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Presently, evidence guiding clinicians on the optimal approach to safely screen patients for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to a nonemergent hospital procedure is scarce. In this report, we describe our experience in screening for SARS-CoV-2 prior to semiurgent and urgent hospital procedures.
Design:
Retrospective case series.
Setting:
A single tertiary-care medical center.
Participants:
Our study cohort included patients ≥18 years of age who had semiurgent or urgent hospital procedures or surgeries.
Methods:
Overall, 625 patients were screened for SARS-CoV-2 using a combination of phone questionnaire (7 days prior to the anticipated procedure), RT-PCR and chest computed tomography (CT) between March 1, 2020, and April 30, 2020.
Results:
Of the 625 patients, 520 scans (83.2%) were interpreted as normal; 1 (0.16%) had typical features of COVID-19; 18 scans (2.88%) had indeterminate features of COVID-19; and 86 (13.76%) had atypical features of COVID-19. In total, 640 RT-PCRs were performed, with 1 positive result (0.15%) in a patient with a CT scan that yielded an atypical finding. Of the 18 patients with chest CTs categorized as indeterminate, 5 underwent repeat negative RT-PCR nasopharyngeal swab 1 week after their initial swab. Also, 1 patient with a chest CT categorized as typical had a follow-up repeat negative RT-PCR, indicating that the chest CT was likely a false positive. After surgery, none of the patients developed signs or symptoms suspicious of COVID-19 that would indicate the need for a repeated RT-PCR or CT scan.
Conclusion:
In our experience, chest CT scanning did not prove provide valuable information in detecting asymptomatic cases of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in our low-prevalence population.
We present a detailed overview of the cosmological surveys that we aim to carry out with Phase 1 of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA1) and the science that they will enable. We highlight three main surveys: a medium-deep continuum weak lensing and low-redshift spectroscopic HI galaxy survey over 5 000 deg2; a wide and deep continuum galaxy and HI intensity mapping (IM) survey over 20 000 deg2 from
$z = 0.35$
to 3; and a deep, high-redshift HI IM survey over 100 deg2 from
$z = 3$
to 6. Taken together, these surveys will achieve an array of important scientific goals: measuring the equation of state of dark energy out to
$z \sim 3$
with percent-level precision measurements of the cosmic expansion rate; constraining possible deviations from General Relativity on cosmological scales by measuring the growth rate of structure through multiple independent methods; mapping the structure of the Universe on the largest accessible scales, thus constraining fundamental properties such as isotropy, homogeneity, and non-Gaussianity; and measuring the HI density and bias out to
$z = 6$
. These surveys will also provide highly complementary clustering and weak lensing measurements that have independent systematic uncertainties to those of optical and near-infrared (NIR) surveys like Euclid, LSST, and WFIRST leading to a multitude of synergies that can improve constraints significantly beyond what optical or radio surveys can achieve on their own. This document, the 2018 Red Book, provides reference technical specifications, cosmological parameter forecasts, and an overview of relevant systematic effects for the three key surveys and will be regularly updated by the Cosmology Science Working Group in the run up to start of operations and the Key Science Programme of SKA1.
This study investigated the characteristics of subjective memory complaints (SMCs) and their association with current and future cognitive functions.
Methods:
A cohort of 209 community-dwelling individuals without dementia aged 47–90 years old was recruited for this 3-year study. Participants underwent neuropsychological and clinical assessments annually. Participants were divided into SMCs and non-memory complainers (NMCs) using a single question at baseline and a memory complaints questionnaire following baseline, to evaluate differential patterns of complaints. In addition, comprehensive assessment of memory complaints was undertaken to evaluate whether severity and consistency of complaints differentially predicted cognitive function.
Results:
SMC and NMC individuals were significantly different on various features of SMCs. Greater overall severity (but not consistency) of complaints was significantly associated with current and future cognitive functioning.
Conclusions:
SMC individuals present distinctive features of memory complaints as compared to NMCs. Further, the severity of complaints was a significant predictor of future cognition. However, SMC did not significantly predict change over time in this sample. These findings warrant further research into the specific features of SMCs that may portend subsequent neuropathological and cognitive changes when screening individuals at increased future risk of dementia.
We compared sepsis “time zero” and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) SEP-1 pass rates among 3 abstractors in 3 hospitals. Abstractors agreed on time zero in 29 of 80 (36%) cases. Perceived pass rates ranged from 9 of 80 cases (11%) to 19 of 80 cases (23%). Variability in time zero and perceived pass rates limits the utility of SEP-1 for measuring quality.
To determine the effect of mandatory and nonmandatory influenza vaccination policies on vaccination rates and symptomatic absenteeism among healthcare personnel (HCP).
DESIGN
Retrospective observational cohort study.
SETTING
This study took place at 3 university medical centers with mandatory influenza vaccination policies and 4 Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare systems with nonmandatory influenza vaccination policies.
PARTICIPANTS
The study included 2,304 outpatient HCP at mandatory vaccination sites and 1,759 outpatient HCP at nonmandatory vaccination sites.
METHODS
To determine the incidence and duration of absenteeism in outpatient settings, HCP participating in the Respiratory Protection Effectiveness Clinical Trial at both mandatory and nonmandatory vaccination sites over 3 viral respiratory illness (VRI) seasons (2012–2015) reported their influenza vaccination status and symptomatic days absent from work weekly throughout a 12-week period during the peak VRI season each year. The adjusted effects of vaccination and other modulating factors on absenteeism rates were estimated using multivariable regression models.
RESULTS
The proportion of participants who received influenza vaccination was lower each year at nonmandatory than at mandatory vaccination sites (odds ratio [OR], 0.09; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.07–0.11). Among HCP who reported at least 1 sick day, vaccinated HCP had lower symptomatic days absent compared to unvaccinated HCP (OR for 2012–2013 and 2013–2014, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.72–0.93; OR for 2014–2015, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.69–0.95).
CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest that mandatory HCP influenza vaccination policies increase influenza vaccination rates and that HCP symptomatic absenteeism diminishes as rates of influenza vaccination increase. These findings should be considered in formulating HCP influenza vaccination policies.
Extractive industries have long been a topic of study in environmental social science. These studies have focused on how extractive industries, as linked to global capitalism, degrade local communities and their environments, but have failed to consider their racialized effects. At the same time, when scholars have examined the intersection of race and the environment, their analyses tend towards the quantification and mapping of the disproportionate environmental burdens that weigh upon communities of color. Both literatures neglect to examine the intersection of race and the environment from a phenomenological perspective. Our research intervenes in the literature by asking: (1) How is the environment implicated in conditioning racialized subjectivities? And (2) How do landscapes and environment impact the formation of collective identity and sense of belonging for African Americans? In this article, we focus on the lived experience of a generation of Black coal miners and their families, who migrated throughout the central Appalachian region during the twentieth century Great Migration. This study offers an empirical investigation into the “landscapes of meaning” that can emerge from the experience of racialized displacement from land and environment. Further, in documenting the lived experience of this group of African Americans, this study also counters the otherwise dominant narrative that portrays Appalachian people as hopeless, helpless, and homeless; and White. Data for this study are drawn from the EKAAMP collection, a community-driven participatory archive aimed at documenting the lives of African American coal miners and their families. This work offers three contributions: It (1) reinserts agency into the analysis of communities affected by extractive economies; (2) invigorates the productive tensions that underlie considerations of the inextricable linkages between environment and the phenomenological experience of racialization; and (3) reconsiders the long-standing historical intersections between environment, community, and race.
The question of how modernity has influenced medievalism and how medievalism has influenced modernity is the theme of this volume. The opening essays examine the 2001 film Just Visiting's comments on modern anxieties via medievalism; conflations of modernity with both medievalism and the Middle Ages in rewriting sources; the emergence of modernity amid the post-World War I movement The MostNoble Order of Crusaders; António Sardinha's promotion of medievalism as an antidote to modernity; and Mercedes Rubio's medievalism in her feminist commentary on modernity. The eight subsequent articles build on this foundation while discussing remnants of medieval London amid its modern descendant; Michel Houellebecq's critique of medievalism through his 2011 novel La Carte et le territoire; historical authenticity in Michael Morrow's approach to performing medieval music; contemporary concerns in Ford Madox Brown and David Gentleman's murals; medieval Chester in Catherine A.M. Clarkeand Nayan Kulkarni's Hryre (2012); medieval influences on the formation of and debate about modern moral panics; medievalist considerations in modern repurposings of medieval anchorholds; andmedieval sources for Paddy Molloy's Here Be Dragons (2013). The articles thus test the essays' methods and conclusions, even as the essays offer fresh perspectives on the articles.
Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Contributors: Edward Breen, Katherine A. Brown, Catherine A.M. Clarke, Louise D'Arcens, Joshua Davies, John Lance Griffith, Mike Horswell, Pedro Martins, Paddy Molloy, Lisa Nalbone, Sarah Salih, Michelle M. Sauer, James L. Smith
Operation of the six 13.7 m antennas of the Fleurs synthesis telescope as a sub-array has provided a new and surprisingly versatile astronomical tool. With enhanced reliability and fully automated operation, unattended observing over several days is possible. Interleaved ‘multiple-snapshot’ observations of many fields per day can be made.
The array has shown itself to be particularly suitable for the measurement of precision (a few arcsecond) positions for the optical identification of a large number of radio sources, a survey of compact sources and the monitoring of the activity of several radio stars over periods of weeks. At present a program of recalibration is under way to improve the positional accuracy and dynamic range of the instrument.
A program to determine accurate radio positions and optical identifications of southern flat-spectrum radio sources has been undertaken with the six-dish array of the Fleurs synthesis telescope at 1.4 GHz and using the SERC J sky survey. This sample covers the declination range −80° to −50° and comprises all 198 sources from the Parkes catalogue with α of > −0.5 and flux density of 0.25 Jy.
The radio astrometric phase of the program is complete. We conclude that by comparison with accurate VLBI positions the FST positions have r.m.s. uncertainties of ∼0″.9. There is no global bias in the FST positions at the 0″.2 to 0″.3 level relative to the JPL VLBI extragalactic reference frame. A comparison with positions from the Parkes catalogue shows that in the southern regions the Parkes catalogue has rms position errors of about 9″. There is no significant bias between the FST and Parkes positions.