Month: August 2024

WhatsApp-propriate? Exploring “WhatsApp” as a Tool for Research Among Ghanaian Immigrants in the United States

Latest Results

Abstract

African immigrants remain underrepresented in research due to challenges in recruitment. Mobile instant messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, present novel, and cost-effective opportunities for conducting health research across geographic and temporal distances, potentially mitigating the challenges of maintaining contact and engagement in research with migrant populations. Moreover, WhatsApp has been found to be commonly used by African immigrant communities. However, little is known about the acceptability and use of WhatsApp as a tool for health research among African immigrants in the US. In this study, we examine the acceptability and feasibility of WhatsApp as a tool for research among Ghanaian immigrants- a subset of the African immigrant population group. We used WhatsApp to recruit 40 participants for a qualitative interview about their use of the mobile messaging application. Three distinct themes related to the acceptability and feasibility of WhatsApp emerged from the interviews: (1) preference for using WhatsApp as a medium of communication; (2) positive perception of WhatsApp; and (3) preference for using WhatsApp for research. The findings indicate that for African immigrants in the US, WhatsApp is a preferred method for recruiting and collecting data. It remains a promising strategy to utilize in future research involving this population.

Assessing Food Access, Exercise, and Dietary History among Older African American Parishioners During the COVID-19 Pandemic (C-FED Study): Design, Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

Latest Results

Abstract

Objectives

Unhealthy diets and inadequate exercise are associated with chronic health conditions and excess mortality. Older African Americans do not meet dietary and exercise guidelines, and this may have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic due to individual and environmental factors, including food insecurity. Studies evaluating these dynamics are essential for developing interventions. This narrative details a study protocol and data collection experiences during the pandemic.

Methods

Participants > 55 years African American old completed detailed food frequency, exercise, and food access questionnaires between October 2020 and July 2021. Observations of the study administrators (authors of this manuscript) for the duration of the study are presented. Details on the study design and reflections on the opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned are summarized. Future manuscripts will report data analysis of study findings.

Results

A total of 123 older African American adults participated in the study, and 118 (70% female) completed all three questionnaires. More than 50% of the participants had at least two primary chronic conditions. About 85% were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Applying community-based participatory approaches, leveraging partnerships, and exercising flexibility approaches were pivotal to successfully implementing the study protocol.

Conclusions

Despite challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, detailed data on older African American adults’ diet and exercise habits were obtained. Our study design and experiences will benefit future researchers. More importantly, results from our study will inform interventions and policies aimed at minimizing consequences associated with poor diet and exercise habits during the pandemic among this vulnerable population.

Assessing Food Access, Exercise, and Dietary History among Older African American Parishioners During the COVID-19 Pandemic (C-FED Study): Design, Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

Latest Results

Abstract

Objectives

Unhealthy diets and inadequate exercise are associated with chronic health conditions and excess mortality. Older African Americans do not meet dietary and exercise guidelines, and this may have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic due to individual and environmental factors, including food insecurity. Studies evaluating these dynamics are essential for developing interventions. This narrative details a study protocol and data collection experiences during the pandemic.

Methods

Participants > 55 years African American old completed detailed food frequency, exercise, and food access questionnaires between October 2020 and July 2021. Observations of the study administrators (authors of this manuscript) for the duration of the study are presented. Details on the study design and reflections on the opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned are summarized. Future manuscripts will report data analysis of study findings.

Results

A total of 123 older African American adults participated in the study, and 118 (70% female) completed all three questionnaires. More than 50% of the participants had at least two primary chronic conditions. About 85% were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Applying community-based participatory approaches, leveraging partnerships, and exercising flexibility approaches were pivotal to successfully implementing the study protocol.

Conclusions

Despite challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, detailed data on older African American adults’ diet and exercise habits were obtained. Our study design and experiences will benefit future researchers. More importantly, results from our study will inform interventions and policies aimed at minimizing consequences associated with poor diet and exercise habits during the pandemic among this vulnerable population.

Identifying Core Issues for Basin Management: The Issue Generating Assessment (IGA) Methodology

Latest Results

Abstract

Effective stakeholder engagement is essential for basin management, requiring structured approaches to foster collaboration and consensus. This paper applies the Issue Generating Assessment (IGA) method, which identifies core issues for stakeholder discussion, to basin management. Focusing on the Israeli part of the Hadera Basin, we identify the core issues that should be discussed by stakeholders using the IGA method. To this end 39 participants across 14 sectors evaluating three generic basin management strategies were asked to qualitatively explain their evaluations. By analyzing these explanations utilizing the IGA method, four core issues emerged: (1) Managing uncertainty: addressing climate change and land use impacts on stream flow; (2) Mutual impacts management: handling interactions between the stream and its surroundings; (3) Integration of uses: balancing various stream utilization priorities; (4) Defining natural system functions: determining the role of natural systems. For each core issue, we proposed questions to guide stakeholder discussions. The IGA method is thus found to be useful, and has the potential to foster meaningful dialogue in structured stakeholder meetings, thereby focusing discussions and allowing understandings among stakeholders to be reached as a basis for basin management plans. Such early understandings may contribute to the development of strategies for sustainable basin management.

In-situ porosity prediction in metal powder bed fusion additive manufacturing using spectral emissions: a prior-guided machine learning approach

Latest Results

Abstract

Numerous efforts in the additive manufacturing literature have been made toward in-situ defect prediction for process control and optimization. However, the current work in the literature is limited by the need for multi-sensory data in appropriate resolution and scale to capture defects reliably and the need for systematic experimental and data-driven modeling validation to prove utility. For the first time in literature, we propose a data-driven neural network framework capable of in-situ micro-porosity localization for laser powder bed fusion via exclusively within hatch strip of sensory data, as opposed to a three-dimensional neighborhood of sensory data. We further propose using prior-guided neural networks to utilize the often-abundant nominal data in the form of a prior loss, enabling the machine learning structure to comply more with process physics. The proposed methods are validated via rigorous experimental data sets of high-strength aluminum A205 parts, repeated k-fold cross-validation, and prior-guided validation. Using exclusively within hatch stripe data, we detect and localize porosity with a spherical equivalent diameter (SED) smaller than \(50.00\,\upmu \) m with a classification accuracy of \(73.13\pm 1.57\%\) This is the first work in the literature demonstrating in-situ localization of porosities as small as \(38.12\,\upmu m\) SED and is more than a five-fold improvement on the smallest SED porosity localization via spectral emissions sensory data in the literature. In-situ localizing micro-porosity using exclusively within hatch-stripe data is a significant step towards within-layer defect mitigation, advanced process feedback control, and compliance with the reliability certification requirements of industries such as the aerospace industry.

Occurrence, source, and ecological risk of pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs in surface water in Las Vegas, USA

Latest Results

Abstract

Globally, pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs (PIDs) are only partially removed by conventional wastewater treatment plants. The origin, sources, and ecological risk of PIDs in Las Vegas Wash are studied scarcely. Therefore, this study aimed to provide insights into the impact of large social events [Electric Dance Carnival (EDC) and National Football League Draft (NFL Draft)] on the levels of PIDs of a unique surface water system located in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA), a contributary to the Colorado River. Thus, distribution of PIDs was evaluated at multiple locations (n = 10) along the Las Vegas Wash. The results of this study showed that the concentrations of benzoylecgonine, ketamine, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), and methamphetamine were 8–41 ng L−1, 14–192 ng L−1, 3.5–2118 ng L−1, and 13.7–194 ng L−1, respectively. Compared the control period, usage of drugs of abuse was significantly elevated during the EDC period. For example, the median concentration of MDMA (558 ng L−1) in surface water during the EDC festival was 46 times higher over the control period. The source of PIDs contamination was determined with principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). LDA provides a perspective in assessing the 2022 EDC impacts on the usage of drugs of abuse. MDMA has low to moderate median risk quotient ranging from 0.07 to 6.1, indicating ecological concerns. This study demonstrated that surface water analysis can capture changes in illicit drug use pattern during large music events.

Graphical abstract

Combining core points and cluster-level semantic similarity for self-supervised clustering

Latest Results

Abstract

Contrastive learning utilizes data augmentation to guide network training. This approach has attracted considerable attention for clustering, object detection, and image segmentation. However, previous studies have ignored the impact of false-negative pairs, resulting in the dissimilarity of the semantic representations of the same cluster. Some researchers have attempted to address this problem; however, only considering the image level has provided unsatisfactory results. To this end, we propose a novel feature extraction algorithm suitable for clustering, combining core points and semantic similarity at the cluster level to restructure positive and negative pairs. Specifically, the core points consisting of the n-nearest neighbors of the cluster center are considered the semantic sample relations of the cluster. This information is explored to reconstruct semantic positive and negative pairs to maximize intra-cluster similarity and inter-cluster variability. More accurate cluster centers offer a sub-optimal initialization for updating the feature model and clustering assignment, which is optimized by the expectation-maximization framework. Extensive experiments conducted on six benchmark datasets show promising clustering performances with relatively few training epochs. The proposed method outperforms the best baseline by 4 \(\%\) (1.5 \(\%\) ) on CIFAR-100 (CIFAR-10). The CPCS code is open-sourced at https://github.com/Cappuccino-Sugar/CPCS.

An Examination of Inquiry-Based Project Learning in Early Childhood Settings in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Latest Results

Abstract

Inquiry-based project learning is an internationally recognised pedagogical approach where children work collaboratively to research and discover the answers to their questions through discussion, representation, and evaluation. This paper explores the findings from Phase One of a qualitative study examining how this approach has been interpreted in early childhood settings in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The findings from an online questionnaire sent to all settings registered on the New Zealand national data base revealed that the international discourse surrounding this approach has been a key influence in this context. There was, however, also evidence that more localised approaches that value indigenous knowledges, in alignment with the national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki (Te Whāriki. He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Ministry of Education. https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Early-Childhood/Te-Whariki-Early-Childhood-Curriculum-ENG-Web.pdf) have been developed. Whilst participants identified pedagogical and practical challenges of undertaking inquiry-based approaches, the educational value of this approach for children was also strongly championed.

Youth Development in the Pacific: A Decade in Review

Latest Results

Abstract

Background

Historical trauma and cultural loss resulting from colonialism have contributed to educational and health disparities among Pacific youth. Recognizing the protective factors is essential for mitigating disparities and enhancing the overall well-being of these youth.

Objective

This review provides evidence about the current state of youth development among Pacific youth.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review of the literature published between 2010 and 2020, including the fields of education, social, psychological, and medical sciences. We employed qualitative data analysis of 35 peer-reviewed studies.

Results

The majority (69%) of the studies focused on program interventions among 10–19-year-old youth at-risk primarily in New Zealand among Māori (51%) and in the U.S. among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (46%). Health interventions were common in Hawai‘i, while the New Zealand studies focused more on measuring youth resilience. Among the three outcomes identified, health/well-being was the most studied area, followed by social-emotional, and cognitive development. The outcomes suggest mainly positive effects on health and well-being, socio-emotional, and cognitive development related to Pacific youth.

Conclusions

While the last decade has seen a growth of culturally anchored programs, more research is needed to account for wider social, economic, and political dynamics that impact youth development, which was largely unaccounted for in the extant studies. There is a need for broader developmental frameworks that would, first, align with the context and culture of the youth’s community, and second, expand our horizon of the developmental patterns as they occur in diverse sociocultural contexts.