title: Image complexity analysis with scanpath identification using remote gaze estimation model

text: Analysis of gaze points has been a vital tool for understanding varied human behavioral pattern and underlying psychological processing. Gaze points are analyzed generally in terms of two events of fixations and saccades that are collectively termed as scanpath. Scanpath could potentially establish correlation between visual scenery and human cognitive tendencies. Scanpath has been analyzed for different domains that include visual perception, usability, memory, visual search or low level attributes like color, illumination and edges in an image. Visual search is one prominent area that examines scanpath of subjects while a target object is searched in a given set of images. Visual search explores behavioral tendencies of subjects with respect to image complexity. Complexity of an image is governed by spatial, frequency and color information present in the image. Scanpath based image complexity analysis determines human visual behavior that could lead to development of interactive and intelligent systems. There are several sophisticated eye tracking devices and associated algorithms for recording and classification of scanpath. However, in the present scenario when the chances of viral infections (COVID-19) from known and unknown sources are high, it is very important that the contact less methods and models be designed. In addition, even though the devices acquire and process eye movement data with fair accuracy but are intrusive and costly. The objective of current research work is to establish the complexity of the given set of images while target objects are searched and to present analysis of gaze search pattern. To achieve these objectives a remote gaze estimation and analysis model has been proposed for scanpath identification and analysis. The model is an alternate option for gaze point tracking and scanpath analysis that is non intrusive and low cost. The gaze points are tracked remotely as against sophisticated wearable eye tracking devices available in the market. The model employs easily available softwares and hardware devices. In the current work, complexity is derived on the basis of analysis of fixation and saccade gaze points. Based on the results generated by the proposed model, influence on subjects due to external stimuli is studied. The set of images chosen, act as external stimuli for the subjects during visual search. In order to statistically analyze scanpath for different subjects, certain scanpath parameters have been identified. The model maps and classifies eye movement gaze points into fixations and saccades and generates data for identified parameters. For eye detection and subsequent iris detection voila jones and circular hough transform (CHT) algorithms have been used. Identification by dispersion threshold (I-DT) is implemented for scanpath identification. The algorithms are customized for better iris and scanpath detection. Algorithms are developed for gaze screen mapping and classification of fixations and saccades. The experimentation has been carried on different subjects. Variations during visual search have been observed and analyzed. The present model requires no contact of human subject with any equipment including eye tracking devices, screen or computing devices.


title: Living in an Emerging Settlement: the Story of Hopley Farm Settlement, Harare Zimbabwe

text: A phenomenological research design guided the study that documented the daily lives of citizens living in emerging settlements. Hopley Farm Settlement in Harare, Zimbabwe, was used as a point of reference. The study argued that emerging settlements are neglected spaces in which residents improvise in their daily life activities to enhance the livability of the settlements. The theory of desperation, which puts into perspective issues of spatial (in) justice, exclusion, power, and oppression, formed the theoretical foundation of the study. Findings spotlight some of the dilemmas experienced by residents living in emerging settlements. These citizens experience multiple shocks and stresses, which include lack of basic services, disconnection from formal services and the urban core, political exclusion, and violation of their human rights. In this regard, households engage in various activities that fall between resilience and desperation as they try to navigate their way in claiming the right to the city. The study recommends politicians and the government to put aside political differences and consider the welfare of the people instead of advancing political agendas.


title: Electroanalysis from the past to the twenty-first century: challenges and perspectives

text: A personal mini-review is presented on the history of electroanalysis and on their present achievements and future challenges. The manuscript is written from the subjective view of two generations of electroanalytical chemists that have witnessed for many years the evolution of this discipline.


title: Penetrating injuries to the vertebral artery: interventions and outcomes from US Trauma Centers

text: PURPOSE: Penetrating injuries to the vertebral artery are rare and incompletely studied. Operative, angioembolic, and nonoperative strategies are management options, although the association between management strategy and outcomes is unknown. This study endeavored to define the epidemiology, management strategy, and outcomes after penetrating injuries to the vertebral artery presenting to trauma centers nationwide. METHODS: Patients with veterbral artery injuries were identified from the National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB) (2016–2017) using ICD-10-CM codes. Only those with penetrating mechanisms of injury were included in the study. Transferred patients were excluded. Study groups were defined by management strategy (Operative management, OM; angioembolization, AE; and nonoperative management, NOM). Patient demographics, injury characteristics, and outcomes were compared between groups using univariate analysis. Multivariate analysis with logistic regression was used to examine independent risk factors for mortality and stroke. RESULTS: Penetrating injuries to the vertebral artery were rare (n = 476, < 1% of NTDB patient population). Median age was 28 [IQR 21–37] years and 81% (n = 385) of patients were male. Interpersonal violence was the most common injury intent (n = 374, 79%). Most patients were managed with NOM (n = 409, 86%), with AE and OM utilized less frequently (8% and 6%, respectively). Stab wounds were the most frequent mechanism of injury among patients managed with OM (62%), while gunshot wounds were most common among patients managed with NOM (84%) or AE (79%). Multivariate analysis of risk factors for stroke revealed only associated carotid artery injury (OR 4.236, 95% CI 1.284–13.970, p = 0.018) and AE (OR 6.342, 95% CI 1.417–28.399, p = 0.016) were independent predictors. Independent risk factors for mortality were advanced age (OR 1.026, 95% CI 1.001–1.052, p = 0.044); elevated ISS (OR 1.030, 95% CI 1.008–1.052, p = 0.006); and associated traumatic brain injury (OR 3.020, 95% CI 1.333–6.843, p = 0.008). Higher ED GCS was independently associated with reduced mortality (OR 0.788, 95% CI 0.731–0.849, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Vertebral artery injuries after penetrating mechanisms are infrequent in the United States. Patients with these injuries tend to be young adult men who were injured by gunshot wounds as a result of interpersonal violence. The majority of these injuries were managed nonoperatively, with operative intervention required most commonly for patients injured by stab wounds. Risk factors for both stroke and mortality were principally due to patient factors and associated injuries. Increased risk of stroke among patients managed with angioembolization will need to be further investigated with future study to determine if this risk is imparted from the management strategy itself or from underlying injury characteristics.


Coping Well


title: Training Physical and Geometrical Mid-Points for Multi-person Pose Estimation and Human Detection Under Congestion and Low Resolution

text: This paper introduces the design and evaluation of NeoPose which is developed for multi-person pose estimation and human detection. The design of NeoPose is targeting the issue of human detection under congested situation and with low resolution in the image. Under such situations, we compared the performance of different versions of NeoPose as well as other existing algorithms in a human detection task. Throughout the task, the usefulness of two kinds of mid-point (physical and geometrical mid-points) and a deconvolution structure was discussed. Experiment results indicated that NeoPose which applied geometrical mid-points and deconvolution structure performed the best in terms of both precision and recall in the evaluation.


docid: cfzfgzqi

title: Older age is associated with sustained detection of SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal swab samples


docid: mvqoarsh

title: Coronavirus: good or bad news for ocular diseases?


What healthcare leaders need to do to protect the psychological well-being of frontline staff in the COVID-19 pandemic


Ten Minutes with Dr Linghang Wang, Director of Infectious Diseases Emergency, Deputy Director of the Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Beijing Ditan Hospital


Pyoderma Gangrenosum Faciale in a Patient with Crohn’s Disease


title: Partial recovery of disturbed V-J pairing profiles of T-cell receptor in people living with HIV receiving long-term antiretroviral therapy

text: Chronic human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection not only causes a gradual loss of CD4(+) T cells but also leads to a disturbance of the T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire. In people living with HIV (PLWH), monitoring TCR repertoire is challenged by the inconsistency of complementarity determining region 3 (CDR3) and limited cell numbers in clinical samples. Thus, a quantitative method is necessary for monitoring the TCR repertoire in PLWH. We characterized the TCR V-J pairing profile of naïve and memory CD4(+) T cells in healthy donors, HIV-infected antiretroviral therapy (ART)-naïve patients and long-term (over 5 years) ART-experienced patients by performing TCR sequencing. We developed a V-J index with 18 parameters which were subdivided into five categories (expression coverage, cumulative percentage of the top tenth percentile, diversity, intra-individual similarity and inter-individual similarity). In ART-naïve patients, 14 of the 18 parameters were significantly altered. Long-term ART recovered ten parameters. The four unrecovered parameters were related to inter-individual similarity. Therefore, these findings indicate that long-term ART could only partially recover TCR V-J pairs and introduce newly impacted V-J pairs. Moreover, these results provide new insights into the V-J pairing of the TCR and into the disturbance of TCR repertoire in HIV infection. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Supplementary material is available for this article at 10.1007/s11427-020-1718-2 and is accessible for authorized users.


title: Impact and Trends in Global Ophthalmology

text: PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Our goal is to provide a review of the impact, global estimates, and projection of vision impairment as well as ongoing systems for eye care delivery. RECENT FINDINGS: Many of the blinding diseases in developing countries are preventable or curable, but the lack of ophthalmologists, the lack of education, and the lack of access to any eye care are some of the major obstacles encountered. SUMMARY: As our world becomes more interconnected through globalization, the interactions between different cultures and populations increase. Global ophthalmology is a field dedicated to building sustainable eye care delivery systems to deliver high-quality care in minimal resource settings, with the aim of reducing blindness around the world.


title: Genetic diversity of the ATAQ gene in Rhipicephalus microplus collected in Mexico and implications as anti-tick vaccine

text: The cattle tick Rhipicephalus microplus has a large impact on cattle production due to its bloodsucking habit and transmission of pathogens that cause babesiosis and anaplasmosis. Application of acaricides constitutes the major control method but is often accompanied by serious drawbacks, including environmental contamination and an increase in acaricide resistance by ticks. The recent development of anti-tick vaccines has provided positive results in the post-genomic era, owing to the rise of reverse vaccinological and bioinformatics approaches to analyze and identify candidate protective antigens for use against ticks. The ATAQ protein is considered a novel antigen for the control of the cattle tick R. microplus; it is expressed in midguts and Malpighian tubules of all ticks from the Rhipicephalus genus. However, genetic diversity studies are required. Here, the ATAQ gene was sequenced of seven R. microplus tick isolates from different regions in Mexico to understand the genetic diversity. The results showed that sequence identity among the Mexican isolates ranged between 98 and 100% and 97.8–100% at the nucleotide and protein levels, respectively. Alignments of deduced amino acid sequences from different R. microplus ATAQ isolates in Mexico revealed a high degree of conservation. However, the Mexican isolates differed from the R. microplus “Mozambique” strain, at 20 amino acid residues. Finally, the analysis of more R. microplus isolates, and possibly of other Rhipicephalus species, to determine the genetic diversity in the ATAQ locus is essential to suggest this antigen as a vaccine candidate that might control tick infestations.


To Compose with Gaia: Living Sympoetically


Mitteilungen der GI im Informatik Spektrum 4/2020


Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 as an atypical cause of Bell's palsy in a patient experiencing homelessness


title: Experience of diagnosis and treatment of traumatic bronchial rupture in children in a single clinical center

text: PURPOSE: To examine the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic bronchial rupture in children at the Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China. METHODS: The diagnosis and treatment of eight cases of traumatic bronchial rupture were analyzed retrospectively from January 2014 to December 2019 in our hospital. RESULTS: Diagnosis of the eight patients was clear after a chest CT with three-dimensional reconstruction techniques and fiberoptic bronchoscopy; six of the patients had a delay in diagnosis of at least 2 weeks. Among the patients, six had left bronchus rupture, and the other two had right bronchus rupture. All eight patients received surgery; seven patients received a bronchial end-to-end valgus anastomosis, and one received right middle lobe lobectomy. There were no deaths in this group, and all patients were cured and discharged. Follow-up was conducted for 3 months to 2 years; the patients who received surgery showed mild bronchostenosis within 2 weeks after the trauma, and the other six patients showed moderate bronchostenosis upon CT examination. CONCLUSION: Being alert to bronchial rupture after trauma in children is helpful for diagnosis. Chest CT with three-dimensional reconstruction techniques and fiberoptic bronchoscopy are the most valuable diagnostic methods. The patients can show excellent results if the operation for a continuous valgus anastomosis of the posterior wall and interrupted end-to-end valgus anastomosis of the anterior wall on the ruptured side is performed in the early stage of traumatic bronchial rupture.


title: Application of Healthcare ‘Big Data’ in CNS Drug Research: The Example of the Neurological and mental health Global Epidemiology Network (NeuroGEN)

text: Neurological and psychiatric (mental health) disorders have a large impact on health burden globally. Cognitive disorders (including dementia) and stroke are leading causes of disability. Mental health disorders, including depression, contribute up to one-third of total years lived with disability. The Neurological and mental health Global Epidemiology Network (NeuroGEN) is an international multi-database network that harnesses administrative and electronic medical records from Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. Using these databases NeuroGEN will investigate medication use and health outcomes in neurological and mental health disorders. A key objective of NeuroGEN is to facilitate high-quality observational studies to address evidence-practice gaps where randomized controlled trials do not provide sufficient information on medication benefits and risks that is specific to vulnerable population groups. International multi-database research facilitates comparisons across geographical areas and jurisdictions, increases statistical power to investigate small subpopulations or rare outcomes, permits early post-approval assessment of safety and effectiveness, and increases generalisability of results. Through bringing together international researchers in pharmacoepidemiology, NeuroGEN has the potential to be paradigm-changing for observational research to inform evidence-based prescribing. The first focus of NeuroGEN will be to address evidence-gaps in the treatment of chronic comorbidities in people with dementia.


title: Diagnostik und Therapie schlafbezogener Atmungsstörungen im Zusammenhang mit der Corona‑Pandemie: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pneumologie und Beatmungsmedizin e. V. (DGP), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schlafforschung und Schlafmedizin (DGSM)

text: When providing sleep medical services special aspects must be taken into account in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite all prevention, due to the high number of unrecognized cases, SARS-CoV2 contacts in the sleep laboratory must be expected and appropriate precautions are necessary. Nevertheless, the continuation or resumption of sleep medical services under the appropriate hygiene measures is strongly recommended to avoid medical and psychosocial complications. There is no evidence for a deterioration of COVID-19 through CPAP therapy. In principle, the application of positive pressure therapy via various mask systems can be accompanied by the formation of infectious aerosols. In the case of confirmed infection with SARS-CoV2, a pre-existing PAP therapy should be continued in an outpatient setting in accordance with the local guidelines for home isolation, since discontinuation of PAP therapy is associated with additional cardiopulmonary complications due to the untreated sleep-related breathing disorder. According to the current state of knowledge inhalation therapy, nasal high-flow (NHF), and PAP therapy can be carried out without increased risk of infection for health care workers (HCW) as long as appropriate personal protective equipment (eye protection, FFP2 or FFP-3 mask, gown) is being used. This position paper of the German Society for Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine (DGP) and the German Society for Sleep Medicine (DGSM) offers detailed recommendations for the implementation of sleep medicine diagnostics and therapy in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.


The impact of COVID-19 on the scientific community—Highlighting The Journal's editorial commitment and two publications


What's New Online


Is COVID-19 an adverse childhood experience (ACE): Implications for screening for primary care


Global lockdown, pollution, and respiratory allergic disease: Are we in or are we out?


Zika Virus: Learning from the Past as We Prepare for the Future


Pregnancy and perinatal outcome of a woman with COVID-19 infection()


Shine Brightly as We Write Our Story:: The global coronavirus pandemic has overtaken our world and our lives in unfathomable ways, and we are all experiencing it in our own unique manner.


July 2020 People & Events


Risk of hepatitis B reactivation associated with treatment against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) with corticosteroids()


title: Tracheotomy When and Where?

text: The time for elective tracheotomies has been discussed for years in what has become very comprehensive literature by now. In this chapter, studies with high levels of evidence are taken into account and recommendations are given for the timing of tracheotomies in long-term ventilated patients, with the individual decision being at the center of consideration. Tracheotomies can be performed both in the operating room and in an intensive care unit. The criteria for such choice are presented under interdisciplinary medical and organizational aspects.


docid: eclclobm

title: The comparison of capnography and epigastric auscultation to assess the accuracy of nasogastric tube placement in intensive care unit patients

text: BACKGROUND: Placement of nasogastric (NG) tubes is a common procedure for patients especially in intensive care units (ICUs). Thus, it is important to determine the correct placement of the tube to prevent misplacement in the airways. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to compare the epigastric auscultation and capnography in assessing the accuracy of NG tube insertion in ICU patients. METHODS: In this descriptive comparative study, 60 patients were selected trough convenience sampling. After insertion of the NG tube in a standard method, the accuracy of placement of the tube with both epigastric auscultation and capnography was investigated. The NG tube insertion accuracy was then confirmed via radiography. Data analysis was performed using statistical software SPSS version 23. RESULTS: The result showed that capnography had a sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 100, 92.5, and 95% respectively, but epigastric auscultation had 90, 80, and 83.4% respectively. The Kappa agreement coefficient between two methods was − 0.759. CONCLUSION: The results revealed that the use of the capnography is preferable over the epigastric auscultation to confirm the correct insertion of the NG tube. It is recommended that more than one method be applied to detect and confirm the correct insertion of the NG tube.


title: Clinical outcomes according to cannula configurations in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome under veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation: a Korean multicenter study

text: BACKGROUND: Recirculation during veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VV-ECMO) is a known drawback that limits sufficient oxygenation. This study aimed to compare the short-term oxygenation and long-term mortality based on cannula configuration in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) who receive VV-ECMO, especially in the absence of newly developed dual-lumen, single cannula. METHODS: Data of patients with severe ARDS who received VV-ECMO from 2012 to 2015 at six hospitals were retrospectively analyzed. Primary outcomes were the partial pressure of oxygen (PaO(2)) at 1, 4, and 12 h after ECMO initiation and 180-day mortality. RESULTS: Patients (n = 335) were divided into two groups based on the return cannula site: femoral vein (n = 178) or internal jugular vein (n = 157). The propensity score matching analysis generated 90 pairs, and baseline characteristics at admission, including PaO(2), were similar between the groups. PaO(2) at 1, 4 and 12 h after ECMO initiation were not different according to cannula configuration. Moreover, the increment in oxygenation from the baseline values was not different between the femoral and jugular group. PaCO(2) level at 1, 4 and 12 h were significantly lower in the jugular group. The two groups did not differ in terms of mortality at 180 days after ECMO, however more cannula-related complications occurred in the jugular group. CONCLUSION: Regardless of the cannula configuration, patients with ARDS managed with VV-ECMO showed comparable clinical outcomes in terms of short-term oxygenation and long-term mortality. Nevertheless, further well-designed randomized control trials are warranted.


title: Population genomics of Vibrionaceae isolated from an endangered oasis reveals local adaptation after an environmental perturbation

text: BACKGROUND: In bacteria, pan-genomes are the result of an evolutionary “tug of war” between selection and horizontal gene transfer (HGT). High rates of HGT increase the genetic pool and the effective population size (N(e)), resulting in open pan-genomes. In contrast, selective pressures can lead to local adaptation by purging the variation introduced by HGT and mutation, resulting in closed pan-genomes and clonal lineages. In this study, we explored both hypotheses, elucidating the pan-genome of Vibrionaceae isolates after a perturbation event in the endangered oasis of Cuatro Ciénegas Basin (CCB), Mexico, and looking for signals of adaptation to the environments in their genomes. RESULTS: We obtained 42 genomes of Vibrionaceae distributed in six lineages, two of them did not showed any close reference strain in databases. Five of the lineages showed closed pan-genomes and were associated to either water or sediment environment; their high N(e) estimates suggest that these lineages are not from a recent origin. The only clade with an open pan-genome was found in both environments and was formed by ten genetic groups with low N(e), suggesting a recent origin. The recombination and mutation estimators (r/m) ranged from 0.005 to 2.725, which are similar to oceanic Vibrionaceae estimations. However, we identified 367 gene families with signals of positive selection, most of them found in the core genome; suggesting that despite recombination, natural selection moves the Vibrionaceae CCB lineages to local adaptation, purging the genomes and keeping closed pan-genome patterns. Moreover, we identify 598 SNPs associated with an unstructured environment; some of the genes associated with these SNPs were related to sodium transport. CONCLUSIONS: Different lines of evidence suggest that the sampled Vibrionaceae, are part of the rare biosphere usually living under famine conditions. Two of these lineages were reported for the first time. Most Vibrionaceae lineages of CCB are adapted to their micro-habitats rather than to the sampled environments. This pattern of adaptation is concordant with the association of closed pan-genomes and local adaptation.


title: Towards new horizons: characterization, classification and implications of the tumour antigenic repertoire

text: Immune-checkpoint inhibition provides an unmatched level of durable clinical efficacy in various malignancies. Such therapies promote the activation of antigen-specific T cells, although the precise targets of these T cells remain unknown. Exploiting these targets holds great potential to amplify responses to treatment, such as by combining immune-checkpoint inhibition with therapeutic vaccination or other antigen-directed treatments. In this scenario, the pivotal hurdle remains the definition of valid HLA-restricted tumour antigens, which requires several levels of evidence before targets can be established with sufficient confidence. Suitable antigens might include tumour-specific antigens with alternative or wild-type sequences, tumour-associated antigens and cryptic antigens that exceed exome boundaries. Comprehensive antigen classification is required to enable future clinical development and the definition of innovative treatment strategies. Furthermore, clinical development remains challenging with regard to drug manufacturing and regulation, as well as treatment feasibility. Despite these challenges, treatments based on diligently curated antigens combined with a suitable therapeutic platform have the potential to enable optimal antitumour efficacy in patients, either as monotherapies or in combination with other established immunotherapies. In this Review, we summarize the current state-of-the-art approaches for the identification of candidate tumour antigens and provide a structured terminology based on their underlying characteristics.


title: Preventive use of respiratory support after scheduled extubation in critically ill medical patients—a network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

text: BACKGROUND: Respiratory support has been increasingly used after extubation for the prevention of re-intubation and improvement of prognosis in critically ill medical patients. However, the optimal respiratory support method is still under debate. This network meta-analysis (NMA) aims to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of various respiratory support methods used for preventive purposes after scheduled extubation in critically ill medical patients. METHODS: A systematic database search was performed from inception to December 19, 2019, for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compared a preventive use of different respiratory support methods, including conventional oxygen therapy (COT), noninvasive ventilation (NIV), high-flow oxygen therapy (HFOT), and combinational use of HFOT and NIV (HFOT+NIV), after planned extubation in adult critically ill medical patients. Study selection, data extraction, and quality assessments were performed in duplicate. The primary outcomes included re-intubation rate and short-term mortality. RESULTS: Seventeen RCTs comprising 3341 participants with 4 comparisons were included. Compared with COT, NIV significantly reduced the re-intubation rate [risk ratio (RR) 0.55, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.39 to 0.77; moderate quality of evidence] and short-term mortality (RR 0.66, 95% CI 0.48 to 0.91; moderate quality of evidence). Compared to COT, HFOT had a beneficial effect on the re-intubation rate (RR 0.55, 95% CI 0.35 to 0.86; moderate quality of evidence) but no effect on short-term mortality (RR 0.79, 95% CI 0.56 to 1.12; low quality of evidence). No significant difference in the re-intubation rate or short-term mortality was found among NIV, HFOT, and HFOT+NIV. The treatment rankings based on the surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA) from best to worst for re-intubation rate were HFOT+NIV (95.1%), NIV (53.4%), HFOT (51.2%), and COT (0.3%), and the rankings for short-term mortality were NIV (91.0%), HFOT (54.3%), HFOT+NIV (43.7%), and COT (11.1%). Sensitivity analyses of trials with a high risk of extubation failure for the primary outcomes indicated that the SUCRA rankings were comparable to those of the primary analysis. CONCLUSIONS: After scheduled extubation, the preventive use of NIV is probably the most effective respiratory support method for comprehensively preventing re-intubation and short-term death in critically ill medical patients, especially those with a high risk of extubation failure.


New trends in radiology education, time to adapt locally


title: Einleitung

text: Produktives Arbeiten im Homeoffice und von unterwegs erfordert neben der passenden IT-Ausstattung auch eine gute Sprach- und Datenverbindung, den Zugriff auf Software und Daten sowie die passenden Führungs- und Arbeitsmethoden. Kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen haben oft in vielen dieser Bereiche noch nicht alle Voraussetzungen geschaffen, um Mitarbeitern das Arbeiten von unterwegs oder zu Hause zu ermöglichen – was in Situationen wie der Coronavirus-Pandemie überlebenswichtig für Unternehmen sein kann. Dieser Ratgeber gibt Ihnen konkrete Anleitungen, wie Sie ohne IT-Fachkenntnisse schnell und pragmatisch Homeoffice und mobiles Arbeiten für sich und Ihr Team umsetzen können. Darüber hinaus erhalten Sie viele Praxistipps, wie Sie die Zusammenarbeit in verteilt arbeitenden Teams organisieren können und welche Anwendungen dabei empfehlenswert sind.


title: Comparing the Efficacy of Formaldehyde with Hydrogen Peroxide Fumigation on Infectious Bronchitis Virus

text: BACKGROUND: The recent reclassification of formaldehyde as a presumed carcinogen prompted the investigation into the comparative efficacy of hydrogen peroxide as a fumigant in microbiological safety cabinets. INTRODUCTION: The aim of the study was to quantify the biocidal efficacy of formaldehyde fumigation, including variables such as exposure time and concentration, and then to compare this to the biocidal efficacy achieved from a hydrogen peroxide vapor fumigation system. The study also investigated the ability of both fumigants to permeate the microbiological safety cabinet (MBSC), including the workspace, under the work tray, and after the HEPA filters. Furthermore, the effect of organic soiling on efficacy was also assessed. Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) was used as the biological target to develop this study model. METHODS: A model using IBV was developed to determine the efficacy of formaldehyde and hydrogen peroxide as fumigants. Virus was dried on stainless steel discs, and variables including concentration, time, protein soiling, and location within an MBSC were assessed. RESULTS: It was demonstrated that formaldehyde fumigation could achieve a 6-log reduction in the titer of the virus throughout the cabinet, and high protein soiling in the presentation did not affect efficacy. Appropriate cycle parameters for the hydrogen peroxide system were developed, and when challenged with IBV, it was shown that vaporized hydrogen peroxide could achieve an equal 6-log titer reduction as formaldehyde within the cabinet workspace and overcome the presence of soiling. CONCLUSION: Hydrogen peroxide was demonstrated to be a viable alternative to formaldehyde under most situations tested. However, the hydrogen peroxide system did not achieve an equal titer reduction above the cabinet’s first HEPA filter using the cabinet workspace cycle, and further optimization of the hydrogen peroxide cycle parameters, including pulsing of the cabinet fans, may be required to achieve this.


Highlights from this issue


title: Pulmonary Vascular Manifestations of COVID-19 Pneumonia

text: BACKGROUND: Parenchymal findings in COVID-19 pneumonia on computed tomography (CT) have been well characterized. However, the role of pulmonary vascular pathology in COVID-19 pneumonia is still not well understood. PURPOSE: To investigate pulmonary vascular abnormalities on CT pulmonary angiography in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this retrospective study, 48 patients with RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 infection who had undergone CT pulmonary angiography between 3/22/20 and 4/5/20 in our large urban health care system were included. Patient demographics and clinical data were collected through the electronic medical record system. Twenty-five patients underwent dual energy CT (DECT) as part of the standard CT pulmonary angiogram protocol at a subset of the hospitals. Two thoracic radiologists independently assessed all studies. Disagreement in assessment was resolved by consensus discussion with a third thoracic radiologist. RESULTS: Of the 48 patients, 45 patients required admission, with 18 admitted to the ICU, and 13 requiring intubation. Seven patients (15%) were found to have pulmonary emboli. Dilated vessels were seen in 41 cases (85%), with 38 (78%) and 27 (55%) of cases demonstrating vessel enlargement within and outside of lung opacities, respectively. Dilated distal vessels extending to the pleura and fissures were seen in 40 cases (82%) and 30 cases (61%), respectively. On DECT, mosaic perfusion pattern was observed in 24 cases (96%), regional hyperemia overlapping with areas of pulmonary opacities or immediately surrounding the opacities were seen in 13 cases (52%), opacities associated with corresponding oligemia were seen in 24 cases (96%), and hyperemic halo was seen in 9 cases (36%). CONCLUSION: Pulmonary vascular abnormalities such as vessel enlargement and regional mosaic perfusion patterns are common in COVID-19 pneumonia. Perfusion abnormalities are also frequently observed at DECT in COVID-19 pneumonia and may suggest an underlying vascular process.


title: Sodium-dependent glucose transporter 1 and glucose transporter 2 mediate intestinal transport of quercetrin in Caco-2 cells

text: BACKGROUND: The role of glucose transporters in the transport of flavonoids remains ambiguous. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we examined whether quercitrin would be absorbed intactly in modeled Caco-2 cells, as well as determined the involvement of sodium-dependent glucose transporter 1 (SGLT1) and glucose transporter 2 (GLUT2) in its transmembrane transport. DESIGN: The first experiment was conducted to examine the uptake of quercitrin into Caco-2 cells 24 h after they were seeded and the second experiment was conducted to determine the transport across the apical and basolateral membrane of Caco-2 cells after they were cultured for 21 days in a Millicell system. Quercitrin was administered at 3, 9, or 18 μg/mL; and the time points of sampling were 30, 60, 90, 120, and 150 min. RESULTS: In the uptake experiment, the highest intracellular quercitrin concentration was observed in the cells treated with 18 μg/mL quercitrin at 60 min, with a bell-shaped kinetic curve. Quercetin, isorhamnetin, and tamarixetin were detected inside the cells, particularly when treated with a high dose. In the transport experiment, quercitrin was transported from the apical to basolateral side and vice versa; its concentrations depended on dose, time, and transport direction (P < 0.0001). Only trace amounts of isorhamnetin and tamarixetin were detected in the apical chamber when quercitrin was added to the basolateral chamber. Phloridzin and phloretin, potent inhibitors of SGLT1 and GLUT2, respectively, significantly diminished quercitrin transport from the apical to basolateral side; and phloretin had a greater inhibitory effect compared to phloridzin. CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrate that quercitrin is absorbed intactly and then effluxed out of Caco-2 cells through both apical and basolateral membranes probably via SGLT1 and GLUT2.


title: Technology to Facilitate Telehealth in Applied Behavior Analysis

text: In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, many behavior analysts have temporarily transitioned to providing services using a telehealth model. This has required them to rapidly shift their treatment modality. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of some available technologies to support telehealth that will allow behavior analysts to conduct direct observation from a remote location. We reviewed 3 technologies that can be used for telehealth: (a) web cameras, (b) Swivl, and (c) telepresence robots. Features of each of these technologies are compared, and the benefits and drawbacks of each are reviewed. Sample task analyses for using each technology are also provided. Finally, tips for using telehealth with families are provided.


A mechanistic analysis placental intravascular thrombus formation in COVID-19 patients


ASGE Update


In Upcoming Issues...


From the Editor – in – Chief: Featured papers in the July Issue


Report of the WHO independent high-level commission on NCDs: where is the focus on addressing inequalities?


Clarification on Pleural Effusions in COVID-19


"Rehabilitative Maßnahmen werden fortgeführt, Patienten regulär entlassen"


docid: clvtpawk

title: "Kooperation ist essenziell!"


Müssen wir die Supportivtherapie bei Krebspatienten anpassen?


docid: wnxcsxdx

title: Isolation of cancer-derived extracellular vesicle subpopulations by a size-selective microfluidic platform

text: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) play an important role in intercellular communication. Recently, there has been increasing interest in EVs as potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic vehicles. However, the molecular properties and cargo information of EV subpopulations have not yet been fully investigated due to lack of reliable and reproducible EV separation technology. Current approaches have faced difficulties with efficiently isolating EVs from biofluids, especially subpopulations of small EVs. Here, we report an EV isolation method based on a size-selective microfluidic platform (ExoSMP) via nanomembrane filtration and electrophoretic force. This unique platform offers an enhanced approach to sorting a heterogeneous population of EVs based on size, with the additional advantages of being label-free and low-cost, and featuring a short processing time (<1 h), and convenient integration with downstream analysis. In this research, we used ExoSMP to demonstrate the isolation of cancer-derived small EVs (30–120 nm) with high recovery (94.2%) and reproducibility at an optimum sample flow rate. Furthermore, we investigated isolation of EV subpopulations by altering nanomembrane combinations with different pore size combinations (50 and 100 nm, 30 and 100 nm, 30 and 200 nm, and 30 and 50 nm). This ExoSMP technique can serve as a standardized EV isolation/separation tool, facilitating the clinical prospects of EVs and opening up a new avenue for future point-of-care applications in liquid biopsies.


title: Conclusion

text: This book shows a buffet of artificial intelligence applications from drone to deep learning and from data analysis to the prediction of next pandemic disease along with its drug discovery. Today the entire globe is under the threat of COVID-19 affecting around 200 countries. The death toll reported in these highly affected countries has become catastrophic.


title: An Introduction to COVID-19

text: A novel coronavirus (CoV) named ‘2019-nCoV’ or ‘2019 novel coronavirus’ or ‘COVID-19’ by the World Health Organization (WHO) is in charge of the current outbreak of pneumonia that began at the beginning of December 2019 near in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China [1–4]. COVID-19 is a pathogenic virus. From the phylogenetic analysis carried out with obtainable full genome sequences, bats occur to be the COVID-19 virus reservoir, but the intermediate host(s) has not been detected till now.


title: AI-Enabled Technologies that Fight the Coronavirus Outbreak

text: Development of innovative designs, new applications, new technologies and heavier investment in AI are continued to be seen every day. However, with the sudden impact of COVID19, so severe and urgent around the world, adoption of AI is propelled to an unprecedent level, because it helps to fight the virus pandemic by enabling one or more of the following possibilities: (1) autonomous everything, (2) pervasive knowledge, (3) assistive technology and (4) rational decision support.


docid: yyqsatqw

title: Update on current views and advances on RSV infection (Review)

text: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection represents an excellent paradigm of precision medicine in modern paediatrics and several clinical trials are currently performed in the prevention and management of RSV infection. A new taxonomic terminology for RSV was recently adopted, while the diagnostic and omics techniques have revealed new modalities in the early identification of RSV infections and for better understanding of the disease pathogenesis. Coordinated clinical and research efforts constitute an important step in limiting RSV global predominance, improving epidemiological surveillance, and advancing neonatal and paediatric care. This review article presents the key messages of the plenary lectures, oral presentations and posters of the '5th workshop on paediatric virology' (Sparta, Greece, 12th October 2019) organized by the Paediatric Virology Study Group, focusing on recent advances in the epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, prognosis, clinical management and prevention of RSV infection in childhood.


1000 at 1000: reflecting on “Review: Current international research into cellulose nanofibres and nanocomposites”


title: QOLEC2: a randomized controlled trial on nutritional and respiratory counseling after esophagectomy for cancer

text: BACKGROUND: Esophagectomy for cancer strongly impairs quality of life. The aim of this trial was to evaluate the effect of the nutritional and respiratory counseling on postoperative quality of life. METHODS: At hospital discharge, patients were randomized into four groups receiving respectively: nutritional and respiratory counseling, nutritional counseling alone, respiratory counseling alone, or standard care. The main endpoint was the impairment in quality of life in the first month after surgery. Linear mixed effect models were estimated to assess mean score differences (MDs) in quality of life scores. RESULTS: Patients receiving nutritional counseling reported less appetite loss (MD − 17.7, 95% CI − 32.2 to −3.3) than those not receiving nutritional counseling at 1 month after surgery. Dyspnea was similar between patients receiving vs. those not receiving respiratory counseling (MD − 3.1, 95% CI − 10.8 to 4.6). Global quality of life was clinically similar between patients receiving vs. those not receiving nutritional counseling over time (MD 0.9, 95% CI − 5.5 to 7.3), as well as in patients receiving vs. those not receiving respiratory counseling over time (MD 0.7, 95% CI − 5.9 to 7.2). CONCLUSIONS: Intensive postoperative care does not affect global quality of life even if nutritional counseling reduced appetite loss. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00520-020-05573-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


Our Voice and Our Vote Are More Important Than Ever Before


title: An improved micropropagation protocol for the ex situ conservation of Mitragyna parvifolia (Roxb.) Korth. (Rubiaceae): an endangered tree of pharmaceutical importance

text: Mitragyna parvifolia (Roxb.) Korth., commonly known as “Kadam,” is an endangered and pharmaceutically valued tree of the family Rubiaceae. The numerous medicinal properties are attributed to the various alkaloids of this plant. Poor seedling survival (due to very small size of seeds, approximately 10,000 per gm), overexploitation and habitat destruction are the major constraints in conserving the wild stocks of this species. This paper reports a significant, improved, and repeatable micropropagation protocol of M. parvifolia using nodal explants of a mature tree. Nodal explants harvested during spring season from the lopped tree differentiated the maximum number of axillary shoots (5.3 ± 0.82 per node) on full-strength Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium containing 3.0 mg L(−1) 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and additives (25 mg L(−1) each of adenine sulfate, L-arginine, and citric acid and 50 mg L(−1) ascorbic acid). Shoots were amplified in vitro through (1) recurrent transfer of mother explants and (2) subculturing on fresh nutrient medium. The greatest number of shoots (13.4 ± 1.26) with an average length of 6.2 ± 1.03 cm was produced after 4 wk on MS medium containing 0.5 mg L(−1) BAP, 0.25 mg L(−1) kinetin (Kin), 0.1 mg L(−1) Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), additives, 100 mg L(−1) activated charcoal (AC), and 0.8% (w/v) agar. This is the first report of concurrent ex vitro rooting and acclimatization (CEVRA) in M. parvifolia. About 90% micropropagated shoots rooted ex vitro on pulse treatment of 500 mg L(−1) Indole-3-butyric acid (IBA; for 5 min) and produced 8.5 ± 0.97 roots per shoot with an average length of 9.40 ± 1.06 cm, after 5 wk. Over 80% of CEVRA plantlets were successfully transplanted to the soil in field. The defined protocol can be employed for conservation ex situ and restoration/rehabilitation/reintroduction in situ of M. parvifolia. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11627-020-10089-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


title: A facile approach for the preparation of polycarbonate nanofiber mat with filtration capability

text: The present day environmental issues demand a lot from scientists and engineers to keep the planet earth safe for its habitats. There were lot of attempts for developing efficient air and liquid filters as the demand increases with an utmost concern of present environmental situations. Thanks to its large surface area to volume ratio, polymer nanofibers and composites are found to be good substitute for conventional filters. As per the research and analysis data, filtration efficiency increases proportional to the reduction of the average diameter of the fibers. In this study, the most efficient electrospinning technology was adopted to prepare polycarbonate (PC) nanofiber mat which yields a very fine surface morphology. There are earlier researches and associated data available about the preparation of PC nanofibers but with average fiber diameter above 1000 nm. In this study, a systematic methodology was instigated to generate PC nanofibers with least average diameter of 90 nm without using any surfactants or salts. The most suitable solvents, solvent proportion, polymer concentration and electrospinning conditions for the formation of the fiber mat are discussed elaborately. PC fiber mat of least average diameter was proved to be highly efficient for particulate matter adsorption using a dust sampling analyzer.


title: Dissection of two drug-targeted regions of Hepatitis C virus subtype 4a infecting Egyptian patients

text: Recently, treatment of HCV infection has been improved after the development of direct acting antivirals (DAAs) which target different viral proteins (NS3-4A, NS5A and NS5B). The activity and effectiveness of these DAAs are affected by the presence of resistance associated substitutions (RASs). This study aimed to characterize HCV genotypes circulating among Egyptian HCV patients, to dissect the full sequences of HCV NS3-4A and NS5B regions, and to characterize RASs associated with NS3-4A and NS5B inhibitors in HCV treatment-naïve patients. Genotyping of 80 HCV samples from treatment-naïve patients was done using restriction fragment length polymorphism and phylogenetic analysis based on some full NS5B sequences. Results showed the prevalence of HCV subtype 4a. Twenty four new full sequences of NS3-4A and NS5B regions of subtype 4a were deposited in the GenBank database. In general, the substitutions associated with NS3-4A-targeting drugs were absent predicting possible responsiveness of Egyptian HCV patients to these drugs. In addition, the absence of amino acid substitutions associated with resistance to Sofosbuvir may predict good response to treatment with Sofosbuvir. Some amino acid substitutions associated with resistance to different classes of non-nucleoside inhibitors were detected. Further investigations on treated Egyptian HCV patients may evaluate the effectiveness of the massively used drugs. Many predicted T-cell-binding epitopes in NS3-4A and NS5B regions were found to be highly conserved in the currently studied isolates; a finding that might be important for HCV vaccine development. We demonstrated potential NS3 epitopes that could be used in engineering T cells against HCV epitopes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11262-020-01776-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


SPX Flow Inc, USA


Quantity does not equal quality: Scientific principles cannot be sacrificed


Xylem Inc, USA


Sartorius AG, Germany


Entegris Inc, USA


title: Meissner's new Irish facility now operational

text: Meissner Filtration Products' new manufacturing facility in Castlebar, Ireland is now up and running (see Filtration Industry Analyst, February 2019).


Changes in burn referrals and injuries during CoVid-19


Foot and Ankle Surgery During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Tokyo


Nederman Holding AB, Sweden


Ahlstrom-Munksjö Oyj, Finland


title: A divergent cyclin/cyclin-dependent kinase complex controls the atypical replication of a malaria parasite during gametogony and transmission

text: Cell cycle transitions are generally triggered by variation in the activity of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) bound to cyclins. Malaria-causing parasites have a life cycle with unique cell-division cycles, and a repertoire of divergent CDKs and cyclins of poorly understood function and interdependency. We show that Plasmodium berghei CDK-related kinase 5 (CRK5), is a critical regulator of atypical mitosis in the gametogony and is required for mosquito transmission. It phosphorylates canonical CDK motifs of components in the pre-replicative complex and is essential for DNA replication. During a replicative cycle, CRK5 stably interacts with a single Plasmodium-specific cyclin (SOC2), although we obtained no evidence of SOC2 cycling by transcription, translation or degradation. Our results provide evidence that during Plasmodium male gametogony, this divergent cyclin/CDK pair fills the functional space of other eukaryotic cell-cycle kinases controlling DNA replication.


title: Investigation of Burkholderia cepacia complex bacteremia outbreak in a neonatal intensive care unit: a case series

text: INTRODUCTION: Burkholderia cepacia complex is a ubiquitous organism with a high virulence potential. It is found most commonly in moist environments. Hospital outbreaks have been reported from diverse sources such as contaminated faucets, nebulizers, disinfectant solutions, multidose antibiotic vials, tap water, bottled water, nasal sprays, and ultrasound gels. In this article, we present our experience in investigating and successfully managing an outbreak of nosocomial transmission of Burkholderia cepacia sepsis in the neonatal intensive care unit at SGT Hospital, Haryana, India. CASE PRESENTATION: During the month of March, multiple Burkholderia cepacia complex isolates were recovered from blood cultures of Caucasian babies admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of our hospital. The organisms were multidrug-resistant, with in vitro sensitivity to meropenem alone (minimum inhibitory concentration = 4 μg/ml). An outbreak was suspected, and the neonatal intensive care unit in-charge and hospital infection control teams were alerted. Outbreak investigation was initiated, and surveillance samples were collected. Burkholderia cepacia complex was successfully isolated from suction apparatus. The isolates were phenotypically typed (biotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing) and found to be identical. CONCLUSIONS: In our study, the index case might have been exposed to infection due to a physiological state of low immunity (preterm, low birth weight, and mechanical ventilation). The rest of the cases might have been exposed to this organism due to inadequate hand hygiene/improper cleaning and disinfection practices. Timely reporting and implementation of infection control measures played a significant role in curtailing this outbreak.


title: Customers’ psychological ownership toward the third place

text: Do people feel psychological ownership toward a third place other than homes as the first place and workplaces as the second place? The present study proposes a research model integrating three characteristics of the third place including customer participation, place attachment, and psychological ownership, and tests six hypotheses derived from the research model, which is based on social identity theory and attachment theory. Communication, concentration, and self-expressiveness as characteristics of the third place have a positive influence on customer participation. Customer participation has a direct positive influence on psychological ownership as well as indirectly through place attachment.


title: A hybrid method of recurrent neural network and graph neural network for next-period prescription prediction

text: Electronic health records (EHRs) have been widely used to help physicians to make decisions by predicting medical events such as diseases, prescriptions, outcomes, and so on. How to represent patient longitudinal medical data is the key to making these predictions. Recurrent neural network (RNN) is a popular model for patient longitudinal medical data representation from the view of patient status sequences, but it cannot represent complex interactions among different types of medical information, i.e., temporal medical event graphs, which can be represented by graph neural network (GNN). In this paper, we propose a hybrid method of RNN and GNN, called RGNN, for next-period prescription prediction from two views, where RNN is used to represent patient status sequences, and GNN is used to represent temporal medical event graphs. Experiments conducted on the public MIMIC-III ICU data show that the proposed method is effective for next-period prescription prediction, and RNN and GNN are mutually complementary.


docid: dwwlouil

title: Resources and Waste Management in COVID-19 and Pandemics


Reply to Ata and Colleagues’ Letter to the Editor: Adjustments for Anterior Thigh Muscle Measuremets in Sarcopenia


Societies‘ Communications


Book Review: Keeping mathematics education real and fair: connecting the disconnections. Constantinos Xenofontos (Ed.) (2019) Equity in mathematics education: addressing a changing world: Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. 235 pages. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-64113-728-7 $45.99US. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-64113-729-4 $112.33US. eBook: ISBN 978-1-64113-730-0 $43.69US


title: Conclusion

text: The problem with local government is that it faces declining financial sustainability at a time of generally growing disillusionment amongst its citizens. Contemporary reforms—consolidation, fiscal institutions, and shared services—when conducted competently may arrest some of the decline in financial sustainability. However, contemporary reforms will do nothing to redress disillusionment with what is supposed to be the system of government closest to the people. In this book I have proposed, instead, a raft of radical reforms based around our Comprehensive Theory of Local Government that seeks to correct the extant imbalance between human dignity and the common good, as well as directly combat rational ignorance. At the core of my ideas is a belief that citizens are competent to make important decisions regarding their own government and lives. Indeed, my own experience working with struggling communities suggests to me that the average citizen, when appropriately informed, is much better at making decisions than their ‘political leaders’. If we truly believe this and act on the courage of our convictions, then the reforms that I have outlined will mitigate the problems of local government. If however, we continue to both deny the competency and dignity of our citizens then we can indeed expect local government be ‘overwhelmed and crushed by almost infinite tasks and duties’ (Pius XI 1931, paragraph 78). The choice is ours—or rather it should be!


Nagoya Protocol and Infectious Diseases: Hindrance or Opportunity?


Border policy centre stage: three takes on the making, managing and understanding of borders


title: The virus spy

text: Yan Li talks about spotting the novel swine flu virus at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory.


title: Health capital: toward a conceptual framework for understanding the construction of individual health

text: Emerging perspectives of health as individualized and privatized capital seem promising to shed light on the construction of individual health in the face of the growing individualization of healthcare. This article reviews extant perspectives of health as capital, reflecting upon how a conceptualization of health capital might be conceived by two of the main contrasting traditions: human capital theory affiliated with the Chicago School of Economics and Bourdieusian concepts of social field and capital. Arguing that a Bourdieusian perspective is potentially more fruitful to capture the importance of social and cultural dimensions in the construction of individual health, this article arrives at a conceptualization of health capital as the aggregate of the actual or potential resources possessed by a given agent that have the capacity to affect the position of agents in the social field of health. Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptualization of forms of capital, this article discusses the efficacy, the legitimation, and the positioning of health capital, uncovering its potential for understanding contemporary trends in health practices and health discourse.


docid: mjfgyksh

title: Did Persian Nowruz Aggravate the 2019 Coronavirus Disease Crisis in Iran?


docid: ygforvya

title: Disposition of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) whose respiratory specimens remain positive for severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by polymerase chain reaction assay (PCR)


Agenda de la SFMC


docid: dmyzojcf

title: When the Need is Greater Than Feasible


EDITORIAL COMMENT


title: Online Learning: A Panacea in the Time of COVID-19 Crisis

text: Educational institutions (schools, colleges, and universities) in India are currently based only on traditional methods of learning, that is, they follow the traditional set up of face-to-face lectures in a classroom. Although many academic units have also started blended learning, still a lot of them are stuck with old procedures. The sudden outbreak of a deadly disease called Covid-19 caused by a Corona Virus (SARS-CoV-2) shook the entire world. The World Health Organization declared it as a pandemic. This situation challenged the education system across the world and forced educators to shift to an online mode of teaching overnight. Many academic institutions that were earlier reluctant to change their traditional pedagogical approach had no option but to shift entirely to online teaching–learning. The article includes the importance of online learning and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Challenges (SWOC) analysis of e-learning modes in the time of crisis. This article also put some light on the growth of EdTech Start-ups during the time of pandemic and natural disasters and includes suggestions for academic institutions of how to deal with challenges associated with online learning.


title: Wissen für den Wandel – Wissenstheoretische Grundlagen einer nachhaltigen Bioökonomiepolitik

text: Eine Strategie zur Umsetzung einer nachhaltigen Bioökonomie muss neben disziplinären und technischen Zielvorstellungen auch den gesellschaftlichen Wandel einplanen und vorbereiten. Eine zukunftsfähige politische Strategie muss also neben dem techno-ökonomischen Wissen ebenso solches Wissen fördern, welches es Produzenten und Konsumenten ermöglicht, nicht-nachhaltige Verfahren und Verhaltensweisen nicht nur zu reduzieren, sondern radikal zu verändern. Dazu gehören neben den technologischen Fertigkeiten auch ein interdisziplinäres Verständnis systemischer Zusammenhänge, demokratisch legitimierte Zielvorstellungen sowie die notwendigen Fähigkeiten, um diese Ziele partizipativ umzusetzen. Nur durch die Anerkennung und gezielte Förderung dieses als dediziert bezeichneten Wissens können nachhaltige Veränderungen erwachsen. Der Beitrag ergänzt das evolutionsökonomische Konzept des wissensbasierten Wandels durch Ansätze aus den Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaften. Konkret werden die besonderen Eigenschaften dieses dedizierten Wissens diskutiert, wodurch nicht zuletzt eine Grundlage für neue Ansätze in der Bioökonomiepolitik geschaffen wird.


title: Using country-level variables to classify countries according to the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases: An unsupervised machine learning approach

text: Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted the attention of researchers and clinicians whom have provided evidence about risk factors and clinical outcomes. Research on the COVID-19 pandemic benefiting from open-access data and machine learning algorithms is still scarce yet can produce relevant and pragmatic information. With country-level pre-COVID-19-pandemic variables, we aimed to cluster countries in groups with shared profiles of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Unsupervised machine learning algorithms (k-means) were used to define data-driven clusters of countries; the algorithm was informed by disease prevalence estimates, metrics of air pollution, socio-economic status and health system coverage. Using the one-way ANOVA test, we compared the clusters in terms of number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, number of deaths, case fatality rate and order in which the country reported the first case. Results: The model to define the clusters was developed with 155 countries. The model with three principal component analysis parameters and five or six clusters showed the best ability to group countries in relevant sets. There was strong evidence that the model with five or six clusters could stratify countries according to the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases (p<0.001). However, the model could not stratify countries in terms of number of deaths or case fatality rate. Conclusions: A simple data-driven approach using available global information before the COVID-19 pandemic, seemed able to classify countries in terms of the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. The model was not able to stratify countries based on COVID-19 mortality data.


title: Nieuws

text: Uit Nederlands onderzoek blijkt dat Flash Glucose Monitoring (FGM) bij risicopatiënten met DM in de tweede lijn niet alleen tot een daling van het HbA1c leidt, maar ook tot minder (ernstige) hypo’s, minder ziekteverzuim en minder diabetesgerelateerde ziekenhuisopnames.


docid: zpsqogjg

title: Der Gasteiner Heilstollen und eine mögliche Ansteckungsgefahr im Therapiebereich mit Viren

text: The SARS-CoV‑2 has infected millions of humans worldwide in the past few months and hundreds of thousands have died as a result of an infection. The end of the pandemic is not in sight and many people are anxious of becoming infected in different settings. The Gastein Healing Gallery (GHG) is a unique outpatient facility combining heat, high humidity and mild radon radiation. Every year approximately 12,000 patients with inflammatory rheumatic, degenerative diseases and chronic pain are treated. We have therefore reviewed and analyzed the literature with respect to a possible increased risk of infection for patients during treatment in the GHG. On the one hand the climatic and physical conditions in the GHG can be viewed as hostile to viruses and on the other hand the mild radon hyperthermia and the geographic location of the GHG lead to positive effects on the patient’s health via complex physiological processes. We therefore consider the likelihood of infection with viruses in the GHG in no way increased, in contrast, it is probably considerably lower compared to other settings.


title: Huisartsenzorg in coronatijd is topsport

text: OM ZOWEL ZORGVERLENERS ALS PATIËNTEN TIJDENS DE CORONAPANDEMIE TE BESCHERMEN TEGEN HET VIRUS, WERDEN ER IN NO TIME ISOLATIEHUISARTSENPOSTEN INGERICHT. HIER WORDEN PATIËNTEN GEZIEN DIE MOGELIJK EEN CORONABESMETTING OF GRIEPVERSCHIJNSELEN HEBBEN, NAAST ANDERE KLACHTEN. NETTY TEUNISSEN, JIKKE VOORNEMAN EN LAURA DE SCHIPPER ZIJN BETROKKEN BIJ DE CORONA-HUISARTSENPOST IN SPORTHAL DE KOOG IN KOOG AAN DE ZAAN.


title: Management of primary blast lung injury: a comparison of airway pressure release versus low tidal volume ventilation

text: BACKGROUND: Primary blast lung injury (PBLI) presents as a syndrome of respiratory distress and haemoptysis resulting from explosive shock wave exposure and is a frequent cause of mortality and morbidity in both military conflicts and terrorist attacks. The optimal mode of mechanical ventilation for managing PBLI is not currently known, and clinical trials in humans are impossible due to the sporadic and violent nature of the disease. METHODS: A high-fidelity multi-organ computational simulator of PBLI pathophysiology was configured to replicate data from 14 PBLI casualties from the conflict in Afghanistan. Adaptive and responsive ventilatory protocols implementing low tidal volume (LTV) ventilation and airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) were applied to each simulated patient for 24 h, allowing direct quantitative comparison of their effects on gas exchange, ventilatory parameters, haemodynamics, extravascular lung water and indices of ventilator-induced lung injury. RESULTS: The simulated patients responded well to both ventilation strategies. Post 24-h investigation period, the APRV arm had similar PF ratios (137 mmHg vs 157 mmHg), lower sub-injury threshold levels of mechanical power (11.9 J/min vs 20.7 J/min) and lower levels of extravascular lung water (501 ml vs 600 ml) compared to conventional LTV. Driving pressure was higher in the APRV group (11.9 cmH(2)O vs 8.6 cmH(2)O), but still significantly less than levels associated with increased mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Appropriate use of APRV may offer casualties with PBLI important mortality-related benefits and should be considered for management of this challenging patient group.


title: Investigation of syphilis immunology and Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum biology to improve clinical management and design a broadly protective vaccine: study protocol

text: BACKGROUND: The syphilis epidemic continues to cause substantial morbidity and mortality worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, despite several recent disease control initiatives. Though our understanding of the pathogenesis of this disease and the biology of the syphilis agent, Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum has improved over the last two decades, further research is necessary to improve clinical diagnosis and disease management protocols. Additionally, such research efforts could contribute to the identification of possible targets for the development of an effective vaccine to stem syphilis spread. METHODS: This study will recruit two cohorts of participants with active syphilis infection, one with de novo infection, one with repeat infection. Whole blood specimens will be collected from each study participant at baseline, 4, 12, 24, 36, and 48 weeks, to track specific markers of their immunological response, as well as to compare humoral reactivity to Treponema pallidum antigens between the two groups. Additionally, we will use serum specimens to look for unique cytokine patterns in participants with early syphilis. Oral and blood samples, as well as samples from any syphilitic lesions present, will also be collected to sequence any Treponema pallidum DNA found. DISCUSSION: By furthering our understanding of syphilis pathogenesis and human host immune response to Treponema pallidum, we will provide important data that will help in development of new point-of-care tests that could better identify active infection, leading to improved syphilis diagnosis and management. Findings could also contribute to vaccine development efforts.


title: Stoppen-met-rokenzorg

text: In deze tijd waarin de wereld op zijn kop staat door COVID-19 is goede rookstopzorg belangrijker dan ooit. Rokers zijn immers extra gevoelig voor longinfecties en door de herhaalde hand-mondbeweging lopen zij volgens de WHO een extra risico op COVID-19.


title: Trots op ons nieuwe tijdschrift

text: Met trots presenteren we ons nieuwe tijdschrift TvPO, tijdschrift voor praktijkondersteuners en praktijkverpleegkundigen. Dit vakblad is het resultaat van het samengaan van TPO de Praktijk , het tijdschrift van de V&VN afdeling Praktijkverpleegkundigen en Praktijkondersteuners en het NHG, en De POH , het tijdschrift van de NVvPO.


title: Preventive healthcare policies in the US: solutions for disease management using Big Data Analytics

text: Data-driven healthcare policy discussions are gaining traction after the Covid-19 outbreak and ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections. The US has a hybrid healthcare structure; it is a system that does not provide universal coverage, albeit few years ago enacted a mandate (Affordable Care Act-ACA) that provides coverage for the majority of Americans. The US has the highest health expenditure per capita of all western and developed countries; however, most Americans don’t tap into the benefits of preventive healthcare. It is estimated that only 8% of Americans undergo routine preventive screenings. On a national level, very few states (15 out of the 50) have above-average preventive healthcare metrics. In literature, many studies focus on the cure of diseases (research areas such as drug discovery and disease prediction); whilst a minority have examined data-driven preventive measures—a matter that Americans and policy makers ought to place at the forefront of national issues. In this work, we present solutions for preventive practices and policies through Machine Learning (ML) methods. ML is morally neutral, it depends on the data that train the models; in this work, we make the case that Big Data is an imperative paradigm for healthcare. We examine disparities in clinical data for US patients by developing correlation and imputation methods for data completeness. Non-conventional patterns are identified. The data lifecycle followed is methodical and deliberate; 1000+ clinical, demographical, and laboratory variables are collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Multiple statistical models are deployed (Pearson correlations, Cramer’s V, MICE, and ANOVA). Other unsupervised ML models are also examined (K-modes and K-prototypes for clustering). Through the results presented in the paper, pointers to preventive chronic disease tests are presented, and the models are tested and evaluated.


title: A ligation and restriction enzyme independent cloning technique: an alternative to conventional methods for cloning hard-to-clone gene segments in the influenza reverse genetics system

text: BACKGROUND: Reverse genetics is used in many laboratories around the world and enables the creation of tailor-made influenza viruses with a desired genotype or phenotype. However, the process is not flawless, and difficulties remain during cloning of influenza gene segments into reverse genetics vectors (pHW2000, pHH21, pCAGGS). Reverse genetics begins with making cDNA copies of influenza gene segments and cloning them into bi-directional (pHW2000) or uni-directional plasmids (pHH21, pCAGGS) followed by transfection of the recombinant plasmid(s) to HEK-293 T or any other suitable cells which are permissive to transfection. However, the presence of internal restriction sites in the gene segments of many field isolates of avian influenza viruses makes the cloning process difficult, if employing conventional methods. Further, the genetic instability of influenza gene-containing plasmids in bacteria (especially Polymerase Basic 2 and Polymerase Basic 1 genes; PB2 and PB1) also leads to erroneous incorporation of bacterial genomic sequences into the influenza gene of interest. METHODS: Herein, we report an easy and efficient ligation and restriction enzyme independent (LREI) cloning method for cloning influenza gene segments into pHW2000 vector. The method involves amplification of megaprimers followed by PCR amplification of megaprimers using a bait plasmid, DpnI digestion and transformation. RESULTS: Hard-to-clone genes: PB2 of A/chicken/Bangladesh/23527/2014 (H9N2) and PB1 of A/chicken/Bangladesh/23527/2014 (H9N2), A/chicken/Jiangxi/02.05YGYXG023-P/2015 (H5N6) and A/Chicken/Vietnam/H7F-14-BN4–315/2014 (H9N2) were cloned into pHW2000 using our LREI method and recombinant viruses were subsequently rescued. CONCLUSION: The LREI cloning procedure represents an alternative strategy for cloning influenza gene segments which have internal restriction sites for the enzymes used in reverse genetics. Further, the problem of genetic instability in bacteria can be alleviated by growing recombinant bacterial cultures at a lower temperature. This technique can be applied to clone any influenza gene segment using universal primers, which would help in rapid generation of influenza viruses and facilitate influenza research and vaccine development.


title: A Smartphone Magnetometer-Based Diagnostic Test for Automatic Contact Tracing in Infectious Disease Epidemics

text: Smartphone magnetometer readings exhibit high linear correlation when two phones coexist within a short distance. Thus, the detected coexistence can serve as a proxy for close human contact events, and one can conceive using it as a possible automatic tool to modernize the contact tracing in infectious disease epidemics. This paper investigates how good a diagnostic test it would be, by evaluating the discriminative and predictive power of the smartphone magnetometer-based contact detection in multiple measures. Based on the sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios, and diagnostic odds ratios, we find that the decision made by the smartphone magnetometer-based test can be accurate in telling contacts from no contacts. Furthermore, through the evaluation process, we determine the appropriate range of compared trace segment sizes and the correlation cutoff values that we should use in such diagnostic tests.


title: Infectious Disease Containment Based on a Wireless Sensor System

text: Infectious diseases pose a serious threat to public health due to its high infectivity and potentially high mortality. One of the most effective ways to protect people from being infected by these diseases is through vaccination. However, due to various resource constraints, vaccinating all the people in a community is not practical. Therefore, targeted vaccination, which vaccinates a small group of people, is an alternative approach to contain infectious diseases. Since many infectious diseases spread among people by droplet transmission within a certain range, we deploy a wireless sensor system in a high school to collect contacts happened within the disease transmission distance. Based on the collected traces, a graph is constructed to model the disease propagation, and a new metric (called connectivity centrality) is presented to find the important nodes in the constructed graph for disease containment. Connectivity centrality considers both a node’s local and global effect to measure its importance in disease propagation. Centrality based algorithms are presented and further enhanced by exploiting the information of the known infected nodes, which can be detected during targeted vaccination. Simulation results show that our algorithms can effectively contain infectious diseases and outperform other schemes under various conditions.


title: Contact Adaption During Epidemics: A Multilayer Network Formulation Approach

text: People change their physical contacts as a preventive response to infectious disease propagations. Yet, only a few mathematical models consider the coupled dynamics of the disease propagation and the contact adaptation process. This paper presents a model where each agent has a default contact neighborhood set, and switches to a different contact set once she becomes alert about infection among her default contacts. Since each agent can adopt either of two possible neighborhood sets, the overall contact network switches among [Formula: see text] possible configurations. Notably, a two-layer network representation can fully model the underlying adaptive, state-dependent contact network. Contact adaptation influences the size of the disease prevalence and the epidemic threshold—a characteristic measure of a contact network robustness against epidemics—in a nonlinear fashion. Particularly, the epidemic threshold for the presented adaptive contact network belongs to the solution of a nonlinear Perron-Frobenius (NPF) problem, which does not depend on the contact adaptation rate monotonically. Furthermore, the network adaptation model predicts a counter-intuitive scenario where adaptively changing contacts may adversely lead to lower network robustness against epidemic spreading if the contact adaptation is not fast enough. An original result for a class of NPF problems facilitate the analytical developments in this paper.


title: Telehealth for Family Guidance: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Parent-Focused Preference Assessment, and Activity-Based Instruction for the Support of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Their Families

text: A 5-stage protocol was used to support Board Certified Behavior Analysts providing telehealth support for children with autism spectrum disorder and their families. Stage 1 of the protocol involves 2 acceptance and commitment therapy exercises. Specifically, the Valued Living Questionnaire is used to identify a family member’s values, and the Bull’s-Eye Values Survey is employed to determine the extent to which a family member is living in accordance with stated values. Stage 2 of the protocol involves administering an adult version of the Meaningful Activity Participation Assessment to identify preferred activities of parents of a child with autism spectrum disorder. During Stage 3 of the protocol, the goals and objectives of a child with autism spectrum disorder are yoked to the preferred activities of a family member in order to promote child–parent engagement. Stage 4 of the protocol is focused on parent-implemented interventions, and Stage 5 of the protocol is designed as a primer for comprehensive support within an acceptance and commitment therapy model. The 5-stage protocol provides guidelines for Board Certified Behavior Analysts interested in structuring telehealth sessions and optimizing engagement between a family member and a child with autism spectrum disorder.


Mitteilungen der DGGG


Mitteilungen der ÖGGG


Always better together: the Canadian Journal of Public Health and the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics


European Society of Neuroradiology (ESNR)


docid: rzrfkkci

title: Monetary policy framework in India

text: In 2016, the monetary policy framework moved towards flexible inflation targeting and a six member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was constituted for setting the policy rate. With this step towards modernization of the monetary policy process, India joined the set of countries that have adopted inflation targeting as their monetary policy framework. The Consumer Price Index (CPI combined) inflation target was set by the Government of India at 4% with ± 2% tolerance band for the period from August 5, 2016 to March 31, 2021. In this backdrop, the paper reviews the evolution of monetary policy frameworks in India since the mid-1980s. It also describes the monetary policy transmission process and its limitations in terms of lags and rigidities. It highlights the importance of unconventional monetary policy measures in supplementing conventional tools especially during the easing cycle. Further, it examines the voting pattern of the MPC in India and compares this with that of various developed and emerging economies. The synchronization of cuts in the policy rate by MPCs of various countries during the global slowdown in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s is also analysed.


title: Degrees of Non-computability of Homeomorphism Types of Polish Spaces

text: There are continuum many homeomorphism types of Polish spaces. In particular, there is a Polish space which is not homeomorphic to any computably presented Polish space. We examine the details of degrees of non-computability of presenting homeomorphic copies of Polish spaces.


Two-Dimensional Codes


title: Computable Analysis and Classification Problems

text: Suppose we are given a collection of mathematical objects such as the class of connected compact Polish groups or the set of all real numbers which are normal to some base.


title: Theoretical and Implementational Aspects of the Formal Language Server (LaSer)

text: LaSer, the formal language server, allows a user to enter a question about an independent language and provides an answer either in real time or by generating a program that can be executed at the user’s site. Typical examples of independent languages are codes in the classic sense, such as prefix codes and error-detecting languages, or DNA-computing related codes. Typical questions about independent languages are the satisfaction, maximality and construction questions. We present some theoretical and implementational aspects of LaSer, as well as some ongoing progress and research plans.


title: Time-Aware Uniformization of Winning Strategies

text: Two-player win/lose games of infinite duration are involved in several disciplines including computer science and logic. If such a game has deterministic winning strategies, one may ask how simple such strategies can get. The answer may help with actual implementation, or to win despite imperfect information, or to conceal sensitive information especially if the game is repeated. Given a concurrent two-player win/lose game of infinite duration, this article considers equivalence relations over histories of played actions. A classical restriction used here is that equivalent histories have equal length, hence time awareness. A sufficient condition is given such that if a player has winning strategies, she has one that prescribes the same action at equivalent histories, hence uniformization. The proof is fairly constructive and preserves finiteness of strategy memory, and counterexamples show relative tightness of the result. Several corollaries follow for games with states and colors.


title: Parallelizations in Weihrauch Reducibility and Constructive Reverse Mathematics

text: In the framework of finite-type arithmetic, we characterize the notion that an existence statement is primitive recursive Weihrauch reducible to the parallelization of another existence statement by a standard derivability notion in constructive reverse mathematics.


title: Quantitative Coding and Complexity Theory of Compact Metric Spaces

text: Specifying a computational problem requires fixing encodings for input and output: encoding graphs as adjacency matrices, characters as integers, integers as bit strings, and vice versa. For such discrete data, the actual encoding is usually straightforward and/or complexity-theoretically inessential (up to polynomial time, say); but concerning continuous data, already real numbers naturally suggest various encodings with very different computational properties. With respect to qualitative computability, Kreitz and Weihrauch (1985) had identified admissibility as crucial property for “reasonable” encodings over the Cantor space of infinite binary sequences, so-called representations. For (precisely) these does the Kreitz-Weihrauch representation (aka Main) Theorem apply, characterizing continuity of functions in terms of continuous realizers. We similarly identify refined criteria for representations suitable for quantitative complexity investigations. Higher type complexity is captured by replacing Cantor’s as ground space with more general compact metric spaces, similar to equilogical spaces in computability.


title: Clockability for Ordinal Turing Machines

text: We study clockability for Ordinal Turing Machines (OTMs). In particular, we show that, in contrast to the situation for ITTMs, admissible ordinals can be OTM-clockable, that [Formula: see text]-admissible ordinals are never OTM-clockable and that gaps in the OTM-clockable ordinals are always started by admissible limits of admissible ordinals. This partially answers two questions in [3].


title: Liouville Numbers and the Computational Complexity of Changing Bases

text: We study the computational complexity of uniformly converting the base-a expansion of an irrational numbers to the base-b expansion. In particular, we are interested in subsets of the irrationals where such conversion can be performed with little overhead. We show that such conversion is possible, essentially with polynomial overhead, for the set of irrationals that are not Liouville numbers. Furthermore, it is known that there are irrational numbers x such that the expansion of x in one integer base is efficiently computable, but the expansion of x in certain other integer bases is not. We prove that any such number must be a Liouville number.


title: Combinatorial Properties of Degree Sequences of 3-Uniform Hypergraphs Arising from Saind Arrays

text: The characterization of k-uniform hypergraphs by their degree sequences, say k-sequences, has been a longstanding open problem for [Formula: see text]. Very recently its decision version was proved to be NP-complete in [3]. In this paper, we consider Saind arrays [Formula: see text] of length [Formula: see text], i.e. arrays [Formula: see text], and we compute the related 3-uniform hypergraphs incidence matrices [Formula: see text] as in [3], where, for any [Formula: see text], the array of column sums, [Formula: see text] turns out to be the degree sequence of the corresponding 3-uniform hypergraph. We show that, for a generic [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] share the same entries starting from an index on. Furthermore, increasing n, these common entries give rise to the integer sequence A002620 in [15]. We prove this statement introducing the notion of queue-triad of size n and pointer k. Sequence A002620 is known to enumerate several combinatorial structures, including symmetric Dyck paths with three peaks, some families of integers partitions in two parts, bracelets with beads in three colours satisfying certain constraints, and special kind of genotype frequency vectors. We define bijections between queue triads and the above mentioned combinatorial families, thus showing an innovative approach to the study of 3-hypergraphic sequences which should provide subclasses of 3-uniform hypergraphs polynomially reconstructable from their degree sequences.


title: Insertion-Deletion Systems with Substitutions I

text: With good biological motivation, we add substitutions as a further type of operations to (in particular, context-free) insertion-deletion systems. This way, we obtain new characterizations of and normal forms for context-sensitive and recursively enumerable languages.


title: Faster Online Computation of the Succinct Longest Previous Factor Array

text: We consider the problem of computing online the Longest Previous Factor array LPF[1, n] of a text T of length n. For each [Formula: see text], LPF[i] stores the length of the longest factor of T with at least two occurrences, one ending at i and the other at a previous position [Formula: see text]. We present an improvement over the previous solution by Okanohara and Sadakane (ESA 2008): our solution uses less space (compressed instead of succinct) and runs in [Formula: see text] time, thus being faster by a logarithmic factor. As a by-product, we also obtain the first online algorithm computing the Longest Common Suffix (LCS) array (that is, the LCP array of the reversed text) in [Formula: see text] time and compressed space. We also observe that the LPF array can be represented succinctly in 2n bits. Our online algorithm computes directly the succinct LPF and LCS arrays.


title: On Interpretability Between Some Weak Essentially Undecidable Theories

text: We introduce two essentially undecidable first-order theories [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. The intended model for the theories is a term model. We prove that [Formula: see text] is mutually interpretable with Robinson’s [Formula: see text]. Moreover, we prove that Robinson’s [Formula: see text] is interpretable in [Formula: see text].


title: Some Notes on Spaces of Ideals and Computable Topology

text: It was shown in [4] that the quasi-Polish spaces introduced in [2] can be equivalently characterized as spaces of ideals in the following sense.


Formal Languages in Information Extraction and Graph Databases


title: Number of Prefixes in Trace Monoids: Clique Polynomials and Dependency Graphs

text: We present some asymptotic properties on the average number of prefixes in trace languages. Such languages are characterized by an alphabet and a set of commutation rules, also called concurrent alphabet, which can be encoded by an independency graph or by its complement, called dependency graph. One key technical result, which has its own interest, concerns general properties of graphs and states that “if an undirected graph admits a transitive orientation, then the multiplicity of the root of minimum modulus of its clique polynomial is smaller or equal to the number of connected components of its complement graph”. As a consequence, under the same hypothesis of transitive orientation of the independency graph, one obtains the relation [Formula: see text], where the random variables [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] represent the number of prefixes in traces of length n under two different fundamental probabilistic models: the uniform distribution among traces of length n (for [Formula: see text]), the uniform distribution among words of length n (for [Formula: see text]). These two quantities are related to the time complexity of algorithms for solving classical membership problems on trace languages.


title: Repetitions in Toeplitz Words and the Thue Threshold

text: A (finite or infinite) word is said to be k-th power-free if it does not contain k consecutive equal blocks. A colouring of the integer lattice points in the n-dimensional Euclidean space is power-free if there exists a positive integer k such that the sequence of colours of consecutive points on any straight line is a k-th power-free word. The Thue threshold of [Formula: see text] is the least number of colours t(n) allowing a power-free colouring of the integer lattice points in the n-dimensional Euclidean space. Answering a question of Grytczuk (2008), we prove that [Formula: see text]. Moreover, we show the existence of a 2-colouring of the integer lattice points in the Euclidean plane such that the sequence of colours of consecutive points on any straight line does not contain squares of length larger than 26. In order to obtain these results, we study repetitions in Toeplitz words. We show that the Toeplitz word generated by any sequence of primitive partial words of maximal length k is k-th power-free. Moreover, adding a suitable hypothesis on the positions of the holes in the generating sequence, we obtain that also the subwords occurring in the considered Toeplitz word according to an arithmetic progression of suitable difference, are k-th power-free words.


title: Balancing Straight-Line Programs for Strings and Trees

text: The talk will explain a recent balancing result according to which a context-free grammar in Chomsky normal form of size m that produces a single string w of length n (such a grammar is also called a straight-line program) can be transformed in linear time into a context-free grammar in Chomsky normal form for w of size [Formula: see text], whose unique derivation tree has depth [Formula: see text]. This solves an open problem in the area of grammar-based compression, improves many results in this area and greatly simplifies many existing constructions. Similar balancing results can be formulated for various grammar-based tree compression formalism like top DAGs and forest straight-line programs. The talk is based on joint work with Moses Ganardi and Artur Jeż. An extended abstract appeared in [11]; a long version of the paper can be found in [12].


docid: yfmgrvyy

title: #P-completeness of Counting Update Digraphs, Cacti, and Series-Parallel Decomposition Method

text: Automata networks are a very general model of interacting entities, with applications to biological phenomena such as gene regulation. In many contexts, the order in which entities update their state is unknown, and the dynamics may be very sensitive to changes in this schedule of updates. Since the works of Aracena et al., it is known that update digraphs are pertinent objects to study non-equivalent block-sequential update schedules. We prove that counting the number of equivalence classes, that is a tight upper bound on the synchronism sensitivity of a given network, is [Formula: see text]-complete. The problem is nevertheless computable in quasi-quadratic time for oriented cacti, and for oriented series-parallel graphs thanks to a decomposition method.


title: On the Complexity of Conversion Between Classic Real Number Representations

text: It is known that while it is possible to convert between many different representations of irrational numbers (e.g., between Dedekind cuts and Cauchy sequences), it is in general not possible to do so subrecursively: conversions in general need to perform unbounded search. This raises the question of categorizing the pairs of representations between which either subrecursive conversion is possible, or is not possible. The purpose of this paper is to prove the following positive result: for a number of well-known representations (Beatty sequences, Dedekind cuts, General base expansions, Hurwitz characteristics, and Locators) conversion between the representations can be performed effectively and with good subrecursive bounds.


title: Recent Advances in Text-to-Pattern Distance Algorithms

text: Computing text-to-pattern distances is a fundamental problem in pattern matching. Given a text of length n and a pattern of length m, we are asked to output the distance between the pattern and every n-substring of the text. A basic variant of this problem is computation of Hamming distances, that is counting the number of mismatches (different characters aligned), for each alignment. Other popular variants include [Formula: see text] distance (Manhattan distance), [Formula: see text] distance (Euclidean distance) and general [Formula: see text] distance. While each of those problems trivially generalizes classical pattern-matching, the efficient algorithms for them require a broader set of tools, usually involving both algebraic and combinatorial insights. We briefly survey the history of the problems, and then focus on the progress made in the past few years in many specific settings: fine-grained complexity and lower-bounds, [Formula: see text] multiplicative approximations, k-bounded relaxations, streaming algorithms, purely combinatorial algorithms, and other recently proposed variants.


title: Non-coding Enumeration Operators

text: An enumeration operator maps each set A of natural numbers to a set [Formula: see text], in such a way that E(A) can be enumerated uniformly from every enumeration of A. The maximum possible Turing degree of E(A) is therefore the degree of the jump [Formula: see text]. It is impossible to have [Formula: see text] for all A, but possible to achieve this for all A outside a meager set of Lebesgue measure 0. We consider the properties of two specific enumeration operators: the HTP operator, mapping a set W of prime numbers to the set of polynomials realizing Hilbert’s Tenth Problem in the ring [Formula: see text]; and the root operator, mapping the atomic diagram of an algebraic field F of characteristic 0 to the set of polynomials in [Formula: see text] with roots in F. These lead to new open questions about enumeration operators in general.