ABSTRACT
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, because of its exclusion from the World Health Organization, Taiwan has been relying on international media to voice itself and partake in the global battle against the fast-spreading disease. Under this premise, this study demonstrates an innovative instructional design for the course titled News English for International Literacy, with the goal to elevate students’ motivation and competence to read-watch English news. A learning-centered approach was adopted to replace conventional ESP language-centered model: identifying the starting and endpoints of students’ learning journey and the route in between. Accordingly, this action research featured needs assessment, team-teaching with field experts, and two-stage role-play. The course timeline synchronized with the development of pandemic;the training prepared students to interact with multimodal journalistic sources to understand ever-changing global development. Twenty-six college-level participants from four different majors joined the study in the southern Taiwan. The data collection instruments included entry and exit surveys, pre-posttests, focus group interviews, and role-play footages. The results showed that students’ frequency of international news reading-viewing increased drastically, while their sense of difficulty dropped significantly. In addition, their international news sources widely diversified. The progresses between the parallel assessments on news knowledge and comprehension and international literacy also indicated significant differences. Students expressed positively about the step-wise instruction, especially the inclusion of field experts, and the contextualized meaning-making in the role-play. © 2021 Taiwan English for Specific Purposes Association. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Today, the most serious threat to global health is the continuous outbreak of respiratory diseases, which is called Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought severe challenges to public health and has attracted great attention from the research and medical communities. Most patients infected with COVID-19 will have fever. Therefore, the monitoring of body temperature has become one of the most important basis for pandemic prevention and testing. Among them, the measurement of body temperature is the most direct through the Forehead Thermometer, but the measurement speed is relatively slow. The cost of fast-checking body temperature measurement equipment, such as infrared body temperature detection and face recognition temperature machine, is too high, and it is difficult to build Disease Surveillance System (DSS). To solve the above-mentioned problems, the Intelligent pandemic prevention Temperature Measurement System (ITMS) and Pandemic Prevention situation Analysis System (PPAS) are proposed in this study. ITMS is used to detect body temperature. However, PPAS uses big data analysis techniques to prevent pandemics. In this study, the campus field is used as an example, in which ITMS and PPAS are used. In the research, Proof of Concept (PoC), Proof of Service (PoS), and Proof of Business (PoB) were carried out for the use of ITMS and PPAS in the campus area. From the verification, it can be seen that ITMS and PPAS can be successfully used in campus fields and are widely recognized by users. Through the verification of this research, it can be determined that ITMS and PPAS are indeed feasible and capable of dissemination. The ITMS and PPAS are expected to give full play to their functions during the spread of pandemics. All in all, the results of this research will provide a wide range of applied thinking for people who are committed to the development of science and technology.
ABSTRACT
SESSION TITLE: Advances in the Care of Mechanically-Ventilated Patients SESSION TYPE: Original Investigations PRESENTED ON: October 18-21, 2020 PURPOSE: Psychomotor agitation is one of the reasons for noninvasive ventilation (NIV) failure. Judicious sedation may mitigate agitation and improve patient-ventilator synchrony in patients receiving NIV. Dexmedetomidine is an alpha-2 adrenergic receptor agonist that exhibits sedative, anxiolytic, and analgesic properties. It can provide moderate sedation without compromising the respiratory drive. This study aims to summarize the existing evidence for dexmedetomidine use in patients receiving NIV. METHODS: Studies reviewed were selected based on relevance from a meta-analysis search conducted in Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane library, and Academic Search Elite to include all published randomized controlled trials through April 2020. Prospective studies were selected if they compared dexmedetomidine with other sedative agents or no sedation in patients who require NIV. Review Manager 5.3 (The Cochrane Collaboration) was used for meta-analysis and a random effect model was applied for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Six randomized controlled trials with a total of 505 patients matched the inclusion criteria. Forty-four patients (20.1%) in the dexmedetomidine group and 96 patients (39.8%) in the control group required escalation of therapy from NIV to intubation. Dexmedetomidine infusion significantly reduced the intubation rate (pooled odds ratio, 0.37;95% CI: 0.24-0.58;p<0.0001) and ICU length of stay by 2.9 days (95% CI: -4.38 to -1.44;p =0.0001). However, dexmedetomidine did not change the mortality rate (pooled odds ratio, 0.46;95% CI: 0.1-1.78;p=0.26). Finally, patients who received dexmedetomidine infusion had a lower incidence of delirium (pooled odds ratio, 0.26;95% CI: 0.15-0.45;p=0.003) but were more prone to bradycardia and hypotension. CONCLUSIONS: The present analysis suggests that dexmedetomidine use in patients receiving NIV could mitigate agitation and improve NIV tolerance. For patients who require sedation while receiving NIV, dexmedetomidine may be the preferred sedative agent as it does not carry deleterious effects on ventilatory function. Dexmedetomidine reduces the incidence of delirium but may affect hemodynamic profiles more than other agents. Given the heterogeneity and small sample size of included studies, future large-scale studies are needed to examine the role of dexmedetomidine use in patients receiving NIV. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Dexmedetomidine could be the preferred sedative agent for patients who have NIV intolerance due to agitation. Our analysis showed that clinical outcomes of dexmedetomidine use in NIV were encouraging, though further prospective studies are needed to confirm these results. In the era of COVID-19, dexmedetomidine could potentially reduce patients’ need for ventilators and optimize resource utilization. DISCLOSURES: No relevant relationships by Wei-cheng Chen, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Teressa Ju, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Chi Chan Lee, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Hsin-Ti Lin, source=Web Response