The COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil: everyday life analysis and group intervention outcomes

The COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly changed the everyday life of the population, especially of people in social distancing. Thus, using a qualitative methodology, we sought to analyze the changes in the everyday lives of Brazilians in social distancing and the possible contributions of occupational therapy in telehealth groups. The research was carried out in a virtual format using the technique of focus groups to collect the narratives. The meetings, which lasted approximately 90 min, occurred in the second half of 2020. The meetings were transcribed, analyzed, and categorized by the interpretive phenomenological method. Four categories were found, namely, changes in emotional states, changes in everyday life, political crossings and the pandemic, and from grouping to virtual grouping. Disruptions in everyday life were noticed, as well as the formation of a mutual help group. Remote assistance in occupational therapy contributed to health care emergencies as it allowed moments of reflection in the participants' everyday lives. © 2023 Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos. All rights reserved.

Memristor Based Integrated System for the Long-Term Analysis of Chronic Wounds: Design and Clinical Trial

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was known that chronic wounds affected roughly 2% of the world population. Due to the increase of bedridden patients parting from 2020, it is estimated that the number of affected people in the world has risen to around 4%. Moreover, there is a constant need coming directly from the medical community, for new devices that can help the tele-monitoring of chronic syndromes such as cutaneous ulcers. In the last years our research group has committed itself in the development of the WoundViewer, an integrated telemedical device able to automatically analyse chronic wounds though a Memristor Cellular Automata (MCA) designed and trained for this specific scope. This work will present both the design of the MCA and of the device, and the data obtained form the clinical trial preformed with the device on a cohort of 150 patients suffering from three different kinds of chronic wounds at different states. The presented data proves that the use systems that exploit memristor-based computing techniques can provide useful and much needed advantages in different actual critical fields such as patient care, helping caregivers to maintain a high standard of cure. © 2022 IEEE.

"A scuola di Astroparticelle”: a synergy between school education and scientific research

The outreach program "A scuola di Astroparticelle” was proposed in 2016 by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN - Napoli Division) in collaboration with the Physics Department "Ettore Pancini” of the Federico II University in Napoli, CNR-SPIN and CNR-ISASI Institutes. Its main goal is to engage teachers and students of High Schools in astroparticle physics projects. For the third edition (2018/19), the activities, which are also part of the Italian Educational Program PCTO - "Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali e per l'Orientamento”, involved 18 schools for a total of 21 projects on several topics. Some projects were strictly related to astroparticles as cosmic rays, while others were more technical, as the development of particle detectors, or cross-disciplinary projects. Students worked for the entire school year and prepared materials for the final event. More than 600 students attended the event and presented their work to a jury with a poster and an oral presentation in plenary sessions. Since 2018, the program is part of OCRA - Outreach Cosmic Ray Activities - a national outreach project of INFN with the aim of collecting, within a common framework, the numerous outreach activities in cosmic-ray field carried out at the local level. The fourth edition (2019-20), in spite of the difficult situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has also seen the participation of 22 schools that carried out part of the activities in an online format. The project realized using the open data of the Pierre Auger Observatory will be presented in detail. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

COVID-19 pandemic and days of absence from work in workers with flu-like symptoms in the City of Rome, Italy.

ABSTRACT: COVID-19 has dramatically affected working forces. We aim to report our occupational medicine service's experience in managing suspected COVID-19 cases during the pandemic through a retrospec-tive observational study. We compared the number of days employees were absent from work due to flu-like symptoms from March 2020 to February 2021 to the same period the previous year (2019-2020). Two hundred thirty-four patients (+47.2% compared to the previous year) who tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 reported flu-like symp-toms; the number of days of absence from work was 2812 (+190.2% compared to the previous year). On average, employees with flu-like symptoms lost 12.07 working days compared to 6.12 in the previous year (p<0.0001). In conclusion, in our sample COVID-19 has increased the number of working day loss. However, our approach proved to be important, especially during the first months of the pandemic, to limit SARS-CoV-2 spread in workplaces.

Coping with Pandemics: Opportunities and Challenges for AI Multimedia in the "new Normal"

Theworld iswelcoming the newnormal - the coronavirus pandemic has significantly changed the way people live, work, communicate and learn. Almost everyone now is wearing a face mask when they go in public. People are working from home, some taking care of children at the same time. Bars and restaurants are limited to carry-out and delivery only. Meetings and conferences go online. Schools are closed and educators are instead holding video conference classes regularly. All these become the new normal as our ways of life. The panel thus provides a valuable opportunity for people from a variety of backgrounds to exchange views on opportunities and challenges for AI multimedia in the current and post pandemics era. © 2020 Owner/Author.