Crisis requires society to renew itself, albeit in a disruptive way. The current Covid-19 pandemic is transforming ways of working, living, and relating to each other on a global level, suddenly and ...dramatically. This paper focuses on the field of education to show how higher education institutions are undergoing radical transformations driven by the need to digitalize education and training processes in record time with academics who lack innate technological capabilities for online teaching. The university system must strive to overcome this situation to be competitive and provide high-quality education in a scenario of digital transformation, disruptive technological innovations, and accelerated change. To achieve these goals, this paper explains some barriers and challenges that universities encounter, as well as technological resources and methodologies they have used in the current scenario to transform higher education to face Covid-19 disruption. The discussion and conclusion synthesize significant insights that can be applied to the digitalization of education in the foreseeable future.
Three inherited autosomal dominant conditions-BRCA-related hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC), Lynch syndrome (LS) and familial hypercholesterolemia (FH)-have been termed the Centers for ...Disease Control and Prevention Tier 1 (CDCT1) genetic conditions, for which early identification and intervention have a meaningful potential for clinical actionability and a positive impact on public health
. In typical medical practice, genetic testing for these conditions is based on personal or family history, ethnic background or other demographic characteristics
. In this study of a cohort of 26,906 participants in the Healthy Nevada Project (HNP), we first evaluated whether population screening could efficiently identify carriers of these genetic conditions and, second, we evaluated the impact of genetic risk on health outcomes for these participants. We found a 1.33% combined carrier rate for pathogenic and likely pathogenic (P/LP) genetic variants for HBOC, LS and FH. Of these carriers, 21.9% of participants had clinically relevant disease, among whom 70% had been diagnosed with relevant disease before age 65. Moreover, 90% of the risk carriers had not been previously identified, and less than 19.8% of these had documentation in their medical records of inherited genetic disease risk, including family history. In a direct follow-up survey with all carriers, only 25.2% of individuals reported a family history of relevant disease. Our experience with the HNP suggests that genetic screening in patients could identify at-risk carriers, who would not be otherwise identified in routine care.
In spite of the widespread recognition of the important roles that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) play in most economies, limited research has focused on their impacts on the natural ...environment and the strategies such enterprises adopt to reduce these impacts. It is usually assumed that SMEs lack the resources to implement proactive environmental strategies that go beyond minimum regulatory compliance. In this study of 108 SMEs in the automotive repair sector in Southern Spain, we found that SMEs undertake a range of environmental strategies from reactive regulatory compliance to proactive pollution prevention and environmental leadership. These strategies are associated with three organizational capabilities: shared vision, stakeholder management, and strategic proactivity, hypothesized based on the unique strategic characteristics of SMEs—shorter lines of communication and closer interaction within the SMEs, the presence of a founder's vision, flexibility in managing external relationships, and an entrepreneurial orientation. We also found that firms with the most proactive practices exhibited a significantly positive financial performance.
This study investigated the effects of active and/or passive warm‐up tasks on the hamstring muscles stiffness through elastography and passive torque measurements. On separate occasions, fourteen ...males randomly completed four warm‐up protocols comprising Control, Cycling, Foam rolling, or Cycling plus Foam rolling (Mixed). The stiffness of the hamstring muscles was assessed through shear wave elastography, along with the passive torque‐angle relationship and maximal range of motion (ROM) before, 5, and 30 minutes after each experimental condition. At 5 minutes, Cycling and Mixed decreased shear modulus (−10.3% ± 5.9% and −7.7% ± 8.4%, respectively; P≤.0003, effect size ES≥0.24) and passive torque (−7.17% ± 8.6% and −6.2% ± 7.5%, respectively; P≤.051, ES≥0.28), and increased ROM (+2.9% ± 2.9% and +3.2% ± 3.5%, respectively; P≤.001, ES≥0.30); 30 minutes following Mixed, shear modulus (P=.001, ES=0.21) and passive torque (P≤.068, ES≥0.2) were still slightly decreased, while ROM increased (P=.046, ES=0.24). Foam rolling induced “small” immediate short‐term decreases in shear modulus (−5.4% ± 5.7% at 5 minutes; P=.05, ES=0.21), without meaningful changes in passive torque or ROM at any time point (P≥.12, ES≤0.23). These results suggest that the combined warm‐up elicited no acute superior effects on muscle stiffness compared with cycling, providing evidence for the key role of active warm‐up to reduce muscle stiffness. The time between warm‐up and competition should be considered when optimizing the effects on muscle stiffness.
The restricted area of space used by most mobile animals is thought to result from fitness‐rewarding decisions derived from gaining information about the environment. Yet, assessments of how animals ...deal with uncertainty using memory have been largely theoretical, and an empirically derived mechanism explaining restricted space use in animals is still lacking. Using a patch‐to‐patch movement analysis, we investigated predictions of how free‐ranging bison (Bison bison) living in a meadow‐forest matrix use memory to reduce uncertainty in energy intake rate. Results indicate that bison remembered pertinent information about location and quality of meadows, and they used this information to selectively move to meadows of higher profitability. Moreover, bison chose profitable meadows they had previously visited, and this choice was stronger after visiting a relatively poor quality meadow. Our work demonstrates a link between memory, energy gains and restricted space use while establishing a fitness‐based integration of movement, cognitive and spatial ecology.
Going global – Travel and the 2019 novel coronavirus Rodríguez-Morales, Alfonso J.; MacGregor, Kirsten; Kanagarajah, Sanch ...
Travel medicine and infectious disease,
January-February 2020, 2020 Jan - Feb, 2020-01-00, 20200101, Letnik:
33
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Since 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) has made five declarations of disease outbreaks considered Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC): the 2009H1N1 (or swine flu) ...pandemic, the 2014 polio declaration, the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa, the 2015–16 Zika virus epidemic and, as of 17 July 2019, the Kivu Ebola epidemic which began in 2018 1,2. ...the PHEIC designation was created following an update to the International Health Regulations (2005) after that outbreak. The ECDC has developed multiple documents in response, including technical reports, statements, risk assessments, algorithms, among others, related to diagnosis, management, and prevention 25–30.2 United Kingdom Travel patterns between the UK and China are well established; in an analysis of air travel from cities in China to international destinations in 2019, nine of the ten cities receiving the highest volumes of arriving passengers were in Asia, with London (UK), ranking 10th 18. ...the outbreak of 2019-nCoV with the evolving epidemiological picture has added some complexities; rapidly changing case numbers, travellers exporting cases, shifting government advice based on logistics rather than public health risk, and media scare stories to name but a few.
SUMMARYIn recent decades, several new diseases have emerged in different geographical areas, with pathogens including Ebola virus, Zika virus, Nipah virus, and coronaviruses (CoVs). Recently, a new ...type of viral infection emerged in Wuhan City, China, and initial genomic sequencing data of this virus do not match with previously sequenced CoVs, suggesting a novel CoV strain (2019-nCoV), which has now been termed severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is suspected to originate from an animal host (zoonotic origin) followed by human-to-human transmission, the possibility of other routes should not be ruled out. Compared to diseases caused by previously known human CoVs, COVID-19 shows less severe pathogenesis but higher transmission competence, as is evident from the continuously increasing number of confirmed cases globally. Compared to other emerging viruses, such as Ebola virus, avian H7N9, SARS-CoV, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), SARS-CoV-2 has shown relatively low pathogenicity and moderate transmissibility. Codon usage studies suggest that this novel virus has been transferred from an animal source, such as bats. Early diagnosis by real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing has facilitated the identification of the pathogen at an early stage. Since no antiviral drug or vaccine exists to treat or prevent SARS-CoV-2, potential therapeutic strategies that are currently being evaluated predominantly stem from previous experience with treating SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and other emerging viral diseases. In this review, we address epidemiological, diagnostic, clinical, and therapeutic aspects, including perspectives of vaccines and preventive measures that have already been globally recommended to counter this pandemic virus.
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