The epidemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), originating in Wuhan, China, has become a major public health challenge for not only China but also countries around the world. The World Health ...Organization announced that the outbreaks of the novel coronavirus have constituted a public health emergency of international concern. As of February 26, 2020, COVID-19 has been recognized in 34 countries, with a total of 80,239 laboratory-confirmed cases and 2,700 deaths. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the epidemic situation. Due to the characteristics of dental settings, the risk of cross infection can be high between patients and dental practitioners. For dental practices and hospitals in areas that are (potentially) affected with COVID-19, strict and effective infection control protocols are urgently needed. This article, based on our experience and relevant guidelines and research, introduces essential knowledge about COVID-19 and nosocomial infection in dental settings and provides recommended management protocols for dental practitioners and students in (potentially) affected areas.
Recent development of dense strong‐motion networks and seismic array processing enables rapid tsunami predictions based on the back‐projection (BP) approach. We develop a multi‐array local BP method ...(MLBP) using seismic networks with epicentral distance from 0.7° to 3.5°. The local BPs using individual arrays are first calculated and are then merged into a single image of the rupture process. This multi‐array approach circumvents the issue of artifact in single‐array BP caused by the overlapping of multiple phases and coda waves. Based on the local BP approach, tsunami predictions are available 7 min after the origin time. Case studies of the 2003 Mw 8.1 Tokachi‐oki and the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku earthquakes show that their rupture zones are well resolved and are comparable with principal slip areas inferred from tsunami observations. The amplitude and arrival time errors of the predicted tsunami waves are within −1.59 to 3.74 m and −10.0 to 10.0 min, which are sufficiently small for warning purposes.
Plain Language Summary
Accurate prediction of tsunami waves for residents who are close to the tsunami source requires fast characterization of tsunami‐genic earthquakes. In this research, we develop a tsunami warning approach based on earthquake source observations using multiple dense clusters of seismic stations installed near the coastal region. At a given stage during an earthquake, the recorded seismic wavefield is back‐propagated to retrieve the direction of the seismic source with respect to each cluster of stations. By combining direction information determined at each station group, we retrieve the principle slip fault area that is most responsible for tsunami generation. A simplified earthquake source model is then constructed to predict the tsunami arrival time and height. By adopting local seismic stations within 80–400 km away from the earthquake sources, we show that the tsunami warning can be issued 7 min after the earthquake origin time. Our case studies of the 2003 Mw 8.1 Tokachi‐oki and the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku earthquakes show that our approach adequately reproduces the tsunami observations. The height errors of the predicted tsunami waves are within −1.59 to 3.74 m; the errors of the arrival times are within −10.0 to 10.0 min, which are sufficiently small for warning purposes.
Key Points
We develop a tsunami warning approach based on a multi‐array back‐projection (BP) method using local seismic networks (0.7°<Δ <3.5°)
The multi‐array BP circumvents the issue of artifacts in single‐array BP caused by the overlapping of multiple phases and coda waves
Case studies of the 2003 M8.1 Tokachi and the 2011 M9.0 Tohoku earthquakes demonstrate fast and accurate predictions for tsunami warning
Objectives
Our aim was to explore the patterns of intrinsic capacity (IC) impairments among community-dwelling older adults and the associations of these different patterns with excessive ...polypharmacy, potentially inappropriate medications, and adverse drug reactions in a nationwide population-based study.
Design
A cross-sectional study included older adults from the Taiwan Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) program in 2020.
Setting and Participants
The study subjects comprised 38,308 adults aged 65 years and older who participated in the ICOPE Step 1 screening and assessed six domains of IC following the World Health Organization (WHO) ICOPE approach.
Methods
Latent class analysis was adopted to identify distinct subgroups with different IC impairments patterns. The associations between different IC impairments patterns and unfavorable medication utilization, including excess polypharmacy (EPP), potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs), and adverse drug reactions (ADRs), were assessed by multivariate logistic regression models.
Results
Latent class analysis identified five distinct subgroups with different IC impairment patterns: robust (latent class prevalence: 59.4%), visual impairment (17.7%), physio-cognitive decline (PCD) with sensory impairment (12.3%), depression with cognitive impairment (7.7%), and impairments in all domains (2.9%). Compared to the robust group, all other groups were at higher odds for unfavorable medication utilization. The “depression with cognitive impairment” group (EPP: aOR=4.35, 95% CI 3.52–5.39, p<0.01; PIMs: aOR=2.73, 95% CI 2.46–3.02, p<0.01) and the “impairment in all domains” group (EPP: aOR=9.02, 95% CI 7.16–11.37, p<0.01; PIMs: aOR=3.75, 95% CI 3.24–4.34, p<0.01) remained at higher odds for EPP and PIMs after adjustment.
Conclusions
We identified five distinct impairment patterns of IC, and each impairment pattern, particularly the “depression with cognitive impairment” and “impairment in all domains”, was associated with higher odds of EPP and PIMs. Further longitudinal and intervention studies are needed to explore long-term outcomes of different impairment pattern and their reversibility.
Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) is the depletion or loss of normal ovarian function, which cause infertility in women before the age of 40 years. Two homozygous germline truncation mutations in ...STAG3 gene had been reported to causes POI in consanguineous families. Here, we aimed to identify the genetic cause of POI in 2 affected sisters manifested with primary amenorrhea and partial development of secondary sexual characters with normal range of height of a consanguineous Han Chinese family. Whole‐exome and Sanger sequencing identified a homozygous donor splice‐site mutation (NM_012447.2: c.1573+5G>A) in the STAG3 gene. RT‐PCR revealed that the mutation causes loss of wild‐type donor splice‐site which leads to aberrant splicing of STAG3 mRNA and consecutive formation of STAG3 alternative transcript (p.Leu490Thrfs*10) . This is the first report of splice‐site mutation of STAG3 gene causes POI in 2 Han Chinese patients.
Mid-infrared (MIR) imaging has emerged as a valuable tool to investigate biological samples, such as tissue histological sections and cell cultures, by providing non-destructive chemical specificity ...without recourse to labels. While feasibility studies have shown the capabilities of MIR imaging approaches to address key biological and clinical questions, these techniques are still far from being deployable by non-expert users. In this review, we discuss the current state of the art of MIR technologies and give an overview on technical innovations and developments with the potential to make MIR imaging systems more readily available to a larger community. The most promising developments over the last few years are discussed here. They include improvements in MIR light sources with the availability of quantum cascade lasers and supercontinuum IR sources as well as the recently developed upconversion scheme to improve the detection of MIR radiation. These technical advances can substantially speed up data acquisition of multispectral or hyperspectral datasets thus providing the end user with vast amounts of data when imaging whole tissue areas of many mm2. Therefore, effective data analysis is of tremendous importance, and progress in method development is discussed with respect to the specific biomedical context.
During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there is an important risk of infection in health care workers, including oral health care workers (OHCWs), due to the characteristics of ...dental practice. In this retrospective study, data pertaining to the 31 OHCWs diagnosed with COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, were retrieved and analyzed. Questionnaires were administered to the subjects over the Internet and telephone. Clinical and epidemiological characteristics and information on the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) were collected. There were 22 females and 9 males, with a median age of 39 y. Although the severity of most cases of COVID-19 (93.5%) was mild or moderate, 1 case was severe, and another case was critical, resulting in death. Fever was the main first symptom of COVID-19, followed by fatigue and myalgia. Most of the OHCWs routinely used PPE such as medical masks, gloves, caps, and work clothes while performing clinical work. N95 or KN95 masks were rarely available because of the scarcity of PPE during the outbreak. Nineteen OHCWs reported a contact history, among whom 7 worked in a fever clinic, 5 reported contact with dental patients suspected of having COVID-19, and 7 reported contact with family members with COVID-19–related symptoms at least 1 d earlier. Our findings indicated that there were few clusters of COVID-19 in dental settings. Since the outbreak, the Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, has provided emergency dental treatment, and none of their staff were infected while providing dental service, which indicates that comprehensive measures such as the use of advanced PPE and environmental disinfection can prevent cross-infection in dental practice. The analysis of the procedures followed during the emergency treatments indicated that OHCWs preferred to recommend conservative treatment to patients, suggesting that attention should be paid to the psychological impact of COVID-19 on dental practitioners.
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