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The current challenging environment for public library has resulted in an ever greater need to demonstrate and evidence the quality of library provision as well as the value and impact of these services on society. Research, conducted on behalf of the Scottish Library and Information Council, reviewed the previous quality standards mechanism used in Scotland and resulted in the creation of a new framework. Data were gathered through a systematic review of all published quality audits of Scottish public libraries, focus groups with heads of service, impact workshops with library staff. The findings resulted in the creation of a new approach to assessing and evaluating the quality of provision as well as the value and impact of Scottish public libraries.

peer-reviewed The full text of this article will not be available in ULIR until the embargo expires on the 18/02/2020 Background Assessment of clinical practice is a core component of midwifery education. Clinical assessment is challenging and affected by a number of factors. Preceptor midwives are reported to be reluctant to fail students in clinical assessments. This is worrying as preceptor midwives are gatekeepers to the profession of midwifery and need to ensure midwifery students are safe and competent practitioners of midwifery on completion of their programmes. Methods This qualitative descriptive study explores preceptor midwives experiences of clinical assessment of midwifery students in four maternity units in the Republic of Ireland. Following ethical approval, twenty-nine preceptor midwives were interviewed. Content analysis was used to analyse the data and two themes with associated subthemes identified. Findings Competency assessment in practice was supported by a robust, clearly delineated process, considered vital to ensure effective and fair assessment of midwifery students. The process in place had many advantages but attracted some criticism too, most notably language, documentation and lack of continuity of the preceptor. The challenges of clinical assessment were multifaceted but the most pressing concern was dealing with students who were struggling in practice where the outcome of an assessment was potentially a fail. Preceptor midwives expressed reluctance to fail students but balanced this with ensuring safety for women and their babies. A number of other challenges hampered decisions in clinical assessments. These included the confidence of the preceptor, juggling the competing demands of clinical practice with effective assessment in an increasingly complex and fiscally challenging environment, operationalising the competency assessment process and the emotional toll associated with failing a student. Conclusion Preceptors’ primary focus is on ensuring that graduate midwives are safe and competent practitioners and it is this which guides their decision making on the outcome of clinical assessments. However, more support is required for the onerous responsibility of clinical assessment, particularly for less experienced midwives but also when failure of clinical assessment is a potential outcome. Preceptorship needs to be valued more at a strategic level

Broadly educated professionals are a rely valuable resource for the Russian public health system in the current socio-economic conditions. Their capability to flexibly switch the focus and content of their activities in the changing and challenging environment is essential for successful performance. The purpose of our study is to analyze the international evidence on managing the process of competencies’ development in healthcare managers. Competence-oriented education and training of future health-care managers is of special interest. In light of this, the study of international data on the organization of the processes of key competence development is important. Here with, it is necessary to take into account the content of the studies, resources and technologies, factors that influence on this process, the development and evaluation of models aimed at improvement of the education of healthcare management professionals at medical schools. We believe that the results of this review will help to develop and offer a number of practical steps aimed at optimizing the education and training of healthcare managers. In addition to a review of international data, this article presents an innovative project for the development of professional competencies of health managers – the Academy of Talent Development in Healthcare (ATDH). This project involves students of the Sechenov University who want to learn how to lead healthcare teams efficiently.

The new Queensferry Crossing in Scotland, UK, is a durable structure designed to minimise degradation and withstand the challenging environment of the Forth estuary. High-performance materials, rigorous compliance testing and advanced protective measures have been employed to this end. An effective, integrated monitoring, inspection and maintenance system was developed to facilitate early intervention and maintain the bridge in a sustainable condition. A range of access facilities, including motorised gantries, shuttle trains and mechanical lifts have been provided to ensure safe and effective access, within touching distance, to all internal and external surfaces. An advanced structural health monitoring system has been installed to monitor the condition and integrity of the bridge, allowing rapid evaluation of structural integrity after extreme events and the identification of changes in condition over time.

As a key species of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, the thermal and saline tolerances of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba Dana) are relatively unknown because of the challenging environment and complicated situations needed for observation have inhibited in-situ experiments in the field. Hence, the thermal and saline tolerance of krill were examined under in-situ aquarium conditions with different controlled scenarios. According to the experiments, the critical lethal times of krill were 24 h, 2 h and 0.5 h under 9°C, 12°C, and 15°C, respectively, and the estimated 50% lethal times were about 17.1 h and 1.7 h under 12°C and 15°C, respectively. Additionally, the critical lethal times (the estimated 50% lethal times) of krill were approximately 14 h and 0.5 h (about 22.9 h and 1.7 h) of salinity under 19.7 and 15.9, respectively. The observed critical and 50% lethal times of krill were 0.5 h and approximately 1.4 h, respectively, salinity under 55.2. The critical and 50% lethal temperatures of krill were 13°C and approximately 14.2°C, respectively. Additionally, the critical and 50% lethal salinity was 19.6 and approximately 17.5 for the lower saline (below normal oceanic salinity [34.4]) environment and 50.3 and approximately 53.2 for the higher saline (above 34.4) environment, respectively. The upper thermal and saline preferences of krill can be considered 6°C and 26.8 to 41.2, respectively. These results can provide potential scenarios for predicting the possible fate of this key species in the Southern Ocean.

Prehistoric cemeteries are important and unique sources of funerary and social practices from the early stages of civilization, but also a highly challenging environment for geophysical investigation. This study evaluates the results of a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey for the detection and mapping of simple, small-sized, box-shaped graves, placed at small depths at the Late Bronze Age Ayios Vasilios North Cemetery (Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece). Interpreted grave anomalies allowed post-survey excavations to verify and not miss existent graves, but also led to the exploration of several anomalies that were not graves. We highlight and analyze in detail anomalies possibly related to graves in plan- and profile-view, compare them to real structures from pre- and post-survey excavation findings, and search for solutions for an efficient identification of GPR anomalies with graves and increase of the effectiveness and dependability of GPR for grave searching in complex site conditions, which include strong variations between geological and anthropogenic structure. We propose a procedure for refining grave interpretation that utilizes the results of both initial and advanced processing of 2D and 3D GPR data. The results of our study will benefit the use of GPR as a non-invasive method to search for small-sized graves placed at small depths in complex subsurface conditions and extend GPR use to investigate the organization and function of prehistoric cemetery sites in an intensively used space. Our work enhances the literature relative to geophysical surveying of prehistoric cemeteries, while the methodology discussed in this case study provides a useful tool for cemetery site management.

The significant improvements in communication technologies revealed innovative online services. Time and location barriers have been eliminated and customer satisfaction has gained importance. The most remarkable evolution is observed in electronic commerce. Electronic commerce is a widely accepted industry which provides an effective medium for both retailers and customers, enabling to perform online transactions through websites. The analysis of consumer preferences has become a key aspect in this challenging environment. In this study, the behaviours of Turkish consumers were identified to provide an insight to the practitioners. We examined the moderator effect of consumers' socio-demographic characteristics on online purchasing behaviours. A questionnaire was designed by using the existing literature. A data set of 337 valid records were collected by a questionnaire and analysed by applying association rule mining method. Several interesting rules representing the preferences of online consumers were determined. The results show that the behaviours of Turkish online consumers are related with their demographic characteristics.

The chloroplast organelle in mesophyll cells of higher plants represents a sunlight-driven metabolic factory that eventually fuels life on our planet. Knowledge of the ultrastructure and the dynamics of this unique organelle is essential to understanding its function in an ever-changing and challenging environment. Recent technological developments promise unprecedented insights into chloroplast architecture and its functionality. The review highlights these new methodical approaches and provides structural models based on recent findings about the plasticity of the thylakoid membrane system in response to different light regimes. Furthermore, the potential role of the lipid droplets plastoglobuli is discussed. It is emphasized that detailed structural insights are necessary on different levels ranging from molecules to entire membrane systems for a holistic understanding of chloroplast function.

The geology of the Betic Cordillera has inspired national and international interest since the first half of the 19th century and structural and tectonic models continue to be refined. The coastal mountain ranges between Nerja and La Herradura expose rocks of the internal Betics that comprise predominantly sheared, folded and faulted schists, phyllites, quartzites and carbonates. Steep and complex terrain, adverse structure, highly disturbed rock masses, seasonally intense rainfall and coastal erosion create a challenging environment for infrastructure and urban development.

The mortgage industry is currently undergoing some significant changes, with declining origination volume, a shifting mix of originations with a much higher share of purchase loans, and other factors leading to growth in market share for independent mortgage bankers but declining profit margins across the board. These changes are leading to a sharper focus by policymakers and market participants on the independent mortgage banking business model. This article highlights the key features of the current environment, with specific focus on some of the differentiators across business models. The industry will evolve over the next few years in response to this challenging environment, toward lenders who can best control costs while meeting customer needs better than the competitors and hence gaining market share.

The paper aims to determine the irrigation water supply efficiency of different irrigation methods used in the challenging environment of Bal’ad district in Somalia. Data was collected from the literature, field visits using field records and scheduled interviews, GPS coordinates and from ancillary information, such as remote sensing images and existing national maps. A comparison was done by use of secondary sources, such as academic journals using information from authorities on irrigation and water loss. Sampling was done by use of Snow balling. The results highlighted response rate for farmers being 80% while that of NGO employees is 75.76%. According to the results, the main ways through which irrigation water is lost is through: evaporation; seepage through the canal bunds; overtopping the bunds; overflow losses and overwatering with the average field application efficiency of 25% and conveyance efficiency of 30%. These generated a scheme irrigation efficiency of 7.5% which is poor for surface irrigation prevalent in the study area. The loss of irrigation water was found to be reduced by the following: daily supervision; proper maintenance; water allocation to farmers; good management; lining of canals; management of irrigation methods; ongoing evaluation; good land preparation; and training farmers.

OBJECTIVES: Obtaining National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for heart transplant research is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for surgeons. We sought to determine the impact of NIH funded cardiac transplantation research over the past 30 years. METHODS: NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results (RePORTER) was queried for R01s using 10 heart transplant related terms. Principal investigator, total grant funding amount, number of publications, and citations of manuscripts were collected. A citation-based Grant Impact Metric was assigned to each grant: sum of citations for each manuscript normalized by the funding of the respective grant (per $100K). The department and background degree(s) (MD, PhD, MD/PhD) for each funded principal investigator were identified from institutional faculty profiles. RESULTS: A total of 321 cardiac transplantation R01s totaling $723 million and resulting in 6513 publications were analyzed. Surgery departments received more grants and more funding dollars to study cardiac transplantation than any other department (n = 115, $249 million; Medicine: n = 93, $208 million; Pathology: 26, $55 million). Surgeons performed equally well compared to all other principal investigators with respect to Grant Impact Metric (15.1 vs 20.6; p = 0.19) and publications per $1 million (7.5 vs 6.8; p = 0.75). Finally, all physician-scientists (MDs) have a significantly higher Grant Impact Metric compared to non-clinician researchers (non-MDs) (22.3 vs 16.3; p = 0.028). CONCLUSIONS: Surgeon-scientists are equally productive and impactful compared to non-surgeons despite decreasing funding rates at the NIH and greater pressure from administrators to increase clinical productivity.

Researchers and advocates have increasingly called for adolescent participation in clinical trials for new HIV prevention products, particularly adolescent girls in areas most affected by the epidemic. However, recent trials have highlighted the challenges for young women and adolescents to be able to effectively use new products that require daily dosing. This analysis provides a highly relevant context for this challenging environment by examining community members acceptability of adolescent girls' participation in clinical trials for new HIV prevention products. We conducted 41 in-depth interviews in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Pune, India with 22 key informants (KIs). Cultural perspectives on adolescent sexuality varied between countries, with KIs in Tanzania more readily acknowledging adolescent girls' sexual activity than KIs in India. KIs in both countries felt strongly adolescents must be well-informed about research concepts prior to participation, and emphasis should be given to preventative misconception. Despite concern in both countries that the trials might be seen as encouraging sexual behavior, KIs in Tanzania overwhelmingly supported adolescent inclusion, whereas KIs in India were more cautious. Involving adolescent girls in clinical trials for new HIV prevention products is potentially acceptable, although meaningful community engagement will be necessary.

The Circumpolar North is generally recognized as a challenging environment to inhabit and yet, we know relatively little about how people managed their welfare in these places. Here, we add to the understanding of maritime hunter-gatherers in the subarctic North Pacific through a comparative approach that synthesizes biogeographic and archaeological data from the Kuril Islands. We conclude that our faunal, ceramic and lithic evidence support expectations from biogeography as assemblages from low biodiversity and insular regions show limited diet breadth, more locally produced pottery and a conservation of lithic resources. However, we highlight that these ecological factors did not strictly determine the occupation history of the archipelago as radiocarbon data suggests all regions experienced similar demographic fluctuations regard-less of their biogeography. These results imply additional pressures influenced the strategic use and settlement of the Kuril Islands and the need for increased chronological resolution to disentangle these complex historical factors.

Mucosal surfaces pose a challenging environment for efficient drug delivery. Various delivery strategies such as nanoparticles have been employed so far; yet, still yielding limited success. To address the need of efficient transmucosal drug delivery, this report presents the synthesis of novel disulfide-containing dendritic polyglycerol (dPG)-based nanogels and their preclinical testing. A bifunctional disulfide-containing linker is coupled to dPG to act as a macromolecular crosslinker for poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (PNIPAM) and poly-N-isopropylmethacrylamide (PNIPMAM) in a precipitation polymerization process. A systematic analysis of the polymerization reveals the importance of a careful polymer choice to yield mucus-degradable nanogels with diameters between 100 and 200 nm, low polydispersity, and intact disulfide linkers. Absorption studies in porcine intestinal tissue and human bronchial epithelial models demonstrate that disulfide-containing nanogels are highly efficient in overcoming mucosal barriers. The nanogels efficiently degrade and deliver the anti-inflammatory biomacromolecule etanercept into epithelial tissues yielding local anti-inflammatory effects. Over the course of this work, several problems are encountered due to a limited availability of valid test systems for mucosal drug-delivery systems. Hence, this study also emphasizes how critical a combined and multifaceted approach is for the preclinical testing of mucosal drug-delivery systems, discusses potential pitfalls, and provides suggestions for solutions.

Digital images are becoming the backbone of the social platform. To day of life of the people, the high impact of the images has raised the concern of its authenticity. Image forensics need to be done to assure the authenticity. In this paper, a novel technique is proposed for digital image forensics. The proposed technique is applied for detection of median, averaging and Gaussian filtering in the images. In the proposed method, a first image is normalized using optimal range to obtain a better statistical information. Further, difference arrays are calculated on the normalized array and a proposed thresholding is applied on the normalized arrays. In the last, co-occurrence features are extracted from the thresholding difference arrays. In experimental analysis, significant performance gain is achieved. The detection capability of the proposed method remains upstanding on small size images even with low quality JPEG compression.

Cryptococcus neoformans is a leading cause of fungal meningitis in immunocompromized populations. Amphotericin B (AMB) and fluconazole (FLC) are common anticryptococcal agents. AMB treatment leads to severe side-effects. In contrast, FLC-based therapy is relatively safe, although C. neoformans often develops resistance to this drug. C. neoformans must adapt to the challenging environment of the human host. Environmental effects on potency of AMB and FLC and development of drug resistance remain poorly characterized. Here, the effects of nutrients, temperature and antioxidants on susceptibility of C. neoformans towards FLC and AMB were investigated. Limited nutrients led to a decrease and an increase of sensitivity towards FLC and AMB, respectively. Co-treatment with various antioxidants also demonstrated reciprocal effects on susceptibility towards FLC and AMB. In contrast, elevated temperature increased the efficacy of both drugs, although the effect on FLC was more drastic as compared to that of AMB. In addition, temperatures of 37°C and above prevented development of FLC resistance. Our study pointed to a critical role of the environment on susceptibility towards AMB and FLC and revealed reciprocal effects towards these antifungal drugs, reflecting contrasting modes of action of AMB and FLC., This study defines the effects of nutrient limitation, elevated temperature, and presence of anti-oxidants on susceptibility of a fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus neoformans, to fluconazole and amphotericin B.

In this work, we present a comparative analysis of the trajectories estimated from various Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems in a simulation environment for vineyards. Vineyard environment is challenging for SLAM methods, due to visual appearance changes over time, uneven terrain, and repeated visual patterns. For this reason, we created a simulation environment specifically for vineyards to help studying SLAM systems in such a challenging environment. We evaluated the following SLAM systems: LIO-SAM, StaticMapping, ORB-SLAM2, and RTAB-MAP in four different scenarios. The mobile robot used in this study equipped with 2D and 3D lidars, IMU, and RGB-D camera (Kinect v2). The results show good and encouraging performance of RTAB-MAP in such an environment.

Low-light is a challenging environment for both human and computer vision to perform tasks such as object classification and detection. Recent works have shown potential in employing enhancements algorithms to support and improve such tasks in low-light, however there has not been any focused analysis to understand the direct effects that low-light enhancement have on an object detector. This work aims to quantify and visualize such effects on the multi-level abstractions involved in network-based object detection. First, low-light image enhancement algorithms are employed to enhance real low-light images, and then followed by deploying an object detection network on the low-light as well as the enhanced counterparts. A comparison of the activations in different layers, representing the detection features, are used to generate statistics in order to quantify the enhancements’ contribution to detection. Finally, this framework was used to analyze several low-light image enhancement algorithms and identify their impact on the detection model and task. This framework can also be easily generalized to any convolutional neural network-based models for the analysis of different enhancements algorithms and tasks.

Although we have seen that Mars has little (if not) water for a human colonization on a large scale, it still offers many opportunities for future explorations. These are related to the potential richness of its minerals, both on the surface and its subsurface, and a challenging environment where to test technological solutions for the exploitation of inhospitable worlds. We explore new methodologies for a drier extraction of minerals, with respect to current methods used in the mining industry on Earth, and existing concepts of human colony based on in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). 3D printing techniques will allow construction of buildings from the volcanic materials available on the surface of Mars.

Organizations of all sizes and complexities are increasingly facing a challenging environment. Competition is increasingly fierce and market dynamism requires agility in emerging issues to adapt and survive. Understanding and promoting process improvements is a necessity that has troubled managers and, these use methods and tools to support their work teams in the search to eliminate losses and waste. This article aims, from a theoretical and conceptual approach, to understand VSM, its application, main positive aspects, and problems, as well as to present concepts and premises of process mining. To study two process mapping tools that are Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Process Mining PM showing a way to improve these approaches. Seek its foundations in a quick literature review, propose a method to apply the two tools empirically and in a case study provide the authors with evidence that indicates an incremental improvement in the mapping process.

This chapter provides insight around the intellectual and academic life of Austrian and German universities at the turn of the last century. Arthur Haas’ success at high school turned into struggle as he tried to become an experimental physicist. Gottingen provided him with an intellectually strong and scientifically challenging environment, which he enjoyed despite his dislike of German student culture. Failure in the progress of his PhD project took him back to Vienna to seek a PhD in theoretical physics with Ludwig Boltzmann. The suicide of Boltzmann curtailed this plan, leaving Haas to write and submit a thesis on the historical philosophical development of physics concepts.

Networked drones have the potential to transform various applications domains; yet their adoption particularly in indoor and forest environments has been stymied by the lack of accurate maps and autonomous navigation abilities in the absence of GPS, the lack of highly reliable, energy-efficient wireless communications, and the challenges of visually inferring and understanding an environment with resource-limited individual drones. We advocate a novel vision for the research community in the development of distributed, localized algorithms that enable the networked drones to dynamically coordinate to perform adaptive beam forming to achieve high capacity directional aerial communications, and collaborative machine learning to simultaneously localize, map and visually infer the challenging environment, even when individual drones are resource-limited in terms of computation and communication due to payload restrictions.

This paper addresses the meaning of ‘learner centered’ education at a time when university students and educators all over the world have been thrust into the world of online learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Going online for months surely tests the ability of educators to deliver student centered and interactive learning in a challenging environment. Learner centeredness, in general, implies learning in which the learner’s responsibilities and activities are emphasized compared to that of the instructor’s. This does not mean that the educator’s role is weakened. Professors must be active in providing feedback about misconceptions and confusions to help students grow into experts. They should also clarify the relation between class projects with the course objectives and the real world, and help students with low competencies develop strategies for solving open-ended problems. Students want to think like an expert and apply their skills for solving real world problems. They also desire academic growth by modeling deep insight from their professors. The educator’s role for providing meaningful guidance has become more critical than ever especially for first or second year students who may need more scaffolding for their intellectual development. However, when online classes are carried out for a prolonged time, students’ self-regulation subsides, and the yearn for ‘togetherness’ rises, making it difficult to maintain learner centeredness. Specific examples and their underlying principles of the support provided to students and educators for overcoming their difficulties are discussed in this paper.

Loading and unloading rolling cargo in roll-on/roll-off are important and very recurrent operations in maritime logistics. In this paper, we apply state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning algorithms to automate these operations in a complex and real environment. The objective is to teach an autonomous tug master to manage rolling cargo and perform loading and unloading operations while avoiding collisions with static and dynamic obstacles along the way. The artificial intelligence agent, representing the tug master, is trained and evaluated in a challenging environment based on the Unity3D learning framework, called the ML-Agents, and using proximal policy optimization. The agent is equipped with sensors for obstacle detection and is provided with real-time feedback from the environment thanks to its own reward function, allowing it to dynamically adapt its policies and navigation strategy. The performance evaluation shows that by choosing appropriate hyperparameters, the agents can successfully learn all required operations including lane-following, obstacle avoidance, and rolling cargo placement. This study also demonstrates the potential of intelligent autonomous systems to improve the performance and service quality of maritime transport.

The following case study overviews the steps followed to develop the first Digital Bank in Africa. Following a case study method, the crucial decisions made over a 2-year period is analyzed. The challenges of each different phase are described, as well as the outcomes and the impact they had in the bank's digital transformation journey. The case study is accompanied by illustrative strategy tools used during development to make the reader more familiar with the decision made. The case study concludes by highlighting success and failures in digital transformation and lessons for other banks.

In this work, Heart Rate Variability indices are computed to analyze the Autonomic Nervous System response during a scuba diving activity. To do that, electrocardiogram signals from 6 subjects were recorded in a reservoir immersion. Two different stages were analyzed: baseline stage, where subjects remained seated outside the water; and immersion stage, where subjects performed physical activity in a non-controlled environment. The smoothed pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution was used for the time-frequency analysis. Results show a statistically significant increase of the mean heart rate and a significant decrease in the root mean square of the successive normal beats during the immersion stage. However, frequency-domain parameters did not show any significant difference between stages. Whereas time-domain parameters reflect a sympathetic activation during the immersion, caused by the predominance of the physical activity and the stress of the challenging environment, frequency-domain parameters are not able to capture it. Further studies are needed to draw more robust conclusions by increasing the number of subjects and exploring alternative methods to compute the Autonomic Nervous System frequency content.

With Innovation in a Secret World, Tina Srivastava joins Sharon Weinberger and Christian Brose in highlighting the challenging environment of research and development and procurement in the United ...

Accurate petrophysical evaluations (formation lithology, porosity and water saturation) are essential to characterize potential reservoir zones and estimate in-place resources. Typically, these evaluations rely on acquisition of open hole logging measurements; however, for several reasons this is not always possible. This paper outlines two examples from tight gas reservoirs in two separate fields in offshore Abu Dhabi where open-hole data could not be acquired and petrophysical analysis was undertaken using cased hole log data. These evaluations successfully identified a number of gas saturated porous intervals in each well, one of which (based on the analysis results) was successfully flow tested. Open-hole logging cannot always be performed because of well control concerns or bad borehole conditions requiring the well to be cased immediately. Historically, such scenarios resulted in acquisition of a cased hole dataset, which was typically not fit for petrophysical analysis (e.g., cased hole density and resistivity with their own limitations). This is especially the case in tight reservoirs where the pore volume contribution to a measurement value is correspondingly low. The new generation of Pulsed Neutron Capture (PNC) logging tools provides an opportunity to acquire a variety of independent measurements in challenging environments and enable standalone and accurate petrophysical evaluations. The case studies presented in this paper summarize the workflows and petrophysical results from a suite of new generation cased hole logging tools. The petrophysical analysis outputs include lithology, porosity and hydrocarbon saturation. In the first case study from the Khuff Formation, open hole log data could not be acquired because of borehole stability. The cased hole petrophysical analysis workflow identified two gas saturated Dolomitic intervals with ~5 % porosity. This interpretation was confirmed by subsequent well testing operations with rates of 29 and 51 MMscf/d. In the second case study from the Araej Formation, open hole log data could not be acquired because of borehole conditions. The cased hole evaluation indicated elevated hydrocarbon saturations across an interval of the well, which coincides with high mud gas levels during drilling. This interval has been identified for development via a Smart Completion. The discussed cased hole log analysis workflow is not a complete replacement for an openhole log evaluation. However, the presented case studies highlight the sensitivity of the tools and the resultant potential to evaluate wells in technically challenging environments in the absence of open hole data. These success stories of standalone cased hole evaluation have opened up myriad of possibilities in old and/or existing wells, especially where the open hole log data was previously inadequate or even absent. Accurate petrophysical evaluations will in turn provide better understanding of the reservoir and significantly help in planning future development of the reservoir.

This paper reports the results of a small-scale study of the information practices of contract academic staff in the United Kingdom, which is being used as the basis for a broader study in the Canadian context. Neoliberal approaches to the management of higher education across the globe, including Canada, are contributing to a highly challenging environment for contract academic staff, who face marginalization, insecurity, and significant stress. The study seeks togive voice to this growing complement of contract academic staff, to identify practical responses to these challenges. Cet article présente les résultats d'une étude à petite échelle des pratiques d'information du personnel universitaire contractuel au Royaume-Uni, qui sert de base à une étude plus large dans le contexte canadien. Les approches néolibérales de la gestion de l'enseignement supérieur à travers le monde, y compris au Canada, contribuent à créer un environnement très difficile pour le personnel académique contractuel, confronté à la marginalisation, à l'insécurité et à un stress important. L'étude cherche à donner la parole à ce complément croissant de personnel académique contractuel, afin d'identifier des réponses pratiques à ces défis.

Background: Acupuncture, in general, is being proclaimed as an alternative analgesic amid the opioid crisis, and along with this, within emergency departments (EDs) there is a specific interest in a form of ear acupuncture called Battlefield Acupuncture (BFA). It is expected that BFA will be used more widely in emergency medicine as it is easy to learn and can be applied both promptly and easily. Teaching programs will be required to sustain this increased demand and upskill emergency clinicians in this skill. Objectives: This article provides experiences and recommendations, based on faculty experiences from teaching BFA in Australia to ED clinicians combined with formal participant feedback. Main Points: BFA courses were adjusted to suit ED doctors and nurses, along with their unique case mix and associated challenging environment. The content of the BFA courses included evidence, pain indications, contraindications, application, safety, mechanism of action, and how to negotiate barriers of credentialing. Workshops used the latest and most effective teaching methods that encompassed problem-based learning, infotainment, simulation, "four stage skills teaching," and "teaching on the run." Conclusion: It is hoped that the experiences gained, and lessons learned in educating this new frontier of BFA to emergency clinicians will assist others in teaching BFA and its related techniques as a viable analgesic alternative in emergency medicine.

Based on interviews with feminist Instagram users, this article studies emergent feminist visibilities on Instagram through the concept of filtering. Filtering entails both enhancement and subtraction: some feminist sensibilities align with Instagram’s interaction order, while others become subdued and remain at the margins of visibility. Taken together, users’ filtering practices contribute to the confident and happy image, individualistic streak, and accommodationist cast of popular feminism, while also amplifying feminist politics that affirm the pleasures of visibility and desire. Instagram proves a more challenging environment for feminists seeking to criticize competitive individualism and aesthetic norms. The notion of filtering enriches existing research on how online environments reconfigure feminist politics and problematizes the avowal of feminism in media culture.

The context in which the EU aspires to play its role as a security provider to its citizens and in its general vicinity has changed dramatically in the last several years. External and internal factors have established a particularly challenging environment in which EU governments had to move from the lethargic prosperity of the early 2000s to the demanding policy agenda of Defense (and Security) Union, as advocated by the European Commission. The last decade has brought major changes in the way in which the EU has responded to the evolving character of its security challenges. The EU and its governments could not avoid moving towards fashioning a comprehensive response to these challenges that were apparently connecting external and internal aspects of security.

Public Health Emergencies (PHEs) provide a complex and challenging environment for vaccine evaluation. Under the R&D Blueprint Plan of Action, the World Health Organization (WHO) has convened a group of experts to agree on standard procedures to rapidly evaluate experimental vaccines during PHEs while maintaining the highest scientific and ethical standards. The Blueprint priority diseases, selected for their likelihood to cause PHEs and the lack of adequate medical countermeasures,were used to frame our methodological discussions. Here, we outline major vaccine study designs to be used in PHEs and summarize high-level recommendations for their use in this setting. We recognize that the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of the Blueprint priority diseasesmay be highly uncertain and that the unique characteristics of the vaccines and outbreak settings may affect our study design. To address these challenges, our group underscores the need for novel, flexible,and responsive trial designs. We conclude that assignment to study groups using randomization is a key principle underlying rigorous study design and should be utilized except in exceptional circumstances. Advance planning for vaccine trial designs is critical for rapid and effective response to a PHE and to advance knowledge to address and mitigate future PHEs.

BACKGROUND/SIGNIFICANCE Infants born extremely premature (

The aquatic habitat of marine “air-breathing” vertebrates provides a significant thermoregulatory challenge due to the high thermal conductivity of water. In addition to temperature changes across their range, air-breathing vertebrates experience temperature changes on the timescale of seconds to minutes as they perform dives to access two critical resources: air at the surface and food at depth. In response to these challenges, air-breathing vertebrates have developed morphological and physiological adaptations that align with their life histories and phylogenies and contribute to homeostasis. However, the physiological and behavioral mechanisms used to maintain thermal balance while diving is still poorly understood. The cardiovascular system is integral to the physiological responses associated with the dive response, exercise, digestion, and thermoregulation. The adjustments required to meet one physiological demand may not be compatible with another and can result in a potential conflict between the various physiological demands imposed on air-breathing divers. We reviewed the literature on thermoregulation while diving in an effort to synthesize our current understanding of the thermoregulatory strategies of diving air-breathing marine vertebrates. Studies have demonstrated that thermoregulatory strategies can involve the temporal separation of two conflicting responses, a compromise in the performance of one response over another, or coordination of synergistic responses. We hope that a review and synthesis of both laboratory and field studies will stimulate future research efforts at the intersection of thermoregulation and diving physiology. Expanding the use of physiological biologgers, particularly to understudied species, will enhance our understanding of how these animals coordinate various physiological demands to maintain homeostasis in a thermally challenging environment.

Wind turbines have a strong impact on the radio environment and need to be tested for electromagnetic emissions. With their size, in-situ measurements at the location of operation apply. The test engineer has to deal with a challenging environment including ambient electromagnetic emissions. The draft of IEC 61400-40 [2] standard is currently under development and deals with in-situ wind turbine measurements. The standard assumes knowledge on the present ambient emissions. This paper presents methods on how to examine those using advanced analysis methods of a real-time spectrum analyzer.

Natural phenolic compounds are important classes of plant, microorganism, and algal secondary metabolites. They have well-documented beneficial biological activities. The marine environment is less explored than other environments but have huge potential for the discovery of new unique compounds with potential applications in, e.g., food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. To survive in a very harsh and challenging environment, marine organisms like several seaweed (macroalgae) species produce and accumulate several secondary metabolites, including marine phenolics in the cells. Traditionally, these compounds were extracted from their sample matrix using organic solvents. This conventional extraction method had several drawbacks such as a long extraction time, low extraction yield, co-extraction of other compounds, and usage of a huge volume of one or more organic solvents, which consequently results in environmental pollution. To mitigate these drawbacks, newly emerging technologies, such as enzyme-assisted extraction (EAE), microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE), pressurized liquid extraction (PLE), and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) have received huge interest from researchers around the world. Therefore, in this review, the most recent and emerging technologies are discussed for the extraction of marine phenolic compounds of interest for their antioxidant and other bioactivity in, e.g., cosmetic and food industry. Moreover, the opportunities and the bottleneck for upscaling of these technologies are also presented.

Because maternal morbidity and mortality remain persistent challenges to the U.S. health care system, efforts to improve inpatient patient safety are critical. One important aspect of ensuring patient safety is reducing medical errors. However, obstetrics presents a uniquely challenging environment for safe ordering practices. When mother-newborn pairs are admitted in the postpartum setting with nearly identical names in the medical record (for example, Jane Doe and Janegirl Doe), there is a potential for wrong-patient medication ordering errors. This can lead to harm from the wrong patient receiving a medication or diagnostic test, especially a newborn receiving an adult dose of medication, as well as delaying treatment for the appropriate patient. We describe two clinical scenarios of wrong-patient ordering errors between mother-newborn pairs. The first involves an intravenous labetalol order that was placed for a postpartum patient but was released from the automated dispensing cabinet under the newborn's name. The medication was administered correctly, but an automatic order for labetalol was generated in the neonate's chart. Another scenario involves a woman presenting in labor with acute psychotic symptoms. The psychiatry service placed a note and orders for antipsychotic medications in the neonate's chart. These orders were cancelled shortly thereafter and replaced for the mother. These scenarios illustrate this specific patient-safety concern inherent in the treatment of mother-newborn pairs and highlight that perinatal units should evaluate threats to patient safety embedded in the unique mother-newborn relationship and develop strategies to reduce risk.

This research aims to develop computer-assisted instruction by using gamification elements on mirror reflection topics in Junior High School. The method used in this research was a descriptive method. The subject of this research is experts and students. Experts chosen in this research are one science expert, one media expert, and one science teacher. Students chosen in this research are fifty-seven students in 9 grade at one of junior high school. The gamification aspects were chosen to make the game were goals, science content, and challenging environment. The expert gave feedbacks in both media and the quality of the content aspects. Students were asked about their agreement level of the gamification elements and the effect of gamification. The effect of gamification asked were motivation, joyness, convenience, addiction, understanding improvement, attractiveness, and interactiveness. The result found that experts gave a good score towards this game. Students also agreed that the game has goals, science content, and challenging environment. The result also found that the gamification elements itself caused them to feel motivated, joy, convenience, addiction, improve their understanding, and attracted after playing the game. Other than that, students confirmed they have two ways of interaction with the game. More than half of total students got a score higher than the average score after playing the game.

The business world is currently operating in an increasingly challenging environment characterized as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). If anything, the current COVID-19 crisis is a demonstration of this. What began as a health crisis has become a social and business crisis of large proportions.

The vagaries of market forces are presenting a financially challenging environment for the higher education sector in England. Intense competition is leaving those overly dependent on tuition fee income in an exposed position. Despite a strong narrative for the need to diversify funding in the available higher education literature, empirical studies examining the degree to which universities are financially diversified are sparse and lack contemporary relevance. This study is the first to produce a National Income Diversification Index for publicly-funded, generalist universities in England. In doing so, it develops a model for a more accurate financial assessment by disaggregating third-stream revenues from core income. The findings suggest established pre-1992 universities are more financially diversified and thus in keeping with modern portfolio theory, are less vulnerable to changes in their external environment. This paper calls for policymakers to include the level of income diversification in any measure of institutional financial health.

To comply with the large global need for surgery, surgical equipment that fits the challenging environment in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should be designed. The aim of this study is to present a context-specific design of an electrosurgical unit (ESU) and a monopolar handheld to improve global access to surgery. This paper presents both a detailed description of electrosurgery in clinical practice in LMICs and the design of an ESU generator and monopolar handheld for this specific setting. Extensive fieldwork (by means of surveys, interviews, observations, and collection of maintenance records) was done by authors RO, KO, and LH. Feedback from users working in Kenya on the first demonstrator designs was obtained, after which the designs were adapted into conceptual prototypes. These were further evaluated by surveying respondents who attended the annual meeting of the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa (COSECSA) in Kigali, Rwanda in December 2018. Conceptual prototypes were developed for (a) an affordable ESU that is compact and battery powered and (b) a robust reusable monopolar handheld that can be cleaned in the autoclave and by chemicals (e.g., glutaraldehyde solution). The conceptual prototypes were positively received by the 51 respondents of the survey. The findings from the field work and the feedback from users during the design phase have led to a clear understanding of the specific needs and potential solutions. The presented conceptual prototypes need to be further developed into functional prototypes, which could be implemented in Kenya and other settings for further evaluation.

Research, policy and practice on education in recent years has focused attention on the mediating role that parents play in children’s schooling. Parents have been constructed as responsible agents; as consumers, investors and partners in performance oriented educational project. Much of the literature has looked at parent-school relations from the vantage point of parents, particularly parents in disadvantaged areas. Less has been written on how parent-school relations look from a school’s perspective. In this paper we draw on data from a case study English school in a socio-economically deprived area and explore the nature of the construct ‘responsible parent’ from the perspectives of teaching staff. We utilise data from semi-structured interviews with teaching staff in one case study school locate on the outskirts of a English city. Through the data we outline teachers’ conceptions of parents and an emerging network of engagement incorporating parents as part of a broader social and education project in school. We argue that a dominant construct, the responsible parent, has resonances with the ways that teachers conceptualise parents. At the same time, the case study school inhabits a dual institutional space: it is captured within a neo-liberal discourse on responsible parent as a key conduit for an outcomes oriented education project. It also goes beyond the narrow confines of formal educational structures in offering ‘challenging’ parents social and emotional support in connecting with their children and their schooling.

Ephemeral streams with mobile beds represent a challenging environment for sediment transport prediction. Bed topography from relatively infrequent high flow events may persist after hydrog...

In a robotised warehouse, as in any place where robots move autonomously, a major issue is the localization or detection of human operators during their intervention in the work area of the robots. This paper introduces a wearable human localization system for large warehouses, which utilize preinstalled infrastructure used for localization of automated guided vehicles (AGVs). A monocular down-looking camera is detecting ground nodes, identifying them and computing the absolute position of the human to allow safe cooperation and coexistence of humans and AGVs in the same workspace. A virtual safety area around the human operator is set up and any AGV in this area is immediately stopped. In order to avoid triggering an emergency stop because of the short distance between robots and human operators, the trajectories of the robots have to be modified so that they do not interfere with the human. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an absolute visual localization method working in the challenging environment of an automated warehouse with low intensity of light, massively changing environment and using solely monocular camera placed on the human body., Comment: Conference paper presented at Twelfth International Conference on Machine Vision, 2019