A decalogue for end-of-life care in Internal Medicine

Since a large number of patients with chronical medical diseases die in hospital, often in an internal medicine ward, internists are urged to improve their expertise in end-of-life (EOL) care, which is a neglected part of their academic education. Recently, FADOI (the Italian Federation of the Associations Hospital Doctors on Internal Medicine) has addressed EOL-medicine in many ways, promoting many scientific meetings on this and allied topics, providing educational material made available in its website on a free basis and establishing an ad hoc Committee charged with the task of organizing dedicated events annually. The Committee has also elaborated a series of recommendations on EOL-care in internal medicine (a decalogue), reflecting largely shared visions. It has been endorsed also by ANIMO (the Association of the Italian Nurses working in an Internal Medicine Department). The decalogue for EOL care in internal medicine is issued here, and calls for its diffusion and implementation. The driving concept is that doctors and nurses must feel responsible for disregarding appropriate EOL-care for the dying patients, because delaying it means to add suffering and discomfort to them in the final phase of their existence

Is platelet gel safe enough for neutropenic patients?

Our group recently described a case of life-threatening oral mucositis (OM) following highdose conditioning chemotherapy for peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT), which was successfully treated with cord blood platelet gel (CBPG

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure