A review on soilless cultivation: The hope of urban agriculture

The cultivation of plants without using soil as a rooting medium is known as soilless farming. Depending on the requirement and type of crop, there are several soilless systems, including hydroponic, aeroponic, vertical farming, and others. The rate at which megacities are growing is worrying. As a result, urban agriculture needs to undergo a revolution in order to address the problem of food scarcity and hunger. These significant quantitative and qualitative food concerns can be solved by soilless farming in urban environments. In greenhouses and tunnels, about 3.5% of the world's crops are produced utilizing soilless, hydroponic farming methods. People who reside in deserts, the arctic, and other difficult-to-farm places can build up hydroponic farms. Since there is no soil, there are fewer insects and weeds. Vegetables, fruits, flowers, and medicinal plants are among the crops grown in soilless or hydroponic systems. Growth media is used in soilless culture methods in place of soil. As growth media, inorganic or organic substrates (barks, coconut coir, coconut soil, fleece, marc, peat) are used. Aquaponics in Nepal has a promising future because it is still in its early phases and is expected to thrive and expand well. As a result, a variety of crops are produced year, increasing income. Soilless cultures are thought of as a recently found approach to agricultural development, yet they are extremely difficult to put into practice

Planck early results. II. The thermal performance of Planck

The performance of the Planck instruments in space is enabled by their low operating temperatures, 20 K for LFI and 0.1 K for HFI, achieved through a combination of passive radiative cooling and three active mechanical coolers. The scientific requirement for very broad frequency coverage led to two detector technologies with widely different temperature and cooling needs. Active coolers could satisfy these needs; a helium cryostat, as used by previous cryogenic space missions (IRAS, COBE, ISO, Spitzer, AKARI), could not. Radiative cooling is provided by three V-groove radiators and a large telescope baffle. The active coolers are a hydrogen sorption cooler (<20 K), a 4He Joule-Thomson cooler (4.7 K), and a 3He-4He dilution cooler (1.4 K and 0.1 K). The flight system was at ambient temperature at launch and cooled in space to operating conditions. The HFI bolometer plate reached 93 mK on 3 July 2009, 50 days after launch. The solar panel always faces the Sun, shadowing the rest of Planck, and operates at a mean temperature of 384 K. At the other end of the spacecraft, the telescope baffle operates at 42.3 K and the telescope primary mirror operates at 35.9 K. The temperatures of key parts of the instruments are stabilized by both active and passive methods. Temperature fluctuations are driven by changes in the distance from the Sun, sorption cooler cycling and fluctuations in gas-liquid flow, and fluctuations in cosmic ray flux on the dilution and bolometer plates. These fluctuations do not compromise the science data.Planck is too large a project to allow full acknowledgement of all contributions by individuals, institutions, industries, and funding agencies. The main entities involved in the mission operations are as follows. The European Space Agency operates the satellite via its Mission Operations Centre located at ESOC (Darmstadt, Germany) and coordinates scientific operations via the Planck Science Office located at ESAC (Madrid, Spain). Two Consortia, comprising around 50 scientific institutes within Europe, the USA, and Canada, and funded by agencies from the participating countries, developed the scientific instruments LFI and HFI, and continue to operate them via Instrument Operations Teams located in Trieste (Italy) and Orsay (France). The Consortia are also responsible for scientific processing of the acquired data. The Consortia are led by the Principal Investigators: J.-L. Puget in France for HFI (funded principally by CNES and CNRS/INSU-IN2P3) and N. Mandolesi in Italy for LFI (funded principally via ASI). NASA’s US Planck Project, based at JPL and involving scientists at many US institutions, contributes significantly to the efforts of these two Consortia. A description of the Planck Collaboration and a list of its members, indicating which technical or scientific activities they have been involved in, can be found at (http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=PLANCK&page=Planck_Collaboration). The Planck Collaboration acknowledges the support of: ESA; CNES and CNRS/INSU-IN2P3-INP (France); ASI, CNR, and INAF (Italy); NASA and DoE (USA); STFC and UKSA (UK); CSIC, MICINN and JA (Spain); Tekes, AoF and CSC (Finland); DLR and MPG (Germany); CSA (Canada); DTU Space (Denmark); SER/SSO (Switzerland); RCN (Norway); SFI (Ireland); FCT/MCTES (Portugal); and DEISA (EU). We acknowledge the use of thermal models from Thales for the payload, IAS for the HFI, JPL for the sorption cooler, and Laben for the LFI. Some of the results in this paper have been derived using the HEALPix package (Górski et al. 2005). The HFI team wishes to thank warmly the Herschel-Planck project team under the leadership of Thomas Passvogel for their time, effort, and competence in solving the crises following failures of several parts of the cyrochain during Planck system tests. We acknowledge very useful discussions on the thermal behaviour of Planck during the system tests from the CSL team, who went far beyond their formal responsibilities

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake