Inclusive Study Group Formation at Scale

Underrepresented students face many significant challenges in their education. In particular, they often have a harder time than their peers from majority groups in building long-term high-quality study groups. This challenge is exacerbated in remote-learning scenarios, where students are unable to meet face-to-face and must rely on pre-existing networks for social support. We present a scalable system that removes structural obstacles faced by underrepresented students and supports all students in building inclusive and flexible study groups. One of our main goals is to make the traditionally informal and unstructured process of finding study groups for homework more equitable by providing a uniform but lightweight structure. We aim to provide students from underrepresented groups an experience that is similar in quality to that of students from majority groups. Our process is unique in that it allows students the opportunity to request group reassignments during the semester if they wish. Unlike other collaboration tools our system is not mandatory and does not use peer-evaluation. We trialed our approach in a 1000+ student introductory Engineering and Computer Science course that was conducted entirely online during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that students from underrepresented backgrounds were more likely to ask for group-matching support compared to students from majority groups. At the same time, underrepresented students that we matched into study groups had group experiences that were comparable to students we matched from majority groups. B-range students in high-comfort and high-quality groups had improved learning outcomes. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Typical and atypical chest CT findings in COVID-19 RTPCR positive patients

Introduction:COVID-19 usually manifests clinically as pneumonia with predominant imaging findings of an atypical or organizing pneumonia. The standard technique for confirming COVID-19 is molecular testing by RT-PCR however chest imaging by CT scan can show signs of pneumonia in patients with negative RT-PCR and results can be achieved significantly faster, thus offering a potential role in supporting rapid decision making. CT scan has been shown to have more sensitivity than RT-PCR and Chest X-ray. CT Severity scoring also helps in better assessment of severity of disease. Aim:To estimate typical and atypical chest CT findings in COVID-19 RTPCR positive patients for better assessment of the role of chest CT in COVID-19 management. Materials andMethods:100 patients with confirmed COVID-19 were included in study. Findings like ground glass haze (GGO), reticulations, crazy paving appearance, consolidation, subpleural curvilinear line, bronchiectasis, subpleural transparent line, vascular enlargement, mediastinal lymphadenopathy, nodules, pleural effusion, Inverted halo sign, Halo sign and pericardial effusion were documented in them and analysis was done. Results:The typical Chest CT features present in our COVID-19 cases were GGO in 93 patients (93%), reticulations in 71 patients (71%), crazy paving appearance in 59 patients (59%), consolidation in 47 patients (47%), subpleural curvilinear line in 39 patients (39%), bronchiectasis in 37 patients (37%) and subpleural transparent line in 30 patients (30%). Most cases had bilateral (98%), peripheral (57%) and patchy involvement (86%) by GGO and lower lobe predominance (55%) by consolidation. Conclusion:GGO, reticulations, crazy paving and consolidation involving bilateral lung, in a peripheral and patchy distribution with lower lobe predilection are the typical findings on chest CT in COVID-19. Chest CT scan may act as a quick diagnostic tool with high sensitivity taking into consideration that almost all COVID-19 patients demonstrate typical features.

COVID-19 and Market Failure: An Indian Experience

Since vaccines provide a limited period of immunity, the slow pace of vaccination, as witnessed in the case of African and Indian continents, may result in the repetition of doses. Any country or region left behind may infect the whole world once again, which necessitates collective and concerted efforts of the whole world to attain herd immunity and make it COVID-19-free. © 2022 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.

COVID-Net US: A Tailored, Highly Efficient, Self-attention Deep Convolutional Neural Network Design for Detection of COVID-19 Patient Cases from Point-of-Care Ultrasound Imaging

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted many aspects of life globally, and a critical factor in mitigating its effects is screening individuals for infections, thereby allowing for both proper treatment for those individuals as well as action to be taken to prevent further spread of the virus. Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) imaging has been proposed as a screening tool as it is a much cheaper and easier to apply imaging modality than others that are traditionally used for pulmonary examinations, namely chest x-ray and computed tomography. Given the scarcity of expert radiologists for interpreting POCUS examinations in many highly affected regions around the world, low-cost deep learning-driven clinical decision support solutions can have a large impact during the on-going pandemic. Motivated by this, we introduce COVID-Net US, a highly efficient, self-attention deep convolutional neural network design tailored for COVID-19 screening from lung POCUS images. Experimental results show that the proposed COVID-Net US can achieve an AUC of over 0.98 while achieving 353 × lower architectural complexity, 62 × lower computational complexity, and 14.3 × faster inference times on a Raspberry Pi. Clinical validation was also conducted, where select cases were reviewed and reported on by a practicing clinician (20 years of clinical practice) specializing in intensive care (ICU) and 15 years of expertise in POCUS interpretation. To advocate affordable healthcare and artificial intelligence for resource-constrained environments, we have made COVID-Net US open source and publicly available (https://github.com/maclean-alexander/COVID-Net-US/ ) as part of the COVID-Net open source initiative. © 2021, Crown.

The impact of corona-virus pandemic effected the air pollution in india

In a country like India, where the major decease are been caused because of the Air pollution, which has affected around 4 million lives because of this pollution only, the cause of the rise in Air pollution is not only from the factories but also the vehicles which use to run on the streets as corona-virus can stay in the air for around 30 minutes, which can cause problems to millions of lives moving on the street, mostly the poor. In India air pollution has rated to almost least in the past 20 years which has contributed to the break from spreading.In India, Delhi and other most populated states stated a drastic downfall in Air pollution with about 60 percent decline in air pollution of PM - 2.5 particularly known as "fine particulate matters" in Delhi when compared with 2019 while the pollution control in other countries couldn't see much change and which has also seen a rise in corona-virus cases.In this paper we have analyzed the impact of rising in the number of the corona-virus cases concerning the most polluted cities to state the actual scenario that is air pollution leads to a rise in a pandemic situation. This paper is primarily based on secondary sources of data collection including the state-wise downfall in the level of air pollution, impact on the environment from the deadly disease i.e. Corona-virus, prospects, impact on the health of the individual. © 2021 Karadeniz Technical University. All rights reserved.

Core surgical field camps: a new deanery-based model for enhancing advanced skills in core surgical trainees through simulation.

Hands-on wet lab simulation training is a vital part of modern surgical training. Since 2010, surgical 'boot camps' have been run by many UK deaneries to teach core surgical trainees basic entry level skills. Training in advanced skills often requires attendance at national fee-paying courses. In the Wessex Deanery, multiple, free of charge, core surgical 'field camps' were developed to provide more advanced level teaching in the particular specialty preference of each core surgical trainee. After the COVID-19 pandemic, national hands-on courses will be challenging to provide and deanery-based advanced skills training may be the way forward for craft-based specialties. The experiences over 2 years of delivering the Wessex core surgical field camps are shared, giving a guide and advice for other trainers on how to run a field camp.