MeetDurian: A Gameful Mobile App to Prevent COVID-19 Infection

The COVID-19 problem has not gone away with the passing of the seasons. Even though most countries have achieved remarkable results in fighting against epidemic diseases and preventing and controlling viruses, the general public is still far from understanding the new crown virus and lacks imagination on its transmission law. In this paper, we propose MeetDurian: a cross-platform mobile application that exploits a location-based game to improve users' hygiene habits and reduce virus dispersal. We present its main features, its architecture, and its core technologies. Finally, we report a set of experiments that prove the acceptability and usability of MeetDurian. An illustrative demo of the mobile app features is shown in the following video: https://youtu.be/Vqg7nFDQuOU.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Miniature intravascular photoacoustic endoscopy with coaxial excitation and detection

Recent research pointed out that the degree of inflammation in the adventitia could correlate with the severity of atherosclerotic plaques. Intravascular photoacoustic endoscopy can provide the information of arterial morphology and plaque composition, and even detecting the inflammation. However, most reported work used a non-coaxial configuration for the photoacoustic catheter design, which formed a limited light-sound overlap area for imaging so as to miss the adventitia information. Here we developed a novel 0.9 mm-diameter intravascular photoacoustic catheter with coaxial excitation and detection to resolve the aforementioned issue. A miniature hollow ultrasound transducer with a 0.18 mm-diameter orifice in the center was successfully fabricated. To show the significance and merits of our design, phantom and ex vivo imaging experiments were conducted on both coaxial and non-coaxial catheters for comparison. The results demonstrated that the coaxial catheter exhibited much better photoacoustic/ultrasound imaging performance from the intima to the adventitia

Incidence and Etiology of Drug-Induced Liver Injury in Mainland China

Background & Aims: We performed a nationwide, retrospective study to determine the incidence and causes of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) in mainland China.Methods: We collected data on a total of 25,927 confirmed DILI cases, hospitalized from 2012 through 2014 at 308 medical centers in mainland China. We collected demographic, medical history, treatment, laboratory, disease severity, and mortality data from all patients. Investigators at each site were asked to complete causality assessments for each case whose diagnosis at discharge was DILI (n=29,478) according to the Roussel Uclaf Causality Assessment Method.Results: Most cases of DILI presented with hepatocellular injury (51.39%; 95% CI, 50.76–52.03), followed by mixed injury (28.30%; 95% CI, 27.73–28.87) and cholestatic injury (20.31%; 95% CI, 19.80–20.82). The leading single classes of implicated drugs were traditional Chinese medicines or herbal and dietary supplements (26.81%) and anti-tuberculosis medications (21.99%). Chronic DILI occurred in 13.00% of the cases and, although 44.40% of the hepatocellular DILI cases fulfilled Hy’s Law criteria, only 280 cases (1.08%) progressed to hepatic failure, 2 cases underwent liver transplantation (0.01%), and 102 patients died (0.39%). Among deaths, DILI was judged to have a primary role in 72 (70.59%), a contributory role in 21 (20.59%), and no role in 9 (8.82%). Assuming the proportion of DILI in the entire hospitalized population of China was represented by that observed in the 66 centers where DILI capture was complete, we estimated the annual incidence in the general population to be 23.80 per 100,000 persons (95% CI, 20.86–26.74). Only hospitalized patients were included in this analysis, so the true incidence is likely to be higher.Conclusions: In a retrospective study to determine the incidence and causes of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) in mainland China, the annual incidence in the general population was estimated to be 23.80 per 100,000 persons—higher than that reported from western countries. Traditional Chinese medicines, herbal and dietary supplements, and anti-tuberculosis drugs were the leading causes of DILI in mainland Chin

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Artificial intelligence enabled Digital Twins for training autonomous cars

This exploration is aimed at the system prediction and safety performance of the Digital Twins (DTs) of autonomous cars based on artificial intelligence technology, and the intelligent development of transportation in the smart city. On the one hand, considering the problem of safe driving of autonomous cars in intelligent transportation systems, it is essential to ensure the transmission safety of vehicle data and realize the load balancing scheduling of data transmission resources. On the other hand, convolution neural network (CNN) of the deep learning algorithm is adopted and improved, and then, the DTs technology is introduced. Finally, an autonomous cars DTs prediction model based on network load balancing and spatial-temporal graph convolution network is constructed. Moreover, through simulation, the performance of this model is analyzed from perspectives of Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F1-score. The experimental results demonstrate that in comparative analysis, the accuracy of road network prediction of the model reported here is 92.70%, which is at least 2.92% higher than that of the models proposed by other scholars. Through the analysis of the security performance of network data transmission, it is found that this model achieves a lower average delay time than other comparative models. Besides, the message delivery rate is basically stable at 80%, and the message leakage rate is basically stable at about 10%. Therefore, the prediction model for autonomous cars constructed here not only ensures low delay but also has excellent network security performance, so that information can interact more efficiently. The research outcome can provide an experimental basis for intelligent development and safety performance improvement in the transportation field of smart cities

MeetDurian: A Gameful Mobile App to Prevent COVID-19 Infection

The COVID-19 problem has not gone away with the passing of the seasons. Even though most countries have achieved remarkable results in fighting against epidemic diseases and preventing and controlling viruses, the general public is still far from understanding the new crown virus and lacks imagination on its transmission law. In this paper, we propose MeetDurian: a cross-platform mobile application that exploits a location-based game to improve users' hygiene habits and reduce virus dispersal. We present its main features, its architecture, and its core technologies. Finally, we report a set of experiments that prove the acceptability and usability of MeetDurian. An illustrative demo of the mobile app features is shown in the following video: https://youtu.be/Vqg7nFDQuOU

Sensible and secure IoT communication for digital twins, cyber twins, web twins

In order to effectively solve the current security problems encountered by smart wireless terminals in the digital twin biological network, to ensure the stable and efficient operation of the wireless communication network. This research aims to reduce the interference attack in the communication network, an interference source location scheme based on Mobile Tracker in the communication process of the Internet of Things (IoT) is designed. Firstly, this paper improves Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) to meet the security and overhead requirements of digital twin networking communication. The access control policy is used to encrypt a random key, and the symmetric encryption scheme is used to hide the key. In addition, in the proposed interference source location technology, the influence of observation noise is reduced based on the principle of unscented Kalman filter, and the estimated interference source location is modified by the interference source motion model. In order to further evaluate the performance of the method proposed as the interference source, this paper simulates the jamming attack scenario. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) value of the proposed algorithm is 0.245 ​m, which is better than the ErrMin algorithm (0.313 ​m), and the number of observation nodes of the proposed algorithm is less than half of the ErrMin algorithm. To sum up, satisfactory results can be achieved by taking the Jamming Signal Strength (JSS) information as the observation value and estimating the location of the interference source and other state information based on the untracked Kalman filter algorithm. This research has significant value for the secure communication of the digital twins in the IoT

MeetDurian: Can Location-Based Games be Used to Improve COVID-19 Hygiene Habits?

The COVID-19 problem has not gone away with the passing of the seasons. Although most countries have achieved remarkable results in fighting against epidemic diseases and controlling viruses, the general public is still far from understanding the new crown virus and lack imagination on its transmission law. Location-based games (LBGs) have been challenged during the on-going pandemic. No research has shown that LBGs can be used to help prevent COVID-19 infection. Therefore, we designed the game MeetDurian, which integrates entertainment, sports, and education. For investigating factors influencing intention to play the MeetDurian, we proposed some comparative evaluation. Data were gathered from participants who participated in capturing virtual durians and completed questionnaires about immersion into the game, workload assessment, user’s emotions, learning outcomes, and personal hygiene. These results proved the acceptability and usability of the mobile game-based MeetDurian for preventing the infection and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic