Empirical Categories Research Articles

Optimal biochar selection for cadmium pollution remediation in Chinese agricultural soils via optimized machine learning

Biochar is effective in mitigating heavy metal pollution, and cadmium (Cd) is the primary pollutant in agricultural fields. However, traditional trial-and-error methods for determining the optimal biochar remediation efficiency are time-consuming and inefficient because of the varied soil, biochar, and Cd pollution conditions. This study employed the machine learning method to predict the Cd immobilization efficiency of biochar in soil. The predictive accuracy of the random forest (RF) model was superior to that of the other common linear and nonlinear models. Furthermore, to improve the reliability and accuracy of the RF model, it was optimized by employing a root-mean-squared-error-based trial-and-error approach. With the aid of the optimized model, the empirical categories for soil Cd immobilization efficiency were biochar properties (60.96 %) > experimental conditions (19.6 %) ≈ soil properties (19.44 %). Finally, this study identified the optimal biochar properties for enhancing agricultural soil Cd remediation in different regions of China, which was beneficial for decision-making regarding nationwide agricultural soil remediation using biochar. The immobilization effect of alkaline biochar was pronounced in acidic soils with relatively high organic matter. This study provides insights into the immobilization mechanism and an approach for biochar selection for Cd immobilization in agricultural soil.

Intuitional Content or Avoiding the Myth of the Given – A Dilemma for McDowell

ABSTRACT McDowell’s “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” (2008, 2009) attempts to reconcile two claims: 1) what we most fundamentally experience is a fundamental level of invariable simple objects and their sensible properties; experience of these objects and properties is the ultimate ground of our knowledge of the world; 2) experience is through-and-through conceptually structured. This leads McDowell to endorsing the incoherent notion of intuitional content – necessary and thus irrevisable basic empirical conceptually structured contents or empirical categories. The notion requires the necessity and irrevisability of purely formal concepts and the on-going responsiveness to experience of empirical concepts. This reveals a dilemma: If the fundamental objects of experience are invariable then they cannot have empirically conceptual form; for revisability is a mark of the empirically conceptual. But purely formal concepts cannot give us the fundamental empirical structure of the world. The dilemma forces us to choose between claiming that the fundamental objects of experience are invariable and claiming that they are conceptually formed. I conclude by briefly describing how Kant successfully faces the challenge of accounting for the most fundamental invariable level of objects of experience without yielding to the myth of the given.

Violence suffered by Venezuelan immigrant female sex workers: an intersectional view.

To characterize and analyze violence committed against Venezuelan immigrant female sex workers, from the perspective of an intersectional look at social class, gender and race-ethnicity. Exploratory study with a qualitative approach. Data sources: interviews with 15 Venezuelan immigrant women sex workers and 37 Brazilian online media reports that addressed the topic. Data were submitted to thematic content analysis, with the support of Qualitative Data Analysis (WebQDA) software. Thematic analysis of data from reports and interviews allowed the emergence of three empirical categories: Structural violence and reasons that led to prostitution: a question of social class; Among the forms of violence, the most feared: physical violence; Violence based on gender and race-ethnicity. The study made it possible to recognize that Venezuelan immigrant women who are sex workers in Brazil are subject to different types of violence and exploitation. This scenario is due to a reality of life and work that is based on the exploitation of female workers who experience the consequences of the interweaving of subalternities characteristic of their social insertion of class, gender and race-ethnicity.

Ethnically distinct populations and coping with violence against children in the COVID-19 pandemic.

To identify policies and programs adopted by a Brazilian municipality to address violence against children during the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative documentary study. The study setting was the municipality of Ananindeua, Pará, Brazil. Data was collected from official websites between November 2021 and February 2022. Thematic content analysis was used with the support of webQDA software. Three empirical categories emerged: a) Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on violence against children; b) Action strategies for tackling violence against children in the COVID-19 pandemic; c) Evaluation indicators and targets for action strategies for tackling violence against children. The documents revealed few direct mentions of children, especially traditional populations; they presented superficial and ineffective evaluations of the policies and programs adopted, using exclusively quantitative indicators.

Men's perception of paternal parenthood and the promotion of child development.

to comprehend men's perception of paternal parenthood while caring for infants to promote child development. this qualitative study adopts an exploratory approach and was conducted with undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff who are fathers of infants up to 6 months old from a higher education institution, excluding fathers from mononuclear families. Data collection occurred through semi-structured interviews and was analyzed using thematic categorical analysis. fifteen men participated in the study. From the analysis, two empirical categories emerged: "Perception of being a father: challenges and novelties" and "Promotion of child development: actions carried out by fathers". Fathers revealed feeling unprepared, the need for emotional support, and recognized activities aimed at their children's development. the relevance of the paternal figure for child development is highlighted, as well as the need for public policies to encourage paternal parenthood.

Effects of the Reduction of the Food Purchase Program Resources for the Family Farmer

The Food Acquisition Program (FAP) created in 2003 during the first term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva represents a change in the way family farmers are benefited. However, in the period of 2019-2022 (Bolsonaro’s Government) the setback in the implementation of social policies, which began during President Dilma Roussef’s second term, worsened. In this context, this article sought to investigate the effects of the partial implementation of the FAP on the lives of family farmers in the municipality of Maracanaú-CE in that period. This is an excerpt from the dissertation “Evaluation of the Municipal Food and Nutrition Security Policy in the Municipality of Maracanaú-Ceará”, which was developed through a Fourth Generation Assessment from February to November 2022, using the Hermeneutic Circle Dialectic. The informants were family farmers benefiting from the program. Empirical data were constructed through individual semi-structured interviews, field observation and field diary, which allowed creating the empirical categories: Benefit of participating in the FAP; Challenges for maintaining family farming in recent years and Support from municipal managers to family farmers. The study concluded that the partial execution of the FAP due to the reduction in the transfer of federal resources had effects regarding the guarantee of sales, the reduction of sales and the value of products, on the conditions for purchasing equipment and supplies. This situation was worsened by insufficient support from municipal management in terms of providing resources and technical assistance, which generated instability in the segment and discouraged people from continuing with family farming. These findings allow us to reflect on the importance of the FAP to keep family farmers in the field, generate security and stability, and promote quality of life not only for the segment, but for consumers who seek healthy food produced in a sustainable way.

A experiência materna no cotidiano de cuidados dos bebês de risco no domicílio

This article proposes to present the maternal experience in the daily routine of caring for babies at-risk. Thematic oral histories were carried out with three mothers of babies attended at a rehabilitation service in the city of São Paulo, selected for convenience. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, textualized and transcreated and, after thematic analysis, two empirical categories were identified: (i) Going home: the first care between joy and fear; (ii) Care at home, the referrals and the personal construction of the network. The study concluded that the arrival of the baby in the post-discharge household was a moment of joy and fear and that the mothers assumed the role of almost exclusive caregiver, having to deal with the instability of the baby's health condition. In addition to routine care, mothers performed specialized procedures and outpatient follow-up of infants. The precarious supply of programs and policies to support post-discharge care required mothers to undertake the personal construction of a care network. Thus, the daily care of at-risk babies at home proved to be an exhausting experience for women, although perceived as pleasant and full of affection.

Access to food and food quality: perception of the homeless population

Objective To understand the perception of access to food and food quality for the street population. Methods This qualitative descriptive study was performed in a Reference Center for the Homeless Population in the south-central region of Belo Horizonte (MG). A semi-structured script was used to conduct interviews with 18 participants. Data collection occurred between December 2020 and January 2021. The thematic analysis of the material, as proposed by Bardin, made it possible to elaborate three empirical categories. Results The public interviewed was male, with a mean age of 43 years, and a mean time on the streets of 44.6 months. Access to food came from donations, meals at government institutions, and acquisition when income was available. Difficulties were reported regarding the quantity and quality of food, acquisition of meals on weekends, feelings of fear and anguish in the face of hunger, lack of food, and social stigma, which were aggravated by COVID-19. Conclusion As in this scenario of social inequalities the access to food is not guaranteed, implementing public policies of social protection is necessary to guarantee basic rights.

Nationalism and Northern Ireland: a rejoinder to Ian McBride on ‘ethnicity and conflict’

ABSTRACT The concept of ‘Ethnicity’ still enjoys some currency in the historical and social science literature. However, the cogency of the idea remains disputed. First coming to prominence in the 1980s, the word is often used to depict the character of social relations in the context of conflicts over sovereignty. The case of Northern Ireland presents a paradigmatic example. This article is a rejoinder to Ian McBride’s contention that my scepticism about the notion lacks justification. With reference to disputes over the state, I show in response that ‘ethnicity’ in effect means nationality. I further claim that the nation state is a successor to the dynastic state. In clarifying the meaning of this arrangement, the article brings out how the nation is a juridical rather than empirical category. More specifically, it derives from the notion of corporate personality in law. For this reason, its retrospective integrity is a matter of fabrication, depending on the fiction of ancestral continuity. At the same time, its future-oriented cohesiveness means that it must be invested with a unifying will. I conclude that the legitimacy of a nation state rests on its democratic will, whose coherence is expressed in the action of its government.

Democratic centralism: The root cause of poor municipal performance in South Africa

This paper is a product of a Doctoral study that applied grounded theory to derive a performance improvement model for a particular Municipality in South Africa. Drawing from this study, this paper argues that democratic centralism, which manifests in politicised bureaucracy and implemented through the ANC policy of cadre deployment, is the root cause of poor performance across South African municipalities. In advancing this argument, the paper interrogates public management literature to conceptualise poor municipal performance and justify the relevance of the politics-administration dichotomy as a framework for positioning democratic centralism as the root cause of poor performance in South African municipalities. In addition, interrogating public management literature allowed the author to identify methodological limitations of past studies and select grounded theory as the most appropriate research design to address these limitations. In applying grounded theory, the author used purposive sampling to identify research participants who were subsequently interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. In preparation for data analysis, the author recorded and transcribed the information obtained from the interviews. Thereafter, the author used open coding with particular emphasis on constant comparative analysis and theoretical sampling. The use of these techniques allowed the author to move the level of abstraction from open codes through to empirical categories leading to generation of empirical explanations that link democratic centralism to poor performance in South African municipalities. To this end, the paper empirically linked poor municipal performance, often displayed through violent protests, to democratic centralism, a phenomenon entrenched into the South African public service through the ANC policy of cadre deployment.

Prediction and interpretation of photocatalytic NO removal on g-C3N4-based catalysts using machine learning

Predictive modeling of photocatalytic NO removal is highly desirable for efficient air pollution abatement. However, great challenges remain in precisely predicting photocatalytic performance and understanding interactions of diverse features in the catalytic systems. Herein, a dataset of g-C3N4-based catalysts with 255 data points was collected from peer-reviewed publications and machine learning (ML) model was proposed to predict the NO removal rate. The result shows that the Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) demonstrated the greatest prediction accuracy with R2 of 0.999 and 0.907 on the training and test data, respectively. The SHAP value and feature importance analysis revealed that the empirical categories for NO removal rate, in the order of importance, were catalyst characteristics > reaction process > preparation conditions. Moreover, the partial dependence plots broke the ML black box to further quantify the marginal contributions of the input features (e.g., doping ratio, flow rate, and pore volume) to the model output outcomes. This ML approach presents a pure data-driven, interpretable framework, which provides new insights into the influence of catalyst characteristics, reaction process, and preparation conditions on NO removal.

Tecnologia educacional sobre tuberculose: construção compartilhada com enfermeiros da Atenção Primária à Saúde

ABSTRACT Objective: to develop, in a participatory way, an educational technology to assist nurses in the management of tuberculosis cases in Primary Health Care. Methods: methodological research with a qualitative approach. Data were collected between June and October 2022, in 25 Basic Health Units, with 41 nurses interviewed individually. Thematic content analysis was carried out to guide technology elaboration. Results: three empirical categories were organized, demonstrating the facilities and difficulties in tuberculosis management, the conceptions about educational technology as a facilitator of the teaching-learning process in Primary Health Care and participatory development of technology. Nurses were in favor of constructing an instructional guide technology, and made suggestions to encourage its creation and use in daily service routine. Final considerations: the participatory process made it possible to create technology to assist nurses in the teaching-learning process in Primary Health Care about caring for people with tuberculosis.

Cotidiano de pessoas que vivem com VIH em Bissau, Guiné-Bissau: perspectivas, desafios e vulnerabilidades

ABSTRACT Objective to understand perspectives and challenges in the daily lives of people after the discovery of living with HIV in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, considering different contexts of vulnerability. Method an exploratory-descriptive study conducted through semi-structured interviews with sixteen people living with HIV attending a hospital in the city of Bissau. We used the thematic content analysis technique. Participants’ reports were analyzed following two empirical categories: Discovery, impacts and challenges of living with HIV; and Experience with antiretroviral therapy: new beginning and perspectives. Results the results indicate that the challenges start with the disclosure of diagnosis, which arouses a diversity of feelings and behaviors. Stigma and discrimination encourage the adoption of confidentiality about serological status, which increases the fragility of emotional support in coping with seropositivity. Antiretroviral therapy was seen as a hope for coping with the disease. Social vulnerability was the dimension that stood out the most, and human rights violations involving people living with HIV were verified. Conclusion and implications for practice the study makes it possible to understand the perspectives, challenges and vulnerabilities of people living with HIV. Living with HIV deserves special attention from health professionals who work in the care of these people, highlighting as a contribution the relevance of comprehensive health care, in which ethics and subjectivity are present.

Health care for people with tuberculosis/HIV co-infection from the multidisciplinary team's perspective.

to know the multidisciplinary team's perspective about the health care of people with tuberculosis and human immunodeficiency virus co-infection in relation to treatment. this is a descriptive-exploratory study, with a qualitative approach, carried out in a health care service in São Paulo, from May to June 2019. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine professionals from the multidisciplinary team. Data were processed through discourse analysis with the support of webQDA. Two empirical categories emerged: Health care interfaces for people with tuberculosis and human immunodeficiency virus co-infection; Barriers and facilitators for health care for people with co-infection. the health-disease process in co-infection is mediated by conditions that positively or negatively interfere with treatment compliance. People's health care goes beyond exclusively clinical assistance and requires the recognition of needs in a broad perspective.

Condições de saúde e relação com os serviços de saúde na perspectiva de pessoas de quilombo

Abstract Objectives to analyze the perceptions of the Quilombola population of Caldeirão about their health conditions and to identify the possibilities and difficulties in the relationship with the health services in their territory. Method a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study, carried out in the Quilombola Community from Caldeirão, Marajó Island, Pará, Brazil. Data production took place from March to April 2021, through individual semi-structured interviews with 30 residents, and thematic content analysis was applied. Results two empirical categories originated, revealing the Quilombola population’s perceptions about their health conditions and the health-disease process, the relationship that the community had with the local health services and the strengths and weaknesses inherent to this relationship. Conclusions and implications for practice Quilombola people’s perceptions showed a predominance of biomedical knowledge and a hospital-centric view, in addition to their weakened relationship with local health services. It is expected that the research results will encourage dialogue about these populations, considering that they represent a traditional group in a vulnerable situation. It is necessary to carry out further research to investigate/strengthen the Family Health Strategy role and unveil/problematize traditional knowledge in the face of biomedical knowledge hegemony in the scenario of Quilombola populations.

Vulnerabilities to illnesses in women living on the border of the Guiana Shield mines.

To analyze the the vulnerabilities to illnesses in women living on the border of the Guiana Shield mines: Brazil, French Guiana, and Suriname. Descriptive, exploratory field study with a qualitative approach. Data collection took place with 19 women who were living in the mining context, in April 2018. The interviews were recorded and transcribed in full and subsequently analyzed in the light of the concept of vulnerability. Women aged between 30 and 39 years, predominantly black and brown, on a common-law marriage, multiparous, of low level of education, and with work activities related to mining. Three empirical categories emerged: Exposure to environmental and life conditions in the mines: vulnerabilities to illnesses in women; Sexual and reproductive health in the context of borders: the invisibility between legality and illegality; Gendered facets of violence in the mines on the border of the Guiana Shield. Vulnerability is marked in the three dimensions of the concept: in the difficult access to health services, in the discontinued treatment, and in the disparity in health policies within countries, which are important aspects of vulnerability and health conditions.

Endometriosis and its relationship with female infertility: an integrative review

This article presents an integrative literature review aimed at reviewing the relationship between endometriosis and female infertility between the years 2016-2022. In this type of study, the integrative review helps to obtain, identify and analyze a specific topic in the literature. Thus, the objective of this work is to extract information from the updated literature through articles selected between the years 2016-2022 in empirical categories called: “Relationship of endometriosis with female infertility”; “Early diagnosis of endometriosis and the influence on female infertility”; "Treatment of endometriosis and the impact on women's health", in order to relate endometriosis to female infertility in an integrative review. The conclusion is, therefore, that health professionals, who manage the treatment of endometriosis, should be attentive to early diagnosis, whether in the form of a questionnaire or laboratory tests, treatment and, consequently, the quality of women's life.

Categories of analysis of mental health for psychology students

Objective: the research aims to understand challenges of university life from the perspective of mental health from undergraduates of the psychology course. Methods: to this end, data were collected through field diary entries and workshops with first and second semester undergraduates students of the psychology course. The workshop started from a script elaborated considering three analytical categories of the study: young people's way of life, mental health and experience in Higher Education. Results: the results, with definitions of the empirical categories performance, responsibilities, coping, relationship with teachers, social support, and adaptation to the university culture and to the new city, pointed out that university is a space represented by individual and collective experiences, which demand and impact the trajectory of life. Conclusion: one notices challenges related to expectations about academic performance and anxieties about the professional future that influence the academic path.

Competências de promoção da saúde: em foco os usuários do projeto Praia sem Barreiras

Abstract Carrying out university extension actions on beaches represents an innovative opportunity to promote the health of people with disabilities or reduced mobility. This article aims to analyze the understanding of users of the Beach Without Barriers (PSB, Praia sem Barreiras) Project about the Health Promotion practices developed by undergraduate students in the health area. Qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study, based on interviews with ten PSB users in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. A thematic analysis of content was carried out anchored on Developing Competencies and Professional Standards for Health Promotion Capacity Building in Europe. Six empirical categories emerged: Dedication of students working in the PSB, Technical qualification of students in the PSB, Emotion during contact with the sea, Mental health improvement, User guidance to students as future professionals and Opinions about the PSB. The qualification of students as agents of change in the local reality, effective communication and strategic partnerships were demonstrated. Actions that transcend bodily limitations and assess the participants’ health needs should be valued in undergraduate school.

Prediction of Soil Heavy Metal Immobilization by Biochar Using Machine Learning.

Biochar application is a promising strategy for the remediation of contaminated soil, while ensuring sustainable waste management. Biochar remediation of heavy metal (HM)-contaminated soil primarily depends on the properties of the soil, biochar, and HM. The optimum conditions for HM immobilization in biochar-amended soils are site-specific and vary among studies. Therefore, a generalized approach to predict HM immobilization efficiency in biochar-amended soils is required. This study employs machine learning (ML) approaches to predict the HM immobilization efficiency of biochar in biochar-amended soils. The nitrogen content in the biochar (0.3–25.9%) and biochar application rate (0.5–10%) were the two most significant features affecting HM immobilization. Causal analysis showed that the empirical categories for HM immobilization efficiency, in the order of importance, were biochar properties > experimental conditions > soil properties > HM properties. Therefore, this study presents new insights into the effects of biochar properties and soil properties on HM immobilization. This approach can help determine the optimum conditions for enhanced HM immobilization in biochar-amended soils.