The Functioning of Local Government Authorities in Poland in the Conditions of the Epidemic in Relation to the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus – General Considerations

The article presents selected aspects of the functioning of local government in Poland under the conditions of the epidemic in connection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. More space is de-voted to the systemic aspects, while the substantive and procedural aspects have only been signalled, because their development goes beyond the scope of this study. The objective of this research paper is to provide an answer to the question to what extent the current regulations, taking into account the new legal regulations, enable the implementation of public tasks and how the new regulations modify the current tasks. The article formulates the thesis that the current regulations may be applied under epidemic conditions, but after making modifications necessary to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the functioning of local government. The regulation concerning the functioning of local self-government in the state of an epidemic is scattered and requires ordering. During the state of epidemic there was a strengthening of digitalization in the sphere of performing public tasks. © 2023, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej w Lublinie. All rights reserved.

The Influence of Selected Soft-Tissue and Telerehabilitation Techniques on Headaches in Young Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction: Headaches are a very common pain syndrome. The International Headache Society distinguishes primary pains, which include, among others, migraines and tension headaches, and secondary pain. Manual techniques, including soft tissue methods, are mentioned in the literature as an effective form of pain relief, but it is ambiguous whether manual therapy is a more effective form of headache therapy than exercises improving the flexibility of soft tissues in the neck area and cervical mobility. Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of selected techniques regarding working with soft tissues on headache symptoms. Material and methods: The study included 29 people with headaches, who were randomly divided into 2 groups. The study group, subjected to soft tissue techniques, comprised 15 people (13 women and 2 men), average age was 27.73 ± 5.06 years, body height, on average, 1.70 ± 0.08 cm, body mass, on average, 64.80 ± 12.31 kg. The control group, subjected to telere-habilitation, included 14 individuals (12 women and 2 men), average age was 28.36 ± 4.88, body height, on average, 1.68 ± 0.09 m, body mass, on average, 64.93 ± 12.78 kg. Participants were enrolled in the study after completing the question-naire in which they reported currently experiencing headaches. The HIT-6 (headache impact test) and HDI (head disability in-dex) screening tests were used to assess pain, and the results before and after the 3-week therapy were compared. In the study group, soft tissue therapy was performed in 3 sessions, for 30 minutes, 1 week apart. The control group was assigned self-ther-apy through teleconsultation in the form of exercises, at least 4 times a week, once a day, for 30 minutes, aimed at improving mobility of the cervical spine and elasticity of soft tissues. Results: In the study group, on the HIT-6 scale, the effect of pain on functioning prior to therapy was, on average, 61.87 ± 5.64, while at the end of therapy, a statistically significant decrease was observed – to an average of 48.60 ± 5.22 (p<0.001). In the control group, on the HIT-6, the effect of pain on functioning was, on average, 59.00 ± 4.10, while at the end of the therapy, a significant decrease to the mean value was observed: 53.50 ± 6.04 (p<0.01). For HDI, disability in the study group was at an average of 43.20 ± 19.78 before the therapy and 25.33 ± 14.32 (p<0.01) following the therapy. In the control group, disability before and after the therapy was 31.43 ± 17.62 and 26.57 ± 13.73, respectively (p<0.01). There were no statistically significant differences in the HDI results – 25.33 ± 14.32 for the study group and 26.57 ± 13.73 for the control group (p>0.05) after treatment. Conclusions: Soft tissue therapy and telerehabilitation caused a significant reduction in the impact of headaches on daily functioning and disability. In the era of epidemics, telerehabilitation may be an effective treatment for headaches in young adults. © AWF Krakow.

Employing Generative Adversarial Network in COVID-19 Diagnosis

In recent years, many papers and models have been developed to study the classification of X-ray images of lung diseases. The use of transfer learning, which allows using already trained network models for new problems, could allow for better results in the COVID-19 disease classification problem. However, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were not very large databases of SARS-CoV-2 positive patient images on which a network could perform learning. A solution to this problem could be a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) algorithm to create new synthetic data indistinguishable from the real data using the available data set. It would allow training a network capable of performing classification with greater accuracy on a larger and more diverse number of training data. Obtaining such a tool could allow for more efficient research on how to solve the global COVID-19 pandemic problem. The research presented in this paper aims to investigate the impact of using a Generative Adversarial Network for COVID-19-related imaging diagnostics in the classification problem using transfer learning. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Mathematical Model Simulation of Detailed Classification of Telemedicine Sensing Data

Medical and health field is a hot application field of wireless sensor networks. How to correctly refine and classify telemedicine sensor data is the research focus in related fields. Therefore, a detailed classification mathematical model simulation of telemedicine sensor data based on multi feature fusion is proposed. On the basis of telemedicine sensor data acquisition, it is preprocessed to reduce the computational overhead of detailed classification. The reliability features of the preprocessed telemedicine sensing data are extracted, the extracted features are fused by the principal component analysis method, and the refined classification model of telemedicine sensing data is constructed based on the principle of machine learning. The fused features are input into the model to complete the refined classification of telemedicine sensing data. The experimental results show that the correct refinement classification rate of the proposed method is more than 90%, the refinement classification accuracy is higher than 98.5%, the convergence speed is good, and the refinement classification time is 4 similar to 12 s, which proves that the correct refinement classification rate and accuracy of the proposed method are high, the classification time is short, and has good application performance.

Vaccinations following CAR-T cell therapy: summary of reported cases and state-of-the-art review of current recommendations

Introduction: Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy is a modern breakthrough technology used in the treatment of B-lineage lymphoid malignancies. These malignancies include acute lymphoblastic leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and plasma cell disorders. CAR-T therapy combines cellular therapy, gene therapy, and individualized therapy. The objective of this paper was to review the latest clinical knowledge, and summarize the reported data pertaining to vaccinations in patients after CAR-T therapy. Material and methods: We carried out a review of published original studies as indexed in PubMed, and a review of s presented during major hematology meetings. Results: Overall, 22 original studies were reviewed and considered suitable for analysis regarding the efficacy of vaccinations for patients who had received CAR-T therapy. Data was divided into three groupings: the efficacy of vaccination against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)/severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2);the efficacy of vaccination against influenza;and the efficacy of post-CAR-T immunization persistence of vaccination performed before CAR-T therapy. Humoral and cellular response to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination was positive for 36.5% and 72.2% of patients, respectively. The positive response to the influenza vaccine was 40% when administered prior to CAR-T therapy, as opposed to 31% after. Seroprotection for vaccine-preventable infections within 3-6 months after CAR-T was comparable to that of the general population, although it was determined to be less effective against specific pathogens (S. pneumoniae, B. pertussis, H. influenzae) in most patients. Conclusions: In cases of incomplete immune reconstitution, there is a high likelihood of a limited response to vaccination. Regarding the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 vaccine, T-cell-induced protection is relatively significant. Therefore, B-cell aplasia is not a contraindication for vaccination in CAR-T patients. The consensus of European Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation/European Hematology Association experts is that vaccination after CAR-T therapy is beneficial in order to reduce the rates of infection, and eventually to improve clinical course. Copyright © 2022 The Polish Society of Haematologists and Transfusiologists, Insitute of Haematology and Transfusion Medicine. All rights reserved

Three-dimensional simulations of the airborne COVID-19 pathogens using the advection-diffusion model and alternating-directions implicit solver

In times of the COVID-19, reliable tools to simulate the airborne pathogens causing the infection are extremely important to enable the testing of various preventive methods. Advection-diffusion simulations can model the propagation of pathogens in the air. We can represent the concentration of pathogens in the air by “contamination” propagating from the source, by the mechanisms of advection (representing air movement) and diffusion (representing the spontaneous propagation of pathogen particles in the air). The three-dimensional time-dependent advection-diffusion equation is difficult to simulate due to the high computational cost and instabilities of the numerical methods. In this paper, we present alternating directions implicit isogeometric analysis simulations of the three-dimensional advection-diffusion equations. We introduce three intermediate time steps, where in the differential operator, we separate the derivatives concerning particular spatial directions. We provide a mathematical analysis of the numerical stability of the method. We show well-posedness of each time step formulation, under the assumption of a particular time step size. We utilize the tensor products of one-dimensional B-spline basis functions over the three-dimensional cube shape domain for the spatial discretization. The alternating direction solver is implemented in C++ and parallelized using the GALOIS framework for multi-core processors. We run the simulations within 120 minutes on a laptop equipped with i7 6700 Q processor 2.6 GHz (8 cores with HT) and 16 GB of RAM. © 2021 The Author(s).