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Life Sciences Jun 2024SARS-CoV-2 is a highly contagious pathogen that predominantly caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The persistent effects of COVID-19 are defined as an inflammatory or host... (Review)
Review
SARS-CoV-2 is a highly contagious pathogen that predominantly caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The persistent effects of COVID-19 are defined as an inflammatory or host response to the virus that begins four weeks after initial infection and persists for an undetermined length of time. Chronic effects are more harmful than acute ones thus, this review explored the long-term effects of the virus on various human organs, including the pulmonary, cardiovascular, and neurological, reproductive, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, endocrine, and lymphoid systems and found that SARS-CoV-2 adversely affects these organs of older adults. Regarding diagnosis, the RT-PCR is a gold standard method of diagnosing COVID-19; however, it requires specialized equipment and personnel for performing assays and a long time for results production. Therefore, to overcome these limitations, artificial intelligence employed in imaging and microfluidics technologies is the most promising in diagnosing COVID-19. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological strategies are the most effective treatment for reducing the persistent impacts of COVID-19 by providing immunity to post-COVID-19 patients by reducing cytokine release syndrome, improving the T cell response, and increasing the circulation of activated natural killer and CD8 T cells in blood and tissues, which ultimately reduces fever, nausea, fatigue, and muscle weakness and pain. Vaccines such as inactivated viral, live attenuated viral, protein subunit, viral vectored, mRNA, DNA, or nanoparticle vaccines significantly reduce the adverse long-term virus effects in post-COVID-19 patients; however, no vaccine was reported to provide lifetime protection against COVID-19; consequently, protective measures such as physical separation, mask use, and hand cleansing are promising strategies. This review provides a comprehensive knowledge of the persistent effects of COVID-19 on people of varying ages, as well as diagnosis, treatment, vaccination, and future preventative measures against the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
PubMed: 38925222
DOI: 10.1016/j.lfs.2024.122861 -
Journal of Hazardous Materials Jun 2024Synthetic fibrous textiles are ubiquitous plastic commodities in everyday existence. Nevertheless, there exists a dearth of understanding regarding their environmental...
Synthetic fibrous textiles are ubiquitous plastic commodities in everyday existence. Nevertheless, there exists a dearth of understanding regarding their environmental occurrence and the releasing capacities of associated additives. In this study, ten additives were determined in twenty-eight kinds of daily used plastic products including face masks, synthetic clothing, and food containers. Our results revealed that a typical kind of fibrous plastic, face masks, contained a greater variety of additives with UV stabilizers in particular, when compared to other plastic commodities. The above phenomena triggered our field investigation for the occurrence and release potentials of face mask fibers and the co-existing UV stabilizers into the environment. We further collected 114 disposed masks from coastal areas and analyzed their UV stabilizer concentrations. Results showed that the abundance of littered face masks ranged from 40-1846 items/km along the Yangtze Estuary, China; and UV stabilizers were of 0.3 ± 0.7 ng/g and 0.7 ± 1.7 ng/g in main bodies and ear ropes, respectively. The UV stabilizer concentrations in the field collected masks were only ∼7 % of their new counterparts, implying their potential leaching after disposal. By simulating the weathering scenario, we predict that a substantial amount of microplastics, with 1.1 × 10 polypropylene fibers and 3.7 × 10 polyester fibers, are probably be released daily into the coastal environment after face masks disposal; whereas the accompanied leaching amount of UV stabilizers was relatively modest under the current scenario.
PubMed: 38925055
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.134999 -
Journal of Veterinary Emergency and... 2024After the 2012 Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation (RECOVER) CPR Guidelines, this is an update of evidence-based consensus guidelines for Basic Life...
OBJECTIVE
After the 2012 Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation (RECOVER) CPR Guidelines, this is an update of evidence-based consensus guidelines for Basic Life Support (BLS), advanced life support (ALS), and periarrest monitoring.
DESIGN
These RECOVER CPR Guidelines were generated using a modified version of the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system for evidence evaluation and translation of this evidence into clear and actionable clinical instructions. Prioritized clinical questions in the Population, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome (PICO) format were used as the basis to conduct systematic literature searches by information specialists, to extract information from relevant publications, to assess this evidence for quality, and finally to translate the findings into treatment recommendations. These recommendations were reviewed by the RECOVER writing group and opened for comment by veterinary professionals for 4 weeks.
SETTING
Transdisciplinary, international collaboration in university, specialty, and emergency practice.
RESULTS
A total of 40 worksheets were prepared to evaluate questions across the 3 domains of BLS, ALS and Monitoring, resulting in 90 individual treatment recommendations. High-dose epinephrine is no longer recommended, and atropine, if used, is only administered once. Bag-mask ventilation is prioritized over mouth-to-nose ventilation in nonintubated animals. In addition, an algorithm for initial assessment, an updated CPR algorithm, a rhythm diagnosis tool, and an updated drug dosing table are provided.
CONCLUSIONS
While the majority of the BLS and ALS recommendations remain unchanged, some noteworthy changes were made due to new evidence that emerged over the past 10 years. Indirectness of evidence remains the largest impediment to the certainty of guidelines formulation and underscores an urgent need for more studies in the target species of dogs and cats.
Topics: Dogs; Animals; Cats; Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation; Cat Diseases; Dog Diseases; Heart Arrest
PubMed: 38924627
DOI: 10.1111/vec.13391 -
Journal of Veterinary Emergency and... 2024To systematically review evidence and devise treatment recommendations for basic life support (BLS) in dogs and cats and to identify critical knowledge gaps.
OBJECTIVE
To systematically review evidence and devise treatment recommendations for basic life support (BLS) in dogs and cats and to identify critical knowledge gaps.
DESIGN
Standardized, systematic evaluation of literature pertinent to BLS following Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology. Prioritized questions were each reviewed by 2 Evidence Evaluators, and findings were reconciled by BLS Domain Chairs and Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation (RECOVER) Co-Chairs to arrive at treatment recommendations commensurate to quality of evidence, risk to benefit relationship, and clinical feasibility. This process was implemented using an Evidence Profile Worksheet for each question that included an introduction, consensus on science, treatment recommendations, justification for these recommendations, and important knowledge gaps. A draft of these worksheets was distributed to veterinary professionals for comment for 4 weeks prior to finalization.
SETTING
Transdisciplinary, international collaboration in university, specialty, and emergency practice.
RESULTS
Twenty questions regarding animal position, chest compression point and technique, ventilation strategies, as well as the duration of CPR cycles and chest compression pauses were examined, and 32 treatment recommendations were formulated. Out of these, 25 addressed chest compressions and 7 informed ventilation during CPR. The recommendations were founded predominantly on very low quality of evidence and expert opinion. These new treatment recommendations continue to emphasize the critical importance of high-quality, uninterrupted chest compressions, with a modification suggested for the chest compression technique in wide-chested dogs. When intubation is not possible, bag-mask ventilation using a tight-fitting facemask with oxygen supplementation is recommended rather than mouth-to-nose ventilation.
CONCLUSIONS
These updated RECOVER BLS treatment recommendations emphasize continuous chest compressions, conformation-specific chest compression techniques, and ventilation for all animals. Very low quality of evidence due to absence of clinical data in dogs and cats consistently compromised the certainty of recommendations, emphasizing the need for more veterinary research in this area.
Topics: Animals; Dogs; Cats; Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation; Veterinary Medicine; Cat Diseases; Heart Arrest; Evidence-Based Medicine; Dog Diseases
PubMed: 38924625
DOI: 10.1111/vec.13387 -
Angewandte Chemie (International Ed. in... Jun 2024Polysulfides are significant compounds in life science, pharmaceutical science, and material science. Therefore, polysulfide construction is in great demand. The...
Polysulfides are significant compounds in life science, pharmaceutical science, and material science. Therefore, polysulfide construction is in great demand. The controllable sequential installation on both ends of S-S motif faces an enormous challenge, due to the reversible covalent S-S bond. A library was established with two divergent mask groups for bilateral unsymmetrical disulfurating reagents (R1O-SS-SO2R2). Sequential coupling was successfully achieved with preferential activation of S-SO2 bond (37.6 kcal/mol) and controllable activation of S-O bond (54.8 kcal/mol) superior to S-S bond (62.0 kcal/mol), enabled untrammeled installation on the bilateral sides of S-S motif to afford unsymmetrical disulfides and trisulfides, even for natural products, pharmaceuticals, peptides, and protein (bovine serum albumin) cross-linkage successively.
PubMed: 38923731
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202408158 -
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis... Jun 2024Recent advances in the understanding of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have led to remarkable progress in visual editing and synthesis tasks, capitalizing on the...
Recent advances in the understanding of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have led to remarkable progress in visual editing and synthesis tasks, capitalizing on the rich semantics that are embedded in the latent spaces of pre-trained GANs. However, existing methods are often tailored to specific GAN architectures and are limited to either discovering global semantic directions that do not facilitate localized control, or require some form of supervision through manually provided regions or segmentation masks. In this light, we present an architecture-agnostic approach that jointly discovers factors representing spatial parts and their appearances in an entirely unsupervised fashion. These factors are obtained by applying a semi-nonnegative tensor factorization on the feature maps, which in turn enables context-aware local image editing with pixel-level control. In addition, we show that the discovered appearance factors correspond to saliency maps that localize concepts of interest, without using any labels. Experiments on a wide range of GAN architectures and datasets show that, in comparison to the state of the art, our method is far more efficient in terms of training time and, most importantly, provides much more accurate localized control.
PubMed: 38923485
DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2024.3415506 -
Angewandte Chemie (International Ed. in... Jun 2024Hydrogel actuators with complex 3D initial shapes show numerous important applications, but it remains challenging to fabricate such actuators. This article describes a...
Hydrogel actuators with complex 3D initial shapes show numerous important applications, but it remains challenging to fabricate such actuators. This article describes a polyelectrolyte-based strategy for modulating small-scale internal stresses within hydrogels to construct complex actuators with tailored 3D initial shapes. Introducing polyelectrolytes into precursor solutions significantly enhances the volume shrinkage of hydrogel networks during polymerization, allowing us to modulate internal stresses. Photopolymerization of these polyelectrolyte-containing solutions through a mask produces mechanically strong hydrogel sheets with large patterned internal stresses. Consequently, these hydrogel sheets attain complex 3D initial shapes at equilibrium, in contrast to the planar initial configuration of 2D actuators. We demonstrate that these 3D actuators can reversibly transform into other 3D shapes (i.e., 3D-to-3D shape transformations) in response to external stimuli. Additionally, we develop a predictive model based on the Flory-Rehner theory to analyze the polyelectrolyte-mediated shrinking behaviors of hydrogel networks during polymerization, allowing precise modulation of shrinkage and internal stress. This polyelectrolyte-boosted shrinking mechanism paves a route to the fabrication of high-performance 3D hydrogel actuators.
PubMed: 38922734
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202410383 -
Minerva Anestesiologica Jun 2024Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often require multiple interventions receiving general anesthesia during their lifetimes. However, a single negative...
Behavioral training and mirroring techniques to prepare for elective anesthesia in children with autism spectrum disorder: a prospective evaluation of implemented program.
BACKGROUND
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often require multiple interventions receiving general anesthesia during their lifetimes. However, a single negative experience may trigger and/or aggravate anxiety and subsequent development of unwanted behavior. This monocentric study assessed the compliance with mask induction of children with ASD who followed a preoperative preparation using behavioral training with positive reinforcement technique and use of mirroring technique.
METHODS
Prospective observational study including all children with ASD scheduled for day case treatment receiving general anesthesia, from November 2019 to August 2022. The primary outcome was Induction Compliance Checklist (ICC) score. The secondary outcomes were child's anxiety in the operating room assessed by the modified Yale Anxiety Scale (mYPAS), the comportment of the child in the recovery room, parental satisfaction about perioperative management (0 to 10 numerical scale) and the satisfaction of the caregivers about anesthetic management (0 to 10 numerical scale). Behavioral changes were assessed one month after the procedure when possible.
RESULTS
In total, 43 children from 1 to 17 years old were included. Median ICC score was 3 [1-6]. Induction Compliance was considered as excellent in 18.6% of patients, good in 39.5%, fair in 14.0% and poor in 27.9%. Seven patients (16.3%) needed restraint during induction.
CONCLUSIONS
The use of behavioral and mirroring techniques implemented as a preparation program for children with ASD could facilitate mask induction of anesthesia. Such a preparation achieves good to excellent compliance in almost 60% of patients.
PubMed: 38922283
DOI: 10.23736/S0375-9393.24.18021-2 -
Toxics Jun 2024Since the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been debates regarding the transmission modes of contagious viruses, including the influenza virus and severe...
Since the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been debates regarding the transmission modes of contagious viruses, including the influenza virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), along with its variants [...].
PubMed: 38922123
DOI: 10.3390/toxics12060443 -
Journal of Imaging Jun 2024The preservation of historical monuments presents a formidable challenge, particularly in monitoring the deterioration of building materials over time. Chateau de...
The preservation of historical monuments presents a formidable challenge, particularly in monitoring the deterioration of building materials over time. Chateau de Chambord's facade suffers from common issues such as flaking and spalling, which require meticulous stone and joint mapping from experts manually for restoration efforts. Advancements in computer vision have allowed machine-learning models to help in the automatic segmentation process. In this research, a custom architecture defined as SAM-SVM is proposed, to perform stone segmentation, based on the Segment Anything Model (SAM) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). By exploiting the zero-shot learning capabilities of SAM and its customizable input parameters, we obtain segmentation mask for stones and joints, which are then classified using SVM. Two more SAMs (three in total) are used, depending on how many stones are left to segment. Through extensive experimentation and evaluation, supported by computer vision methods, the proposed architecture achieves a Dice coefficient of 85%. Our results highlight the potential of SAM in cultural heritage conservation, providing a scalable and efficient solution for stone segmentation in historic monuments. This research contributes valuable insights and methodologies to the ongoing conservation efforts of Château de Chambord and could be extrapolated to other monuments.
PubMed: 38921625
DOI: 10.3390/jimaging10060148