title: Synthesis and physico-chemical properties of poly(N-vinyl pyrrolidone)-based hydrogels with titania nanoparticles

text: Poly(N-vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP)-based hydrogels with titania nanoparticles (TN) were synthesized by the sol–gel method for the first time and were characterized in different states (native, freeze-dried, air-dried to constant weight and ground to powder, or swollen to constant weight in H(2)O or D(2)O) by various methods such as wide-angle and small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering, neutron spin-echo (NSE) spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. The static (static polymer–polymer correlation length (mesh size), associates of cross-links and PVP microchains) and dynamic (polymer chain relaxation rate, hydrodynamic polymer–polymer correlation length) structural elements were determined. The incorporation of titania nanoparticles into PVP hydrogel slightly increases the size of structural inhomogeneities (an increase in the static and dynamic polymer–polymer correlation length, the formation of associates of cross-links and PVP chains). Titania nanoparticles have an impact on the microstructure of the composite hydrogel and form associates with sizes from 0.5 to 2 µm attached to PVP hydrogel pore walls. The PVP and TN/PVP hydrogels show a high degree of water swelling. Moreover, the presence of titania nanoparticles in TN/PVP increases the number of water adsorption cycles compared to PVP hydrogel. The high swelling degree, bacteria-resistant and antimicrobial properties against Staphylococcus aureus allow considering NT/PVP hydrogels for medical applications as wound coatings.


title: Secondary Traumatic Stress in Foster Carers: Risk Factors and Implications for Intervention

text: OBJECTIVES: Fostering, a professional or semi-professional role that is in increasing demand, involves potential exposure to material related to children’s trauma in a domestic setting. Yet, professional vulnerability to secondary traumatic stress (STS) is under-researched in foster carers, as is the suitability of associated intervention techniques. We therefore investigated incidence of STS and psychological predictors relevant to secondary and primary stress appraisal in UK foster carers. METHODS: British foster carers (n = 187; 81% female; aged 23–72 years; mean length of experience 9 years) were approached through a range of organizations managing paid foster caring in the UK for a survey study. Self-report measures were obtained on STS, burnout and compassion satisfaction from the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale, as well as on primary trauma and variables previously recommended for inclusion in training targeting secondary trauma: empathy, resilience and self-care. RESULTS: High levels of STS and burnout were found among foster carers. In multivariate model testing, STS was directly and positively predicted by burnout, compassion satisfaction and primary trauma (R(2) = 0.54, p < 0.001). Resilience, empathy and self-care did not show direct associations with STS, but self-care had a significant indirect effect on STS. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support the view that STS is a substantial risk factor in foster caring. While self-care is confirmed as a promising factor in intervention, the roles of empathy and resilience are more ambiguous.


title: Mathematical modeling of clinical engineering approach to evaluate the quality of patient care

text: At present, the patient care delivery system (PCDS) in a hospital/medical institute/clinic is absolutely medical technology-dependent and this tendency is found to increase day by day. To ensure the quality of patient care (QPC) appropriate implementation of the patient care technology management system (PCTMS) is necessary. Unfortunately, it is found to be absent in the healthcare delivery system in most of the countries in the world. The situation is very much severe, particularly, in medium- and low-income countries like Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc. The opposite scenario is found in high-income countries, specifically, in Japan where QPC has been improved significantly by adopting the clinical engineering approach (CEA) in their PCDS. Up to now, QPC is determined based on prediction as there are no mathematical ways to evaluate it properly. In this study, we for the first time, propose a mathematical model to evaluate the QPC quantitatively based on feedback control analogy taking into account of CEA in PCTMS, particularly, for clinical and surgical equipment. The model consists of three subsections: the clinical engineering department (CED), PCTMS, and health care engineering directorate (HCED). The correlation among the subsections and their performance parameters are defined and standardized. Multiple linear regression method is applied to derive the least square normal equations for each of the subsections and then the regression coefficients are solved by the standard data taken from 1000 beds hospitals of different countries. The model is applied to reveal the present status of QPC for 18 different countries including high-, middle-, and low-income countries of the world. The results obtained from the model demonstrate that the present status of QPC in Japan is 84.69% and in Pakistan, it is only 0.20%. This huge discrepancy is identified to be caused by the inclusion of CEA in PCDS of Japan. The proposed model can be applied to evaluate the QPC of a hospital/in a country and hence to take necessary steps accordingly for establishing the proposed research methodology. It is to be mentioned here that the proposed model cannot be applied to evaluate the QPC in some countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, etc. due to the unavailability of data related to the model parameters.


Axitinib/pembrolizumab: Tumour-lysis-syndrome: case report


title: Optimization of Inhibitory Peptides Targeting Phosphoprotein of Rabies Virus

text: Rabies is a serious zoonosis caused by rabies virus (RABV) of the genus Lyssavirus, and immunotherapy is now the only approved, effective method for post-exposure prophylaxis against rabies in humans, whereas an effective antiviral therapy is still unavailable if the central nervous system is invaded. Phosphoprotein (P) is known to play pivotal roles in the life cycle of RABV, and has been regarded as a prime target for inhibitors of viral replication. This study aimed to carry out intracellular administration of a kind of P-binding peptide for RABV inhibition. A group of reported P-binding peptides were focused on for activity improvement by quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) method, and then were mediated by cell penetrating peptide (CPP) for intracellular activity evaluation. The QSAR models had good performance in reliability and predictability (R(2) ≥ 0.852, Q(2) ≥ 0.601, [Formula: see text] ≥ 0.595), and the peptide screened by partial least squares (PLS) QSAR model (R(2) = 0.994, Q(2) = 0.937, [Formula: see text] = 0.981) exhibited even higher antiviral activity when it was delivered into the cells by CPP. Above all, this study provided an effective way for development of peptide drug against RABV.


title: Minimally invasive aortic valve replacement with central cannulation: A cost-benefit analysis in a developing country

text: BACKGROUND: Minimally-invasive approaches to aortic valve replacement (MIAVR) are technically and logistically demanding. However, few centers have started using these approaches with standard equipment because of the limited resources. We sought to report intra- and postoperative clinical outcomes and address health resource utilization after MIAVR. RESULTS: A total of 102 eligible patients who had aortic valve replacement were enrolled in a prospective, multicenter cohort study conducted from June 2015 to December 2017. Fifty patients underwent aortic valve surgery via upper inverted T-shaped hemi-sternotomy (MS), and 52 patients were operated using full sternotomy (FS) in two centers in a developing country. Central cannulation was performed in all cases. Major adverse cardiac events, pain, and wound complications were compared. A cost analysis was performed, and exposure and feasibility for cannulation were assessed. The mean length of MS skin incision was 5.82 ± 0.67 cm. Cumulative cross-clamp time was insignificant between both groups (91.87 ± 34.41 versus 94.91 ± 33.96 min; p = 0.66). MS exhibited shorter ventilation time (6.18 ± 1.86 versus 10.68 ± 12.78 h; p = 0.029) and intensive care stays (33.27 ± 19.75 versus 49.42 ± 47.1 h; p = 0.037). Major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) were compared, and MS group exhibited fewer transfusions (1.18 ± 0.89 versus 1.7 ± 0.97 units; p = 0.002), fewer pulmonary complications (1 (2%) versus 2 (3.8%); p < 0.001), and less sternotomy wound infection (1 (2%) versus 5 (9.6%); p = 0.048). Total operative mortality of 4.46% was recorded (n = 5). Significant cost reduction was recorded favoring MS; central cannulation saved $907.16 and carried a total cost reduction of $580 (9.3%) when compared with the FS approach (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: With a lack of logistics in developing countries, MIAVR not only has a cosmetic advantage but carries a significant reduction in blood use, respiratory complications, pain, and cost. MIAVR can be feasible, with a rapid learning curve in developing centers.


title: The Ethical Issues of Learning Analytics in Their Historical Context

text: The ethical context of Learning Analytics is framed by two related processes. Firstly, the amount of personal data available to organisations has been transformed by the computerisation and the subsequent development of the Internet. Secondly, the methods and ethical assumptions of Operations Research have been extended into new areas. Learning Analytics can be conceptualised as the extension of Operations Research methods to educational institutions, in a process facilitated by technological and social changes in the early twenty-first century. It is argued that the ethical discourse has viewed Learning Analytics as a discrete field, and focused on its internal processes, at the expense of its connections with the wider social context. As a result, contradictions arise in the practice of research ethics, and a number of urgent issues are not given due consideration. These include the partial erosion of the consensus around the Nuremberg code; the use of ethical waivers for quality improvement; the coercive extraction of data; the use of analytics as an enabling technology for management; and the educational implications of the relationship between surveillance and trust.


title: Unique Bipolar Gene Architecture in the RNA Genome of Influenza A Virus

text: The genome of influenza A virus consists of eight single-stranded negative-polarity RNA segments. The eighth segment (NS) encodes the anti-interferon protein NS1 (27 kDa) and the nuclear export protein NEP (14 kDa) via the classic negative-sense strategy. It also contains an additional positive-sense open reading frame that can be directly translated into the negative strand protein 8 (NSP8; 18–25 kDa in different strains). The existence of three or more genes of the opposite polarity in the same locus of a single-stranded RNA appears to be a unique (“economical”) type of gene architecture in living organisms. In silico analysis of genomes of human and animal influenza A viruses revealed that the NSP8 gene had emerged in the influenza A virus population about 100 years ago (“young” gene) and is highly evolutionary variable. The obtained experimental data suggest that NSP8 gene is expressed in the infected animals, which strengthens the concept of bipolar (ambisense) strategy of the influenza A virus genome. The high variability of the NSP8 protein suggests that the “young” NSP8 gene is in the process of functional optimization. Further accumulation of mutations may alter the functions of mature NSP8 protein and lead to the emergence of mature bipolar influenza A virus with unexpected properties that would be threatening for humans and animals.


Albumin human/bumetanide: Osmotic demyelination syndrome: case report


title: A tailored, electronic textile conformable suit for large-scale spatiotemporal physiological sensing in vivo

text: The rapid advancement of electronic devices and fabrication technologies has further promoted the field of wearables and smart textiles. However, most of the current efforts in textile electronics focus on a single modality and cover a small area. Here, we have developed a tailored, electronic textile conformable suit (E-TeCS) to perform large-scale, multimodal physiological (temperature, heart rate, and respiration) sensing in vivo. This platform can be customized for various forms, sizes and functions using standard, accessible and high-throughput textile manufacturing and garment patterning techniques. Similar to a compression shirt, the soft and stretchable nature of the tailored E-TeCS allows intimate contact between electronics and the skin with a pressure value of around ~25 mmHg, allowing for physical comfort and improved precision of sensor readings on skin. The E-TeCS can detect skin temperature with an accuracy of 0.1 °C and a precision of 0.01 °C, as well as heart rate and respiration with a precision of 0.0012 m/s(2) through mechano-acoustic inertial sensing. The knit textile electronics can be stretched up to 30% under 1000 cycles of stretching without significant degradation in mechanical and electrical performance. Experimental and theoretical investigations are conducted for each sensor modality along with performing the robustness of sensor-interconnects, washability, and breathability of the suit. Collective results suggest that our E-TeCS can simultaneously and wirelessly monitor 30 skin temperature nodes across the human body over an area of 1500 cm(2), during seismocardiac events and respiration, as well as physical activity through inertial dynamics.


Abstracts of the 66th Annual Conference of IACTS, February 2020


docid: mphvdmkm

title: Haloperidol/quetiapine: Paradoxical worsening of delirium resulted in hypoactive delirium and unmasking of previously undiagnosed parkinsonism: case report


title: Clinical, laboratory and radiological assessment of skeletal maturation in children and adolescents with obesity

text: BACKGROUND: Childhood obesity is related to multiple serious health problems and an enhanced risk of premature onset of diseases. The relation of skeletal maturation to obesity is undetermined. The study aims to evaluate skeletal maturation in children and adolescents with obesity, to correlate it with their anthropometric data, body fat content, BMI, fat mass and pubertal stage. RESULTS: Our study shows that obese children and adolescents have accelerated skeletal maturation compared to control normal-weight healthy subjects (mean skeletal age difference of 0.123 ± 0.67 years versus − 0.175 ± 0.32 years). Also, there were significant positive correlations between bone age and BMI (r = 0.435, P value 0.00). CONCLUSION: The mean skeletal age difference was more in the obese group as compared to the control group and suggesting accelerated skeletal development in the obese group. It is important to assess skeletal maturity in growing patients to determine the best timing for orthopedic and orthodontic treatment around the growth spurt.


Antituberculars: Paradoxical worsening of pulmonary tuberculosis: case report


Intrauterine Fetal Infections: Do-Able Approaches


title: Leishmaniasis diagnosis: an update on the use of parasitological, immunological and molecular methods

text: Diagnosis of leishmaniasis has always been a major challenge as its clinical features resemble some other commonly occurring diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid, and malaria. Reliable laboratory methods become important for differential diagnosis. Demonstration of the parasites in stained preparations of bone marrow and splenic aspirates being risky and invasive is still the gold standard for diagnosis. Serological tests utilizing rapid immunochromatographic formats or rK39 in enzyme linked immune sorbent assay, immunoblotting, direct agglutination test have complications related to high proportions of positive asymptomatic individuals and the inability to diagnose a relapse. Among the molecular techniques, polymerase chain reaction is the most commonly used technique that is successfully implied for diagnosis. This review provides updated information on the recent developments in the field of diagnosis in leishmaniasis, various methods utilized with their advantages and limitations.


title: Starting a neurosurgical service in a Southern Nigeria rural community. Prospect, challenges, and future—the Irrua experience

text: Neurosurgical services is an essential component of tertiary level of health care, this field is still evolving in Nigeria with lack of material and manpower. There is a near complete absence of neurosurgeons in the rural communities in Nigeria with over 95% resident in urban area. Starting a neurosurgical services takes a huge sacrifice from the neurosurgeon who is faced with a decision to do something in the presence of a near absence of material and manpower, and in turn circumvent processes with extra burden so as to ensure he/she provides leadership with respect to patients care and assists in the training of allied surgeons and other healthcare staffs to mitigate against morbidity and mortality. Our research is aimed to highlight the total number of patients attended to in the neurosurgical unit, challenges, prospect, and future.


title: Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management: Five Years into Implementation of the Sendai Framework

text: The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 recognizes health at the heart of disaster risk management (DRM) at the global policy level. Five years on, it has catalyzed the rapid development of the field of Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health EDRM) by providing a mandate for building partnerships as well as enhancing scientific research. Key milestones achieved include publication of the World Health Organization’s Health EDRM Framework, development of the WHO Thematic Platform for Health EDRM and the WHO Health EDRM Research Network, and further application of health information principles to DRM. Furthermore, health actors at all levels have continued to engage in the Sendai Framework processes and have had a key role in its implementation and proposed monitoring. There have been significant gains made through the partnership of health and DRM, but the relationship has not been without its challenges. Many national, regional, and global initiatives continue to operate with a lack of consistency and of linkages to respond to the Sendai Framework’s call for embedding health resilience in DRM, and conversely, embedding DRM in health resilience. Overcoming this hurdle is important, and doing so will be a key marker of success of the next 10 years of partnership under the Sendai Framework.


Ganciclovir/letermovir: Rebound Cytomegalovirus hepatitis, acquired resistance to ganciclovir and nephrotoxicity: case report


Multiple drugs: Lack of drug effect: case report


title: Evaluation of the INCREMENT-CPE, Pitt Bacteremia and qPitt Scores in Patients with Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae Infections Treated with Ceftazidime–Avibactam

text: BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive performance of the INCREMENT-CPE (ICS), Pitt bacteremia score (PBS) and qPitt for mortality among patients treated with ceftazidime–avibactam for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infections. METHODS: Retrospective, multicenter, cohort study of patients with CRE infections treated with ceftazidime–avibactam between 2015 and 2019. The primary outcome was 30-day all-cause mortality. Predictive performance was determined by assessing discrimination, calibration and precision. RESULTS: In total, 109 patients were included. Thirty-day mortality occurred in 18 (16.5%) patients. There were no significant differences in discrimination of the three scores [area under the curve (AUC) ICS 0.7039, 95% CI 0.5848–0.8230, PBS 0.6893, 95% CI 0.5709–0.8076, and qPitt 0.6847, 95% CI 0.5671–0.8023; P > 0.05 all pairwise comparisons]. All scores showed adequate calibration and precision. When dichotomized at the optimal cut-points of 11, 3, and 2 for the ICS, PBS, and qPitt, respectively, all scores had NPV > 90% at the expense of low PPV. Patients in the high-risk groups had a relative risk for mortality of 3.184 (95% CI 1.35–8.930), 3.068 (95% CI 1.094–8.606), and 2.850 (95% CI 1.016–7.994) for the dichotomized ICS, PBS, and qPitt, scores respectively. Treatment-related variables (early active antibiotic therapy, combination antibiotics and renal ceftazidime–avibactam dose adjustment) were not associated with mortality after controlling for the risk scores. CONCLUSIONS: In patients treated with ceftazidime–avibactam for CRE infections, mortality risk scores demonstrated variable performance. Modifications to scoring systems to more accurately predict outcomes in the era of novel antibiotics are warranted. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s40121-020-00288-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


title: Diagnosis and potential treatments for acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND): a review

text: Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) or formerly known as early mortality syndrome (EMS) is an emerging disease that has caused significant economic losses to the aquaculture industry. The primary causative agent of AHPND is Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a Gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium that has gained plasmids encoding the fatal binary toxins Pir A/Pir B that cause rapid death of the infected shrimp. In this review, the current research studies and information about AHPND in shrimps have been presented. Molecular diagnostic tools and potential treatments regarding AHPND were also included. This review also includes relevant findings which may serve as guidelines that can help for further investigation and studies on AHPND or other shrimp diseases.


Mycophenolate mofetil/prednisone/sirolimus: Various toxicities: case report


title: Small and Medium Enterprises and Global Risks: Evidence from Manufacturing SMEs in Turkey

text: This study investigated how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a country perceive major global risks. The aim was to explore how country attributes and circumstances affect SME assessments of the likelihood, impacts, and rankings of global risks, and to find out if SME risk assessment and rankings differ from the global rankings. Data were gathered using an online survey of manufacturing SMEs in Turkey. The results show that global economic risks and geopolitical risks are of major concern for SMEs, and environmental risks are at the bottom of their ranking. Among the economic risks, fiscal crises in key economies and high structural unemployment or underemployment were found to be the highest risks for the SMEs. Failure of regional or global governance, failure of national governance, and interstate conflict with regional consequences were found to be among the top geopolitical risks for the SMEs. The SMEs considered the risk of large-scale cyber-attacks and massive incident of data fraud/theft to be relatively higher than other global technological risks. Profound social instability and failure of urban planning were among the top societal risks for the SMEs. Although the global environmental and disaster risks were ranked lowest on the list, man-made environmental damage and disasters and major natural hazard-induced disasters were ranked the highest among this group of risks. Overall, the results show that SMEs at a country level, for example Turkey, perceive global risks differently than the major global players.


title: Quantification of Eimeria necatrix, E. acervulina and E. maxima genomes in commercial chicken farms by quantitative real time PCR

text: Advent of quantitative polymerase chain reaction and its variants have enabled identification and quantification of seven known Eimeria species of poultry in biological samples. Attempts were made in the present study to identify and quantify three important pathogenic Eimeria species responsible for intestinal coccidiosis in domestic farmed chicken, E. necatrix, E. acervulina and E. maxima in droppings collected from thirty one poultry farms of North Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The study included broiler, layer and backyard rearing units. Overall occurrence of E. necatrix, E. maxima and E. acervulina was 64.5%. E. necatrix was detected in 55% (11/20) broiler farms, 66.7% (4/6) layer farms and 100% (5/5) backyard rearing units studied. Thus, occurrence of E. necatrix was detected in 64.5% (20/31) farms studied. E. maxima and E. acervulina were detected in droppings of 65% (13/20) broiler farms, 66.7% (4/6) layer farms and 60% (3/5) back yard rearing units. Genome counts of each Eimeria species revealed maximum parasite load of E. necatrix followed by E. acervulina in broiler farms and least in layer farms. The mean parasite load (genome) copies for these parasite species were intermediate for backyard units while E. maxima had the lowest number of genome copies in droppings. Mean E. maxima counts were highest in boiler farms, while it was similar for layer and back yard units. However, statistically no significant differences were observed for parasite load existing either between the broiler, layer or back yard units or between the genome counts of E. necatrix, E. acervulina or E. maxima.


Oseltamivir/peramivir: Lack of efficacy: case report


title: Role of dexmedetomidine infusion after coronary artery bypass grafting

text: BACKGROUND: Postoperative pain has negative consequences on patients’ outcomes after cardiac surgery. Routine management with opioid and or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications has several disadvantages. Dexmedetomidine is a selective α2 agonist used for sedation and analgesia. The use of dexmedetomidine for postoperative pain management and decreasing delirium and agitation in cardiac surgery patients is a matter of debate. Our objective was to determine the role of an early administration of dexmedetomidine in decreasing opioid use post-cardiac surgery and its effects on the quality of postoperative recovery. RESULTS: Medical records of 120 patients admitted to the cardiac surgery intensive care unit (CSICU) after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in two cardiac centers between December 2015 and December 2016 were reviewed. Patients were divided into two groups. Group A included 55 patients who received dexmedetomidine in a dose of 0.2–0.4 mcg/kg/h on admission to CSICU, and group B included 65 patients who did not receive dexmedetomidine. The primary outcome was the pain score immediately after extubation, and the secondary outcomes included post-extubation sedation and pain scores for 12 h. There were significant decrease of the pain scores in dexmedetomidine group that continues through the 3rd, 6th, 8th, and 12th hour readings after surgery with mean modified Ramsay scores 0.1 ± 0.0, 0.89 ± 2.05, 0.35 ± 0.1, and 0.12 ± 1.1 respectively compared to 0.46 ± 1.15, 3.46 ± 2.93, 0.98 ± 1.90, and 0.12 ± 1.1 in group B (p < 0.001), significant decrease in cumulative morphine received (p < 0.001, OR = 909, 95% CI 0.05–0.19), favorable reduction in heart rate in dexmedetomidine group (80 ± 1.9 b/min) compared to 96 ± 8.8 b/min in the other group (p = 0.017), and smoother recovery from general anesthesia. CONCLUSION: Administration of dexmedetomidine in the early postoperative period can be safe. It may reduce the use of opioids, has sedative, analgesic, and sympatholytic effects that could play a useful role during the management of coronary artery bypass patients, and may improve postoperative recovery.


Flecainide/paracetamol interaction: Various toxicities: case report


title: One Health Aotearoa: a transdisciplinary initiative to improve human, animal and environmental health in New Zealand

text: There is increased recognition that complex health challenges at the human-animal-environmental interface require a transdisciplinary, “whole-of-society” approach. This philosophy is particularly pertinent in Aotearoa-New Zealand because of the country’s relatively isolated island ecosystem, economic reliance on agriculture and its intensification, and existing indigenous worldview that emphasises holism and interconnectivity between humans, animals and the environment. In New Zealand, the One Health Aotearoa (OHA) alliance was established in order to better connect researchers and to address a growing number of infectious diseases challenges. The emphasis of OHA is to bring together and facilitate interactions between people from diverse disciplines, link to stakeholders and communities, and engage with policy-makers, government operational agencies, and funders, thus providing a holistic and integrative systems-thinking approach to address priority questions and achieve desired outcomes in One Health. The initial focus of OHA has been on infectious diseases, but there is increasing recognition of the potential benefits of the alliance to address broader complex issues. Greater involvement and overlap of the environmental sciences, human and animal health sciences, social science, and indigenous kaupapa Māori research is particularly critical for ensuring its success within the New Zealand context. Given the economic and cultural importance of New Zealand’s “clean, green” image, a One Health approach that draws strongly on the environmental sciences makes particular sense. Furthermore, as the global environment becomes increasingly stressed by anthropogenic pressures our research may hold potential solutions for similar challenges elsewhere.


title: Quality Improvement Innovation in a Maternal and Child Health Network: Negotiating Course Corrections in Mid-Implementation

text: This article analyzes mid-implementation course corrections in a quality improvement innovation for a maternal and child health network working in a large Midwestern metropolitan area. Participating organizations received restrictive funding from this network to screen pregnant women and new mothers for depression, make appropriate referrals, and log screening and referral data into a project-wide data system over a one-year pilot program. This paper asked three research questions: (1) What problems emerged by mid-implementation of this program that required course correction? (2) How were advocacy targets developed to influence network and agency responses to these mid-course problems? (3) What specific course corrections were identified and implemented to get implementation back on track? This ethnographic case study employs qualitative methods including participant observation and interviews. Data were analyzed using the analytic method of qualitative description, in which the goal of data analysis is to summarize and report an event using the ordinary, everyday terms for that event and the unique descriptions of those present. Three key findings are noted. First, network participants quickly responded to the emerged problem of under-performing screening and referral completion statistics. Second, they shifted advocacy targets away from executive appeals and toward the line staff actually providing screening. Third, participants endorsed two specific course corrections, using “opt out, not opt in” choice architecture at intake and implementing visual incentives for workers to track progress. Opt-out choice architecture and visual incentives served as useful means of focusing organizational collaboration and correcting mid-implementation problems.


title: Applications of Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) in Food Processing and Water Treatment

text: Light-emitting diode (LED) technology is an emerging nonthermal food processing technique that utilizes light energy with wavelengths ranging from 200 to 780 nm. Inactivation of bacteria, viruses, and fungi in water by LED treatment has been studied extensively. LED technology has also shown antimicrobial efficacy in food systems. This review provides an overview of recent studies of LED decontamination of water and food. LEDs produce an antibacterial effect by photodynamic inactivation due to photosensitization of light absorbing compounds in the presence of oxygen and DNA damage; however, such inactivation is dependent on the wavelength of light energy used. Commercial applications of LED treatment include air ventilation systems in office spaces, curing, medical applications, water treatment, and algaculture. As low penetration depth and high-intensity usage can challenge optimal LED treatment, optimization studies are required to select the right light wavelength for the application and to standardize measurements of light energy dosage.


title: Controversies in Brain Death Declaration: Legal and Ethical Implications in the ICU

text: PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This article provides a brief overview of the history and complexities of brain death determination. We examine a few legal cases that highlight some of the controversies surrounding the validity of brain death tests in light of varying state laws and institutional policy, the appropriateness of making religious accommodations, the dilemma of continuing organ-sustaining support in a pregnant brain-dead patient, and the issue of whether to obtain informed consent from surrogate decision makers before proceeding to testing. RECENT FINDINGS: In response to physician concerns about navigating these complex cases, especially with laws that vary from state to state, the American Academy of Neurology has published a position statement in January of 2019 endorsing brain death as the irreversible loss of all functions of the entire brain. It provides positions on the determination of brain death as well as guidance surrounding requests for accommodation. SUMMARY: Although death by neurologic criteria has been accepted as death medically for over 40 years, legal variance exists throughout the states, especially regarding religious accommodations and in pregnancy. Questions of whether to obtain informed consent from surrogate decision makers prior to brain death testing remain, and there is no guideline regarding obtaining ancillary testing. We expect to see continued cases that cause medical, legal, and ethical controversies in our ICUs. As such, uniform training in proper methodology in performing the brain death examination and appropriate use of ancillary testing is crucial, and there is a need for legal consistency in the acceptance of the medical standard.


title: A topology-based network tree for the prediction of protein–protein binding affinity changes following mutation

text: The ability to predict protein–protein interactions is crucial to our understanding of a wide range of biological activities and functions in the human body, and for guiding drug discovery. Despite considerable efforts to develop suitable computational methods, predicting protein–protein interaction binding affinity changes following mutation (ΔΔG) remains a severe challenge. Algebraic topology, a champion in recent worldwide competitions for protein–ligand binding affinity predictions, is a promising approach to simplifying the complexity of biological structures. Here we introduce element- and site-specific persistent homology (a new branch of algebraic topology) to simplify the structural complexity of protein–protein complexes and embed crucial biological information into topological invariants. We also propose a new deep learning algorithm called NetTree to take advantage of convolutional neural networks and gradient-boosting trees. A topology-based network tree is constructed by integrating the topological representation and NetTree for predicting protein–protein interaction ΔΔG. Tests on major benchmark datasets indicate that the proposed topology-based network tree is an important improvement over the current state of the art in predicting ΔΔG.


title: Antimicrobial activity of endophytic fungi isolated from the mangrove plant Sonneratia apetala (Buch.-Ham) from the Sundarbans mangrove forest

text: Endophytic fungi reside in the intercellular space of plant nourished by the plant. In return, they provide bioactive molecules which can play critical roles on plant defense system. Fifty six endophytes were isolated from the leaves, root, bark and fruits of Sonneratia apetala, a pioneer mangrove plant in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh. A total of 56 isolates were obtained and 12 different species within 8 genera were identified using morphological and molecular characteristics. Antimicrobial activity of ethyl acetate (EtOAc) and methanolic (MeOH) extracts of these 12 different species were analyzed by resazurin assay and the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) were determined. The fungal extracts showed antimicrobial activities against more than one tested bacterium or fungus among 5 human pathogenic microbes, i.e. Escherichia coli NCTC 12241, Staphylococcus aureus NCTC 12981, Micrococcus lutus NCTC 7508, Pseudomonas aeruginosa NCTC 7508 and Candida albicans ATCC 90028. Overall, methanolic extracts showed greater activity than that of ethyl acetate extracts. Of the isolates identified, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Aspergillus niger and Fusarium equiseti were the most active isolates and showed activity against microorganisms under investigation. Methanolic extracts of C. gloeosporioides and A. niger showed the lowest MIC (0.0024 mg/mL) against P. aeruginosa. The study indicates that endophytic fungi isolated from S. apetala species possess potential antimicrobial properties, which could be further investigated.


title: Evidence-Based Resilience Intervention for Nursing Students: a Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial

text: Nursing students report chronic stress, and burnout is common. One factor related to lower burnout is resilience, though little research has studied resilience interventions in nursing students. This study had two objectives: 1) to examine the effects of a pilot resilience intervention, and 2) to investigate student attitudes about the intervention. This was a randomized controlled trial that took place from January 2017 – June 2017 at a Midwest university in the United States. First-year nursing students (N = 27) were randomly assigned to the intervention (N = 14) or control (N = 13) group. The intervention group participated in a five-week resilience intervention. Both groups completed three online surveys (before, immediately after the intervention, and three months later). Using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests to compare pre- and post-intervention scores, neither group reported significant changes in resilience or the burnout facet of cynicism. The burnout facets of exhaustion and professional efficacy significantly decreased in the intervention group, but not the control group. Participants reported satisfaction with the intervention, though most wanted more hands-on activities. This resilience intervention may be valuable for reducing burnout in nursing students, but interventions should first conduct a needs assessment.


title: A classification of structural inertia: Variations in structural response

text: Structurally inert firms suffer elevated failure risks in the face of environmental change because inertia makes it difficult to keep pace with the speed of such change. Traditionally, this ecology theory based outlook focuses on the risks of mortality, treating the make-up of an organization’s architecture as uniform and thus relatively inconsequential for understanding this hazard. Renewing recent debates on inertia and on structure, in this paper we examine the specifics of the make-up of structural inertia in the context of failure hazards—the measurable survival risks associated with failure. Developing a classification of structural inertia, we test a sample of 755 firms listed on the Taiwanese Security Exchange across 52 industries to develop a convention on organizational structure, ratifying that structural inertia differs by type in incorporating failure hazards. Findings differentiate between and elaborate the validating environmental and resource conditions for these different categories, detailing the extent to which failure hazards are related to the specifics of each type. This variation is helpful in explaining better why, despite conditions leading to failure, inert organizations continue to thrive over time. Discussing this logic addresses the narrow representation of structural inertia and limitations to its theoretical development over several decades. It also shows that traditional organizational ecology measures can be legitimately underplayed in organizations dealing with increased failure hazards in favor of the characteristics of different structural inertia types.


title: Approximate solutions for HBV infection with stability analysis using LHAM during antiviral therapy

text: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a life-threatening virus that causes very serious liver-related diseases from the family of Hepadnaviridae having very rare qualities resembling retroviruses. In this paper, we analyze the effect of antiviral therapy through mathematical modeling by using Liao’s homotopy analysis method (LHAM) that defines the connection between the target liver cells and the HBV. We also examine the basic nonlinear differential equation by LHAM to get a semi-analytical solution. This can be a very straight and direct method which provides the appropriate solution. Moreover, the local and global stability analysis of disease-free and endemic equilibrium is done using Lyapunov function. Mathematica 12 software is used to find out the solutions and graphical representations. We also discuss the numerical simulations up to sixth-order approximation and error analysis using the same software.


A multimodal approach to postoperative analgesia in ICU following major surgery


Methylprednisolone: Femoral head necrosis: 15 case reports


title: Curcumin-PVP Loaded Electrospun Membranes with Conferred Antibacterial and Antitumoral Activities

text: Electrospun membranes containing curcumin were prepared from poly(L-co-D,L-lactic) acid and polyvinylpyrrolidone. The effect of curcumin concentration on the solution viscosity and the morphology of fiber was studied. Curcumin solubility in aqueous solutions was enhanced by the formation of curcumin/polyvinylpyrrolidone water-soluble complex. Curcumin physico-chemical and therapeutic properties within the membranes were preserved upon UV-Vis light irradiation, as a part of the membranes sterilization. The biomaterials showed antibacterial activity against pathogenic microorganisms such as Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans. In-vitro experiments against HeLa and Graffi tumor cells and white blood cells (peritoneal macrophages and spleen lymphocytes) revealed potential biomedical application of the membranes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL (ESM): The online version of this article (doi: 10.1007/s12221-020-9473-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.


Strategieën voor compassievolle zorg


title: Rethinking Global Health Governance in a Changing World Order for Achieving Sustainable Development: The Role and Potential of the ‘Rising Powers’

text: The idea of this paper is inspired by the dismal experience and lessons from the initially ineffective global (WHO-led) response to the 2014–2016 West African Ebola virus epidemic. It charts the evolution of global health policy and governance in the post-World War II international order to the current post-2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals era. In order to respond adequately existing and emerging health and development challenges across developing regions, the paper argues that global health governance and related structures and institutions must adapt to changing socio-economic circumstances at all levels of decision-making. Against the background of a changing world order characterised by the decline of US-led Western international liberalism and the rise of the emerging nations in the developing world, it identifies the ‘Rising Powers’ (RPs) among the emerging economies and their soft power diplomacy and international development cooperation strategy as important tools for responding to post-2015 global health challenges. Based on analysis of illustrative examples from the ‘BRICS’, a group of large emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the paper develops suggestions and recommendations for the RPs with respect to: (1) stimulating innovation in global health governance and (2) strengthening health systems and health security at country and regional levels. Observing that current deliberations on global health focus largely, but rather narrowly, on what resource inputs are needed to achieve the SDG health targets, this paper goes further and highlights the importance of the ‘how’ in terms of a leadership and driving role for the RPs: How can the RPs champion global governance reform and innovation aimed at producing strong, resilient and equitable global systems? How can the RPs use soft power diplomacy to enhance disease surveillance and detection capacities and to promote improved regional and international coordination in response to health threats? How can they provide incentives for investment in R&D and manufacturing of medicines to tackle neglected and poverty-related diseases in developing countries?


title: Data mining and machine learning approaches for prediction modelling of schistosomiasis disease vectors: Epidemic disease prediction modelling

text: This research presents viable solutions for prediction modelling of schistosomiasis disease based on vector density. Novel training models proposed in this work aim to address various aspects of interest in the artificial intelligence applications domain. Topics discussed include data imputation, semi-supervised labelling and synthetic instance simulation when using sparse training data. Innovative semi-supervised ensemble learning paradigms are proposed focusing on labelling threshold selection and stringency of classification confidence levels. A regression-correlation combination (RCC) data imputation method is also introduced for handling of partially complete training data. Results presented in this work show data imputation precision improvement over benchmark value replacement using proposed RCC on 70% of test cases. Proposed novel incremental transductive models such as ITSVM have provided interesting findings based on threshold constraints outperforming standard SVM application on 21% of test cases and can be applied with alternative environment-based epidemic disease domains. The proposed incremental transductive ensemble approach model enables the combination of complimentary algorithms to provide labelling for unlabelled vector density instances. Liberal (LTA) and strict training approaches provided varied results with LTA outperforming Stacking ensemble on 29.1% of test cases. Proposed novel synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) equilibrium approach has yielded subtle classification performance increases which can be further interrogated to assess classification performance and efficiency relationships with synthetic instance generation.


L’élément militaire de réanimation du service de santé des armées : un hôpital militaire de campagne dédié à la réanimation


Antimicrobial Silver Touch Surfaces in an Occupational Medicine Clinic


title: Coronavirus disease 2019: Lessons, risks and challenges

text: There have been several viral pandemics that have swept the globe over the past century. The latest one is the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In this mini review, we outline the epidemiology, clinical presentation, management and prognosis of COVID-19. The pandemic is part of a rapidly changing landscape and it remains to be seen how events will unfold in South Africa, where there is a large reservoir of young people with sub-optimal lung immunity due to several causes, including HIV, post-tuberculous lung disease, smoking, biomass fuel exposure and poor socioeconomic circumstances.


See a Chance and Take it


title: Australia’s Universities

text: Australia’s public universities are robust institutions that play a crucial role in strengthening the economic and social fabric of the country. They have a Grand Bargain with the state in which they are provided with base funding to educate students to participate in the growing knowledge economy. They also have a civic role to advance knowledge and understanding and to shape the debate on crucial issues like climate change. Because these roles require more money than is provided from government sources, the universities have adopted a commercial mindset. To guide this mindset, they each produce and publish an organisation-level strategy. We argue that these strategies are incomplete and often incoherent.


title: What Are the Strategies of Australia’s Universities? Arenas, Vehicles, Differentiators, Staging and Economic Logic

text: Because Australia’s universities have multiple missions, they also have a broad scope of operations. Notwithstanding this, there are a set of institutional mechanisms that ensure a large degree of sameness across the academic footprint of the universities. They lack fundamental differentiation. Also, the cost structure of the universities requires some faculties (cash cows) to generate free cash flow to fund the research operations of other faculties. Because university research is expensive, universities are trying to convince industry to fund more of this activity. However, universities have many obstacles to overcome in this endeavour.


title: Strategic Frameworks

text: The discipline of strategy has a language and set of diagnostic frameworks. These are used to guide the development and assessment of strategy. Some of the key frameworks are presented here. Because this language is seldom used by the universities to communicate their strategies, it leaves the impression that some of the core concepts of the discipline were not used to guide the development of these strategies. This chapter also addresses the issues of the likely disruptive influence of MOOCs on university education and the role that rankings are playing in measuring performance guiding future strategy.


Versorgung von Patienten mit chronischen Schmerzen in der Pandemie


Patienten im Blick trotz Krisenmodus


Palliativmedizin in Zeiten von COVID-19


S1-Leitlinie der DGS - Palliativmedizin in der Corona-Pandemie


title: Medical Dialogue Summarization for Automated Reporting in Healthcare

text: Healthcare providers generally spend excessive time on administrative tasks at the expense of direct patient care. The emergence of new artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies gives rise to innovations that could relieve them of this burden. In this paper, we present a pipeline structure for building dialogue summarization systems. Our pipeline summarizes a consultation of a patient with a care provider and automatically generates a report compliant with medical formats. Four pipeline components are used to generate a report based on audio input. The outputs of each component are analyzed to determine the most important challenges and issues. The current proof-of-concept, which was applied to eight doctor-to-patient sessions concerning ear infection, shows that automatic dialogue summarization and reporting is achievable, but requires improvements to increase completeness.


title: An Exploratory Approach for Governance of Society for Smarter Life

text: This paper presents an exploratory approach for the governance of Society in the context of Smarter Life. By answering the challenges of the era of Digitalisation, facing profound societal changes, benefiting from multiple innovations, information systems and services play an outstanding role in improving and enhancing life of humans and contribute to the progress in Smarter Life. This exploratory approach is based on information, whilst information systems and services contribute to developing new practices, creating new situations, generating new added value. In this perspective, information and knowledge can be viewed as information common good, which is in the heart of service design. It is essential that services are designed in an exploratory way, by involving multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, even multi-national actors, whose active participation would lead to the development of new value-added services. This can be done thanks to a protected place adapted to co-construction of information services, Tiers-Lieu for Services (TLS). To assist the dynamics of the servitised Society and support its governing in a sustainable way, an institutional instrument, called people-public-private-partnerships for services (4PS), is presented.


title: EcoSoft: Proposition of an Eco-Label for Software Sustainability

text: There is an increasing interest in corporate sustainability and how companies should include it to satisfy user’s requirements concerning social, economic, and environmental impacts. Research about sustainability in computer science aims to offer methods, techniques and tools to lessen the impact of new technologies on the environment, to offer a better world, a smarter life, to the next generations. Information systems must participate in the collective effort to move towards sustainable development, and software and application companies must lead a CSR strategy to achieve this aim. Moreover, beyond an individual company approach, sustainability should be seen as an integral quality of any software (as well as safety, performance or reliability). All of this seem obvious at a time when applications and programs of all kinds are ubiquitous in everyday life. Nevertheless, the challenges of sustainable development have still not been considered in certain key sectors such as the development of information technology. A lot of ecolabels exist for a lot of different products, although not for software sustainability. We propose in this work an ecolabel for software sustainability, based on a set of relevant criteria found in different works.


title: The Machine with a Human Face: From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Sentience

text: The main challenge of technology is to facilitate the tasks and to transfer the functions that are usually performed by the humans to the non-humans. However, the pervasion of machines in everyday life requires that the non-humans are increasingly closer in their abilities to the ordinary thought, action and behaviour of the humans. This view merges the idea of the Humaniter, a longstanding myth in the history of technology: an artificial creature that thinks, acts and feels like a human to the point that one cannot make the difference between the two. In the wake of the opposition of Strong AI and Weak AI, this challenge can be expressed in terms of a shift from the performance of intelligence (reason, reasoning, cognition, judgment) to that of sentience (experience, sensation, emotion, consciousness). In other words, the challenge of technology if this possible shift is taken seriously is to move from the paradigm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to that of Artificial Sentience (AS). But for the Humaniter not to be regarded as a mere myth, any intelligent or sentient machine must pass through a Test of Humanity that refers to or that differs from the Turing Test. One can suggest several options for this kind of test and also point out some conditions and limits to the very idea of the Humaniter as an artificial human.


title: Towards Smart Manufacturing with Dynamic Dataspace Alignment

text: The technological foundation of smart manufacturing consists of cyber-physical systems and the Internet-of-Things (IoT). Despite smart manufacturing has become a key paradigm to promote the integration of manufacturing processes using digital technologies, the manufacturing processes themselves are designed by human experts in a traditional way and have limited ability to adapt their behavior to exceptional circumstances. We leverage the fact that each IoT device in a smart factory can be coupled with a digital twin – that is, a software artefact that faithfully represents the physical system using real-time sensor data – to envision a software architecture to support adaptation of the manufacturing process when divergence from reference practices occur.


title: Towards the Integration of Agricultural Data from Heterogeneous Sources: Perspectives for the French Agricultural Context Using Semantic Technologies

text: Sustainable agriculture is crucial to society since it aims at supporting the world’s current food needs without compromising future generations. Recent developments in Smart Agriculture and Internet of Things have made possible the collection of unprecedented amounts of agricultural data with the goal of making agricultural processes better and more efficient, and thus supporting sustainable agriculture. These data coming from different types of IoT devices can also be combined with relevant information published in online social networks and on the Web in the form of textual documents. Our objective is to integrate such heterogeneous data into knowledge bases that can support farmers in their activities, and to present global, real-time and comprehensive information to researchers. Semantic technologies and linked data provide a possibility for data integration and for automatic information extraction. This paper aims to give a brief review on the current semantic web technology applications for agricultural corpus, then to discuss the limits and potentials in construction and maintenance of existing ontologies in agricultural domain.


title: Machine Learning for Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics of Operational Data in Smart Manufacturing

text: Perceiving information and extracting insights from data is one of the major challenges in smart manufacturing. Real-time data analytics face several challenges in real-life scenarios, while there is a huge treasure of legacy, enterprise and operational data remaining untouched. The current paper exploits the recent advancements of (deep) machine learning for performing predictive and prescriptive analytics on the basis of enterprise and operational data aiming at supporting the operator on the shopfloor. To do this, it implements algorithms, such as Recurrent Neural Networks for predictive analytics, and Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for prescriptive analytics. The proposed approach is demonstrated in a predictive maintenance scenario in steel industry.


title: Combination of Topic Modelling and Decision Tree Classification for Tourist Destination Marketing

text: This paper applies a smart tourism approach to tourist destination marketing campaigns through the analysis of tourists’ reviews from TripAdvisor to identify significant patterns in the data. The proposed method combines topic modelling using Structured Topic Analysis with sentiment polarity, information on culture, and purchasing power of tourists for the development of a Decision Tree (DT) to predict tourists’ experience. For data collection and analysis, several custom-made python scripts were used. Data underwent integration, cleansing, incomplete data processing, and imbalance data treatments prior to being analysed. The patterns that emerged from the DT are expressed in terms of rules that highlight variable combinations leading to negative or positive sentiment. The generated predictive model can be used by destination management to tailor marketing strategy by targeting tourists who are more likely to be satisfied at the destination according to their needs.


docid: nuilerlw

title: Towards Predictive Maintenance for Flexible Manufacturing Using FIWARE

text: Industry 4.0 has shifted the manufacturing related processes from conventional processes within one organization to collaborative processes across different organizations. For example, product design processes, manufacturing processes, and maintenance processes across different factories and enterprises. This complex and competitive collaboration requires the underlying system architecture and platform to be flexible and extensible to support the demands of dynamic collaborations as well as advanced functionalities such as big data analytics. Both operation and condition of the production equipment are critical to the whole manufacturing process. Failures of any machine tools can easily have impact on the subsequent value-added processes of the collaboration. Predictive maintenance provides a detailed examination of the detection, location and diagnosis of faults in related machineries using various analyses. In this context, this paper explores how the FIWARE framework supports predictive maintenance. Specifically, it looks at applying a data driven approach to the Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM) model for machine condition and remaining useful life to support predictive maintenance using FIWARE framework in a modular fashion.


title: Integration Framework of MES Toward Data Security Interoperation

text: The core problem of the application of MES (Manufacturing Execution System) in intelligent manufacturing systems is integration, which solves the problem of the data interoperation between the distributed manufacturing systems. The previous researches on MES integration rarely considered the problem of system data security access. A three-level data security access mechanism based on the independence of the system administrators, security administrators, and security auditors is proposed which integrated into the MES integration framework to guarantee the business and engineering data security access for the related distributed clients. The principle is using the domain to make the logical isolation for different clients and data sources and applying the pre-defined data sharing rules for safe access. In the proposed MES integration framework model, the data interoperation between MES and the engineering software systems is discussed which includes ERP (Enterprise Resource Management), CAPP (Computer Aided Process Planning), DNC (Distribution Numerical Control), WMS (Warehouse Management System), and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), etc., the implementation method of personalized data display GUI is discussed as well. The study is based on the KMMES developed by Wuhan KM-Software of China, and it has been deployed in over forty companies from the sections of aerospace, automotive, shipbuilding and other industries.


title: An Architecture for Predictive Maintenance of Railway Points Based on Big Data Analytics

text: Massive amounts of data produced by railway systems are a valuable resource to enable Big Data analytics. Despite its richness, several challenges arise when dealing with the deployment of a big data architecture into a railway system. In this paper, we propose a four-layers big data architecture with the goal of establishing a data management policy to manage massive amounts of data produced by railway switch points and perform analytical tasks efficiently. An implementation of the architecture is given along with the realization of a Long Short-Term Memory prediction model for detecting failures on the Italian Railway Line of Milano - Monza - Chiasso.


title: Social Participation Network: Linking Things, Services and People to Support Participatory Processes

text: Digital technologies have impacted almost every aspect of our society, including how people participate in activities that matter to them. Indeed, digital participation allows people to be involved in different societal activities at an unprecedented scale through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Still, enabling participation at scale requires making it seamless for people to: interact with a variety of software platforms, get information from connected physical objects and software services, and communicate and collaborate with their peers. Toward this objective, this paper introduces and formalizes the concept of Social Participation Network, which captures the diverse participation relationships – between people, digital services and connected things – supporting participatory processes. The paper further presents the early design of an associated online service to support the creation and management of Social Participation Networks. The design advocates the instantiation of Social Participation Networks within distinct participation contexts—spanning, e.g., private institutions, neighbor communities, and governmental institutions—so that the participants’ information and contributions to participation remain isolated and private within the given context.


Ed's letter


Striving for leadership in an unequal world


Making the most of your dental therapist


docid: ottysdri

title: Physics unlocked

text: During the COVID-19 lockdown, the flourishing of online seminars is opening up the new frontiers of physics to an unprecedented number of scientists.


title: The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Response to the West African Ebola Outbreak 2014

text: The International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR) are the most up to date international legal rules on the control of infectious diseases and provide a unified code for infectious disease control. The IHR name the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) as one of the international organisations with whom the WHO must cooperate and co-ordinate in implementing the IHR. It was organisations like the IFRC and MSF, that worked to stop the spread of Ebola following the outbreak in 2014. The focus of this chapter is the work of the IFRC during the Ebola outbreak. The IFRC carries out relief operations to assist victims of disasters, and combines this with development work to strengthen the capacities of its member National Societies. The IFRC’s work focuses on four core areas: promoting humanitarian values, disaster response, disaster preparedness, and health and community care. Combining a study of the IFRC as an organisation with a legal mandate of its own, elucidated in the Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and the more general international legal framework, this chapter uses international law as a framework to reflect on the limits and effectiveness of legal measures in responding to Ebola. To this end, international law provides a logical and global method to respond to infectious diseases. This chapter finds that the mandate and practice of the IFRC in the response to Ebola provides material to critically analyse each of these parts in light of infectious disease proliferation in 2014–2016. Since outbreak was announced in early 2014 more than 10,000 Red Cross volunteers were trained in Ebola response. IFRC supported emergency operations in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have targeted 23 million people.


title: Restricting Access to Pathogen Samples and Epidemiological Data: A Not-So-Brief History of “Viral Sovereignty” and the Mark It Left on the World

text: In 2007 the Indonesian government claimed sovereignty over the H5N1 influenza virus samples isolated within Indonesia’s territories, refusing to share those samples with the World Health Organisation. Indonesia’s sovereignty claims conflicted with the decades-long practice of sharing influenza samples with the WHO, and was seen as an affront to scientific norms of cooperation and openness. The conflict was ostensibly resolved in 2011 with the introduction of the WHO’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework (PIP Framework), which was intended to secure access to influenza viruses from around the world and effect a fairer distribution of vaccines and other benefits associated with the use of pandemic influenza samples. The problem is, the PIP Framework did not resolve the issues created with the concept of viral sovereignty. In fact, by recognising the sovereign rights of states over this subset of pathogens, the PIP Framework legitimised viral sovereignty as a broader legal norm. Instead of resisting this concept, the WHO quietly acceded to it and reinforced a set of perverse incentives for countries to restrict access to pathogens precisely when those pathogens embody the greatest value: during a public health emergency. This chapter demonstrates that the concept of viral sovereignty did not begin with Indonesia in 2007, and more importantly, it did not end with the PIP Framework in 2011. Despite the term “viral sovereignty” fading into relative obscurity, the concept itself is now an established legal norm that could delay efforts to save lives during epidemics and pandemics.


title: The Law of Responsibility and the World Health Organisation: A Case Study on the West African Ebola Outbreak

text: The delay between the WHO being made aware of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and declaring it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) has been the subject of some considerable criticism in the literature, as well as in the Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel commissioned by the WHO, which stated that that ‘significant and unjustifiable delays occurred in the declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by WHO.’ This paper examines this late declaration of a PHEIC for Ebola through the lens of the law of responsibility, arguing that the WHO incurs responsibility for this delay. The law of responsibility is long standing in international law as the framework for providing redress for breaches of law. It gives rise to an obligation to provide redress and ensures some form of culpability for a breach of international law. In this paper we argue that the WHO does not merely have the power to declare a PHEIC via the International Health Regulations (2005), but also has a legal obligation to do so when the criteria are met. An obligation which we argue, they breached in failing to declare the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa a PHEIC in a timely manner. This breach should then engage the law of responsibility for the consequences of the delay. The paper argues, however, that there exist substantial issues with the application of the principles of responsibility to international organizations.


title: Applying Lessons from the Past in Haiti: Cholera, Scientific Knowledge, and the Longest-Standing Principle of International Health Law

text: The tragedy of the Haitian cholera epidemic—where a disease brought to the country by United Nations (UN) peacekeepers has killed at least 10,000 people and sickened over 800,000—has propelled a range of complex international law issues into the public eye. The repercussions of the ongoing debate over accountability, and the purposes and limits of UN immunity, are likely to reverberate for years to come. Despite considerable attention from the international law community, however, almost none of the resulting scholarship has focused on the international health law aspects of the case. The international spread of the vast majority of infectious diseases has been the subject matter of international law only since the 2005 revision of the International Health Regulations (IHRs). By contrast, preventing the international transmission of cholera has been the object of multilateral state negotiation for over 160 years, resulting in it becoming the sole subject matter of not merely the first, but the first three binding international health law treaties over a century ago. Since that time, cholera prevention has remained an unbroken thread woven through the history of international health law, from the initial International Sanitary Conventions, through the formation of the World Health Organisation, and into the twenty-first century. The current iteration of the IHRs are today one of the most universally accepted sources of binding international legal obligations of any kind; as the only disease that has appeared in all previous iterations over nearly 125 years, preventing the transnational spread of cholera approaches customary international law status. This chapter builds upon these themes to re-examine the conduct of the United Nations through this lens. It explores UN standards, and actual UN practice, as they relate to medical guidance to peacekeeping missions, preventative measures for peacekeepers such as vaccination and prophylaxis, and treatment of sewage and sanitation. In doing so, it offers valuable lessons from the past and the present on how international law around infectious disease might be effectively implemented, and followed, in the future.


title: Dual-Use and Infectious Disease Research

text: Despite rapid advance in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, infectious diseases remain a central challenge for global health policy. In the twenty-first century, the life sciences—including microbiology, virology, and immunology—have been marshalled as key tools in the fight against infectious disease, and the promotion of global health. Rapid advance in these fields, however, has given rise to the “dual-use dilemma,” when one and the same piece of scientific research or technology has the capacity to help or harm humanity. While not unique to fields that address infectious disease, contemporary cases of dual-use research are largely identified in the context of the life sciences. In this chapter I outline the debate about dual-use research in the life sciences, in particular the ethics of dual-use research. After a historical overview of the dual-use dilemma in the twenty-first century, I examine ethical issues in attempting to trade off the risks and benefits of dual-use research. I address how we select alternative, less risky experiments; translational issues arising for dual-use research; and political commitments to realise the benefits and mitigate the risks arising from such research. I then discuss the governance of dual-use research, before concluding with a brief discussion on priority setting in infectious disease research as a path forward for policymakers.


title: R&D for Emerging Infectious Diseases of Epidemic Potential: Sharing Risks and Benefits Through a New Coalition

text: The lack of effective vaccines for emerging infectious diseases (EID) of limited market potential, such as Chikungunya and Zika, poses a serious threat to human life and prosperity. Research and development (R&D) for new vaccines for EIDs faces two major challenges. The first is R&D preparedness: that is, to advance EID vaccine candidates to the latest R&D stage possible during non-epidemic times, on the basis of any feasible safety or efficacy data. The second is R&D response: that is, to test the clinical efficacy of vaccine candidates rapidly once an outbreak erupts. To overcome these challenges, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was established in August 2016. Here, we explore why the realisation of CEPI’s mission—preventing outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases from becoming humanitarian crises—is a global public good, and the crucial role R&D preparedness and R&D response play in providing this good. We next examine why providing this global public good requires incentivising involvement and sharing risks with the private sector. Finally, we explore the potential for CEPI to be an agent mobilising shared responsibilities, including key factors that must be addressed in order for CEPI to demonstrate to governments that collective action is the preferred strategy for preventing future epidemics and strengthening global health security.


title: Rights-Based Approaches to Preventing, Detecting, and Responding to Infectious Disease

text: Policymakers have come to look to human rights law in framing national health policy and global health governance. Human rights law offers universal frameworks to advance justice in public health, codifying international standards to frame government obligations and facilitate accountability for realising the highest attainable standard of health. Addressing threats to individual dignity as ‘rights violations’ under international law, health-related human rights have evolved dramatically to offer a normative framework for public health.


title: Cumulative Merging Percolation and the Epidemic Transition of the Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible Model in Networks

text: We consider cumulative merging percolation (CMP), a long-range percolation process describing the iterative merging of clusters in networks, depending on their mass and mutual distance. For a specific class of CMP processes, which represents a generalization of degree-ordered percolation, we derive a scaling solution on uncorrelated complex networks, unveiling the existence of diverse mechanisms leading to the formation of a percolating cluster. The scaling solution accurately reproduces universal properties of the transition. This finding is used to infer the critical properties of the susceptible-infected-susceptible model for epidemics in infinite and finite power-law distributed networks. Here, discrepancies between analytical approaches and numerical results regarding the finite-size scaling of the epidemic threshold are a crucial open issue in the literature. We find that the scaling exponent assumes a nontrivial value during a long preasymptotic regime. We calculate this value, finding good agreement with numerical evidence. We also show that the crossover to the true asymptotic regime occurs for sizes much beyond currently feasible simulations. Our findings allow us to rationalize and reconcile all previously published results (both analytical and numerical), thus ending a long-standing debate.


BISp Informationen


dvs Informationen


title: Translation: Expert Consensus on the Application of Artificial Liver Blood Purification System in the Treatment of Severe and Critical COVID-19: National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases, State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases

text: The prevention and treatment of COVID-19 nationwide has entered a tackling phase. Effective treatment of severe and critically ill patients is the key to reducing the fatality of the disease. The artificial liver blood purification system can remove inflammatory factors, alleviate the damage of the inflammatory response to the body, and has important value for the treatment of severe COVID-19. Led by Academician Lanjuan Li, based on the experience of treating patients across the country, integrating the opinions of experts from all over the country, the center summarized and formulated the consensus including the basic principles, treatment indications, relative contraindications, mode selection, monitoring indicators, and efficacy evaluation of artificial liver, which provides reference for treatment of severe COVID-19 patients.


title: Translation: Management of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Experience in Zhejiang Province, China

text: The current epidemic situation of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) still remains severe. As the National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of the Zhejiang University School of Medicine is the primary medical care center for COVID-19 in Zhejiang Province. Based on the present expert consensus carried out by the National Health Commission and National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, our team summarized and established an effective treatment strategy centered on “Four-Anti and Two-Balance” for clinical practice. The “Four-Anti and Two-Balance” strategy includes antivirus, anti-shock, anti-hypoxemia, and anti-secondary infection, and maintaining of water, electrolyte and acid/base balance and microecological balance. Simultaneously, an integrated multidisciplinary personalized treatment is recommended to improve therapeutic effects. The importance of early viral detection, dynamic monitoring of inflammatory indexes, and chest radiographs has been emphasized in clinical decision-making. Sputum was observed with the highest positive rate by RT-PCR. Viral nucleic acids could be detected in 10% of the patients’ blood samples at the acute phase and 50% of patients had positive RT-PCR results in their feces. We also isolated live viral strains from feces, indicating potential infectiousness of feces. Dynamic cytokine detection was necessary to timely identify cytokine storms and for the application of the artificial liver blood purification system. The “Four-Anti and Two-Balance” strategy effectively increased cure rates and reduced mortality. Early antiviral treatment alleviated disease severity and prevented illness progression. We found that lopinavir/ritonavir combined with abidol showed antiviral effects against COVID-19. Shock and hypoxemia were usually caused by cytokine storms. The artificial liver blood purification system was able to rapidly remove inflammatory mediators and block the cytokine storm. Moreover, it also contributed to the balance of fluids, electrolytes, and acids/bases and thus improved treatment efficacy during critical illness. For cases of severe illness, early and also short periods of moderate glucocorticoid administration was supported. Patients with an oxygenation index below 200 mm Hg were transferred to the intensive care unit. Conservative oxygen therapy was preferred and noninvasive ventilation (NIV) was not recommended. Patients with mechanical ventilation were strictly supervised with cluster ventilator-associated pneumonia prevention strategies. Antimicrobial prophylaxis was prescribed rationally and was not recommended, except for patients with a long course of disease, repeated fever, and elevated procalcitonin, similarly secondary fungal infections were of concern. Some patients with COVID-19 showed intestinal microbial dysbiosis with decreased genus such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. Nutritional and gastrointestinal function should; therefore, be assessed for all patients. Nutritional support and application of prebiotics or probiotics were suggested to regulate the balance of intestinal microbiota and reduce the risk of secondary infections due to bacterial translocation. Anxiety and fear were common in patients with COVID-19. Therefore, we established a dynamic assessment and warning for psychological crises. We also integrated Chinese medicine in the treatment to promote rehabilitation. We optimized nursing processes for severe patients to promote their rehabilitation. Since viral clearance patterns after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infections remained unclear, 2 weeks quarantine for discharged patients was required, and a regular following-up was also needed. These Zhejiang experiences and suggestions have been implemented in our center and achieved good results. However, since COVID-19 was a newly emerging disease, more work is warranted to further improve strategies of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for COVID-19.


title: Translation: Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (Trial Version 7): National Health Commission, National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine

text: The National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China has released the document: Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia to standardize the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19


title: Mexican Law of Religion at 28 Years of the Constitutional Reform on Religious Matters

text: In the framework of the centenary of the promulgation of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States (1917), the current directions of Mexican Law of Religion are addressed. The starting point is the constitutional reform of January 28, 1992, to Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130, which are the basis for the development of a Law of Religion in a positive sense. This reform contains the principles that guarantee the freedom of religion in Mexico: separation between State and churches and Laicity of State. “Mexican Law of Religion” means the totality of state legal norms that include the religious factor linked to individual, corporate, and collective religious needs and interests under the fundamental principles of religious freedom, secularism (laicity), and separation of the State and religious communities. In this sense, the holders of the religious factor are not only the individual person and the religious communities or religious associations but also the indigenous peoples. For the analysis, I will focus my remarks on some fundamental topics: the amendments to Articles 24 and 40 of the Political Constitution and the New Constitution of Mexico City; development and legal protection of the dimensions of religious freedom; management of religious diversity as public policy and recent cases, such as the Native American Church case and the Blood Transfusion case, since these illustrate the Supreme Court’s readiness to protect the right of religious freedom. One of the most difficult issues to resolve with respect to the register of religious associations has been how to define “notorio arraigo.” The Basic Law strives to protect religious freedom and to establish a society tolerant of religious difference. Furthermore, increased protection of religious minorities may signal a change in Mexican cultural perceptions of religious minorities.


A note from the Editor in Chief


Hemicorporal paresthesias in a parvovirusinfection


docid: mxdpacqo

title: Alveolar Hemorrhage

text: Diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH) is a life-threatening condition, characterized by extensive intra-alveolar hemorrhage. This condition can result from a variety of diseases such as vasculitis, primary systemic as well as secondary pulmonary hypertension, autoimmune diseases including collagen vascular diseases, Goodpasture syndrome, antiphospholipid autoantibody syndrome, infections such as tuberculosis, influenza virus, hantavirus, SARS, dengue fever, Nile virus fever, inhalation of herbicides and pesticides, drug reactions, especially cytostatics. Most cases of DAH are caused by capillaritis associated with systemic autoimmune diseases. In BAL specimen, there are red blood cells as well as hemosiderin-laden macrophages—it is essential to differentiate DAH from artificial bleeding induced by bronchoscopy or biopsy, as well as from aspiration from the upper respiratory tract. DAH may also occur as an idiopathic condition. It should be distinguished from focal pulmonary hemorrhage secondary to infections, arteriovenous malformation or pulmonary embolism. Early bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage is usually the first approach to exclude infections. Biopsy can help to identify the cause to direct the therapy.


title: Ressourcen in Krisenzeiten: Selbst- und Sozialkompetenzen bei berufsbegleitend Studierenden

text: The promotion of personal and social competencies among students, especially part-time students, seems more important these days. Actually a strong sense of coherence and social support may be important resources to manage current demands. This article shows what can be done by university lecturers to support students in this critical situation and what can be done by the students themselves in the sense of self-care.


Pflege Kolleg 9 — Update Corona


panorama


Die zentrale Rolle wird deutlich bewusst: Gesundheits- und Krankenpflege im COVID-19-Einsatz


docid: yudgrshh

title: Gelassener, aber bereit: Schwedens eigener Weg in der Corona-Krise


Nähe vermitteln in Zeiten der Distanz: Digitale Angebote für Trauerfeiern und Bestattungen unter COVID-19-Bedingungen


Zweifel & Angst


Symbiosis volumes one (1985) to 39 (2005) now available on-line


DGP: Wann und wie beatmen bei COVID-19-Pneumonie?


docid: itrdhcjp

title: Expertentipps zur Beratung von Patienten mit Atemwegserkrankungen


Das könnten die Anzeichen für einen schweren COVID-19-Verlauf sein


So sollten Kinder während der Coronavirus-Pandemie behandelt werden


COVID-19-Patienten mit Lungenversagen profitieren von Beatmung in Bauchlage


Chance für niedergelassene Gynäkologen?


Das sind die Abrechnungsregeln im Überblick!


Anwendung von Antikörper-Schnelltests


Sie sind Schlüsselpersonen im Umgang mit Gewaltbetroffenen


Ärztinnen im Kreißsaal sind wichtiger denn je


Table of contents-4C


title: UK post-Brexit financial regulation: the status quo on equivalence

text: Given the extraordinary circumstances the world currently faces due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the energy and focus of the UK and the EU have shifted to dealing with the global pandemic and progress in reaching an arrangement on equivalence post-Brexit appear to have stalled. The purpose of this article is to summarise the status quo on this topic before the interruption began.


Buffering reproductive science in the era of COVID-19


title: Entrepreneurial homeworkers

text: Nearly 40% of British self-employees are homeworkers. Using a large representative sample of the UK longitudinal survey data, we explore the determinants of self-employed homeworking, distinguishing between genders. We reject the notion that homeworking is a transitional entrepreneurial state that the self-employed “grow out of”, while establishing that both employer status and business structure play an important role in predicting which self-employed become homeworkers. Our findings also shed light on two outstanding puzzles in entrepreneurship scholarship: why so few of the self-employed create jobs for others, and why on average the self-employed suffer an earnings penalty compared with employees.


title: Zur aktuellen Relevanz der Fürsorge für Menschen mit komplexen Behinderungen

text: Die Geschichte der Fürsorge hat aufgezeigt, dass Fürsorgesysteme mit dem jeweiligen soziokulturellen Kontext nicht nur verwoben sind, sondern aus diesem heraus entstehen. Dementsprechend spiegeln sie Aspekte der jeweiligen Gesellschaft wider bzw. treten durch sie spezifische Menschen- und Gesellschaftsbilder, ethische und moralische Vorstellungen sowie damit verbundene Ziele, Werte und Normen in Erscheinung. Diese Erkenntnis führt zu der Annahme, dass sich die aktuelle Relevanz (oder Nicht-Relevanz) der Fürsorge für Menschen mit komplexen Behinderungen durch eine Analyse des gegenwärtigen Sozialsystems zeigen müsste.


docid: lpjtqcql

title: International Society of Pharmacovigilance: COVID-19 role


docid: xpjyojqy

title: Risk of Covid-19 with renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system medications


docid: yofeivqo

title: MHRA COVID-19 website for reporting ADRs and incidents


docid: tvifpvgf

title: Editors’ Introduction


title: Reaching out

text: In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, science is crucial to inform public policy. At the same time, mistrust of scientists and misinformation about scientific facts are rampant. Six scientists, actively involved in outreach, reflect on how to build a better understanding and trust of science.


In upcoming issues...


About clarity in diagrams: again!


Anthropocene in an age of pandemics


docid: vddwzeew

title: The Developing Role of Evidence-Based Environmental Health: Perceptions, Experiences, and Understandings From the Front Line

text: There has been renewed recognition that proactive strategies and interventions can address the social determinants of health, and the environmental health profession is well placed to effect positive change in many of these determinants. This qualitative research has revealed differences in the perceptions, experiences, and understandings of evidence-based practice among public health professionals from different backgrounds across different services in health care and local government in England. The absence of a strong tradition of evidence-based practice in environmental health appears to be a disadvantage in securing funding and playing a full role, as it has become the expectation in the new public health system. This has, at times, resulted in tensions between professionals with different backgrounds and frustration on the part of environmental health practitioners, who have a tradition of responding quickly to new challenges and “getting on with the job.” There is generally a willingness to develop evidence-based practice in environmental health; however, this will take time and investment.


Transitioning to a New Normal after COVID-19: Preparing to Get Back on Track for Cancer Imaging


Longitudinal CT Findings in COVID-19 Pneumonia: Case Presenting Organizing Pneumonia Pattern


Spectrum of Chest CT Findings in a Familial Cluster of COVID-19 Infection


docid: qpsncmme

title: The Impact of a Pandemic on Professional Meetings


title: Management of Lung Nodules and Lung Cancer Screening During the COVID-19 Pandemic: CHEST Expert Panel Report

text: This article is being simultaneously published by CHEST, Radiology: Imaging Cancer, and the Journal of the American College of Radiology. © 2020 The American College of Chest Physicians, published by Elsevier Inc; RSNA; and The American College of Radiology, published by Elsevier Inc. BACKGROUND: The risks from potential exposure to COVID-19, and resource reallocation that has occurred to combat the pandemic, have altered the balance of benefits and harms that informed current (pre-COVID-19) guideline recommendations for lung cancer screening and lung nodule evaluation. We developed consensus statements to guide clinicians managing lung cancer screening programs and patients with lung nodules during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: An expert panel of 24 members, including pulmonologists (17), thoracic radiologists (5), and thoracic surgeons (2) was formed. The panel was provided with an overview of current evidence, summarized by recent guidelines related to lung cancer screening and lung nodule evaluation. The panel was convened by video teleconference to discuss then vote on statements related to 12 common clinical scenarios. A pre-defined threshold of 70% of panel members voting agree or strongly agree was used to determine if there was a consensus for each statement. Items that may influence decisions were listed as notes to be considered for each scenario. RESULTS: Twelve statements related to baseline and annual lung cancer screening (2), surveillance of a previously detected lung nodule (5), evaluation of intermediate and high risk lung nodules (4), and management of clinical stage I non-small cell lung cancer (1) were developed and modified. All 12 statements were confirmed as consensus statements by voting results. The consensus statements provide guidance about situations where it was felt to be appropriate to delay screening, defer surveillance imaging of lung nodules, and minimize non-urgent interventions during the evaluation of lung nodules and stage I non-small cell lung cancer. CONCLUSIONS: There was consensus that during the COVID-19 pandemic it is appropriate to defer enrollment in lung cancer screening and modify the evaluation of lung nodules due to the added risks from potential exposure and the need for resource reallocation. There are multiple local, regional, and patient related factors that should be considered when applying these statements to individual patient care.


title: Chest Imaging Appearance of COVID-19 Infection

text: COVID-19 (previously known as novel coronavirus [2019-nCoV]), first reported in China, has now been declared a global health emergency by World Health Organization. As confirmed cases are being reported in several countries from all over the world, it becomes important for all radiologists to be aware of the imaging spectrum of the disease and contribute to effective surveillance and response measures.


Severe COVID-19 Pneumonia: Assessing Inflammation Burden with Volume-rendered Chest CT


COVID-19 Complicated by Acute Pulmonary Embolism


Longitudinal Assessment of COVID-19 Using a Deep Learning–based Quantitative CT Pipeline: Illustration of Two Cases


title: Extension of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on Chest CT and Implications for Chest Radiograph Interpretation

text: PURPOSE: To study the extent of pulmonary involvement in COVID-19 with quantitative CT (QCT) and to assess the impact of disease burden on opacity visibility on chest radiographs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective study included 20 pairs of CT scans and same-day chest radiographs from 17 patients with COVID-19, along with 20 chest radiographs of controls. All pulmonary opacities were semi-automatically segmented on CT images, producing an anteroposterior projection image to match the corresponding frontal chest radiograph. The lung opacification mass (QCTmass) was defined as [(opacity attenuation value+1000 HU)/1000]*1.065(g/mL) * combined volume (cm(3)) of the individual opacities. Eight thoracic radiologists reviewed the 40 radiographs, and a receiver operating characteristics curve analysis was performed for the detection of lung opacities. Logistic regression analysis was done to identify factors affecting opacity visibility on chest radiographs. RESULTS: The mean QCTmass per patient was 72.4±120.8 g (range, 0.7-420.7), and opacities occupied 3.2±5.8% (range, 0.1-19.8) and 13.9±18.0% (range, 0.5-57.8) of the lung area on the CT images and projected images, respectively. The radiographs had a median sensitivity of 25% and specificity of 90% among radiologists. Nineteen of 186 opacities were visible on chest radiographs, and a median area of 55.8% of the projected images was identifiable on radiographs. Logistic regression analysis showed that QCTmass (p<0.001) and combined opacity volume (p<0.001) significantly affected opacity visibility on radiographs. CONCLUSION: QCTmass varied among COVID-19 patients. Chest radiographs had high specificity for detecting lung opacities in COVID-19, but a low sensitivity. QCTmass and combined opacity volume were significant determinants of opacity visibility on radiographs. An earlier incorrect version appeared online. This article was corrected on April 6, 2020.