Zusammenhang zwischen klinischen Befunden bei stationärer Aufnahme von Patienten, die an SARS-CoV-2 erkrankt sind, und dem Behandlungsverlauf

Die Arbeit wurde zu Beginn der COVID-19-Pandemie durchgeführt. Die drohende Kapazitätserschöpfung in der stationären Versorgung von COVID-19-Patienten erforderte eine optimale Ressourcenverteilung, um eine bestmögliche Versorgung der Patienten zu gewährleisten. Hierfür war eine gute Einschätzung des klinischen Zustandes der Patienten von großer Bedeutung. Ziel dieser retrospektiven Studie war es, herauszufinden, ob es Möglichkeiten gibt, anhand des klinischen Befundes zum Zeitpunkt der stationären Aufnahme eines COVID-19-Patienten eine Vorhersage über den Verlauf und das Outcome des Patienten zu treffen. Zur Objektivierung des klinischen Bildes bei Aufnahme wurden der NEWS, der SOFA-Score und der 4C-Mortality-Score berechnet und verglichen. Als Endpunkte wurden Parameter bestimmt, die zur Unterscheidung von kritisch kranken und weniger kritisch kranken Patienten dienten, wie zum Beispiel Aufnahme auf die Intensivstation, Verlegung zur ECMO, Krankenhausmortalität. Das Kollektiv ist im Median 78 Jahre alt und besteht zu 47% aus Frauen. Die Mortalitätsrate beträgt 30,3%. Die Auswertung ergab, dass das klinische Bild bei der stationären Aufnahme einen Vorhersagewert für den weiteren Verlauf und das Outcome des Patienten darstellt. Insgesamt ist der NEWS am besten zur schnellen Ersteinschätzung in der Akutsituation sowie zur Verlaufsbeobachtung geeignet. Für die explizite Vorhersage der Mortalität zeigen jedoch der SOFA- sowie der 4C-Mortality-Score eine bessere Performance

Let’s Work Together — Occupational Factors and Their Correlates to Prison Climate and Inmates’ Attitudes Towards Treatment

The role of psychosocial and structural occupational factors in mental health service provision has broadly been researched. However, less is known about the influence of employees' occupational factors on inmates in correctional treatment settings that mostly seek to apply a milieu-therapeutic approach. Therefore, the present study investigated the relationships between occupational factors (job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and the functionality of the organizational structure) and prison climate, the number of staff members' sick days as well as inmates' treatment motivation. Employees (n = 76) of three different correctional treatment units in Berlin, Germany, rated several occupational factors as well as prison climate. At the same time, treatment motivation of n = 232 inmates was assessed. Results showed that higher ratings of prison climate were associated with higher levels of team climate, job satisfaction and the functionality of the organizational structure, but not with self-efficacy and sick days. There was no significant relationship between occupational factors and the perceived safety on the treatment unit. Inmates' treatment motivation was correlated with all aggregated occupational factors and with average sick days of staff members. Outcomes of this study strongly emphasize the importance of a positive social climate in correctional treatment units for occupational factors of prison staff but also positive treatment outcomes for inmates. Also, in the light of these results, consequences for daily work routine and organizational structure of prisons are discussed

High-Performance Fake Voice Detection on Automatic Speaker Verification Systems for the Prevention of Cyber Fraud with Convolutional Neural Networks

This study proposes a highly effective data analytics approach to prevent cyber fraud on automatic speaker verification systems by classifying histograms of genuine and spoofed voice recordings. Our deep learning-based lightweight architecture advances the application of fake voice detection on embedded systems. It sets a new benchmark with a balanced accuracy of 95.64% and an equal error rate of 4.43%, contributing to adopting artificial intelligence technologies in organizational systems and technologies. As fake voice-related fraud causes monetary damage and serious privacy concerns for various applications, our approach improves the security of such services, being of high practical relevance. Furthermore, the post-hoc analysis of our results reveals that our model confirms image texture analysis-related findings of prior studies and discovers further voice signal features (i.e., textural and contextual) that can advance future work in this field

Label-free impedance flow cytometry for nanotoxicity screening

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Public health communication: Attitudes, experiences, and lessons learned from users of a COVID-19 digital triage tool for children

Background: The pandemic has made public health communication even more daunting because acceptance and implementation of official guidelines and recommendations hinge on this. The situation becomes even more precarious when children are involved. Our child-specific COVID-19 online forward triage tool (OFTT) revealed some of the public health communication challenges. We aimed to explore attitudes, experiences, and challenges faced by OFTT users and their families, in regard to public health recommendations. Methods: We selected key informants (n = 20) from a population of parents, teachers, guardians, as well as doctors who had used the child-specific COVID-19 OFTT and had consented to a further study. Videos rather than face-face interviews were held. Convenience and quota sampling were performed to include a variety of key informants. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed for themes. Results: Several themes emerged, namely; (1) definition and expectations of high-risk persons, (2) quarantine instructions and challenges, (3) blurred division of responsibility between authorities and parents, (4) a novel condition and the evolution of knowledge, (5) definition and implications of socioeconomic status, (6) new normal and societal divisions, and (7) the interconnectedness of these factors-systems thinking. Conclusion: As the virus is evolving and circumstances are changing rapidly, the communication of public health to the different interest groups becomes, both an art and science, even more so when using a new technological communication channel: an OFTT. A myriad of interconnected factors seems to influence attitudes toward public health recommendations, which calls for systems thinking in public health communication