Exposure Assessment to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields in Occupational Military Scenarios: A Review

(1) Background: Radiofrequency radiations are used in most devices in current use and, consequently, the assessment of the human exposure to the radiofrequency radiations has become an issue of strong interest. Even if in the military field there is wide use of radiofrequency devices, a clear picture on the exposure assessment to the electromagnetic field of the human beings in the military scenario is still missing. (2) Methods: a review of the scientific literature regarding the assessment of the exposure of the military personnel to the RF specific to the military environment, was performed. (3) Results: the review has been performed grouping the scientific literature by the typology of military devices to which the military personnel can be exposed to. The military devices have been classified in four main classes, according to their intended use: communication devices, localization/surveillance devices, jammers and EM directed-energy weapons. (4) Discussion and Conclusions: The review showed that in the exposure conditions here evaluated, there were only occasional situations of overexposure, whereas in the majority of the conditions the exposure was below the worker exposure limits. Nevertheless, the limited number of studies and the lack of exposure assessment studies for some devices prevent us to draw definitive conclusions and encourage further studies on military exposure assessment.

Influence of Sweat on Joint and Sensor Reliability of E-Textiles

This article addresses reliability under the sweat of interconnection techniques for the mounting surface mounted device (SMD) components and fully printed humidity sensors onto conductive stretchable textile ribbons. Samples underwent testing for the effect of ageing by artificial sweat on their electrical resistance using both alkaline and acidic artificial sweat. The best results in terms of electrical resistance change were obtained for samples soldered to the conductive fibers interwoven in the ribbon. However, this method can damage the ribbon due to the high temperature during soldering and significantly reduce the mechanical properties and flexibility of the ribbon, which can lead to a limited service life of samples. On the other hand, adhesive bonding is a very interesting alternative, where the above-mentioned properties are preserved, but there is a significant effect of sweat ageing on electrical resistance. The results of fully printed graphene-based humidity sensors show that, for the intended use of these sensors (i.e., detection of changes in moisture on the human body), usage of the samples is possible, and the samples are sufficiently reliable in the case of sweat degradation. In addition, the response of the sensor to humidity is quite high: 98% at a relative humidity of 98%.

Kajian Etnobiologi Kelompok Etnik Dani: Bentuk Interaksi Masyarakat Dengan Taman Wisata Alam Gunung Meja, Manokwari, Papua Barat

Selain sebagai penyedia air bersih, potensi flora dan fauna Taman Wisata Alam Gunung Meja (TWA Gunung Meja), sangat menjanjikan. Karena letaknya yang mudah diakses serta lokasinya yang berada di dalam kota Manokwari, interaksi yang terjadi antara masyarakat dengan kawasan ini juga sangat tinggi dan berdampak terhadap potensi keanekaragaman hayatinya. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mempelajari bentuk interaksi antara kelompok etnik Dani dengan TWA Gunung Meja serta merekam informasi etnobiologi mereka dan melakukan penilaian deskriptif dampak pemanfaatan terhadap kondisi lingkungan TWA Gunung Meja. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif dengan teknik observasi, wawancara dan studi kepustakaan dan semua hasil observasi dan wawancara yang diperoleh dalam penelitian ini dianalisis menggunakan statistik deskriptif. Pendekatan kontekstual digunakan untuk menjelaskan situasi di lapangan untuk melengkapi deskripsi lokasi penelitian. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat tujuh spesies tumbuhan dari enam famili dan enam spesies hewan dari enam famili dimanfaatkan oleh kelompok etnik Dani di kawasan TWA Gunung Meja. Tujuan pemanfaatannya bervariasi untuk kebutuhan sandang, pangan, energi dan pengobatan medis dan asesori budaya. Bagian tumbuhan yang dimanfaatkan berragam terdiri dari batang, ranting, dahan, daun, buah dan kulit, sedangkan daging, lemak, empedu, kulit, cakar dan taring adalah bagian tubuh hewan yang dimanfaatkan kelompok etnik Dani sesuai tujuan pemanfaatannya.ABSTRACTApart from being a provider of clean water, the potential of flora and fauna of the Gunung Meja Nature Tourism Park (TWA Gunung Meja) is very promising. Due to its easily accessible and its location within the city of Manokwari, the interaction that occurs between the community and this area is also very high and creates impact on its biodiversity potential. This study aims to study the form of interaction between the Dani ethnic group and TWA Gunung Meja as well as record their ethnobiological information. We conduct a descriptive assessment of the impact of utilization on the environmental conditions of TWA Gunung Meja. This research is a descriptive study with observation, interview and literature study techniques and all observations and interviews obtained in this study were analyzed using descriptive statistics. A contextual approach is used to explain the situation in the field to complete the description of the research location. The results showed that there were seven plant species from six families and six animal species from six families used by the Dani ethnic group in the TWA Gunung Meja area. The purpose of its use varies for the needs of clothing, food, energy and medical treatment and cultural accessories. The various parts of the plant used consist of stems, twigs, branches, leaves, fruit and skin, while meat, fat, gall, skin, claws and fangs are animal body parts used by the Dani ethnic group according to their intended use

eSports and eSocial Work

Bringing together international players, eSports benefits beyond digitalization according to its intended use. It is possible to socialize individuals who cannot come together due to pandemics, extraordinary events, and economic difficulties and increase their commitment to life with these video games. Social work should take advantage of this developing field. eSports can provide benefits in geriatrics, home care services, physical therapy, elderly people in nursing homes, women, children, people with an autistic spectrum disorder, and social adaptation. Social work's functions in many areas such as environmental and social adaptation, well-being, welfare, public health, social policy, and the rehabilitation of children prone to crime can be made more functional through eSports. This chapter deals with the functions of social work to be developed and improved with eSports.

Off-Label Use of Medicines in Children Attending a Secondary Healthcare Facility in Federal Capital Territory

Before a new drug is approved for marketing in any country, it must have undergone three phases of clinical trials designed to assess its efficacy and safety when used according to an approved recommendation. After a drug has been tested and approved by the regulatory authorities, the drug is usually given a ‘label’ or ‘license’ which is a report describing the drug intended use and dosage. This study aimed at evaluating the use of medicines outside the terms stated in the label. The study was conducted using a data collection form to obtain information from patients’ case file. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The case notes of 449 patients were included in the study. The ages of the patients ranged from 4 days to 16 years. Females constituted 51.7% (232) and males 48.3% (217). A total of 1866 drugs were administered to patients, of which 469 (25.13%) were off-label prescriptions. The highest category of off-label drug was indication (45%). This study has revealed a considerable prevalence of off-label use of medicines, there is however need for proper pharmaceutical care to be emplaced in healthcare facilities so as to minimize off-label drug use and prevent adverse effect of drugs as a result of inappropriate use of medicines.

Playing YouTube: How the Nancy YouTuber doll and app position children as aspiring YouTube influencers

This article analyzes Nancy YouTuber, a popular doll and companion app that is part of a growing trend of children's toys modeled on YouTube influencers. Nancy YouTuber's app is one of the first to provide a fictitious YouTube channel, introducing children to YouTube's affordances. We investigate how the doll and app socialize YouTuber practices, and to what extent the combination of both deepens the commodification of childhood. We use the walkthrough method to analyze the app, and a semiotic approach to study the doll, its accessories and surrounding materials to map the manufacturer's intended use through these discourses. Our research uncovers how children are encouraged to recreate product reviews and internalize commercial digital identity performances. We use Spain, where the doll originates, to contextualize these findings. The article considers how influencer-aspirant toys position children as promotional intermediaries and normalize children's YouTuber aspirations.

Breaking the Silence about the Animals We Eat

Some 77 billion terrestrial animals are reared for human consumption globally every year. The moral implications of killing animals for food and the material conditions of these animals in intensive animal agriculture have seldom been discussed in children’s literature. The purpose of this article is to examine how these socially and culturally maintained silences are broken in two Nordic children’s picturebooks, Swedish Älskade lilla gris (Dear Little Pig, 1982) by Ulf Nilsson and Eva Eriksson and Finnish Kinkkulin jouluyllätys (Little Ham’s Christmas Surprise, 2010) by Teija Rekola and Timo Kästämä. The books’ pig protagonists are determined not to die, embodying the dualistic status inherent in the animality of farmed animals; they are subjects and objects, living beings and food-to-become. Further, this article explores the representation of the inherent value of so-called farmed animals and how it can be narrated-to-exist by concepts gleaned from Western animal rights philosophy, especially the capabilities approach by Martha Nussbaum. In the two books, inherent value is expressed in significantly different modes. Älskade lilla gris discusses multispecies families, autonomous animality, and emancipation, whereas Kinkkulin jouluyllätys uses a more traditional mode involving an anthropomorphic animal story, idyllic setting, and humanized subjectivity. Analysis focuses on the representation of nonhuman individuality, agency, sentience, animality, and interaction with humans. Both books present active and sentient individuals with varying degrees of animality. One celebrates its protagonist’s pighood but also contrasts it with the confined conditions of an animal industrial complex. The other employs a human-like pig protagonist on the run from his slaughterer and whose pighood is limited to his appearance and intended use.

Factors Influencing Adherence to mHealth Apps among Adults with Non-communicable Disease: A Systematic Review. (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Mobile health applications show vast potential in supporting patients and health care systems with the globally increasing prevalence and economic costs of non-communicable diseases. However, despite the availability of evidence-based mHealth apps, a substantial proportion of users does not adhere to them as intended and may consequently not receive treatment. Therefore, understanding factors that act as barriers or facilitators to adherence is a fundamental concern to prevent intervention dropouts and increase the effectiveness of digital health interventions. OBJECTIVE This review aims to identify intervention- and patient-related factors influencing the continued use of mHealth applications targeting non-communicable diseases (NCDs). We further derive quantified adherence scores for different health domains, which may help stakeholders plan, develop, and evaluate mHealth apps. METHODS A comprehensive systematic literature search (January 2007- December 2020) was conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, and ACM Digital Library. Data on intended use, actual use, and factors influencing adherence were extracted. Intervention-related and patient-related factors with a positive or negative influence on adherence are presented separately for the health domains NCD-Self-Management, Mental Health, Substance Use, Nutrition, Physical Activity, Weight Loss, Multicomponent Lifestyle Interventions, Mindfulness, and other NCDs. Quantified adherence measures, calculated as the ratio between estimated intended and actual use, were derived for each study and compared with qualitative findings. RESULTS The literature search yielded 2862 potentially relevant articles, of which 99 were included as part of the inclusion criteria. Four intervention-related factors indicated positive effects on adherence across all health domains: (1) personalization or tailoring the content of the mHealth app to the individual needs of the user, (2) reminders in the form of individualized push notifications, (3) a user-friendly and technically stable app design, and (4) personal support complementary to the digital intervention. Social and gamification features were also identified as drivers of app adherence across several health domains. A wide variety of patient-related factors like user characteristics or user recruitment channels further affects adherence. Derived adherence scores of included mHealth apps averaged 56.0%. CONCLUSIONS This study contributes to the scarce scientific evidence on factors positively or negatively influencing adherence to mHealth apps and is the first to compare adherence relative to the intended use of various health domains quantitatively. As underlying studies mostly have a pilot character with short study durations, research on factors influencing adherence to mHealth apps is still limited. To facilitate future research on mHealth app adherence, researchers should clearly outline and justify the app's intended use, report objective data on actual use relative to the intended use, and ideally, provide long-term usage and retention data.

A Knowledge based Automatic Radiation Treatment Plan Alert System

In radiation therapy, preventing treatment plan errors is of paramount importance. In this paper, an alert system is proposed and developed for checking if the pending cancer treatment plan is consistent with the intended use. A key step in the development of the paper is characterization of various treatment plan fingerprints by three-dimension vectors taken from possibly thousands of variables in each treatment plan. Then three machine learning based algorithms are developed and tested in the paper. The first algorithm is a knowledge-based support vector machine method. If an incorrect treatment plan were offered, the algorithm would tell that the pending treatment plan is inconsistent with the intended use and provide a red flag. The algorithm is tested on the actual patient data sets with 100% successful rate and 0% failure rate. In addition, two algorithms based on the well-known k-nearest neighbour and Bayesian approach respectively are developed. Similar to the support vector machine algorithm, these two algorithms are also tested with 100% success rate and 0% failure rate. The key seems to pick up the right features.

Moving Towards Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-based Therapies with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

The advent of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, which allows to transform one cell type into another, holds the promise to produce therapeutic cells and organs on demand. Realization of this objective is contingent on the ability to demonstrate quality and safety of the cellular product for its intended use. Bottlenecks and backlogs to the clinical use of iPSCs have been fully outlined and a need has emerged for safer and standardized protocols to trigger cell reprogramming and functional differentiation. Amidst great challenges, in particular associated with lengthy culture time and laborious cell characterization, a demand for faster and more accurate methods for the validation of cell identity and function at different stages of the iPSC manufacturing process has risen. Artificial intelligence-based methods are proving helpful for these complex tasks and might revolutionize the way iPSCs are managed to create surrogate cells and organs. Here, we briefly review recent progress in artificial intelligence approaches for evaluation of iPSCs and their derivatives in experimental studies. Graphical Abstract