The detrimental effects of delayed intravitreal anti-VEGF therapy for treating retinal pathology: lessons from a forced test-case

Determine the anatomical consequences of delaying intravitreal injection (IVI) therapy with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) in patients using treat-and-extend (T&E) protocol. Retrospective medical record review of consecutive patients receiving intravitreal anti-VEGF therapy using T&E protocol prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included 923...

Incidence, prevalence, and outcome of moderate to severe neurotrophic keratopathy in a German tertiary referral center from 2013 to 2017

Neurotrophic keratopathy (NK) is an orphan disease, with an estimated prevalence of 1–5/10,000. No data regarding the incidence exists. The primary aim was to evaluate incidence and prevalence of NK at a tertiary referral center in Germany, and the secondary aim was to analyze demographic parameters, etiology, and clinical features and therapeutic outcomes. All patients treated...

Assessment of Erosive Activity By Modeling Approach in Northern Algeria

The erosive activity in the Cheliff watershed (Algeria) draws its magnitude from the climatic, geological and geomorphometric conditions that characterize this region. Indeed, the high spatio-temporal variability of precipitation caracterising the semi-arid climate, coupled at a very pronounced relief with vulnerable lithologic composition amplified the phenemon. The extended no...

Effects of delay in anti-vascular endothelial growth factor intravitreal injections for neovascular age-related macular degeneration

To assess the impact of COVID-19-related delay in intravitreal injection timing on macular structure and visual acuity (VA) among patients treated for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nvAMD). We reviewed demographic and clinical data and macular ocular computerized tomographic images of 34 patients (48 eyes, group A) who did not follow their injection schedule during...

Railway ground vibration and mitigation measures: benchmarking of best practices

Vibration and noise aspects play a relevant role in the lifetime and comfort of urban areas and their residents. Among the different sources, the one coming from the rail transit system will play a central concern in the following years due to its sustainability. Ground-borne vibration and noise assessment as well as techniques to mitigate them become key elements of the...

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave on the care and treatment situation of intravitreal injections in a German metropolitan region

This study aims to evaluate the impact of the first coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) wave in 2020 on patients scheduled for intravitreal injections (IVI) in a German metropolitan region. We performed a multicentre prospective survey and retrospective analysis of the records of patients treated with intravitreal injections during the 20-week period from March to July 2020 in all four...

Three-year follow-up of high-risk keratoplasty following fine-needle diathermy of corneal neovascularization combined with bevacizumab

Problems, assumptions and solutions in locomotive design, traction and operational studies

Locomotive design is a highly complex task that requires the use of systems engineering that depends upon knowledge from a range of disciplines and is strongly oriented on how to design and manage complex systems that operate under a wide range of different train operational conditions on various types of tracks. Considering that field investigation programs for locomotive...

Rethinking the Methodological Foundation of Historical Political Science

The basis of a methodology determines whether a research method can fit the core characteristics of a particular academic tradition, and thus, it is crucial to explore this foundation. Keeping in mind the controversy and progress of the philosophy of social sciences, this paper aims to elaborate on four aspects including the cognitive model, the view of causality, research...

The Patterns of Democracy in Context of Historical Political Science

The patterns of democracy are related to the success or failure of national governance; hence, they are a key topic in the theoretical research of political science. It is difficult to comprehend the worldwide political conflicts caused by the promotion of liberal democracy in the study of democratic models that have liberal democracy as their core. The emphasis of historical...

Sharika D. Crawford. The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 216 páginas.

ReseñasSharika D. Crawford. The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 216 páginas.CLAUDIA LEAL*  http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4554-1671*Universidad de los Andes, Colombia [email protected] gran mayoría de los colombianos vive entre paisajes andinos y pisando siempre tierra firme. Los intelectuales de "la" costa (as...

Lucía Duque Muñoz. De la geografía a la geopolítica: discurso geográfico y cartografía a mediados del siglo XIX en Colombia. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia / Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2020. 310 páginas.

ReseñasLucía Duque Muñoz. De la geografía a la geopolítica: discurso geográfico y cartografía a mediados del siglo XIX en Colombia. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia / Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2020. 310 páginas.ANDRÉS GUHL CORPAS*  http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2719-4098*Profesor asociado Departamento de Historia y Geografía Universidad de los Andes, Colombia aguhl...

Sustaining urbanization while undermining sustainability: the socio-environmental characterization of coastal sand mining in Lagos Nigeria

Sand mining is a global activity that has attracted wide attention due partly to its invaluable positive contributions to development and partly to its negative socio-environmental impacts. While sand mining supports urbanization by providing essential aggregate materials for urban real estate and construction sectors, it however undermines environmental sustainability especially...

The choice of anesthesia for acute abdomen surgery patients and its influence on gastrointestinal function recovery.

Objective: To study the clinical anesthesia options for patients undergoing acute abdomen surgery and its effect on the recovery of patients’ gastrointestinal function. Methods: 120 patients who underwent abdomen surgery in our hospital from January ...

Establishment and evaluation of a nomogram prediction model for recurrence risk of atrial fibrillation patients after radiofrequency ablation.

Objective: To explore the risk factors for recurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients after radiofrequency ablation and construction of a targeted nomogram prediction model. Methods: A prospective cohort study design was used to select 312 patients ...

Analysis on application effects of RAID quality improvement model in closed-loop management of central retinal artery occlusion nursing.

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the clinical value of applying RAID quality improvement model in closed-loop management of central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO) nursing. Methods: Twelve ophthalmic nurses were trained. Soon afterwards, their related ...

Ensuring Rights while Protecting Health: The Importance of Using a Human Rights Approach in Implementing Public Health Responses to COVID-19

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world have implemented public health policies that limit individual freedoms in order to control disease transmission. While such limitations on liberties are sometimes necessary for pandemic control, many of these policies have been overly broad or have neglected to consider the costs for populations already...

The correlation between high-risk HPV infection and precancerous lesions and cervical cancer.

Objective: To analyze the correlation between high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and precancerous lesions and cervical cancer. Methods: Patients with cervicitis (N=100), cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade I (CIN I) (N=100), cervical ...

Dense Tissue Pattern Characterization Using Deep Neural Network

Breast tumors are from the common infections among women around the world. Classifying the various types of breast tumors contribute to treating breast tumors more efficiently. However, this classification task is often hindered by dense tissue patterns captured in mammograms. The present study has been proposed a dense tissue pattern characterization framework using deep neural...

High-Entropy Alloys for Solid Hydrogen Storage: Potentials and Prospects

Hydrogen storage is one of the most significant research areas for exploiting hydrogen energy economy. To store hydrogen with a high gravimetric/volumetric density, gaseous hydrogen storage systems require a very high-pressure compressed gas cylinder which is quite unsafe and the storage in the liquid form needs cryogenic containers to be maintained at roughly 20 K under ambient...

Deep Learning for Reliable Classification of COVID-19, MERS, and SARS from Chest X-ray Images

Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an extremely contagious and quickly spreading coronavirus infestation. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which outbreak in 2002 and 2011, and the current COVID-19 pandemic are all from the same family of coronavirus. This work aims to classify COVID-19, SARS, and MERS chest X-ray (CXR...

A Fuzzy Collaborative Intelligence Approach to Group Decision-Making: a Case Study of Post-COVID-19 Restaurant Transformation

In a fuzzy group decision-making task, when decision makers lack consensus, existing methods either ignore this fact or force a decision maker to modify his/her judgment. However, these actions may be unreasonable. In this study, a fuzzy collaborative intelligence approach that seeks the consensus among experts in a novel way is proposed. Fuzzy collaborative intelligence is the...

A Global Review of Provisions on Emergency Care in National Constitutions

National constitutions are important tools for the realization of the right to health, and constitutional law linking health and human rights has been associated with improved access to health resources. Meanwhile, emergency care is a lifesaving service delivery platform with the potential to address much of the death and disability in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs...

Mirror self-recognition in gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla): a review and evaluation of mark test replications and variants

Mirror self-recognition (MSR), widely regarded as an indicator of self-awareness, has not been demonstrated consistently in gorillas. We aimed to examine this issue by setting out a method to evaluate gorilla self-recognition studies that is objective, quantifiable, and easy to replicate. Using Suarez and Gallup’s (J Hum Evol 10:175–183, 1981) study as a reference point, we drew...

Correction to: On the Symmetry of Extremal in Several Embedding Theorems

Digital embryos: a novel technical approach to investigate perceptual categorization in pigeons (Columba livia) using machine learning

Pigeons are classic model animals to study perceptual category learning. To achieve a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of categorization, a careful consideration of the employed stimulus material and a thorough analysis of the choice behavior is mandatory. In the present study, we combined the use of “virtual phylogenesis”, an evolutionary algorithm to generate...

Biosynthesis of Novel Naphthoquinone Derivatives in the Commonly-used Chassis Cells Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli

Naphthoquinones harboring 1,4-naphthoquinone pharmacophore are considered as privileged structures in medicinal chemistry. In pharmaceutical industry and fundamental research, polyketide naphthoquinones were widely produced by heterologous expression of polyketide synthases in microbial chassis cells, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli. Nevertheless, these cell...

A qPCR to quantify Wolbachia from few Onchocerca volvulus microfilariae as a surrogate for adult worm histology in clinical trials of antiwolbachial drugs

The filarial nematode Onchocerca volvulus causes onchocerciasis (river blindness), a neglected tropical disease affecting 21 million people, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Targeting the endosymbiont Wolbachia with antibiotics leads to permanent sterilization and killing of adult worms. The gold standard to assess Wolbachia depletion is the histological examination of adult worms...

Students home alone—profiles of internal and external conditions associated with mathematics learning from home

This study aims at describing differences in internal and external resources of students to handle mathematics learning from home. Based on data from N = 223 7th-grade secondary school students gathered via an online survey at the end of the first school year during the COVID-19 pandemic, we used latent profile analysis to identify student profiles defined by the internal factors...

Diagnostic and predictive accuracy of anti-mullerian hormone for ovarian function after chemotherapy in premenopausal women with early breast cancer

Accurate diagnosis and prediction of loss of ovarian function after chemotherapy for premenopausal women with early breast cancer (eBC) is important for future fertility and clinical decisions regarding the need for subsequent adjuvant ovarian suppression. We have investigated the value of anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) as serum biomarker for this. AMH was measured in serial blood...