Critical Lessons Research Articles

Climate change-induced droughts and tourism: Impacts and responses of Western Cape province, South Africa

Climate change has led to several extreme weather events across the world. One such weather extreme is drought. Drought phenomenon has been increasing in both frequency and intensity globally of late. To this end, there has been growing concern about the impact droughts have and will have on the tourist destinations in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. In this study, which employs a mixed-methods approach utilising primary, archival and secondary data, we examine the impact of the 2015–2018 drought episodes on the tourism industry in the Western Cape as well as the industry's response. These drought episodes famously led to the Day Zero phenomenon, a situation that could have resulted in taps running dry at some point. The study found that the drought led to a severe decline in tourist arrivals at the major tourist attractions in the Western Cape province as well as a decline in tourist spending and hotel occupancy. This resulted in a loss of potential revenue and jobs. The province had been experiencing a decline in rainfall that drastically affected water supplies; a trend likely to recur in the future. During and after the drought, the tourism industry adopted several measures aimed at augmenting and saving water, thereby easing the sector's water demand. We recommend that the tourism sector and the Western Cape province build on the successes and lessons learnt during the Day Zero campaign to prepare for the future. This would allow the province to address Sustainable Development Goal 6, focusing on water and sanitation as a part of embracing responsible and sustainable tourism. Hence, continuous research, innovation and investment in the water-smart industry is a must for Cape Town and the Western Cape province. • There is an increasing demand for the sector to improve water efficiency and security. • There is a need for the tourism industry to develop models for managing droughts. • Western Cape provides critical lessons on combating drought within the tourism sector. • Tourism needs to invest in water harvest technology to ensure water independency. • Tourism and recreation must adapt and mitigate climate change to ensure sector resilience.

An Analysis of Government Communication in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Recommendations for Effective Government Health Risk Communication.

Governments throughout the world can learn many critical lessons from examining instances of ineffective communication with the public during the global coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic. Ineffective government communication has resulted in a great deal of public confusion and misunderstanding, as well as serious errors in responding to this evolving health threat, leading to disastrous health and social outcomes for the public and prolonging the pandemic, especially within the United States. This article uses systems theory as a template for analyzing government communication in the United States during the COVID‐19 pandemic, providing governments with recommendations for establishing effective health risk communication strategies for use with the public. The communication strategies offered here promote the delivery of relevant, accurate, and sensitive information to key public groups, minimizing communication noise to guide desirable coordinated actions. These communication strategies can be applied locally, nationally, and internationally.

The Sahel crisis since 2012

The ‘perfect storm’ that enveloped Mali in 2012 has since escalated into a protracted and widespread crisis across the Sahel. The region currently hosts multiple, moving threats, which are most active in the three states of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. In those states alone, between 2012 and 2019, there have been 1,463 armed clashes, 4,723 civilians killed, at the hands of 195 violent armed groups, in 1,263 discrete locations.1 Violence reached its highest level to date in 2019 and continues at heightened frequency, suggesting a dangerous threshold has been reached and new frontlines loom. The critical lesson of this briefing is that this tsunami of conflict did not initially manifest as overtly Islamist or even ideologically coherent, but grew from opportunism. Populist rhetoric, displays of weakened state authority, a brutal—or absent—security sector, the militarization of neighbors, livelihoods and communities each constitute viable ways that the Sahel violence can metastasize through the wider region.

COVID-19 response in Nigeria: Health system preparedness and lessons for future epidemics in Africa

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will continue to have a significant impact on the way we live for at least the next few years until the scale-up of production and administration of an effective vaccine. Unfortunately, this will not be the last pandemic of infectious diseases the world will experience, and the next one may have more devastating consequences in Africa than COVID-19, unless critical lessons for the future are learnt now for more rapid and robust containment measures. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the viral cause of COVID-19, is thought to have been introduced into the continent by returning travellers from hotspots in Asia, Europe and America. In a pandemic with Africa having relatively lower morbidity and mortality, it is alarming that in about five months since confirmation of the continent's first case of COVID-19 in Egypt on February 14th, 2020, the infection rate remains at an exponential phase with forty-seven African countries reporting a total of 766,803 cases, 13,191 deaths and 486,925 recoveries as at 31st July, 2020; out of which Nigeria reported 42,689 cases, 878 deaths and 19,290 recoveries, with Lagos State accounting for close to half of all cases in Nigeria. Importantly, lessons learnt during the Ebola epidemic have had a significant impact on Nigeria's COVID-19 response. In this article, we discuss Nigeria's response, health system preparedness and the lessons that are critical for containment of future outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics of any infectious disease in Africa.

Structure, Function, and Morphology in the Classification of Pituitary Neuroendocrine Tumors: the Importance of Routine Analysis of Pituitary Transcription Factors.

The traditional approach to the diagnosis of primary adenohypophyseal cell proliferations uses hormone immunohistochemistry to classify pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNETs). The routine application of immunolocalization of pituitary transcription factors (SF1, PIT1, TPIT, ERα, and recently GATA3) along with adenohypophyseal hormones has taught us critical lessons that are discussed in this communication. We point out that appropriate patient care requires accurate diagnosis and is critical in the era of precision medicine. A misdiagnosis can result in far greater health care costs than the cost of accurate tumor classification and may have other unintended consequences. We provide additional insights about confusing findings in genomic studies, emphasizing that high-quality pathology is essential for strong science and translational research.

Necessary conditions for integrated approaches to the post-conflict recovery of cultural heritage in the Arab World

ABSTRACT Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been a dominant theme over the past half century; yet, cultural heritage continues to be generally overlooked by mainstream post-war reconstruction practices and policies – perceived and treated as a luxury that cannot be afforded by societies coping with multiple over-riding priorities during conflict. After analysing the inherent interconnectedness of war and cultural heritage, this paper unearths nine specific deficiencies in policies, practices, and their implications. It then draws upon the efforts to protect and recover cultural heritage, and broader processes of post-war reconstruction, to offer ways forward through critical lessons that seek to advance academic discourse and act as guidance for good practice. These lessons emphasise the need for: a shared vision; integration of cultural heritage into the wider responses; sustained political and financial support; local capacity; participation of Indigenous actors; recognition of complementarity between replacement and conservation approaches; prioritisation of quality over speed of recovery; conservation codes and legislation; and finally, appreciation of belief and religion.

Review: Food Democracy: Critical Lessons in Food, Communication, Design and Art, Edited by Oliver Vodeb

Book Review| August 01 2020 Review: Food Democracy: Critical Lessons in Food, Communication, Design and Art, Edited by Oliver Vodeb Food Democracy: Critical Lessons in Food, Communication, Design and Art Edited by Oliver Vodeb Bristol: Intellect Ltd (distributed by University of Chicago Press), 2017 500 pp. Illustrations. $40.00 (paper) Pamela Tudge Pamela Tudge Concordia University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2020) 20 (3): 119–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2020.20.3.119 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Pamela Tudge; Review: Food Democracy: Critical Lessons in Food, Communication, Design and Art, Edited by Oliver Vodeb. Gastronomica 1 August 2020; 20 (3): 119–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2020.20.3.119 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions.2020The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Engaging migrant and refugee communities in non-formal science learning spaces

In this era of pandemics, economic crises and civil unrest, science centres and museums have an opportunity to become truly relevant resources to society. This paper summarises a number of critical lessons from the PISEA International Symposium, a conference held the at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna from the 17th–18th of October 2019. The purpose of this event was to share, learn, and discuss ways in which engagement with migrants and refugee populations might be improved within informal science learning spaces. Issues around integration, inclusive art-science practice, and shifting institutional policy and language were all explored. This paper also calls for the committed reform of informal science spaces, and a renewed commitment to responsive, equitable, and inclusive practice.

Surge activation by the emergency department for COVID-19

In March 2020, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) published a national strategic plan for COVID-19, which provides general guidelines yet leaves logistical details for institutions to determine. Key capabilities from this plan provided a crucial foundation for a 16-day Emergency Department (ED) surge planning process at one pediatric institution. This paper describes critical milestones and lessons learned during this brief period, including derivation of criteria for ED surge activation, a full-scale surge drill, and the resultant ED surge protocol. The framework of real-time evaluation was used throughout the planning process and involved constant and iterative synthesis of real-time feedback from multidisciplinary stakeholders for responsive decision-making. Ultimately, the objective of this paper is to provide timely and readily actionable information to other institutions seeking guidance to apply the ACEP strategic plan for COVID-19.

Best practices from International experiences for Eastern Africa countries regarding ancillary services markets

Some of the Eastern Africa Power Pool countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda are heavily dependent on hydro resources. Further, the grid is becoming increasingly unstable because of the variability from renewable generation. If the baseload units such as hydro units (or geothermal units in case of Kenya) kept on standby to provide ancillary services like active/reactive reserves, the cost of energy would increase. To avoid this, grid engineers, operators, and regulators in Eastern Africa can implement the best practices from the rest of the world. This paper summarizes three critical lessons learned from North America and Australia that can be applied to the Eastern Africa grid. The list is not comprehensive. However, it is a starting point to spark the discussion and draw the attention of national/international funding organizations to explore this area.

Bus rapid transit arrives in Barranquilla, Colombia: Understanding a changing landscape through residents' travel experiences

In this article, we describe how the travel experiences of residents of Barranquilla, Colombia have changed since a new bus rapid transit system was deployed in 2010 along with changes to pre-existing private transit services. We recruited interview participants using intercept methods at more than fifteen locations, conducted dozens of semi-structured interviews, and used collaborative and iterative coding to analyze the data.Interviewees expressed mixed feelings about the transition from private transit to the hybrid BRT-private transit system. Many were pleased about reductions in travel time, the air conditioning on BRT vehicles, and an increased sense of safety from crime. But most interviewees also identified significant drawbacks, most notably overcrowding, the insufficiency and complexity of BRT feeder routes, and the elimination of several private transit bus routes. While the free transfer between BRT trunk and feeder routes reduced some users’ out-of-pocket costs, some interviewees, expressed disappointment at losing the ability to bargain over fares.Our findings raise questions about equity in access and affordability, as well as issues of system legibility that emerged with BRT implementation. Another critical lesson from our research points out to a potentially significant problem: while BRT planners tended to focus on safety improvements and mitigating environmental damage, such goals seem to have come at the expense of other aspects that users see as more important, such as reducing improving travel times. Finally, our interviews revealed a complex interaction among transport services, in which some private transit lines complement BRT services while others compete with them.

Book Review: Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City

The case of Brian Sinclair, a First Nations man who died in a Winnipeg, Manitoba, hospital emergency room in 2008 after waiting 34 hours for medical care to treat a preventable infection, represents the degree to which structural indifference exists within Canadian society. This article reviews the book Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City by Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Adele Perry, published by University of Manitoba Press in 2018. The review will provide a content summary of each chapter along with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the book. A critical analysis of how the authors examined this case, using a place-based approach of the city, the hospital, and life and death of Brian Sinclair, is discussed. The review will identify critical concepts and lessons relevant to the development of Indigenous health policy and practice, which will be applicable to both a national and international audience.

COVID 19; challenges to critical care and lessons learnt

The Sri Lankan Journal of Anaesthesiology is the official journal of the College of Anaesthesiologists of Sri Lanka. It publishes clinical investigations, research articles, audits, case reports, review articles and CME articles relating to anaesthesiology, critical care and pain. It is published bi annually in January and June. Sri Lankan Journal of Anaesthesiology is included on DOAJ and Scopus.

When past is not a prologue: Adapting informatics practice during a pandemic

Data and information technology are key to every aspect of our response to the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic—including the diagnosis of patients and delivery of care, the development of predictive models of disease spread, and the management of personnel and equipment. The increasing engagement of informaticians at the forefront of these efforts has been a fundamental shift, from an academic to an operational role. However, the past history of informatics as a scientific domain and an area of applied practice provides little guidance or prologue for the incredible challenges that we are now tasked with performing. Building on our recent experiences, we present 4 critical lessons learned that have helped shape our scalable, data-driven response to COVID-19. We describe each of these lessons within the context of specific solutions and strategies we applied in addressing the challenges that we faced.

That Was Then, This Is Wow: A Case for Critical Information Literacy Across the Curriculum

This article applies a Writing across the Curriculum approach to Critical Library Instruction. The information landscape has drastically shifted over the past ten years, altering the ways we perform, interact with, access, and understand research. These changes call for critical library instruction programs that are more robust and sustained than the one- or two-shot critical library instruction lesson I had described in 2010. However, college classroom practices, due to a variety of challenges, have been slow to adapt to this need. In this article written from my perspective as an English teacher, I identify the central place of critical information literacy (CIL) in higher education, aligning it with calls for a new educational approach for the 21st century. As one possible way forward, I draw on insights from writing across the curriculum to recommend a collaborative critical information literacy across the curriculum model that would provide students with sustained and increasingly advanced exposure to CIL throughout their undergraduate years.

Elevating the art of medicine: A caregiver's reflection.

The following narrative chronicles the unlikely events of the author, an editorial director of an oncology publication, whose experience with cancer was purely academic in nature until 2 family members were diagnosed simultaneously with breast cancer and melanoma, respectively. The perspective‐altering encounters from inside the healthcare system revealed critical lessons regarding the importance of patient‐centered care as key to empowering patients and creating a sense of peace for survivors.

Process evaluation ofhealth system costing - Experience from CHSI study in India.

BackgroundA national study, ‘Costing of healthcare services in India’ (CHSI) aimed at generating reliable healthcare cost estimates for health technology assessment and price-setting is being undertaken in India. CHSI sampled 52 public and 40 private hospitals in 13 states and used a mixed micro-costing approach. This paper aims to outline the process, challenges and critical lessons of cost data collection to feed methodological and quality improvement of data collection.MethodsAn exploratory survey with 3 components–an online semi-structured questionnaire, group discussion and review of monitoring data, was conducted amongst CHSI data collection teams. There were qualitative and quantitative components. Difficulty in obtaining individual data was rated on a Likert scale.ResultsMean time taken to complete cost data collection in one department/speciality was 7.86(±0.51) months, majority of which was spent on data entry and data issues resolution. Data collection was most difficult for determination of equipment usage (mean difficulty score 6.59±0.52), consumables prices (6.09±0.58), equipment price(6.05±0.72), and furniture price(5.64±0.68). Human resources, drugs & consumables contributed to 78% of total cost and 31% of data collection time. However, furniture, overheads and equipment consumed 51% of time contributing only 9% of total cost. Seeking multiple permissions, absence of electronic records, multiple sources of data were key challenges causing delays.ConclusionsMicro-costing is time and resource intensive. Addressing key issues prior to data collection would ease the process of data collection, improve quality of estimates and aid priority setting. Electronic health records and availability of national cost data base would facilitate conducting costing studies.

The location of the visualization at the Diamond Record

abu Muhammad al-Sijlmassi, who lived in Morocco in the late seventh Hijri century (7 AH), considered as one of the greatest pioneers Moroccan rhetorical school ,he was creative as he wrote his book tagged (The adorable Inclination in gendering methods of prose) In AH 704 / AD 1304. (The adorable Inclination) 'is an innovative and serious book in criticism and rhetoric from a philosophical and logical point of view, in which Al Sijilmassi employed the mind, taste and culture between Arabic and Greek in the critical and rhetorical lesson, and came up with a new approach that is more understanding of Aristotelian theories in criticism and rhetoric. The aim of this study was to show the distinctive features of the book of the Inclination through a review of the most important of the topics classified by Al Sijlmassi under the science of the rhetoric - especially mentioning those related to poetry and capillarity and the main elements that Al Sijlmassi sees are the real components the capillarity of poetry and art and it`s beauty, where this was a reality In a type of (imagination) more than all other types, and therefore our study came to the gender of imagination more detailed and broaden than the rest of the genders of the book; because imagination is the subject of poetic formation, and this is field of our study. We did not forget to also observe any other species that may be a catalyst in the formation of poetry, occurred in a section other than the section of imagination, so the methodology of this study began with a quick view of the era of Al Sijlmassi and a brief on his biography, and his thought about the development of rhetoric in his time. Then we presented in the second section some of the features of the book and the new of Al Sijlmassi, which distinguish him, before we get to the third section, as soon as we enter it we get in his world and we begin our tour in it and what he inundates about the subject of imagination, which is our main subject of this study. It was found through the brief research that Al Sijlmassi is a pioneer in the field of criticism, rhetoric and literary theorem, resulted from the deep thought and deepening of the culture of both Arabic and Greek, as we have seen his progress in his vision of poetry and capillarity components, and the importance of providing imagination before anything else, so that poetry to be a Complete and vibrant living being. As we conclude from our study of the types of rhetoric Al Sijlmassi has, he monitored a lot of important pillars that revives the words and sentences and versification and transmit poetic blood in it, and thus create to the recipient pleasure, emotion and provocation. Finally, we hope that we have succeeded as much as our humble effort in going through a giant book!

Three lessons for the COVID-19 response from pandemic HIV

The HIV pandemic provides lessons for the response to the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: no vaccine is available for either and there are no licensed pharmaceuticals for COVID-19, just as there was not for HIV infection in the early years. Population behaviour will determine the pandemic trajectory of COVID-19,1 just as it did for HIV.

Building a Medical Undergraduate Palliative Care Curriculum: Lessons Learned.

Previous literature demonstrates that current palliative care training is in need of improvement for medical students in global, European and Canadian contexts. The training of medical undergraduates is key to ensure that the ongoing and increasing need for enhanced access to palliative care across all settings and communities is met. We describe building a comprehensive palliative and end-of-life care curriculum for medical undergraduates at our university. As with recent European and US studies, we found that the process of university curriculum renewal provided a critical opportunity to integrate palliative care content, but needed a local palliative care champion already in place as an energetic and tireless advocate. The development and integration of a substantive bilingual (English and French) palliative and end-of-life care curriculum over the 4-year medical undergraduate program at our university has occurred over the course of 14 years, and required multiple steps and initiatives. Subsequent to the development of the curriculum, there has been a 13-fold increase in students selecting our palliative care clinical rotations. Critical lessons learned speak to the importance of having a team vision, interprofessional collaboration with a focus on vision, plans and implementation, and flexibility to actively respond and further integrate new educational opportunities within the curriculum. Future directions for our palliative care curriculum include shifting to a competency-based training and evaluation paradigm. Our findings and lessons learned may help others who are working to develop a comprehensive undergraduate medical education curriculum.