Sort by
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Does Not Significantly Affect Midlife Cognitive Functioning Within the General Population: Findings From a Prospective Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study.

To determine whether differences exist in mid-adulthood cognitive functioning in people with and without history of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Community-based study. People born between April 1, 1972, and March 31, 1973, recruited into the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Longitudinal Study, who completed neuropsychological assessments in mid-adulthood. Participants who had experienced a moderate or severe TBI or mTBI in the past 12 months were excluded. Longitudinal, prospective, observational study. Data were collected on sociodemographic characteristics, medical history, childhood cognition (between 7 and 11 years), and alcohol and substance dependence (from 21 years of age). mTBI history was determined from accident and medical records (from birth to 45 years of age). Participants were classified as having 1 mTBI and more in their lifetime or no mTBI. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-IV) and Trail Making Tests A and B (between 38 and 45 years of age) were used to assess cognitive functioning. T tests and effect sizes were used to identify any differences on cognitive functioning domains between the mTBI and no mTBI groups. Regression models explored the relative contribution of number of mTBIs and age of first mTBI and sociodemographic/lifestyle variables on cognitive functioning. Of the 885 participants, 518 (58.5%) had experienced at least 1 mTBI over their lifetime, with a mean number of 2.5 mTBIs. The mTBI group had significantly slower processing speed ( P < .01, d = 0.23) in mid-adulthood than the no TBI controls, with a medium effect size. However, the relationship no longer remained significant after controlling for childhood cognition, sociodemographic and lifestyle factors. No significant differences were observed for overall intelligence, verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, attention, or cognitive flexibility. Childhood cognition was not linked to likelihood of sustaining mTBI later in life. mTBI histories in the general population were not associated with lower cognitive functioning in mid-adulthood once sociodemographic and lifestyle factors were taken into account.

Relevant
Identifying and Describing Billions of Objects: an Architecture to Tackle the Challenges of Volume, Variety, and Variability

Persistent identifiers are applied to an ever-increasing diversity of research objects, including data, software, samples, models, people, instruments, grants, and projects. There is a growing need to apply identifiers at a finer and finer granularity. The systems developed over two decades ago to manage identifiers and the metadata describing the identified objects struggle with this increase in scale. Communities working with physical samples have grappled with these challenges of the increasing volume, variety, and variability of identified objects for many years. To address this dual challenge, the IGSN 2040 project explored how metadata and catalogues for physical samples could be shared at the scale of billions of samples across an ever-growing variety of users and disciplines. This presentation outlines how identifiers and their describing metadata can be scaled to billions of objects. In addition, it analyses who the actors involved with this system are and what their requirements are. This analysis resulted in the definition of a minimum viable product and the design of an architecture that addresses the challenges of increasing volume and variety. The system is also easy to implement because it reuses commonly used Web components. Our solution is based on a Web architectural model that utilises Schema.org, JSON-LD and sitemaps. Applying these commonly used architectural patterns on the internet allows us not only to handle increasing volume, variety and variability but also enable better compliance with the FAIR Guiding Principles.

Relevant
Scaling Identifiers and their Metadata to Gigascale: An Architecture to Tackle the Challenges of Volume and Variety

Persistent identifiers are applied to an ever-increasing variety of research objects, including software, samples, models, people, instruments, grants, and projects, and there is a growing need to apply identifiers at a finer and finer granularity. Unfortunately, the systems developed over two decades ago to manage identifiers and the metadata describing the identified objects no longer scale. Communities working with physical samples have grappled with these three challenges of the increasing volume, variety, and variability of identified objects for many years. To address this dual challenge, the IGSN 2040 project explored how metadata and catalogues for physical samples could be shared at the scale of billions of samples across an ever-growing variety of users and disciplines. In this paper, we focus on how we scale identifiers and their describing metadata to billions of objects and who the actors involved with this system are. Our analysis of these requirements resulted in the definition of a minimum viable product and the design of an architecture that not only addresses the challenges of increasing volume and variety but, more importantly, is easy to implement because it reuses commonly used Web components. Our solution is based on a Web architectural model that utilises <a href="http://Schema.org">Schema.org</a>, JSON-LD, and sitemaps. Applying these commonly used architectural patterns on the internet allows us to not only handle increasing variety but also enable better compliance with the FAIR Guiding Principles.

Open Access
Relevant
Reframing well‐being: Lessons from Aotearoa New Zealand's first wave <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 response

AbstractWell‐being is increasingly being promoted and used to describe social progress. However, tension exists between framings that focus on enhancing individual well‐being (living well) and societal or collective framings of well‐being (living well together). Well‐being is central to Aotearoa New Zealand's COVID‐19 response and recovery. The COVID‐19 pandemic reopened debates about what kind of society people want to live in. Our research explored the ‘shared typical’ or commonality of experiences of the first wave of COVID‐19 response in Aotearoa New Zealand. Semi‐structured interviews provided insights into a wide range of concerns participants faced and what that meant for their well‐being and the well‐being of Aotearoa New Zealand. We found that well‐being is both multidimensional and hierarchical, and while people talked about their own well‐being, it was often in the context of broader social well‐being. These findings support research showing that well‐being is relational. We suggest that Indigenous models of well‐being are well placed to inform policy strategies enabling holistic well‐being, but this needs to be done in ways that pair Indigenous and Western knowledge, rather than integrating or assimilating this knowledge into Western science approaches.

Open Access
Relevant
System overstrength factor induced by interaction between structural reinforced concrete walls, floors and gravity frames: Analytical formulation

In multi-storey structural wall buildings, the structural walls are required to resist additional shear force due to their interactions with the floors and gravity-resisting system, which is not fully catered for in current seismic design provisions and assessment guidelines. This paper scrutinizes the mechanics of the interaction between structural reinforced concrete (RC) structural walls, floors and gravity frames in multi-storey RC structural wall buildings during elastic and nonlinear response phases. It also investigates the implications of this interaction on design of multi-story RC wall buildings. Generic expressions are derived to predict the drift and rotation profiles of multi-storey RC wall buildings. Then, a simple hand calculation method is developed to estimate the system (moment) overstrength of multi-storey RC wall buildings due to system (wall-floor-frames) interaction. The proposed method is applied to a prototype building with different slab dimensions and stiffness, and verified by comparing with the system overstrength factor obtained using finite element analysis. The simplified method estimates, and the nonlinear finite element analyses results agree, that a system overstrength factor of 1.7 can be used to account for the 3D interaction between the structural walls, floors and gravity frames in design and assessment of typical ductile RC wall buildings.

Open Access
Relevant