COVID-19: WHAT ABOUT DENTISTS?

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been associated with person-to-person transmission. This includes droplets inhalation, exposure to saliva, and contact with the oral or nasal mucosa. The World Health Organization (WHO) made it public that the novel coronavirus initiated an international public health emergency. COVID-19 cases are rising up until this day, as of End-April 2021, around 141 million confirmed cases and 3 million deaths were reported worldwide. Due to the characteristics of dental clinics, dental health care personnel are at a higher risk of getting exposed to the COVID-19 infection. Thus, there is an urgent need to improve the current implemented recommendations and strategies in order to prevent transmission of the disease. Despite the huge efforts made by the countries affected in an attempt to restrain this pandemic, there is still a daily flare-up of cases. Dental health personnel will come across patients with COVID-19, and thus will have to abide by strict infection control measures to prevent its spread. The aim of this article is to introduce a brief overview about the basic knowledge of COVID-19, its routes of transmission, as well as its clinical symptoms. Based on relevant research and guidelines, this study also provides recommendations for patients screening, management protocols, infection control as well as recommendations for dental health care personnel in different affected areas

Modeling Surface Currents in the Eastern Levantine Mediterranean

International audienceWe consider the problem of reconstructing the meso-scale features of the currents in the Eastern Levantine Mediterranean from combining in-situ and satellite altimetry data. Mathematically, this is an inverse problem where the objective is to invert Lagrangian trajectories, which are positions of drifters launched at sea, in order to improve the coarse Eulerian velocity, provided by the altimetric satellite measurements. We shall use a variational assimilation approach, whereby the eulerian velocity correction is obtained by minimizing the distance between the simulated position from a velocity background and actual observations. One important property of our approach is that it is model free, so that it is inexpensive and can be easily cast into real-time oceanic operational products. Our method is first validated with twin experiments, where we conduct sensitivity analysis to parameters such as number of drifters, assimilation time window and spatial filter length. The approach is next validated with past and present data from the Levantine Mediterranean by correcting velocity fields derived from altimetry by assimilating drifters' data. The drifters' data used here were collected in the context of the MedSVP program and more recently by the National Lebanese Marine Center (CNSM) in September 2013. The CNSM with its boat CANA has developed an important activity of data collection along the Lebanese coast so far and this activity will permit it to extend its collaborations further by integrating the modeling and data assimilation methods for reconstructing the surface currents

Towards a Meta-Language for the Concurrency Concern in DSLs

International audienceAbstract—Concurrency is of primary interest in the development of complex software-intensive systems, as well as thedeployment on modern platforms. Furthermore, Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) are increasingly used in industrial processes toseparate and abstract the various concerns of complex systems.However, reifying the definition of the DSL concurrency remainsa challenge. This not only prevents leveraging the concurrencyconcern of a particular domain or platform, but it also hinders:a) the development of a complete understanding of the DSLsemantics; b) the effectiveness of concurrency-aware analysistechniques; c) the analysis of the deployment on parallelarchitectures. In this paper, we present M oCCML, a dedicatedmeta-language for formally specifying the concurrency concernwithin the definition of a DSL. The concurrency constraintscan reflect the knowledge in a particular domain, but also theconstraints of a particular platform. MoCCML comes with acomplete language workbench to help a DSL designer in thedefinition of the concurrency directly within the concepts of theDSL itself, and a generic workbench to simulate and analyzeany model conforming to this DSL. Mo CCML is illustrated onthe definition of an lightweight extension of SDF (SynchronousData Flow)

Critically Ill Patients with Visceral Nocardia Infection, France and Belgium, 2004-2023.

peer reviewedWe studied 50 patients with invasive nocardiosis treated during 2004-2023 in intensive care centers in France and Belgium. Most (65%) died in the intensive care unit or in the year after admission. Nocardia infections should be included in the differential diagnoses for patients in the intensive care setting

Albiglutide and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (Harmony Outcomes): a double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial

Background: Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists differ in chemical structure, duration of action, and in their effects on clinical outcomes. The cardiovascular effects of once-weekly albiglutide in type 2 diabetes are unknown. We aimed to determine the safety and efficacy of albiglutide in preventing cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke. Methods: We did a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial in 610 sites across 28 countries. We randomly assigned patients aged 40 years and older with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (at a 1:1 ratio) to groups that either received a subcutaneous injection of albiglutide (30–50 mg, based on glycaemic response and tolerability) or of a matched volume of placebo once a week, in addition to their standard care. Investigators used an interactive voice or web response system to obtain treatment assignment, and patients and all study investigators were masked to their treatment allocation. We hypothesised that albiglutide would be non-inferior to placebo for the primary outcome of the first occurrence of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke, which was assessed in the intention-to-treat population. If non-inferiority was confirmed by an upper limit of the 95% CI for a hazard ratio of less than 1·30, closed testing for superiority was prespecified. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02465515. Findings: Patients were screened between July 1, 2015, and Nov 24, 2016. 10 793 patients were screened and 9463 participants were enrolled and randomly assigned to groups: 4731 patients were assigned to receive albiglutide and 4732 patients to receive placebo. On Nov 8, 2017, it was determined that 611 primary endpoints and a median follow-up of at least 1·5 years had accrued, and participants returned for a final visit and discontinuation from study treatment; the last patient visit was on March 12, 2018. These 9463 patients, the intention-to-treat population, were evaluated for a median duration of 1·6 years and were assessed for the primary outcome. The primary composite outcome occurred in 338 (7%) of 4731 patients at an incidence rate of 4·6 events per 100 person-years in the albiglutide group and in 428 (9%) of 4732 patients at an incidence rate of 5·9 events per 100 person-years in the placebo group (hazard ratio 0·78, 95% CI 0·68–0·90), which indicated that albiglutide was superior to placebo (p<0·0001 for non-inferiority; p=0·0006 for superiority). The incidence of acute pancreatitis (ten patients in the albiglutide group and seven patients in the placebo group), pancreatic cancer (six patients in the albiglutide group and five patients in the placebo group), medullary thyroid carcinoma (zero patients in both groups), and other serious adverse events did not differ between the two groups. There were three (<1%) deaths in the placebo group that were assessed by investigators, who were masked to study drug assignment, to be treatment-related and two (<1%) deaths in the albiglutide group. Interpretation: In patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, albiglutide was superior to placebo with respect to major adverse cardiovascular events. Evidence-based glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists should therefore be considered as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes. Funding: GlaxoSmithKline

25th annual computational neuroscience meeting: CNS-2016

The same neuron may play different functional roles in the neural circuits to which it belongs. For example, neurons in the Tritonia pedal ganglia may participate in variable phases of the swim motor rhythms [1]. While such neuronal functional variability is likely to play a major role the delivery of the functionality of neural systems, it is difficult to study it in most nervous systems. We work on the pyloric rhythm network of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) [2]. Typically network models of the STG treat neurons of the same functional type as a single model neuron (e.g. PD neurons), assuming the same conductance parameters for these neurons and implying their synchronous firing [3, 4]. However, simultaneous recording of PD neurons shows differences between the timings of spikes of these neurons. This may indicate functional variability of these neurons. Here we modelled separately the two PD neurons of the STG in a multi-neuron model of the pyloric network. Our neuron models comply with known correlations between conductance parameters of ionic currents. Our results reproduce the experimental finding of increasing spike time distance between spikes originating from the two model PD neurons during their synchronised burst phase. The PD neuron with the larger calcium conductance generates its spikes before the other PD neuron. Larger potassium conductance values in the follower neuron imply longer delays between spikes, see Fig. 17.Neuromodulators change the conductance parameters of neurons and maintain the ratios of these parameters [5]. Our results show that such changes may shift the individual contribution of two PD neurons to the PD-phase of the pyloric rhythm altering their functionality within this rhythm. Our work paves the way towards an accessible experimental and computational framework for the analysis of the mechanisms and impact of functional variability of neurons within the neural circuits to which they belong

The Effectiveness of Semi-Automated and Fully Automatic Segmentation for Inferior Alveolar Canal Localization on CBCT Scans: A Systematic Review.

This systematic review aims to identify the available semi-automatic and fully automatic algorithms for inferior alveolar canal localization as well as to present their diagnostic accuracy. Articles related to inferior alveolar nerve/canal localization using methods based on artificial intelligence (semi-automated and fully automated) were collected electronically from five different databases (PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, Cochrane, and Scopus). Two independent reviewers screened the titles and abstracts of the collected data, stored in EndnoteX7, against the inclusion criteria. Afterward, the included articles have been critically appraised to assess the quality of the studies using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2) tool. Seven studies were included following the deduplication and screening against exclusion criteria of the 990 initially collected articles. In total, 1288 human cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans were investigated for inferior alveolar canal localization using different algorithms and compared to the results obtained from manual tracing executed by experts in the field. The reported values for diagnostic accuracy of the used algorithms were extracted. A wide range of testing measures was implemented in the analyzed studies, while some of the expected indexes were still missing in the results. Future studies should consider the new artificial intelligence guidelines to ensure proper methodology, reporting, results, and validation

A New Classification of the Morphology of Complete Ponticulus Posticus on Cone Beam Computed Tomography

The objectives of this retrospective study were to measure the prevalence of complete ponticulus posticus (CPP), to propose a new classification based on two different shapes of CPP, to compare these shapes with age and gender, and to test two different methods of measurements of the diameters of CPP on cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). Material and methods: We used 2012 CBCT scans from Planmeca Promax 3D Mid and Romexis 5.1 software tools to measure the height and width of the CPP, and we measured the surface of the CPP using an ellipse tool. We classified the CPP into “thin” and “thick” shape. Results: the prevalence of CPP was 9.49% with 97 male and 94 female patients. The unilateral type was found in 131 patients, while the bilateral type was found in 60 patients. Intra-observer reliability was evaluated using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). The ICC was 0.875 for height, 0.872 for width, and 0.885 for the ellipse area. Both methods present very good intra-observer reproducibility. The “thin” group tended to be older and significantly more related to female patients. The “thick” group was associated with younger male patients. Conclusions: the proposed classification of CPP may be used when reporting the CBCT large field of view. There is still a need to increase the knowledge on the atlas and on its main variant, such as complete PP

Modeling and numerical simulations of Brownian rodlike particles with anisotropic translational diffusion

International audienceA new kinetic macromodel based on moments of the probability distribution function is proposed to investigate the flow of rodlike Brownian particle suspensions. The rods concentration-orientation coupling is taken into account. A numerical study is presented for rods through the planar channel, with and without introducing a circular obstacle which develops a nonhomogeneous flow. To verify this macromodel, the results are compared with the solution of the associated Fokker-Planck equation taking into consideration an anisotropic translational diffusion tensor. This tensor depends on the local orientation of the rod. Low (smaller than 10 3) Brownian translational Peclet number causes rod migrations across the flow streamlines