Search Results (14)

Bicycle safety remains a critical concern as cycling gains popularity, especially in urban areas where traffic conditions pose significant risks. The increasing presence of bicycles and derivatives of them further complicates traffic dynamics, raising the potential for accidents and injuries. This study examines bicycle accident trends in Poland from 2016 to 2023 using data provided by the Polish Police, supplemented with medical insights on injury mechanisms. The analysis highlights key patterns, such as the higher incidence of accidents during summer, fewer accidents on weekends compared to weekdays, and the disproportionate fatality rate among cyclists over 60. Failure to yield the right of way emerges as a leading cause of accidents. These findings underscore the need for a multifaceted approach to improving cyclist safety, including infrastructural enhancements, public education, stricter enforcement of traffic laws, and advancements in medical response and protective gear. Addressing these factors can contribute to a safer environment that supports the continued growth of sustainable and active transportation. Full article

Recent advances in natural language processing have increased interest in automatic question generation, particularly in education (e.g., math, biology, law, medicine, and languages) due to its efficiency in assessing comprehension. Specifically, multiple-choice questions have become popular, especially in standardized language proficiency tests. However, manually creating high-quality tests is time-consuming and challenging. Distractor generation, a critical aspect of multiple-choice question creation, is often overlooked, yet it plays a crucial role in test quality. Generating appropriate distractors requires ensuring they are incorrect but related to the correct answer (semantically or contextually), are grammatically correct, and of similar length to the target word. While various languages have seen research in automatic distractor generation, Japanese has received limited attention. This paper addresses this gap by automatically generating cloze tests, including distractors, for Japanese language proficiency tests, evaluating the generated questions’ quality, difficulty, and preferred distractor types, and comparing them to human-made questions through automatic and manual evaluations. Full article

Background: Digitalization in the health system is a topic that is rapidly gaining popularity, and not only because of the current pandemic. As in many areas of daily life, digitalization is becoming increasingly important in the medical field amid the exponential rise in the use of computers and smartphones. This opens up new possibilities for optimizing patient education in the context of anesthesia. The main aim of this study was to assess the implementation of remote consent in Europe. Methods: An online survey entitled “Digital online Patient Informed Consent for Anesthesia before Elective Surgery. Recent practice in Europe,” with a total of 27 questions, was sent by the European Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) to their members in 47 European countries. To assess the effect of the economy on digitalization and legal status with regard to anesthesia consent, data were stratified based on gross domestic product per capita (GDPPC). Results: In total, 23.1% and 37.2% of the 930 participants indicated that it was possible to obtain consent online or via telephone, respectively. This observation was more often reported in countries with high GDPPC levels than in countries with low GDPPC levels. Furthermore, 27.3% of the responses for simple anesthesia, 18.7% of the responses for complex anesthesia, and 32.2% of the responses for repeated anesthesia indicated that remote consent was in accordance with the law, and this was especially prevalent in countries with high GDPPC. Concerning the timing of consent, patients were informed at least one day before in 67.1% of cases for simple procedures and in 85.2% of cases for complex procedures. Conclusion: Even European countries with high GDPPC use remote informed consent only in a minority of cases, and most of the time for repeated anesthetic procedures. This might reflect the inconsistent legal situation and inhomogeneous medical technical structures across Europe. Full article

The urgent need to protect user privacy and security has emerged as the World Wide Web has become an increasingly necessary part of daily life. Browser fingerprinting is a very interesting topic in the industry of technology security. New technology will always raise new security issues and browser fingerprinting will undoubtedly follow the same process. It has become one of the most popular topics in online privacy because, to date, there is still no exact solution as to how to stop it entirely. The majority of solutions just aim to reduce the likelihood of obtaining a browser fingerprint. Research on browser fingerprinting is unquestionably required since it is essential to educate users, developers, policymakers, and law enforcement about it so that they can make strategic choices based on knowledge. Browser fingerprinting must be recognised in order to defend against privacy problems. A browser fingerprint is described as data gathered by the receiving server to identify a distant device, and it is different from cookies. Websites frequently utilize browser fingerprinting to obtain information about the type and version of the browser, as well as the operating system, and other current settings. It has been known that even when cookies are disabled, fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify users or devices. In this communication paper, a new insight into the challenge of browser fingerprint is encouraged as a new venture. Thus, the initial way to truly understand the browser fingerprint is the need to collect browser fingerprints. In this work, the process of data collection for browser fingerprinting through scripting, to offer a complete all-in-one fingerprinting test suite, has been thoughtfully divided into appropriate sections and grouped with key information to be carried out. The objective is to gather fingerprint data with no personal identification information and make it an open source of raw datasets in the industry for any future research purposes. To our best knowledge, there are no open datasets made available for browser fingerprints in the research field. The dataset will be widely accessible by anyone interested in obtaining those data. The dataset collected will be very raw and will be in the form of a text file. Thus, the main contribution of this work is to share an open dataset of browser fingerprints along with its collection methodology. Full article

The present article analyzes the connection between, on the one hand, gender equality and, on the other hand, loneliness and social isolation. It hypothesizes that modern relational institutions that support gender equality, such as no-fault divorce laws, reduce loneliness in close relationships. This hypothesis is put to the test through a multilevel analysis of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2017. The analysis reveals that the data agree, to a large extent, with the theoretical arguments. The prevalence of loneliness is higher in countries with higher levels of gender inequality (as measured by the Gender Inequality Index (GII)). This can be attributed to a moderation effect; at lower levels of gender inequality, partnerships provide better protection from loneliness. These results are robust to controls for demographic composition, level of health, educational attainment, income poverty, and interview mode. Last, the analyses show that the threat of emotional isolation is more widespread in countries with low gender inequality. These findings, however, are only significant before controlling for demographic composition, level of health, educational attainment, income poverty, and interview mode, and they require further analysis. The concluding section relates these findings to the popular tendency to argue that modern society has created a “loneliness epidemic” and discusses policy implications. Full article

The popularization of education on the administrative compulsion law in response to major epidemic situations in China refers to the educational activities carried out by an educational subject aimed at an educational object promoting understanding and mastery of knowledge of administrative compulsion. The goal is to improve the government’s legal ability to prevent and control behavior, enhance people’s awareness of the rule of law, and provide a strong legal basis for the rule of law in the context of major epidemics. Other aims are to cultivate citizens’ legal beliefs, restrain citizens’ conduct, and maintain a stable social order. However, problems arise in the subject, content, and mode of the educational activities. Therefore, we need to discuss compulsory education in the context of major epidemic situations, including the need for a favorable educational environment, the strengthening of information distribution, and the guidance of public opinion on administrative enforcement. We should also improve education subjects to enhance the legal quality of administrative organs, perfect the education content, encourage people to support administrative compulsion in epidemic situations, and deliver education in campus online classes. Full article

We write as the Survivors Justice Project (SJP), a legal/organizing/social work/research collective born in the aftermath of the 2019 passage of the New York State Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), a law that allows judges to re-sentence survivors of domestic violence currently in prison and to grant shorter terms or program alternatives to survivors upon their initial sentencing. Our work braids litigation, social research, advocacy, organizing, popular education, professional development for the legal and social work communities, and support for women in prison going through the DVSJA process and those recently released. We are organized to theorize and co-produce new knowledges about the gendered and racialized violence of the carceral state and, more specifically, to support women currently serving time in New York State to access/understand the law, submit petitions, and hopefully be freed. In this article we review our collective work engaged through research and action, bridging higher education and movements for decarceration through racial/gender/economic justice, and venture into three aspects of our praxis: epistemic justice in our internal dynamics; accountabilities and deep commitments to women still incarcerated and those recently released, even and especially during COVID-19; and delicate solidarities, exploring external relations with policy makers, judges, defense attorneys, advocates, and prosecutors in New York State, other states, and internationally. Full article

Basketball is among the third most popular team sport in Italy. Albeit not usually perceived as being at high risk for tetanus, the Italian legal framework (Law No. 292 of 1963; Presidential Decree 1301/1965) requires tetanus vaccination (TeV) even for amateur practice. Even though some previous reports have suggested a relatively low adherence towards vaccination practice among basketball player, corresponding knowledge, attitudes and practices towards TeV remain largely unknown. Our study specifically investigated such topics in a total of 270 amateur basketball players participating into an internet-based survey by completing a structured questionnaire. Of them, 73.0% had a proper vaccination status, but a third of respondents (33.3%) exhibited some degree of vaccine hesitancy. The average understanding of TeV and tetanus (79.8% with a potential range 0–100) as well as the risk perception for natural infection (63.9% ± 26.6) were quite good. Even though unmotivated fears towards TeV were more scarcely reported (14.0% ± 15.4), they still represented the main reasons for having missed vaccination shots (63.0%). Knowledge status and risk perception for natural infection and TeV were well correlated (R = 0.22 and R = −0.64, respectively). Appropriate TeV status was more likely in respondents not exhibiting vaccine hesitancy (Odds Ratio (OR) 0.114, 95% Confidence Interval (95%CI) 0.059–0.225). In turn, vaccine hesitancy was more frequently reported among individuals of male gender (OR 3.148, 95%CI 1.072–9.244), while better formal education (OR 0.065, 95%CI 0.013–0.319) and working in healthcare settings (OR 0.042, 95%CI 0.007–0.265) were characterized as negative effectors. Vaccinations in athletes represent an often overlooked issue, with a considerable lack of available evidence. The results stress the opportunity for appropriate TeV screening programs among amateur athletes and the potential relevance of interventions aimed at raising the perceived significance of TeV in order to cope with a significant share of vaccine-hesitant athletes. Full article

We argue that the neoliberal tradition and new public management reforms of the public sector effectively erode the core (liberal) democratic values of the rule of law and transparency. The tension between public law and managerially-influenced governmental policy is in practice resolved by the emergence of what we call “shadow management” in public administration, whereby managerial decisions that clash with constitutional and administrative law are dealt with in internal memos or consultancy reports and hidden from public view. The consequence is a duality in the public sector, which potentially reduces public trust in institutions and undermines their democratic legitimacy. Finally, we argue that when governmental neoliberal policy clashes with legal requirements, the likely effect is that the popular institution of the (governmental or parliamentary) ombudsman, originally introduced for legal supervision over civil servants, takes on the new deceptive role of providing pseudo-legal justification for neoliberal reform, making neoliberalism and ombudsmen a particularly problematic combination from a democratic and legal perspective. We support our contentions by a case study of Swedish higher education and hypothesize that the mechanisms we highlight are general in nature. Full article

Dog aggression directed towards humans is a common and serious behavioral and public health issue. This cross-sectional study was designed to gain insights into U.S. small animal veterinarians’ views and experiences with the most common dog breeds in the U.S., dog aggression, and breed-specific legislation. An electronic survey was distributed via email to an online veterinary community, and responses were summarized and compared by means of χ² and Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel tests. Most respondents were concerned about the risks of dog bite injuries, but the majority were not in favor of banning specific breeds of dogs in order to enhance public safety. When participants rated the perceived bite risk associated with popular dog breeds, Chow Chows were perceived as the highest risk, with pit bull types categorized as a moderate risk. Golden Retrievers were seen as the most appropriate for families with children. Public education about animal behavior was the most frequently endorsed policy intervention to increase public safety. These findings suggest that most veterinarians feel that banning an entire dog breed is not an effective way to ensure human safety. Instead, most respondents endorsed alternative initiatives, such as public education and stricter leash laws, to reduce the risk of dog bites. Full article

Physics students are rarely exposed to the style of thinking that goes into theoretical developments in physics until late in their education. In this work, we present an alternative to the traditional statement of Newton’s second law that makes theory questions accessible to students early in their undergraduate studies. Rather than a contrived example, the model considered here arises from a popular framework for testing Lorentz symmetry used extensively in contemporary experiments. Hence, this work also provides an accessible introduction to some key ideas in ongoing tests of fundamental symmetries in physics. Full article

The aim of this paper is to review pharmacy laws and regulations, pharmacist training, clinic considerations, and patient care outcomes regarding pharmacy-based travel health services in the United States. Pharmacists and pharmacies in the United States are highly visible and accessible to the public, and have long been regarded as a source for immunization services. As international travel continues to increase and grow in popularity in this country, there is a pressing need for expanded access to preventative health services, including routine and travel vaccinations, as well as medications for prophylaxis or self-treatment of conditions that may be acquired overseas. In the United States, the scope of pharmacy practice continues to expand and incorporate these preventable health services to varying degrees on a state-by-state level. A literature review was undertaken to identify published articles on pharmacist- or pharmacy-based travel health services or care in the United States. The results of this paper show that pharmacists can help to increase access to and awareness of the need for these services to ensure that patients remain healthy while traveling abroad, and that they do not acquire a travel-related disease while on their trip. For those pharmacists interested in starting a travel health service, considerations should be made to ensure that they have the necessary training, education, and skill set in order to provide this specialty level of care, and that their practice setting is optimally designed to facilitate the service. While there is little published work available on pharmacy or pharmacist-provided travel health services in the United States, outcomes from published studies are positive, which further supports the role of the pharmacist in this setting. Full article

As a kind of thinking mechanism that grasps motion, change and development of objects on the whole, systematic thinking contains a whole set of thinking principles, methods and operation procedures. With the uprising popularity of studies on informational system science and complexity theory, information reveals a new field that the philosophy of the past has not discovered. Wu’s works are putting forward a wholly new scientific thinking way: the Informational Thinking. We can conclude rationally from Wu’s explanations of information that the character of informational thinking way can include and surpass the basic idea of systematic thinking way. So far as the whole process of scientific cognition is concerned, functions of informational thinking are expanded in several aspects. Information civilization is undoubtedly the latest pattern of contemporary human civilization. Nowadays, people are hard to escape the fate of survival of informatization. Its theory and practice are fundamentally reforming and impressively reconstructing existence style of modern society, as well as the modern individual life belief, emotion, behavior, attitude and psychology in every respect. The reconstruction of modern information ecological ethics must face to face with the openness of information culture, non-controllability, freedom, permeability, internationalism, technicality, virtuality, popularity, diversity and immediacy due to the rapid development of information technology and deal with the severe challenges to social management as a result of the tendency of the disordering of network culture, non-controllability, anarchy and liberalization 7. Taking Control of the Optimal Systematic Condition of Objects as the Aim. The modern sense of information ecology refers to a system which is combined by man, practice, value and technology existing in a specific regional environment, which plays a role of educated existence in the integrated system. With the continuing expansion and penetrating of informatization, the spiritual and cultural life of modern society is confronted with the severe challenges of complanation, homogeneity, non-privacy or even alienation and so on. At the same time, it leads to a series of social ethical issues, such as infringement of intellectual property rights, illegal access to information, the illegal use of information technology, information attribution of liability, authorization, infringement of personal right of privacy, infringement of image rights, etc. The emergence of these problems is rooted in information ecological imbalance (It refers to the disequilibrium state among information, human and environment), that is to say, there are information exchange blocks between the internal and external ecological system or imbalance between its elements and subsystems. Information ecological imbalance mainly reflects in the following five aspects: excessive information, information monopoly, information infringing, information pollution and the information syndrome. The root cause of ecological imbalance lies in its entropy. In this increasingly informationized and intelligentized era, “the means of technology” in the sense of pure knowledge is undoubtedly important and indispensable with regard to alleviating the encroachment on information subjects brought by excessive and detrimental information substantially. However, in terms of modern sociology of knowledge, it is more important to pay a close attention to the autonomous construction and normative function of the culture, values and ethics beyond pure knowledge, to keep in mind “the balance of information ecology”, the core value subject of information practice and information culture, to abide by the law of information production, information transmission, information consumption and information disintegration with an aim to ensure the reasonable match of the categories and numbers of information subjects, the coordination of the factors of information ecological environment, the adjustment of information subjects and information ecological environment and the efficient circulation of the whole information system. Thus, the premium practice-value reconstruction of modern information ecological ethics must be based on the diversity and differentiation of information ecology and the principle of coordination, mutual benefits and symbiosis with the aspiration of promoting the coordinated development between human society and information environment. The reconstruction should strive to create a harmonious and open environment to produce information and share information in a fair and just way, to configure and foster more sharing information resources reasonably, to realize the balance of information ecological system and ultimately to promote the sustainable and healthy development of humans, information environment and even the material and spiritual life of human society. Full article

Green infrastructure is defined as any type of infrastructure that has the purpose of lessening the burden of development on the environment and/or has the aim of providing ecosystem services, such as runoff management, air temperature reduction, carbon sequestration, and habitat provisioning. Despite these potential benefits and a recent increase in popularity, the widespread use of green infrastructure has been limited. To ascertain why this may be the case, we asked: What are the socio-ecological factors that influence the adoption of green infrastructure? To answer this question, we carried out a review of the literature. We found 32 papers addressing our research topic, three quarters of which were published since 2009. Based on the results and conclusions of the articles we reviewed, we identify six factors that influence the adoption of green infrastructure: Education, the Provision of Ecosystem Services, Financial Incentives, Coordination Among Actors, Laws and Policies, and Planning Recommendations. We present a model of the direct and indirect effects of each factor on the adoption of green infrastructure and investigate the geographic variability of factors. Our results indicate that Education, the Provision of Ecosystem Services, and Financial Incentives are the most influential factors affecting the adoption of green infrastructure because they are supported by the greatest number of articles regardless of location of study and have the greatest number of linkages with other factors and adoption in our model. We conclude with evidence-based strategies to promote the use of green infrastructure in order to create more sustainable environments. Full article