PROFESSIONAL PATHOLOGY IN THE REGION OF VARNA - DYNAMICS, PROBLEMS, HORIZONS OF DEVELOPMENT

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Using virtual spaces for learning communities to facilitate project development and collaborative learning

With the extensive expansion of IT in the learning, business and home environments it is becoming apparent that there is considerable opportunity for increasing collaborative interaction if a framework is developed to coordinate the activities of the individuals across the different sectors. As a possible way of achieving this objective we present the online Community of Practice (CoP) developed and presently being trialled at the Institute for Work Based Learning (IWBL), Middlesex University. In this paper, we describe our approach for developing and utilising of this Community of Practice. Through case studies we will give two ways in which it is being currently applied. We will define what we have presently achieved and go on to outline future developments

Morphology of suprascapular notch in medieval skeletons from Bulgaria

The suprascapular notch is situated in the lateral part of the superior border of the scapula, just medial to the base of the coracoid process, giving passage for the suprascapular nerve. The aim of this study is to determine the frequency of different types of suprascapular notch in male and female medieval skeletal series and to assess the sexual differences. The shape of the notch was classified into 5 types, based on the scheme given by Alekseev. A total of 102 scapulae and scapular fragments were investigated. The results show that the deep notch was the most common. In the left female scapulae the shallow notch was frequently observed as well. Three cases of suprascapular foramen, which is considered as a risk factor for suprascapular nerve neuropathy, were observed and there was a double foramen in one of them, which is a very rare case. According to the results of c2 test, there were no significant sexual differences in the distribution of notch types. Our results illustrate that there were some individuals among the investigated medieval population potentially affected by suprascapular nerve entrapment syndrome and their way of livingmay have been impacted by the symptoms accompanying this condition

EVALUATION OF SOME CLINICO-LABORATORY AND CYTOPHOTOMETRIC PARAMETERS AS EARLY DIAGNOSTIC TESTS FOR LEAD INTOXICATION

The clinical manifestation and extent of intoxication by lead aerosols in 51 workers from lead-dangerous manufactures has been follow ed-up. The values of erythrocytometric and laboratory parameters have been estimated. Significant aberrations in the mean erythrocyte diameter, mean erythrocyte thickness and mean erythrocyte spherical index as well as in the urinary delta-aminolevulinic acid excretion have been established during the preclinical stage of saturnism. Morphometric parameters along with delta-aminolevulinic acid possess the highest information value concerning lead intoxication followed by blood hemoglobin values. Both moderate reticulocytosis and erythrocytes with basophilic punctations are insufficiently indicative for the early etiologic diagnosis. Cytomorphometric abnormalities which become more outlined with advancing pathological alterations are of high specificity and validity as early diagnostic tests for lead intoxication

NEUROTOXICAL INJURIES OF WORKERS IN PROFESSIONAL CONTACT WITH HEAVY METALS

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OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE TO BLOOD AND BODY FLUIDS IN HOSPITAL HEALTHCARE WORKERS AND PERCEPTION OF INFECTIOUS RISK

Introduction and aim: Injuries with sharps in healthcare are associated with a risk of infection with blood-borne pathogens that is significant due to the high incidence of injury. Each year, 3 million healthcare workers worldwide experience percutaneous exposure to blood-borne pathogens.The aim was to summarize the results of occupational exposure to blood and body fluids, immunization status and perception of infection risk among hospital-based healthcare workers, and to assess progress in the implementation of blood-borne infection prevention measures.Contingent and methods: 2744 healthcare workers from 19 hospitals in the city of Sofia were studied, 87.3% women, average age 48.08 ± 11.9 years, average work experience 24.8 ± 12.6 years: 763 doctors, 1427 nurses, 208 laboratory assistants , 176 midwives, 77 rehabilitators, 93 nurses. A standardized blood exposure questionnaire “Exposure of hospital personnel to blood and blood-borne infections” was completed anonymously.Results and discussion: 63.2% of healthcare workers had an incident of contact with blood/biological fluids during their work experience, and 45% in the previous year. Unvaccinated against hepatitis B were 41.6%. The probability of infection with blood-borne pathogens from contaminated blood after a needle stick was predominantly rated as high, with equal risk for HBV and HCV. The highest proportion of health care workers reported a 100% probability of HIV infection.Conclusion: The frequency of injuries with sharp objects during work experience and in the previous year was high. Healthcare workers had an inaccurate perception of the risk of infection in the event of an incident involving contaminated blood. Hepatitis B vaccination coverage was low

Vision-Language Integration in Multimodal Video Transformers (Partially) Aligns with the Brain

Integrating information from multiple modalities is arguably one of the essential prerequisites for grounding artificial intelligence systems with an understanding of the real world. Recent advances in video transformers that jointly learn from vision, text, and sound over time have made some progress toward this goal, but the degree to which these models integrate information from modalities still remains unclear. In this work, we present a promising approach for probing a pre-trained multimodal video transformer model by leveraging neuroscientific evidence of multimodal information processing in the brain. Using brain recordings of participants watching a popular TV show, we analyze the effects of multi-modal connections and interactions in a pre-trained multi-modal video transformer on the alignment with uni- and multi-modal brain regions. We find evidence that vision enhances masked prediction performance during language processing, providing support that cross-modal representations in models can benefit individual modalities. However, we don't find evidence of brain-relevant information captured by the joint multi-modal transformer representations beyond that captured by all of the individual modalities. We finally show that the brain alignment of the pre-trained joint representation can be improved by fine-tuning using a task that requires vision-language inferences. Overall, our results paint an optimistic picture of the ability of multi-modal transformers to integrate vision and language in partially brain-relevant ways but also show that improving the brain alignment of these models may require new approaches

Single-Trial {MEG} Data Can Be Denoised Through Cross-Subject Predictive Modeling

A pervasive challenge in brain imaging is the presence of noise that hinders investigation of underlying neural processes, with Magnetoencephalography (MEG) in particular having very low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). The established strategy to increase MEG's SNR involves averaging multiple repetitions of data corresponding to the same stimulus. However, repetition of stimulus can be undesirable, because underlying neural activity has been shown to change across trials, and repeating stimuli limits the breadth of the stimulus space experienced by subjects. In particular, the rising popularity of naturalistic studies with a single viewing of a movie or story necessitates the discovery of new approaches to increase SNR. We introduce a simple framework to reduce noise in single-trial MEG data by leveraging correlations in neural responses across subjects as they experience the same stimulus. We demonstrate its use in a naturalistic reading comprehension task with 8 subjects, with MEG data collected while they read the same story a single time. We find that our procedure results in data with reduced noise and allows for better discovery of neural phenomena. As proof-of-concept, we show that the N400m's correlation with word surprisal, an established finding in literature, is far more clearly observed in the denoised data than the original data. The denoised data also shows higher decoding and encoding accuracy than the original data, indicating that the neural signals associated with reading are either preserved or enhanced after the denoising procedure

Organic production labelling and the increased popularity of organic foods

Introduction: The modern consumer of organic food in his quest to provide quality and safe products seeks guarantees of their origin. In this regard, awareness of objective indications of the identity of organic products is essential.Aim: The aim of this article is to study the consumers’ knowledge about organic food labelling.Materials and Methods: For the purpose of the present research, data from an anonymous survey conducted among 150 organic food consumers from the Dobrich region, in the period from November 2020 until April 2021, were used. The results of the survey were statistically processed using Jamovi Statistics, version 2.2.5. For hypothesis testing, Pearson’s chi-square test (χ2 test) was applied with significance level α = 0.05.Results: Respondents who are aware of the label for organic certification (text information on the packages) associate organic foods with foods free from GMOs, heavy metals, pesticides, chemical fertilizers and antibiotics, hormones, preservatives and dyes (χ² = 6.20 and p = 0.013) and with foods marked with a leaf sign (χ² = 4.03 and p = 0.045). Respondents informed about the biological certification label rely on television programmes (χ² = 4.38 and p = 0.036) and would positively choose to purchase of organic foods in the presence of a health problem (χ² = 5.69 and p = 0.017). In addition, there is association between buying organic food for children and respondents’ knowledge about organic certification (χ² = 4.99 and p = 0.025). The respondents who recognize the sign "European Leaf" as a designation of organic foods, are most often receiving information from specialized websites and internet portals dedicated on organic foods (χ² = 12.8 and p < 0.001).Conclusion: The consumers of organic foods are well informed about the characteristic marking – the organic food label, as well as about organic certification. Participants usually acquire this knowledge from television programmes, internet portals or specialized websites