Hunting the standard of compensation – intellectual property, Chorzów Factory and investments: a response

While the debate on intellectual property and international investment law is relatively young, the role of historical cases will be important in offering some interpretative analysis. Due to the niche nature of both areas of law, where, often times, the legal luminaries found in both areas often speak past each other, in an earlier issue of this journal I offered an interpretative history of Chorzów Factory as an example of early case law by an international court illustrating the origins of the ISDS involving intellectual property. As with any interpretation, there are bound to be opposing views or explicit endorsement, but whatever the merits, that interpretative history has initiated a debate in the pages of this journal. That debate is in part, a response to my original analysis, to which I offer a response. This response is to endorse the fact that additional information has come forward that will enrich the debate on Chorzów Factory and its connection to intellectual property. Moreover, this response argues that the reply misses the point regarding the formal connection of international law to intellectual property in ISDS, a connection that I attempted to demonstrate through the example of the Chorzów Factory case – where a legal fight in the 1920s over nitrate, other chemical production and ownership still continue to be of relevance to international law.

Gynecological Health Concerns in Women with Schizophrenia and Related Disorders: A Narrative Review of Recent Studies

Sex and age are important factors influencing physical and mental health in schizophrenia. Our goal was to review the recent literature for associations between gynecological conditions and psychotic illness and to propose integrated strategies for their management in order to improve overall health outcomes in women. We addressed the following questions: What are the prevalence and risk factors of gynecological disorders in women with schizophrenia or delusional disorder (DD)? What are the rates of uptake of gynecological cancer screening and mortality in this population? What role does menopause play? We found an increased incidence of breast cancer in women with schizophrenia. Other gynecological comorbidities were less frequent, but the field has been understudied. Low rates of breast and cervical cancer screening characterize women with schizophrenia. Menopause, because of endocrine changes, aging effects, and resultant comorbidity is associated with high rates of aggressive breast cancer in this population. Uterine and ovarian cancers have been less investigated. Psychosocial determinants of health play an important role in cancer survival. The findings lead to the recommendation that primary care, psychiatry, gynecology, oncology, and endocrinology collaborate in early case finding, in research into etiological links, and in improvement of prevention and treatment.

A Singular Concept of Biodiversity Remains the Best Way to Address the Plural Values of Nature in Conservation Planning

The term “biodiversity” generally refers to living variation. Biodiversity has recognized anthropocentric values of insurance and investment. Values of “nature” include those of biodiversity and also many other aspects reflecting the scope of human-nature relationships. Systematic conservation planning methods can integrate this range of local to global values. Early case studies in Australia and Papua New Guinea show the potential for such approaches. Recently, there have been calls for a recasting of the concept of biodiversity to capture plurality of values. However, balance among sometimes conflicting values of nature is best-served by a singular biodiversity concept and definition focused on variety, because this enables effective integration with other values of nature. Attempts at pluralistic recastings of biodiversity in fact may promote neglect of global biodiversity values. Further, an extended analysis of the Papua New Guinea case study shows that it cannot be argued that focusing on localized values of nature for conservation will effectively address regional/global scale conservation needs.

POLITICS AND PLAY IN THE LAVS PISONIS

This article examines the first-century c.e.Laus Pisonis, an anonymous panegyric for a certain Piso that lays particular emphasis on his skill at lyre-playing, ball games and the board game, the ludus latrunculorum (155–210). Whereas this focus has often been a cause of consternation among critics, this article argues that play is a crucial element of the poem's poetic and political operations. The first section shows that the poem employs images of poetic maturity and of temporality in order to justify a light or ludic topic for an allegedly young poet. The second section identifies a hitherto unobserved telestich (M-O-R-A) in the passage describing the ludus latrunculorum and argues that this letter game defines a positive period of play within the poem. The third section further demonstrates that this letter game is aimed specifically at the patron Piso as he is represented within the poem. That is, the poet parallels Piso's potential to uncover the telestich in the text and his ability to uncover the poet's hidden talent. The concluding fourth section explores the wider impact of this reinterpretation of the Laus Pisonis for the literary history of the Early Principate. It proposes that the poem's playfulness should not be seen as reflecting the progressive disempowerment of the political elite. Rather, the poem is an early case of Roman political discourse encroaching on the value of the trivial and the boundaries of otium. The Laus Pisonis makes play political.

A Machine Learning approach to enhance indoor thermal comfort in a changing climate

This paper presents an alternative workflow for thermal comfort prediction. By using the leverage of Data Science & AI in combination with the power of computational design, the proposed methodology exploits the extensive comfort data provided by the ASHRAE Global Thermal Comfort Database II to generate more customised comfort prediction models. These models consider additional, often significant input parameters like location and specific building characteristics. Results from an early case study indicate that such an approach has the potential for more accurate comfort predictions that eventually lead to more efficient and comfortable buildings.

“Scuola Sicura”: a school screening program to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among students in Piedmont, Italy

ObjectivesAims of “Scuola Sicura” (SS) were to monitor the rate of COVID-19 and to contain its spread within the school population through early case isolation. We report the initial process and outcome evaluation results.DesignDescriptive study of an experimental screening testing program in children in Piedmont in the period January-March 2021. We used data from the COVID-19 platform and the Local Health Units, the archives of birth certificates (CedAP) and hospital discharge files (SDO).Setting and participantsThe screening program targeted second and third grade students in first level secondary schools. Participants were subdivided into four groups; one group each week underwent screening, yielding one test per student per month.Main outcome measuresWe calculated:1. number of positive cases detected vs. total number of students tested in the SS program;2. number of positive cases detected outside the SS program vs. total number of students in the target population.We detected the number of quarantines due to SS and no-SS case identification. To investigate the spread of COVID-19 in households, the mother-child pairs were identified through record linkage between the CedAP and SDO archives, and positive mothers were identified.ResultsSixty-nine percent of schools and 19.5% of the students participated in the program. SS detected 114 positives cases for SARS-CoV-2. On 08.03.2021, the target classes started distance learning: 69 of the 114 positive students were identified before that date, leading to the activation of 67 quarantine measures. We were able to identify the mothers of 61 out of 69 of those students (88%); 46 mothers had performed a swab test after the positivity of their child with a positive result in 11 cases. Asymptomatic cases identified at screening during in-class learning period accounted for 26.5% of the total number of cases occurred in the participating classes.ConclusionsThis is one of the few studies (and the first in Italy) to describe the functioning and predictive capacity of school screening testing for SARS-CoV-2 in a real-world situation. Our findings provide data-driven suggestions for government agencies when planning large-scale school screening testing programs.

COMPARISON OF CLINICO-SOCIAL PROFILE OF PULMONARY AND EXTRA PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS IN TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL IN A RURALAREA: A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The burden of tuberculosis (TB) in India is the highest accounting for 26% of the global incidence. A total of 1.4 million people died from TB in 2019 (including 208 000 people with HIV). India accounts for a fourth of the global burden of TB and 29% of global mortality. Therefore, we carried out this study to compare demographic, lifestyle and clinical characteristic between pulmonary TB (PTB) and extrapulmonary TB (EPTB). MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY:Aretrospective analysis was carried of 348 patients diagnosed in DOTS centre, Pravara Rural Hospital, Loni. Characteristics of demographic and clinical characteristics were obtained from medical case records. RESULTS:Among the 348 cases, 71.3% were PTB and 28.7% were EPTB including, pleural (36%), meningeal (27%) and lymphatic (20%) cases. The male to female ratio in PTB and EPTB are 1.99 and 1.22 respectively. EPTB was more common at younger age (<25 years). Tobacco addiction (10.9%), diabetes mellitus (4.03%), HIV positivity (12.1%) and history of contact with Tb patients (17.7%) were more likely to be associated with PTB. CONCLUSION:Increased awareness of the risk factors may facilitate early case nding and better management outcomes for these patients.

Knowledge on Breast Cancer among College Students

Background: Globally, breast cancer is one of the most common cancer among females of age group 15-40 years. India is also one of the leading countries of breast cancer. It is found that incidence rate of breast cancer is higher in less developing countries in comparison to development country. In 2018, worldwide, nearly 2 million new breast cancer cases were diagnosed. Early diagnosis of breast cancer can increase the chance of early case detection and favourable outcomes, resulting in improved survival rates and quality of life of women and is therefore important public health strategy at all settings [2]. Several studies suggests that even though the incidence and mortality of breast cancer have been on the increase, the knowledge and awareness regarding the breast cancer is low among college students. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess knowledge and awareness among college students about breast cancers in Lucknow Materials & Methods: Descriptive research design was selected for this study. Target population includes the female students studying in the selected colleges of Lucknow. 87 female students were selected through non-probability, purposive sampling techniques. Data was gathered using a self-administered semi structured questionnaire. Results: Overall results of this study show that, 34 (39.08%) female students had adequate knowledge, 49 (56.32%) female students had moderately inadequate knowledge, and 04 (4.59%) female students had inadequate knowledge. Conclusion: Findings of this study revealed that knowledge of breast cancer among female college students was inadequate.

Utility of early diagnosis, contact tracing and stakeholder engagement in outbreak response in three COVID-19 outbreak settings in Ghana

Objective: To describe how early case detection, testing and contact tracing measures were deployed by stakeholders in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana – using three outbreak scenarios.Design: A descriptive assessment of three case studies of COVID-19 outbreaks within three settings that occurred in Ghana from March 13 till the end of June 2020.Setting: A construction camp, a factory and a training institution in Ghana.Participants: Staff of a construction camp, a factory, workers and students of a training institution.Interventions: We described and compared the three COVID-19 outbreak scenarios in Ghana, highlighting identification and diagnosis of cases, testing, contact tracing and stakeholder engagement for each scenario. We also outlined the challenges and lessons learnt in the management of these scenarios.Main outcome measures: Approach used for diagnosis, testing, contact tracing and stakeholder engagement.Results: Index cases of the training institution and construction camp were screened the same day of reporting symptoms, whiles the factory index case required a second visit before the screening. All index cases were tested with RTPCR. The training institution followed and tested all contacts, and an enhanced contact tracing approach was conducted for staff of the other two sites. Multi-sectorial engagement and collaboration with stakeholders enabled effectivehandling of the outbreak response in all sites.Conclusion: Comparing all three settings, early diagnosis and prompt actions taken through multi-sectorial collaborations played a major role in controlling the outbreak. Engaging stakeholders in the COVID-19 response is an effective way to mitigate the challenges in responding to the pandemic.