The impact of COVID-19 on shoulder and elbow trauma: an Italian survey

Background: Because of the rapid spread of COVID-19, on March 8, 2020 Italy became a “protected area”: people were told not to leave their homes unless it was essential. The aim of this study was to evaluate the activity of our trauma center, relative to shoulder and elbow, in the 30 days starting from March 8, 2020, the first day of restrictions in Italy, and to compare it with the same days of 2019 to weigh the impact of COVID-19 on shoulder and elbow trauma. Materials and methods: Patients managed in our trauma center between March 8, 2020, and April 8, 2020 (COVID period), for shoulder and elbow trauma were retrospectively included and compared to patients admitted in the same period of 2019 (no-COVID period). Clinical records of all participants were examined to obtain information regarding age, sex, mechanism of injury, and diagnosis. Results: During the no-COVID period, 133 patients were admitted for a shoulder or elbow trauma; in the COVID period, there were 47 patients (65% less first aid). In the no-COVID and COVID period, patients with shoulder contusion totaled 60 (14.78% of all; male [M]: 34; female [F]: 26; mean age 51.8 years, range 18-88) and 11 (12.09% of all contusions; M: 7, F: 4; mean age 43 years, range 24-60), respectively. In the no-COVID period, 27 fractures (9.34% of all fractures) involved the shoulder, whereas 18 fractures (8.69%) were registered in the COVID period. In the no-COVID period, 14 elbow fractures were treated (4.8% of all fractures), compared with 4 in the COVID period. In the no-COVID and COVID periods, 6 patients (M: 5, F: 1; mean age 42 years, range 21-64) and 2 patients (M: 1, F: 1; mean age 29.5 years, range 24-35) reported having a feeling of momentary post-traumatic shoulder instability, and 0 and 1 patients (M: 1, F: 0; age 56 years), respectively, reported similar symptoms at the elbow. Finally, first or recurrent dislocations in the no-COVID period were 10, and in the COVID period, 7; elbow dislocations in the no-COVID period were 2, and in the COVID period, there were 3. Conclusions: During the COVID period, we provided a reduced number of health services, especially for patients with low-energy trauma and for those who underwent sports and traffic accidents. However, during the COVID period, elderly subjects remain exposed to shoulder and elbow trauma due to low-energy (domestic) falls. The subsequent hospitalization of these patients has contributed to making it more difficult to manage the hospital wards that are partly occupied by COVID-19 patients

The impact of sodium contamination in tin sulfide thin-film solar cells

Through empirical observations, sodium (Na) has been identified as a benign contaminant in some thin-film solar cells. Here, we intentionally contaminate thermally evaporated tin sulfide (SnS) thin-films with sodium and measure the SnS absorber properties and solar cell characteristics. The carrier concentration increases from 2 × 10[superscript 16] cm[superscript −3] to 4.3 × 10[superscript17] cm[superscript−3] in Na-doped SnS thin-films, when using a 13 nm NaCl seed layer, which is detrimental for SnS photovoltaic applications but could make Na-doped SnS an attractive candidate in thermoelectrics. The observed trend in carrier concentration is in good agreement with density functional theory calculations, which predict an acceptor-type Na[subscriptSn] defect with low formation energy.United States. Department of Energy (SunShot Initiative, Contract No. DE-EE0005329)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant No. CHE-11115577)Alexander von Humboldt FoundationNational Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship ProgramMIT Energy Initiative (Fellowship)United States. Department of Energy. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (Postdoctoral Research Award)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award No. DMR-08-19762)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Center for Nanoscale Systems (Award No. ECS-0335765

Coupled Analysis of In Vitro and Histology Tissue Samples to Quantify Structure-Function Relationship

The structure/function relationship is fundamental to our understanding of biological systems at all levels, and drives most, if not all, techniques for detecting, diagnosing, and treating disease. However, at the tissue level of biological complexity we encounter a gap in the structure/function relationship: having accumulated an extraordinary amount of detailed information about biological tissues at the cellular and subcellular level, we cannot assemble it in a way that explains the correspondingly complex biological functions these structures perform. To help close this information gap we define here several quantitative temperospatial features that link tissue structure to its corresponding biological function. Both histological images of human tissue samples and fluorescence images of three-dimensional cultures of human cells are used to compare the accuracy of in vitro culture models with their corresponding human tissues. To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior work on a quantitative comparison of histology and in vitro samples. Features are calculated from graph theoretical representations of tissue structures and the data are analyzed in the form of matrices and higher-order tensors using matrix and tensor factorization methods, with a goal of differentiating between cancerous and healthy states of brain, breast, and bone tissues. We also show that our techniques can differentiate between the structural organization of native tissues and their corresponding in vitro engineered cell culture models