Search

This paper examines the causes of infant mortality for the Hanseatic city of Rostock, Germany, between 1800 and 1904. Based on unique individual-level church records from Rostock's largest inner-city parish, St. Jakobi, we apply the novel ICD10h coding system for the first time to the German context. Using this coding system, we analyse cause-specific patterns of infant, neonatal and post-neonatal mortality in an internationally comparable way and bring new insights into the determinants of 19th-century infant mortality, which was shaped by increase and stagnation in wide parts of Germany. Our results show that Rostock experienced a stagnating infant mortality rate at a low level in international comparison during the first 40 years of the 19th century, followed by severe increases during the next 20 years and a stage of slight decline and stagnation towards the end of the study period. This suboptimal development from 1840 was strongly related to post-neonatal mortality and causes of death that are related to unfavourable sanitary conditions and/or poor nutrition, which possibly hints at worsening housing and living conditions following accelerated population growth. Our analyses also reveal that water-food borne diseases were underestimated in Rostock, even though symptomatic disease terms such as convulsions and teething, that were frequently recorded over much of the 19th century, had deviating seasonality patterns and thus cannot entirely refer to this disease group but rather to a wide field of different diseases. The applied coding scheme is a significant step forward to foster comparative international research on historical cause-specific mortality.

This study aims to use remote sensing techniques to map the urban region of Ankara from the past to the present, assessing the nature, magnitude and direction of changes within the area, including the transformation of LULC classes and explaining the driving forces behind these transformations. The study encompasses three stages. Firstly, Landsat 7 ETM+ images from 2000 and Sentinel-2 satellite images from 2020 were obtained for Ankara city and surroundings through the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. Image classification was conducted for both 2000 and 2020 using 'Blue', 'Green', 'Red', 'Vegetation Red Edge1', 'Vegetation Red Edge2', 'Vegetation Red Edge3', 'NIR', 'Vegetation Red Edge4', 'Water vapour', ' SWIR1', 'SWIR2' bands, as well as 'NDWI', 'NDVI', 'NDBI' indices on the GEE platform. LULC was classified using the Random Forest (RF) classifier, which included six classes: urban area, forest, water surfaces, open areas, agricultural areas and roads. Secondly, the LULC maps of the 2000 and 2020 images were classified using RF. The study employed the 'Categorical Change, Pixel Value Change and Time Series Change' methods to determine the transformations between LULC categories. Specifically, the urban change within the study area increased by 70% between 2000 and 2020. Over the past 20 years, from 2000 to 2020, the urban areas in Ankara expanded by 170%. Consequently, accurately determining the nature, magnitude and direction of urban development using remote sensing data offers valuable baseline information for various disciplines related to spatial planning at local and national scales.

This research aims to investigate the effects of leadership behaviour of school principals on teachers' organisational commitment in Turkey. The method of meta-analysis is used to calculate the effects size of leadership on teachers' organisational commitment. Besides this, leadership style, publication type and publication year are used as moderators in order to explain variation in effect sizes. The analysis results of the random effect model showed that leadership has a very strong and positive effect on teachers' organisational commitment. Particularly, supporting, democratic and transformational leadership styles affect organisational commitment of teachers more than other leadership approaches. However, except leadership styles, the other moderators chosen for the research are not a powerful determinant of the relationship between school leadership and organisational commitment.

Employment enhances community integration and overall quality of life for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Rapidly evolving and widely used handheld technologies (e.g., tablets and smart phones) may empower improved outcomes of vocational training for individuals with IDD. This systematic review summarizes and evaluates peer-reviewed studies that involved handheld technology to facilitate vocational training in authentic community-based settings for people with IDD. Eleven studies involving 32 participants with IDD were systematically located and analyzed in terms of key variables, study rigor, and Tau-U effect size estimates. Overall, Tau-U score suggested a large to a very large effect for interventions involving handheld technologies to teach vocational skills. Results are used to offer preliminary guidance for practitioners and to suggest directions for future research and practice.

As the global shift from fossil fuels to the Paris Agreement has accelerated, wind energy has become a key alternative to hydroelectric power. However, existing research often needs to improve in integrating diverse environmental, economic, and climate-related variables when modeling wind energy potential, particularly under future climate change scenarios. Addressing these gaps, this study employs the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) method, a robust and innovative tool for spatial modeling, to identify optimal wind farm sites in Türkiye. This research advances site selection methodologies and enhances predictive accuracy by leveraging a comprehensive dataset and incorporating climate change scenarios. The results indicate that 89% of the current licensed projects will maintain compliance in the future, while 8% will see a decrease in compliance. Furthermore, the wind energy potential in Türkiye is expected to increase because of climate change. These results confirm the suitability of existing project locations and identify new high-potential areas for sustainable wind energy development. This study provides policymakers, investors, and developers actionable insights to optimize wind energy integration into the national energy portfolio, supporting global climate goals by accelerating the adoption of renewable energy sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mosquito-borne diseases are responsible for 700 000 deaths annually. Current outdoor protective strategies primarily focus on direct skin application of commercial repellents (i.e., aerosol sprays or topical lotions) which are typically limited to efficacy times of ≤10 hours due to rapid evaporation and dermal absorption. Consequently, frequent reapplication for continuous protection can increase associated health hazards and cause noncompliance. This study utilizes Hansen solubility parameter modeling to design physical gels composed of insect-repelling N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide (DEET) and modacrylic copolymer poly(acrylonitrile-co-vinyl chloride) (P(AN–VC)). The P(AN–VC)/DEET composites exhibit tunable and reversible sol–gel transition temperatures that can meet the thermomechanical stability demands of the intended application and permit facile transition to commercial melt processing techniques such as injection molding, filament spinning, or film casting. P(AN–VC)/DEET gel films demonstrate mosquito repellency for more than half a year—performing longer than any other known material to date—due to the high reservoir of repellent and its desorption hindrance from the polymer matrix. Therefore, P(AN–VC)/DEET gels hold significant potential for extended protection against mosquitos and other biting arthropods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediterranean region is identified as a primary hot-spot for climate change due to the expected temperature and rainfall changes. Understanding the potential impacts of climate change on the hydrology in these regions is an important task to develop long-term water management strategies. The aim of this study was to quantify the potential impacts of the climate changes on local hydrological quantities at the Goksu Watershed at the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey as a case study. A set of Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenarios were used as drivers for the conceptual hydrological model J2000 to investigate how the hydrological system and the underlying processes would respond to projected future climate conditions. The model was implemented to simulate daily hydrological quantities including runoff generation, Actual Evapotranspiration (AET) and soil-water balance for present (2005–2015) and future (up to 2100). The results indicated an increase of both precipitation and runoff throughout the region from January to March. The region showed a strong seasonally dependent runoff regime with higher flows during winter and spring and lower flows in summer and fall. The study provides a comparative methodology to include meteorological-hydrological modelling integration that can be feasible to assess the climate change impacts in mountainous regions.

This article describes an innovative school-to-work transition program incorporating identified best practices. Iowa's Super Senior program serves students in the "middle range" of the disability severity spectrum during the student's senior and 5th, or "Super Senior" year. The article describes the program elements, presents outcome data, describes the funding mechanism used to sustain the program after the initial federal grant and offers recommendations for transition practice. Iowa's High School Super Senior program has three central elements: (1) Person-Centered Career Planning--where family members, friends and professionals come together to help a student identify their skills, interests, support needs, ideal job match action plan to reach their career goals; (2) Multiple, short-term vocational experiences to help students develop/refine their goals; and (3) Extended Internships and Ongoing Support--during the student's "Super" senior year to develop work skills and employer/co-worker connections that will result satisfying employment that can be maintained into adulthood. 153 students entered Super Seniors 2001 through 2004-05. Of those, 85% participated in the program for at least two years. Of the 153 students served and 125 who completed two program years, 116 exited school with paid employment, with 68 (59%) obtaining full-time jobs and 50% receiving employer benefits. The 116 employed students represented 76% of all participants and 84% of those who completed two or more program years as intended under the model. The employment outcomes for students who completed at least two years in the program were far superior to those who only participated in one year. Specifically, 84% of those who exited after two or more years were employed and only 39% of the students who chose not to complete two years in the program exited school with jobs. In comparison to program entry, students who were employed at program exit increased their hours worked an average of 394% (6.4 hrs. to 31.4 hrs./ week), increased hourly wages by 240% ($2.33 to $7.93/hour) and monthly wages by 612% ($159 to $1,133/month). (Contains 4 tables.)

Introduction: Peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) collection via apheresis requires the administration of granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (filgrastim) to stem cell donors. Several reports have shown that filgrastim administration and apheresis procedure induce a hypercoagulable state across PBSC collection, which might predispose certain donors to thrombotic complications. Methods: We evaluated the hemostatic functions of healthy allogeneic stem cell donors by rotational thromboelastometry (ROTEM). Blood samples from healthy donors (n = 30) were collected at defined time points: before filgrastim (baseline), on the day of apheresis before and after the procedure, and 1 week after apheresis. Results: The results indicated that hemostatic changes are temporary since all parameters in both EXTEM and INTEM assays are restored to their initial values 1 week after the apheresis. Conclusion: We concluded that stem cell apheresis does not induce a hypercoagulable state in healthy donors. This is the first study evaluating the hemostatic functions of stem cell donors by ROTEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supraphysiological shear stresses (SSs) induce irreversible impairments of red blood cell (RBC) deformability, overstretching of RBC membrane, or fragmentation of RBCs that causes free hemoglobin to be released into plasma, which may lead to anemia. The magnitude and exposure tisme of the SSs are two critical parameters that determine the hemolytic threshold of a healthy RBC. However, impairments in the membrane stability of damaged cells reduce the hemolytic threshold and increase the susceptibility of the cell membrane to supraphysiological SSs, leading to cell fragmentation. The severity of the RBC fragmentation as a response to the mechanical damage and the critical SS levels causing fragmentation are not previously defined. In this study, we investigated the RBC mechanical damage in oxidative stress (OS) and metabolic depletion (MD) models by applying supraphysiological SSs up to 100 Pa by an ektacytometer (LORRCA MaxSis) and then assessed RBC deformability. Next, we examined hemolysis and measured RBC volume and count by Multisizer 3 Coulter Counter to evaluate RBC fragmentation. RBC deformability was significantly impaired in the range of 20–50 Pa in OS compared with healthy controls (p < 0.05). Hemolysis was detected at 90–100 Pa SS levels in MD and all applied SS levels in OS. Supraphysiological SSs increased RBC volume in both the damage models and the control group. The number of fragmented cells increased at 100 Pa SS in the control and MD and at all SS levels in OS, which was accompanied by hemolysis. Fragmentation sensitivity index increased at 50–100 Pa SS in the control, 100 Pa SS in MD, and at all SS levels in OS. Therefore, we propose RBC fragmentation as a novel sensitivity index for damaged RBCs experiencing a mechanical trauma before they undergo fragmentation. Our approach for the assessment of mechanical risk sensitivity by RBC fragmentation could facilitate the close monitoring of shear-mediated RBC response and provide an effective and accurate method for detecting RBC damage in mechanical circulatory assist devices used in routine clinical procedures.