Improving the performance of filters for personal respiratory protection

Introduction. To adequately protect workers from gaseous air pollution using air purifying respiratory protective devices (RPD), it is necessary to periodically replace filters. The aim of the study was the analyze the methods of monitoring the performance of workers’ RPD. Materials and methods. Nowadays the subjective reaction of smell to an increase in the concentration of gas in the mask is widely used. This practice is compared with the available scientific information on the subjective ability of humans to detect gases. Results. The requirements for filter replacement in the legislation of foreign countries are analyzed. It has been established that for most hazardous substances there is no available information on the thresholds of odor (irritant) perception, and the available data show a high probability of exceeding the odor perception thresholds over the maximum permissible concentrations of hazardous substances in the working area. for getting used to it, distraction of attention, low individual sensitivity, etc. The existing approach in Russia leads to the belated replacement of part of the filters and, as a consequence, to the deterioration of the professional health of workers. Conclusion. Recommendations are formulated on the measures, the implementation of which is necessary to improve the protection of personnel used air purifying RPD.

THE HISTORY OF THE EXISTENCE OF ONE SOURCE. “THE DIARY OF PRINCE DMITRY MIKHAILOVICH VOLKONSKY” IN THE ARCHIVE FUND OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

The article is devoted to the history of the existence of a unique historical source of personal origin – the “Diary of Prince D.M. Volkonsky”, created for more than thirty years by a representative of the Tula branch of the Volkonsky princes. The daily records allow us to trace the everyday life of a Russian aristocrat, the author’s subjective reaction to contemporary events, and are also a valuable source for studying the first third of the 19th century. Originally consisting of 42 notebooks, the “Diary” has not been fully preserved. Today, divided into parts, it is stored in three archives – the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, and the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library. The article deals with the part of the source that was deposited in the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Fund 646 of the “Editorial Board of the journal ‘The Voice of the Past’” and covers the period from 1812 to 1834, with time gaps. Despite the fact that the text of the document was referred to by S.P. Melgunov and A.G. Tartakovsky, only the war period of 1812–1814 was introduced into scientific circulation, the most famous part of which was the publication: “The Russians at Danzig”. Its use in subsequent research makes it possible to supplement the existing sources of official origin and the sources of a memoir nature.

Usability of Food Size Aids in Mobile Dietary Reporting Apps for Young Adults: Randomized Controlled Trial

Background Young adults are more likely to use self-managed dietary reporting apps. However, there is scant research examining the user experience of different measurement approaches for mobile dietary reporting apps when dealing with a wide variety of food shapes and container sizes. Objective Field user experience testing was conducted under actual meal conditions to assess the accuracy, efficiency, and subjective reaction of three food portion measurement methods embedded in a developed mobile app. Key-in–based aid (KBA), commonly used in many current apps, relies on the user’s ability to key in volumes or weights. Photo-based aid (PBA) extends traditional assessment methods, allowing users to scroll, observe, and select a reduced-size image from a set of options. Gesture-based aid (GBA) is a new experimental approach in which the user makes finger movements on the screen to roughly describe food portion boundaries accompanied by a background reference. Methods A group of 124 young adults aged 19 to 26 years was recruited for a head-to-head randomized comparison and divided into 3 groups: a KBA (n=42) control group and PBA (n=41) and GBA (n=41) experimental groups. In total, 3 meals (ie, breakfast, lunch, and dinner) were served in a university cafeteria. Participants were provided with 25 dishes and beverages for selection, with a variety of food shapes and containers that reflect everyday life conditions. The accuracy of and time spent on realistic interaction during food portion estimation and the subjective reaction of each aid were recorded and analyzed. Results Participants in the KBA group provided the highest accuracy in terms of hash brown weight (P=.004) and outperformed PBA or GBA for many soft drinks in cups. PBA had the best results for a cylindrical hot dog (P<.001), irregularly shaped pork chop (P<.001), and green tea beverage (660 mL; P<.001). GBA outperformed PBA for most drinks, and GBA outperformed KBA for some vegetables. The GBA group spent significantly more time assessing food items than the KBA and PBA groups. For each aid, the overall subjective reaction based on the score of the System Usability Scale was not significantly different. Conclusions Experimental results show that each aid had some distinguishing advantages. In terms of user acceptance, participants considered all 3 aids to be usable. Furthermore, users’ subjective opinions regarding measurement accuracy contradicted the empirical findings. Future work will consider the use of each aid based on food or container shape and integrate the various advantages of the 3 different aids for better results. Our findings on the use of portion size aids are based on realistic and diverse food items, providing a useful reference for future app improvement of an effective, evidence-based, and acceptable feature. Trial Registration International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Registry ISRCTN36710750; http://www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN36710750.

Uma geografia de rosto humano

In different literary means, and throughout his lifetime, Miguel Torga kept drawing a human-like geography, as his senses reacted to the places he visited and walked through. With this article, we try to show how, from his native land of Trás-os-Montes, a true existential geode‑ sic marker, Torga displayed his telluric and Iberian nature, as he kept assessing and resizing himself as a man, by the experience of meeting new places and people that he preserved in books. By that literary inscription, born of an organic and subjective reaction and of a prospective look of human horizon, the author seeks to understand the human contours that the different physical and cultural geographies produced. In this exercise, which endows the spaces with human density, and gives them identity and historicity, the notion of heritage landscape is nurtured and expanded.

Kappa statistic for judgment agreement in Sociolinguistics / Estatística Kappa para concordância de julgamento em Sociolinguística

Perception studies have required the development of new techniques, as well as new ways of analyzing data. This paper discusses the proposal of Kappa statistic for the measurement of agreement amongst judgments in perception tests. The analysis deals with data obtained from a subjective reaction test focusing on the variable pronunciation of /t, d/ as stops or affricates in Aracaju, Sergipe, Brazil, considering aesthetic, rhythmic, and dialectal factors. Kappa statistic shows aspects of the inter-rater agreement and reliability that can explain how the linguistic change is driven in the community. This type of analysis also allows to account for, in a perception study, the sex/gender bias observed in production. Results suggest that Kappa-statistics is a tool that can improve the explanatory power of perceptual studies in Sociolinguistics.Keywords: Sociolinguistic perception; statistic tools; inter-rater agreement; /t,d/ palatalization.Resumo: Estudos de percepção têm demandado o desenvolvimento de novas técnicas, assim como novas formas de analisar os dados obtidos. Este texto discute a proposta do teste Kappa para a aferição da força de convergência de julgamentos em testes de percepção. A análise é realizada com dados obtidos em um teste de reação subjetiva quanto à realização variável de /t,d/ em Aracaju, Brasil, considerando fatores estéticos, rítmicos e dialetais. A estatística Kappa mostra aspectos da concordância e da confiabilidade entre os avaliadores que podem ser usados para explicar como a mudança linguística se dá na comunidade. A análise também permite identificar em um estudo da percepção o viés de sexo/gênero observado nos estudos de produção. Os resultados mostram que a estatística Kappa é uma ferramenta que pode ampliar o poder explanatório dos estudos de percepção em Sociolinguística.Palavras-chave: percepção sociolinguística; ferramentas estatísticas; concordância de juízes; palatalização de /t,d/.

Prison stress in women and its negative impact in the process of correcting

В статье рассматриваются причины и факторы, способствующие возникновению пенитенциарного стресса у осужденных к лишению свободы женщин. Стресс как субъективная реакция психики на изоляцию от общества больше связан с воздействием пенитенциарной среды и способствует развитию деструктивных проявлений у женщин, что негативно влияет на исправительное воздействие и часто проявляется на стадии адаптации и перед освобождением. В гендерном аспекте результаты исследования показали, что осужденные к лишению свободы мужчины проявляют устойчивость к стрессорным воздействиям при высоком уровне стресса, депрессивные состояния среди них в несколько раз меньше, чем у женщин. Пенитенциарный стресс у женщин является более контрастным, так как уровень психоэмоциональных переживаний выше и требуется значительно больше времени для восстановления, чем мужчинам. Исследуется практика применения индивидуальных и групповых психокоррекционных методик, осуществляемых в процессе исполнения наказания, которые создают условия для самоисправления женщины. Оптимизация исправительного воздействия возможна при условии включения осужденных женщин в воспитательно-ресоциализационные и социально-реабилитационные программы с учетом психофизиологических особенностей и анализа психодинамики их активности, с использованием дополнительного положительного влияния близких родственников и общественности на разных этапах отбывания наказания. The article discusses the causes and factors contributing to stress in prison of persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty of women. Stress as a subjective reaction of the psyche to isolation from society is more related to the impact of the prison environment and contributes to the development of destructive manifestations in women, which negatively affects the corrective effect and often manifests itself at the stage of adaptation and before release. In the gender aspect, the results of the study showed that men sentenced to imprisonment show resistance to stress at a high level of stress, depression among them several times less, unlike women. Penitentiary stress in women is more contrast, because the level of psycho-emotional experiences is higher and it takes much more time to recover than men. The author of the article studies the practice of applying individual and group psychocorrection techniques carried out in the process of execution of punishment, which create conditions for self-correction of women. Optimization of treatment possible, subject to the inclusion of women offenders in a correctional reintegration and social rehabilitation programme taking into account psycho-physiological characteristics and analysis of the psychodynamics of activity, using the influence of relatives and the public at various stages of punishment.

Usability of Food Size Aids in Mobile Dietary Reporting Apps for Young Adults: Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Young adults are more likely to use self-managed dietary reporting apps. However, there is scant research examining the user experience of different measurement approaches for mobile dietary reporting apps when dealing with a wide variety of food shapes and container sizes. OBJECTIVE Field user experience testing was conducted under actual meal conditions to assess the accuracy, efficiency, and subjective reaction of three food portion measurement methods embedded in a developed mobile app. Key-in–based aid (KBA), commonly used in many current apps, relies on the user’s ability to key in volumes or weights. Photo-based aid (PBA) extends traditional assessment methods, allowing users to scroll, observe, and select a reduced-size image from a set of options. Gesture-based aid (GBA) is a new experimental approach in which the user makes finger movements on the screen to roughly describe food portion boundaries accompanied by a background reference. METHODS A group of 124 young adults aged 19 to 26 years was recruited for a head-to-head randomized comparison and divided into 3 groups: a KBA (n=42) control group and PBA (n=41) and GBA (n=41) experimental groups. In total, 3 meals (ie, breakfast, lunch, and dinner) were served in a university cafeteria. Participants were provided with 25 dishes and beverages for selection, with a variety of food shapes and containers that reflect everyday life conditions. The accuracy of and time spent on realistic interaction during food portion estimation and the subjective reaction of each aid were recorded and analyzed. RESULTS Participants in the KBA group provided the highest accuracy in terms of hash brown weight (<i>P</i>=.004) and outperformed PBA or GBA for many soft drinks in cups. PBA had the best results for a cylindrical hot dog (<i>P</i>&lt;.001), irregularly shaped pork chop (<i>P</i>&lt;.001), and green tea beverage (660 mL; <i>P</i>&lt;.001). GBA outperformed PBA for most drinks, and GBA outperformed KBA for some vegetables. The GBA group spent significantly more time assessing food items than the KBA and PBA groups. For each aid, the overall subjective reaction based on the score of the System Usability Scale was not significantly different. CONCLUSIONS Experimental results show that each aid had some distinguishing advantages. In terms of user acceptance, participants considered all 3 aids to be usable. Furthermore, users’ subjective opinions regarding measurement accuracy contradicted the empirical findings. Future work will consider the use of each aid based on food or container shape and integrate the various advantages of the 3 different aids for better results. Our findings on the use of portion size aids are based on realistic and diverse food items, providing a useful reference for future app improvement of an effective, evidence-based, and acceptable feature. CLINICALTRIAL International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Registry ISRCTN36710750; http://www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN36710750.

Antismoking Campaigns’ Perception and Gender Differences: A Comparison among EEG Indices

Human factors’ aim is to understand and evaluate the interactions between people and tasks, technologies, and environment. Among human factors, it is possible then to include the subjective reaction to external stimuli, due to individual’s characteristics and states of mind. These processes are also involved in the perception of antismoking public service announcements (PSAs), the main tool for governments to contrast the first cause of preventable deaths in the world: tobacco addiction. In the light of that, in the present article, it has been investigated through the comparison of different electroencephalographic (EEG) indices a typical item known to be able of influencing PSA perception, that is gender. In order to investigate the neurophysiological underpinnings of such different perception, we tested two PSAs: one with a female character and one with a male character. Furthermore, the experimental sample was divided into men and women, as well as smokers and nonsmokers. The employed EEG indices were the mental engagement (ME: the ratio between beta activity and the sum of alpha and theta activity); the approach/withdrawal (AW: the frontal alpha asymmetry in the alpha band); and the frontal theta activity and the spectral asymmetry index (SASI: the ratio between beta minus theta and beta plus theta). Results suggested that the ME and the AW presented an opposite trend, with smokers showing higher ME and lower AW than nonsmokers. The ME and the frontal theta also evidenced a statistically significant interaction between the kind of the PSA and the gender of the observers; specifically, women showed higher ME and frontal theta activity for the male character PSA. This study then supports the usefulness of the ME and frontal theta for purposes of PSAs targeting on the basis of gender issues and of the ME and the AW and for purposes of PSAs targeting on the basis of smoking habits.

VITILIGO AND COMORBID PSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDERS

Vitiligo is a chronic idiopathic disease characterized by appearance of depigmented spots and discolored hairs in various parts of the body due to the destruction and reducing the number of melanocytes. Despite the absence of somatogenic appearance psychosomatic aspects of vitiligo are extremely relevant to study in view of high psychosocial significance associated with the pronounced stigmatizing effects. 62 vitiligo patients were examined. Among comorbid psychosomatic disorders there were found out psychogenic manifestations - 25 (40.3%) and nosogenic reactions due to stress effect of the dermatosis - 37 (50.7%): sociophobic - 17, masked hypochondria - 13, overvalued hypochondria of beauty - 7 patients. Psychogenic manifestations with the participation of objectively severe and subjectively significant factors can attribute vitiligo to psychosomatic skin diseases. In the clinical picture of nosogenic disorders, various forms of dissociation between the prevalence of dermatosis and subjective reaction to the cosmetic defect were revealed, which is due to the structure of the personality and somatoperceptive accentuation of the patient. The results can be implemented in dermatological practice, which will significantly optimize the treatment and compliance of patients with vitiligo. Objective: a complex clinical (dermatological, psychopathological) and psychological study of psychosomatic disorders in vitiligo.

Recognition, feelings of injustice and claim justification: a case study of deaf people's storytelling on the internet

This paper argues that Honneth's theory of recognition opens promising venues for exploring the role of emotion in politics, particularly when issues of injustice are at stake. While endorsing Honneth's view that ‘feelings of injustice’ are an important source for intelligibility of injustice, and that disadvantaged individuals need to build a ‘shared interpretative framework’ in struggles for recognition, this article contends that a more nuanced account of discursive justification is required to deal with dissent and moral disagreement. As a response to this problem, we suggest that Honneth's approach of subjective reaction to injury as violation of conditions to practical identity can be brought together with notions of discursive justification in the Habermasian fashion. Through an empirically based analysis – using storytelling of deaf people gathered in two virtual environments: (a) the website of the main Brazilian organization for deaf persons (FENEIS), and (b) Orkut, an online social network – this paper evinces that subjects not only articulate feelings of injustice or claims for recognition in everyday experience, but also usually engage in interpretation, judgment and justification of such claims. Results show that Honneth's theory of recognition, when articulated with a notion of discursive justification, can better equip scholars concerned with practices that aim to overcome injustice.