Recovery Priority Research Articles

Lived Experiences of Sexuality and Sexual Functioning in Males with SCI: A Mixed-Methods Study.

Sexual dysfunction is highly prevalent in males with spinal cord injury (SCI) and has been recognized to be a key recovery priority. This cross-sectional, mixed-methods study aimed to investigate the major themes linked to sexual functioning in males with chronic (>1 year) SCI. Twenty male participants with SCI, aged 25 to 59 years, completed validated questionnaires exploring sexual function/satisfaction and health-related quality of life and a semi-structured interview with an experienced sexual medicine physician. Sex hormone concentrations and metabolic biomarkers, along with body composition and habitual physical activity levels, were assessed. Interview recordings were transcribed and thematic analysis performed using combined COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, and Behavior) and biopsychosocial models to identify and organize major contributors and barriers to sexual functioning. Metabolic and hormonal biomarkers largely fell within normal physiological ranges despite reduced sexual functioning reported in our cohort (19/20 participants reported some degree of erectile dysfunction). Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts revealed 24 themes. Adaptability was important for improving sexual satisfaction. Attraction and attentiveness to sex and partners remained stable over time, while the desire for intimacy increased post injury. Sexual social norms, and comparisons to the able-bodied population, provided challenges for sexual activity and partnership. Environmental concerns regarding access to sexual health resources and accessible physical spaces during intimacy were relevant. Mood disorders and general life stressors negatively impacted sexual desire, while physical activity encouraged sexual activity. By considering a holistic view of sexuality in males with SCI, we identified key contributors and barriers to sexual functioning for the cohort studied.

Measuring community resilience inequality to inland flooding using location aware big data

Understanding community resilience is critical for effective resource allocation and planning. However, classical resilience measures often fall short in capturing the diverse characteristics of each stage: preparation, resistance, recovery, and adaptability. We propose a multi-stage resilience assessment framework integrating morphological indicators to measure community resilience. Applying this framework to evaluate disparities in community resilience after the inland flooding in Changsha, we find that morphological indicators provide a more accurate description of resilience priority and ability compared to speed indicators. The analysis reveals stronger complementarity and lower redundancy among resilience indicators. Moreover, we establish a strong connection between resilience, driving factors, and government actions. Neighborhoods with high flood risk and socioeconomic status encounter the severest impact and highest recovery priority, leading to substantial government engineering measures. Conversely, vulnerable communities facing high flood risk and low socioeconomic status display the lowest resistance and recovery ability, emphasizing the necessity for tailored initiatives like increasing green infrastructure and constructing flood buffer zones. Additionally, low river flood risk communities with high socioeconomic status experience minimal flood impact, underscoring the significance of prioritizing low-lying regions susceptible to surface water flooding. The study informs government decision-making, emphasizing differentiated strategies for enhancing community resilience across regions and stages.

Node priority evaluation modeling of the substation to be restored based on weight fusion

Severe weather is likely to lead to a large area of power outage accidents, and the emergency repair manpower, flood control materials reserve, and transportation capacity are often limited. This paper studies the node priority evaluation method of substations to be restored in disaster areas and establishes a node priority evaluation model of substations to be restored based on weight fusion. Firstly, the priority evaluation index system is constructed, then subjective weight is assigned to each evaluation index through hierarchical analysis, and objective weight is assigned by the entropy weight method. Finally, the subjective and objective weight fusion optimization strategy based on game theory is adopted, which not only retains the objectivity of the original object but also considers the subjectivity of expert evaluation opinions. The example analysis shows that the combined weights of each priority evaluation index are [0.1835, 0.2432, 0.2631] and [0.0376, 0.0694, 0.0806, 0.1226], and the emergency response needs urgency score of disaster site A is finally 0.6024. We set the recovery priority to Level 2.

Designing an Egocentric Video-Based Dashboard to Report Hand Performance Measures for Outpatient Rehabilitation of Cervical Spinal Cord Injury.

Functional use of the upper extremities (UEs) is a top recovery priority for individuals with cervical spinal cord injury (cSCI), but the inability to monitor recovery at home and limitations in hand function outcome measures impede optimal recovery. We developed a framework using wearable cameras to monitor hand use at home and aimed to identify the best way to report information to clinicians. A dashboard was iteratively developed with clinician (n = 7) input through focus groups and interviews, creating low-fidelity prototypes based on recurring feedback until no new information emerged. Affinity diagramming was used to identify themes and subthemes from interview data. User stories were developed and mapped to specific features to create a high-fidelity prototype. Useful elements identified for a dashboard reporting hand performance included summaries to interpret graphs, a breakdown of hand posture and activity to provide context, video snippets to qualitatively view hand use at home, patient notes to understand patient satisfaction or struggles, and time series graphing of metrics to measure trends over time. Involving end-users in the design process and breaking down user requirements into user stories helped identify necessary interface elements for reporting hand performance metrics to clinicians. Clinicians recognized the dashboard's potential to monitor rehabilitation progress, provide feedback on hand use, and track progress over time. Concerns were raised about the implementation into clinical practice, therefore further inquiry is needed to determine the tool's feasibility and usefulness in clinical practice for individuals with UE impairments.

Resilience Importance Measure and Optimization Considering the Stepwise Recovery of System Performance

Effective recovery after disruptions is essential to improve system resilience. For many distributed systems such as offshore wind farms and communication networks, spatial location characteristics and limited maintenance resources lead to discontinuous changes in performance during system recovery. However, the stepwise performance is frequently ignored. The coupling relationship between the system and maintenance teams makes it difficult to improve the system resilience from the recovery perspective. In this article, a new method that combines the resilience importance measure and enhanced pigeon-inspired optimization (PIO) is presented to optimize the system resilience under stepwise recovery conditions. First, this study proposes a resilience-oriented importance measure that evaluates the recovery priority for each component. Second, an optimization model is established to minimize the system resilience loss by joint optimization of recovery sequence and task assignment under the conditions of multiple maintenance teams. Third, the resilience importance measure is combined with roulette wheel selection to form a high-quality intitle swarm of PIO. Fourth, an importance measure-based PIO with a Gaussian mutation and adaptive crossover operator is designed to find an optimization solution for system resilience. Finally, the recovery of a network system consisting of 32 nodes and 71 edges is studied. Compared with the stochastic method and traditional PIO, the proposed method in this study reduces the system resilience loss by 48.87 and 15.54%, respectively.

Comparative Study of the Seismic Resilience of Transportation Networks according to Bridge Recovery Priority

Recently, frequent earthquakes have damaged bridge structures, causing great inconvenience owing to the disruption of transportation networks and increasing travel time. In this study, the restoration priority of bridges under seismic conditions was proposed and the seismic resilience curves were compared based on an artificial neural network model. To determine the restoration priority of bridges, 1) performance-based and 2) benefit-cost-based restoration priorities were introduced. For demonstration purposes, the actual Pohang road network was reconstructed and the seismic resilience curves of the transportation network corresponding to the proposed restoration priorities were compared. Numerical analysis showed that the performance-based restoration priority had a more rapid seismic resilience curve than benefit-cost-based restoration priority.

Recovery units under the Endangered Species Act should be used more widely

Recovering species is the main goal of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In the face of limited conservation budgets, diverse tools are needed to efficiently recover species. Recovery units may be one such tool - designated portions of a species’ range that must be recovered individually before an entire species can be considered recovered. Recovery units allow for spatial flexibility in developing recovery goals and may be used in regulatory decisions such as ESA section 7 consultation. Despite the advantages, very little information exists on how recovery units have been developed and used. We mined available public data to determine the number and types of species for which recovery units have been designated; evaluated species and geographic characteristics associated with recovery unit designation; and examined how recovery units have been used in implementing the ESA, such as during consultation. We found 49 listed species had designated recovery units through December 2017, and that these species typically had relatively large ranges and were well-studied. We found taxonomic biases in recovery unit designation as well, with fish species being disproportionately likely to have recovery units and plants disproportionately less. These species were also more likely to have their recovery units considered and used in subsequent ESA implementation – a probability that decreased as time since unit designation passed. Improvements in recovery priority numbers among species with recovery units indicate that the theoretical benefits of this tool may have translated to improved status. These data indicate that recovery units could be applied to additional wide-ranging species to improve recovery under the ESA.

Enhancing resilience of integrated electricity-gas systems: A skeleton-network based strategy

The increasing frequency of major energy outages in recent years has significantly affected millions of people around the world, raising extensive concerns about enhancing infrastructure resilience to withstand and quickly recover from disasters. However, the post-disaster recovery of infrastructure functionality has been hindered by the lack of interdependency modeling of energy networks and priority identification of components, resulting in long-duration energy supply scarcity, wide-ranging service disruption, and huge social losses. Here, a skeleton-network based strategy for enhancing the resilience of integrated electricity-gas systems (IEGSs) is proposed, which can provide a clear representation of which network components should be protected and how to determine the component recovery priority considering interdependencies of power and gas systems. Using the modified energy systems in New England and Northwest China, the skeleton-network is uncovered to quickly recover more than 90% of system functionality using less than 44.3% of total resources, and consumer-affected time by energy outages decreases by more than 53%. The analysis also indicates that compared to conventional methods, the skeleton-network based strategy performs best in improving infrastructure resilience. These results elucidate the implications of skeleton-networks on quick recovery of infrastructure functionality and demonstrate resilience enhancement methods that are applicable to a wider class of coupled infrastructure networks in hazard-prone areas.

Repair Priority in Distribution Systems Considering Resilience Enhancement

When a meteorological disaster occurs and equipment becomes damaged, a significant amount of time is required to repair the damaged components as it is impossible to repair several components simultaneously. Therefore, the determination of repair priority is a significant aspect of a distribution system’s resilience. This study proposes a technique to identify the unserved areas of a radial distribution system based on the bus injection to the branch current (BIBC) matrix, as opposed to a complex optimization technique, for evaluating the repair priority determination strategy for all the possible disaster scenarios. Generally, most resilience metrics include the concept of duration; therefore, the strategy for resilience enhancement must optimize the recovery priority using an objective function that consists of the recovered capacity increment, rather than the recovered capacity. To verify the proposed method, in this paper, the resilience is evaluated under all the disaster scenarios that can occur in contingencies from N-2 to N-5. Since complex restoration or repair strategies could be simplified using the proposed method, it is expected that this study will make a significant contribution to the resilience enhancement in distribution systems.

Mapping specular hematite ore beneficiation routes to industrial application standards

The purpose of this study is to determine the appropriate method for micaceous iron ore processing and production per-industrial application standards. After identifying the characteristics of the samples (with XRF, XRD, mineralogical analyzes), gravity and magnetic separation tests were carried out. Quartz and hematite are the main minerals of micaceous hematite ores. Silica grade as the major impurity varies from 10% to 68%. The total iron content of the samples also varies from 15% to 62%. A jig and shaking table did not provide a good result in micaceous hematite beneficiation to achieve the standard of its specific applications. Gravity concentration by the spiral in the size range of -200 and -300 μm has led to the production of iron concentrates with a grade of 62.34% and 64.84%, respectively. The recovery values for the two experiments are 13.50% and 12.60%, respectively. Therefore, the spiral did not provide a good result in the micaceous iron ore beneficiation. High-intensity magnetic separation (1.2 T) has resulted in a product with a grade and recovery of 65.98% and 88.35%, respectively. The experimental design utilizing the Taguchi method considering the increasing of grade or recovery priority indicated that for micaceous iron beneficiation with a priority of recovery increasing, the feeder frequency, roll speed, and adjustable gate angle should be at 6.5 Hz, 95 rpm, and 20°, respectively. However, for micaceous iron beneficiation with a priority of grade increasing, the feeder frequency, roll speed, and adjustable gate angle should be at 2.5 Hz, 135 rpm, and 60°, respectively.

Equity, participation, and planning for recovery in Puerto Rico.

Based on a survey of stakeholders from 34 municipalitiesin Puerto Rico 1 year following HurricaneMaria, this study reports on progress and prioritiesfor longer-term recovery. Following a description ofthe storm and its impacts and an overview of recoveryprinciples, initial insights expressed after the stormare studied. Over 56 percent of respondents rankedthe need for equity considerations as the top recoverypriority, while 23 percent ranked building back faster,and 11 percent supported building back stronger as thetop priority. Building back greener was the top recoverygoal for 10 percent of the respondents. In addition tobroad recovery goals, specific actions and initiatives tosupport recovery are also investigated. While the needsfor more robust data collection and information sharingemerged, gaps in training and capacity buildingwere also reported. The analysis sheds light on the needfor more participatory, deliberative processes, and thechallenges of leadership, management, and inclusivegovernance following large-scale disasters. The findingsare relevant to other island communities and thedevelopment of effective systems for disaster recovery.

복원력 개선을 위한 공급지장 부하 판별법과 고장설비 복구 우선순위

This paper presents the criteria for determining recovery priority that can improve the post-event resilience. Through case studies, it is checked whether the existing recovery strategy, which considers recovered capacity or connection with the main bus, works well even in extreme disaster. This paper proposes a new strategy that considers not only the recovered capacity but also the time required for recovery as a recovery strategy that can improve resilience. In addition, this paper proposes a new method to identify interrupted customers after a disaster. The proposed method can calculate the amount of power interrupted simply without iterative calculation or modification of the matrix representing the power system structure. The resilience results of the recovery priority according to each strategy were compared for the three IEEE test feeders, from the N-2 to the N-5 contingency.

Improved resilience measure for component recovery priority in power grids

Improved resilience measure for component recovery priority in power grids

Policy-based disaster recovery planning model for interdependent infrastructure systems under uncertainty

Due to continuous population expansion and the threat of climate change, the past century has witnessed increasing occurrences of natural hazards, leading to significant global losses and requiring substantial restoration efforts. This issue challenges decision makers to act in a timely and effective manner to protect infrastructure systems from future natural hazards. This study presents a policy-based decision model for restoration planning, as part of the PRAISys platform, to support informed disaster mitigation of interdependent infrastructure systems under uncertainty. Following the concept of disaster recovery priority used in practice, this model determines the priority rank of each recovery task from pre-defined policies and simulates the restoration accordingly. This model captures different types of interdependencies with rigorous models at the component and system levels and predicts possible system recoveries under a given damage scenario in a probabilistic manner. This model can quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of decision strategies on system recovery and resilience under different disaster recovery policies. As a demonstration example, this study applies the proposed model to the post-earthquake recovery simulation of three interdependent infrastructure systems (i.e., power, communication, and transportation) in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, USA. A total of sixteen cases were considered to represent different restoration strategies. For every case, the uncertainties in the recovery steps are captured by probabilistic simulation, and system resilience is calculated for every recovery sample. Simulation results from different strategies are compared to evaluate the effectiveness of non-intuitive strategies on system recovery and resilience. The proposed model uses a simple and straightforward concept to mimic practical disaster recovery plans. It is easy to understand and implement for modelers, and it is also useful to compare outcomes from different recovery criteria and decision strategies for practitioners.

A wearable vision-based system for detecting hand-object interactions in individuals with cervical spinal cord injury: First results in the home environment.

Cervical spinal cord injury (cSCI) causes the paralysis of upper and lower limbs and trunk, significantly reducing quality of life and community participation of the affected individuals. The functional use of the upper limbs is the top recovery priority of people with cSCI and wearable vision-based systems have recently been proposed to extract objective outcome measures that reflect hand function in a natural context. However, previous studies were conducted in a controlled environment and may not be indicative of the actual hand use of people with cSCI living in the community. Thus, we propose a deep learning algorithm for automatically detecting hand-object interactions in egocentric videos recorded by participants with cSCI during their daily activities at home. The proposed approach is able to detect hand-object interactions with good accuracy (F1-score up to 0.82), demonstrating the feasibility of this system in uncontrolled situations (e.g., unscripted activities and variable illumination). This result paves the way for the development of an automated tool for measuring hand function in people with cSCI living in the community.

Assessment of priorities in critical material recovery from Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

A major problem in developing environmental management systems for assessing recovery priorities for high added-value materials such as critical metals from wastes is that the input data required are contained in a variety of databases compiled for different purposes with different levels of content and accuracy. To deal with decision-making priorities for environmental issues where uncertainties and inconsistencies are inherent in input data sources a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach using an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine weights and fuzzy numbers to account for input data uncertainties is developed and is illustrated for determination of critical metal recovery priorities from Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in Europe. A spreadsheet programme with many user-friendly input and output features is developed to aid data-handling and the calculations required in the MCDA approach. Where data uncertainties exist, weighted input parameters for the critical metals are determined by an absolute judgement panel of key stakeholders and include data on: recovery potential, geographical supply concentration and stability, end use substitution, future metal demand and economic importance in key industrial sectors. Sensitivity analyses can be carried out on results of recovery priority outputs by simple numerical variation of input parameters and/or by the use of specialist input decision panels representing stakeholder groups with differing priorities, and the results suggest that recovery priorities in the European situation should concentrate on gallium, indium and germanium. The spreadsheet-MCDA program set up in developing the methodology for criticality has wide general application in environmental decision-making analysis particularly where uncertainties exist in the input data required.

An Effective and Efficient Method for Detecting Hands in Egocentric Videos for Rehabilitation Applications.

Individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) report upper limb function as their top recovery priority. To accurately represent the true impact of new interventions on patient function, evaluation should occur in a natural setting. Wearable cameras can be used to monitor hand function at home, using computer vision to automatically analyze the resulting egocentric videos. A key step in this process, hand detection, is difficult to accomplish robustly and reliably, hindering the deployment of a complete monitoring system in the home and community. We propose an accurate and efficient hand detection method that uses a simple combination of existing detection and tracking algorithms, evaluated on a new hand detection dataset, consisting of 167,622 frames of egocentric videos collected from 17 individuals with SCI in a home simulation laboratory. The F1-scores for the best detector and tracker alone (SSD and Median Flow) were 0.90±0.07 and 0.42±0.18, respectively. The best combination method, in which a detector was used to initialize and reset a tracker, resulted in an F1-score of 0.87±0.07 while being two times faster than the fastest detector. The method proposed here, in combination with wearable cameras, will help clinicians directly measure hand function in a patient's daily life at home.

Recovery priorities in degenerative cervical myelopathy: a cross-sectional survey of an international, online community of patients

ObjectivesTo establish the recovery priorities of individuals suffering with degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM).DesignA cross-sectional, observational study.SettingPatients from across the world with a diagnosis of DCM accessed the survey over an...

EU’s Gender Equality Dilemma: A Human Rights or a Market Economy Instrument?

In the early stages of the European Integration, gender equality related policies were narrowly tackled due to the economic recovery priority of the Union. Although there was a rise of national and international women movements all around Europe, gender equality, particularly as a new paradigm, had not gained priority until the 1990s, when the EU was newly building a political presence in the world politics. Since the Copenhagen Criteria were presented in 1993, gender equality embedded titles have proven to be more promising as they are declared as a part of the EU’s human rights norms and the EU’s self-image towards ‘Others’. In a similar vein, specifically in that period the EU has contributed several international women conventions and has undertaken responsibilities in terms of promoting equality between men and women in its external relations. However, the explanations how a gender equality norm matters in the EU are yet unsatisfied due to the continuity of gender blind policies and strategies. This paper scrutinizes the content within which the EU has constructed gender equality norm inside its borders and then exported it as a Europeanization norm in its relations with Turkey. In light of the EU’s official documents and imposition of gender equality as an accession criterion, it can be argued that instead of creating an ideational change in the unequal conception of gender roles, the EU constantly instrumentalizes gender equality as a regulatory mechanism for market economy both inside the Union and throughout its enlargement process. Hence, despite its gender sensitive image, the EU falls short in internalizing

Application of biosurfactant tea saponin in flotation separation for ternary plastic mixtures: Statistical optimization and mechanism analysis

Plastics flotation is facilitated to the sustainable development and cleaner production of the industry. Biosurfactant tea saponin was first applied to a flotation process for ternary plastic mixtures so as to minimize the secondary pollution. Response surface methodology was utilized to optimize such process by considering variable interactions and multi-objects. Mechanism of wetting selectivity was clearly established with the assistance of interfacial free energy and characterization. Results showed that the tea saponin in cooperation with polyethylene glycol can be an eligible substitution of traditional reagents used in polyethylene, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and thermoplastic rubber system. For multi-objective optimization of purity priority, the solution was predicted as polyethylene glycol concentration of 8.43 mg/L, tea saponin concentration of 50.00 mg/L, conditioning time of 7.36 min, air flow rate of 180.55 L/h and stirring intensity of 1179.72 rpm. The purity and recovery of polyethylene product could reach 98.31 and 95.18% in validation tests, respectively. For reverse optimization of recovery priority, the purity and recovery of polyethylene product were also satisfactory in validation tests with 90.36 and 99.36%, respectively. The essence of wetting selectivity is the hydrogen bond (O–H···π*) between specific plastics and tea saponin, providing a referential direction for the development of new targeted reagents.