websites, and data sources identified from previous iterations of CAPE as sources. Contacts within relevant government departments provided any additional data sources, reviewed the accuracy and completeness of the data, and provided amendments as needed. Data were scored independently by members of the research team. Final policy scores were tabulated and presented as a weighted overall average score and as unweighted domain-specific scores. RESULTS: Compared to public health best practices, the federal government of Canada scored 37% overall. The three most impactful domains-(1) pricing and taxation, (2) marketing and advertising controls, and (3) impaired driving countermeasures-received some of the lowest scores (39%, 10%, and 40%, respectively). Domain-specific scores varied considerably from 0% for minimum legal age policies to 100% for controls on physical availability of alcohol. CONCLUSION: Many evidence-informed alcohol policies have not been adopted, or been adopted only partially, by the Canadian federal government. Urgent adoption of the recommended policies is needed to prevent and reduce the enormous health, social, and economic costs of alcohol use in Canada.

RéSUMé: OBJECTIF: Évaluer de manière systématique les politiques sur l'alcool actuelles du gouvernement fédéral canadien dans le cadre de pratiques de santé publique exemplaires. MéTHODES: Le projet de l'Évaluation des politiques canadiennes sur l'alcool 2022 a évalué les politiques fédérales sur l'alcool dans dix domaines. Ces domaines de politiques ont été pondérés en fonction de preuves sur leurs répercussions relatives, notamment leur efficacité et leur portée. Une échelle d'évaluation descriptive détaillée de pratiques exemplaires a été élaborée et examinée à l'externe. Entre juin et décembre 2022, des données sur les politiques ont été recueillies dans la législation officielle, sur des sites Web du gouvernement et au moyen de sources identifiées comme telles au cours des itérations précédentes du projet de l'Évaluation des politiques canadiennes sur l'alcool. Des personnes-ressources au sein des ministères concernés ont communiqué d'autres sources de données, examiné l'exactitude et le caractère exhaustif de ces données et apporté les modifications nécessaires. Les données ont été évaluées indépendamment par des membres de l'équipe de recherche. Les scores de politiques finaux ont été inscrits dans des tableaux et présentés sous forme d'une moyenne générale pondérée et de scores non pondérés par domaine. RéSULTATS: Comparativement aux pratiques de santé publique exemplaire, le gouvernement fédéral du Canada a obtenu un score général de 37 %. Les trois domaines susceptibles d'avoir les plus grandes répercussions, à savoir 1) la fixation des prix et la taxation, 2) le contrôle du marketing et de la publicité, et 3) les mesures contre la conduite avec facultés affaiblies, se sont vu attribuer parmi les scores les plus bas (39 %, 10 %, et 40 % respectivement). Les scores par domaine variaient considérablement, allant de 0 % pour les politiques sur l'âge minimum légal à 100 % pour le contrôle de la disponibilité physique de l'alcool. CONCLUSION: De nombreuses politiques sur l'alcool reposant sur des preuves n'ont pas été adoptées, ou l'ont été seulement partiellement, par le gouvernement fédéral canadien. Il est urgent d'appliquer les politiques recommandées pour prévenir et réduire les énormes coûts sanitaires, sociaux et économiques de la consommation d'alcool au Canada.

An investigation of media reports of digital surveillance within the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a surge in digital public health surveillance worldwide, with limited opportunities to consider the effectiveness or impact of digital surveillance. The news media shape public understanding of topics of importance, contributing to our perception of priority issues. This study investigated news media reports published during the first year of the pandemic to understand how the use and consequences of digital surveillance technologies were reported on. Methods: A media content analysis of 34 high- to low-income countries was completed. The terms "COVID-19," "surveillance," "technologies," and "public health" were used to retrieve and inductively code media reports. Results: Of the 1,001 reports, most were web-based or newspaper sources on the development and deployment of technologies directed at contact tracing, enforcing quarantine, predicting disease spread, and allocating resources. Technology types included mobile apps, wearable devices, "smart" thermometers, GPS/Bluetooth, facial recognition, and security cameras. Repurposed data from social media, travel cards/passports, and consumer purchases also provided surveillance insight. Media reports focused on factors impacting surveillance success (public participation and data validity) and the emerging consequences of digital surveillance on human rights, function creep, data security, and trust. Discussion: Diverse digital technologies were developed and used for public health surveillance during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of these technologies and witnessed or anticipated consequences were reported by a variety of media sources worldwide. The news media are an important public health information resource, as media outlets contribute to directing public understanding and shaping priority public health surveillance issues. Our findings raise important questions around how journalists decide which aspects of public health crises to report on and how these issues are discussed.

"No one went into pharmacy to sell a lot of Coca-Cola. It's just sort of a necessary evil" - Community pharmacists' perceptions of front-of-store sales and ethical tensions in the retail environment.

Background: Community pharmacists are expected to uphold ethical duties to patients and society while maintaining independent businesses or fulfilling expectations of corporate owners. Canadian pharmacy colleges provide only indirect guidance on the retail setting of the profession. Little is known about whether pharmacists identify ethical issues in retail pharmacy or around the sales of non-drug products. Objective: This study sought to examine pharmacists' perceptions of their roles in health promotion, the factors that influence the selection of front-of-store products, and ethical issues relating to their dual roles as health care providers and retailers. Methods: In 2020, 25 Canadian pharmacists participated in semi-structured phone interviews. Interviews were audio-recorded, anonymized, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed using qualitative methods. Results: Almost all participants described their role primarily as a health care provider, though some described themselves as 50-50 health care providers and retailers. Most staff pharmacists reported little control over front-of-store product selection. Where participants reported some control, external factors such as business viability and profitability impacted their choices, though some reported selecting products based on the needs of their patient community or their personal beliefs. The dominant tensions described stemmed from participants' dual roles as health care providers and retailers, though specific issues and situations were varied, ranging corporate targets, to service provision, to the sales of unproven or unhealthy products. Participants suggested solutions to the issues they described, ranging from a complete overhaul of the licensing structure of community pharmacies, down to one-on-one conversations with patients. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the retail setting of community pharmacy produces unique ethical tensions: the imposition of retail sales standards and targets are commonplace, and business viability is a primary driving force in front-of-store product selection. Clear guidance from Canadian pharmacy colleges and legislators to address these tensions and issues may be necessary.

Characterization of a Low-Temperature Plasma (LTP) Ambient Ionization Source Using Temporally Resolved Monochromatic Imaging Spectrometry.

The low-temperature plasma (LTP) probe is a common plasma-based source used for ambient desorption-ionization mass spectrometry (MS). While the LTP probe has been characterized in detail with MS, relatively few studies have used optical spectroscopy. In this paper, two-dimensional (2D) imaging at selected wavelengths is used to visualize important species in the LTP plasma jet. First, 2D steady-state images of the LTP plume for N2+ (391.2 nm), He I (706.5 nm), and N2 (337.1 nm) emissions were recorded under selected plasma conditions. Second, time-resolved 2D emission maps of radiative species in the LTP plasma jet were recorded through the use of a 200 ns detection gate and varying gate delays with respect to the LTP trigger pulse. Emission from He I, N2+, and N2 in the plasma jet region was found to show a transient behavior (often referred to as plasma bullets) lasting only a few microseconds. The N2+ and He I maps were highly correlated in spatial and temporal structure. Further, emission from N2 showed two maxima in time, one before and one after the maximum emission for N2+ and He I, due to an initial electronic excitation wave and ion-electron recombination, respectively. Third, the interaction of the LTP probe with a sample substrate and an electrically grounded metallic needle was studied. Emission from a fluorophore on the sample substrate showed an initial photon-induced excitation from plasma-generated photons followed by electronic excitation by other plasma species. The presence of a grounded needle near the plasma jet significantly extended the plasma jet lifetime and also generated a long-lived corona discharge on the needle. The effect of LTP operating parameters on emission spectra was correlated with mass-spectral results including reagent-ion signals. Lastly, five movies provide a side-by-side comparison of the temporal behavior of emitting species and insights into the interactions of the emission clouds with a sample surface as well as an external needle. Temporally and spatially resolved imaging provided insights into important processes in the LTP plasma jet, which will help improve analyte ion sampling in LTP-MS.

Development of a Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Policy for Canadian Childcare Settings: A Delphi Study.

This study aimed to obtain consensus on physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) policy items for use in Canadian childcare settings. Purposeful sampling of Canadian experts in PA/SB (n = 19) and Early Childhood Education (ECE; n = 20) was used to form two distinct (i.e., PA/SB and ECE) panels for a 3-round Delphi study. In round 1, the PA/SB experts suggested their top 10 items for a Canadian childcare PA/SB policy. Policy items were then pooled to generate a list of 24 unique items. In round 2, experts in both panels rated the importance of the 24 policy items using a 7-point Likert scale (i.e., 1 = Not at all important to 7 = Extremely important). The ECE panel was also asked to report on the feasibility of the policy items using a 4-point Likert scale (i.e., 1 = Not at all feasible to 4 = Very feasible). Policy items that received an interquartile deviation (IQD) score of ≤ 1 (indicating consensus) and a median score of ≥ 6 (indicating importance) in both panels were considered shared priorities. In round 3, members of both panels re-rated the importance of the policy items that did not achieve consensus among their respective panel in round 2 and were asked to order items based on importance. Descriptive statistics were used to assess feasibility of policy items, and differences in panel ratings were quantified using Mann Whitney U tests. Consensus was achieved for 23 policy items in the PA/SB panel and 17 items in the ECE panel. Overall, 15 shared priorities were identified (e.g., provide 120 min of outdoor time per day, sedentary behaviour should not be used as a punishment), and six policy items exhibited a statistical difference in ratings across panels. Members of the ECE panel indicated that the policy item, "children should be permitted to go outside whenever they want, for as long as they want" (M = 1.78; SD = 0.65) was lowest in terms of feasibility, and the policy item, "children should receive opportunities to engage in both unstructured and structured physical activity opportunities daily" (M = 3.89; SD = 0.32) was the most feasible for daily implementation. Findings from this study can inform the development of an expert-generated and feasibility-informed institutional PA/SB policy for use in Canadian childcare settings. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10643-023-01473-z.

Use of digital technologies for public health surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a variety of digital technologies have been leveraged for public health surveillance worldwide. However, concerns remain around the rapid development and deployment of digital technologies, how these technologies have been used, and their efficacy in supporting public health goals. Following the five-stage scoping review framework, we conducted a scoping review of the peer-reviewed and grey literature to identify the types and nature of digital technologies used for surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic and the success of these measures. We conducted a search of the peer-reviewed and grey literature published between 1 December 2019 and 31 December 2020 to provide a snapshot of questions, concerns, discussions, and findings emerging at this pivotal time. A total of 147 peer-reviewed and 79 grey literature publications reporting on digital technology use for surveillance across 90 countries and regions were retained for analysis. The most frequently used technologies included mobile phone devices and applications, location tracking technologies, drones, temperature scanning technologies, and wearable devices. The utility of digital technologies for public health surveillance was impacted by factors including uptake of digital technologies across targeted populations, technological capacity and errors, scope, validity and accuracy of data, guiding legal frameworks, and infrastructure to support technology use. Our findings raise important questions around the value of digital surveillance for public health and how to ensure successful use of technologies while mitigating potential harms not only in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also during other infectious disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics.

Regulating During Crisis: A Qualitative Comparative Case Study of Nursing Regulatory Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic placed intense pressure on nursing regulatory bodies to ensure an adequate healthcare workforce while maintaining public safety. Purpose: Our objectives were to analyze regulatory bodies' responses during the pandemic, examine how nursing regulators conceptualize the public interest during a public health crisis, and explore the influence of a public health crisis on the balancing of regulatory principles. We aimed to develop a clearer understanding of regulating during a crisis by identifying themes within regulatory responses. Methods: We conducted a qualitative comparative case study examining the pandemic responses of eight nursing regulators in three Canadian provinces and three U.S. states. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 19 representatives of nursing regulatory bodies and 206 publicly available documents and analyzed thematically. Results: Five themes were constructed from the data: (1) risk-based responses to reduce regulatory burden; (2) agility and flexibility in regulatory pandemic responses; (3) working with stakeholders for a systems-based approach; (4) valuing consistency in regulatory approaches across jurisdictions; and (5) the pandemic as a catalyst for innovation. Specifically, we identified that the meaning of "public interest" in the context of high workforce demand was a key consideration for regulators. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate the intensity of effort involved in nursing regulatory responses and the significant contribution of nursing regulation to the healthcare system's pandemic response. Our results also indicate a shift in thinking around broader public interest issues, beyond the conduct and competence of individual nurses, to include pressing societal issues. Regulators are beginning to grapple with these longer-term issues and policy tensions.

Protecting the public interest when regulating health professionals providing virtual care: a scoping review protocol.

BACKGROUND: Virtual care is transforming the nature of healthcare, particularly with the accelerated shift to telehealth and virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health profession regulators face intense pressures to safely facilitate this type of healthcare while upholding their legislative mandate to protect the public. Challenges for health profession regulators have included providing practice guidance for virtual care, changing entry-to-practice requirements to include digital competencies, facilitating interjurisdictional virtual care through licensure and liability insurance requirements, and adapting disciplinary procedures. This scoping review will examine the literature on how the public interest is protected when regulating health professionals providing virtual care. METHODS: This review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) scoping review methodology. Academic and grey literature will be retrieved from health sciences, social sciences, and legal databases using a comprehensive search strategy underpinned by Population-Concept-Context (PCC) inclusion criteria. Articles published in English since January 2015 will be considered for inclusion. Two reviewers will independently screen titles and abstracts and full-text sources against specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Discrepancies will be resolved through discussion or by a third reviewer. One research team member will extract relevant data from the selected documents and a second will validate the extractions. DISCUSSION: Results will be presented in a descriptive synthesis that highlights implications for regulatory policy and professional practice, as well as study limitations and knowledge gaps that warrant further research. Given the rapid expansion of virtual care provision by regulated health professionals in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mapping the literature on how the public interest is protected in this rapidly evolving digital health sector may help inform future regulatory reform and innovation. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: This protocol is registered with the Open Science Framework ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/BD2ZX ).

Implementation Adherence and Perspectives of the Childcare PhysicaL ActivitY (PLAY) Policy: A Process Evaluation.

The Childcare PhysicaL ActivitY (PLAY) policy was an evidence-informed, eight-item institutional-level policy document targeting children's physical activity, outdoor play, and sedentary time. Nine childcare centers in London, Ontario, participated in this cluster, randomized controlled trial. Early Childhood Educators allocated to the experimental group, from five childcare centers in London, Ontario, implemented the policy for young children (18 months to 4 years) for 8 weeks and documented adherence to each policy item (i.e., dose) in daily logs. Program evaluation surveys (n = 21) and interviews (n = 10) were completed postintervention to assess Early Childhood Educators' perspectives of feasibility, context, enjoyment, communication between researchers and childcare staff, and likelihood of future implementation. Descriptive statistics were calculated, and thematic analysis was conducted. Adherence to policy items ranged from 16.5% (for delivery of shorter, more frequent outdoor periods) to 85.9% (for delivery of unstructured/child-directed play). Participants reported effective communication between the research team and childcare centers (0 = not at all effective to 5 = very effective; M = 4.20; SD = 0.83) but noted that they were unlikely to continue the implementation of more frequent outdoor periods (0 = not at all likely to 5 = extremely likely; M = 2.19; SD = 1.21). Interview themes included weather as a prominent barrier and the use of verbal prompts as a solution for implementing the policy. As this was a small and short-term intervention, this pilot study offers important insight on larger scale policy interventions aimed at increasing physical activity and minimizing sedentary time among children enrolled in childcare.

Digital technology and disease surveillance in the COVID-19 pandemic: a scoping review protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Infectious diseases pose a risk to public health, requiring efficient strategies for disease prevention. Digital health surveillance technologies provide new opportunities to enhance disease prevention, detection, tracking, reporting and analysis. However, in addition to concerns regarding the effectiveness of these technologies in meeting public health goals, there are also concerns regarding the ethics, legality, safety and sustainability of digital surveillance technologies. This scoping review examines the literature on digital surveillance for public health purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify health-related applications of digital surveillance technologies, and to highlight discussions of the implications of these technologies. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The scoping review will be guided by the framework proposed by Arksey and O'Malley and the guidelines outlined by Colquhoun et al and Levac et al. We will search Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL (EBSCOhost), ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar and IEEE Explore for relevant studies published between December 2019 and December 2020. The review will also include grey literature. Data will be managed and analysed through an extraction table and thematic analysis. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Findings will be disseminated through traditional academic channels, as well as social media channels and research briefs and infographics. We will target our dissemination to provincial and federal public health organisations, as well as technology companies and community-based organisations managing the public response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Impact of the Childcare Physical Activity (PLAY) Policy on Young Children's Physical Activity and Sedentary Time: A Pilot Clustered Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: The importance of daily physical activity is crucial for healthy development during the early years. Currently, a formal written physical activity policy is lacking in Canadian childcare centers, but holds promise for offering consistent physical activity opportunities. With eight recommendations, the Childcare PLAY policy is an evidence-informed, institutional-level document, targeting children's physical activity, outdoor play, and sedentary time. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the Childcare Physical Activity (PLAY) policy on the physical activity and sedentary time of young children (18 months-4 years) in childcare. Methods: Nine childcare centers in London, Ontario participated in the cluster, randomized controlled trial. The centers in the control condition (n = 4) continued their typical daily routines, while the centers in the intervention condition (n = 5) implemented the PLAY policy for eight weeks. To assess physical activity levels, toddlers and preschoolers wore ActiGraph wGT3X-BT accelerometers for five consecutive days during childcare hours, at baseline, mid- and post-intervention, and at the six-month follow-up. Raw accelerometry data were converted to 15 s epochs, and age- and device-specific cut-points were applied. The participants with two or more days of at least 5 h/day of wear-time at baseline, and at one additional time point, were included in the linear mixed-effects models. An adjusted alpha (p < 0.017) was used to account for multiple comparison bias. Results: A total of 148 children (31.92 ± 7.41 months) had valid accelerometry data. The intervention resulted in a significant increase in light physical activity among the participants in the experimental group at the six-month follow-up (+1.07 min/h, an 11.16% increase; p = 0.0017). The intervention did not have a statistically significant effect on the total physical activity, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, or sedentary time. Conclusions: The findings indicate that the Childcare PLAY policy was effective at increasing the toddlers' and preschoolers' light physical activity. This pilot intervention appears promising for supporting some improved movement behaviors among children in childcare settings; however, additional investigations are needed to explore the feasibility and effectiveness with larger and more-diverse samples.

Ethics Guidance for Environmental Scientists Engaged in Surveillance of Wastewater for SARS-CoV-2.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to rapid and widespread international pursuit of wastewater surveillance for genetic signals of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the pandemic. Environmental scientists and engineers familiar with the techniques required for this endeavor have responded. Many of the environmental scientists engaged in these investigations have not necessarily had experience with the ethical obligations associated with generating and handling human health data. The Canadian Water Network facilitated adoption of these surveillance methods by creating a national coalition, which included a public health advisory group that recognized a need for ethics guidance for the wastewater approach to public health surveillance. This Policy Analysis addresses that need and is based on a review of relevant ethics literature tightly focused on ethics applicable to public health surveillance. That review revealed that classical health bioethics governing clinical practice and general public health ethics guidance did not adequately address key issues in wastewater surveillance. The 2017 World Health Organization guidelines, directly based on a systematic literature review, specifically addressed ethical issues in public health surveillance. The application of relevant ethical guidance to wastewater surveillance is analyzed and summarized for environmental scientists.

Unsupervised Reconstruction of Analyte-Specific Mass Spectra Based on Time-Domain Morphology with a Modified Cross-Correlation Approach.

Concomitant species that appear at the same or very similar times in a mass-spectral analysis can clutter a spectrum because of the coexistence of many analyte-related ions (e.g., molecular ions, adducts, fragments). One method to extract ions stemming from the same origin is to exploit the chemical information encoded in the time domain, where the individual temporal appearances inside the complex structures of chronograms or chromatograms differ with respect to analytes. By grouping ions with very similar or identical time-domain structures, single-component mass spectra can be reconstructed, which are much easier to interpret and are library-searchable. While many other approaches address similar objectives through the Pearson's correlation coefficient, we explore an alternative method based on a modified cross-correlation algorithm to compute a metric that describes the degree of similarity between features inside any two ion chronograms. Furthermore, an automatic workflow was devised to be capable of categorizing thousands of mass-spectral peaks into different groups within a few seconds. This approach was tested with direct mass-spectrometric analyses as well as with a simple, fast, and poorly resolved LC-MS analysis. Single-component mass spectra were extracted in both cases and were identified based on accurate mass and a mass-spectral library search.

MODERN PLASMA-BASED DESORPTION/IONIZATION: FROM ATOMS AND MOLECULES TO CHEMICAL SYNTHESIS.

Since the first mass spectrometry (MS) experiments were conducted by Thomson and Aston, plasmas have been used as ionization sources. Historically, plasma ion sources were used for these experiments because they were one of the few known sources of gas-phase ions at the time and they were relatively simple to setup and operate. Since then, developments in plasma ionization have continued to inform and motivate advances in other areas of MS. For example, plasma-desorption MS demonstrated ionization of large peptides and polymers more than 10 years before the first descriptions of electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI). As a result, significant effort was placed on development of ionization approaches, mass analysis, and detection approaches for very large molecules: even before the advent of ESI and MALDI. Since then, new analytical challenges and opportunities in plasma ionization have arisen. In this review, the emerging trends in plasma-based ionization for several areas of MS will be discussed, including molecular ionization, elemental ionization, hybrid elemental and molecular ion sources, and unique chemical transformations. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Mass Spec Rev.

Exploring the ethical issues in research using digital data collection strategies with minors: A scoping review.

While emerging digital health technologies offer researchers new avenues to collect real-time data, little is known about current ethical dimensions, considerations, and challenges that are associated with conducting digital data collection in research with minors. As such, this paper reports the findings of a scoping review which explored existing literature to canvass current ethical issues that arise when using digital data collection in research with minors. Scholarly literature was searched using electronic academic databases for articles that provided explicit ethical analysis or presented empirical research that directly addressed ethical issues related to digital data collection used in research with minors. After screening 1,156 titles and abstracts, and reviewing 73 full-text articles, 20 articles were included in this review. Themes which emerged across the reviewed literature included: consent, data handling, minors' data rights, observing behaviors that may result in risk of harm to participants or others, private versus public conceptualizations of data generated through social media, and gatekeeping. Our findings indicate a degree of uncertainty which invariably exists with regards to the ethics of research that involves minors and digital technology. The reviewed literature suggests that this uncertainty can often lead to the preclusion of minors from otherwise important lines of research inquiry. While uncertainty warrants ethical consideration, increased ethical scrutiny and restricting the conduct of such research raises its own ethical challenges. We conclude by discussing and recommending the ethical merits of co-producing ethical practice between researchers and minors as a mechanism to proceed with such research while addressing concerns around uncertainty.

Cooperative Heteroligand Interaction with G-Quadruplexes Shows Evidence of Allosteric Binding.

Although allosteric binding of small molecules is commonplace in protein structures, it is rather rare in DNA species such as G-quadruplexes. By using CD melting, here, we found binding of the small-molecule ligands PDS and L2H2-6OTD to the telomeric DNA G-quadruplex was cooperative. Mass spectrometry indicated a 1:1:1 ratio in the ternary binding complex of the telomeric G-quadruplex, PDS, and L2H2-6OTD. Compared to the binding of each individual ligand to the G-quadruplex, single-molecule mechanical unfolding assays revealed a significantly decreased dissociation constant when one ligand is evaluated in the presence of another. This demonstrates that cooperative binding of PDS and L2H2-6OTD to the G-quadruplex is allosteric, which is also supported by the mass spectra data that indicated the ejection of coordinated sodium ions upon binding of the heteroligands to the G-quadruplex. The unprecedented observation of the allosteric ligand binding to higher-ordered structures of DNA may help to design more effective ligands to target non-B DNA species involved in many critical cellular processes.

Development of a consensus statement on the role of the family in the physical activity, sedentary, and sleep behaviours of children and youth.

BACKGROUND: Children and youth who meet the physical activity, sedentary, and sleep behaviour recommendations in the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines are more likely to have desirable physical and psychosocial health outcomes. Yet, few children and youth actually meet the recommendations. The family is a key source of influence that can affect lifestyle behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process used to develop the Consensus Statement on the Role of the Family in the Physical Activity, Sedentary, and Sleep Behaviours of Children and Youth (0-17 years) and present, explain, substantiate, and discuss the final Consensus Statement. METHODS: The development of the Consensus Statement included the establishment of a multidisciplinary Expert Panel, completion of six reviews (three literature, two scoping, one systematic review of reviews), custom data analyses of Statistics Canada's Canadian Health Measures Survey, integration of related research identified by Expert Panel members, a stakeholder consultation, establishment of consensus, and the development of a media, public relations, communications and launch plan. RESULTS: Evidence from the literature reviews provided substantial support for the importance of family on children's movement behaviours and highlighted the importance of inclusion of the entire family system as a source of influence and promotion of healthy child and youth movement behaviours. The Expert Panel incorporated the collective evidence from all reviews, the custom analyses, other related research identified, and stakeholder survey feedback, to develop a conceptual model and arrive at the Consensus Statement: Families can support children and youth in achieving healthy physical activity, sedentary and sleep behaviours by encouraging, facilitating, modelling, setting expectations and engaging in healthy movement behaviours with them. Other sources of influence are important (e.g., child care, school, health care, community, governments) and can support families in this pursuit. CONCLUSION: Family is important for the support and promotion of healthy movement behaviours of children and youth. This Consensus Statement serves as a comprehensive, credible, and current synopsis of related evidence, recommendations, and resources for multiple stakeholders.