Global overview of the management of acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic (CHOLECOVID study)

Background: This study provides a global overview of the management of patients with acute cholecystitis during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: CHOLECOVID is an international, multicentre, observational comparative study of patients admitted to hospital with acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on management were collected for a 2-month study interval coincident with the WHO declaration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and compared with an equivalent pre-pandemic time interval. Mediation analysis examined the influence of SARS-COV-2 infection on 30-day mortality. Results: This study collected data on 9783 patients with acute cholecystitis admitted to 247 hospitals across the world. The pandemic was associated with reduced availability of surgical workforce and operating facilities globally, a significant shift to worse severity of disease, and increased use of conservative management. There was a reduction (both absolute and proportionate) in the number of patients undergoing cholecystectomy from 3095 patients (56.2 per cent) pre-pandemic to 1998 patients (46.2 per cent) during the pandemic but there was no difference in 30-day all-cause mortality after cholecystectomy comparing the pre-pandemic interval with the pandemic (13 patients (0.4 per cent) pre-pandemic to 13 patients (0.6 per cent) pandemic; P = 0.355). In mediation analysis, an admission with acute cholecystitis during the pandemic was associated with a non-significant increased risk of death (OR 1.29, 95 per cent c.i. 0.93 to 1.79, P = 0.121). Conclusion: CHOLECOVID provides a unique overview of the treatment of patients with cholecystitis across the globe during the first months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The study highlights the need for system resilience in retention of elective surgical activity. Cholecystectomy was associated with a low risk of mortality and deferral of treatment results in an increase in avoidable morbidity that represents the non-COVID cost of this pandemic

A demonstration of interstellar navigation using new horizons

As NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft exits the solar system bound for interstellar space, it has traveled so far that the nearest stars have shifted markedly from their positions seen from Earth. We demonstrated this by imaging the Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 fields from Earth and New Horizons on 2020 April 23, when the spacecraft was 47.1 au distant. The observed parallaxes for Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 are 32.″4 and 15.″7 , respectively. These measurements are not of research grade, but directly seeing large stellar parallaxes between two widely separated simultaneous observers is vividly educational. Using the New Horizons positions of the two stars alone, referenced to the three-dimensional model (3D) of the solar neighborhood constructed from Gaia DR3 astrometry, further provides the spacecraft spatial position relative to nearby stars with 0.44 au accuracy. The range to New Horizons from the solar system barycenter is recovered to 0.27 au accuracy, and its angular direction to 0.°4 accuracy, when compared to the precise values from NASA Deep Space Network tracking. This is the first time optical stellar astrometry has been used to determine the 3D location of a spacecraft with respect to nearby stars and the first time any method of interstellar navigation has been demonstrated for a spacecraft on an interstellar trajectory. We conclude that the best astrometric approach to navigating spacecraft on their departures to interstellar space is to use a single pair of the closest stars as references, rather than a large sample of more distant stars

ANALYSIS OF THE ELEMENT ABUNDANCE IN ROOTS OF HOLM OAKS AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF DECLINE

INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare). LNL (Laboratori Nazionali Legnaro), Annual Report

Preferences for generativity in prosocial behavior: an experimental analysis

This study belongs to the stream of literature on the roots and motivations for pro-social behaviours. In particular, we will test though a laboratory experiment if generativity motivate people to act pro-socially. We borrow from psychology the definition of generativity: it is the stage of psychological development where contributing positively to the community welfare with own actions become a prominent need for human beings (see for example, Erikson 1993, 1998; Fisher, 1995). This concept has been already operationalized for empirical analysis in economics and it has been studied its effect on well-being with observational data (Becchetti e Bellucci, 2021). Using a laboratory analysis, we aim to isolate the effect of generativity on prosocial behavior; in particular, we aim to test if prosocial behavior is observed more frequently in generative contexts, that is, when the effect of the prosocial actions affect not only the direct beneficiary of the action but have the potential to affect the welfare of other subject indirectly, allowing and/or stimulating other prosocial behaviors. We use a workhorse of experimental studies on prosocial behavior, the dictator game, that we modify to create a generative context: the dictator, A, donate to a recipient, B, that will have the chance to donate to a third subject C. We use the following treatments as a control: the standard dictator game with one dictator and one recipient; a dictator game with one dictator and two recipients; a dictator game with two dictators and one recipient. The comparison of the behavior of dictators in a generativity context and in the control treatments will allow us to establish if a preference for generativity exists