Empowerment of Home Health Care Case Managers

Background: Job satisfaction and feelings of empowerment positively impact home health care nurses by improving patient safety and patient outcomes. The project objective determined whether an empowerment educational module improved the feelings of empowerment and job satisfaction of registered nurses at a home health care agency. Methods: A quantitative, pre-test/post-test research study was conducted to measure the success of an empowerment educational module. Laschinger’s (2008) Nursing Worklife questionnaire was administered to 92 participating nurses, 46 were assigned to an experimental group and 46 were assigned to a control group. Participants in the experimental group were queried about their perceptions towards empowerment in home health care environments and their reactions towards the teaching module. Results: The educational module did not significantly impact the participants’ sense of empowerment and seemed to weaken the empowerment at times, albeit in statistically insignificant numbers. Six themes emerged from this discussion

Meat quality of Kuruma prawn (Marsupenaeus japonicus): preliminary evaluation

Among the peneids, Marsupenaeus japonicus, a cold-temperate species, carnivorous, is the mostly cultured prawn in Italy and in the Mediterranean Sea basin, thanks to the good adaptability to the temperature and salinity variations, to the good resistance to the manipulations (better resistance out of water), to its appreciate nourishing qualities and to the good growth rate (Lumare, 1998).Whereas the literature on cultured fish fillet is rich (Gjedrem, 1997; Lanari et al., 1999; Parisi et al., 2003), few are the information about the shrimp meat quality traits.Therefore, the present work aimed at typifying the variations of the meat quality characteristics in shrimps from semi-intensive (supplemented with an artificial diet) or extensive rearing systems

Innovative Covid-19 diagnostics and testing strategies in Italy, Denmark, UK, Israel and Sweden: a comparative analysis including tests, incidence and mortality

Background and aim: Detecting SARS-CoV-2 remains a critical component in the global effort to control COVID-19, particularly with the emergence of variants. Since the outbreak, diagnostic techniques have evolved to meet different contexts and needs. Methods: In this study, we analyzed the use of these techniques in five countries (i.e. Italy, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Israel) based on their specific national testing and contact tracing strategies. We also examined the number of tests performed per week, the positivity rate of tests, and the mortality rate in these populations during the same time periods. These countries were chosen based on the directives of the consortium involved in the CORONADX project. Results: During the three-year period under review, Italy and Denmark adopted large-scale testing strategies over a long period of time, with different results: in Italy an average of 4.5% of the population adhered to diagnosis, in Denmark 21%, while Israel reached 6.5%. The UK prioritised mass testing for short periods, outperforming the other countries with 1,882,596,198 total swabs and an average adherence of 28.1% of the population. Despite this, it recorded the highest number of deaths related to COVID-19 (211,155), with a lethality rate of 0.87%, second only to Sweden with 0.88%, where the average adherence to diagnosis was 1.7% of the population. Significant are the data for Israel, where as deaths increased, so did testing (r = 0.62, p < 0.001). Conclusions: To control future outbreaks it’s fundamental satisfying the need for effective testing strategies and government communication, equitable healthcare access, and education in public health and hygiene principles. (www.actabiomedica.it)

Toward Open Integrated Access and Backhaul with O-RAN

Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications has been recently standardized for use in the fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks, fulfilling the promise of multi-gigabit mobile throughput of current and future mobile radio network generations. In this context, the network densification required to overcome the difficult mmWave propagation will result in increased deployment costs. Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) has been proposed as an effective mean of reducing densification costs by deploying a wireless mesh network of base stations, where backhaul and access transmissions share the same radio technology. However, IAB requires sophisticated control mechanisms to operate efficiently and address the increased complexity. The Open Radio Access Network (RAN) paradigm represents the ideal enabler of RAN intelligent control, but its current specifications are not compatible with IAB. In this work, we discuss the challenges of integrating IAB into the Open RAN ecosystem, detailing the required architectural extensions that will enable dynamic control of 5G IAB networks. We implement the proposed integrated architecture into the first publiclyavailable Open-RAN-enabled experimental framework, which allows prototyping and testing Open-RAN-based solutions over end-to-end 5G IAB networks. Finally, we validate the framework with both ideal and realistic deployment scenarios exploiting the large-scale testing capabilities of publicly available experimental platforms