The Agia Sofia’s Axis. A Corridor of Change and Resilience for Thessaloniki

The paper dwells on greenways as natural and cultural corridors, and their value for the contemporary city change and resilience. Just after a short theoretical approach on urban landscape architecture related to the sustainability and urban resilience, we intend to present our project that won the second prize in the Panhellenic competition, organized by the Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy, for the redesign of Agia Sofia’ s axis, one of the main historical traces of Thessaloniki’ s urban landscape. This example supports our design approach, socio-ecological and perceptual, for landscape architectural projects, in both planning and design

Non-invAsive VentIlation for early General wArd respiraTory failurE (NAVIGATE):A multicenter randomized controlled study. Protocol and statistical analysis plan

Few randomized trials have evaluated the use of non-invasive ventilation (NIV) for early acute respiratory failure (ARF) in non-intensive care unit (ICU) wards. The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that early NIV for mild-moderate ARF in non-ICU wards can prevent development of severe ARF

Automatic Learning for Semantic Collocation

The real difficulty in development of practical NLP systems comes from the fact that we do not have effective means for gathering "knowledge ". In this paper, we propose an algorithm which acquires automatically knowledge of semantic collocations among "words" from sample corpora. The algorith

Tools for sublanguage based semantic knowledge acquisition from corpora

This paper describes the implantation of a KA tool kit for use with sublanguage-specific corpora. The key idea of KA as an evolutionary process is discussed in detail. Special attention is paid to the system's attempt to avoid the pitfalls faced by purely statistical KA processes, The system relies on a set of interactively linked subprocesses and on a central knowledge base which stores all acquired knowledge

Linguistic knowledge generator

Introduction The difficulties in current NLP applications are seldon, due to the lack of appropriate frameworks for encoding our linguistic or extra-linguistic knowledge, but rather to the fact that we do not know in advance what actual instances of knowledge should be, even though we know in advance what types of knowledge are required. It normally takes a long time and requires painful trial and error processes to adapt knowledge, for ex ample, in existing MT systens in order to translate documents of a new text-type and of a new subject domain. Semantic dsification schenes for wods, for example, usually reflect ontologics of subject domains so that we cannot expect a single ctsific- tion scheme to be effective across different domains. qB treat different suManguages requires different word clsification schemes. We have to construct apprm priate schenes for given sublanguages from scratch It bas also been reported that not only knowledge concerned with extra-linguistic donnain

Continuous vs Intermittent Meropenem Administration in Critically Ill Patients With Sepsis: The MERCY Randomized Clinical Trial

Importance: Meropenem is a widely prescribed β-lactam antibiotic. Meropenem exhibits maximum pharmacodynamic efficacy when given by continuous infusion to deliver constant drug levels above the minimal inhibitory concentration. Compared with intermittent administration, continuous administration of meropenem may improve clinical outcomes. Objective: To determine whether continuous administration of meropenem reduces a composite of mortality and emergence of pandrug-resistant or extensively drug-resistant bacteria compared with intermittent administration in critically ill patients with sepsis. Design, setting, and participants: A double-blind, randomized clinical trial enrolling critically ill patients with sepsis or septic shock who had been prescribed meropenem by their treating clinicians at 31 intensive care units of 26 hospitals in 4 countries (Croatia, Italy, Kazakhstan, and Russia). Patients were enrolled between June 5, 2018, and August 9, 2022, and the final 90-day follow-up was completed in November 2022. Interventions: Patients were randomized to receive an equal dose of the antibiotic meropenem by either continuous administration (n = 303) or intermittent administration (n = 304). Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcome was a composite of all-cause mortality and emergence of pandrug-resistant or extensively drug-resistant bacteria at day 28. There were 4 secondary outcomes, including days alive and free from antibiotics at day 28, days alive and free from the intensive care unit at day 28, and all-cause mortality at day 90. Seizures, allergic reactions, and mortality were recorded as adverse events. Results: All 607 patients (mean age, 64 [SD, 15] years; 203 were women [33%]) were included in the measurement of the 28-day primary outcome and completed the 90-day mortality follow-up. The majority (369 patients, 61%) had septic shock. The median time from hospital admission to randomization was 9 days (IQR, 3-17 days) and the median duration of meropenem therapy was 11 days (IQR, 6-17 days). Only 1 crossover event was recorded. The primary outcome occurred in 142 patients (47%) in the continuous administration group and in 149 patients (49%) in the intermittent administration group (relative risk, 0.96 [95% CI, 0.81-1.13], P = .60). Of the 4 secondary outcomes, none was statistically significant. No adverse events of seizures or allergic reactions related to the study drug were reported. At 90 days, mortality was 42% both in the continuous administration group (127 of 303 patients) and in the intermittent administration group (127 of 304 patients). Conclusions and relevance: In critically ill patients with sepsis, compared with intermittent administration, the continuous administration of meropenem did not improve the composite outcome of mortality and emergence of pandrug-resistant or extensively drug-resistant bacteria at day 28. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03452839

Continuous infusion versus intermittent administration of meropenem in critically ill patients (MERCY): A multicenter randomized double-blind trial. Rationale and design

Meropenem is a β-lactam, carbapenem antibacterial agent with antimicrobial activity against gram-negative, gram-positive and anaerobic micro-organisms and is important in the empirical treatment of serious infections in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. Multi-drug resistant gram-negative organisms, coupled with scarcity of new antibiotic classes, forced healthcare community to optimize the therapeutic potential of available antibiotics. Our aim is to investigate the effect of continuous infusion of meropenem against bolus administration, as indicated by a composite outcome of reducing death and emergence of extensive or pan drug-resistant pathogens in a population of ICU patients