Search Results (45)

Tourism offers many economic benefits but can have long-lasting ecological effects when improperly managed. Tourism can cause overwhelming pressure on wastewater treatment systems, as in Belize, where some of the over 400 small islands (cayes) that were once temporary sites for fishermen have become popular tourist destinations. An overabundance of nitrogen, in part as a result of incomplete wastewater treatment, threatens human health and ecosystem services. The tourism industry is a complex and dynamic industry with many sectors and stakeholders with conflicting goals. In this study, a systems thinking approach was adopted to study the dynamic interactions between stakeholders and the environment at Laughing Bird Caye National Park in Belize. The project centered on nutrient discharges from the caye’s onsite wastewater treatment system. An archetype analysis approach was applied to frame potential solutions to nutrient pollution and understand potential behaviors over time. “Out of control” and “Underachievement” were identified as system archetypes; “Shifting the Burden” and ‘‘Limits to Success’’ were used to model specific cases. Based on these results, upgrading of the wastewater treatment system should be performed concurrently with investments in the user experience of the toilets, education on the vulnerability of the treatment system and ecosystem, and controls on the number of daily tourists. Full article

This paper details how, in partnership with young people, community workshops centred on queer joy can offer queer and trans youth sexuality education (SE) that is relevant to their experiences, lived realities, and desires. In the data, young people discuss how tailored content, queer pedagogies, youth-centric approaches, and affirming spaces that are responsive to their questions might improve their sexuality knowledge as well as their mental health. A total of 22 youth participants from a mid-size Canadian city, the vast majority of whom identified as queer and/or trans, registered in a weekend workshop to evaluate SE video lessons created by educators enrolled in our partner organization’s sexuality education training program. Through this process, young people leaned on both their expertise and experience to critically reflect on the content and pedagogies employed by the educators. Additionally, 14 youth participated in post-workshop interviews where they continued these conversations and reflected on their SE experiences. In contrast to queer and trans young people’s more violent experiences in classrooms, public spaces, and political discourses, this community intervention workshop cultivated community, knowledge, power, and solidarity between and among youth participants. As they used and created memes to laugh in the face of structures and situations that attempt to erase their bodies and experiences, young people reached for a vision of sexuality education that not only includes them but centres on their desires and curiosities. Full article

Nitrous oxide has a wide range of medical applications, such as being used as an analgesic in general anesthesia, dental procedures, childbirth and sedation. Lately, it has also been employed as an inhalant recreational drug to induce brief euphoria. Recent studies indicate a worldwide rise in the incidence of skin frostbites associated with nitrous oxide use. A scoping review was conducted to synthesize and summarize the existing literature published in English regarding frostbite injuries associated with the recreational use of nitrous oxide. The literature search was carried out in July 2024 using databases such as Embase, Web of Science and PubMed^®. From an initial pool of 83 publications, 8 studies were ultimately selected for full-text review as they met our inclusion criteria for analysis. Additionally, we provide a representative clinical case involving a 21-year-old male who experienced frostbite following skin exposure to nitrous oxide. Most publications on nitrous oxide induced frostbites are from recent years, primarily between 2022 and 2024, with the first case documented in 1996. These injuries are mostly observed in young adults, with a female dominance, and are typically localized to the inner thighs. According to the existing literature, the predominant treatment approach is conservative management, with excision and split-thickness skin grafting (STSG) in the second place. This study represents the first literature review summarizing frostbite injuries to the skin from nitrous oxide misuse. There is a need for enhanced preventive measures to raise public awareness and reduce the incidence of frostbite injuries associated with the recreational use of nitrous oxide. Full article

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a disorder that starts in childhood, sometimes persisting into adulthood. It puts a strain on their social, professional, family, and environmental lives, which can exacerbate disorders such as anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. Background/Objectives: This paper aims to predict ADHD in children and adults and explain the main factors impacting this disorder. Methods: We start by introducing the main symptoms and challenges ADHD poses for children and adults such as epilepsy and depression. Then, we present the results of existing research on three ADHD comorbidities: anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder, and their possible continuity in adulthood with therapeutic implications. After that, we explain the impact of this disorder and its relationship with these comorbidities on the affected patient’s health and environment and list proposed treatments. We propose a methodology for predicting this impairment in children and adults by using Machine Learning algorithms (ML), Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), and two datasets, the National Survey for Children’s Health (NSCH) (2022) for the children and the ADHD|Mental Health for the adults. Results: Logistic Regression (LR) was the most suitable algorithm for children, with an accuracy of 99%. As for adults, the XGBoost (XGB) was the most performant ML method, with an accuracy of 100%. Conclusions: Lack of sleep and excessive smiling/laughing are among the factors having an impact on ADHD for children, whereas anxiety and depression affect ADHD adults. Full article

Youth mental health interventions incorporating trained therapy animals are increasingly popular, but more research is needed to understand the specific interactive behaviors between participants and therapy dogs. Understanding the role of these interactive behaviors is important for supporting both intervention efficacy and animal welfare and well-being. The goal of this study was to develop ethograms to assess interactive behaviors (including both affiliative and stress-related behaviors) of participants and therapy dogs during a social stress task, explore the relationship between human and dog behaviors, and assess how these behaviors may vary between experimental conditions with varying levels of physical contact with the therapy dog. Using video data from a previous experimental study (n = 50 human–therapy dog interactions, n = 25 control group), we successfully developed behavioral ethograms that could be used with a high degree of interrater reliability. Results indicated differences between experimental conditions in dog and human behaviors based on whether participants were interacting with a live or a stuffed dog, and whether they were allowed to touch the dog. These findings suggest that physically interacting with a live dog may be an important feature of these interventions, with participants demonstrating increased positive behaviors such as laughing and smiling in these conditions. Dog behaviors also varied based on whether they were in the touching/petting condition of the study which could indicate reactions to the session and has potential welfare implications for the dogs. Future research should focus on identifying specific patterns of interactive behaviors between dogs and humans that predict anxiolytic outcomes. Full article

Peripheral facial paralysis represents a disabling condition with serious psychological and social impact. Patients with peripheral facial paralysis have a disfigurement of the face with loss of harmony and symmetry and difficulties in everyday facial functions such as speaking, drinking, laughing, and closing their eyes, with impairment of their quality of life. This paralysis leads to impairment of facial expression, which represents one of the first means of communication, an important aspect of human interaction. This review aims to explore the reanimation techniques for managing peripheral facial paralysis. An analysis of static and dynamic techniques for facial reanimation is provided, including muscle flaps, nerve grafting techniques, and bioengineering solutions. Each technique showed its benefits and drawbacks; despite several options for facial reanimation, no technique has been detected as the gold standard. Therefore, each patient must be evaluated on an individual basis, considering their medical history, age, expectations, and treatment goals, to find the best and most fitting treatment. Full article

This study examines the role of laughter in media content, focusing on traditional non-humorous entertainment talk shows with hosts, guests and a studio audience. The analysis, which documents over 20,000 instances of laughter in just 60 episodes (one laugh every 20 s), highlights the central role of laughter in this reality. The study concludes that: (1) hosts laughed more than guests and studio audiences; (2) in the programmes analysed, female hosts generated almost twice as much laughter as male hosts; (3) laughter followed a recognisable ‘U-shaped’ pattern, peaking at the beginning and end of the programme; (4) jokes with sexual connotations elicited the highest levels of laughter; (5) public service episodes had fewer instances of laughter; and (6) the programme with the host who laughed the most had the largest audience. In conclusion, laughter provides not only emotional, but also ideological gratification, based on the (post)modern concept of happiness. Full article

This study examines the role of laughter in media strategies. The aim is to distinguish between laughter shared ‘with’ the audience and laughter directed ‘at’ the audience. The research briefly traces the historical evolution of laughter from a repressed and morally criticised expression to a symbol of wealth and empowerment, a transformation facilitated by media diffusion. The subsequent analysis, based on the Portuguese context, seems to indicate a current tendency towards a more empathetic, lighter, and more visibly expressive form of laughter that transcends boundaries such as age, education, and social status, thus fostering a deeper connection with the audience. This study underlines the profound impact of laughter on audience engagement and highlights the central role of communal laughter—laughing ‘with’ the audience—in contemporary media communication. In conclusion, the findings suggest that a more empathetic and less critical approach to audience behaviour through laughter has the potential to attract larger audiences. Indirectly, this emerging trend may be indicative of a growing reluctance among members of contemporary society to tolerate ideas or perspectives contrary to their own. Full article

Many philosophers have approached the nature of laughter and various ideas have been put forward in the period from the classical period to the present day. One of the relevant ideas was created by the pioneers of relief theory, who sought the nature of laughter in the act of release from psychological pressure. Relief theory appears as one of the most difficult subjects to diagnose, as a result of its dependence on certain psychological conditions, within the framework of the ecology of Turkish laughter. Bektashi narratives, in which the Turkish–Islamic synthesis is intensely seen, probably take the lead among the Turkish anecdote types that can be included in the subject area of relief theory. In the Ottoman geographical region of the 13th century, Bektashism, which was established with a mystical Sufi understanding based on Hacı Bektaş Veli, started to generate products with an intense subject of laughter over time. It is known that Bektashism, which is the continuation in Anatolia of the Turkish Sufi tradition initiated by Hoca Ahmet Yesevi in the 11th century in the Khorasan region, was also respected by the Ottoman Empire for a long time. Bektashism, which is a continuation of the cultural understanding of Islam, became the subject of anecdotes as a type as a result of certain historical events. In Bektashi narratives, which are reflected in anecdotes as a type, it is easy to determine the situation that causes laughter but difficult to make an analysis of why the matter in question is laughed at. From the narrator’s point of view, there is a fear as to why he/she is telling the story, and, from the listener’s point of view, there is a feeling of having sinned because he/she is laughing. Bektashi anecdotes, which have an element of laughter other than the classical laughter elements based on equivoke, consist of a suppressed fear in their content. The act of laughter, which occurs when the suppressed fear causes sudden relief, reveals the feeling of having sinned based on the aggressive attitude of the anecdote towards religious figures that has been aroused in the person. This situation brings along the necessity of explaining the laughter element in Bektashi anecdotes with the theory of relief. The interpretation of Bektashi anecdotes based on the views of Sigmund Freud, one of the pioneers of relief theory, on laughter and its relationship with the unconscious has made it possible to evaluate this in the context of “substitution” theory. The theory of substitution, a mechanism identified by Freud on the interpretation of dreams and the content of anecdotes or jokes, occurs in cases where a statement and its response deviate from the direction indicated by the original statement. For the formation of the theory, which is characterised as a psychological deviation or a product of faulty reasoning, a subject contrary to social norms must be dealt with, laughter must not depend on equivoke and it must be found in the last response of a conversation. Based on these data, five Bektashi anecdotes have been identified using the sampling method in the article and substitution theory has been applied to the identified jokes. Full article

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is associated with a high prevalence of emotional disorders affecting the health-related quality of life of patients and their families. Pseudobulbar affect (PBA), also referred to as pathological laughing and crying, is an under-recognized and under-treated co-morbidity. We conducted a systematic literature review of 16 studies to determine the prevalence and clinical characteristics of PBA in patients with MS of all ages. Based on conservative figures available from 8/16 studies, the prevalence of PBA in the context of MS was found to range between 2% and 10% (median 10%), with higher percentages in the female population. Possible reasons for the observed variability in the prevalence data include heterogeneity of the diagnostic methodologies and common presence of confounding factors, such as co-morbid affective disorders. The clinical presentation was found to be comparable to that of PBA in the context of other neurological disorders, as it reflected the location of underlying lesions (especially in the brainstem) rather than the associated pathology. Clinicians should be prompted to consider PBA in the differential diagnosis of emotional disorders in the context of MS by using both clinical criteria and psychometric instruments. Further studies should be conducted to develop standardized diagnostic protocols and to optimize therapeutic approaches for the clinical management of this patient population. Full article

Cough is a frequent symptom in many common respiratory diseases and is considered a predictor of early exacerbation or even disease progression. Continuous cough monitoring offers valuable insights into treatment effectiveness, aiding healthcare providers in timely intervention to prevent exacerbations and hospitalizations. Objective cough monitoring methods have emerged as superior alternatives to subjective methods like questionnaires. In recent years, cough has been monitored using wearable devices equipped with microphones. However, the discrimination of cough sounds from background noise has been shown a particular challenge. This study aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of single-axis acceleration signals combined with state-of-the-art deep learning (DL) algorithms to distinguish intentional coughing from sounds like speech, laugh, or throat noises. Various DL methods (recurrent, convolutional, and deep convolutional neural networks) combined with one- and two-dimensional time and time–frequency representations, such as the signal envelope, kurtogram, wavelet scalogram, mel, Bark, and the equivalent rectangular bandwidth spectrum (ERB) spectrograms, were employed to identify the most effective approach. The optimal strategy, which involved the SqueezeNet model in conjunction with wavelet scalograms, yielded an accuracy and precision of 92.21% and 95.59%, respectively. The proposed method demonstrated its potential for cough monitoring. Future research will focus on validating the system in spontaneous coughing of subjects with respiratory diseases under natural ambulatory conditions. Full article

The aim of the article is to inventory gestures related to mockery, insult, attracting good luck, or warding off bad luck that a group of informants from Barcelona have performed. The data come from the application of the survey from the Atlas de Gestos, whose task is to collect gestures from the Pan-Hispanic context to describe the gestural repertoire of each territory and conduct comparative studies. The results, interpreted based on social factors (gender, age, and level of instruction), confirm the wide range of gestures for different functions (10 for mockery, 11 for insult and attracting good luck, and 9 for warding off bad luck). Regarding differences based on social variables, the results allow for indicating trends, namely, while the most used gesture to express mockery is sticking out the tongue, young people prefer the gesture of pointing and laughing, and informants over 55 years old only prefer laughing. Concerning insults, the use of peineta is widespread, although differences in behavior between men and women are observed. As for attracting good luck, Barcelona informants opt for crossing fingers, although older generations use gestures with more religious connotations, such as clasping hands. Finally, to ward off bad luck, Barcelona locals mention the gesture of crossing made with the index fingers of each hand. Full article

Caring for the other is an ethical as well as an aesthetic question: but where does one end and where does the other begin? Rita Charon, in her work Narrative Medicine (2006), builds a strong case against such separation in medical care, or more precisely, against the negligence of what she calls “narrative competence”—defined as the ability to absorb, interpret, and translate stories of others. Charon compares the work of health professionals to that of a skilled translator, who reads not only words but also silences and metaphors. While Charon focuses primarily on developing the concept of care as aesthetic experience for health professionals, Yuriko Saito’s recent publication Aesthetics of Care (2022) draws a parallel between care ethics in general and aesthetic experience. Both, according to Saito, share the same attitudes such as open-mindedness, receptivity, respect, and collaborative spirit. In this paper, I will discuss the concept of care in Belgian film director Chantal Akerman’s later works: My Mother Laughs (2019) and No Home Movie (2015). Through different media—the former being a memoir and the latter a documentary—Akerman cares for her mother and bears witness to the end of her mother’s life. Taking cues from Charon and Saito, I argue that both media are media of care: they are aesthetic means of bearing witness to illness, trauma, love, and care. Especially through filmmaking, Akerman seems to have achieved the impossible: that is, the desire of the daughter not to take her eyes off her dying mother and look at her eternally. Such desire is also expressed in her film aesthetics: the long take inscribes a waiting becoming infinite; it is as if the movie, or the motion picture, is exposed to both a slow death and a passage to eternity. At the same time, unlike Charon and Saito, who position the carer as an ideal reader and viewer, I argue that Akerman as the carer is by no means perfect: her memoir offers a detailed account of her need to keep a distance and hide from her mother, and of her mother’s complaint about Akerman not sharing her life with her. Distance is what Akerman struggles with regarding her relation to her mother, and she struggles with it through writing and filming. In Akerman’s case, the ability to achieve the impossible with aesthetic media lies precisely in mediation and mediality: they enable a relation of care that is close, yet still maintains a safe distance. Full article

The elements in blood normally reflect the levels in prey, indicating a recent exposure. Laughing gulls (Leucophaes atricilla) eat mainly horseshoe crab eggs (Limulus polyphemus) in the spring in Delaware Bay, New Jersey. The levels of arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), and selenium (Se) in the blood of laughing gulls foraging on crab eggs were examined in Delaware Bay to provide information on a species that is normally a generalist, and to determine if the levels of these elements were similar in 2019 and 2022/2023, were intercorrelated, and were related to those in crab eggs. Hg increased from 2019 (136 ± 31 ng/g) to 2022/2023 (473 ± 75 ng/g), while Cd and Se decreased. There were some significant correlations among elements and a close relationship between the element levels in blood and those in crab eggs collected in the same month (except for As). The levels differed between laughing gulls and three species of shorebirds for As and Cd. The elements in the blood of gulls and shorebirds should be similar because they eat mainly the same eggs in the same places. A significant proportion of laughing gull blood samples had levels of Hg and Se that were above the levels associated with adverse effects, which requires further examination. Full article

The recreational use of nitrous oxide (N₂O), also called laughing gas, has increased significantly in recent years. In 2022, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) recognized it as one of the most prevalent psychoactive substances used in Europe. Chronic nitrous oxide (N₂O) exposure can lead to various clinical manifestations. The most frequent symptoms are neurological (sensitive or motor disorders), but there are also other manifestations like psychiatric manifestations or cardiovascular disorders (thrombosis events). N₂O also affects various neurotransmitter systems, leading to its anesthetic, analgesic, anxiolytic and antidepressant properties. N₂O is very challenging to measure in biological matrices. Thus, in cases of N₂O intoxication, indirect biomarkers such as vitamin B12, plasma homocysteine and plasma MMA should be explored for diagnosis and assessment. Others markers, like oxidative stress markers, could be promising but need to be further investigated. Full article