Sustained Focus Research Articles

Grinding performance using variants of the MQL technique: MQL with cooled air and MQL simultaneous to the wheel cleaning jet

The hardening of legislation in favor of socio-environmental preservation and the sustainable focus of industry are changing the current manufacturing methods, among which is grinding. This abrasion machining technique aims to produce parts with excellent surface finish and high geometric precision. On the other hand, the multiple sharp edges of the abrasive grains that make up the grinding wheel simultaneously deform and shear the workpiece surface material, which releases a lot of energy in the form of heat. In this context, to soften the damage caused by the high temperatures, cutting fluids are applied to lubricate and refrigerate the tool/workpiece interface during the grinding process. However, the use of these fluids is damaging to people’s health and carries a high cost for disposal, given their potential to impact the biosphere. In this sense, the society allied with the researchers seeks alternative methods of lubri-refrigeration, among them, the minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), which applies a small quantity of fluid to the cutting zone through a flow of compressed air. However, the excessive increase of machining temperatures and the intensification of the grinding wheel clogging are significant drawbacks of this technique. Thus, to mitigate these problems, this work seeks to evaluate the traditional MQL application, MQL with cooled air (MQL+CA), and assisted by a wheel cleaning jet (MQL+WCJ), comparing them with the conventional method with abundant fluid, in the external cylindrical plunge grinding of the AISI 4340 steel using an aluminum oxide grinding wheel. The output parameters used to assess the efficiency of the techniques were surface roughness, roundness error, diametrical wheel wear, grinding power, tangential cutting force, specific grinding energy, and microhardness. The machined surfaces were evaluated through optical and scanning electron microscopies to verify possible thermal damages and microstructural alterations, and optical microscopy images of the grinding wheel cutting surface were assessed to ascertain the occurrence of the wheel clogging phenomenon. The results of the tests showed that the conventional method produced the best results in all analyzed parameters. Besides, MQL+WCJ and MQL+CA outperformed all the results obtained with traditional MQL, which revealed the improvement obtained with these eco-friendly techniques and their applicability in the industry. Moreover, the application of the MQL+WCJ provided the closest results in comparison with the conventional method, proving to be superior to the MQL+CA.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Coaching with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

This study explores the advantages and disadvantages of being a professional coach with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The abundant literature on ADHD is reviewed and looked at in light of international and national (French) coaching performance standards By looking at the relationship one with ADHD tends to have with themselves, with others, with sustained focus and follow-through, and with creative processes, this study concludes that a coach with ADHD who can have the most impairing traits of the disorder under control most probably has an edge over non-ADHD coaches, in particular when it comes to the creative aspects of the coaching process.

Long Tail Hardware: Turning Device Concepts Into Viable Low Volume Products

We have argued that the innovations that have enabled a long tail of products in several industries can be leveraged to do the same for hardware devices. While we see these established innovations as necessary, in the case of hardware, they are insufficient. Devices bring additional complexities in comparison with products that can be distributed digitally such as apps, books, and movies. One key difference is the replication challenge, especially at low volumes where economies of scale do not readily apply. It is certainly possible to be successful with a niche hardware product, in the same way that niche apps, books, and movies have been possible since the inception of their respective markets. However, as things stand, low -volume manufacturing is hard and requires tough tradeoffs between complexity, refinement, and price. As a result, it is all too easy to fail. We believe that a sustained focus on the replication challenge can reduce this complexity and risk.

Sustainability.

This review on Sustainability covers selected 2018 publications on the focus of sustainability. It is divided into the following sections: (a) Water quantity; (b) Water quality; (c) Climate change and resilience; (d) Planning and ecosystem evaluation; (e) Life cycle assessment (LCA) applications; (f) Sustainable management; (g) Sustainability and asset management; (h) Sustainability in wastewater treatment; (i) Sustainable water and wastewater utilities; (j) Sustainable water resource management.

Specialist Supportive Clinical Management for anorexia nervosa: what it is (and what it is not).

Specialist Supportive Clinical Management (SSCM) is a psychotherapy comprising a clinical management focus addressing anorexia nervosa (AN) symptoms and a supportive therapy component. SSCM has been an active control therapy in randomised controlled trials for AN, but has proven to be an effective therapy in its own right. There has been speculation about how this relatively straightforward therapy works. Some of the commentaries and descriptors used for SSCM, however, do not reflect the content or principles of SSCM. This paper clarifies areas of misunderstanding by describing what SSCM is and what it is not, particularly in relation to commentary about its constituent characteristics. SSCM utilises well established clinical management for AN (with a sustained focus on normalised eating and weight restoration) coupled with supportive therapy principles and strategies. Common factors across both arms include core counselling skills and a positive therapeutic alliance to promote adherence and retention in treatment for AN. Compared to other comparator therapies to date, SSCM is a simpler therapy without unique or novel theoretically derived strategies. Comparable outcomes with more complex psychotherapies raise the question of whether the combined core components of SSCM may be sufficient for many people with AN.

Dynamics of auditory spatial attention gradients

Auditory spatial attention faces the conflicting demands of focusing on the current task while also rapidly shifting location to unexpected stimuli. We examined the interplay of sustained focus and intermittent shifts in an auditory spatial attention task. Most trials required a choice response from a standard location in virtual space (L-R: −90°, 0°, +90°), but occasionally the location shifted between 45°-180°. Reaction time curves for angular shifts had a quadratic shape, with slowing for small shifts but faster reaction times for larger shifts. The reaction time curves were maintained at faster stimulus rates and usually scaled to fit the range of stimulus locations. However, focus on the right had an attenuated curve, and did not scale to the range of locations. The findings suggest two mechanisms: a top-down bias centered on standard locations that decreases with distance, and a bottom-up bias that under these conditions increases with distance from the standard location.

Book Review: Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz by Jason Borge

Taking on a sprawling and elusive notion like jazz is an ambitious enterprise. Jason Borge limits his perspective in this book mostly to representations of jazz by Latin American music critics and in film. Framing the book is the question of the reception of jazz in Latin America, specifically Brazil, Argentina and Cuba, and the politics of reception as refracted through issues of nationalism, race, and imperialism. As such, for readers who are acquainted with the many musicians and styles that populate the book, this is an informative and thorough account of the fortunes of jazz from the moments of its appearance to a waning “afterlife” (ch. 5) of the 1980s and ’90s. Each of the countries merits a chapter, and it is instructive for comparative purposes to trace the trajectory of jazz as it entered different social and political contexts. Most salient seems to be the question of race, and the ways that various critics navigate the ascribed “blackness” of jazz within their respective national conversations.In Argentina, Borge argues that the powerful and prevailing ideology of whiteness made it difficult for non-whites to enter the musical canon as it was written by critics of the 1930s and ‘40s. But that didn’t mean that there was no jazz, or that there were no non-white Argentines playing it. It only meant that critics were blind to their participation in the increasingly worldwide phenomenon.In Brazil, anxiety about what Borge identifies as Americanization shaped critical and audience responses to jazz. Moreover, it was through cinema rather than records that a widespread apprehension of the genre took place. In film, most jazz musicians were white. While Brazil did not suffer from the same kind of erasure of the role of people of African descent in the national imaginary (though that did not exempt Brazilians from their own particular forms of racism), somehow jazz was again more aligned with whiteness than might otherwise have been the case. Toward the 1960s, when bossa nova and jazz might be understood as related and intertwined, the relationship continued, paradoxically, to be a fraught one, at least in the eyes of critics.In Cuba, jazz and Cuban genres such as mambo were very closely related because of frequent in-person exchanges as musicians circulated between Havana, Miami, and New York. Cuba’s geographical proximity and a long history of what historian Louis A. Pérez has referred to as “ties of singular intimacy” (1990) in political and cultural realms meant that the musicking on both sides of the Florida straits grew up alongside one another and became entangled. Yet both American and Cuban critics, the argument goes, were too invested in keeping jazz distinct from Latin jazz, and the discursive effect was that both failed to recognize the inextricable histories of the two genres.Throughout, the author works to read and interpret his sources on their terms and without anachronistically reading twenty-first-century perspectives into mid-twentieth-century-cultural production. For the most part, he successfully exposes the contours of nationalist thought and aspirations to modernity, as well as understandings of race and gender that seem appropriate to the contexts in question. In some cases, however, the intention to interpret sources generously results in somewhat tone-deaf assertions about clearly racist tropes. The drawings of Miguel Covarrubias, for example, are described as “capturing the jaunty, playful spirit of Harlem clubs.”(28) Yet they appear almost shockingly to rely on and amplify visual cues that signaled blackness with exaggerated features and primitivist lines. Perhaps, to 1930s’ viewers, these images did indeed seem “lithe and modern” (28), but perhaps it would also be helpful to point out that they no longer appear as such, and instead look more like they are partaking of the kinds of visual regimes that we understand to be constitutive of the structural racisms that pervade the Americas.This is a paradoxical history, a history as much about what did not happen as what did. For the most part, it is the sustained focus on what the critics said, with additional attention to the ways that jazz appeared in film that leads Borge to his conclusions. This may be more useful for readers familiar with the musicians, films and performances to which the book refers. It may be less useful to those looking for an approach informed more by sound studies, especially in some recent iterations that attend to performance, the racialization or gendered nature of acousmatic music, infrastructure and technology. Similarly, a view that lingered more on the shifting venues and forms in which jazz was proffered and consumed by distinct audiences might also have yielded alternative, or additional, claims. The study of music in Latin America is a robust field, and this book is an instructive contribution.

Creative reuse: The impact artmaking has on raising environmental consciousness

Education for Sustainability (EfS) seeks to initiate ways of preserving our planet beyond this current generation. Visual arts teachers can facilitate the students’ imagination to cultivate sustainable attitudes and behaviours. This research investigates whether 12 year olds would question their ecological footprint if they creatively reuse discarded materials in their artmaking. Engaging in activities with a sustainability focus, they recognized the power that aesthetic transformation has on discarded materials, triggering shifts in their attitudes and making connections between their actions and their impact on the ecosphere. This research has implications for teaching EfS, in that the power of aesthetic transformation through creative reuse has the capacity to invite reflection to motivate children to make environmentally sustainable choices.

Sexual Violence: Christian Theological Legacies and Responsibilities

AbstractBetween the sustained focus of popular attention on the Catholic sexual abuse crisis and the current ubiquity of #MeToo and #ChurchToo discourse, it is clear that sexual violence is a problem within western Christianity. This article speaks to Christian theological legacies of complicity with systems of sexual violence. It sketches ethical, intellectual, and practical trajectories for scholars and practitioners engaging the Christian tradition today to address sexual violence well.

Searching for the real sustainable smart city?

The emergence of ‘Smart Cities’ is a contemporary global phenomenon which is closely aligned to a vision of modern technologically advanced sustainable urban environments. However, public policy and academic discourses differ about what constitutes a city that is either ‘smart’ or ‘sustainable’, and assumptions are frequently made about the positive impact of technology and its potential benefit to the environment. Whilst a smart city is not necessarily a sustainable city, the terms ‘smart city’ and the ‘sustainable city’ are increasingly being fused together in the concept of the Sustainable Smart City (SSC). This article seeks to explore the conceptual components of the SSC, with a particular focus on the participatory role of the citizen, where this involves the use of new digital technologies. Conventional eGovernment has tended to focus on service delivery rather than engaging citizens in participatory activity, whilst traditional discourses on sustainability focus on environmentalism rather than broader societal sustainability. Sustainability in the context of the SSC is a much wider concept, where the aspiration is also to improve the quality life by engaging citizens in participatory governance, by co-creating sustainability values, and by developing relationships, trust and sustainable mechanisms for ongoing engagement. In this respect, new digital technology is understood according to its transformational potential and the opportunities which it offers to citizens in delivery of services, meaningful participation and of sustainable societal solutions. This article explores the three underlying conceptual pillars of the SCC, namely insights deriving from perspectives associated with (1) sustainability, (2) new technology and (3) participation, where each of these perspectives offers up its own rationale and institutional logic. Here, it is argued, that whilst practice around SSC’s differs considerably, the ‘real’ SSC stands at the nexus of new technology, citizen engagement and sustainable outcomes.

Ultraviolent Gothic Visions: Lucio Fulci's ‘Gates of Hell’ Trilogy as Derridean Cinematic Haunted Spaces

This article examines films produced by the Italian director Lucio Fulci between 1980 and 1981: City of the Living Dead/Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980), The Beyond/L'aldilà (1981), and The House by the Cemetery/Quella villa accanto al cimitero (1981). Unofficially termed the Gates of Hell trilogy, the films stress a distinctive gothic sensibility brought together by the vivid and extreme subjects of decay and unflinching depictions of ultraviolent death and bodily destruction. The article explores the gothic motifs of the film series from the perspective of the work of Jacques Derrida. It argues that Fulci establishes a unique and highly stylized neo-gothic vision in his ‘trilogy’ that reflects a hauntological ethos, and effectively a distinctively Derridean evocation of the gothic, but with a sustained focus upon Derrida's deconstructive concept of ‘Undecidability.’ In the Gates of Hell trilogy the idea of undecidability is a persistent and compelling subject actively woven into the narratives through the gothic elements that infuse their extreme violence, the supernatural, the irrational, and the frequently surreal cinematic visions that Fulci conjures.

Older people's mental health in rural areas: Converting policy into service development, service access and a sustainable workforce.

This paper describes the older people's mental health workforce development, policy development and implementation process and quantifies the rural service delivery and access impacts over a 15-year period in New South Wales. It highlights the factors that are considered to be critical to successful rural service development such as commitment to funding parity, investment in strong local service leadership, and development of innovative, locally adapted rural service models. Building on these foundations, the Older People's Mental Health Program in New South Wales was able to address key challenges relating to service access in rural health and develop new, sustainable specialist older people's mental health service networks. A sustained focus on policy and implementation which explicitly supports rural older people's mental health service enhancement, and development of evidence-based models of care, has significantly improved access to specialist mental health care for older people in rural areas. It has delivered 23 new rural older people's mental health community teams and a 440% increase in the number of people accessing these teams. It has also doubled the number of acute inpatient units and established new specialistmental health-residential aged care partnership services in rural New South Wales. It has resulted in increased access to services for the "older old," while not diminishing older people's rates of access to general adult mental health services. It has also supported innovative, sustainable rural service models such as "hub and spoke" models and step-up step-down inpatient services that build on existing health and hospital infrastructure and link geographically dispersed specialist clinicians and services together in rural service delivery.

Historicizing Race

Historicizing Race is a sweeping reassessment of race and racial ideologies in Western intellectual history. The authors Marius Turda and Maria Sophia Quine emphasize the “stealth and wiliness” of race, beginning their analysis with an overview of “blood purity” laws in the fifteenth-century Iberian world and concluding with timely observations about the reemergence of racism and xenophobia in the twenty-first century (pp. 2, 18). Given the fractured political and cultural landscapes that characterize much of Western Europe and North America today, Turda and Quine's sustained focus on how race feeds “cultural arrogance” and notions of superiority seems particularly timely (p. 8). In five chapters—“History,” “Culture,” “Nation,” “Genealogy,” and “Science”—Turda and Quine remind us that race is a relationally constructed marker of identity lacking the abstract markers of scientific certainty that its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century apostles claimed it possessed. Echoing the work of cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, Turda and Quine insist that seeing race as a “signifier” that is used (and abused) to reinforce perceived differences and rationalize iniquities in socioeconomic and political power is a far more useful way of understanding the historical development of race (p. 13).

Prevalence and correlates of depression among Nigerian stroke survivors.

BackgroundThere is mixed evidence for the hypothesis that the risk of depression after stroke is influenced by the location of lesions in the hemispheres, demographic and clinical factors, and disability of stroke survivors.AimThe current study determined the prevalence of depression and its socio-demographic and clinico-pathological correlates among stroke survivors in a tertiary hospital in Lagos, Nigeria.MethodThe cross-sectional study was carried out among 112 adult patients with a clinical history of stroke confirmed by neuroimaging. Depression was diagnosed using Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview. The socio-demographic profile was obtained, and cognitive impairment was assessed using the Mini-Mental State Examination. Stroke severity was assessed retrospectively using the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale and current disability was measured using the Modified Rankin Scale.ResultsThere were 48 (42.9%) stroke survivors with a clinical diagnosis of depression. Using binary logistic regression, the independent determinants of depression were younger age, unemployment, perceived poor social support, increasing number of previous admissions because of stroke, cognitive impairment, severity of stroke and current disability status. However, there was no significant association between depression and lesion location.ConclusionDepression is a common associate of stroke, and there is a need for sustained focus on young stroke survivors with severe stroke, especially those who do not have social support and have low socio-economic status, who may have a higher risk of developing depression following stroke.

A LITERATURE REVIEW OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM (1990-2016)

Purpose of the study—Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world. Just like an enterprise today, sustainability is the long-term objective pursued by tourism industry. However, little effort has been made to systematically provide sufficient information to academicians and practitioners who have great research interests in sustainable tourism. Therefore, this paper aims to figure out the knowledge mapping of sustainable tourism and to indicate its research hot spots and trends for future research.
 Methodology—This paper surveys the development trajectory of sustainable tourism using a literature review and classification of articles retrieved from 5 online databases with solo keyword “sustainable tourism” from 1900 to 2016.
 Main findings—Based on the scope of 641 articles, this study reveals that the number of publication on sustainable tourism has significantly increased since 2006. In addition, these articles are scattered across 125 journals and mostly published in 23 academic journals. The majority of targeted countries/regions for sustainable tourism focus on Asia, Europe and America.
 Limitation—Restricted to limited knowledge, we make a brief literature survey on sustainable tourism from 1990-2016 to explore how sustainable tourism and its applications have developed in this period.
 Originality/value—In fact, sustainable tourism is a belief and an overall concept in every tourism activities. Though this research has done lots, it still has rooms to make more complete. Finally, we present a conceptual framework integrating 13 classifications criteria derived from our analysis with 3247 keywords. Most interestingly, we further present a conceptual framework with a visual effect to operationalize the coverage of sustainable tourism. Based on our analysis, any researcher can easily find the popular and right journal to get into it, if he/she is in need, he/she also can roughly know its applications so far and completely get a whole picture of sustainable tourism quickly.

Unintended Circularity?—Assessing a Product-Service System for its Potential Contribution to a Circular Economy

Product-service systems (PSSs) are seen as valuable facilitators of a circular economy (CE) on a business level. However, that PSSs contribute to a CE is not a given and is determined by the chosen PSS business model and strategy applied throughout the entire lifecycle. Thus, in order to support companies in implementing circular business models such as PSSs, an increasing number of frameworks and methods have been proposed in prior research. This article hypothesizes that many industrial companies are expanding to become PSS providers with neither such support nor a strong sustainability focus. There is a gap in the literature regarding the potential contribution of such PSSs to a CE. Thus, the research reported aims to provide initial insight regarding whether unintended circularity, i.e., an unintended contribution to a CE, may occur when becoming a PSS provider. Applying and adapting an existing framework for the assessment of PSSs’ potential contribution to a CE, the use-oriented PSS of an industrial company was assessed in-depth. Results regarding the relative resource reduction and the prospect of achieving absolute resource decoupling are reported and discussed. While relative improvements over product sales are identified, e.g., resulting from end-of-life efforts on reuse and remanufacturing, opportunities for additional enhancement are found, e.g., in adjustments of the PSS design process. Concerning absolute resource decoupling, a fundamental challenge lies in the use-oriented PSS’s dependency on an increasing number of physical components as the company’s business expands. This article advances the discussion on PSSs’ potential contributions to a CE with an in-depth empirical study. For practitioners, the results reported expand on important aspects of efficient and effective PSS provision throughout the lifecycle.

70-year legacy of the Framingham Heart Study.

The Framingham Heart Study (FHS) was established in 1948 to improve understanding of the epidemiology of coronary heart disease (CHD) in the USA. In 1961, seminal work identified major risk factors for CHD (high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and evidence on the electrocardiogram of left ventricular hypertrophy), which later formed the basis for multivariable 10-year and 30-year risk-prediction algorithms. The FHS cohorts now comprise three generations of participants (n ≈ 15,000) and two minority cohorts. The FHS cohorts are densely phenotyped, with recurring follow-up examinations and surveillance for cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular end points. Assessment of subclinical disease and physiological profiling of these cohorts (with the use of echocardiography, ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring, exercise stress testing, cardiac CT, heart and brain MRI, serial vascular tonometry and accelerometry) have been performed repeatedly. Over the past decade, the FHS cohorts have undergone deep 'omics' profiling (including whole-genome sequencing, DNA methylation analysis, transcriptomics, high-throughput proteomics and metabolomics, and microbiome studies). The FHS is a rich, longitudinal, transgenerational and deeply phenotyped cohort study with a sustained focus on state-of-the-art epidemiological methods and technological advances to facilitate scientific discoveries.

From Prevention through to Therapy: Supporting Evidence‐Informed Practice across the Spectrum of Child Maltreatment

From Prevention through to Therapy: Supporting Evidence‐Informed Practice across the Spectrum of Child Maltreatment

Advancing the state-level tracking of evidence-based practices: a case study

BackgroundDespite a sustained focus by policymakers and researchers on improving the standard of clinical care in public mental health services, the use of evidence-based practice remains low. Among other challenges, this reflects the difficulty of translating clinical research into useable policy that can be feasibly funded and monitored by state or large healthcare systems.Case presentationIn this paper we present a case study of Washington State’s strategy for monitoring the use of clinical elements at the session level for all Medicaid-funded children’s mental health services. The implementation of this strategy reflects policy actions to promote effective practice while also actively influencing multiple other levels of the implementation ecology. The approach is informed by the Policy Ecology Framework, the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, the evidence-based policymaking literature, and common ontology and clinical elements models.ConclusionsWe found the strategy developed in Washington State to be a feasible method of collecting session level information about the use of effective clinical mental health practices. In addition, the approach appears to be having influence on multiple layers of the implementation ecology that could be explored through further study.

Enhancing Therapist Courage and Clinical Acuity for Advancing Clinical Practice

ABSTRACTConventional psychotherapy approaches are currently contending with a prospective client market that is increasingly receptive to intuitive healers, tarot card readers, and extrasensory perception or ESP practitioners. More notable, however, than the alternative sources for personal insight and growth, is the societal shift to valuing, embracing and integrating a broader range of knowledge. In this evolving context, an ever-inclusive relationship to information may demand that conventionally-ground psychotherapists consider creative means for advancing clinical practice. Creative advancement in this regard requires courage and sustained focus. Two process-level strategies for enhancing therapist courage and clinical acuity are introduced in this article.