Background
The heterogeneity and lack of validation of existing severity scores for food allergic reactions limit standardization of case management and research advances. We aimed to develop and ...validate a severity score for food allergic reactions.
Methods
Following a multidisciplinary experts consensus, it was decided to develop a food allergy severity score (FASS) with ordinal (oFASS) and numerical (nFASS) formats. oFASS with 3 and 5 grades were generated through expert consensus, and nFASS by mathematical modeling. Evaluation was performed in the EuroPrevall outpatient clinic cohort (8232 food reactions) by logistic regression with request of emergency care and medications used as outcomes. Discrimination, classification, and calibration were calculated. Bootstrapping internal validation was followed by external validation (logistic regression) in 5 cohorts (3622 food reactions). Correlation of nFASS with the severity classification done by expert allergy clinicians by Best‐Worst Scaling of 32 food reactions was calculated.
Results
oFASS and nFASS map consistently, with nFASS having greater granularity. With the outcomes emergency care, adrenaline and critical medical treatment, oFASS and nFASS had a good discrimination (receiver operating characteristic area under the curve ROC‐AUC>0.80), classification (sensitivity 0.87–0.92, specificity 0.73–0.78), and calibration. Bootstrapping over ROC‐AUC showed negligible biases (1.0 × 10−6–1.23 × 10−3). In external validation, nFASS performed best with higher ROC‐AUC. nFASS was strongly correlated (R 0.89) to best‐worst scoring of 334 expert clinicians.
Conclusion
FASS is a validated and reliable method to measure severity of food allergic reactions. The ordinal and numerical versions that map onto each other are suitable for use by different stakeholders in different settings.
FASS with ordinal (oFASS‐3, oFASS‐5) and numerical (nFASS) formats that map consistently was developed by multidisciplinary experts' consensus and mathematical modeling. Following evaluation, internal and external validation, FASS is a validated and reliable method to measure severity of food allergic reactions. oFASS‐3, oFASS‐5, and nFASS are suitable for use by different stakeholders in different settings.Abbreviations: EuroPrevall, Prevalence, Cost and Basis of Food Allergy in Europe; FASS, Food Allergy Severity Score; HCSC, Hospital Clinico San Carlos; iFAAM, European union‐funded project Integrated Approaches to Food Allergen and Allergy Risk Management; NORA, Network for Online Registration of Anaphylaxis; oFASS, ordinal FASS; oFASS‐3, ordinal FASS with 3 grades oFASS‐5, ordinal FASS with 5 grades; SAFE, European union‐funded project Plant food allergies: field to table strategies for reducing their incidence in Europe.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) alters left atrial (LA) hemodynamics, which can lead to thrombosis in the left atrial appendage (LAA), systemic embolism and stroke. A personalized risk-stratification of AF ...patients for stroke would permit improved balancing of preventive anticoagulation therapies against bleeding risk. We investigated how LA anatomy and function impact LA and LAA hemodynamics, and explored whether patient-specific analysis by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can predict the risk of LAA thrombosis. We analyzed 4D-CT acquisitions of LA wall motion with an in-house immersed-boundary CFD solver. We considered six patients with diverse atrial function, three with either a LAA thrombus (removed digitally before running the simulations) or a history of transient ischemic attacks (LAAT/TIA-pos), and three without a LAA thrombus or TIA (LAAT/TIA-neg). We found that blood inside the left atrial appendage of LAAT/TIA-pos patients had marked alterations in residence time and kinetic energy when compared with LAAT/TIA-neg patients. In addition, we showed how the LA conduit, reservoir and booster functions distinctly affect LA and LAA hemodynamics. Finally, fixed-wall and moving-wall simulations produced different LA hemodynamics and residence time predictions for each patient. Consequently, fixed-wall simulations risk-stratified our small cohort for LAA thrombosis worse than moving-wall simulations, particularly patients with intermediate LAA residence time. Overall, these results suggest that both wall kinetics and LAA morphology contribute to LAA blood stasis and thrombosis.
Educación Híbrida: una Experiencia de Vuelta al Aula Paez, Nicolas; Marcet, Diego Fernando; Cozzi, Gonzalo Alejandro
Revista iberoamericana de tecnologia en educación y educación en tecnología,
06/2024
38
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Desde febrero de 2020 la pandemia de COVID-19 se extendió por todo el planeta, impactando en todos los ámbitos de nuestra vida incluida la educación. Nos vimos forzados a renunciar a nuestras aulas ...físicas para dictar nuestras clases por videoconferencia. Este cambio tuvo distinto impacto dependiendo la forma en que cada docente venía dictando su materia. Luego de dos años la pandemia pasó y volvimos al aula pero de una forma distinta. El presente trabajo relata la experiencia de atravesar la pandemia y volver al aula en una materia de Ingeniería de Software dictada en la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Junto con la experiencia se resumen una serie de aprendizajes obtenidos y un conjunto de reflexiones de cara al futuro.
In this study, we report on the synthesis of ternary photocatalysts comprising TiO
2
/SnO
2
/g-C
3
N
4
for the degradation of ciprofloxacin (CIP) in water. SnO
2
nanoparticles were synthesized via ...the sol–gel method, while g-C
3
N
4
was obtained through melamine calcination. Commercial TiO
2
and SnO
2
nanopowders were also used. The heterojunctions were synthesized via the wet impregnation method. The photocatalysts were characterized via various techniques, including XRD, TEM, STEM, FTIR, N
2
adsorption, UV–Vis DR, and hole tests. Photocatalytic degradation tests of CIP were carried out under UV, visible, and solar radiation. The P25/npA/g-C
3
N
4
(90/10) material exhibited the best performance, achieving CIP degradation of over 97%. The synthesized materials demonstrated excellent initial adsorption of CIP, around 30%, which facilitated subsequent degradation. Notably, the CIP photocatalytic degradation tests performed under solar radiation showed a synergistic effect between the base materials and carbon nitride in highly energetic environments. These results highlight the effectiveness of ternary photocatalysts TiO
2
/SnO
2
/g-C
3
N
4
for CIP degradation, particularly under solar radiation.
Clot formation is a crucial process that prevents bleeding, but can lead to severe disorders when imbalanced. This process is regulated by the coagulation cascade, a biochemical network that controls ...the enzyme thrombin, which converts soluble fibrinogen into the fibrin fibers that constitute clots. Coagulation cascade models are typically complex and involve dozens of partial differential equations (PDEs) representing various chemical species' transport, reaction kinetics, and diffusion. Solving these PDE systems computationally is challenging, due to their large size and multi-scale nature. We propose a multi-fidelity strategy to increase the efficiency of coagulation cascade simulations. Leveraging the slower dynamics of molecular diffusion, we transform the governing PDEs into ordinary differential equations (ODEs) representing the evolution of species concentrations versus blood residence time. We then Taylor-expand the ODE solution around the zero-diffusivity limit to obtain spatiotemporal maps of species concentrations in terms of the statistical moments of residence time, Formula: see text, and provide the governing PDEs for Formula: see text. This strategy replaces a high-fidelity system of N PDEs representing the coagulation cascade of N chemical species by N ODEs and p PDEs governing the residence time statistical moments. The multi-fidelity order (p) allows balancing accuracy and computational cost providing a speedup of over N/p compared to high-fidelity models. Moreover, this cost becomes independent of the number of chemical species in the large computational meshes typical of the arterial and cardiac chamber simulations. Using a coagulation network with N = 9 and an idealized aneurysm geometry with a pulsatile flow as a benchmark, we demonstrate favorable accuracy for low-order models of p = 1 and p = 2. The thrombin concentration in these models departs from the high-fidelity solution by under 20% (p = 1) and 2% (p = 2) after 20 cardiac cycles. These multi-fidelity models could enable new coagulation analyses in complex flow scenarios and extensive reaction networks. Furthermore, it could be generalized to advance our understanding of other reacting systems affected by flow.
A composite optical bench made up of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) skin and aluminum honeycomb has been developed for the Tunable Magnetograph instrument (TuMag) for the SUNRISE III mission ...within the NASA Long Duration Balloon Program. This optical bench has been designed to meet lightweight and low sensitivity to thermal gradient requirements, resulting in a low Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE). In addition to the flight model, a breadboard model identical to the flight one has been manufactured, including embedded fiber Bragg temperature and strain sensors. The aim of this is to explore if the use of distributed fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) can provide valuable information for strain and temperature mapping of an optical instrument on board a space mission during its operation as well as its on-ground testing. Furthermore, surface-mounted strain FBG sensors and thermocouples have been installed in the optical bench for intercomparison purposes. This paper presents the results obtained from a thermal vacuum test consisting of three thermal cycles with stabilization steps at 100 °C, 60 °C, 20 °C and -20 °C. Experimental results provide information about how FBG embedded temperature sensors can provide a proper and quick response to the temperature changes of the optical bench and that embedded FBG strain sensors are able to measure micro-deformation induced in a close-to-zero CTE optical bench.
Metal matrix syntactic foams are promising materials with high energy absorption capability. To study the effects of matrix strength on the quasistatic compressive properties of syntactic foams using ...SiC hollow particles as reinforcement, matrices of Al-A206 and Mg-AZ91 were used. Because Al-A206 is a heat-treatable alloy, matrix strength can be varied by heat treatment conditions, and foams in as-cast, T4, and T7 conditions were tested in this study. It is shown that the peak strength, plateau strength, and toughness of the foams increase with increasing yield strength of the matrix and that these foams show better performance than other foams on a specific property basis. High strain rate testing of the Mg-AZ91/SiC syntactic foams showed that there was little strain rate dependence of the peak stress under strain rates ranging from 10
−3
/s to 726/s.
The Radiation and Dust Sensor is one of six sensors of the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer onboard the Perseverance rover from the Mars 2020 NASA mission. Its primary goal is to characterize the ...airbone dust in the Mars atmosphere, inferring its concentration, shape and optical properties. Thanks to its geometry, the sensor will be capable of studying dust-lifting processes with a high temporal resolution and high spatial coverage. Thanks to its multiwavelength design, it will characterize the solar spectrum from Mars' surface. The present work describes the sensor design from the scientific and technical requirements, the qualification processes to demonstrate its endurance on Mars' surface, the calibration activities to demonstrate its performance, and its validation campaign in a representative Mars analog. As a result of this process, we obtained a very compact sensor, fully digital, with a mass below 1 kg and exceptional power consumption and data budget features.
Background
In previous studies, authors use ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) to analyze the characteristics of cyclitic membranes and the associated complications in patients with pars planitis. ...However, there are no reports regarding the prevalence of cyclitic membranes or complications at diagnosis and during follow-up.
Purpose
To describe the characteristics and complications of cyclitic membranes, as determined by UBM in patients with pars planitis using AVISO-S™ (Quantel Medical) equipment with a 50-MHz linear probe with a focus at the pars plana.
Design
This retrospective study reviewed UBM images of patients diagnosed with pars planitis, from the Inflammatory Eye Disease Clinic in Mexico City from January 2010 to June 2016.
Results
Cyclitic membranes were observed in the first UBM image in 67 eyes (56.7%) and during follow-up in 81 eyes (68.62%). In 67 eyes (82.71%), the cyclitic membranes extended through one or two quadrants. Extension toward the posterior lens capsule was recognized in 15 eyes (18.52%) and extension toward the peripheral retina in 12 eyes (14.81%). Complications included ciliary body detachments in 10 eyes (12.35%) and peripheral retinal traction in 8 eyes (9.88%).
Conclusions
UBM is a valuable tool for the diagnosis of cyclitic membranes at admittance and during follow-up of patients with pars planitis; it helps the clinician to detect this complication early.
The implementation of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) presents a vast and intricate array of challenges, including the establishment of governance systems that engage all ...societal actors, particularly nongovernmental entities and youth, in proposing solutions and decision-making. This article investigates the potential of collective intelligence as a tool within citizen science to create solutions for SDG-related challenges and to establish or enhance necessary governance mechanisms. We detail a collective intelligence experiment conducted during the UN Climate Change Conference 2019 (COP25; Madrid, December 2-13), which aimed to generate a prioritised list of actions addressing SDG 6, Water and Sanitation and SDG 13, Climate Action. The experiment involved 1,253 students aged 15 to 17 who proposed, modified, and prioritised 14,517 ideas using an online platform created by Kampal, a spin-off of the University of Zaragoza. We discuss: a) participation protocols following citizen science methodologies; b) the platform description; c) results concerning the participation process, the tool's effectiveness in collectively extracting the best solutions, and the quality of the generated proposals; and d) enhancements and new research directions for using citizen science and collective intelligence to tackle SDG-related challenges in a collaborative and participatory way.
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