A united statement of the global chiropractic research community against the pseudoscientific claim that chiropractic care boosts immunity.

BACKGROUND: In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) posted reports claiming that chiropractic care can impact the immune system. These claims clash with recommendations from the World Health Organization and World Federation of Chiropractic. We discuss the scientific validity of the claims made in these ICA reports. MAIN BODY: We reviewed the two reports posted by the ICA on their website on March 20 and March 28, 2020. We explored the method used to develop the claim that chiropractic adjustments impact the immune system and discuss the scientific merit of that claim. We provide a response to the ICA reports and explain why this claim lacks scientific credibility and is dangerous to the public. More than 150 researchers from 11 countries reviewed and endorsed our response. CONCLUSION: In their reports, the ICA provided no valid clinical scientific evidence that chiropractic care can impact the immune system. We call on regulatory authorities and professional leaders to take robust political and regulatory action against those claiming that chiropractic adjustments have a clinical impact on the immune system

Artificial intelligence (AI): multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research and practice

As far back as the industrial revolution, great leaps in technical innovation succeeded in transforming numerous manual tasks and processes that had been in existence for decades where humans had reached the limits of physical capacity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers this same transformative potential for the augmentation and potential replacement of human tasks and activities within a wide range of industrial, intellectual and social applications. The pace of change for this new AI technological age is staggering, with new breakthroughs in algorithmic machine learning and autonomous decision making engendering new opportunities for continued innovation. The impact of AI is significant, with industries ranging from: finance, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, supply chain and logistics all set to be disrupted by the onset of AI technologies. The study brings together the collective insight from a number of leading expert contributors to highlight the significant opportunities, challenges and potential research agenda posed by the rapid emergence of AI within a number of domains: technological, business and management, science and technology, government and public sector. The research offers significant and timely insight to AI technology and its impact on the future of industry and society in general

Stability of the extragalactic VLBI reference frame

The qualification and the maintenance of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) source directions are currently based on global statistics regarding the complete data set of VLBI observations of extragalactic radio sources. The founding hypothesis in the selection of extragalactic objects to access a quasi-inertial reference system is that their directions are fixed in space. Therefore the study of the time variability of the sources is an important step in the process of checking and improving the reliability of the ICRF, in view of high precision applications such as Earth rotation studies or the unification with future space astrometry results. In this paper we investigate the systematic and random behaviours in time series of individual determinations of coordinates for several hundred sources over 1987-1999. New criteria for the qualification of sources in a future revision of the ICRF are proposed

Caso para diagnóstico Case for diagnosis

Relata-se caso de erythema gyratum repens em paciente do sexo masculino, de 40 anos, com eritema disseminado, pruriginoso, bizarro, figurado, com fina descamação nas bordas. Na primeira consulta, os exames laboratoriais e a radiografia do tórax foram normais. Durante acompanhamento clínico foi diagnosticado câncer de pulmão por tomografia computadorizada de tórax, tendo a imuno-histoquímica da biópsia da linfonodomegalia inguinal confirmado o pulmão como sítio primário.<br>A case of erythema gyratum repens is described in a 40-year-old man with a generalized, bizarre, figurated and pruritic erythema with fine scaling borders. Laboratorial exams and radiography of the thorax were normal in the first visit. A tomographic study of the thorax showed a lobulated pulmonary nodule and the immunohistochemistry on the biopsy of an inguinal lymph node confirmed the lung cancer as the primary site of the neoplasia