Lung Aspergillus niger infection after SARS-CoV2

A 64-year-old never-smoker man, with professional exposure, presented to Marius Nasta Pneumophtisiology Institute for fatigability to effort, in the context of severe SARS-COV2 infection one month previously. His medical history includes pulmonary tuberculosis (55 years ago) and newly diagnosed type II diabetes (261 mg/dL glycemia). The thoracic tomography computer in the immediate post-COVID period (Fig. 1A) revealed the presence of glass ground lesions and a 3 cm nodule with cystic degeneration in the upper left lobe. A gross examination of the specimen identified a condensation area of 2.5 cm diameter, brown-grey colored, with necrosis and central ulceration. Microscopic examination showed the presence of bronchiectasis with squamous metaplasia of the epithelium, which appears ulcerated;numerous calcium oxalate crystals with adjacent foreign body granulomatous reaction;endobronchial are present fibrinous and inflammatory debris, brown-black pigment, and septate, dichotomous branching hyphae, suggestive of Aspergillus spp. A periodic acid-Schiff stain was performed, identifying the fungal hyphae. The histopathological diagnosis was bronchiectasis supra-infected and colonized with fungal filaments (Aspergillus niger).

Questioning the Potential for Achieving Active Ageing in Bucharest

The continuous growth of elderly population cohorts represents a global phenomenon influencing the design of any country’s economic and social policies. In the present context, an urban development planning challenge is encouraging an active and healthy lifestyle, transforming seniors into an economically and socially active group that further ensures their successful active ageing and respects place attachment values. This study aims to depict an overall image of the possibility to achieve active ageing for Bucharest’s elderly and their perception of this matter. In order to do so, the research appealed to the survey method for a total sample of 402 residents aged 65+ and living in all districts of Bucharest. The research objectives follow the main pillars of the active ageing concept that is assessing: their financial security and reasons motivating them to work after retiring, their capacity and needs for independent living, their access to health services and the enabling environment, which can act both as a facilitator and a barrier. The main results reveal that an active lifestyle depends on socio-economic and psychological characteristics and that the elderly’s contribution to economic life is often a continuation of their previous activities, not necessarily a result of successful policies for achieving active ageing. All these, next to low revenues, low access to health care, and limited usage capacity for ICT tools, define obvious difficulties for designing future urban friendly-ageing policies in Bucharest. This research represents a valuable contribution from the pre-COVID period, which may be complemented by further studies that contrast current perspectives on the topic. © 2022, Centre for Research on Settlements and Urbanism, Faculty of Geography, Babes-Bolyai University. All rights reserved.

Silver Tourism and Recreational Activities as Possible Factors to Support Active Ageing and the Resilience of the Tourism Sector

Population ageing, affecting both developed and developing countries nowadays, poses new challenges but also represents an opportunity for socio-economic systems in general, and in particular for tourism and recreation. In the light of the recently designed EU silver economy policies, active ageing shapes itself to be an attractive opportunity for the European leisure market. Seriously affected by the COVID-19 health crisis, the tourism sector's resilience depends on the hospitality industry's capacity to adapt, innovate, and respond to society's new demographic challenges. Consequently, new types and forms of tourism and new service technologies should be implemented having in mind an ageing population. This paper used as the main research tool a survey on Bucharest residents aged 65 and over, aiming to identify their main preferences and limitations regarding recreational activities and leisure tourism. The main results identify similarities and differences to findings on European silver tourists and could be further valued by better adapted holiday packages and tourism marketing strategies for Romania. The present research emphasised differences in senior travel preferences and a possible segmentation of silver tourists in Romania (e.g. based on their income, education level), highly suggesting that the elderly's needs have to be addressed by tailor-made products.

Reactive WiFi honeypot

Attackers move throughout all environments. They conduct reconnaissance, scan networks, and seek misconfigured and vulnerable stations. This aspect is especially true for wireless networks. As the COVID-19 pandemic pushed numerous employees to conduct business-related tasks over the home network, the WiFi spectrum's protection has become more critical and taken a front seat in developing cybersecurity best practices. Detection of an intruder will not suffice in today's environment. This paper presents our contribution in the form of a WiFi network honeypot. As we limited our framework to exploit artificial intelligence only in detecting aggressors and tailoring a hackback, we concur that machine learning techniques can be applied to answer other shortcomings of our design. © 2021 IEEE.