Bilateral phacoemulsification of cataract: the opinion of foreign ophthalmologists

Рurpose: to present the opinion of foreign ophthalmic surgeons on simultaneous bilateral phacoemulsification of cataract (SBPEC) by analyzing literature data. We performed an analysis of papers listed by Pubmed in 2000–2020 which contained expert assessments of SBPEC effectiveness based on polling. Ophthalmic surgeons were offered special questionnaires largely close in content, which were designed to establish the rating of factors that affected the respondents’ decision for or against the surgery. Our results indicate that, depending on the country, from 13.9 to 86 % of ophthalmic surgeons practice SBPEC, while from 14.0 to 67.2 % refrain from using this technology. The surveys revealed three major factors in favor of SBPEC — reduced number of clinical visits, the patient’s convenience during rehabilitation, and a high risk of complications after a second general anesthesia. The main factors against SBPEC are the risk of endophthalmitis (noted by 69–73 % of respondents), the absence of information on the postoperative refractive result in the first eye, which could determine the choice of the intraocular lens on the second eye (74–80 %), the risk of bilateral vision loss (73–79 %), as well as possible forensic problems (52–58 %).Conclusion. The surveying highlights certain negative factors that need to be overcome in order for SBPEC to become more widespread. Raising the awareness of SBPEC practice and approval by the ophthalmic community is essential for a sustainable culture change regarding this technology. To achieve this aim, standardization of the SBPEC procedure is needed, followed by the development of training manuals and protocols for surgical intervention.

Conservation units seen as drivers of sustainable development in Brazil and their correlations with the 2030 Agenda

Thinking about sustainable development is increasingly necessary for the continuity of all species in the biosphere. Over time, natural resources become scarcer, enabling conflicts and wars to be generated. Thus, this study aims to show the relevance of conservation units as territories that are necessary and supported by Law 9,985/2000 for the promotion of a sustainable culture in the country. But also, the aim was to prove the relationship of conservation units with the Sustainable Development Goals, proposed by the United Nations in 2015. For this study, the bibliographic and documentary research technique was used. At the end of the analysis, we can observe that the existence of conservation units and knowledge about them stimulates economic development linked to environmental care, facilitating the maintenance of social homeostasis and ecosystems. In addition to being directly linked to the SDGs and the concern for current and future generations.

Intelligent Recognition Method of Decorative Openwork Windows with Sustainable Application for Suzhou Traditional Private Gardens in China

Decorative openwork windows (DO-Ws) in Suzhou traditional private gardens play a vital role in Chinese traditional garden art. Due to the delicate and elegant patterns, as well as their rich cultural meaning, DO-Ws have quite high protection and utilization value. In this study, we firstly visited 15 extant traditional gardens in Suzhou and took almost 3000 photos to establish the DO-W datasets. Then, we present an effective visual recognition method named CSV-Net to classify different DO-Ws’ patterns in Suzhou traditional gardens. On the basis of the backbone module of the cross stage partial network optimized with the Soft-VLAD architecture, the proposed CSV-Net achieves a preferable representation ability for distinguishing different DO-Ws in practical scenes. The comparative experimental results show that the CSV-Net model achieves a good balance between its performance, robustness and complexity for identifying DO-Ws, also having further potential for sustainable application in traditional gardens. Moreover, the Canglang Pavilion and the Humble Administrator’s Garden were selected as the cases to analyze the relation between identifying DO-W types and their locations in intelligent approaches, which further reveals the design rules of the sustainable culture contained in Chinese traditional gardens. This work ultimately promotes the sustainable application of artificial intelligence technology in the field of garden design and inheritance of the garden art.

Religious Participation: Does It Matter for Sustainable Culture and Entertainment Consumption?

Previous research has studied the correlations between income, education, and sustainable culture and entertainment consumption. The correlation between religion as an informal institution and culture and entertainment consumption is often neglected. Based on this background, this paper attempts to explore the correlation between religious participation (as a proxy for religion) and three kinds of sustainable culture and entertainment consumption. Using the data from the Chinese General Social Survey in 2017 to perform empirical analysis, it is found that religious participation is negatively correlated with the sustainable culture and entertainment consumption. Two-stage least squares and propensity score matching method were employed, verifying the robustness of this result. Additionally, the full sample was divided into sub-samples to discuss the heterogeneous correlation between religious participation and sustainable culture and entertainment consumption. The results suggest that in the low income group and the low marketization degree group, religious participation is most relevant to the sustainable culture and entertainment consumption. This paper contributes to enriching current research.

Isolation and long-term expansion of murine epidermal stem-like cells

Epidermis is the most outer layer of the skin and a physical barrier protecting the internal tissues from mechanical and environmental insults. The basal keratinocytes, which, through proliferation and differentiation, supply diverse cell types for epidermal homeostasis and injury repair. Sustainable culture of murine keratinocyte, however, is a major obstacle. Here we developed murine keratinocyte lines using low-Ca2+ (0.06 mM) keratinocyte serum-free medium (KSFM-Ca2+) without feeder cells. Cells derived in this condition could be subcultured for >70 passages. They displayed basal epithelial cell morphology and expressed keratin (Krt) 14, but lacked the epithelial-characteristic intercellular junctions. Moreover, these cells could be adapted to grow in the Defined-KSFM (DKSFM) media containing 0.15 mM Ca2+, and the adapted cells established tight- and adherens-junctions and exhibited increased Krt1/10 expression while retained subculture capacity. Global gene expression studies showed cells derived in KSFM-Ca2+ media had enriched stem/proliferation markers and cells adapted in DKSFM media had epithelial progenitor signatures. Correspondingly, KSFM-Ca2+-derived cells exhibited a remarkable capacity of clonal expansion, whereas DKSFM-adapted cells could differentiate to suprabasal epithelial cell types in 3-dimentional (3D) organoids. The generation of stem-like murine keratinocyte lines and the conversion of these cells to epithelial progenitors capable of terminal differentiation provide the critically needed resources for skin research.

Reversing the Surging Tide towards Authoritarian Democracy in Africa

The global crisis of democracy and constitutional governance is particularly manifest in Africa. Signs of authoritarian mobilization and resurgence are clearly apparent in the decline in the quality of democratic elections and governance in the last two decades. What emerges from many of the chapters in this book is that the legislative and constitutional framework for a sustainable democracy in Africa is weak; a weakness which has been aggravated by the weakness of a civil society often unable to mobilize to protect the laws, rules, and regulations that are in place. Arresting the decline in the quality of elections is a sine qua non to reviving and sustaining the present faltering progress towards a credible and sustainable culture of democracy, rule of law, and constitutionalism on the continent. It is contended that the key to reversing the surging tide towards authoritarian democracy in Africa is to enhance the legal and constitutional framework for elections to make it more robust. The chapter suggests certain critical reforms that are needed to ensure that elections are no longer used as a survival strategy in which opposition parties are kept in the game to maintain a semblance of democracy whilst autocrats hold on to power.

Design for sustainable cultural landscapes : A whole-systems framework

This article explores how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) could be used as a guidance framework for the capacity development of those engaged in the process of identifying, protecting, conserving, presenting and transmitting cultural landscapes. It draws insights from the Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) curriculum intended to serve the purpose of educating for the transition to a comprehensive sustainable culture. The framework follows the pattern of the EDE curriculum organised in four dimensions of sustainability and the three dimensions of learning - cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural. Each of these four dimensions, in turn, contains five modules– thus twenty subject areas in total, all of which need to be considered by sustainable cultural landscape educational programmes. The paper concludes that in order to create a whole-systems guidance framework addressing cultural landscape complexities, a wide variety of viewpoints needs to be considered including community, nature rights and traditional ways of knowing and other participatory epistemologies.

Integrating an ED&I Strategy at the Met Office

<p>Diverse perspectives combined with an inclusive culture where people can bring their authentic selves to work, stimulates innovation, improves decision making and leads to greater performance and resilience. In the past, colleagues at the Met Office have set up excellent staff-led initiatives, which over the last year have been built on to deliver a coordinated institutional wide approach and instil a sustainable culture change. The Met Office has created a comprehensive Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) Strategy to address how the organisation will lead and invest in our people and culture to make the Met Office a great place to work for all. We are publishing equality objectives to publicly demonstrate our commitment and focus to enhance ED&I:</p><ul><li>engaging with and understanding the diversity of our people,</li> <li>advancing equality of opportunity,</li> <li>increasing representation of under-represented groups at all levels,</li> <li>zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination.</li> </ul><p>To fulfil these objectives our actions include using comprehensive staff surveys, data collection, Equality Impact Assessments, an ongoing review of recruitment and progression practices and seeking external accreditations. As an organisation, we have employed specialist consultants with ED&I sector knowledge to help us implement these actions. A programme of extensive internal communications has shared activities, experiences and new initiatives to engage all staff.</p><p>We outline the joined-up structures that we are delivering to fulfil our strategy, which has ultimate oversight by the top levels of our organisation. However, it engages all staff with the Strategy in their day-to-day work and through a new Ally Community and a Diversity Council comprising staff representation from all existing staff-led ED&I networks. An example staff network of focus is the Women in Climate network, a joint network with the University of Exeter to support the retention of women in weather and climate science and promote diversity whilst fostering cross-institutional support, idea-sharing and networking. Other Met Office staff led networks include the Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME), LGBTQ+, Autism, Internationals in the UK, Accessibility and Disability, Menopause, Dementia/Carer and Mental Health and Wellbeing Awareness networks. The Met Office also has a team of Dignity and Respect at Work advisors and encourages young people from a range of backgrounds to consider STEM careers through outreach in schools and Science Camps. We present our strategy as a model for best practise for other geoscience organisations, whilst highlighting some of the challenges that we have faced and how we are working to overcome them.</p>

A Proposal for Measuring In-Use Buildings’ Impact through the Ecological Footprint Approach

To reduce the environmental impact of the construction sector, sustainable strategies for managing the in-use phase of buildings must be integrated urgently. Current green certifications present several limitations and, in particular, do not help determine where to focus for reducing the environmental demand of buildings. Among existing indicators, the ecological footprint (EF) is the most useful for assessing the buildings’ environmental performance through impact sources that reveal the over-consumption of resources. The present paper expands EF by taking into account the role of human behavior in over-consumption, and thus the efficiency in buildings’ use. After comparing ecological footprint with the existing green certifications, the paper demonstrates how a new integrated ecological footprint assessment can describe the impact of built-up, energy consumption, water consumption, material consumption, food and drink, mobility, waste generation, recycling potential, and occupants in the environmental efficiency of a building. The application of a case study demonstrates the reliability and the effectiveness of the model and shows that the estimated ecological deficit reflects not only the consumption of energy and materials, but also the behaviors of building users. This highlights the need for integrating a sustainable culture in the users of buildings.

Post-Pandemic Sustainability Strategies for Zimbabwean SMEs

In the past decade, the issue of sustainability in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has attracted much attention from scholars and policymakers. Admittedly, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated much curiosity of scholars with regard to the sustainability of SMEs. Accordingly, this study seeks to explore sustainability strategies that can be employed by SMEs in Zimbabwe in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. Notably, seven sustainable strategies emerged from the thematic analysis, namely, online marketplaces, leveraging technology, cost-cutting measures, customer relationship, innovation and creativity, sustainable culture, and collaboration and partnerships. The results of this study help the policymakers and practitioners in making sound decisions related to SME sustainability based on empirical evidence.