Parents in modern Western societies are increasing their demands professional
childcare. According to Statistics Canada, about half of Canadian parents rely on childcare, with over 70% of households with two working parents using childcare on a regular basis. Despite the demand for daycare and after-school program specialists, Early Childhood Educators (ECE) are not widely recognized as holding a professional designation. Dr. Tricia Van Rhijn, professor of Family Relations and Human Development at the University of Guelph in Canada, shared some insights towards gaining a better understanding of professionals working in the childcare sector.
The Endocannabinoid System, Our Universal Regulator
The endocannabinoid system (ECS) plays a very important role in the human body for our survival. This is due to its ability to play a critical role in maintaining the homeostasis of the human body, which encompasses the brain, endocrine, and immune system, to name a few. ECS is a unique system in multiple dimensions. To begin with, it is a retrograde system functioning post- to pre-synapse, allowing it to be a “master regulator” in the body. Secondly, it has a very wide scope of influence due to an abundance of cannabinoid receptors located anywhere from immune cells to neurons. Finally, cannabinoids are rapidly synthesized and degraded, so they do not stay in the body for very long in high amounts, possibly enabling cannabinoid therapy to be a safer alternative to opioids or benzodiazepines.
Confocal Laser Fluorescence Microscopy to Measure Oil Concentration in Produced Water: Analyzing Accuracy as a Function of Optical Settings
The confocal laser fluorescence microscope (CLFM) enables viewing fluorescing objects and creating 3D images by optical sectioning. The CLFM can potentially be used to view, count, and analyze oil droplets, which have naturally fluorescing properties, by image processing techniques. However, many factors, including sample oil concentration, number of optical sections per stack, quantity and location of stacks, and threshold value for grayscale to binary image processing affect the intensity of fluorescence in the images produced and the oil concentration that is calculated. This study aims to establish patterns between these variables and a methodology to accurately calculate oil concentrations.
The World Hope Index
The main aim of the World Hope Index (WHI) is to help readers understand that hope can be perceived as a social product. This has been done through creating an index and quantifying Hope levels for 131 countries around the world for 2017. The paper also attempts to move the discourse of measuring human welfare and prosperity forward, from GDP growth rate and the Human Development Index to a new form of measure, being the World Hope Index.