Systemic inflammatory response syndrome and sepsis – epidemiology, differentiation, diagnostics in in clinical practice

Bacterial infection is an important factor causing morbidity and mortality in different populations. Every time exacerbation of infectious response (strength, time of symptom severity, time of progression) and whole cascade of inflammatory reaction is dependent on the efficiency of the organism’s homeostasis. In many situations, especially in case of patients with a decrease level of immune system efficiency, we observe very dynamic intensification of infection and inflammation symptoms. Every time the inflammatory response affect whole body functions and manifests itself in change of biochemical, hematological, and immunological parameters. Those changes are visible specially during systemic inflammatory response. SIRS (systematic inflammatory response syndrome) and sepsis with high levels of incidence and mortality from many years it is a the large diagnostic and therapeutic problem in clinical practice. Annual mortality caused by sepsis which reaches 30 and 50 deaths per 100 000 population, makes it classified as one of a top causes of death among patients under hospital care. Due to its dynamic nature of its course, it is necessary to thoroughly understand its course which may contribute to the search for more effective biochemical and hematological diagnostic markers which will allow to shorten the time of implementation of effective therapy and decrease mortality. The aim of this study was to present the specifity of a SIRS and sepsis and to show its progression, complications and available tools and methods of its diagnosis in clinical practice

Urban Living Labs: how to enable inclusive transdisciplinary research?

The Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach has the potential to create enabling environments for social learning and to be a successful arena for innovative local collaboration in knowledge co-creation and experimentation in the context of research and practice in sustainability transitions. Nevertheless, complex issues such as the urban Food-Water-Energy (FWE) Nexus present a challenge to the realization of such ULL, especially regarding their inclusiveness. We present ULL as a frame for a local knowledge co-creation and participation approach based on the project "Creating Interfaces - Building capacity for integrated governance at the Food-Water-Energy-nexus in cities on the water". This project aims at making FWE Nexus linkages better understandable to the stakeholders (citizens and associations, city government, science, businesses), and to facilitate cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. This paper focuses on and discusses inclusiveness as a key aspect and challenge of ULLs and on what literature and our experiences in this regard suggest for the advancement of the concept of ULL towards ULL 2.0. These findings often also relate to framing transdisciplinary research in a wider sense

Expert facial comparison evidence: Science versus pseudo science

Confirming the identity of the accused is a critical component of many criminal trials. However, recent evidence suggests this process is highly error prone and leads to unacceptably high rates of wrongful conviction (Innocence Project, 2015). When photographic identification evidence is ambiguous, facial mapping practitioners may be called upon to make comparisons between images of the culprit and the accused. This practice assumes that the techniques employed are reliable and can be used to assist the court in making identity confirmation decisions. However, previous experimental work in this area has established that many of these techniques are unreliable (Kleinberg, Vanezis & Burton, 2007; Strathie, McNeill & White, 2012). We extend these findings by examining another facial mapping technique that uses gridlines, drawn between face-pairs, as a potential face matching aid (Oxlee, 2007). Results show that a simple side-by-side presentation of face-pairs without gridlines produces most accurate responding. Moreover, the application of the grideline technique increases the likelihood that two different face pairs will judged to be the same. These findings suggest that continuing to admit facial mapping evidence in court is likely to increase, rather than decrease, the incidence of wrongful conviction

Adjective markers of Polish indigenous lexical personality factors: A peer-rating study

Studies of other people’s personality trait perception have been of marginal significance in the psychology of personality. Such studies usually use tools developed specifically for self-rating research. Similar studies in social psychology are limited to a high level of abstraction. On the basis of earlier Polish peer-rating psycholexical studies, a six-factor structure of dispositional adjectives has been observed, different from the structure obtained in self-rating studies. The purpose of the current study was to construct scales enabling the measurement of the adjective markers of Polish lexical personality traits based on the Big Six in a peer-rating study. Another purpose was to examine the psychometric properties of the constructed scales and identify the most important correlates. The participants were 383 people, with age ranging from 16 to 83 years. The constructed 48-adjective list allows to measure the axial traits of the Polish lexicon: Agreeableness, Impulsiveness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Resilience, and Intellect. Coefficients of internal consistency and stability reached satisfactory values