Blue Marble Research Articles

Home-Based Digital Exercise Training Program to Improve Physical Function of Older Sepsis Survivors: Protocol of the HEAL Sepsis Randomized Clinical Trial.

While sepsis, an exaggerated response to infection, can affect people of all age groups, it is more prevalent in middle-aged and older adults. Older adults suffer worse short-term and long-term outcomes than younger patients. Older sepsis survivors are commonly discharged to long-term acute care facilities, where they often die within 1 year. Those who return home from the hospital lose the momentum of physical function improvement after early inpatient rehabilitation, and often face exacerbation of comorbidities and decline in physical function. Additionally, patients who are discharged home often live at distant locations and are not able to commute to rehabilitation centers due to their poor health status. Therefore, remotely delivered exercise interventions tailored to this population hold promise to improve physical function safely and effectively after sepsis. However, this type of intervention has yet to be tested in this population. This study aims to assess the safety, feasibility, and ease of recruitment and retention of participants for a remotely delivered physical activity intervention for improving physical function in middle-aged and older sepsis survivors. The proposed intervention will be delivered through a digital health platform that comprises a patient-facing mobile app and a 12-week physical activity program specifically designed for middle-aged and older sepsis survivors with poor health status who may face challenges participating in traditional out-patient or community-based exercise interventions. This study is ongoing and plans to enroll 40 sepsis survivors aged 55 years and older who will be randomized to either a remotely delivered exercise intervention group or a control group (electronic health diary). Both groups will use a tablet containing the Health in Motion app (Blue Marble Health). The intervention group will receive a clinician-designed personalized avatar-guided home exercise program and reminders while the control group will self-report daily activities using the in-app health diary feature. This study is the first to use a home-based, remotely monitored 12-week exercise program to improve physical function in sepsis survivors. This study will evaluate the safety, feasibility, and efficacy, providing the necessary knowledge to design and calculate power for future larger trials. This study will provide important information for planning a future randomized clinical trial to test the efficacy of a remotely delivered exercise intervention in this high-risk population. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05568511; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05568511. DERR1-10.2196/60270.

Varicolored Marble in the Central Metasedimentary Belt, Grenville Supergroup. I. Circumstantial Evidence of Melting

Abstract Large expanses of granulite-facies white marble occur in the Central Metasedimentary Belt of the Grenville orogen in western Quebec and in contiguous areas of eastern Ontario and New York. Locally, the white rock is transformed into “varicolored” marble, ranging from pink, orange, yellow, green, gray to blue marble, in some cases closely juxtaposed. We have dissected specimens from three target areas in western Quebec. A powerful analytical workflow including high-resolution ZEISS Atlas 5 large-area imaging was employed in combination with detailed energy-dispersive spectroscopy analyses to create digital map-like online datasets of entire samples to display the textures and characteristics in their entirety. We describe in detail the texture and mineralogy of marble specimens collected from exposures created during the construction of Autoroute 5 near Wakefield and of Autoroute 50 near Grenville-sur-la-Rouge and two specimens collected near Bryson, Quebec. At the inferred pressure and temperature and in the presence of H2O, the white marble seems to have melted. A carbonate melt, a powerful flux, can dissolve silicate wallrocks along a mutual contact. In this way, a marble-derived melt has assimilated wallrocks ranging from peridotite to granite. This melting event may have occurred more than once in the 350-million-year lifespan of the Grenville event; the thermal event associated with the Rigolet stage, during gravitational collapse of the orogen approximately one billion years ago, was the most intense. The marble samples contain no vestiges of older deformed assemblages. Whereas the varicolored marble undoubtedly is metasedimentary, a coeval influx of mantle-derived carbonatitic melt and related fluids from a subjacent complex may have caused localized metasomatism of the marble prior to and after melting.

Using Research to Save the Anthropocene: A Review of Michael Quinn Patton’s Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles

Patton’s (2020) book, Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles, will expand your knowledge of evaluation, research, the Anthropocene, global issues, and the planet. In 2023, it is important that we understand the impact of our past and present actions on the planet and the future of humanity. Patton’s principles, supported with comics, figures, and exhibits, will grow evaluators in the knowledge, skills, and mindset to make a positive future difference in our planet and humanity. Methodologists will appreciate a new way to examine evaluation and grow as professionals while professors will have a source to add to their course content.

Feasibility of a self-reported digital fall risk assessment compared with the traditional functional balance and gait assessments performed during student led balance screening: A pilot study

Background: One in four older adults in the age range 65 and above, report falls in the US each year. Some falls cause injuries or even deaths and can pose a significant economic burden on society. This pilot study compares two different methods of measuring fall risk in older adults. The goal of this research is to investigate the feasibility of a digital fall risk assessment tool, compared with the traditional functional gait and balance assessments. Methods: Community dwelling older adults aged 60 years or older were recruited. Physical therapy students guided the participants through the following traditional paper-based tests: Berg Balance Scale (BBS) or Fullerton Advanced Balance (FAB), 30 Second Chair Stand (30CST), 50-foot Walk Test, Balance Efficacy Scale (BES), and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies - Depression Scale (CES-D). All participants then independently completed the following digitally guided tests using the Health in Motion© (Blue Marble Health) remote therapeutic monitoring platform that comprised of Fall Risk Questionnaire (FRQ), One Leg Stand Test (OLST), 30 Second Sit to Stand Test (30STST), and 2 Question Depression Screen (2QDS). Results: This pilot study involved six female and one male community-dwelling older adults aged 67-90 years (81.57 ± 8.07). In general, the digital fall risk assessments correlated with some of the traditional paper-based fall risk tests. Specifically, there was a statistically significant moderate correlation between the digital fall risk questionnaire (FRQ) and the paper-based BES (r=0.77, p=0.043), and CES-D (r=0.76, p=.046). There was a statistically significant very strong correlation between the digital OLST and the 50-foot walk preferred speed (r=0.80, p=0.056), fast speed (r=0.92, p=.0009), and moderate correlation with 30CST (r=0.79, p=0.033). Further, there was a 100% match between both digital and paper-based depression tests. In terms of average total duration of administering the test, the digital fall risk assessment takes 7 minutes in comparison to 60 minutes with traditional balance and gait assessment. Conclusion: During the global COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, digital fall risk self-assessment tools can enable clinicians to collect asynchronous, objective, and standardized assessments prior to their telehealth visits. KEYWORDS: Fall Prevention, Fall Screening, Self-Assessment Mhealth App, Telehealth, Pro Bono Balance Clinic, Remote Patient Monitoring.

Europe's Final Frontier: Astroculture and Planetary Power since 1945

The main landmass of Europe does not appear in the iconic Blue Marble photograph of earth, taken from space on the final Apollo mission to the moon in December 1972. Europe as a continent remains out of frame, hidden north beyond the curvature of the planet. Viewers instead see swirling clouds, vast expanses of the world ocean and the partially obscured forms of Africa, Antarctica and the Arabian Peninsula. Decentring the Global North was crucial to the charisma of this image, which for half a century has been a symbol of human unity and a staple of appeals to protect the only planet we have ever inhabited. The universality of the photograph contrasted with the frictions of the Cold War and decolonisation that peaked in the 1960s. Blue Marble is nonetheless deeply ambivalent. Its extraterrestrial vantage was possible thanks to the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. And the implicit message of the photograph – that the benefits of spaceflight and other advanced technologies would be shared with all peoples as a contribution to global economic development – simultaneously invoked legacies of inequality from the epoch of formal imperialism, itself not yet at an end. Regions visible in Blue Marble, in fact, included territory still administered at the time by Britain, France, Norway, Portugal and Spain.1

Reclaiming vision: looking at Berger’s Ways of Seeing and NASA’s Blue Marble

John Berger’s warnings around the gaze in Ways of Seeing and the discourses surrounding NASA’s Blue Marble, the 1972 image of the whole Earth from space, propose a visual practice based on vision as inculcating an alienating objectivity. I return to these foundational texts from 1972 in order to produce symptomatic readings that suggest a background for certain attitudes around digital images. Introducing Donna Haraway’s notion of diffraction multiplies the interpretive identities of such texts and pushes against over identifications that limit a text’s contemporary resonance, as I explain through my discussion of Ways of Seeing and then model through various approaches to Blue Marble. My analysis identifies how attributes of each object contribute to the disappearance of the image as something one looks at, but by reclaiming vision, a new kind of critical visuality becomes available, particularly as it applies to digital culture, as I address in my conclusion.

Evaluation of a Novel Digital Fall Risk Assessment Application Vs Traditional Functional Gait and Balance Assessments in Older Adults at a Community Balance Screening

This pilot study compared two different methods of measuring fall risk in older adults. Scores from typical clinical tests were compared to self-assessments of fall risk collected by older adults using a guided software application, Health in Motion(c) (Blue Marble Health).

The weather of the Blue Marble

The weather of the <i>Blue Marble</i>

What's Next for Key and Core Tech?

The Universe is a complicated network that evolved out of the Big Bang to the human-dominated world we see today. Technology is a collection of natural or scientific phenomena that have been discovered and used by human beings. The combination and evolution of technology is forming a complex, self-organizing, and evolving scale-free network. Originating from a technological system, key and core technology is the cornerstone to boosting economic and social progress. To develop a more sustainably focused planet, key and core technologies will play an increasingly vital role.

Workshop Report: Blue Marble Thinking for the Future of Business in Society: Where Does the Business in Society Field Go from Here?

Blue Marble or holistic systems thinking focuses on the big picture—the system as a whole. The ‘blue marble’ is Earth viewed from space, where it can be seen as an unboundaried whole. To understand the Blue Marble, we need to zoom out—and then zoom in to specific issues and systems—and then zoom back out again. Panelists outlined key issues facing the business in society field: the need to get the field “unstuck” towards the truly difficult, big picture issues facing the world today. Presenters discussed: what it means to be human today, how natural sciences can inform research, implications of inequality, organizational responsibilities in the digital age, and the importance of language, narrative, and metaphors. Discussion emphasized how to move the field towards greater understanding of complexity and the roles that businesses and we as scholars play in understanding and even working towards resolving those issues?

Establishing the Reliability and Validity of Health in Motion&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;#169;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; Automated Falls Screening Tool

Introduction: Blue Marble Health Company has created a digital fall risk screening tool (Health in Motion©) that can be used by means of self-report (touch/mouse) or by means of motion capture (Microsoft Kinect Sensor). Health in Motion© consists of automated versions of the Fall Risk Question-naire, 30-Second Chair Stand Test, and the One Leg Stance Test. Methods: We compared the three methods (self-report, sensor, and clinical standard measurement) using stopwatch and observation in 15 community-dwelling older adults, aged 63 - 80 years old. Each version was completed three times each in random order, for a total of nine trials. Results: Health in Motion© falls screening tool accessible via self-report and sensor is a valid and reliable automated at-home self-assessment for falls risk. Conclusion: Results support the use of Health in Motion© falls screening tools as viable alternatives to standard falls risk assessments for use by older adults at home.

Before the beginning

Some 4 billion years ago, somewhere in the mass of inert minerals and molecules that made up our wet, rocky planet, dead became alive. This was the most important chemical transformation ever to happen on Earth. Not only did it give rise to all the living things that have ever existed, it also altered the chemistry of the oceans, the land and the atmosphere above. If it hadn't happened, there would beno blue marble. That first chemical step towards life may be a lot closer than we thought. The new approach starts with modern life and works backwards. Formed of a tangle of proteins and a relative of DNA called RNA, ribosomes are molecular machines found inside every living cell. They do just one thing and do it well: they read the genetic code contained in DNA and use it to construct proteins. In essence, they are cellular robots that build the stuff that makes our cells tick

The Lavrion Pb-Zn-Fe-Cu-Ag detachment-related district (Attica, Greece): Structural control on hydrothermal flow and element transfer-deposition

The impact of lithological heterogeneities on deformation, fluid flow and ore deposition is discussed based on the example of the Lavrion low-angle detachment partly accommodating gravitational collapse of the Hellenides orogenic belt in Greece. The Lavrion peninsula is characterised by a multiphase Pb-Zn-Fe-Cu-Ag ore system with a probable pre-concentration before subduction followed by progressive remobilisation and deposition coeval with the development of a low-angle ductile to brittle shear zone. The mylonitic marble below the detachment shear zone is composed of white layers of pure marble alternating with blue layers containing impurities (SiO2, Al2O3, carbonaceous material). Ductile mylonitic deformation is more pervasive in the less competent impure blue marble. We propose that localised deformation in the impure marble is associated with fluid circulation and dolomitisation, which in turn causes an increase in competence of these layers. Mineralised cataclastic zones, crosscutting the mylonitic fabric, are preferentially localised in the more competent dolomitic layers. Oxygen and carbon isotopic signatures of marble invaded by carbonate replacement deposits during ductile to ductile-brittle deformation are consistent with decarbonation coeval with the invasion of magmatic fluids. Mineralised cataclastic zones reflecting brittle deformation evolve from low 13C to low 18O signatures, interpreted as local interaction with carbonaceous material that trends toward the contribution of a surface-derived fluid. These features indicate that the Lavrion area records a complex deposition history influenced by the evolution of fluid reservoirs induced by the thermal and mechanical evolution of the marble nappe stack. Ore remobilisation and deposition associated with the activity of the low-angle detachment is (i) firstly related to the intrusion of the Plaka granodiorite leading to porphyry-type and carbonate replacement mineralisation during ductile-brittle deformation and (ii) then marked by progressive penetration of surface-derived fluids guided by strain localisation in the more competent levels leading to epithermal mineralisation associated with brittle deformation.

Biobased start-up tries new financing route

Blue Marble Biomaterials aims to raise money via a stock offering to small investors. Based in Missoula, Mont., Blue Marble uses biorefining to convert food waste into chemicals. Last year it launched a dithiazine bacon flavor from raw materials such as coffee grounds, tomato pomace, and grape pomace. It also formed a collaboration with Welch’s to upgrade waste from grape and apple juice processing. In 2015, the Securities & Exchange Commission adopted Regulation A+, which allows start-ups to raise up to $50 million from small investors. Previously, such venture capital investing was limited to high-net-worth individuals.

Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth

Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth

The Blue Marble

The Blue Marble

Burning worlds of cartography: a critical approach to climate cosmograms of the Anthropocene

Climate science today makes use of a variety of red globes to explore and communicate findings. These transform the iconography which informs this image: the idealised, even mythical vision of the blue, vulnerable and perfect marble is impaired by the application of the colours yellow and red. Since only predictions that employ a lot of red seem to exist, spectators are confronted with the message that the future Earth that might turn out as envisaged here is undesirable. Here intuitively powerful narrations of the end of the world may connect. By employing methods of art history and visual analysis, and building on examples from current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and future scenario maps, this article explores how burning world images bear – intentionally or not – elements of horror and shock. My question explored here is as follows: should ‘burning world’ images be understood as a new and powerful cosmology?

Galleries of the Stelvio-Lake Como: Sanford Robinson Gifford.

Galleries of the Stelvio-Lake Como: Sanford Robinson Gifford.

NTDs V.2.0: “Blue Marble Health”—Neglected Tropical Disease Control and Elimination in a Shifting Health Policy Landscape

The concept of the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) was established in the aftermath of the Millennium Development Goals. Here, we summarize the emergence of several new post-2010 global health documents and policies, and how they may alter the way we frame the world's major NTDs since they were first highlighted. These documents include a new Global Burden of Disease 2010 Study that identifies visceral leishmaniasis and food-borne trematode infections as priority diseases beyond the seven NTDs originally targeted by preventive chemotherapy, a London Declaration for access to essential medicines, and a 2013 World Health Assembly resolution on NTDs. Additional information highlights an emerging dengue fever pandemic. New United Nations resolutions on women and the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have not yet embraced NTDs, which may actually be the most common afflictions of girls and women and represent a stealth cause of NCDs. NTDs also have important direct and collateral effects on HIV/AIDS and malaria, and there is now a robust evidence base and rationale for incorporating NTDs into the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. “Blue marble health” is an added concept that recognizes a paradoxical NTD disease burden among the poor living in G20 (Group of Twenty) and other wealthy countries, requiring these nations to take greater ownership for both disease control and research and development. As we advance past the year 2015, it will be essential to incorporate global NTD elimination into newly proposed Sustainable Development Goals.

Commentary: Let’s send the DOE to Alpha Centauri

The announcement of an Earth-mass planet orbiting the closest Sunlike star has renewed discussion of the costs and benefits of an interstellar probe. The planet, Alpha Centauri Bb, is in an extremely hot orbit, but its existence increases the probability that a planet with a liquid-water ocean orbits Alpha Centauri. Data from NASA’s Kepler telescope now show that there are about as many habitable-zone, Earth-sized planets as stars, and in April NASA decided to fund a follow-up spacecraft, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Before this decade is out, we will probably discover an ocean-bearing planet orbiting a nearby star. When we do, should we send a mission?