The early costs of plant closures: Evidence on lead effects on workers’ subjective and objective outcomes

2021 ◽  
Vol 188 ◽  
pp. 489-505
Author(s):  
Christoph Wunder ◽  
Tugba Zeydanli
Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor

This article is an attempt to comprehend deindustrialisation and the impact of plant downsizing and closures in Scotland since the 1970s through listening to the voices of workers and reflecting on their ways of telling, whilst making some observations on how an oral history methodology can add to our understanding. It draws upon a rich bounty of oral history projects and collections undertaken in Scotland over recent decades. The lush description and often intense articulated emotion help us as academic “outsidersˮ to better understand how lives were profoundly affected by plant closures, getting us beyond statistical body counts and overly sentimentalised and nostalgic representations of industrial work to more nuanced understandings of the meanings and impacts of job loss. In recalling their lived experience of plant run-downs and closures, narrators are informing and interpreting; projecting a sense of self in the process and drawing meaning from their working lives. My argument here is that we need to listen attentively and learn from those who bore witness and try to make sense of these diverse, different and sometimes contradictory stories. We should take cognisance of silences and transgressing voices as well as dominant, hegemonic narratives if we are to deepen the conversation and understand the complex but profound impacts that deindustrialisation had on traditional working-class communities in Scotland, as well as elsewhere.


Author(s):  
M Mazhar Celikoyar ◽  
Michael F Perez ◽  
M Ilhan Akbas ◽  
Oguzhan Topsakal

Abstract Background Facial features and measurements are utilized to analyze patients’ faces for various reasons, including surgical planning, scientific communications, patient-surgeon communications, and post-surgery evaluations. Objectives There are numerous descriptions regarding these features and measurements scattered throughout the literature and we did not encounter a current compilation of these parameters in the medical literature. Methods A narrative literature review of the published medical literature for facial measurements used for facial analysis in rhinoplasty was done through the electronic databases MEDLINE/PubMed and Google Scholar, along with a citation search. Results A total of 61 facial features were identified. 45 points (25 bilateral, 20 unilateral), five lines (three bilateral, two unilateral), eight planes, and three areas. A total of 122 measurements were identified: 48 distances (6 bilateral, 42 unilateral), 57 angles (13 bilateral, 44 unilateral), and 17 ratios. Supplemental Figures were created to depict all features and measurements using either a frontal, lateral or basal view of the face. Conclusions This paper provides the most comprehensive and current compilation of facial measurements to date. We believe this compilation will guide further developments (methodologies and software tools) for analyzing nasal structures and assessing the objective outcomes of facial surgeries, in particular rhinoplasty. Moreover, it will improve the communication as a reference for facial measurements of facial surface anthropometry, in particular rhinoplasty.


Work ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Amy Wagenfeld ◽  
Daniel Winterbottom

BACKGROUND: Adjusting to incarceration is traumatic. An under-utilized strategy understood to buffer and counteract the negative impacts of incarceration are nature interventions. OBJECTIVE: Outcomes of an interdisciplinary design studio course focused on developing masterplans for a women’s prison in the Pacific Northwest (US) are presented. Course objectives included comprehension and application of therapeutic and culturally expressive design principles to increase the benefits of environmental design within a carceral setting; collaboration, developing a deeper, more representative understanding of how design processes can improve the lives of marginalized populations; and enhancing design skills, including at masterplan and schematic scale using an iterative process and reflection. METHODS: A landscape architect, occupational therapist, and architect teaching team, with support from architects and justice specialists facilitated an elective design studio course to redesign the Washington Corrections Center for Women campus. RESULTS: In a ten-week academic quarter, six student design teams created conceptual masterplans for therapeutic outdoor spaces at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Students presented their plans to prison staff, current and ex-offenders, and architects and landscape architects in practice, and then received positive feedback. CONCLUSION: Despite well-documented need for and value of nature interventions to improve health and wellbeing for everyone regardless of circumstance or situation, the project awaits administrative approval to move forward to installation.


Author(s):  
Alessio Trivella ◽  
Selvaprabu Nadarajah ◽  
Stein-Erik Fleten ◽  
Denis Mazieres ◽  
David Pisinger

Problem definition: Merchant commodity and energy production assets operate in markets with volatile prices and exchange rates. Plant closures adversely affect societal entities beyond the specific plant being shut down, such as the parent company and the local community. Motivated by an aluminum producer, we study if mitigating these hard-to-assess broader impacts of a shutdown is financially viable using the plant’s operating flexibility. Academic/practical relevance: Our social commerce perspective toward managing shutdown decisions deviates from the commonly used asset value maximization objective in merchant operations. Identifying operating policies that delay or decrease the likelihood of a shutdown without incurring a significant asset value loss supports socially responsible plant shutdown decisions. Methodology: We formulate a constrained Markov decision process to manage shutdown decisions and limit the probability of future plant closures. We provide theoretical support for approximating this intractable model using unconstrained stochastic dynamic programs with modified shutdown costs and explore two classes of operating policies. Our first policy leverages anticipated regret theory, and the second policy generalizes, using machine learning, production-margin heuristics used in practice. We compute the former and latter policies using a least squares Monte Carlo method and combining this method with binary classification, respectively. Results: Anticipated-regret policies possess desirable asymptotic properties absent in classification-based policies. On instances created using real data, anticipated-regret and classification-based policies outperform practice-based production-margin strategies. Significant reductions in shutdown probability and delays in plant closures are possible while incurring small asset value losses. Managerial implications: A plant’s operating flexibility provides an effective lever to balance the social objective to reduce closures and the financial goal to maximize asset value. Adhering to both objectives requires combining short-term commitments with external stakeholders to avoid shutdown with longer-term internal efforts to reduce the probability of plant closures.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Andrés CORONEL ◽  
Wanderley Marques BERNARDO ◽  
Diogo Turiani Hourneaux de MOURA ◽  
Eduardo Turiani Hourneaux de MOURA ◽  
Igor Braga RIBEIRO ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Endoscopic antireflux treatments for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) are still evolving, and most of the published studies address symptom relief in the short-term. Objective - We aimed to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis focused on evaluating the efficacy of the different endoscopic procedures. METHODS: Search was restricted to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on MedLine, Cochrane, SciELO, and EMBASE for patients with chronic GERD (>6 months), over 18 years old and available follow up of at least 3 months. The main outcome was to evaluate the efficacy of the different endoscopic treatments compared to sham, pharmacological or surgical treatment. Efficacy was measured by different subjective and objective outcomes. RESULTS: We analyzed data from 16 RCT, totaling 1085 patients. The efficacy of endoscopic treatments compared to sham and proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) treatment showed a significant difference up to 6 months in favor of endoscopy with no heterogeneity (P<0.00001) (I2: 0%). The subgroup analysis showed a statistically significant difference up to 6 months in favor of endoscopy: endoscopy vs PPI (P<0.00001) (I2: 39%). Endoscopy vs sham (P<0.00001) (I2: 0%). Most subjective and objective outcomes were statistically significant in favor of endoscopy up to 6 and 12 months follow up. CONCLUSION: This systematic review and meta-analysis shows a good short-term efficacy in favor of endoscopic procedures when comparing them to a sham and pharmacological or surgical treatment. Data on long-term follow up is lacking and this should be explored in future studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 2665-2671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gföller ◽  
Elisabeth Abermann ◽  
Armin Runer ◽  
Christian Hoser ◽  
Mario Pflüglmayer ◽  
...  

BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e032662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amélie Frégeau ◽  
Alexis Cournoyer ◽  
Marc-André Maheu-Cadotte ◽  
Massimiliano Iseppon ◽  
Nathalie Soucy ◽  
...  

IntroductionThere is a growing interest in developing interprofessional education (IPE) in the community of healthcare educators. Tabletop exercises (TTX) have been proposed as a mean to cultivate collaborative practice. A TTX simulates an emergent situation in an informal environment. Healthcare professionals need to take charge of this situation as a team through a discussion-based approach. As TTX are gaining in popularity, performing a review about their uses could guide educators and researchers. The aim of this scoping review is to map the uses of TTX in healthcare.Methods and analysisA search of the literature will be conducted using medical subject heading terms and keywords in PubMed, Medline, EBM Reviews (Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews), CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Embase and ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), along with a search of the grey literature. The search will be performed after the publication of this protocol (estimated to be January 1st 2020) and will be repeated 1 month prior to the submission for publication of the final review (estimated to be June 1st 2020). Studies reporting on TTX in healthcare and published in English or French will be included. Two reviewers will screen the articles and extract the data. The quality of the included articles will be assessed by two reviewers. To better map their uses, the varying TTX activities will be classified as performed in the context of disaster health or not, for IPE or not and using a board game or not. Moreover, following the same mapping objective, outcomes of TTX will be reported according to the Kirkpatrick model of outcomes of educational programs.Ethics and disseminationNo institutional review board approval is required for this review. Results will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The findings of this review will inform future efforts to TTX into the training of healthcare professionals.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document