COVID-19 AND THE HUMAN EYE – CONJUNCTIVITIS A LONE COVID-19 FINDING - A case-control study

Background: The worldwide sudden appearance and drastic increase in the number of infected cases with the severe acute respiratory syndrome-Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) determined the World Health Organization to declare it as a pandemic situation. The ‘Corona Virus Disease 2019’ (COVID-19) has varied clinical manifestations, from asymptomatic to severe cases, and conjunctivitis, seems not only to be one of them, but sometimes found to be lone initial symptom present. Aim and method: The aim was to identify the prevalence of conjunctivitis as the first symptom in COVID-19 patients, in a primary healthcare unit. A retrospective study was conducted analyzing the presenting complains/symptoms and results of COVID-19 confirmatory tests. Results: Out of the 672 cases that were sent for RT-PCR testing only 121 (18%) were found to be positive. Among this 2.67% of patients who had both conjunctivitis and COVID-19, 77.77% of patients had unilateral eye affected while 22.22% had bilateral conjunctivitis of varying degrees. 15 patients diagnosed to have both acute conjunctivitis and COVID-19, presented other symptoms associated with COVID-19 infection. While 3 patients had only acute conjunctivitis during their entire course of COVID-19. Conclusions: Conjunctivitis is a symptom of COVID-19 and maybe the first sign of the infection, until the onset of the classical manifestations, the patient serves to be a viral reservoir. The physicians should not miss unilateral conjunctivitis, as it can be the only presenting complain of the COVID-19 disease at the initial phase, which might worsen if underwent undetected and can aid in the spread of the contagion.

Digital Transformation Driven by Internet Data Center

With the acceleration of the digital transformation and technological upgradation of various industries, in the wake of application of new technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things, the demand for data storage, computing, transmission, and applications has greatly increased. Remote working, remote education, and e-commerce on account of the pandemic have led to a drastic increase in data consumption as well. The processing and analysis of massive data requires the construction of an information infrastructure—Internet Data Center (IDC). In the past few years, China's government has been dedicating itself to the task of constructing IDCs in some underdeveloped areas and establishing more detailed regulations. This chapter introduces some basic policies and implications behind this and a mathematical way to quantitatively analyse the investment efficiency of R&D resources in China's different regions. Several recommendations for the government and the society at large have also been outlined in this chapter for improvement in the whole ecosystem for IDCs in China.

Europejski Zielony Ład i odbudowa polskiej gospodarki – szanse i wyzwania

Man-made climate change has become the greatest political and economic challenge today. The dictate of GDP as the main measure of prosperity and economic success has led to the wasteful use of natural resources and a drastic increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The consequences are more and more felt: water, food and air pollution, the spread of infectious diseases such as Covid19, or extreme weather phenomena caused by global warming. Limiting these phenomena requires strong and consistent political decisions as well as real actions. The ambitious goals of decarbonisation and climate neutrality adopted by the European Union meet with the strongest resistance and criticism in the former Eastern Bloc countries, whose economies are highly dependent on coal. European policymakers are trying to reconcile the interests of European economies, highly diversified both in terms of the economic structure and the share of fossil fuels in the energy mix. The main tool is to be the unprecedented scale of the European budget earmarked for pro-climate actions, which is to help achieve climate neutrality while maintaining economic growth.

Damage evaluation and precursor of sandstone under the uniaxial compression: Insights from the strain-field heterogeneity

The stress-induced microcrack evolution in rock specimens causes a series of physical changes and heterogeneous deformations. Some of these attributes (such as sound, electricity, heat, etc.) have been effectively used to identify the damage state and precursory information of the rock specimens. However, the strain-field heterogeneity has not been investigated previously. In this study, the relationship of the strain-field heterogeneity and damage evolution of three sandstone specimens under the uniaxial compressive load was analyzed statistically. The acoustic emission (AE) and two-dimensional digital image correlation were employed for real-time evaluation of the AE parameters and strain-field heterogeneity. The results showed that the strain-field heterogeneity was closely related to the rock damage that amplified with the applied stress, and exhibited two features; numerical difference and spatial concentration. Subsequently, these two features were characterized by the two proposed heterogeneous quantitative indicators (i.e., the degree and space heterogeneities). Further, their four transition processes were in agreement with the damage stages confirmed by AE parameters: a relatively constant trend; growth with a relatively constant rate; drastic increase trend; and increase with a high rate to maximum value. Moreover, a time sequence chain for damage precursor was built, where the heterogeneous quantitative indicators and AE parameters differed in sensitivity to microcrack development and can be used as a damage warning at the varying magnitude of the external load.

Impact of Demand Response on Optimal Sizing of Distributed Generation and Customer Tariff

Due to the surge in load demand, the scarcity of fossil fuels, and increased concerns about global climate change, researchers have found distributed energy resources (DERs) to be alternatives to large conventional power generation. However, a drastic increase in the installation of distributed generation (DGs) increases the variability, volatility, and poor power quality issues in the microgrid (MG). To avoid prolonged outages in the distribution system, the implementation of energy management strategies (EMS) is necessary within the MG environment. The loads are allowed to participate in the energy management (EM) so as to reduce or shift their demands to non-peak hours such that the maximum peak in the system gets reduced. Therefore, this article addresses the complication of solutions, merits, and demerits that may be encountered in today’s power system and encompassed with demand response (DR) and its impacts in reducing the installation cost, the capital cost of DGs, and total electricity tariff. Moreover, the paper focuses on various communication technologies, load clustering techniques, and sizing methodologies presented.

Pertumbuhan Ekonomi Dan Inflasi Di Indonesia Pada Masa Pandemi

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused recessions in many countries around the world. This happened after economic growth in the first and second quarters of 2020. Some of the countries experiencing recession are Singapore, South Korea, Germany, Japan, France, Hong Kong, and the United States. If the economic growth in each quarter is also negative, Indonesia will experience a recession. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) noted that Indonesia's economic growth rate fell to minus (5.32%) in the second quarter of 2020. Previously, Indonesia's economic growth in the first quarter of 2020 was 2.97% or started to slow down. Inflation is a tendency to increase the prices of goods and services in general, which continues continuously, which will reduce the purchasing power of the public, especially for low-income groups. Therefore, it is hoped that there will be a control over the rate of inflation, especially during the Covid 19 Pandemic which had an impact on Indonesia's macro conditions. This observation discusses "The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Indonesia's Inflation Rate", aims to determine the effect of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Level of Inflation in Indonesia. The results of this observation show that in March 2020 there was inflation of 2.96% year on year (yoy), with an increase in the price of gold jewelery and several food prices that experienced a quite drastic increase.

Zum diskursiven Bild von Deutschland in der medialen Flüchtlingsdebatte

In 2015–2016, a large number of refugees sought refuge in European countries due to the political situation in the Near East and Africa. A drastic increase in number of refugees caused the issue to polarize citizens across Europe. Germany can be assigned a special position in terms of the number of refugees accepted. With the help of the concept of the discursive picture of the world, the article tries to reconstruct the image of Germany based on the analysis of press articles. Online editions of the magazine “Die Zeit” from 2015 are analyzed for this purpose. The question is how this way of presenting Germany is profiled in the media and how it is linguistically structured in the media-mediated refugee debate.

Metformin Treatment or PRODH/POX-Knock Out Similarly Induces Apoptosis by Reprograming of Amino Acid Metabolism, TCA, Urea Cycle and Pentose Phosphate Pathway in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells

It has been considered that proline dehydrogenase/proline oxidase (PRODH/POX) is involved in antineoplastic activity of metformin (MET). The aim of this study is identification of key metabolites of glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), tricarboxylic acids (TCA), urea cycles (UC) and some amino acids in MET-treated MCF-7 cells and PRODH/POX-knocked out MCF-7 (MCF-7crPOX) cells. MCF-7crPOX cells were generated by using CRISPR-Cas9. Targeted metabolomics was performed by LC-MS/MS/QqQ. Expression of pro-apoptotic proteins was evaluated by Western blot. In the absence of glutamine, MET treatment or PRODH/POX-knock out of MCF-7 cells contributed to similar inhibition of glycolysis (drastic increase in intracellular glucose and pyruvate) and increase in the utilization of phospho-enol-pyruvic acid, glucose-6-phosphate and some metabolites of TCA and UC, contributing to apoptosis. However, in the presence of glutamine, MET treatment or PRODH/POX-knock out of MCF-7 cells contributed to utilization of some studied metabolites (except glucose), facilitating pro-survival phenotype of MCF-7 cells in these conditions. It suggests that MET treatment or PRODH/POX-knock out induce similar metabolic effects (glucose starvation) and glycolysis is tightly linked to glutamine metabolism in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. The data provide insight into mechanism of anticancer activity of MET as an approach to further studies on experimental breast cancer therapy.

Synthesis and Characterization of Ti-Sn Alloy for Orthopedic Application

Titanium (Ti)-based alloys (e.g., Ti6Al4V) are widely used in orthopedic implant applications owing to their excellent mechanical properties and biocompatibility. However, their corrosion resistance needs to be optimized. In addition, the presence of aluminum and vanadium cause alzheimer and cancer, respectively. Therefore, in this study, titanium-based alloys were developed via powder metallurgy route. In these alloys, the Al and V were replaced with tin (Sn) which was the main aim of this study. Four sets of samples were prepared by varying Sn contents, i.e., 5 to 20 wt. %. This was followed by characterization techniques including laser particle analyzer (LPA), X-ray diffractometer (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), computerized potentiostate, vicker hardness tester, and nanoindenter. Results demonstrate the powder sizes between 50 and 55 µm exhibiting very good densification after sintering. The alloy contained alpha at all concentrations of Sn. However, as Sn content in the alloy exceeded from 10 wt. %, the formation of intermetallic compounds was significant. Thus, the presence of such intermetallic phases are attributed to enhanced elastic modulus. In particular, when Sn content was between 15 and 20 wt. % a drastic increase in elastic modulus was observed thereby surpassing the standard/reference alloy (Ti6Al4V). However, at 10 wt. % of Sn, the elastic modulus is more or less comparable to reference counterpart. Similarly, hardness was also increased in an ascending order upon Sn addition, i.e., 250 to 310 HV. Specifically, at 10 wt. % Sn, the hardness was observed to be 250 HV which is quite near to reference alloy, i.e., 210 HV. Moreover, tensile strength (TS) of the alloys were calculated using hardness values since it was very difficult to prepare the test coupons using powders. The TS values were in the range of 975 to 1524 MPa at all concentrations of Sn. In particular, the TS at 10 wt. % Sn is 1149 MPa which is comparable to reference counterpart (1168 MPa). The corrosion rate of Titanium-Sn alloys (as of this study) and reference alloy, i.e., Ti6Al4V were also compared. Incorporation of Sn reduced the corrosion rate at large than that of reference counterpart. In particular, the trend was in decreasing order as Sn content increased from 5 to 20 wt. %. The minimum corrosion rate of 3.65 × 10−9 mm/year was noticed at 20 wt. % than that of 0.03 mm/year of reference alloy. This shows the excellent corrosion resistance upon addition of Sn at all concentrations.