Endotracheal intubation to reduce aspiration events in acutely comatose patients: a systematic review

Background: It is customary to believe that a patient with a Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score less than or equal to 8 should be intubated to avoid aspiration. We conducted a systematic review to establish if patients with GCS 64 8 for trauma or non-traumatic emergencies and treated in the acute care setting (e.g., Emergency Department or Pre-hospital environment) should be intubated to avoid aspiration or aspiration pneumonia/pneumonitis, and consequently, reduce mortality. Methods: We searched six databases, Pubmed, Embase, Scopus, SpringerLink, Cochrane Library, and Ovid Emcare, from April 15th to October 14th, 2020, for studies involving low GCS score patients of whom the risk of aspiration and related complications was assessed. Results: Thirteen studies were included in the final analysis (7 on non-traumatic population, 4 on trauma population, 1 pediatric and 1 adult mixed case studies). For the non-traumatic cases, two prospective studies and one retrospective study found no difference in aspiration risk between intubated and non-intubated patients. Two retrospective studies reported a reduction in the risk of aspiration in the intubated patient group. For traumatic cases, the study that considered the risk of aspiration did not show any differences between the two groups. A study on adult mixed cases found no difference in the incidence of aspiration among intubated and non-intubated patients. A study on pediatric patients found increased mortality for intubated versus non-intubated non-traumatic patients with a low GCS score. Conclusion: Whether intubation results in a reduction in the incidence of aspiration events and whether these are more frequent in patients with low GCS scores are not yet established. The paucity of evidence on this topic makes clinical trials justifiable and necessary. Trial registration: Prospero registration number: CRD42020136987

A New Contact Mat Wireless System for Estimating Vertical Jump Height

Abstract Among the different devices available for the assessment of the vertical jump height based on the flight time measurement, the contact mats are surely one of the simplest and portable systems and, for this reason, they are more widely used. This paper deals with the comparative evaluation of the performances of a new contact mat system with respect to a force platform. Some tests have been performed and the relative comparative results will be presented. The study shows a significant concurrent validity of Wi-JumpLe system for the flight and ground contact time measurements. In conclusion, the new contact mat structure together with the electronic measurement system is legitimate to assess vertical jump height and leg extensors muscle power

Learning Robust Representations via Multi-View Information Bottleneck

This is the author accepted manuscript.The information bottleneck method (Tishby et al. 2000) provides an information theoretic method for representation learning, by training an encoder to retain all information which is relevant for predicting the label, while minimizing the amount of other, superfluous information in the representation. The original formulation, however, requires labeled data in order to identify which information is superfluous. In this work, we extend this ability to the multi-view unsupervised setting, in which two views of the same underlying entity are provided but the label in unknown. This enables us to identify superfluous information as that which is not shared by both views. A theoretical analysis leads to the definition of a new multi-view model which produces state-of-the-art results on the Sketchy dataset and on label-limited versions of the MIR-Flickr dataset. We also extend our theory to the single-view setting by taking advantage of standard data augmentation techniques, empirically showing better generalization capabilities when compared to traditional unsupervised approaches for representation learning.European Union Horizon 202

E-kayak: A Wireless DAQ System for Real Time Performance Analysis

Abstract The use of microelectronic measurement systems properly designed for sport performance monitoring is, in recent years, increasingly common to give helpful feedback in training of professional athletes. Different are the systems today available, some of them make use of video analysis while others are based on the measure of specific kinematic or dynamic parameters. In this paper, we present a study on a new portable data acquisition system (E-kayak – ApLab Rome Italy) for real time monitoring of the boat and paddling dynamics. The system gives real time feedback to the athlete during the training session. Moreover, the training data can then be downloaded to a PC for further analysis from the coach. The acquired data can help evaluating the paddling technique and spotting technical flaws, to improve performance. A first prototype of the system has been manufactured and at the moment is still in the testing phase. Some results of the preliminary tests are presented in this paper

Intervalley Scattering in GaAs and InP Probed by Pulsed Far‐Infrared Transmission Spectroscopy

The dynamics of photoexcited electrons in GaAs and InP were studied using the transmission of 200‐fs pulses of far‐infrared radiation in the spectral range 15–100 cm−1. Kinetic traces of the infrared transmission as a function of delay between optical excitation and infrared probe show a probe‐limited decrease in transmission followed by a more gradual (0.7–2 ps) drop to a steady value, consistent with the slow return of electrons from high‐mass satellite valleys. Infrared transmission spectra, analyzed in the context of a Drude model, reveal density‐dependent electron mobilities 3–4 times below equilibrium n‐doped values. Electron‐hole collisions likely account for the lower mobility

Remote sensing techniques applied to geomorphological mapping of rocky coast: the case study of Gallinara Island (Western Liguria, Italy)

Geomorphological survey and mapping of the emerged and submerged coastal areas, particularly addressed to evaluate sea cliff instability within the assessment of coastal hazard and risk mitigation measures, require high resolution and georeferenced spatial data. Remote sensing techniques fully satisfy these needs and allow to obtain all information in a single short-lived survey campaign. An integrated survey by means of laser scanner and multibeam techniques coupled with aerial photos interpretation has been experienced along the rocky coast of the Gallinara Island (Western Liguria, Italy). The small extent of Gallinara, together with its particular meteo-marine climate conditions, makes the island a noteworthy case study. Multibeam and laser scanner technologies allowed to reconstruct the submerged and emerged rocky coast at high resolution. The accuracy of the 3D surface reconstructed by means of laser scanner used in profiler mode was tested and validated, by comparing with the static laser scanner survey method. The resulting data allowed to obtain significant geological and geomorphological information leading to the definition of rocky cliff stability conditions. \ua9 2019, \ua9 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Sending Granny to Chiang Mai: debating global outsourcing of care for the elderly

This article ties in with existing discussions on global care chains, family separation and the devaluation of social-reproductive work. We explore the new trend of outsourcing care for the elderly to countries with lower wages. We base our analysis on the debate in the German press and supplement it with insights from ethnographic field observations in two care homes in Thailand. We identify a discourse of abandonment, which shows how outsourcing the care of the elderly unsettles the privilege of sedentarism that is often taken for granted in the Global North. Furthermore, the newspaper articles tend to villainize people who seek care for their loved ones abroad. We argue that both discourses foster a neoliberal rationale of individualized responsibility and obfuscate the deep systemic roots of the care crisis in the Global North. However, by extending the discussion on outsourcing care for the elderly beyond the dominant media discourses, we envisage a rich potential for provoking political debate on the revaluation of care

Direct Picosecond Measurement of Photoinduced Cooper Pair Breaking in Lead

We report on a direct kinetic measurement of Cooper-pair breaking in superconducting lead. A 100-fs pulse of visible light was used to excite a thin-film lead sample, while the Cooper-pair density was optically probed using an ultrashort pulse of broadband far-infrared radiation. Subsequent to the absorption of the visible light, a rapid (ps) change in the far-infrared optical transmission was observed, corresponding to the breaking of Cooper pairs and the collapse of the superconducting gap

Assessment of erosion and surface tritium inventory issues for the ITER divertor

The authors analyzed sputtering erosion and tritium codeposition for the ITER vertical target divertor design using erosion and plasma codes (WBC/REDEP/DEGAS+) coupled to available materials data. Computations were made for a beryllium, carbon, and tungsten coated divertor plate, and for three edged plasma regimes. New data on tritium codeposition in beryllium was obtained with the TPE facility. This shows codeposited H/Be ratios of the order of 10% for surface temperatures {le} 300 C, beryllium thereby being similar to carbon in this respect. Hydrocarbon transport calculations show significant loss (10--20%) of chemically sputtered carbon for detached conditions (T{sub e} {approx} 1 eV at the divertor), compared to essentially no loss (100% redeposition) for higher temperature plasmas. Calculations also show a high, non-thermal, D-T molecular flux for detached conditions. Tritium codeposition rates for carbon are very high for detached conditions ({approximately} 20g-T/1000 s discharge), due to buildup of chemically sputtered carbon on relatively cold surfaces of the divertor cassette. Codeposition is lower ({approximately} 10X) for higher edge temperatures ({approximately} 8--30 eV) and is primarily due to divertor plate buildup of physically sputtered carbon. Peak net erosion rates for carbon are of order 30 cm/burn-yr. Erosion and codeposition rates for beryllium are much lower than for carbon at detached conditions, but are similar to carbon for the higher temperatures. Both erosion and tritium codeposition are essentially nil for tungsten for the regimes studied