Occupational accidents in the Danish merchant fleet and the nationality of seafarers

BACKGROUND: The aim of the study was to examine occupational accidents reported from non-passenger merchant ships registered in the Danish International Ship Register in 2010-2012, with a focus on analysing nationality differences in the risk of getting injured in an accident. METHODS: Data about notified occupational accidents were collected from notifications sent to the Danish Maritime Authority and from records of contact with Danish Radio Medical. Events were matched by personal identification and accident data to create a unified database. Stratified cumulative time spent on board by seafarers was used to calculate accident rates. Incidence rates of different nationalities were compared by Poisson regression. RESULTS: Western European seafarers had an overall accident rate of 17.5 per 100000 person-days, which proved to be significantly higher than that of Eastern European, South East Asian and Indian seaman (adjusted incidence rate ratio 0.53, 0.51 and 0.74, respectively), although differences decreased over the investigated period. Smaller but in most cases still significant discrepancies were observed for serious injuries. The back injury rate of Western European employees was found especially high, while eye injuries seem to be more frequent among South East Asian workers. CONCLUSIONS: The study identified substantial differences between nationalities in the rate of various accidents reported from merchant ships sailing under the Danish flag. The differences may be attributed to various factors such as safety behaviour. Investigation of special injury types and characterisation of effective elements of safety culture can contribute to the improvement of workplace safety in the maritime sector

Live-virus exposure of vaccine-protected macaques alters the anti-HIV-1 antibody repertoire in the absence of viremia

Background: We addressed the question whether live-virus challenges could alter vaccine-induced antibody (Ab) responses in vaccinated rhesus macaques (RMs) that completely resisted repeated exposures to R5-tropic simian-human immunodeficiency viruses encoding heterologous HIV clade C envelopes (SHIV-Cs). Results: We examined the Ab responses in aviremic RMs that had been immunized with a multi-component protein vaccine (multimeric HIV-1 gp160, HIV-1 Tat and SIV Gag-Pol particles) and compared anti-Env plasma Ab titers before and after repeated live-virus exposures. Although no viremia was ever detected in these animals, they showed significant increases in anti-gp140 Ab titers after they had encountered live SHIVs. When we investigated the dynamics of anti-Env Ab titers during the immunization and challenge phases further, we detected the expected, vaccine-induced increases of Ab responses about two weeks after the last protein immunization. Remarkably, these titers kept rising during the repeated virus challenges, although no viremia resulted. In contrast, in vaccinated RMs that were not exposed to virus, anti-gp140 Ab titers declined after the peak seen two weeks after the last immunization. These data suggest boosting of pre-existing, vaccine-induced Ab responses as a consequence of repeated live-virus exposures. Next, we screened polyclonal plasma samples from two of the completely protected vaccinees by peptide phage display and designed a strategy that selects for recombinant phages recognized only by Abs present after – but not before – any SHIV challenge. With this “subtractive biopanning” approach, we isolated V3 mimotopes that were only recognized after the animals had been exposed to live virus. By detailed epitope mapping of such anti-V3 Ab responses, we showed that the challenges not only boosted pre-existing binding and neutralizing Ab titers, but also induced Abs targeting neo-antigens presented by the heterologous challenge virus. Conclusions: Anti-Env Ab responses induced by recombinant protein vaccination were altered by the multiple, live SHIV challenges in vaccinees that had no detectable viral loads. These data may have implications for the interpretation of “vaccine only” responses in clinical vaccine trials

Absentee Landowning and Exploitation in West Virginia, 1760-1920

Absentee landowning has long been tied to economic distress in Appalachia. In this important revisionist study, Barbara Rasmussen examines the nature of landownership in five counties of West Virginia and its effects upon the counties\u27 economic and social development. Rasmussen untangles a web of outside domination of the region that commenced before the American Revolution, creating a legacy of hardship that continues to plague Appalachia today. The owners and exploiters of the region have included Lord Fairfax, George Washington, and, most recently, the U.S. Forest Service. The overarching concern of these absentee landowners has been to control the land, the politics, the government, and the resources of the fabulously rich Appalachian Mountains. Their early and relentless domination of politics assured a land tax system that still favors absentee landholders and simultaneously impoverishes the state. Class differences, a capitalistic outlook, and an ethic of growth and development pervaded western Virginia from earliest settlement. Residents, however, were quickly outspent by wealthier, more powerful outsiders. Insecurity in landownership, Rasmussen demonstrates, is the most significant difference between early mountain farmers and early American farmers everywhere. Barbara Rasmussen is an Appalachian historian. A thought-provoking and frequently insightful work that will contribute significantly to the ongoing scholarly debate concerning the roots of Appalachian dependency. —Journal of Appalachian Studies The book is consistently and appropriately engaged in present-day political concerns and ends with a prescription to revise West Virginia tax codes. Both activists and scholars can benefit from Rasmussen\u27s research. —Register of the Kentucky Historical Societyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/1019/thumbnail.jp

Safe Navigation of Cruise Ships in Greenlandic Waters – Legal Frame and Practical Challenges

Climate change provides for improved conditions for maritime navigation and results in increased activity in the Arctic. Those increased activities influence the safety at sea and risk of accidents. A disaster as the Costa Concordia incident would have far more serious consequences in Greenlandic waters than it had in Italy, therefore the question of prevention and disaster-preparedness is crucial. One approach to avoid risks is to create specific legislation. The legal system guiding safe navigation of cruise ships in/around Greenlandic waters is complex: the legal regime for navigation is set in different general and specific international, regional and national legal acts, partly non-binding, therefore issues of effectiveness arise. Safety is also influenced by practical issues, e.g. the lack of sufficient nautical charts for Greenlandic waters and “preparedness” at land to handle potential disasters, such as the SAR-system and preparedness of different actors, for example hospitals

Knowledge integration in One Health policy formulation, implementation and evaluation

The One Health concept covers the interrelationship between human, animal and environmental health and requires multistakeholder collaboration across many cultural, disciplinary, institutional and sectoral boundaries. Yet, the implementation of the One Health approach appears hampered by shortcomings in the global framework for health governance. Knowledge integration approaches, at all stages of policy development, could help to address these shortcomings. The identification of key objectives, the resolving of trade-offs and the creation of a common vision and a common direction can be supported by multicriteria analyses. Evidence-based decision-making and transformation of observations into narratives detailing how situations emerge and might unfold in the future can be achieved by systems thinking. Finally, transdisciplinary approaches can be used both to improve the effectiveness of existing systems and to develop novel networks for collective action. To strengthen One Health governance, we propose that knowledge integration becomes a key feature of all stages in the development of related policies. We suggest several ways in which such integration could be promoted

Danish Rural Areas' Readiness for Joint Action as a Proxy for the Potential for Co-production

This paper assesses and locates general readiness and capacity for internal joint action of five Danish rural parishes, and uses this as a proxy in a discussion of the opportunities of increased use of volunteers in welfare co-production in rural Denmark. The literature describes the importance of maintaining active communities that have the ability to take over or co-produce where government assistance leaves off, ensuring that all citizens—not only the strongest—can access services in the future. Co-production is dependent on capacity outside the government, capacity within the government, as well as effective coordination. By use of mixed-methods, the paper shows that the readiness for joint action varies among the five parishes and depends on very different organisations. Some parishes' readiness for joint actions is simply much higher than others. This result offers an important lesson for planners and politicians, who—for a co-production strategy to be successful and equal—must obtain concrete knowledge about the rural areas they serve. Their knowledge must cover not only socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, but also traditions of knowledge-sharing, participation, and mobilisation. Keywords: communities; readiness for joint action, participation patterns, rural areas, co-production, resilience ---------------------------------------------------- Résumé Cet article évalue et localise la préparation générale et la capacité d'actions concertées internes de cinq paroisses rurales danoises et utilise ceci comme un indicateur dans la discussion sur les opportunités d'augmenter l'utilisation des volontaires dans la coproduction d'aide sociale dans le Danemark rural. La littérature décrit l'importance de maintenir les communautés actives qui ont la capacité de rachat ou de coproduire , là où le gouvernement a arrêté les subventions, permettant ainsi à tous les citoyens—pas seulement les plus aisés—d'avoir accès aux services dans le futur. La coproduction dépend de capacités de sources non-gouvernementales, gouvernementales, ainsi que d'une coordination efficace. Grâce à l'utilisation d'une méthode mixte, cet article démontre que la préparation d'actions concertées varie parmi les cinq paroisses et dépend d' organisations très différentes. Certaines préparations de paroisses concernant les actions concertées sont simplement supérieures à d'autres. Ce résultat offre une leçon importante pour les planificateurs et les politiciens qui—pour une stratégie coproductrice réussie et équitable—doivent obtenir des connaissances concrètes de leur région rurale à charge. Leur connaissance doit couvrir non seulement les caractéristiques socioéconomiques et démographiques, mais aussi les traditions, le partage des connaissances, la participation et la mobilisation