Pesticide-handling practices of smallholder coffee farmers in Eastern Jamaica

Pesticide use among smallholder coffee producers in Jamaica has been associated with significant occupational health effects. Research on pesticide handling practices, however, has been scarce, especially in eastern Jamaica. This explorative study aims at filling this gap and provides a first basis to develop effective interventions to promote a safer pesticide use. A random sample of 81 coffee farmers was surveyed. The majority of farmers reported to suffer from at least one health symptom associated with pesticide handling, but safety practices were scarcely adopted. There was also the risk that other household members and the wider local community are exposed to pesticides. The lack of training on pesticide management, the role of health services and the cost for protective equipment seemed to be the most significant factors that influence current pesticide handling practices in eastern Jamaica. Further research is recommended to develop a systemic understanding of farmer’s behaviour to provide a more solid basis for the development of future intervention programmes.

The Copenhagen principles on the handling of detainees: implications for the procedural regulation of internment

The Copenhagen Principles on the Handling of Detainees in International Military Operations were released in October 2012 after a five-year long process involving states and certain organizations. The Principles address a number of issues concerning the handling and transfer of detainees. They apply in military operations conducted by states abroad in the context of non-international armed conflicts and peace operations. This article focuses on those principles that address the procedural regulation of internment (ie preventive, security detention), as it is here that the current law is particularly unclear. On the one hand, the treaty provisions applicable in non-international armed conflicts contain no rules on the procedural regulation of internment, in comparison with the law of international armed conflict. On the other hand, the relevant rules under international human rights law (IHRL) appear derogable in such situations. This article demonstrates that the approach taken to this issue in the Copenhagen Principles is one which essentially draws on the procedural rules applicable to civilian internment in the international armed conflicts. These rules adopt standards that are lower than those under IHRL. Reference is then made to other recent practice, which illustrates that the Copenhagen Principles do not apply in a legal vacuum. In particular, two recent judicial developments highlight the continued relevance of human rights law and domestic law, respectively, in regulating detention operations in the context of international military operations. Compliance with the Copenhagen Principles may not, therefore, be sufficient for detention to be lawful.

NEONATAL HANDLING AND THE MATERNAL ODOR PREFERENCE IN RAT PUPS: INVOLVEMENT OF MONOAMINES AND CYCLIC AMP RESPONSE ELEMENT-BINDING PROTEIN PATHWAY IN THE OLFACTORY BULB

Early-life environmental events, such as the handling procedure, can induce long-lasting alterations upon several behavioral and neuroendocrine systems. However, the changes within the pups that could be causally related to the effects in adulthood are still poorly understood. In the present study, we analyzed the effects of neonatal handling on behavioral (maternal odor preference) and biochemical (cyclic AMP response element-binding protein (CREB) phosphorylation, noradrenaline (NA), and serotonin (5-HT) levels in the olfactory bulb (OB)) parameters in 7-day-old male and female rat pups. Repeated handling (RH) abolished preference for the maternal odor in female pups compared with nonhandled (NH) and the single-handled (SH) ones, while in RH males the preference was not different than NH and SH groups. In both male and female pups, RH decreased NA activity in the OB, but 5-HT activity increased only in males. Since preference for the maternal odor involves the synergic action of NA and 5-HT in the OB, the maintenance of the behavior in RH males could be related to the increased 5-HT activity, in spite of reduction in the NA activity in the OB. RH did not alter CREB phosphorylation in the OB of both male and females compared with NH pups. The repeated handling procedure can affect the behavior of rat pups in response to the maternal odor and biochemical parameters related to the olfactory learning mechanism. Sex differences were already detected in 7-day-old pups. Although the responsiveness of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to stressors is reduced in the neonatal period, environmental interventions may impact behavioral and biochemical mechanisms relevant to the animal at that early age. (C) 2009 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Infeasibility handling in genetic algorithm using nested domains for production planning

In this paper we present a genetic algorithm with new components to tackle capacitated lot sizing and scheduling problems with sequence dependent setups that appear in a wide range of industries, from soft drink bottling to food manufacturing. Finding a feasible solution to highly constrained problems is often a very difficult task. Various strategies have been applied to deal with infeasible solutions throughout the search. We propose a new scheme of classifying individuals based on nested domains to determine the solutions according to the level of infeasibility, which in our case represents bands of additional production hours (overtime). Within each band, individuals are just differentiated by their fitness function. As iterations are conducted, the widths of the bands are dynamically adjusted to improve the convergence of the individuals into the feasible domain. The numerical experiments on highly capacitated instances show the effectiveness of this computational tractable approach to guide the search toward the feasible domain. Our approach outperforms other state-of-the-art approaches and commercial solvers. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evolutionary model trees for handling continuous classes in machine learning

Model trees are a particular case of decision trees employed to solve regression problems. They have the advantage of presenting an interpretable output, helping the end-user to get more confidence in the prediction and providing the basis for the end-user to have new insight about the data, confirming or rejecting hypotheses previously formed. Moreover, model trees present an acceptable level of predictive performance in comparison to most techniques used for solving regression problems. Since generating the optimal model tree is an NP-Complete problem, traditional model tree induction algorithms make use of a greedy top-down divide-and-conquer strategy, which may not converge to the global optimal solution. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm based on the use of the evolutionary algorithms paradigm as an alternate heuristic to generate model trees in order to improve the convergence to globally near-optimal solutions. We call our new approach evolutionary model tree induction (E-Motion). We test its predictive performance using public UCI data sets, and we compare the results to traditional greedy regression/model trees induction algorithms, as well as to other evolutionary approaches. Results show that our method presents a good trade-off between predictive performance and model comprehensibility, which may be crucial in many machine learning applications. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Formalization of an architectural model for exception handling coordination based on CA action concepts

Architectures based on Coordinated Atomic action (CA action) concepts have been used to build concurrent fault-tolerant systems. This conceptual model combines concurrent exception handling with action nesting to provide a general mechanism for both enclosing interactions among system components and coordinating forward error recovery measures. This article presents an architectural model to guide the formal specification of concurrent fault-tolerant systems. This architecture provides built-in Communicating Sequential Processes (CSPs) and predefined channels to coordinate exception handling of the user-defined components. Hence some safety properties concerning action scoping and concurrent exception handling can be proved by using the FDR (Failure Divergence Refinement) verification tool. As a result, a formal and general architecture supporting software fault tolerance is ready to be used and proved as users define components with normal and exceptional behaviors. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Från ord till (e-)handling : - Integration av e-handelssystemi SiteVision

The client, Senselogic, had noticed an increased demand for an e-commerce system integrated into its product, SiteVision, something that did not previously exist. Senselogic wanted to integrate a third-party system to manage e-commerce. The problem was that there were very many e-commerce solutions to choose from. In order to select the best system it was necessary to evaluate the e-commerce systems and compare them to each other. To identify the elements that has to be included in an e-commerce system a study of literature was conducted. From the parts identified in the study of literature, a number of criteria were presented. Those criteria were then supplemented with additional criteria that Senselogic required of an e-commerce system before integrating it with SiteVision. Before the evaluation a number of test cases were created to test whether the ecommerce systems fulfilled to the criteria developed. These test cases were then used in the evaluation of the e-commerce systems while a test score was filled in. Then the evaluations of the different systems were compiled and compared in order to see which system best fulfilled the criteria. There was one system that scored higher than the others in the evaluation created. That was the system chosen to integrate with SiteVision.

Att omsätta vetenskap till handling : Försök som gjorts för att minska förekomst av trycksår samt vårdpersonalens följsamhet till trycksårsförebyggande riktlinjer.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka vilka försök som gjorts för att minska förekomst av trycksår samt att undersöka vårdpersonalens följsamhet till trycksårsförebyggande riktlinjer. Studien utfördes som en litteraturstudie och bygger på resultatet från 13 vetenskapliga artiklar. Artiklarna söktes via databaserna Cinahl och PubMed. För att inkluderas i studien skulle de vara publicerade mellan 2005 och 2010, skrivna på engelska eller svenska, vara relevanta för ämnet samt tillgängliga i fulltext. En sammanfattning av huvudresultatet visade att de flesta försök som gjorts för att minska förekomst av trycksår innebar en implementering av nya riktlinjer. För att höja kompetensnivån hos vårdpersonal har utbildning och information varit ett genomgående tillvägagångssätt i studierna. Ett starkt ledarskap sågs som en avgörande faktor för hur effektivt riktlinjerna efterföljdes av vårdpersonalen. I flera studier framgick att användandet av tryckavlastande madrass var det mest framgångsrika sättet att minska prevalens av trycksår. Studier som gjorts med syfte att beskriva vårdpersonals följsamhet till trycksårsförebyggande riktlinjer visade att det förelåg en diskrepans mellan evidensbaserad vetenskap och vårdpersonalens agerande i den kliniska verksamheten samt att följsamheten till riktlinjerna var låg.

Att utveckla och utvecklas i förskolan : Kunskapande i praktisk handling med reflektionen som grund

Studien belyser ett aktionsforskningsinriktat utvecklingsarbete som iscensattes och genomfördes på tre avdelningar i en svensk förskola under september, oktober och november 2010. Matematik, lek samt samtalsklimatet var de områden som de tio medverkande pedagogerna valde att utveckla. Fallstudien har koppling till specialpedagogik med emfas på att skapa ett förebyggande arbete genom att kontinuerligt dokumentera, följa upp och utveckla förskolans verksamhet för att ge bästa möjliga förutsättningar för utveckling och lärande utifrån barns olika förutsättningar och behov. Det övergripande syftet har varit att i samverkan mellan forskare och pedagoger beskriva ett aktionsforskningsinriktat utvecklingsarbete i en förskolas verksamhet samt att analysera och tolka det beskrivna utvecklingsarbetet. Syftet har också varit att belysa de deltagande pedagogernas uppfattningar av vilka förändringar som ägde rum i verksamheten samt hur och varför förändringarna ägde rum. I utvecklingsarbetet har sociokulturell teoribildning och praktik växelverkat genom att systematiska observationer och dokumentationer har reflekterats i en serie om fyra handledningssamtal med respektive arbetslag. Triangulering har använts som metod där forskarens deltagande observationer, transkriptioner av samtalen samt intervjuer med pedagogerna har fått komplettera varandra. Studien har haft en fenomenografisk ansats vilket här innebar att söka efter variationen av pedagogernas uppfattningar. Studien vilar på socialkonstruktionistisk kunskapssyn och sociokulturell lärandeteoris idé om att lärande kan ske genom interaktion med betydelsefulla andra och att vi utifrån behov och den kontext vi ingår i utvecklar våra verktyg genom aktivitet och handlingar. En fenomenografisk analysmetod har använts där pedagogernas utsagor i respektive arbetslag inordnats i beskrivningskategorier som sedan analyserats i ett horisontalt system. Relationen mellan samtliga arbetslags beskrivningskategorier analyserades i ett hierarkiskt system. Resultatet tolkades och formulerades i en slutsats där utvecklingsarbetet beskrivs som en hierarkisk process i tre steg: Organisering – reflektion – praktisk handling. Att organisera för tid och upplägg av handledningssamtal och dokumentationsverktyg uppfattades av pedagogerna som en grundläggande förutsättning för utvecklingsarbetet. De reflektioner som blev möjliga genom de kontinuerliga handledningssamtalen och utifrån dokumentationerna uppfattades av pedagogerna leda till ett kunskapande om den egna praktiken och om sig själva som pedagoger. De nya kunskaperna ledde i sin tur till de nya aktioner som prövades. Aktionerna beskrevs av pedagogerna dels som gripbara förändringar i miljön och dels som icke gripbara förändringar vilket innebar att pedagogerna ökade sin närvaro, delaktighet och medvetenhet i samspelet med barnen. Studien kan bidra till att andra förskolor inspireras i arbetet med att utveckla sin verksamhet och söka stöd för att se på den egna praktiken samt att låta mötet mellan teori och praktik stimulera till utveckling och förändring.