Impact of the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic on Lung Cancer Surgery in France: A Nationwide Study

Few studies have investigated the link between SARS-CoV-2 and health restrictions and its effects on the health of lung cancer (LC) patients. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic on surgical activity volume, postoperative complications and in-hospital mortality (IHM) for LC resections in France. All data for adult patients who underwent pulmonary resection for LC in France in 2020, collected from the national administrative database, were compared to 2018–2019. The effect of SARS-CoV-2 on the risk of IHM and severe complications within 30 days among LC surgery patients was examined using a logistic regression analysis adjusted for age, sex, comorbidities and type of resection. There was a slight decrease in the volume of LC resections in 2020 (n = 11,634), as compared to 2018 (n = 12,153) and 2019 (n = 12,227), with a noticeable decrease in April 2020 (the peak of the first wave of epidemic in France). We found that SARS-CoV-2 (0.43% of 2020 resections) was associated with IHM and severe complications, with, respectively, a sevenfold (aOR = 7.17 (3.30–15.55)) and almost a fivefold (aOR = 4.76 (2.31–9.80)) increase in risk. Our study suggests that LC surgery is feasible even during a pandemic, provided that general guidance protocols edited by the surgical societies are respected.

Climate Adaption for Energy Utilities: Lessons Learned From California's Pioneering Regulatory Actions

This Policy Brief provides lessons learned from regulation of climate adaptation by energy utilities. The regulatory bodies responsible for oversight of investor-owned energy utilities are ill-equipped to regulate climate adaptation in the energy sector; but they may be the only institutions with authority to do so. In 2018, the California Public Utilities Commission initiated the first quasi-legislative procedure to regulate investor owned energy utilities' climate adaptation activities. The Commission's new rules for climate adaptation offer some general guidance on climate adaptation, and require investor owned utilities to conduct and submit climate vulnerability studies. Structural limitations, including conflicting interest, capacity of staff, and scope of the problem hampered the success of adaptation regulation, which failed to address fundamental questions about what constitutes adaptive measures.

Generalized Guidance Formulation for Impact Angle Interception with Physical Constraints

This paper proposes an optimal impact angle control guidance law for homing missiles with a narrow field-of-view of the seekers. As groundwork for designing a guidance law, we first present a general guidance structure that can achieve any terminal constraint of the line-of-sight rate based on the optimal control theory. We configure the desired profile of the line-of-sight rate using a saturation function whose exact form is determined to satisfy the required boundary conditions. By combining the line-of-sight rate profile with the optimal guidance structure, we develop a guidance law that achieves an impact angle interception with the field-of-view constraint. Herein, as the entire guidance structure is derived based on exact kinematics without any approximation, the proposed law ensures the accurate impact angle interception for various engagement scenarios. This precise consideration of the engagement kinematics also accurately ensures the energy optimality of preventing the excessive use of control inputs when homing. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, numerical simulations with various engagement scenarios are conducted, and the results demonstrate that the proposed law allows missiles to accurately intercept their targets with the desired impact angles and without violating the prescribed field-of-view constraint.

Importancia de las tutorías de acompañamiento en un estado de excepción en la Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad Técnica de Manabí

RESUMEN El acompañamiento tutorial representa una actividad orientadora y asistencial para la consecución de los estudios universitarios, la cual se hace indispensable más aún cuando se atraviesan situaciones de emergencia sanitaria y los gobiernos decretan un estado de excepción, originado actualmente a causa del nuevo brote de coronavirus. Por consiguiente, el objetivo de las tutorías radica en la acción de acompañamiento misma que involucra la atención, orientación y guía en la formación académica, profesional y humana. Es por esta razón que las tutorías tienen el fin de garantizar la calidad de enseñanza y permanencia social y promover el seguimiento a los índices de reprobación, aprobación, deserción, rezago, egreso y titulación para detectar debilidades y establecer acciones preventivas y correctivas. El presente artículo parte de una conceptualización general de la tutoría de acompañamiento y como su aplicación permite contribuir de manera efectiva a la consecución de los objetivos que la educación superior actual persigue. La metodología se sustento en una revisión documental de los principales estudios que se han abordado de la temática de tutoría de acompañamiento, para su ejecución se empleó las técnicas e instrumentos como la observación y la aplicación de una encuesta aleatoria a estudiantes de la Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación, de la Universidad Técnica de Manabí (UTM), entre los principales resultados destacan que cierta parte de los estudiantes desconocen de la existencia de las tutorías, pero es importante destacar que las tutorías son solicitadas para recibir orientaciones generales cuando inicia un período académico. PALABRAS CLAVE: tutoría de acompañamiento; tutor; tutorado, desarrollo académico. Importance of the tutoring of accompaniment in a state of exception, in the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Sciences of Education ABSTRACT Tutorial accompaniment represents an orientation and assistance activity for the achievement of university studies, which is even more essential when health emergencies are experienced and governments decree a state of exception, currently caused by the new coronavirus outbreak. Therefore, the objective of the tutorials lies in the accompanying action itself, which involves attention, orientation, and guidance in academic, professional, and human training. It is for this reason that the tutorials have the purpose of guaranteeing the quality of teaching and social permanence and promoting the follow-up of the failure rates, approval, desertion, lag, graduation, and graduation to detect weaknesses and establish preventive and corrective actions. This article starts from a general conceptualization of mentoring and how its application makes it possible to contribute effectively to the achievement of the objectives that current higher education pursues. The methodology was based on a documentary review of the main studies that have been addressed on the subject of accompanying tutoring, for its execution techniques and instruments such as observation and application of a random survey to students of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Sciences, from the Technical University of Manabí (UTM), among the main results are that a certain part of the students are unaware of the existence of tutorials, but it is important to note that tutorials are requested to receive general guidance when an academic period begins. KEYWORDS: accompanying tutoring; tutor; tutored, academic development.

Conducting Online Crime and Safety Surveys with British Farmers

Rural crime continues to be an under-represented area of academia. As a result, much of the methodological guidance tends to stem from health or rural development research, providing general guidance, but lacking the specific considerations of conducting crime and safety research in a rural environment. However, the impact of COVID-19 has led to a wider consideration of online surveys, particularly in rural communities. This paper provides guidance on conducting online crime and safety surveys with the farming community based on the extensive experience of the author in the field of rural criminology. Methodological considerations will be addressed that distinguish rural online crime and safety surveying from its urban counterpart, and the advantages and disadvantages of this methodology will be discussed. The aim being to guide the rural criminological researcher in the use of online surveys to obtain key data from the farming community to support and extend their research.

Co-Creation: A Novel Approach to Developing Guidelines for Research Integrity Policy – Lessons Learned from the SOPS4RI Project

"Co-creation is a qualitative research methodology that engages stakeholders in playful activities to produce user-centered outputs. Through an interactive and open approach, co-creation explores stakeholders’ latent values, generates innovative ideas, and captures minority views, allowing for in-depth understanding of how stakeholders are affected by various factors. Therefore, co-creation is a promising methodology for developing guidelines on research integrity (RI), although there is no literature available about co-creation in this context. In our presentation, we share experiences of using co-creation to design institutional guidelines on RI together with research managers, funders and researchers across Europe. We conducted 24 co-creation workshops on topics ranging from RI education, to creating a responsible research environment, resulting in concrete guidelines that research institutions and funders can implement to foster RI. Our experience has provided us with valuable insights on using co-creation for RI guideline development. While motivating research stakeholders – often serious and analytically oriented people – to engage in creative exercises can be a challenge, particularly in the online setting, it is possible to achieve when ‘play’ and ‘work’ are carefully balanced. Additionally, to ensure the concreteness of guidelines while accounting for differences among institutions and countries, best practice examples can be used to show different approaches to implementing more general guidance. We have also learned that it is valuable to explore stakeholders’ preferences regarding the guideline format, since implementability is not only influenced by the content. These insights provide practical considerations that other researchers can use when co-creating RI guidelines. "

An Experimental Analysis of the Effects of Different Hardware Setups on Stereo Camera Systems

For many application areas such as autonomous navigation, the ability to accurately perceive the environment is essential. For this purpose, a wide variety of well-researched sensor systems are available that can be used to detect obstacles or navigation targets. Stereo cameras have emerged as a very versatile sensing technology in this regard due to their low hardware cost and high fidelity. Consequently, much work has been done to integrate them into mobile robots. However, the existing literature focuses on presenting the concepts and algorithms used to implement the desired robot functions on top of a given camera setup. As a result, the rationale and impact of choosing this camera setup are usually neither discussed nor described. Thus, when designing the stereo camera system for a mobile robot, there is not much general guidance beyond isolated setups that worked for a specific robot. To close the gap, this paper studies the impact of the physical setup of a stereo camera system in indoor environments. To do this, we present the results of an experimental analysis in which we use a given software setup to estimate the distance to an object while systematically changing the camera setup. Thereby, we vary the three main parameters of the physical camera setup, namely the angle and distance between the cameras as well as the field of view and a rather soft parameter, the resolution. Based on the results, we derive several guidelines on how to choose the parameters for an application.

Using patient shielding – What is the risk?

The practice of placing radiation protective shielding on patients (‘in contact’) in order to reduce the dose to certain radiosensitive organs for diagnostic X-ray examination, has been employed for decades. However, there has been a growing body of evidence that this practice is often ineffective or even counterproductive and the use of such shielding can also overemphasise the hazards of ionising radiation in the public mind. This has led to a growing disparity in the application of patient contact shielding and culminated in several professional bodies issuing guidance and statements to provide a consistent approach to patient contact shielding. This, in turn, has led to a healthy discussion and re-evaluation of when and why patient contact shielding should be used, where the main issue centres around the criteria used to arrive at the recommendations. The decision process involves considering, among others, the reported effectiveness of the shielding and a subjective assessment of the subsequent risks from their use. In order to improve the transparency of these recommendations, it is therefore suggested that a threshold for dose and/or risk should be clearly stated, below which no protection is required. A suggested starting point for defining this threshold is discussed. This would enhance uniformity of application and provide clarity for staff, patients and the public. It would also ensure that any future research in this area could be easily incorporated into the general guidance.

Telehealth in Oncology: ASCO Standards and Practice Recommendations

PURPOSE To provide standards and practice recommendations specific to telehealth in oncology. METHODS A systematic review of the literature on telehealth in oncology was performed, including the use of technologies and telecommunications systems, and other electronic methods of care delivery and sharing of information with patients. The evidence base was combined with the opinion of the ASCO Telehealth Expert Panel to develop telehealth standards and guidance. Public comments were solicited and considered in preparation of the final manuscript. RESULTS The Expert Panel determined that general guidance on implementing telehealth across general and specialty settings has been published previously and these resources are endorsed. A systematic search for studies on topics specific to oncology resulted in the inclusion of two clinical practice guidelines, 12 systematic reviews, and six primary studies. STANDARDS AND GUIDANCE Standards and guidance are provided for which patients in oncology can be seen via telehealth, establishment of the doctor-physician relationship, role of allied health professionals, role of advanced practice providers, multidisciplinary cancer conferences, and teletrials in oncology. Additional information is available at www.asco.org/standards .