Levels Of Disconnection Research Articles

Building an Equitable Future Through Data Disaggregation.

Building an Equitable Future Through Data Disaggregation.

Nerve transfers for brachial plexus injuries: grading of volitional control.

After brachial plexus injuries (BPIs), nerve transfers are used to restore lost muscle function. Brain plasticity underlies the process of regaining volitional control, which encompasses disconnection of the original donor nerve-related programs and reconnection to acceptor nerve programs. To the authors' knowledge, the levels of disconnection and reconnection have never been studied systematically. In this study, the authors developed a novel 4-point plasticity grading scale (PGS) and assessed the degree of volitional control achieved, identifying clinical correlations with this score. Patients with BPI who underwent a phrenic, spinal accessory, median, and/or ulnar fascicle nerve transfer to restore biceps and deltoid function were asked to maximally contract their target muscle as follows: 1) by using only the donor nerve program, and 2) by activating the target muscle while consciously trying to avoid using the donor nerve, with assessment each time of the Medical Research Council (MRC) scale grade for muscle strength. The authors' PGS was used to rate the level of volitional control achieved. PGS grade 1 represented the lowest independent volitional control, with MRC grade 4 obtained in response to the donor command and MRC grade 0 in response to the acceptor command (minimum brain plasticity), whereas PGS grade 4 was no noticeable contraction in response to the donor command and MRC grade 4 in response to the acceptor command (maximum brain plasticity). In total, 153 patients were studied. For biceps restoration, the phrenic nerve was used as a donor in 44 patients, the spinal accessory nerve in 40 patients, and the median and/or ulnar fascicles in 44 patients. A triceps branch was used to restore deltoid function in 25 patients. The level of volitional control achieved was PGS grade 1 in 1 patient (0.6%), grade 2 in 21 patients (13.7%), grade 3 in 103 patients (67.3%), and grade 4 in 28 patients (18.3%). The median PGS grade did not differ significantly between the four donor nerves. No correlations were observed between age, time from BPI to surgery, duration of follow-up, or compliance with rehabilitation and PGS grade. Just around 20% of the authors' patients developed a complete disconnection of the donor program along with complete independent control over the reinnervated muscle. Incomplete disconnection was present in the vast majority of the patients, and the level of disconnection and control was poor in approximately 15% of patients. Brain plasticity underlies patient ability to regain volitional control after a nerve transfer, but this capacity is limited.

Comparative fish community structure among different types of enclosures of estuarine environments

This study explores the differences of fish assemblages in three macrotidal estuaries of Man-gyeong River Estuary (MRE), Geum River Estuary (GRE), and Han River Esturay (HRE) with similar ranges of seasonal water temperature that are diked with different levels of disconnection from freshwater discharge. The distribution of major species in the three estuaries could generally be grouped into three distinctive patterns based on their cumulative distribution with respect to the salinity gradient. The MRE was geographically closer to the GRE than to the HRE, but the fish community of the MRE more closely resembled that of the HRE. Increased freshness of the water inside the dike and the limit of coastal fish to the river may have led to this result. The results provide clues to how enclosure patterns of estuarine waters could affect fish communities over a long-term period. In addition, the information may provide guidance for how a fish community may return once environmental conditions are restored.

An overview of the research work on Prof. Saijo including projects on cross-curriculum environmental education programs and on sustainable bamboo utilization

Industrialisation in Japan has seen the country become increasingly urbanised. This has led to a level of disconnection from the countryside among Japanese people and nature has been affected by a lack of human interaction. Previously, satoyama, which refers to the area between the mountains and arable land and has come to represent humankind's interaction with the natural world, could be used to describe the interaction between Japanese people and nature. Bamboo is one natural material that was widely used by Japanese people in many applications, including as food and building materials. But, with the increase in urbanisation came a decline in the use of bamboo in Japan. As a result, bamboo trees and forests expanded across satoyama lands and their rapid expansion into different ecosystems led to the destruction of non-bamboo ecosystems. Professor Kiyoshi Saijo, Faculty of Education, Miyagi University of Education, Japan, is creating curricula to educate Japanese society on the importance of satoyama, and the need to use bamboo. Saijo has created educational programmes at both a university level and for primary school children that align with the aims of the UNs sustainable development goals, including the case study of the Tanabata festival, which features the use of bamboo in several different ways.

Effect of disaster debris, floodwater pooling duration, and bridge damage on immediate post-tsunami connectivity

This study establishes a general methodology to account for the effects of the amount of disaster debris generated, debris dispersal, the duration floodwater pooling for events like tsunamis, and damage to infrastructure on initial and time evolution of connectivity between critical facilities and key locations within a community such as evacuation zones and shelters. The proposed methodology is applied to Seaside, OR, for cascading seismic and tsunami hazards corresponding to seven return periods ranging from 250 to 10,000 years. The post-event connectivity is assessed for the first 72 h. The results provide insights on immediate post-event connectivity, its evolution with time as floodwaters recede and as the debris is cleared, and the relative effect of debris, floodwater pooling, and infrastructure damage on connectivity. For example, the level of disconnection caused by debris and flooding in Seaside is not always directly proportional to the return period (magnitude) of the seismic-tsunami event. Results show that bridge damage further exacerbates the lack of connectivity due to debris and floodwater pooling, highlighting that multi-hazard and multi-infrastructure analyses are necessary to understand connectivity for disasters.

Linking Real-Life Situation with Content of School Mathematics at Secondary Level: Exploring Current Practice and Challenge in Bangladesh

Worldwide mathematics is considered as a subject in school curriculum which is intimately connected to students’ daily life. However, it is disheartening that there are some level of disconnection between students’ mathematics learning and the way it is applied to real-world. This study is conducted to explore the current practice and challenges in linking real-life situation with mathematical content at secondary level in Bangladesh, a country in transition from least-developed to developing status. Here multiple case study approach was followed under qualitative framework. Mathematics teachers of Grade 8 and their lessons were selected conveniently to explore how teachers were responding to the issues of practice and challenges in linking real-life situation and eventually promoted mathematical literacy in their lessons. Each teacher was considered as a case. Lesson observations, participant teachers’ interview, FGD with students and document analysis had been used as instruments in the study. Thematic analysis was followed as the data analysis technique. In this paper, we briefly summarized our work in exploring current practice and challenges in Bangladesh in connecting real-world with the world of mathematics. This study finds that teachers emphasize on explaining mathematical concept in ways that make sense to students but practice in specific cases. Occasionally, students struggle with mathematical terminologies while teachers are unaware of it. Moreover, teachers find difficulties to connect some mathematical content with real-life situations because of the nature of content and during the lessons they rely on “teaching textbooks” due to time constraint. Both teachers and students in this study point out that textbook examples and problems are not interesting. Finally, this study finds that Grade 8 mathematics textbook, in limited cases, deals with “real” problems: problems that are typically placed in a “situation”. The present study will thus provide insights to the teachers to improve their practice in order to make mathematics more significant and interesting to the students. This study will also notify the textbook writers to bridge between content and context to increase the effectiveness and quality of mathematics textbook by including more real-life oriented mathematical problems. Along with improved teachers’ practice and quality textbook, this study will eventually provide opportunities for students to be engaged with mathematics in a more meaningful way and to finally develop their mathematical literacy at an expected level. Keywords: Real-life situation, Mathematical literacy, Mathematisation DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-3-19 Publication date: January 31 st 2021

Religion and unemployment benefits

When employees are dismissed or resign because of a conflict between their religion and job duties or expectations, how does this affect their claims to unemployment benefits? How do European countries address this question? The answer has significant consequences for many jobseekers and employees belonging to religious minorities and in many ways excluded from the mainstream labour market, yet the role of religion in the adjudication of European unemployment disputes has so far received limited attention. This article focuses on the role of religious dress in unemployment benefits disputes in Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain. It also assesses whether the messaging in relevant case law in the area of unemployment benefits has been sufficiently interlocking with employment law. Finding a level of disconnect, it is argued that an explicit duty of reasonable accommodation in employment would appropriately address the interplay between unemployment benefits and employment law in Europe.

The Association of Afro-Caribbean Immigrants' Feelings of Disconnection from the Community with the Metabolic Syndrome.

Many immigrants can feel like outsiders in their adopted country. The objective of this study was to determine if psychosocial stress associated with feelings of disconnection from the community is associated with the metabolic syndrome (Met-S) among Afro-Caribbean immigrants. The frequency of the Met-S, based on International Diabetes Federation criteria, was determined for a population-based sample of 406 English-speaking Afro-Caribbean immigrants ages twenty and older in the Virgin Islands of the United States (USVI). Feelings of disconnection were assess with Roger's Life Attitude Inventory. Logistic regression analyses showed that a high level of disconnection was significantly associated with the Met-S [Odds Ratio = 1.64 (95% CI 1.10-2.44)] after adjusting for conventional risk factors and for body mass index. Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the USVI who express a high level of disconnection from the community have an increased risk for the Met-S.

“This is a most disgusting case”: Imperial Policy, Class and Gender in the “Rangoon Outrage” of 1899

“This is a most disgusting case”: Imperial Policy, Class and Gender in the “Rangoon Outrage” of 1899 Jeremy Neill Introduction On an otherwise unremarkable Easter Sunday, 1899, a middle-aged Burmese woman named Ma Gun was returning from prayer at the Shwedagon Pagoda, on the grounds of the British Army Cantonment in Rangoon. In the cantonment, the newly arrived West Kent Regiment was in quarantine due to a smallpox outbreak in Rangoon. Most of the regiment was finishing their midday meal when a disturbance broke out near “C” company’s barracks, on a wooded hill overlooking one of the main roads leading to the pagoda. Details of what happened were disputed, but facts soon emerged alleging that a number of soldiers from the Regiment waylaid Ma Gun near their barracks and sexually assaulted her in a case that came to be known as the “Rangoon Outrage” in the press and by the British government. This case, and the military’s apparent attempt to cover up what happened, demonstrates that the imperial project was far from monolithic, and that different elements of the British Empire’s mechanisms of control frequently worked at cross-purposes. The masculine code of the soldiers involved trumped the legal and moral structures designed to control their behavior and undermined attempts to rationalize the benefits of colonial rule. Feminist historians describe rape as violence against women for the purpose of social control, and as a way for men to assert their masculine identity. Susan Brownmiller goes as far as to state “From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”2 Studies of nineteenth century England show endemic sexual violence among the working classes, and that the legal system was increasingly trying to control working class violence, including expanding definitions of rape and more actively prosecuting it.3 The example of the Rangoon Outrage raises a number of questions. To what extent did attitudes in far-flung posts of the Empire reflect legal thinking in the metropole? What level of disconnect was there between working class ideas of sexual access and the legal culture that British soldiers in Rangoon found themselves in at the end of the Victorian era? Ronald Hyam has made the argument that Empire was a sexual playground for the British bourgeoisie, but did this apply to the working classes who made up the common soldiery?4 Did restrictions on prostitution, part of the late Victorian moral project that had a large impact on the military, encourage violence against women? If Empire was a fundamentally masculine project, and rape was a means of establishing male dominance, why was the Raj so concerned with prosecuting this case and punishing those responsible? The answers appear to lie in bourgeois concepts of proper behavior that extended from the slums of industrial cities to far-flung imperial posts. In this case even the bourgeois officers, the “gentlemen” who were supposed to control the working class, seemed actively to protect the soldiers involved in a heinous crime. Colonial masculinity was not monolithic, and this case shows that the masculine code of the military could cross class lines. Shani D’Cruze argues that the Victorian attitude was one less concerned with the rights of women and more concerned with policing public violence: [S]exual aggression in men was “normal, healthy and inevitable” and constituted serious criminal behavior only when it violated another man’s rights of sexual access, or violated class hierarchies or involved sufficient physical injury to make the assault provable regardless of the sexual dimension involved.5 Where does this case fit? In the imperial context, another element is present, the façade of control that the British needed to project to maintain colonial order, a boundary that the soldiers’ behavior in this case clearly violated. After 1860 the Crown engaged in a systematic attempt to bring India more into line with principles of British jurisprudence, which laid the grounds for conflict in a more complex environment that added race to the legal mixture.6 Did the law apply...

Monitoring of Biodiversity Indicators in Boreal Forests: a Need for Improved Focus

The general principles of scale and coarse and fine filters have been widely accepted, but management agencies and industry are still grappling with the question of what to monitor to detect changes in forest biodiversity following forest management. Part of this problem can be attributed to the lack of focused questions for monitoring including absence of null models and predicted effects, a certain level of disconnect between research and management, and recognition that monitoring can be designed as a research question. Considerable research from the past decade has not been adequately synthesized to answer important questions, such as which species or forest attributes might be the best indicators of change. A disproportionate research emphasis has been placed on community ecology, and mostly on a few groups of organisms including arthropods, amphibians, migratory songbirds, and small mammals, while other species, including soil organisms, lichens, bats, raptors, some carnivores, and larger mammals remain less well-known. In most studies of community ecology, the question of what is the importance, if any, of the regularly observed subtle changes in community structures, and causes of observed changes is usually not answered. Hence, our ability to deal with questions of persistence is limited, and demographic research on regionally-defined key species (such as species linked to processes, species whose persistence may be affected, species with large home ranges, species already selected as indicators, and rare and threatened species) is urgently needed. Monitoring programs need to be designed to enable managers to respond to unexpected changes caused by forest management. To do this, management agencies need to articulate null models for monitoring that predict effects, focus fine-scale monitoring on key species (defined by local and regional research) in key habitats (rare, declining, important) across landscapes, and have a protocol in place to adapt management strategies to changes observed. Finally, agencies must have some way to determine and define when a significant change has occurred and to predict the persistence of species; this too should flow from a well-designed null model.

Leaping the barrier

The role of information technology (IT) in manufacturing and engineering is now well understood. It is difficult to imagine a factory, warehouse or drawing office today that could even function without the right IT system. Yet IT has come much further now than just automating manual manufacturing and engineering processes. There are whole new fields of advantage to be gained from squeezing more out of IT systems, particularly by making better use of the information that is stored within them. Overall, technologies such as forecasting tools, data warehousing and workflow can help manufacturers to reduce the level of disconnection in the organisation between different functions and departments. The key is to ensure that as much corporate information as possible is held in a single, digital format, whether as data, test, graphics or knowledge.

Determination of cerebrospinal fluid shunt function with water-soluble contrast medium

Determination of cerebrospinal fluid shunt patency with water-soluble contrast medium is a simple, rapid, reliable, and safe technique. Since September, 1974, the authors performed 113 examinations. With the Spitz-Holter valve, only the atrial catheter can be studied, but, with the Pudenz valve and with the shunting devices that have a double-dome reservoir, both the proximal and the distal catheter can be visualized. Through the ventricular catheter a full ventriculographic study can be made, demonstrating ventricular size, malposition of the catheter, and the lesion that caused the hydrocephalus, or its evolution. The problem of collapsed ventricules, in which clinical and "manual" evaluation of the flushing device can give misleading findings, is emphasized. The injection of the atrial or peritoneal catheter in the pathological cases demonstrated its blockage, level of disconnection, malposition, sleeve, or cyst formation. Computerized tomography has only slightly decreased the number of these studies: when the ventricles are large, the examination with water-soluble contrast medium is still needed to demonstrate the exact level of malfunction. This demonstration has decreased the number of the total revisions complete changes of shunting systems, eliminating some unnecessary changes of normally functioning catheters.