ABSTRACT
In the introduction to this special issue of Volkskunde on heritage and controversies, the urgency and relevance of this topic in the 2020s are emphasized. The wave of symbolic violence and protests against statues of persons linked with slave trade or colonization (illustrated with the case of the Melville Monument in Edinburgh) in the 2020s, was fuelled by the Black Lives Matter Movement, in particular after the death of George Floyd in 2020. The expansion and proliferation of the concept of heritage in the 21st century, well beyond only monuments and statues, is accompanied by an expansion of controversies. An extended series of adjectives like dark, difficult or toxic has recently been introduced in museology and critical heritage studies to draw attention to problematic aspects of heritage, memories, and tourism. This is contextualized by problematizing and addressing historical and contemporary events, traumas, and development. This is not only the case for slavery, imperialism, racism, colonialism, and gender relations in the past but also for climate change, sustainability, and anxieties about the future(s). These agendas and new challenges have effects on education, in particular history and history didactics. This field is now confronted with strong political attempts at orientation and reframing (as the attempts to launch a selective canon trajectory in Flanders demonstrate). But resilience can be expected, just like strategies of multiplication of perspectives, stories, canons, and frames. In the last five years, several projects were launched by Paul Janssenswillen en Wil Meeus, focusing on the topic of controversies in heritage (organizations) and teaching history, emphasizing multiperspectivity and the need for tools and didactic frames. This even leads to an article in this journal Volkskunde, published in 2019. One of these projects, the REGER project, bumped halfway into the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns and other problems in 2020 and 2021. But as the present volume demonstrates, literature reviews and numerous experiments were realized in the second phase. Some results are published in this special issue. Confronted with the pandemic's impact and several evolutions, a reorientation of the trajectory of the project led to the discovery of controversy mapping and its application in high schools and higher education in France. Many other promising lines are explored, including the legacy of the late Bruno Latour, the work of Tommaso Venturini and Anders Kristian Munk and the potential of thinking in terms of "Streitwert" (agonistic value), as launched by Gabi Dolff-Bonekamper.
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Objective: This study investigates the role of family composition on children's development during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, net of family socioeconomic status (SES). Background: At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020, schools closed and children all around the world were sent home, providing a rare opportunity to study the association between family composition and children's educational performance. Method: This study uses an extraordinary large-scale dataset on learning growth in primary education combined with extensive family background information (Netherlands Cohort Study on Education [NCO]). Using a difference-in-differences design and school-fixed effects, the association between family composition and learning growth before and during the school closure was compared, while controlling for family SES. Results: We find that during the pandemic, the effect of family composition on learning growth increased. Children in single-parent families and children in large families suffered larger learning losses during the pandemic than children in two-parent families and small families. Firstborn children experienced slightly less learning loss during the pandemic. Conclusion: The results indicated that the effect of family composition increased during the first school closure, even after controlling for family SES. Implications: This study provides evidence of family composition effects net of family SES. This indicates that apart from family SES, family composition should be taken into account to identify students at risk of learning loss. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Marriage and Family published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.
ABSTRACT
Background. The COVID-19 pandemic brought an unprecedented disruption to many hospital standard operating procedures including changing family visitation policies. As an infection control policy, most hospitals denied or limited visitors and patient families were updated via phone or video conferencing. There are several plausible reasons to suspect that altered communication techniques and heightened public awareness of critical illness during the pandemic impacted end of life care and decision making. Methods. We conducted a retrospective observational cohort study from a tertiary care hospital to determine if more patients in the ICU were transitioned to comfort measures only (CMO) care during COVID than in the same period the year before when COVID had not yet arrived in the United States ('pre-pandemic'). Collected information included demographics (Table 1), reason for ICU, comorbidities, code status at admission, length of ICU stay, cost of care during ICU admission, and disposition at discharge. All analyses began using the Kolmogorov -Smirnov test. Normally distributed continuous variables are compared between groups using the independent-samples t-test. Non-normally distributed continuous variables are compared between groups using the Mann-Whitney U test. Results. There were no statistically significant differences in baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of patients admitted to the medical ICU during the pre-pandemic versus pandemic periods (Table 1). Among the 266 patients admitted during the pre-pandemic period, 11.7% (31/266) were discharged with CMO code status. Among the 160 patients admitted in the pandemic period, 8.8% (14/160) were discharged with CMO code status (Table 2). The median APACHE score was significantly higher in the pre-pandemic period ([median=18 (interquartile range = 11) compared to the pandemic period ([median=15 (interquartile range = 1), (Mann-Whitney U = 17146.50, p = .008). The cost of an ICU admission during the pandemic period increased 0.099%. Table 1 Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of patients admitted to the medical ICU pre- versus post-pandemic (n = 426). Table 2 Discharge status code and outcomes of patients admitted to the medical ICU in the pre- versus post-pandemic (n = 426). Conclusion. This study shows that despite the highmorbidity and mortality associated with COVID, during the study time periods, the limitation of in-person visitors did not have an impact on the frequency of patients transitioned to CMO or decreased hospital expenditure.
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The COVID-19 pandemic impacted predoctoral psychology training at the graduate, practicum, and internship levels including a greater reliance on telehealth and evolving learning needs. However its unique impact on geropsychology training has not been explored. The Building Bridges workgroup for predoctoral training faculty levels, we describe opportunities and barriers to address evolving geropsychology training needs during the pandemic as determined through working group discussion. Negative impacts to training identified include: decreased opportunities for 1) face-to-face patient care and 2) telehealth care due to disparities in telehealth access and utilization in older adults. Other impacts on the geropsychology pipeline include declining opportunities to see older adults at practicum sites. Conversely, increased media attention to the impact of COVID on older adults' physical and mental health may lead to graduate students' having greater interest in geriatric mental health and reinforcing a geropsychology career. Recommendations for training programs to address the long-term ramifications of the pandemic will be offered.
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This is a case study of year-end feasts in the scouting group 69 Sint-Maarten in Deurne in 2019 and 2020. It documents the use of the Secret Santa application and explores if patterns can be discovered in the gift system and if COVID-19 had an impact.
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Increasing volatility in the global economy since the 2009 financial crisis, including the USA-China trade war and recent COVID-19 outbreak, has compelled businesses to build resilience to respond quickly to unexpected disruptions. Consistent with organizational information processing theory (OIPT), we posit that openness to technological innovation helps to build information processing capabilities (i.e., interfunctional coordination and interpartner informational justice), which are required to build supply chain resilience (SCR) and improve performance. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze survey data gathered from 241 Chinese manufacturers. The results reveal interfunctional coordination and interpartner informational justice fully mediate the relationship between openness to technological innovation and SCR, and information processing capabilities and SCR are significantly and positively associated with operational performance. This article extends OIPT by elucidating the role of openness to technological innovation and enhances the SCR literature by providing empirical evidence of the important roles for information processing capabilities. The findings provide a unique information processing perspective to help managers broaden their solutions against disruptive events, and thus avoid or minimize potential negative impacts on firms.
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Introduction: Axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) is an autologous anti-CD19 Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that induces durable responses in patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma. At a median of 27.1 months follow-up on the ZUMA-1 trial, median overall survival (OS) was 25.8 months with 39% progression free survival (PFS) at 2 years post-infusion (Locke, Lancet Onc 2019). We previously reported outcomes of axi-cel patients treated with standard of care therapy at a median follow up of 12.9 months, including 42% who did not meet eligibility criteria for ZUMA-1 based on co-morbidities (Nastoupil, JCO 2020). Here we report results from this cohort at a median follow up of 32.4 months, as well as late outcomes of interest including cytopenias, infections and secondary malignancies. Methods and Results: The US Lymphoma CAR-T Consortium comprised of 17 US academic centers who contributed data independent of the manufacturer. Two hundred and ninety-eight patients underwent leukapheresis with intent to manufacture standard of care axi-cel as of September 30, 2018. In infused patients (n=275), OS and PFS were calculated from date of infusion. After median follow-up of 32.4 months (95% CI 31.1 - 34.3), median OS was not reached (95% CI 25.6 - not evaluable) (Figure 1A) with 1-, 2- and 3-year OS of 68.5% (95% CI 62.6-73.7), 56.4% (95% CI 50.1-62.2) and 52.2% (95% CI 45.7-58.2%), respectively. Median PFS was 9 months (95% CI 5.9-19.6) (Figure 1B);1-, 2- and 3-year PFS was 47.4% (95% CI 41.4-53.2), 41.6% (95% CI 35.6-47.5) and 37.3% (95% CI 31.3-43.2), respectively. Twenty-seven PFS events occurred at or after 1 year post infusion;19 events were progressive lymphoma, with the latest relapse observed 28 months after axi-cel infusion. Eight patients died while in remission from their lymphoma: 4 from secondary malignancy, 3 from infection, and 1 from unknown causes. Results of multivariable modeling were similar to our prior analysis: factors associated with both a shorter PFS and shorter OS included male sex, elevated pre-lymphodepletion LDH, and poor ECOG status. Complete blood count and B- and T-cell recovery data were collected at 1 and 2-years post-infusion, excluding patients who had relapsed or been treated for secondary malignancy at time of collection (Table 1). Rates of neutropenia (absolute neutrophil count ≤1000) at 1- and 2- years were 9.2% (10/109) and 11.2% (9/80) and rates of CD4 count ≤200/ul were 62% (23/37) and 27% (7/26). Recovery of B cells was seen in 54% (15/28) and 57% (13/23) at 1-and 2-years post infusion. Infections were reported in 31.2% (34/109) patients between 6- and 12-months post infusion, and 17% (18/109) were severe, requiring either hospitalization and/or IV antibiotics. Twenty-one patients (24%, 21/89) had an infection between 1- and 2- years, 11% of which were severe. Twenty percent (10/49) of patients between 2- and 3-years had an infection and 4 (8%) were severe. Neutropenia, low CD4 counts, and IgG levels were not associated with infection, though patients with infection between 6-12 months were more likely to have received IVIG (p<0.001). No patient in this cohort died of COVID-19. Twenty-two of 275 (8%) patients were diagnosed with subsequent malignancy after axi-cel treatment: 14/275 (5%) patients were diagnosed with myeloid malignancies (MDS (n=12), AML (n=1), CMML (n=1));other malignancies included squamous cell carcinoma of skin (n=3);sarcoma (n=1);endometrial (n=1);lung (n=1);mesothelioma (n=1) and AITL (n=1). Patients with myeloid malignancy had a median age of 62 at axi-cel apheresis (IQR 56-67), 64% were male and median lines of prior therapy was 4 (IQR 3-6), including 36% with a prior autologous stem cell transplant. Eleven patients were in remission from lymphoma at myeloid malignancy diagnosis, while 3 were diagnosed after progression and interval therapy. Conclusion: This multi-center retrospective study showed similar long-term results to the ZUMA-1 trial, despite including patients who did not meet ZUMA-1 eligibility criteria ba ed on comorbidities. Sixteen percent of PFS events were seen after 1 year, largely due to disease progression. Late infection was common but was not explained by persistent neutropenia or low CD4 counts. Subsequent malignancy, including MDS, occurred in 8% of patients and require further study to better identify patients at risk. (Figure Presented).
ABSTRACT
Rationale One of the striking features of the Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic is the considerable variation in disease presentation and severity amongst patients, ethnic groups, and countries. Genetic factors could contribute to this variation. The Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 1 (ACE1) gene is characterized by a genetic deletion/insertion (D/I) of an alu repeat and this polymorphism (rs1799752) shows an important geographical variation. Recently, we showed that COVID-19 incidence was inversely correlated to the presence of the ACE1 D-allele frequency. Also, a significant correlation between COVID-19 related mortality and the prevalence of the D-allele was observed. ACE1 is a homologue of ACE2, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) host cell entry receptor. Since ACE1 and ACE2 levels are strongly regulated by common genetic variants in their genes, ACE2 levels may also be influenced by this polymorphism. Therefore, this genetic D/I in ACE1 might influence infectivity and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2. Methods ACE2 protein expression was visualized by immunohistochemistry on lung tissue sections from 67 subjects and quantified in alveolar epithelium. DNA was extracted from lung tissue and the prevalence of the three genotypes of rs1799752 (II, DI, DD) in ACE1 was determined using Taqman® SNP Genotyping assays. Results Significantly higher levels of ACE2 protein in alveolar lung epithelium were observed when subjects were homozygous for the insertion (II), compared to subjects homozygous for the deletion (DD). Importantly, this correlation remained significant, even after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, COPD, smoking, and diabetes. Therefore, homozygosity of the insertion (II) is an independent determinant for increased lung ACE2 levels and is not driven by higher frequencies of the insertion in certain patient groups. Conclusion In conclusion, we suggest a genetic D/I polymorphism in ACE1 to correlate with alveolar protein expression of ACE2, the SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor, thereby potentially affecting infectivity and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2. The geographical variance in the ACE1 II genotype might contribute to the varying prevalence, morbidity, and mortality due to COVID-19.