Imminent Issues Research Articles

Hypotension with neurovascular changes and cognitive dysfunction: An epidemiological, pathobiological, and treatment review.

Hypotension is a leading cause of age-related cognitive impairment. The available literature evidences that vascular factors are associated with dementia and that hypotension alters cerebral perfusion flow and can aggravate the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Despite the discovery of biomarkers and the recent progress made in neurovascular biology, epidemiology, and brain imaging, some key issues remain largely unresolved: the potential mechanisms underlying the neural deterioration observed in AD, the effect of cerebrovascular alterations on cognitive deficits, and the positive effects of hypotension treatment on cognition. Therefore, further well-designed studies are needed to unravel the potential association between hypotension and cognitive dysfunction and reveal the potential benefits of hypotension treatment for AD patients. Here, we review the current epidemiological, pathobiological, and treatment-related literature on neurovascular changes and hypotension-related cognitive dysfunction and highlight the unsettled but imminent issues that warrant future research endeavors.

Analysis of a nurse-provided on-call peritoneal dialysis support in an outpatient reference care centre

BackgroundTo analyse the nature of medical or technical emergency issues of ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients calling a nurse-provided emergency PD support service of a reference centre that is provided all year in the after-hours.MethodsWe retrospectively analysed patients’ chief complaint, urgency, resolution of and association to current PD treatment and modality directed to an on-call nurse-provided PD support service from 2015–2021 based on routinely collected health data. Calls were systematically categorized being technical/procedural-, medical-, material-related or type of correspondence. Call urgency was categorized to have “immediate consequence”, inquiry was eligible for “processing next working day” or whether there was “no need for further action”. Call outcomes were classified according to whether patients were able to initiate, resume or finalize their treatments or whether additional interventions were required. Unexpected adverse events such as patients’ acute hospitalization or need for nurses’ home visits were evaluated and quantified.ResultsIn total 753 calls were documented. Most calls were made around 7:30 a.m. (5:00–9:00; median, 25-75th CI) and 6:30 p.m. (5:00–8:15). 645 calls were assigned to continuous ambulatory- (CAPD) or automated PD (APD). Of those, 430 calls (66.7%) had an “immediate consequence”. Of those 77% (N = 331) were technical/procedural-, 12.8% (N = 55) medical- and 6.3% (N = 27) material related issues. 4% (N = 17) were categorized as other correspondence.Issues disrupting the course of PD were identified in 413 cases. In 77.5% (N = 320) patients were able to initiate, resume or finalize their treatment after phone consultation. Last-bag exchange was used in 6.1% enabling continued therapy in 83.6%.In 35 cases a nurse visit at patients’ home or patients' visit to the practice at the earliest possible date were required, while hospitalization was required in seven medical category cases (5.4% and 1.09% of total assessed calls, respectively).ConclusionThe on-call PD-nurse provides patient support for acute and imminent issues enabling them to successfully initiate, resume or finalize their prescribed treatment. Nurses triage of acute conditions facilitated rapid diagnostics and therapy. Maintaining quality PD homecare, the provision of trained personnel is indispensable. The information gathered in this study may therefore be used as a foundation to tailor educational programs for nephrology nurses and doctors to further develop their competencies in PD.

Toward a transformative climate change adaptation from local to global perspective—A transdisciplinary challenge by Kyoto Climate Change Adaptation Center

Policies for climate change adaptation differ from those for climate change mitigation, both of which share the common aim of maintaining a sustainable climate system that enables humankind to survive while enjoying wellbeing. Considering the variability in regional conditions, they must be diverse throughout the policymaking process, with the participation of multiple stakeholders, to place the livelihood of residents as the central issue. Simultaneously, these regional diversities must also be realized in a manner consistent with the global goal of climate change mitigation. To that end, comprehensive and transformative adaptation measures are essential, rather than responding to imminent issues on an ad-hoc basis. As the literature shows, a transdisciplinary approach involving researchers across different fields and multiple non-academic sectors can fill the gaps in transformative adaptation. Still, it has yet to be implemented because of the lack of experience of this issue. Here, we present key findings that affect the generation of synergies and tradeoffs among issues through our novel transdisciplinary approach in Kyoto, Japan, via a series of Future Design workshops in agriculture in collaboration with local farmers, regional policymakers, and researchers with diverse backgrounds. These results provide a direction for future research to secure a methodological foundation that will facilitate the sustainability of these efforts.

One-pot methanolysis of poly(ethylene terephthalate) enabled by isopropanol-assisted CO2 hydrogenation

BackgroundRecently the plastic pollution and CO2 emission have both become critical issues to be addressed for the sake of a sustainable and carbon-neutral society. To cope with these imminent issues, it is imperative to develop new processes to recycle and reutilize the waste plastics and CO2 produced by anthropogenic activities. MethodsIn this study, the chemical recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) was conducted via a one-pot process, in which PET was degraded into dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and ethylene glycol (EG) by methanol (MeOH) that was in-situ produced by CO2 hydrogenation over the Cu/ZnO catalyst. The effect of alcohol addition on the one-pot PET methanolysis was investigated in an attempt to enhance the MeOH and DMT yields. Significant findingsOur results reveal that the added isopropanol (i-PrOH) could act as a catalytic solvent to boost the PET degradation (from 31.9% to 63.1% PET conversion) with a high DMT selectivity (92.7%) from the CO2-H2-PET system. Such high DMT selectivity is attributed to the limited PET alcoholysis and DMT transesterification ability of i-PrOH. These findings demonstrate that the one-pot PET methanolysis enabled by i-PrOH-assisted CO2 hydrogenation is a promising approach to valorize waste PET and CO2 simultaneously with a high efficiency.

EU State Aid Rules and the European Green Deal: Will Their Stars Align?

The European Union (EU) is in the process of revamping its star cast for a greener production. While, economic growth and competition rules have dominated the centre stage and been the lead actors so far, the director - European Commission (EC) is now trying to spotlight imminent issues such as ‘sustainability’, ‘environment protection’ and ‘climate change’ through its newest rising stars the ‘European green deal’, ‘European climate law’ and ‘Fit for 55’ package, albeit with some resistance from senior actors such as ‘competition rules’, more specifically the ‘state aid rules’. This paper covers the story of the rise, conflicts and probable conciliation between these actors on the grand EU stage. European Green Deal, EU State aid, Competition, Fit for 55, Environment, Sustainability

Deterioration of Mental Health in Children and Adolescents During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper reviews the global effect of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the mental health of children and adolescents in South Korea, the U.S., Japan, and China. We reviewed research on deteriorated mental health, including increased suicide, suicidal thoughts, and self-harm. Various studies have shown that students' mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the number of students who committed suicide has significantly increased in the U.S. and Japan. Factors such as prior mental health status, change in daily routine, reduced physical activity, excessive screen time, overuse of electronic devices, and reduced social support have been reported to have a significant effect. The chain of deteriorating mental health among the youth began at the onset of COVID-19, social distancing, and school closure. As youths began to stay at home instead of going to school, they lost opportunities to connect with their friends or teachers, who could provide support outside of their homes. Young people spent less time on physical activity and more time online, which damaged their sleeping schedule and daily routine. In preparing for the post-pandemic phase, we should thoroughly analyze the long-term effects of the pandemic on youth mental health, while simultaneously tackling current imminent issues.

Evaluation of 1,3-dioxolane in promoting CO2 hydrate kinetics and its significance in hydrate-based CO2 sequestration

To reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions for the mitigation of climate change require novel CCUS solutions. Hydrate-based CO2 sequestration (HCS) is a novel carbon-neutrality technology that aims to store CO2 in solid hydrate form with long-term stability. However, imminent issues exist for the application of HCS in terms of demanding thermodynamic conditions, slow formation kinetics, and low CO2 gas uptake. These challenges necessitate the quest for an efficient and eco-friendly CO2 hydrate promoter. In this study, 1,3-dioxolane (DIOX) as a low-toxicity CO2 hydrate promoter was systematically examined. The phase equilibria, cage occupancy, and the kinetics of binary CO2 + DIOX hydrate were measured for DIOX concentrations (CDIOX) varying from 0.05 mol% to 5.56 mol%. It was confirmed that DIOX is a dual-function promoter for CO2 hydrate, but its promotion effect is weakened for CDIOX between 0.60 mol% and 1.00 mol% and for all CDIOX at relatively high pressure. The CO2 uptake in the hydrate phase increases with CDIOX above 2.00 mol% and is the highest for CDIOX = 5.56 mol% (57.08 ± 6.39 mmol/mol). Based on the morphology observation, hydrate transits from ice-like to slurry to mushy-like and finally to snow-like with increasing CDIOX. Interestingly, we observed that the aqueous phase separates into two phases (i.e., DIOX-rich and H2O-rich) at pressure above 3.09 MPa, which explains the gradual loss of the promotion effect. The results of our study provide a comprehensive evaluation on DIOX as a possible promoter for CO2 hydrate in HCS application.

Concentration Network for Reinforcement Learning of Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems

When dealing with a series of imminent issues, humans can naturally concentrate on a subset of these concerning issues by prioritizing them according to their contributions to motivational indices, e.g., the probability of winning a game. This idea of concentration offers insights into reinforcement learning of sophisticated Large-scale Multi-Agent Systems (LMAS) participated by hundreds of agents. In such an LMAS, each agent receives a long series of entity observations at each step, which can overwhelm existing aggregation networks such as graph attention networks and cause inefficiency. In this paper, we propose a concentration network called ConcNet. First, ConcNet scores the observed entities considering several motivational indices, e.g., expected survival time and state value of the agents, and then ranks, prunes, and aggregates the encodings of observed entities to extract features. Second, distinct from the well-known attention mechanism, ConcNet has a unique motivational subnetwork to explicitly consider the motivational indices when scoring the observed entities. Furthermore, we present a concentration policy gradient architecture that can learn effective policies in LMAS from scratch. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the presented architecture has excellent scalability and flexibility, and significantly outperforms existing methods on LMAS benchmarks.

Dilemata zelené matky: proměna environmentálně příznivého spotřebního chování očima prvorodičky

The process of becoming a mother is substantially linked to consumption. It can facilitate this process, but it can also put new mothers through anxiety, stress and fear of failure. Environmentally conscious women face an even greater challenge as they have to combine their pro-environmental values with the specific social norms. We conducted in-depth interviews with six such women – we called them Green Mothers. Rather than focusing on changes in their behaviour, we became interested in dilemmas they have been dealing with. We concluded that consumption plays a somewhat secondary role in accepting their maternal role – Green Mothers keep their reticent attitude. However, they have become less radical and have accepted consumer compromises. Lifestyle dilemmas are most apparent in relation to identity. Green Mothers turn from their intellectual approach to physicality, health concerns and needs of their children. Their interest in global problems declined as they had shifted their focus to more local and imminent issues. Adopting pro-environmental practices is primarily influenced neither by lack of finances, nor by social pressure, but by time. Therefore, our research contributes to the discussion on the high demands of environmentally-friendly lifestyles.

TURKISH-IRANIAN COMPETITION IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA

Turkey and Iran have maintained stable relations for decades and established cooperation by exploring their common interests despite many political disputes, ideological differences, or economic competition. But recently, many emerging disagreements of the two neighbors started to test the breaking point of this longtime balance. Today, Ankara and Tehran are trying to get a better hand against each other through diplomatic, military, and economic instruments. Starting by presenting an overview of Turkish-Iranian relations, this article focuses on the main points of friction between the two actors in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. The region is going through a critical juncture with crucial events such as the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 and the aftermaths of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. So far, Turkey has increased its regional influence by strengthening its economic and diplomatic presence and establishing military cooperation. This target is pursued through the Turkic identity, which provides the ideological basis for Ankara’s regional strategy. The Islamic Republic of Iran, on the other hand, is trying to defend the regional status quo to resist the containment strategy and international isolation that it has been facing since the revolution. The “axis of resistance” idea that Iran pursues, especially in the Middle East, is almost nonexistent in the Central Asian and Caucasian region due to the Russian factor, lack of sympathy to such an approach on the part of the regional actors, and the Regime’s reluctance to change the status quo in its Northern and Eastern borders. In addition to Ankara and Tehran’s competing regional desires, several bilateral problems to solve in energy, trade, security, and migration management put the actors on the opposing sides. The study claims that the incompatibility between the actors’ regional strategies increases to the point that their rivalry in the Middle East will expand to Central Asia and the Caucasian region. But in contrast to this slow process, there are imminent common issues that can only be solved by a joint effort by Turkey and Iran, and this necessity will restrain the damages of this incompatibility on bilateral relations.

Global Climate Change: A Threat Multiplier to Pak- Afghan Constrained Relations

Pakistan and Afghanistan both are underdeveloped states and totally depended on agriculture for their economic spine. Terrorism issues with massive liability shortfall, susceptible set-up, bad governance, huge corruption, widespread poverty and extensive protection disbursement share the issues and issues of both countries. Global Climate Change and weather trade, and enlarging risk, foretells disastrous consequences on agriculture. The South Asian Region generally and PakAfghan particularly vulnerable to Challenges due to the weather change, consisting of, quickly melting Himalayan glaciers resultant in water shortage, low farming harvests main to meals lack confidence, threatened seashores, and people movement are causal to the emergencies of individualism and power between two important neighbours. These multidimensional factors of imminent issues have generated a debate to appear past the out-of-date coast-to-coast security constraints and comprise the environmentalist model of security, which calls for developing the variation ability of a state.

Correlation of anemia to body mass index among adult population in a rural region of Malwa in Madhya Pradesh

Background: Anemia and obesity are the markers of imminent health issues in adults because malnutrition shows two extreme ends, decreased hemoglobin (Hb) and increased body mass index (BMI), caused due to undernutrition and overnutrition, respectively. Aims and Objectives: This study was done to compare the effect of a BMI on anemia in India as very few of these studies have been done in rural India and none in the rural Malwa region of Central India. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at a rural mission hospital in a remote village Hatpipliya of district Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, beginning from September 2020 to November 2020 with a sample size of 152 subjects. Hb was assessed on the basis of the World Health Organization standards and BMI was calculated as per Quetelet’s index. The collected data were tabulated and analyzed. Results: A total of 152 people in the age group of >20 years were included in the study. Seventy-one (47%) were male and 81 (53%) were female. The prevalence of anemia among underweight population was 38.8%, which was almost closed to those with normal BMI (38.5%). The overweight category showed 21% to be anemic and interestingly, 50% of obese individuals were anemic. Conclusion: No significant difference (P > 0.05) was found in the prevalence of anemia among all BMI groups. Frequent screening for the prevalence of anemia and its association with BMI should be done among the target group.

Challenges and Opportunities presented to the Albanian Economy and Labor Market during the Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted many problems in the structure of the economy and hence in the employment sector, as a very delicate sector for the Albanian economy. This unpredictable factor that has affected the world economy is giving its blows every quarter to the Albanian economy. The unemployment rate has a downward trend making unemployment a major problem for the economy. The main purpose of this study is to argument and analyse the impact of the pandemic factor on the economy, and specifically the employment and unemployment rate in Albania during the economic year 2020. The period of the past year has shown how government subsidy has affected or not the reduction of unemployment as consequence of business closures. It is worth mentioning that in this paper we will try to create a comparison of two exhaustive analyses of the reports published by INSTAT and interpretations of the data of the financial year 2020. Based on these data we will create an overview of the unemployment situation and employment in general Albania, during the pandemic period. How much impact have the pandemic and the health crisis had on the economy, and what is the consequence of the pandemic in the labour market expected to continue? In conclusion, we will suggest the formulation of a group of political policies by engaging experts of various fields. These policies will not only be crucial to confront the imminent issues caused by Covid-19, but they will also be very important to overcome the general crisis created by it.

Evaluation of ancillary services in distribution grid using large‐scale battery energy storage systems

Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are being presented as a prominent solution to the various imminent issues associated with the integration of variable renewable energy sources in the distribution system. Performance of grid-connected BESS depends on the type of application (power and energy), grid operating parameters and level of interconnection point, which shows the necessity of benefit assessment of BESS technology and its applications in terms of economic and grid operations before investment at a larger scale. In this study, real-time analysis and evaluation of two different battery technologies connected in a medium voltage (MV) distribution system are carried out. The main objective of this paper is focused on the impact analysis of large-scale BESS on MV distribution feeder. A real case of installation of lithium-ion and advanced lead-acid battery systems into the Indian distribution system has been considered for this study. Different operational strategies of BESS such as frequency regulation and energy time-shift have been performed with real-time data. The effectiveness in usage of BESS with these functionalities has been verified in terms of peak shaving, improvement in voltage profile and reduction in power losses in the feeder.

Collaboration: A potential solution to imminent issues facing nursing and midwifery education in Africa?

Collaboration: A potential solution to imminent issues facing nursing and midwifery education in Africa?

IImminent Contractual Issues in the COVID-19 Era 'The Legal Implications'

Beyond the alarming spread of COVID-19 across the globe and the social distancing measures being put in place by the government authorities all over the world, the sting of the pandemic has had far reaching effects and has found its way into almost every sector of the economy. Businesses are at risk of being wind up, contractual obligations are likely to be breeched if not properly reviewed, terms of contract between employers and employees have become airy-fairy and the atmosphere has become a false dawn for potential investors, stakeholders and growing industries. This article seeks to address the imminent issues that may arise from the impact of the pandemic as it relates to contractual agreements and proffer possible recommendations.

A conceptual framework for a dyadic supplier-customer co-innovation of bioplastic packaging

Abstract This paper unravels critical and imminent issues in co-innovation of bioplastic packaging. The current state of bioplastic packaging signifies the challenges caused by the mismatch of the characteristics of bioplastic packaging and the products they are intended for, and confirms the needs for a supplier-customer co-innovation. Although co-innovation, to a large extent, demonstrates immense potentials in promoting product improvement and environmental benefits, co-innovation in bioplastic packaging has not been extensively studied. This paper offers the processes and mechanisms of co-innovation in the form of a conceptual framework, detailing the joint activities and joint resources that address the specific bioplastic packaging characteristics.

Power Loss Alleviation in Integrated Power and Natural Gas Distribution Grids

The existing distributed gas–fired generation (GfG) units have (partially) connected the power and gas distribution grids. In addition, as the emerging technology for conversion of renewable/surplus power to synthetic natural gas, i.e., power-to-gas (PtG) materializes, the foundation for a fully integrated power and gas distribution grid is more likely to be set. This could, in turn, bring about new opportunities for exploiting the natural gas distribution grid for mitigation of the existing and imminent issues in power distribution systems. To that end, this paper unveils a new model for optimal joint scheduling of PtG and GfG units in a power–gas embedded grid. The PtG–GfG facility is operated for arbitrage and loss alleviation as a regulation service to the power distribution system. The mathematical formulation of a new method for estimation of the loss reduction in the integrated grid is developed and embedded into the optimization problem. The efficacy and feasibility of the model is numerically validated on a test system. The results indicate that the proposed model can reliably estimate the loss reduction percentage and accordingly determine the scheduling setpoints to achieve the determined loss reduction. It is demonstrated that the model increases the profitability of investment in PtG–GfG facilities via extra financial settlements for the facility operator.

Invited review: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agriculture, and food-A case of shifting cultivation and history.

Since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced five Assessment Reports (ARs), in which agriculture as the production of food for humans via crops and livestock have featured in one form or another. A constructed database of the ca. 2,100 cited experiments and simulations in the five ARs was analyzed with respect to impacts on yields via crop type, region, and whether adaptation was included. Quantitative data on impacts and adaptation in livestock farming have been extremely scarce in the ARs. The main conclusions from impact and adaptation are that crop yields will decline, but that responses have large statistical variation. Mitigation assessments in the ARs have used both bottom-up and top-down methods but need better to link emissions and their mitigation with food production and security. Relevant policy options have become broader in later ARs and included more of the social and nonproduction aspects of food security. Our overall conclusion is that agriculture and food security, which are two of the most central, critical, and imminent issues in climate change, have been dealt with an unfocussed and inconsistent manner between the IPCC five ARs. This is partly a result of not only agriculture spanning two IPCC working groups but also the very strong focus on projections from computer crop simulation modeling. For the future, we suggest a need to examine interactions between themes such as crop resource use efficiencies and to include all production and nonproduction aspects of food security in future roles for integrated assessment models.

Power Congestion Management in Integrated Electricity and Gas Distribution Grids

The proliferation of gas-fired generation (GfG) units and emerging power-to-gas (PtG) technology can set the stage for an integrated natural gas and power distribution system. PtG and gas-fired units have the potential to mitigate several existing and imminent issues of power distribution systems. This paper investigates how PtG and GfG facilities can be added to the portfolio of conventional resolutions when the motivation is (partly) congestion management in power distribution systems. It demonstrates how PtG and GfG units as merchant investments can change the operation philosophy from the traditional preventive to the novel corrective mode. To that end, a new real-time optimal scheduling algorithm is proposed to enable a PtG–GfG unit to optimally contribute to the congestion management. Merchandise operators profit, in addition to the arbitrage benefit, by relieving the distribution grid's congestion, thereby achieving a more stable return on investments. Slack variables are incorporated into the optimization problem to measure the contribution of the PtG–GfG unit to the congestion management. A new mechanism is proposed through which the merchandise operator is financially compensated by the power system operator, due to its contribution to the congestion management. Numerical studies using real-world data on a test system validate the efficacy and feasibility of the algorithm.