Y Stenting in Wide-Necked Bifurcation Aneurysms: A Single-Center Experience

Stent-assisted coiling is an endovascular means of managing wide-necked bifurcation aneurysms. In spite of the wide availability of various newer devices in managing such difficult aneurysms, the Y stenting offers a safe and cost-effective alternative to treat such cases in resource poor settings. This article provides an insight of our initial six cases of Y stent-assisted coiling along with their follow-up over a period of 6 months with no recanalization in any case. It also highlights the various technical aspects involved in such cases. One case had recurrent subdural hematoma probably due to use of antiplatelets and another patient had sudden dip in level of consciousness probably due to hematoma expansion that might also have been due to antiplatelet usage. However, none of the cases had any issues regarding stent migration, malapposition, and dissection. In our experience, Neuroform Atlas stent used for Y stenting offers a safe and technically easy alternative to various newer bifurcation devices.

Distance to Vaccine Sites is Associated with Lower COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake

COVID-19 remains a leading cause of death in the United States, despite wide availability of vaccines. Distance may pose an overlooked barrier to vaccine uptake. We analyzed the association between distance to vaccine sites and vaccination rates. Zip codes farther away from vaccine sites had consistently lower vaccine uptake. This effect persisted after controlling for potent covariates (e.g., partisanship, vaccine hesitancy), as well as in multiverse analyses testing across more than 1,000 specifications. Suggesting that the effect was not explained by reverse causality (i.e. proximity driven by demand), the distance effect maintained in analyses limited only to retail locations (e.g., CVS), whose location was set pre-pandemic. Findings suggest that reducing distance to vaccine sites as a powerful lever for encouraging COVID-19 vaccination.

Virtual Environments as Enablers of Civic Awareness and Engagement

The wide availability of accurate sensors currently hosted by smartphones are enabling new participative urban management opportunities. Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) allows people to actively participate in any aspect of urban planning, by collecting and sharing data, reporting issues to public administrations, proposing solutions to urban planners, and delivering information of potential social interest to their community. Although collected data can be very helpful to enhance the quality of life of citizens, mobile users are still reluctant to use their devices to take advantages of the opportunities offered by the digitized society, mainly due to privacy issues. From August to December 2018, the city of Florianópolis, capital of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil, was used as a living lab environment for an MCS application called ParticipACT Brazil, a socio/technical-aware crowdsensing platform. While the current literature focuses on MCS from a purely technical point of view, this research demonstrated that a multidisciplinary approach that includes both human sciences and ICT is needed in order to better identify critical issues, highlights the untapped potential of MCS paradigm, and suggests research methodologies that could provide benefits for all the actors involved (researchers, public administrators, and citizens).

Painkillers among people aged 20-30 according to questionnaires

Aim. Painkillers are one of the most widespread drugs on the pharmaceutical market, individual analgesics belong to the OTC (over-the-counter drug) group, which are also available outside pharmacies. The universality and wide availability of painkillers posea real problem of medication errors. The aim of the study was to examine the attitude of people aged 20-30 to taking painkillers and to examine the level of knowledge of the respondents about them.Method. The study involved 70 people aged 20-30 who voluntarily fi lled in an original electronic questionnaire, which included the attitude of people of this age to taking medications and questions assessing their knowledge about the medications they take. It included questions about the type of drugs taken, frequency, intensity of pain at which the respondents took analgesics and knowledge about possible adverse effects in the case of long-term use of analgesics or their overdose. The most numerous age group were people aged 20-30, they constituted 55.7% of the respondents. People aged 24-27 accounted for 24.3%, while 20% were people aged 28-30. Most respondents showed that their current place of residence is a city with over 500,000 inhabitants. Most of the respondents had secondary education and it amounted to 51.4%.Results and conclusion. As many as 85.7% of people take painkillers. 35.7% of the respondents take medication once a month, while 34.3% take medication less frequently than once a month. 60.9% of people know the effects of chronic overuse of painkillers, butas many as 39.1% of respondents have a knowledge defi cit in this regard. The study found that 89.9% of people aged 20-30 know how to safely use painkillers, only 10.1% do not know in this regard. Most people in this age group use drugs when the intensity of pain is 4, which means that the most numerous group of people takes drugs when the intensity of pain is very high. This indicates that drugs are not taken without necessity, which results in their chronic non-use, as a result of which the risk of side effectscaused by overuse of painkillers is minimised. The study showed that 35.7% take painkillers once a month and 34.3% less than oncea month. Mostly women take medication once a month, this could possibly be associated with menstrual pain. The survey shows that 60.9% of people know the effects of chronic overuse of painkillers. It follows that most of the respondents know the consequences ofoverusing painkillers, but a large proportion of people in this age group show a defi cit of knowledge about what is dangerous to their health, therefore it is necessary to educate people aged 20-30 years in this regard.Cognitive value. The conducted research shows the attitude of young people toward painkillers. The cognitive value is the selection of a specifi c research group which from an early age, has the possibility to observe easy and wide access to analgesics.

Mobility Trends and their effect on Traffic Safety During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Case Study Republic of Croatia

Safety analysis focuses on how traffic safety can change while mobility analysis is used to determine how people change travel behavior. The integration of mobility, safety and behavioral data related to COVID-19 can provide valuable insights to decision makers. Wide availability of mobile sensors has given us the opportunity to be able to assess changes in the performance and mobility of transport systems in, almost real time. The researchers also measured the impact of COVID-19 on human mobility using public mobile location data available from many companies such as Google and Apple, which is very useful for changing human mobility. The platforms produce aggregated metrics of daily mobility, including the purpose of travel, the mode of travel, and imputations of social demographics. Based on a comprehensive data set of people who participated in the collected accident data and mobile device data, we record the impact of COVID-19 on traffic safety. The paper systematically and statistically approaches the assessment of road safety in Croatia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Update of Genetic Diversity of Porcine Circovirus Type 2 in Chile Evidences the Emergence of PCV2d Genotype

Porcine Circovirus 2 (PCV2) can cause multiple clinical conditions known as porcine circovirus-associated diseases (PCVAD). Before the wide availability of PCV2 vaccines, PCVAD resulted in significant losses to the global swine industry. PCV2's rapid evolutionary dynamics are comparable to single-stranded RNA viruses. Thus, shifts in the dominance and distribution of different genotypes may frequently occur, resulting in the emergence and spread of varying PCV2 genotypes and recombinant strains in swine. This study aims at identifying the PCV2 genotypes currently circulating in Chile. Seven hundred thirty-eight samples were obtained from 21 swine farms between 2020 and 2021. The samples were tested using PCR for species detection and genotyping. Sequencing and phylogenetic analyses were conducted in selected samples. PCV2 was detected in 26.9% of the PCR reactions and 67% of the sampled farms. The genotypes were determined in nine farms, PCV2a in one farm, PCV2b in four, and PCV2d in five, with PCV2b and PCV2d co-circulating in one farm. The phylogenetic analysis of twelve ORF2 sequences obtained (PCV2a = 5; PCV2b = 4; PCV2d = 3) showed a PCV2a Chilean strains monophyletic cluster; closely related to Chilean viruses collected in 2012 and 2013. Of the three different PCV2b sequenced viruses, two viruses were close to the root of the PCV2b group, whereas the remaining one grouped with a South Korean virus. PCV2d sequences were closely related to Asian viruses. A previously reported PCV2a/PCV2d recombinant strain was not detected in this study. Our results suggest the emergence and potential shift to PCV2d genotype in Chilean farms.

Mobility Trends and their effect on Traffic Safety During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Case Study Republic of Croatia

Safety analysis focuses on how traffic safety can change while mobility analysis is used to determine how people change travel behavior. The integration of mobility, safety and behavioral data related to COVID-19 can provide valuable insights to decision makers. Wide availability of mobile sensors has given us the opportunity to be able to assess changes in the performance and mobility of transport systems in, almost real time. The researchers also measured the impact of COVID-19 on human mobility using public mobile location data available from many companies such as Google and Apple, which is very useful for changing human mobility. The platforms produce aggregated metrics of daily mobility, including the purpose of travel, the mode of travel, and imputations of social demographics. Based on a comprehensive data set of people who participated in the collected accident data and mobile device data, we record the impact of COVID-19 on traffic safety. The paper systematically and statistically approaches the assessment of road safety in Croatia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Identification of shapes and uses of past landscapes through EMI survey

Over the last ten years, the use of Electro-Magnetic Induction (EMI) instruments for archaeological purposes has increased considerably. This development has come both from the availability of new instruments' with multi-coils spacing allowing a multi-depth analysis and because of the wide availability of high quality GPS positing which can be easily integrated with EMI. These new pos- sibilities promote the use of EMI instruments for the study of archaeological landscapes and sites. Indeed, the capability to simultane- ously map both the electrical conductivity and the magnetic susceptibility presents a great advantage for archaeological purposes com- pared to other geophysical instruments. The combination of these two measurements means that it is possible to geomorphologicaly characterize past landscapes while simultaneously mapping anthropogenic activities. 7b maximize the potential ofE MI measurements, this technique requires specialized processing and calibration to limit confusing and unclear results. In order to obtain quantitative conductivity and magnetic susceptibility data, it is necessary to correct instrumental drift and calibrate for local soil conditions. In this paper we introduce the theoretical basis of the EMI technique, discuss common instruments and explain the calibration procedure before presenting three case studies that illustrate applications of EMI to archaeological sites on a range of scales.

New Trends and Most Promising Therapeutic Strategies for Epilepsy Treatment

Background: Despite the wide availability of novel anti-seizure medications (ASMs), 30% of patients with epilepsy retain persistent seizures with a significant burden in comorbidity and an increased risk of premature death. This review aims to discuss the therapeutic strategies, both pharmacological and non-, which are currently in the pipeline.Methods: PubMed, Scopus, and EMBASE databases were screened for experimental and clinical studies, meta-analysis, and structured reviews published between January 2018 and September 2021. The terms “epilepsy,” “treatment” or “therapy,” and “novel” were used to filter the results.Conclusions: The common feature linking all the novel therapeutic approaches is the spasmodic rush toward precision medicine, aiming at holistically evaluating patients, and treating them accordingly as a whole. Toward this goal, different forms of intervention may be embraced, starting from the choice of the most suitable drug according to the type of epilepsy of an individual or expected adverse effects, to the outstanding field of gene therapy. Moreover, innovative insights come from in-vitro and in-vivo studies on the role of inflammation and stem cells in the brain. Further studies on both efficacy and safety are needed, with the challenge to mature evidence into reliable assets, ameliorating the symptoms of patients, and answering the challenges of this disease.

Remote research on locomotion interfaces for virtual reality: Replication of a lab-based study on teleporting interfaces

The wide availability of consumer-oriented virtual reality (VR) equipment has enabled researchers to recruit existing VR owners to participate remotely using their own equipment. Yet, there are many differences between lab environments and home environments, as well as differences between participant samples recruited for lab studies and remote studies. This paper replicates a lab-based experiment on VR locomotion interfaces using a remote sample. Participants completed a triangle-completion task (travel two path legs, then point to the path origin) using their own VR equipment in a remote, unsupervised setting. Locomotion was accomplished using two versions of the teleporting interface varying in availability of rotational self-motion cues. The size of the traveled path and the size of the surrounding virtual environment were also manipulated. Results from remote participants largely mirrored lab results, with overall better performance when rotational self-motion cues were available. Some differences also occurred, including a tendency for remote participants to rely less on nearby landmarks, perhaps due to increased competence with using the teleporting interface to update self-location. This replication study provides insight for VR researchers on aspects of lab studies that may or may not replicate remotely.