A Case of COVID-19 Pneumonia in a Young Male with Full Body Rash as a Presenting Symptom

Background: In December 2019 the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, was identified in Wuhan, China. In the ensuing months, the COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally and case load is exponentially increasing across the United States. Emergency departments  have adopted screening and triage procedures to identify potential cases and isolate them during evaluation.Case Presentation: We describe a case of COVID-19 pneumonia requiring hospitalization that presented with fever and extensive rash as the primary presenting symptoms. Rash has only been rarely reported in COVID-19 patients, and has not been previously described

Formal Affective Strategies In Contemporary African Diasporic Feminist Texts

While scholars who investigate the works of African diasporic authors Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Claudia Rankine acknowledge the importance between form and audience in their works, critics have either yet to fully recognize how and/or for what purpose each author implements specific techniques. Paying close attention to what I propose are formal affective strategies in Danticat’s Everything Inside, Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, and Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, allows us to see how each author infuses experimental forms that are strategically bound to how their future readers will react to their texts with the hope that these reactions will prove more socially and politically moving than just moving—as in readers simply turning the page. Black diasporic women authors, including Danticat, Adichie, and Rankine, destabilize traditional literary paradigms and invent new formal affective strategies in their works. Upon closer consideration, these strategies not only help expose the continuous exclusivity of the American Dream and contemporary problems associated with the enduring patriarchal hegemony, but by engaging the audience with commonly felt affects, reconfigure future possibilities for intersectional solidarity through the very conflicts and difficulties their writings explore and formally embod

Four-dimensional geospatial approaches for modeling vertical urban growth

Urban densification is a form of development that has been seen as more sustainable compared to urban sprawl, typical for North American cities. Urban modeling has been extensively researched and mostly focused on urban sprawl using methods based on raster geographic information system (GIS) data and for two spatial dimensions (2D). The objectives of this thesis are the 1) development of a spatial index for 3D urban compactness; 2) development of geosimulation approaches for modeling spatio-temporal dynamics of changes in 4D for vertical urban growth; and 3) implementation and evaluation of the proposed approaches using geospatial datasets for regional and municipal spatial scales for the Metro Vancouver Region. Several modeling scenarios have been created to represent 3D urban growth development over space and time. The obtained results indicate that the proposed 4D geospatial approaches have potential to be used in urban planning

Contribution atomistique à la compréhension des verres métalliques et de silice

Amorphous materials are ubiquitous in everyday life. They comprise "hard" and"soft" glasses. Hard amorphous systems are usually seen as structure materials, with properties and use comparable to those of crystalline solids. Soft glasses are usually seen as complex fluids, described in terms of their rheological properties with the corresponding practical applications (concrete, paints, drilling mud, cosmetic gels, creams or foams, etc). Amorphous materials can either present a solid-like behaviour or flow depending on their mechanical load: all are yield-stress fluids. Their usage limits are often defined by the occurrence of shear-banding, an extreme form of localization seen in molecular glasses as well as in granular materials. There is now considerable evidence that they are consequences of the existence of a disordered structure at the level of the elementary constituents (atoms, particles,...). Studies of plasticity in amorphous solids, are still hampered by the lack of any identifiable defect responsible for the plastic response. It is now acknowledged that plasticity is the net result of local rearrangements, or "shear transformations", involving small clusters of (say a few tens of) particles. These rearrangements are thermally--activated and are ubiquitous processes in the structural relaxation and deformation of glasses at low temperatures. Unfortunately, they take place over timescales long compared to those accessible to direct Molecular Dynamics simulations. Some extremely promising new tools, however, are opening the route towards accelerated algorithms for the simulation of thermal systems. They are based on numerical methods developed over these last two decades to determine thermally activated transitions in atomic systems. Of particular interest here is the Activation-Relaxation Technique (ART), an eigenvector-following method that allows the identification of activated states and paths in the potential energy landscape of atomic systems. In this study, we will show that although an exhaustive search for saddle points in case of disordered solids is unfeasible (because of the exponential number of activated states), ART can identify enough saddles to build statistically relevant samples, from which stationary distributions can be computed. The purpose of this strictly numerical thesis was the prediction of thermally activated kinetics in glasses such as those encountered experimentally. The nature of such miscroscopic events occuring in disordered systems was studied both under mechanical stress and in ageing conditions. We investigate two quantities that describe thermally-activated events within the harmonic approximation of the transition state theory, i.e. activation energy and attempt frequency.Since in the definition of an attempt frequency the curvature of the initial minimum and the saddle point are present, we wanted to see if there was a relation between attempt frequencies and activation energies of a given event in two types of systems: metallic glasses and silica glasses. Such correlation had been observed before for a wide range of phenomena and is referred to as the Meyer-Neldel compensation rule. We also attempt to answer if the simple BKS potential without Ewald summation is able to reproduce polyamorphism observed in silica glasses subject to hydrostatic compression and characterized mainly in terms of coordination numbers. Apart from thermally activated processes, the structural analyses of metallic and silica glasses were performed. The short and medium range orders were characterized using two methods: Voronoi tesselations for metallic glasses, providing us information about near neighbor conformations, and in case of silica, statistics of ring distributions.Les matériaux amorphes sont omniprésents dans la vie quotidienne. Ils comprennent des verres "dures" et "mous". Le systèmes amorphes durs sont généralement considérés comme des matériaux de structure, dont les propriétés et l'utilisation sont comparable à celles des solides cristallins. Les verres mous sont généralement considérés comme des fluides complexes, décrits pour leurs propriétés rhéologiques et les applications correspondantes pratiques. Les matériaux amorphes peuvent soit présenter un comportement de type solide ou de flux en fonction de leur charge mécanique: tous sont des fluides à limite apparente d'élasticité. Leurs limites d'utilisation sont souvent définies par l'apparition de bandes de cisaillement, une forme extrême de localisation vu dans des verres moléculaires ainsi que dans les matériaux granulaires. Il ya maintenant des preuves considérables que ce sont les conséquences de l'existence d'une structure désordonnée au niveau des constituants élémentaires. Les études de la plasticité des solides amorphes, sont encore gênés par l'absence de tout défaut identifiable responsable de la réponse plastique. Il est maintenant reconnu que la plasticité est le résultat net des réarrangements locaux, ou "transformations de cisaillement", impliquant des petits groupes de particules. Ces réarrangements sont thermiquement - activées et sont ubiquitaires dans le processus de relaxation de déformation structurelle des verres à basse température. Malheureusement, ils se déroulent sur des échelles de temps long par rapport à ceux qui sont accessibles aux simulations de dynamique moléculaire. Certains nouveaux outils très prometteurs, cependant, ouvrent la voie vers des algorithmes accélérés pour la simulation de systèmes thermiques. Ils sont basés sur les méthodes numériques développées au cours de ces deux dernières décennies pour déterminer les transitions thermiquement activés dans les systèmes atomiques. Un intérêt particulier ici est la technique d'activation-relaxation (ART). Dans cette étude, nous allons montrer que, même si une recherche exhaustive des points de selle pour des solides désordonnés est impossible, ART peut identifier assez de points de selles pour construire des échantillons statistiquement pertinents, à partir desquelle des distributions stationnaires peuvent être calculées. Le but de cette thèse strictement numérique était de prédire les cinétiques thermiquement activées dans des verres telles que celles rencontrées expérimentalement. La nature de ces événements microscopique qui se produisent dans miscroscopic systèmes désordonnés a été étudiée à la fois sous des contraintes mécaniques et dans des conditions de vieillissement. Nous étudions deux grandeurs décrivant ces événements au sein de l'approximation harmonique de la théorie de l'état de transition, c'est à dire l'énergie d'activation et la fréquence d'attaque. Etant donné que dans la définition d'une fréquence d'attaque la courbure du minimum initial et le point de selle sont présents, nous voulions voir (pour les verres métalliques et verres de silice) s'il y avait une relation entre les fréquences de tentative et les énergies d'activation d'un événement donné. Cette corrélation a été précédemment observée pour un large éventail de phénomènes et est appelé la règle de compensation Meyer-Neldel. Nous aussi tentons de répondre si le simple potentiel BKS sans sommation d'Ewald est capable de reproduire le polyamorphisme observé dans les verres de silice soumis à une compression hydrostatique. Outre les processus activés thermiquement, les analyses structurelles de verres métalliques et de silice ont été réalisées. Les ordres de courte et moyenne portée ont été caractérisées par deux méthodes: pavages de Voronoı pour les verres métalliques, nous fournissant des informations sur les conformations voisines proches, et dans le cas de la silice, les statistiques de distributions de chaînes moléculaires

Four-Valence Electron Group 14 Reactive Intermediates: Silyliumylidene and Germyliumylidene

Monovalent silyl cations, four-valence electron reactive intermediates, are investigated. These species possess nearly degenerate two lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals (LUMOs) in addition to their highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO). This gives them the potential of forming one, two or three bonds simultaneously. One possible route to the generation of these phenylsilicon cation reactive intermediates utilizes 2,3-benzo-1,4,5,6,7-pentaphenyl-7-silanorbornadiene cation as a precursor. Upon fragmentation of the 7-silanorbornadiene cation, 1,2,3,4-tetraphenylnaphthalene (TPN) is formed and PhSi:+ may arise as a coproduct. Fluoroborates were considered as potential trapping agents due to the strong Si-F bonds that would ultimately result. Trapping reactions involving difluoroborate anions F2BX2 (X = F, Me, Ph) have been screened through density functional theory computational studies. The stepwise process shown below was found to have low activation barriers for both steps in the formation of the trapping product PhSiF2BF2. The first fluoride transfer to silicon is predicted to be a barrierless reaction and insertion of the resulting silylene into the second B-F bond is predicted to proceed with 1-3 kcal/mol barrier

Dependence prevalence rates of depression and alkohol consumpiton among residents of Cracow

StreszczenieWSTĘPNiniejsza praca dotyczy problematyki zależności pomiędzy występowaniem alkoholizmu oraz depresji oraz podwójnej diagnozy obu przypadłości. We wstępie omówione zostały epidemiologia, patogeneza, metody leczenia oraz podstawowe pojęcia dotyczące zarówno alkoholizmu, jak i depresji. Rozważania te stanowiły podwaliny dla analizy wyników badań przedstawionych przez różne ośrodki badawcze w Polsce i za granicą w zakresie poznania przyczyn jak i mechanizmów rozwoju objawów alkoholizmu i depresji oraz ich wzajemnych zależności. Analizy wyników tych badań zostały uzupełnione o najważniejsze teorie dotyczące uzależnień oraz podwójnej diagnozy. METODY Część badawcza niniejszej pracy została opracowana na podstawie wyników badań HAPPIE, dotyczących zdrowia, alkoholu i psychospołecznych czynników w Europie Wschodniej, przeprowadzonych w latach 2002-2008 przez University College London we współpracy z ośrodkami naukowymi w Europie. WNIOSKI:Wyniki badań dostarczyły następujących wniosków: jako przyczyny powstawania depresji w świetle przeprowadzonych w niniejszej pracy badań można wyróżnić uwarunkowania związane z płcią, ze statusem materialnym, stanem cywilnym oraz poziomem wykształcenia, a także częstotliwością spożywania alkoholu.Summary INTRODUCTIONThis paper concerns the problem of the relationship between the incidence of alcoholism and depression and dual diagnosis of both ailments. The epidemiology, pathogenesis, treatment methods and basic concepts of both alcoholism and depression was discussed in the introduction. These considerations were the foundation for the analysis of the test results submitted by various research centers in Poland and abroad in the understanding of the causes and mechanisms for the development of alcoholism and depression symptoms and their interdependencies. Analysis of the results of these studies have been completed with the most important theories of addiction and dual diagnosis.METHODSResearch part of this work is based on the results of HAPPIE studies concerning health, alcohol and psychosocial factors in the Eastern Europe, carried out in 2002-2008 by the University College London, in collaboration with research centers in Europe.CONCLUSIONS:The results provided the following conclusions: as the causes of emergence of depression in the light of research in this paper, can be distinguished factors concerned with gender, material status, marital status and education level, as well as with frequency of alcohol consumption

A Case of COVID-19 Pneumonia in a Young Male with Full Body Rash as a Presenting Symptom

Background: In December 2019 the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, was identified in Wuhan, China. In the ensuing months, the COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally and case load is exponentially increasing across the United States. Emergency departments  have adopted screening and triage procedures to identify potential cases and isolate them during evaluation.Case Presentation: We describe a case of COVID-19 pneumonia requiring hospitalization that presented with fever and extensive rash as the primary presenting symptoms. Rash has only been rarely reported in COVID-19 patients, and has not been previously described

Genetic Characterization of the Poultry Red Mite (<i>Dermanyssus gallinae</i>) in Poland and a Comparison with European and Asian Isolates

(1) Background: The blood-feeding mite Dermanyssus gallinae (De Geer 1778) continues to attract wide interest from researchers and bird breeders. The aim of this study was to evaluate the genetic diversity of D. gallinae populations in five commercial laying hen farms in Poland and to determine their similarity with isolates from other countries. The study involved an analysis of a fragment of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene (COI). A total of 38 isolates obtained from Polish farms and 338 sequences deposited in GenBank were analyzed. (2) Results: Haplotype No. 46 was dominant (90%) in Polish isolates and was homologous with the isolates from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, and South Korea. These results are indicative of high genetic homogeneity and common ancestry of the poultry red mite and point to a common source of infestation in the examined farms. (3) Conclusions: The genetic diversity of D. gallinae should be further studied to promote a better understanding of how this parasite is disseminated within and between countries