Definition and Validation of a Risk-Stratification Model for Probable or Proven COVID-19 Patients in Emergency Departments: The Revised HOME-CoV Score.

The HOME-CoV rule is a list of clinical criteria defined by experts’ consensus, qualifying patients with probable or proven COVID-19 for home treatment when negative. The aims were to define and validate a revised HOME-CoV score, optimizing the original rule. Definition of the revised HOME-CoV score using logistic regression in a prospective multicenter cohort and validation in another cohort of patients who presented to the emergency department with proven or probable COVID-19. The main outcome was non-invasive or invasive ventilation or all-cause death within the 7 days following inclusion. Two threshold values were defined using a sensitivity of > 0.9 and a specificity of > 0.9 to identify low-risk patients and high-risk patients, respectively. The revised HOME-CoV score included seven clinical criteria. In the definition cohort (n=1696), the AUC was 87.6 (95% CI 84.7 to 90.6). The cutoffs to define low-risk and high-risk patients were <2 and >3, respectively. In the validation cohort (n=1304), the AUC was 85.8 (95% CI 80.6 to 91.0) and 85.5 (95% CI 76.8 to 94.1) in the subgroup of patients with positive RT-PCR for SARS-CoV2. A score of < 2 qualified 73% of patients as low risk with a sensitivity of 0.84 (0.66-0.95) and a negative predictive value of 0.99 (0.99-1.00). The revised HOME-CoV score compared favorably with the original rule and other models. The revised HOME-CoV score may allow accurate risk stratification and safely qualify for home treatment, a significant proportion of patients with probable or proven COVID-19.

legal regulation of blood money in Civil Kuwaiti law

The original rule is that the compensation value is assessed by the Judge exactly. Compensation comes after the occurrence of the damage. Despite that, the Kuwaiti Civil law No. 67 of 1980 defined another type of compensation the value of which was pre-determined by the law, i.e. before the occurrence of the damage, therefore, the judge has no power to determine its value, which is called: legal blood money or in Arabic term (Deyyah Sharia) which has taken all its provisions from the Islamic Sharia (rules) and related to compensation for death and 26 specific types of body injuries. In this research, we explained the regulation taken from the Islamic Provisions for compensation against bodily injury, known as legal blood money which was added to the compensation for other material, moral and body injuries that are out of the blood money concept.

The “One-fifth Rule” with Rollbacks for Self-Adjustment of the Population Size in the (1 + (λ,λ)) Genetic Algorithm

Self-adjustment of parameters can significantly improve the performance of evolutionary algorithms. A notable example is the (1 + (λ,λ)) genetic algorithm, where adaptation of the population size helps to achieve the linear running time on the OneMax problem. However, on problems which interfere with the assumptions behind the self-adjustment procedure, its usage can lead to the performance degradation. In particular, this is the case with the “one-fifth rule” on problems with weak fitness-distance correlation.We propose a modification of the “one-fifth rule” in order to have less negative impact on the performance in the cases where the original rule is destructive. Our modification, while still yielding a provable linear runtime on OneMax, shows better results on linear function with random weights, as well as on random satisfiable MAX-3SAT problems.

The End(s) of Vococentrism

This chapter examines the concept of vococentrism proposed by Michel Chion and developed at length by David Neumeyer. The first part looks at the system of vococentrism as it was codified in the early 1930s to replace the original rule of mimetic synchronization, with its emphasis on the act of recording. Vococentrism was by contrast focused on placing the voice in a narrative representation. Vococentrism essentially reconciled the soundtrack to the continuity system, transformed music into its customary role of underscore, and ensured that the soundtrack served as the voice of narrative. The second part examines vococentrism in the age of intensified continuity, David Bordwell’s term for the stylistic system that has dominated filmmaking since the 1980s. The author concludes that whereas intensified continuity has given greater emphasis to the face in the visual field, it has displaced the voice from its central position on the soundtrack. Intensified continuity has ushered in the end of vococentrism, which in a sense recognizes how marks of identity and subjectivity in contemporary cinema have given way to figures of gesture and affect.

DISPENSING WITH INDISPENSABILITY

‘Indispensability’ is the central concept underpinning the treatment of refusal to deal claims under Article 102 TFEU. Since its adoption in Magill and Bronner, however, the conventional wisdom that instances of refusal to deal constitute an abuse only in the presence of indispensability has been challenged from multiple directions. This article surveys the departures from the orthodoxy that can be found in the jurisprudence. In doing so, it measures the purported explanations for such derogations against the justifications for restraint encapsulated in the indispensability concept. Finally, it asks whether the weight of exceptions may reach the point of overwhelming, or ‘dispensing with,’ the original rule.

Catholic Reform from the Bottom Up

The chapter examines efforts the Trinitarians of Provence made to reverse a long decline and to adapt their medieval order to reflect the new spiritual climate of the Catholic Reformation. The reform was made by ordinary members despite opposition from their superior general in Paris, who envisioned reform only as a return to the order’s original rule. Founded to ransom Christian slaves in the Mediterranean, the order had fallen away from its rule and experienced declining vocations and impoverishment in the Wars of Religion. The chapter argues that the Provençal monks took their model of religious life from the reformed congregations of Capuchins and Recollects and not from a desire to return to some imagined primitive purity. They wanted to govern their houses in a more collaborative way, to better educate their priests, and to create a more spiritualized community with the interiorized personal piety that characterized the Catholic Reformation.

Technical Basis for the Exemptions to Mandatory Post Weld Heat Treatment (PWHT) of SA-738 Grade B for Sec. III Div. 1 Subsection NE Application

With the current practice in steel making and welding process control, thick and large structural components fabricated from the widely used steel materials such as SA-738 Grade B have good material properties sufficient enough to meet the increasing demand of avoiding a large amount of Post Weld Heat Treatment (PWHT) applications at both shop and site. The original rule in the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (the Code), however, allows the exemption to mandatory PWHT for SA-738 Grade B by limiting the applicable material thickness equal to or less than 1 3/4 in. (44 mm) for Section III, Division 1, Subsection NE application. A Code Case was proposed with the purpose to increase the maximum thickness for the exemption of mandatory PWHT from 1 3/4 in. (44 mm) in the original rule to 2 3/8 in. (60 mm). In order to demonstrate the applicability of the PWHT exemption for material with increased thickness, material tests have been performed mainly for the test data required in the ASME Sec. III Div. 1 Subsection NE for three different heats of the plates. The tests performed also include additional data to those required by the Code, such as fracture toughness (KJc) test, microstructural observation, hardness test and oblique Y-groove test for SMAW process. All the tests results for the base materials and weld joints have shown sufficient rationale to increase the exemption thickness to mandatory PWHT to 2 3/8 in. (60 mm).

Carmelites and Crusading in the Later Middle Ages

In contrast with their larger competitors, the Franciscans and Dominicans, the Carmelites seemed to eschew the Holy Land after its loss to the Mamluks in 1291. At first sight, the apparent lack of interest on the part of Carmelites in crusading and the Holy Land is surprising. Founded on Mount Carmel as an eremitical and contemplative community in the first decade of the thirteenth century, by the 1240s the Carmelites had begun to spread westward via Cyprus to England, France and Sicily, where they adapted their original Rule in order to become mendicants. In 1291 they left the Holy Land altogether, but unlike the Franciscans, who negotiated a return in the 1330s through their custody of the Holy Places, and the Dominicans, who maintained missions in Mongol and Turkish territories, the Carmelites seemed to show little interest in returning to their original homeland. Nor have they been generally associated with preaching the crusade in the systematic fashion of the larger mendicant orders. In fact, one could be excused for assuming that the order willingly lost touch with its geographical roots.

Simple Modification of Oja Rule Limits L1-Norm of Weight Vector and Leads to Sparse Connectivity

This letter describes a simple modification of the Oja learning rule, which asymptotically constrains the L1-norm of an input weight vector instead of the L2-norm as in the original rule. This constraining is local as opposed to commonly used instant normalizations, which require the knowledge of all input weights of a neuron to update each one of them individually. The proposed rule converges to a weight vector that is sparser (has more zero weights) than the vector learned by the original Oja rule with or without the zero bound, which could explain the developmental synaptic pruning.