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Cloud computing is currently one of the prime choices in the computing infrastructure landscape. In addition to advantages such as the pay-per-use bill model and resource elasticity, there are technical benefits regarding heterogeneity and large-scale configuration. Alongside the classical need for performance, for example, time, space, and energy, there is an interest in the financial cost that might come from budget constraints. Based on scalability considerations and the pricing model of traditional public clouds, a reasonable optimization strategy output could be the most suitable configuration of virtual machines to run a specific workload. From the perspective of runtime and monetary cost optimizations, we provide the adaptation of a Hadoop applications execution cost model extracted from the literature aiming at Spark applications modeled with the MapReduce paradigm. We evaluate our optimizer model executing an improved version of the Diff Sequences Spark application to perform SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pairwise sequence comparisons using the AWS EC2's virtual machine instances. The experimental results with our model outperformed 80% of the random resource selection scenarios. By only employing spot worker nodes exposed to revocation scenarios rather than on-demand workers, we obtained an average monetary cost reduction of 35.66% with a slight runtime increase of 3.36%. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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In the published article, the reference for de Oliveira, D. L., and de Oliveira, G. A. (2020)”. was incorrectly written as "de Oliveira, D. L., and de Oliveira, G. A. (2020). "Jornalismo cient-fico e sociedade em tempos de COVID-19,” in Brasil Ps-Pandemia: Reflexes e Propostas, eds R. Santosonaldo and M. Porchmann (Embu das Artes: Alexa Cultural), 261–281.” It should be "de Oliveira, D. L., and de Oliveira, G. A. (2020). "Jornalismo Científico e Sociedade em Tempos de COVID-19,”, in Brasil Pós-Pandemia: reflexões e propostas, eds R. Santos andM. Porchmann (Embu das Artes: Alexa Cultural), 261–281.” In the published article, there was an error. The name of the Brazilian Journalist– Monica Bergamo–was misspelled as Monica Begamo. A correction has been made to Results, The Appellate Judge Who Humiliated a Municipal Officer in Santos After Refusing toWear a Face Covering, Paragraph Number 5: "Similarly, Monica Begamo, another digital influencer with a presence in traditional media, drew on the frame criticizing the elites and mandonism. Sharing a post from another journalist, Fabio Pannunzio, Begamo wrote:” The corrected sentence appears below: "Similarly,Monica Bergamo, another digital influencer with a presence in traditional media, drew on the frame criticizing the elites and mandonism. Sharing a post from another journalist, Fabio Pannunzio, Bergamo wrote:” The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated. © 2023 Lopes de Oliveira, Moreno and Lewenstein.
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Introduction. Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and COVID-19 are at high risk of adverse outcomes due to the presence of comorbidities. However, it is still unclear whether dialysis therapy is associated with a worse prognosis in patients infected with SARSCoV- 2. The objectives were to assess mortality and risk factors associated with a worse prognosis of these patients (e.g., age, sex, comorbidities, Intensive Care Admission [ICU] admission, and need for invasive mechanical ventilation [IMV]). Methods. An observational, descriptive, retrospective study was conducted in the private healthcare maintenance organization (Unimed-BH) of Belo Horizonte and 33 surrounding cities in Brazil. We used data collected from the organization's database. We included adult inpatients with CKD on previous dialysis therapy who tested positive for COVID-19, from February 2020 to June 2021. Results. During the period, 16182 patients were admitted to Unimed-BH with a diagnosis of COVID-19. Of these, 333 (2%) had dialysis CKD. Male patients were 180 (54%), age ranged from 22.85 to 95.75 years and the mean was 60.91 years. Of the 333 patients, 109 (32.7%) were admitted to the ICU, and 56 (16.8%) required IMV. Among the 14 comorbidities analysed, the mean number of comorbidities was 6, with 93 (27.9%) dyslipidaemia, 74 (22%) diabetic, 270 (81%) hypertensive, 25 (7.5%) asthmatic, 42 (12.6%) with chronic pulmonary disease (CPD) and 122 (36.6%) with congestive heart failure (CHF). There were 66 (19.8%) deaths, 29 (43.9%) were male, the mean age was 60.8 years, and 23 patients (34.8%) were elderly (>60 years). Among the patients who died, 55 (83.3%) were in the ICU and 46 (69.7%) on IMV. The mean number of comorbidities was 9.27 being 16 (24.2%) dyslipidaemia, 44 (66.6%) diabetic, 60 (90.9%) hypertensive, 5 (7%) asthmatic, 10 (15%) with CPD and 32 (48.5%) with CHF. Conclusions. Dialysis patients appear more susceptible to unfavourable outcomes than the general population. Our findings are similar to those reported in the world literature which is still scarce. It is important to conduct more studies on this population.
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Introduction. Life expectancy is increasing worldwide. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people 100 years or more (centenaries) were challenged by a potentially fatal disease. We evaluated the outcome of centenaries hospitalized due to COVID-19 in a private healthcare system of Belo Horizonte/Brazil (Unimed-BH). Methods. Administrative data were collected from the hospital database. Patients were included if they had a severe adult respiratory syndrome due to coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ribonucleic acid identified by quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) or by the International Code of Disease- 10th review (ICD-10) hospitalization codes U07.1, B34.2, or B97.2. Results. From March 1 2020 to October 31 2021, 316.4 & plusmn;12.9 centenaries/month were registered. Eighteen hospitalizations due to COVID-19 were identified. Median age was 101.8 years (interquartile range [IQR]:100.7,103.0). Most patients were female (83%). There was a median of 6.0 morbidities per patient (IQR:5.3,7.8), range 2-12 morbidities, among 71 possible morbidities. The most described morbidities were systemic arterial hypertension (94%), dementia (61%), and congestive heart failure (61%). Median length of hospitalization was 6.5 days (IQR:3.3,8.0). No patient was dialyzed. Seven (39%) patients died during hospitalization, of whom 3 (17%) were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit and 2 (11%) were oxygenated by invasive mechanical ventilation. No other patients were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit or invasively mechanically ventilated. Conclusions. Although the hospitalization rate was low, the mortality rate during hospitalization was high among centenaries. Further research is required to evaluate the actual risks of centenaries to be infected by SARS-CoV-2 and the subsequent outcomes.
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Objective: to compare the average anxiety among undergraduate Nursing students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: it was a cross-sectional study conducted with 101 undergraduate Nursing students. Data collection took place through WhatsApp (R), by sending a link containing a consent form, a Google Forms (R) instrument and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The analysis was carried out through central tendency, absolute and relative frequency, and analytical tests. Results: trait anxiety and state anxiety presented medium (52.5%) and high (67.3%) levels, respectively, with mean state anxiety (48.1) higher than the mean trait anxiety (42.3) and positive correlation (r=0.479) between the two scales (p<0.000). They were high among students who lived with family members with risk factors for COVID-19 aggravation, underwent social isolation, without confirmatory tests for the disease, and performed an internship in internal medicine. Conclusion: significant percentages of anxiety levels were identified among undergraduate Nursing students in mandatory internship during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus revealing the need for preventive actions for this public. Contributions to practice: based on these findings, proposals to prevent mental health problems in this public can be developed seeking to change the current mental health scenario.
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During the pandemic, people were asked to stay at home, which increased the demand for software. The quality of the software is improving as a result of this trend. In response, companies have accelerated their digitization processes to provide better quality software that is more accessible, user-friendly, and secure. Since the pandemic, software development teams around the world have struggled to meet deadlines during uncertain times. This poster addresses the difficulties developers and designers face in developing and managing digital health software. This is due to the growing appeal of low and no-code platforms that are becoming more accessible and user-friendly to non-programmers. The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a prototype digital health component library known as LICOR. This software development kit contains integrated digital components designed specifically for the digital health industry. It helps even non-experts create effective digital health products. The design approach was developed by combining various theories and techniques such as design system principles, domain-oriented design, micro front-ends, and microservices. The methodology is based on the design-based research approach, which combines theoretical research with working and coded software artifacts to enable real-world testing. We are interested in contributions from the community and would be happy to discuss ethical concerns, bias, and illiteracy in digital health with academics. Finally, we discuss future research opportunities and the difficulties of connecting the design phase with the development phase in digital health software development. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Since RIO-92, sustainability has become a major issue within the tourism environment, urging the need to measure its economic, social and environmental variables. Agenda 21, a product of this Summit, recommends the implementation of governance processes, such as satisfaction surveys, as one of the tools for measuring sustainability. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 health crisis, sustainability will be the essential element of stability and control in the face of future crises on a global scale. This research proposes the opinion of residents and visitors as one of the bases for the design of sustainable tourism. Therefore, it analyses the level of sustainability felt by both groups, through more than 1800 satisfaction surveys carried out in Albufeira, Faro and Lagos in the Algarve-Portugal. It is perceived that the local population is satisfied with tourism, although they do not want more tourists. The tourist activity developed in the destinations is linked to the sun and beach, reaching, on the part of the tourist, a high level of satisfaction, and there is an intention to return in the coming periods. However, the surveys revealed the need for improvements in infrastructure to offer higher levels of excellence and attractiveness, which have not yet been achieved, thus strengthening off-season tourism, involving society and its idiosyncrasies. © 2022, Universidade de Aveiro. All rights reserved.
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Vaccines have opened up a new horizon for tourism worldwide. Municipalities with significant dependence on the sector in their economies will have to adjust to the new needs and expectations of their visitors. Following COVID-19, the key to the development of balanced and sustainable tourism will be the rapid power of adaptation, which, in addition to the 17 SDGs, will have to rely on the involvement of the destination's stakeholders and on the "re"-knowledge of their own reality. The study reflects on the necessary adaptation of tourist municipalities to the reality of the current tourist environment, through the effective use of accessible tools and the recognition of the needs of the new visitor. The idea of destination emotional intelligence is proposed on the basis of a comparative adaptation between the theory of intelligence and the new criteria to be met by post-COVID-19 tourist destinations. © 2022, IGI Global. All rights reserved.
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The phenomenon called infodemia refers to the increase in the volume of information on a specific topic, which multiplies rapidly in a short period of time, and has stood out in the context of the health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Too much information can trigger feelings of fear, anxiety, stress, and other conditions of mental distress. The study aims to describe the profile of exposure to information about COVID-19 and its repercussions on the mental health of elderly Brazilians. This is a cross-sectional study carried out with 1924 elderly Brazilians. Data were collected through a web-based survey sent to the elderly via social networks and email, from July to October 2020. The results of the descriptive analysis of the data show that most of the elderly were aged between 60 and 69 years (69.02%), female (71.26%), married (53.79%) and white (75.57%). About 21.67% (n = 417) concluded their graduation, 19.75% (380) concluded their specialization and 16.63% (320) concluded their master's or doctoral degrees. Television 862 (44.80%) and social networks 651 (33.84%) were reported as frequent sources of exposure to news or information about COVID-19. Participants indicated that television (46.47%;n = 872), social networks (30.81%;n = 575) and radio (14.48%;251) affected them psychologically and/or physically. Receiving fake news about COVID-19 on television (n = 482;19.8%) and on social media (n = 415;21.5%) mainly resulted in stress and fear. The disseminated information contributes to awareness, but also affects physically and/or psychologically many elderly people, mainly generating fear and stress. © 2022, Centro Nacional de Informacion de Ciencias Medicas. All rights reserved.
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Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the need to follow health protocols based on the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, most teachers and researchers started conducting teaching and research activities at their "home office". Meanwhile, these professionals began to develop their activities in an often-improvised workspace - many of them have also been caring for their children and doing household chores. We have even observed a decline in student performance with remote teaching, as class duration reduced and students lacked access to laboratories for practical classes. In our view, if the Brazilian government does not invest in improving the quality of remote education and internet access for the population amid the ongoing pandemic, an increasing number of teachers and researchers will develop irreversible health problems due to the precariousness of remote teaching and work.
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Introduction: This case presents the pediatric form of Baló's Concentric Sclerosis, which corresponds to 2.2% of demyelinating diseases in this age group, being more common in adults. It is characterized by concentric rings formed by demyelinated and myelinated fibers with an 'onion skin' pattern. In childhood, it has less functional impairment and a more benign course. Differential diagnosis with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, primary central nervous system neoplasms and infections is a challenge. There is no consensus on treatment and corticosteroids have been used as the basis of therapy for acute injuries. Objectives: To report the case of a 13-year-old child with clinical and neuroimaging features characteristic of the disease and a good response to methylprednisolone. Methods: Review of medical records and literature search (PubMed). Results: A 13-year-old white male patient started paresthesia followed by paresis in the right side. After 1 month, he had complete recovery from symptoms without the use of medication. Cranial magnetic resonance imaging showed an oval lesion in the nucleocapsular region on the left with hypersignal on T2/FLAIR with diffusion restriction. Prescription Teriflunamide 14mg/day for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis. Two years after the start of treatment, he presented paresis in his left side with dysphagia. On physical examination, athetosis in the left upper limb was observed. Symptoms were preceded by hypogeusia and hyposmia with serology for COVID IgG positive and IgM negative. Cranial magnetic resonance imaging revealed rounded areas on T2/FLAIR with enhancement and diffusion to restriction in the subthalamic region and occipital lobe on the right suggestive of active demyelinating plaques and lesion in the left frontal lobe with heterogeneous signal on T2. Methylprednisolone was prescribed IV for five days with significant improvement in athetosis and paresis. Conclusions: The pediatric form of Baló's disease is a rare disease with few cases reported in the literature and represents a diagnostic challenge and a therapeutic enigma.
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AIM: To determine the magnitude of the association between social isolation and oral health in adults. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Systematic review based on PRISMA guidelines. Observational studies and clinical trials were obtained by searching the electronic databases of PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane Library electronic, SciELO, Science Direct and Embase. Hand searches and gray literature were included. Two researchers independently selected the studies, extracted data, and analyzed and assessed their methodological quality. The Rayyan QCRI web-based tool was used to manage and cite references, and the risk of bias was estimated according to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Meta-analysis was not performed due to insufficient data. RESULTS: The search retrieved 2545 articles. Full texts of 14 articles were read, and 1 clinical trial and 3 cross-sectional studies were included. All the studies reported on oral function, but none assessed plaque or caries parameters. The cross-sectional studies presented high risk of bias. None of the studies associated social isolation with oral health. CONCLUSIONS: There is no strong evidence for an association between social isolation and oral health in adults. Regular oral hygiene practice should be encouraged, recommended and maintained at this time of social isolation, to maintain oral health.
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Dental Caries , Oral Health , Adult , Cross-Sectional Studies , Humans , Oral Hygiene , Social IsolationABSTRACT
How far can State and businesses 'play' with personal data, claiming to protect the right to health in pandemic times? This question leeds to the discussion of the possible damage caused by profiling and contact tracing techniques regarding personality rights in relations between ICT companies and States'. By analysing the way European and Inter-American bodies are tackling data protection rules currently in force, the text analyses the consent as a problematic issue, considering both the opt-in and opt-out model are not enough to protect those rights, especially in pandemic times. Although contact tracing might be used in favour of Public Health policies, it may also result in the violation of human rights. Applying the inductive method, this paper proposes a reflection about online behavioural tracking and profiling practices, explaining the efects of personal data mass gathering and the complex relations between businesses activities and human rights. The main conclusion is that all individuals have the same right to privacy, equality and freedom of choice. Thus, States should provide clear and objective rules to be followed by ICT companies, in accordance with international rules, ensuring individual's protection and holding data processors accountable for personal data processing.
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This article presents data on the impacts and changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic on librarianship within the context of rural school libraries. We understand the work in libraries as a special activity that is only valued if contextualized. Thus, we question the role of the library and the librarian practices in the current pandemic scenario with the purpose of updating the debate on librarianship in rural schools. To this end, we conducted a bibliographic and exploratory field research mediated by the application of a questionnaire. We conclude by highlighting the precarious situation that prevents actions and activities to encourage reading and the dissemination of pedagogical resources to support school and school-community libraries.
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In 2019 coronavirus pandemic was required to find ways to further early diagnosis of COVID-19. This research aims to implement deep neural networks. Thus, we sought work to present analyses about the Deep Learning model, CNN, COVID-19 detection, and segmentation image. The training dataset to train the model we used exams the computerized tomography (CT scan) with dataset the Harvard Dataverse, available since May 2020, was used. The data were collected from the Public Hospital of the Government of the Employees of São Paulo (HSPM) and the Hospital Metropolitano da Lapa - São Paulo - Brazil. We applied it to four different architectures like VGG 19, Resnet 50, Inception, Xception. Each architecture has its advantages and disadvantages, and to supply the needs that each architecture presents, we generated ensembles among them. In general, the segmentation has shown that it is possible to capture regions with COVID-19 and differentiate them from other diseases. This study has pointed out the accuracy of 95.05% with a low false-positive rate for detection using computed tomography imaging. Thus, for automatic image renewal to show lung involvement, preliminary results translate into the lung and area affected by SARS-CoV-2. Future works can be done to improve our results, in particular, more databases may include detection of multiple disease cases such as pneumonia, bronchitis. Thus, it may be indicated more information to the classification result. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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In this article, at a time when we celebrate Paulo Freire's centenary, we discuss the current moment crossed by profound crises. We problematize this context, especially with regard to the Brazilian educational scenario that experiences pressures for remote education in times of pandemic, looking in Freire's legacy for clues to understand and seek answers to what we have lived and faced. We articulate Freire's reference to the experiences lived by the Municipal Reference Center for Youth and Adult Education (Centro Municipal de Referência de Educacąõ de Jovens e Adultos-CREJA), to the teaching work, tensioned by conservative projects, and the movement of lives understood in their potential for approximation and reflection in times of social distancing. We understand that revisiting Paulo Freire and having a dialog with his concepts is urgent and necessary, in the thickening for the densification of our actions and investigations in teacher education. © 2021 Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa, Editora. All rights reserved.
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Our case study situates science communication within the interaction of the COVID-19 disease, scientific research about the disease, public statements by relevant officials, media messages, political actions, and public opinion. By studying these interactions in the Brazilian context, we add to the understanding of science communication complexity by studying a context less easily available to the English-speaking research community. Methodologically, we identified key moments in Brazil during the pandemic using tools such as Google Trends, and content analysis of influencers' Twitter and Instagram accounts and digital newspapers. These episodes are then explored as case studies, using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of messages to identify message emphasis frames and political agendas. The results introduce issues rarely explored in previous science communication research, especially ones associated with nationalism and political populism and national inequalities of privilege, income, and trust.
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This article aims to identify the possibilities of the diaconal action of the Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession in Brazil-IECLB in face of the crisis caused by COVID-19, which is taking place and which will bring relevant consequences for the socio-political context in the Country. At the beginning of the article, there is a report of the diaconal experience of the Sinodo Nordeste Gaucho and its way of acting in the 2020 pandemic situation. Based on a reflection on the relationship between crisis and transforming diakonia, the article returns to the origins and facts of the diaconal history of the IECLB, demonstrating how the church and it's Diakonia has acted in these difficult times that have already occurred.