Developing Tools to Counteract and Prevent Suicide Bomber Incidents: A Case Study in Value Sensitive Design.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Royakkers L
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5539256 | biostudies-other | 2017 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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Project description:In a so-called overpopulated world, sustainable consumption is of existential importance. However, the expanding spectrum of product choices and their production complexity challenge consumers to make informed and value-sensitive decisions. Recent approaches based on (personalized) psychological manipulation are often intransparent, potentially privacy-invasive and inconsistent with (informational) self-determination. By contrast, responsible consumption based on informed choices currently requires reasoning to an extent that tends to overwhelm human cognitive capacity. As a result, a collective shift towards sustainable consumption remains a grand challenge. Here, we demonstrate a novel personal shopping assistant implemented as a smart phone app that supports a value-sensitive design and leverages sustainability awareness, using experts' knowledge and 'wisdom of the crowd' for transparent product information and explainable product ratings. Real-world field experiments in two supermarkets confirm higher sustainability awareness and a bottom-up behavioural shift towards more sustainable consumption. These results encourage novel business models for retailers and producers, ethically aligned with consumer preferences and with higher sustainability.
| S-EPMC7890503 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ImportanceExtreme heat poses a distinct risk to the 2.1 million incarcerated people in the United States, who have disparately high rates of behavioral health conditions. Suicide is a leading cause of death among people in prisons.ObjectiveTo examine associations of extreme heat, solitary confinement, and an indicator of suicidal behaviors among incarcerated men in a Deep South US prison system.Design, setting, and participantsThis longitudinal case series panel study included adult men in prisons in Louisiana, a state with one of the largest prison systems in the United States that has been engaged in litigation due to lack of air conditioning and extreme heat. The unit of analysis was prison facility-days. A facility-level data set was created by merging administrative data files, which included demographic characteristics, health classification, housing location and movement, disciplinary records, and involvement in suicide-watch incidents for all incarcerated men in Louisiana during the observation period. Individual-level variables were aggregated to facility-days to merge in daily maximum heat index data from the US Local Climatological Data, which were linked to the zip codes of prisons. The observation period was January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2017. Data set construction occurred from August 2020 to September 2022, and analysis was conducted from December 2022 to February 2023.ExposureThe focal exposure was extreme heat days. Daily maximum heat index data were categorized into 6 bins (<30 °F, 30-39 °F, 40-49 °F, 50-59 °F, 70-79 °F, and ≥80 °F) and as an indicator for any facility-day where the maximum heat index exceeded the 90th percentile of heat indices for total days in observation period. Conditional fixed-effects negative binomial regression models were used to calculate incident rate ratios to test associations between extreme heat and suicide watch incidents, while controlling for covariates.Main outcomes and measuresThe focal outcome was daily count of suicide watch incidents that were recorded in a carceral system database. Covariates included daily percentages of incarcerated persons at each prison with serious mental illness diagnosis, daily rate of solitary confinement, and total facility population.ResultsThe sample of 6 state-operated prisons provided 6576 facility-days for the analysis. Results suggest a dose-responsive association between extreme heat and daily counts of suicide-watch incidents; compared with days with temperatures between 60 and 69 °F, the rate of daily suicide incidents increased by 29% when the heat index reached the level of caution (ie, 80-89 °F) and by 36% when reaching extreme caution (90-103 °F) (80-89 °F: incidence rate ratio [IRR], 1.29; 95% CI, 1.17-1.43; P < .001; 90-103 °F: IRR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.15-1.61; P < .001). Compared with other days, those with the extreme heat indicator were significantly associated with a 30% increase in the incident rate of daily suicide-watch incidents (IRR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.18-1.45; P < .001).Conclusions and relevanceFindings suggest an association between extreme heat and an indicator of suicidality among an incarcerated sample, contribute to an emerging literature exploring linkages between climatological events and health outcomes in prisons, and may have implications for legal interventions and advocacy seeking to abate heat-induced morbidity and mortality in carceral contexts.
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Project description:BACKGROUND:Young people commonly use social media platforms to communicate about suicide. Although research indicates that this communication may be helpful, the potential for harm still exists. To facilitate safe communication about suicide on social media, we developed the #chatsafe guidelines, which we sought to implement via a national social media campaign in Australia. Population-wide suicide prevention campaigns have been shown to improve knowledge, awareness, and attitudes toward suicide. However, suicide prevention campaigns will be ineffective if they do not reach and resonate with their target audience. Co-designing suicide prevention campaigns with young people can increase the engagement and usefulness of these youth interventions. OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to document key elements of the co-design process; to evaluate young people's experiences of the co-design process; and to capture young people's recommendations for the #chatsafe suicide prevention social media campaign. METHODS:In total, 11 co-design workshops were conducted, with a total of 134 young people aged between 17 and 25 years. The workshops employed commonly used co-design strategies; however, modifications were made to create a safe and comfortable environment, given the population and complexity and sensitivity of the subject matter. Young people's experiences of the workshops were evaluated through a short survey at the end of each workshop. Recommendations for the campaign strategy were captured through a thematic analysis of the postworkshop discussions with facilitators. RESULTS:The majority of young people reported that the workshops were both safe (116/131, 88.5%) and enjoyable (126/131, 96.2%). They reported feeling better equipped to communicate safely about suicide on the web and feeling better able to identify and support others who may be at risk of suicide. Key recommendations for the campaign strategy were that young people wanted to see bite-sized sections of the guidelines come to life via shareable content such as short videos, animations, photographs, and images. They wanted to feel visible in campaign materials and wanted all materials to be fully inclusive and linked to resources and support services. CONCLUSIONS:This is the first study internationally to co-design a suicide prevention social media campaign in partnership with young people. The study demonstrates that it is feasible to safely engage young people in co-designing a suicide prevention intervention and that this process produces recommendations, which can usefully inform suicide prevention campaigns aimed at youth. The fact that young people felt better able to safely communicate about suicide on the web as a result of participation in the study augurs well for youth engagement with the national campaign, which was rolled out across Australia. If effective, the campaign has the potential to better prepare many young people to communicate safely about suicide on the web.
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Project description:Cyanobacteria are suitable for sustainable, solar-powered biotechnological applications. Synthetic biology connects biology with computational design and an engineering perspective, but requires efficient tools and information about the function of biological parts and systems. To enable the development of cyanobacterial Synthetic Biology, several molecular tools were developed and characterized: (i) a broad-host-range BioBrick shuttle vector, pPMQAK1, was constructed and confirmed to replicate in Escherichia coli and three different cyanobacterial strains. (ii) The fluorescent proteins Cerulean, GFPmut3B and EYFP have been demonstrated to work as reporter proteins in cyanobacteria, in spite of the strong background of photosynthetic pigments. (iii) Several promoters, like P(rnpB) and variants of P(rbcL), and a version of the promoter P(trc) with two operators for enhanced repression, were developed and characterized in Synechocystis sp. strain PCC6803. (iv) It was shown that a system for targeted protein degradation, which is needed to enable dynamic expression studies, is working in Synechocystis sp. strain PCC6803. The pPMQAK1 shuttle vector allows the use of the growing numbers of BioBrick parts in many prokaryotes, and the other tools herein implemented facilitate the development of new parts and systems in cyanobacteria.
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Project description:A device for the in-home detection of nocturnal seizures is currently being developed in the Netherlands, to improve care for patients with severe epilepsy. It is recognized that the design of medical technology is not value neutral: perspectives of users and developers are influential in design, and design choices influence these perspectives. However, during development processes, these influences are generally ignored and value-related choices remain implicit and poorly argued for. In the development process of the seizure detector we aimed to take values of all stakeholders into consideration. Therefore, we performed a parallel ethics study, using "value sensitive design." Analysis of stakeholder communication (in meetings and e-mail messages) identified five important values, namely, health, trust, autonomy, accessibility, and reliability. Stakeholders were then asked to give feedback on the choice of these values and how they should be interpreted. In a next step, the values were related to design choices relevant for the device, and then the consequences (risks and benefits) of these choices were investigated. Currently the process of design and testing of the device is still ongoing. The device will be validated in a trial in which the identified consequences of design choices are measured as secondary endpoints. Value sensitive design methodology is feasible for the development of new medical technology and can help designers substantiate the choices in their design.
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Project description:Cellular senescence plays a very important role in organismal aging increasing with age and in age-related diseases (ARDs). This process involves physiological, structural, biochemical, and molecular changes of cells, leading to a characteristic trait referred to "senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP)." In particular, with aging, stem cells (SCs) in situ exhibit a diminished capacity of self-renewal and show a decline in their functionality. The identification of interventions able to prevent the accumulation of senescent SCs in the organism or to pretreat cultured multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) prior to employing them for cell therapy is a main purpose of medical research. Many approaches have been investigated and resulted effective to prevent or counteract SC senescence in humans, as well as other animal models. In this work, we have reviewed the chance of using a number of herb-derived products as novel tools in the treatment of cell senescence, highlighting the efficacy of these agents, often still far from being clearly understood.
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Project description:Identification of novel biomarkers for risk assessment is important for both effective disease prevention and optimal treatment recommendation. Discovery relies on the precious yet limited resource of stored biological samples from large prospective cohort studies. Case-cohort sampling design provides a cost-effective tool in the context of biomarker evaluation, especially when the clinical condition of interest is rare. Existing statistical methods focus on making efficient inference on relative hazard parameters from the Cox regression model. Drawing on recent theoretical development on the weighted likelihood for semiparametric models under two-phase studies (Breslow and Wellner, 2007), we propose statistical methods to evaluate accuracy and predictiveness of a risk prediction biomarker, with censored time-to-event outcome under stratified case-cohort sampling. We consider nonparametric methods and a semiparametric method. We derive large sample properties of proposed estimators and evaluate their finite sample performance using numerical studies. We illustrate new procedures using data from Framingham Offspring Study to evaluate the accuracy of a recently developed risk score incorporating biomarker information for predicting cardiovascular disease.
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Project description:BackgroundSuicide is a leading cause of death globally, and there has been a rapid growth in the use of new technologies such as mobile health applications (apps) to help identify and support those at risk. However, it is not known whether these apps are evidence-based, or indeed contain potentially harmful content. This review examines the concordance of features in publicly available apps with current scientific evidence of effective suicide prevention strategies.MethodsApps referring to suicide or deliberate self-harm (DSH) were identified on the Android and iOS app stores. Systematic review methodology was employed to screen and review app content. App features were labelled using a coding scheme that reflected the broad range of evidence-based medical and population-based suicide prevention interventions. Best-practice for suicide prevention was based upon a World Health Organization report and supplemented by other reviews of the literature.ResultsOne hundred and twenty-three apps referring to suicide were identified and downloaded for full review, 49 of which were found to contain at least one interactive suicide prevention feature. Most apps focused on obtaining support from friends and family (n = 27) and safety planning (n = 14). Of the different suicide prevention strategies contained within the apps, the strongest evidence in the literature was found for facilitating access to crisis support (n = 13). All reviewed apps contained at least one strategy that was broadly consistent with the evidence base or best-practice guidelines. Apps tended to focus on a single suicide prevention strategy (mean = 1.1), although safety plan apps provided the opportunity to provide a greater number of techniques (mean = 3.9). Potentially harmful content, such as listing lethal access to means or encouraging risky behaviour in a crisis, was also identified.DiscussionMany suicide prevention apps are available, some of which provide elements of best practice, but none that provide comprehensive evidence-based support. Apps with potentially harmful content were also identified. Despite the number of apps available, and their varied purposes, there is a clear need to develop useful, pragmatic, and multifaceted mobile resources for this population. Clinicians should be wary in recommending apps, especially as potentially harmful content can be presented as helpful. Currently safety plan apps are the most comprehensive and evidence-informed, for example, "Safety Net" and "Mood-Tools--Depression Aid".
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Project description:Neurodegenerative diseases are associated with increased levels of nitric oxide (NO) mainly produced by microglial cells through inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) whose expression is induced by inflammatory stimuli. NO can both exert cytotoxic functions and induce a metabolic switch by inhibiting oxidative phosphorylation and upregulating glycolytic flux. Here, we investigated whether two newly synthesized acetamidine based iNOS inhibitors, namely CM292 and CM544, could inhibit lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced BV2 microglial cell activation, focusing on both inflammatory and metabolic profiles. We found that CM292 and CM544, without affecting iNOS protein expression, reduced NO production and reverted LPS-induced inflammatory and cytotoxic response. Furthermore, in the presence of the inflammatory stimulus, both the inhibitors increased the expression of glycolytic enzymes. In particular, CM292 significantly reduced nuclear accumulation of pyruvate kinase M2, increased mitochondrial membrane potential and oxygen consumption rate, and augmented the expression of pyruvate dehydrogenase, pointing to a metabolic switch toward oxidative phosphorylation. These data confirm the role played by NO in the connection between cell bioenergetics profile and inflammation, and suggest the potential usefulness of iNOS inhibitors in redirecting microglia from detrimental to pro-regenerative phenotype.
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Project description:Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is the most well-known method to consider values in design. It consists of three iterative phases of investigation: conceptual, empirical, and technical. Although the approach is promising, the role of empirical research remains unclear. We address two opportunities for extending the role of empirical research in VSD. First, we argue that empirical research enables us to identify values in context. Second, we explain that empirical research enables us to anticipate how technology mediates the values of users. We make our point by means of an empirical study in a real-life controlled experimental context into the value mediation of virtual reality (VR) in patients with chronic low-back pain. Using value-oriented semi-structured interviews with twenty patients, we first analyze what values these patients consider important, and how the values are experienced. The second set of interviews held after all patients used VR four weeks at home, aims to provide insight into value changes as mediated by VR. We end the article by a comparison of our empirical results with previous, often speculative, literature into values in VR. We show that empirical research benefits the VSD process by providing in-depth insight into the effects of context and technology on values and the ability to translate these insights into recommendations for more responsible design and implementation of the technology.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12553-022-00671-w.
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