Violence

As part of an effort to grapple with the meaning of violence, Hannah Arendt argued that it was curious how infrequently violence was taken up for special consideration in conversations of history and politics, remarking that “this shows to what an extent violence and its arbitrariness were taken for granted and therefore neglected; no one questions or examines what is obvious to all” (8). While we are not suggesting that violence has eluded the critical eye in the time since Arendt’s argument, there is something remarkably resonant about the idea that violence is taken-for-granted as part of human existence, and thus—for privileged citizens protected from its affects—invisible. In this issue, the contributors explore how violence continues to define and shape social, political, and cultural terrains. In what follows, we explore what it means to talk about violence and follow this with a general introduction to the pieces in this special issue that tease out the various locations of violence and its representations across different spaces

Calibration of a common shortwave multispectral camera system for quantitative agricultural applications

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for collecting multispectral imagery of agricultural fields are becoming more affordable and accessible. However, there is need to validate calibration of sensors on these systems when using them for quantitative analyses such as evapotranspiration, and other modeling for agricultural applications. The results of laboratory testing of a MicaSense (Seattle, WA, USA) RedEdge™ 3 multispectral camera and MicaSense Downwelling Light Sensor (irradiance sensor) system using a calibrated integrating sphere were presented. Responses of the camera and irradiance sensor were linear over many light levels and became non-linear at light levels below expected real-world, field conditions. Simple linear corrections should suffice for most light conditions encountered during the growing season. Using an irradiance sensor or similar system may not properly account for light variability in cloudy or partly cloudy conditions as also identified by others. A simple stand for aiding in reference panel imagining was also described, which may facilitate repetitive, consistent reference panel imaging

Status and recommendations of technological and data-driven innovations in cancer care:Focus group study

Background: The status of the data-driven management of cancer care as well as the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations aimed at accelerating the rate of progress in this field are topics of great interest. Two international workshops, one conducted in June 2019 in Cordoba, Spain, and one in October 2019 in Athens, Greece, were organized by four Horizon 2020 (H2020) European Union (EU)-funded projects: BOUNCE, CATCH ITN, DESIREE, and MyPal. The issues covered included patient engagement, knowledge and data-driven decision support systems, patient journey, rehabilitation, personalized diagnosis, trust, assessment of guidelines, and interoperability of information and communication technology (ICT) platforms. A series of recommendations was provided as the complex landscape of data-driven technical innovation in cancer care was portrayed. Objective: This study aims to provide information on the current state of the art of technology and data-driven innovations for the management of cancer care through the work of four EU H2020-funded projects. Methods: Two international workshops on ICT in the management of cancer care were held, and several topics were identified through discussion among the participants. A focus group was formulated after the second workshop, in which the status of technological and data-driven cancer management as well as the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations in this area were collected and analyzed. Results: Technical and data-driven innovations provide promising tools for the management of cancer care. However, several challenges must be successfully addressed, such as patient engagement, interoperability of ICT-based systems, knowledge management, and trust. This paper analyzes these challenges, which can be opportunities for further research and practical implementation and can provide practical recommendations for future work. Conclusions: Technology and data-driven innovations are becoming an integral part of cancer care management. In this process, specific challenges need to be addressed, such as increasing trust and engaging the whole stakeholder ecosystem, to fully benefit from these innovations

PHA4GE quality control contextual data tags:standardized annotations for sharing public health sequence datasets with known quality issues to facilitate testing and training

As public health laboratories expand their genomic sequencing and bioinformatics capacity for the surveillance of different pathogens, labs must carry out robust validation, training, and optimization of wet- and dry-lab procedures. Achieving these goals for algorithms, pipelines and instruments often requires that lower quality datasets be made available for analysis and comparison alongside those of higher quality. This range of data quality in reference sets can complicate the sharing of sub-optimal datasets that are vital for the community and for the reproducibility of assays. Sharing of useful, but sub-optimal datasets requires careful annotation and documentation of known issues to enable appropriate interpretation, avoid being mistaken for better quality information, and for these data (and their derivatives) to be easily identifiable in repositories. Unfortunately, there are currently no standardized attributes or mechanisms for tagging poor-quality datasets, or datasets generated for a specific purpose, to maximize their utility, searchability, accessibility and reuse. The Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) is an international community of scientists from public health, industry and academia focused on improving the reproducibility, interoperability, portability, and openness of public health bioinformatic software, skills, tools and data. To address the challenges of sharing lower quality datasets, PHA4GE has developed a set of standardized contextual data tags, namely fields and terms, that can be included in public repository submissions as a means of flagging pathogen sequence data with known quality issues, increasing their discoverability. The contextual data tags were developed through consultations with the community including input from the International Nucleotide Sequence Data Collaboration (INSDC), and have been standardized using ontologies - community-based resources for defining the tag properties and the relationships between them. The standardized tags are agnostic to the organism and the sequencing technique used and thus can be applied to data generated from any pathogen using an array of sequencing techniques. The tags can also be applied to synthetic (lab created) data. The list of standardized tags is maintained by PHA4GE and can be found at https://github.com/pha4ge/contextual_data_QC_tags. Definitions, ontology IDs, examples of use, as well as a JSON representation, are provided. The PHA4GE QC tags were tested, and are now implemented, by the FDA's GenomeTrakr laboratory network as part of its routine submission process for SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance. We hope that these simple, standardized tags will help improve communication regarding quality control in public repositories, in addition to making datasets of variable quality more easily identifiable. Suggestions for additional tags can be submitted to PHA4GE via the New Term Request Form in the GitHub repository. By providing a mechanism for feedback and suggestions, we also expect that the tags will evolve with the needs of the community.</p

Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Patient Volumes, Acuity, and Outcomes in Pediatric Emergency Departments: A Nationwide Study

Objectives The aim of this study was to quantify the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric emergency department (ED) utilization and outcomes. Methods This study is an interrupted-Time-series observational study of children presenting to 11 Canadian tertiary-care pediatric EDs. Data were grouped into weeks in 3 study periods: prepandemic (January 1, 2018-January 27, 2020), peripandemic (January 28, 2020-March 10, 2020), and early pandemic (March 11, 2020-April 30, 2020). These periods were compared with the same time intervals in the 2 preceding calendar years. Primary outcomes were number of ED visits per week. The secondary outcomes were triage acuity, hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, mortality, length of hospital stay, ED revisits, and visits for trauma and mental health concerns. Results There were 577,807 ED visits (median age, 4.5 years; 52.9% male). Relative to the prepandemic period, there was a reduction [-58%; 95% confidence interval (CI),-63% to-51%] in the number of ED visits during the early-pandemic period, with concomitant higher acuity. There was a concurrent increase in the proportion of ward [odds ratio (OR), 1.39; 95% CI, 1.32-1.45] and intensive care unit (OR, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.01-1.42) admissions, and trauma-related ED visits among children less than 10 years (OR, 1.51; 95% CI, 1.45-1.56). Mental health-related visits in children declined in the early-pandemic period (in \u3c10 years,-60%; 95% CI,-67% to-51%; in children ≥10 years:-56%; 95% CI,-63% to-47%) relative to the pre-COVID-19 period. There were no differences in mortality or length of stay; however, ED revisits within 72 hours were reduced during the early-pandemic period (percent change:-55%; 95% CI,-61% to-49%; P \u3c 0.001). Conclusions After the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, dramatic reductions in pediatric ED visits occurred across Canada. Children seeking ED care were sicker, and there was an increase in trauma-related visits among children more than 10 years of age, whereas mental health visits declined during the early-pandemic period. When faced with a future pandemic, public health officials must consider the impact of the illness and the measures implemented on children\u27s health and acute care needs

Substrate Cooperativity in Marine Luciferases

Marine luciferases are increasingly used as reporters to study gene regulation. These luciferases have utility in bioluminescent assay development, although little has been reported on their catalytic properties in response to substrate concentration. Here, we report that the two marine luciferases from the copepods, Gaussia princeps (GLuc) and Metridia longa (MLuc) were found, surprisingly, to produce light in a cooperative manner with respect to their luciferin substrate concentration; as the substrate concentration was decreased 10 fold the rate of light production decreased 1000 fold. This positive cooperative effect is likely a result of allostery between the two proposed catalytic domains found in Gaussia and Metridia. In contrast, the marine luciferases from Renilla reniformis (RLuc) and Cypridina noctiluca (CLuc) demonstrate a linear relationship between the concentration of their respective luciferin and the rate of light produced. The consequences of these enzyme responses are discussed

Effect of wearing a face mask on hand-to-face contact by children in a simulated school environment: the Back-to-School COVID-19 Simulation Randomized Clinical Trial

Importance Wearing a face mask in school can reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission but it may also lead to increased hand-to-face contact, which in turn could increase infection risk through self-inoculation. Objective To evaluate the effect of wearing a face mask on hand-to-face contact by children while at school. Design, Setting, and Participants This prospective randomized clinical trial randomized students from junior kindergarten to grade 12 at 2 schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, during August 2020 in a 1:1 ratio to either a mask or control class during a 2-day school simulation. Classes were video recorded from 4 angles to accurately capture outcomes. Interventions Participants in the mask arm were instructed to bring their own mask and wear it at all times. Students assigned to control classes were not required to mask at any time (grade 4 and lower) or in the classroom where physical distancing could be maintained (grade 5 and up). Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcome was the number of hand-to-face contacts per student per hour on day 2 of the simulation. Secondary outcomes included hand-to-mucosa contacts and hand-to-nonmucosa contacts. A mixed Poisson regression model was used to derive rate ratios (RRs), adjusted for age and sex with a random intercept for class with bootstrapped 95% CIs. Results A total of 174 students underwent randomization and 171 students (mask group, 50.6% male; control group, 52.4% male) attended school on day 2. The rate of hand-to-face contacts did not differ significantly between the mask and the control groups (88.2 vs 88.7 events per student per hour; RR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.78-1.28; P = >.99). When compared with the control group, the rate of hand-to-mucosa contacts was significantly lower in the mask group (RR, 0.12; 95% CI, 0.07-0.21), while the rate of hand-to-nonmucosa contacts was higher (RR, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.08-1.82). Conclusions and Relevance In this clinical trial of simulated school attendance, hand-to-face contacts did not differ among students required to wear face masks vs students not required to wear face masks; however, hand-to-mucosa contracts were lower in the face mask group. This suggests that mask wearing is unlikely to increase infection risk through self-inoculation. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0453125

Increased Cortical Thickness in Sports Experts: A Comparison of Diving Players with the Controls

Sports experts represent a population of people who have acquired expertise in sports training and competition. Recently, the number of studies on sports experts has increased; however, neuroanatomical changes following extensive training are not fully understood. In this study, we used cortical thickness measurement to investigate the brain anatomical characteristics of professional divers with extensive training experience. A comparison of the brain anatomical characteristics of the non-athlete group with those of the athlete group revealed three regions with significantly increased cortical thickness in the athlete group. These regions included the left superior temporal sulcus, the right orbitofrontal cortex and the right parahippocampal gyrus. Moreover, a significant positive correlation between the mean cortical thickness of the right parahippocampal gyrus and the training experience was detected, which might indicate the effect of extensive training on diving players' brain structure

The PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

The physics emphases of the PHENIX collaboration and the design and current status of the PHENIX detector are discussed. The plan of the collaboration for making the most effective use of the available luminosity in the first years of RHIC operation is also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Further details of the PHENIX physics program available at http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/phenix

Subcellular Min Oscillations as a Single-Cell Reporter of the Action of Polycations, Protamine, and Gentamicin on Escherichia coli

BACKGROUND: In Escherichia coli, MinD-GFP fusion proteins show rapid pole to pole oscillations. The objective was to investigate the effects of extracellular cations on the subcellular oscillation of cytoplasmic MinD within Escherichia coli. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We exposed bacteria to the extracellular cations Ca(++), Mg(++), the cationic antimicrobial peptide (CAP) protamine, and the cationic aminoglycoside gentamicin. We found rapid and substantial increases in the average MinD oscillation periods in the presence of any of these polyvalent cations. For Ca(++) and Mg(++) the increases in period were transient, even with a constant extracellular concentration, while increases in period for protamine or gentamicin were apparently irreversible. We also found striking interdependence in the action of the small cations with protamine or gentamicin, distorted oscillations under the action of intermediate levels of gentamicin and Ca(++), and reversible freezing of the Min oscillation at high cationic concentrations. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Intracellular Min oscillations provide a fast single-cell reporter of bacterial response to extracellular polycations, which can be explained by the penetration of polycations into cells