Interface as the site of infrastructural change

This study contributes to critical infrastructure literature by investigating people's evolving interactions with surveillance infrastructure at the sites of 'interface', specifically focusing on the tracing infrastructure called Electronic Entry Register, devised by the South Korean government during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Highlighting the significance of the infrastructure's 'interface' as the site of agential interactions that engender new relations, this paper illustrated the diverse ways in which the structural organisations of tracing infrastructure transformed continually and the resultant meanings of surveillance shifted. To this end, a sequence of field research comprising walking interviews, observations, and sit-in interviews was conducted with 11 research participants across various urban sites in Seoul, a city with one of the highest penetration rates of smartphone use. This situated investigation within the geographical context of high sociotechnical potency is noteworthy because urban infrastructuring increasingly invites digital mediation. The empirical evidence demonstrates how the micro-struggles at the interface sites engendered significant infrastructural changes, which in turn reshaped the lived experiences of surveillance. The results flag the need to attend to the conceptual and analytical significance of 'interface' in studying digital infrastructure and reflect on how unfolding sociotechnical relations could express digital infrastructure differently.

Exploring strategies for managing telework: Federal managers' perspective

This qualitative pragmatic study explores the strategies federal managers have used to manage telework productivity since the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. This qualitative study was selected because it focused on federal managers' real-world perspectives and experiences. This study sought to answer one research question: What strategies have federal managers implemented to effectively manage telework employee productivity since the COVID-19 pandemic? A triangulation of data sources was employed during the data collection phase, which included one-on-one semi-structured interviews with seven federal managers, field notes, and a review of federal telework policy. The population consisted of federal managers from specific occupational backgrounds (finance, human resources, and information technology) located in the United States and responsible for managing one or more federal employees since the pandemic. Thematic analysis was used to group similar patterns, categories, sub-themes, and themes. The e-leadership (electronic) and socio-technical systems (STS) theories framed the research. The results revealed telework management strategies, recommendations, and best practices to help other federal managers and improve federal telework programs. Federal employee productivity can be managed using telework as a management tool, but only implemented. Federal managers have a fiduciary supervisory responsibility to effectively manage employee productivity in a traditional (on-site) work environment or virtual (telework) environment according to federal telework policy. Keywords: e-leadership;electronic leadership;socio-technical systems;shock leadership;federal manager;telework;telecommuting;telework management;remote-work, virtual workplace;job satisfaction;information and communications technology (ICT). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Of Canals, Rivers and the Right to Exist: New (?) Methodological Tools for a Changed World

What can a dying river teach us about post/de-colonial science and technology? In a post-COVID world, absence and loss will be a constant presence in the lives of most. While thinking with erasures and absence in science and technology studies is not new, our current moment pushes us to burrow deeper into the histories of technologies that produce manufactured empty space, examine histories that pushed groups to the fringes of documented memory and encourage us to ponder how we must deal with these moments. This essay examines what the Yaqui River and the history of the Yaqui in Sonora can teach us about historical erasures and new meanings in landscapes and waterways lost to agro-business.

From Postcolonial to Post-COVID: Midnight Thoughts While Waiting for the Dawn

This essay reflects on the theories and methods of global science and technology studies (STS). It first examines postcolonial STS and points out certain problems and limitations of the approach. It then discusses a few alternative approaches that have benefited from postcolonial STS, and also tries to carve out new directions. Finally, this article uses China and the current pandemic as a case study to explore certain critical questions for a new global STS.

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Intermacs 2022 Annual Report: Focus on 2018 Heart Transplant Allocation System.

The thirteenth annual report from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support (Intermacs) highlights outcomes for 27,314 patients receiving continuous flow durable left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) over the last decade (2012-2021). In 2021, 2,464 primary LVADs were implanted, representing a 23.5% reduction in the annual volume compared to peak implantation in 2019 and an ongoing trend from the prior year. This decline is likely a reflection of the untoward effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the change in the US heart transplant allocation system in 2018. The last several years have been characterized by a shift in device indication and type with 81.1% of patients now implanted as destination therapy and 92.7% receiving an LVAD with full magnetic levitation in 2021. However, despite an older, more ill population being increasingly supported pre-implant with temporary circulatory devices in the recent (2017-2021) vs prior (2012-2016) eras, the 1- and 5-year survival continues to improve at 83.0% and 51.9%, respectively. The adverse events profile has also improved, with significant reduction in stroke, gastrointestinal bleeding, and hospital readmissions. Finally, we examined the impact of the change in heart transplant allocation system in 2018 on LVAD candidacy, implant strategy, and outcomes. In the competing outcomes analysis, the proportion of transplant eligible patients receiving a transplant has declined from 56.5% to 46.0% at 3 years, while the proportion remaining alive with ongoing support has improved from 24.1% to 38.1% at 3 years, underscoring the durability of the currently available technology.

PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING AND MEDIA AT THE BEGINNING OF COVID-19 VACCINATION CAMPAIGNS IN SPAIN: AN STS APPROACH

In this contribution we reflect on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in Spain, using the Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach. We study the evolution of public understanding on COVID-19 vaccination in Spain, looking at the scientific and industrial advances involved in the vaccines' development, the decisions and political debates that emerged because of how the health crisis was managed, and media coverage of the process. To do this, we use data provided by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), plus data from other national and international surveys. We also make use of a wide selection of news in the media that contributed to shaping the collective imagination on the problem in the months before and after the start of the vaccination campaign in Spain, which began at the end of December 2020. Although the exploratory study is based on data from surveys and the media, we don't seek to offer a detailed data analysis but rather thoughtful consideration to have a better understanding of what the pandemic means for the changing relations between Science-Technology-Society. © 2022.

Care during exceptional times: results of the CUIDAR study on the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile

This article presents some results of "CUIDAR;study on times, forms, and spaces of care at home during the pandemic," a research project that explored how the pandemic and the subsequent policies implemented by the Chilean government transformed and disrupted the spatialities, temporalities, and practices of care within the households. To do so, we designed a web survey that draws inspiration from care theories emerging from the field of Science and Technology Studies or STS. Such an approach allowed thinking about care as a more-than-human affair that goes beyond a particular moral stance and corresponds more with a doing anchored in the entanglements of human and non-human actors. Data gathered revealed the appearance of new actors while stressing that care is much too relevant and complex to only rest upon specific household members – namely women – who are left to their own devices since policies implemented seem to be unable to support them in the tasks of caring for themselves and others. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR]

Professional Quality of Life among medical imaging technologists and radiologists during Covid-19 pandemic in India.

Background: Professional quality of life is one of the growing concerns among healthcare workers especially during COVID-19 pandemic. Presence and work of radiologist, as well as, medical imaging technologist for prolonged hours with patients could be stressful and painful. Objectives: This study aimed to assess the Professional Quality of Life among the radiologist and medical imaging technologist by analyzing professional satisfaction, compassion, and burnout during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods: An online, cross-sectional, self-reported and internet-based survey was carried out among 153 radiologists and medical Imaging technologists. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the sociodemographic variables and domains of professional quality of life scale. Cronbach's alpha was used to check internal consistency. Independent sample t test (two tailed) was used to compare the demographic variables and compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Results: The Majority of participants reported moderate and higher level of compassion satisfaction whereas moderate burnout and secondary traumatic stress was reported by majority of participants during Covid-19 pandemic. There was negative correlation between compassion satisfaction and burnout, secondary traumatic stress. Conclusion: The findings of this study are vital to understand the work-related quality of life among healthcare professionals not only during Covid-19 pandemic but also after the pandemic situation. There is a need to conduct qualitative evaluation to ascertain the risk factors associated with professional quality of life. The study also reflects the need to focus more on the mental health of healthcare professionals not only during and after pandemic situation.

Biopolitics of "Acquired Immunity": The War Discourse and Feminist Response-Abilities in Art, Science, and Technology During COVID-19.

If we are to adequately decipher and make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ways in which large populations as well as their immune systems have responded to the virus, we ought to map the broader sociomaterial contexts in which a planetary health crisis, such as COVID-19, has been situated. Adopting a biophilosophical approach and feminist versions of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article problematizes the virality of the war discourse and its tactical uses for the sake of biopower during COVID-19. Also, a queering lens is used to question the military metaphors deployed during COVID-19. Queering is understood in this article as to make change, and to act in a way that is disruptive of allegedly oppressive power structures. Queering seeks to expose or otherwise uncover that norms are, in fact, just limitations on a far broader set of possibilities. With the aim of exploring how critical associations can extend their response-abilities for the exploitative, authoritarian, and racist forces of biopower, the article examines the skilled practices and intra-actions of a feminist collective, FEMeeting-Women in Art, Science and Technology. Acknowledging the social relevance of a core community for acquiring immunity and its role for the future, a feminist conception of the virus played a key role in queering all kinds of anthropocentric and essentialist views by biohacking, DIY (Do It Yourself) and DIWO (Do It With Others) techniques in the actions and coproductions of FEMeeting. Of note, the war metaphor operated as a tactic for camouflaging and obfuscating the facts in the course of the pandemic. The findings reveal that paratactical commoning, which is a self-reflexive collective knowledge production in artistic and hacktivist research, emerges as a way in which political ontological potentials can be critically activated within communities of action. The feminist lenses on COVID-19, and the paratactical commoning presented in this article, are of broad interest to systems scientists to explore the ways in which biopower, and the previously unchecked war discourse and militaristic metaphors coproduce COVID-19 acquired immunity and the social injustices. Understanding not only the biology but also the biopolitics of acquired immunity to the control of COVID-19 is, therefore, crucial for systems medicine and planetary (health) care that is at once effective, resilient, foreseeable, and just.

Parsimonious machine learning models to predict resource use in cardiac surgery across a statewide collaborative.

Objective: We sought to several develop parsimonious machine learning models to predict resource utilization and clinical outcomes following cardiac operations using only preoperative factors. Methods: All patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting and/or valve operations were identified in the 2015-2021 University of California Cardiac Surgery Consortium repository. The primary end point of the study was length of stay (LOS). Secondary endpoints included 30-day mortality, acute kidney injury, reoperation, postoperative blood transfusion and duration of intensive care unit admission (ICU LOS). Linear regression, gradient boosted machines, random forest, extreme gradient boosting predictive models were developed. The coefficient of determination and area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUC) were used to compare models. Important predictors of increased resource use were identified using SHapley summary plots. Results: Compared with all other modeling strategies, gradient boosted machines demonstrated the greatest performance in the prediction of LOS (coefficient of determination, 0.42), ICU LOS (coefficient of determination, 0.23) and 30-day mortality (AUC, 0.69). Advancing age, reduced hematocrit, and multiple-valve procedures were associated with increased LOS and ICU LOS. Furthermore, the gradient boosted machine model best predicted acute kidney injury (AUC, 0.76), whereas random forest exhibited greatest discrimination in the prediction of postoperative transfusion (AUC, 0.73). We observed no difference in performance between modeling strategies for reoperation (AUC, 0.80). Conclusions: Our findings affirm the utility of machine learning in the estimation of resource use and clinical outcomes following cardiac operations. We identified several risk factors associated with increased resource use, which may be used to guide case scheduling in times of limited hospital capacity.

On the Political Aspects of Declaring an Epidemic in the Vicinity of Velehrad in Moravia on the Eve of the Celebration of the Thousandth Anniversary of St Methodius's Death (1885)

The paper investigates the circumstances in which an epidemic was proclaimed in the vicinity of Velehrad in Moravia, on the eve of the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the St Methodius's death on July 5, 1885, as one of the earliest examples of abusing medicine for political purposes. The events related to the prevention of the Velehrad celebration in 1885 have been analyzed on the basis of correspondence between Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer and Franjo Rački, as well as between Lujo and Kosto Vojnović. The analysis focuses on the measure of restricting movement, passed by a consensual decision of the governments of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Russian Empire, which prevented the organized travel of Slavic pilgrims from other parts of the two empires to Moravia, although the epidemic actually did not occur. The prohibition was purely political in nature, intended to prevent mass religious gatherings of Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Orthodox and Greek Catholics from the Russian Empire. The aim was to obstruct putting in practice the idea of church unification between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, strongly promoted by the Holy See during the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878-1903). The Austro-Hungarian government considered the idea of church unification as extremely dangerous and an instrument of pan-Slavic propaganda that encouraged the penetration of the Russian Empire into the Balkan and Mediterranean regions, threatening the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Russian government also considered the idea of church unification to be highly dangerous, especially the affirmation of the Old Church Slavonic liturgy as the common church heritage of Catholic and Orthodox Slavs, which it perceived as an instrument of Catholic proselytism. In addition, in accordance with the position of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russia did not recognize Sts Cyril and Methodius as saints of the Catholic Church, but of the Orthodox Church alone. Affirmation of the Old Church Slavonic liturgy by the Holy See was also directly linked to its efforts to win over the Orthodox Churches in the Balkans for an ecclesiastical union, which Russia considered a potential threat to one of its most important foreign policy priorities, which was expanding its influence to the West. By accepting the ecclesiastical union with the Holy See, the Balkan Orthodox states would be far lesser subject to Russian political influence. Therefore, Russia accepted without hesitation the proposal of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to introduce the measure of prohibiting movement, including closing the border with the Russian Empire, in order to prevent the pilgrimage to Velehrad. As a support for the hypothesis that the proclamation of the epidemic in the vicinity of Velehrad in 1885 was one of the earliest examples of abusing medicine for political purposes, it is pointed out that no infectious disease was medically registered in Moravia that year by the state institutions of public health. Given the coincidence of the proclamation of the Velehrad epidemic with the fifth cholera pandemic wave in the 19th century (1881-1896), the author draws attention to the discrepancy between the very objective reporting of the Viennese press - the Neue Freie Presse and the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung - on the Austro-Hungarian anti-epidemic measures in order to prevent the disease from spreading to the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and the very biased and tendentious reporting of the same newspaper on the alleged outbreak in Moravia from mid-June 1885, on the eve of the great Velehrad celebration on July 5, 1885. This is directly related to the fact that the news about the appearance of several infectious diseases in Velehrad and its surroundings were false, and the mentioned press published them under the influence of the Austrian government, which used them for its political agenda. As crucial evidence, which supports the conclusions in this paper about the abuse of medicine for politica purposes by the Austro-Hungarian authorities in connection with the Velehrad celebration of 1885, historian Jitka Jonova has mentioned in her paper that the Moravian Health Council, in its statement of July 3, 1885, stated that there was no need to prohibit the pilgrimage to Velehrad for health or epidemiological reasons. Abuse of medicine by the Austro-Hungarian government in declaring a false epidemic in the vicinity of Velehrad in 1885, as probably one of the earliest examples of such abuse, has been taken as a basis for questioning the justification of all restrictive measures and decisions of public-health and political authorities in cases of serious threats to public health, in cases when they significantly violate the legal and constitutional rights of citizens, especially taking into account some drastic forms of abusing public health measures in the 20th century. The importance of critical attitude adopted by the public towards all important decisions and measures of political and medical authorities has also been emphasized in view of the current Covid-19 pandemic, during which some of the fundamental constitutional rights, including the right to free movement, have been revoked or significantly restricted, similarly to the proclamation of the epidemic in Moravia in 1885. The author indicates that he by no means intends to question the decisions and measures taken to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, or to deny the dangerous effects of the Sars-Cov-2 virus on human health, but only wants to point out that the mentioned decisions and measures, as well as all other public epidemiological measures of a restrictive nature, must be proportionate and continuously subject to critical questioning by the public, and also transparently and consensually explained by the medical authorities, on the basis of whose assessments they are introduced. All this has been emphasized as necessary in order not to jeopardize the trust of citizens in the decisions and measures of public-health and other institutions as well as the political authorities that manage the crisis situations, especially in times of a global pandemic such as the world is currently facing. © 2021 Hrvatski Institut za Povijest. All rights reserved.

Report of the 24th Meeting on Signal Transduction 2021.

The annual meeting "Signal Transduction-Receptors, Mediators and Genes" of the Signal Transduction Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary conference which is open to all scientists sharing a common interest in the elucidation of the signaling pathways mediating physiological or pathological processes in the health and disease of humans, animals, plants, fungi, prokaryotes, and protists. The 24th meeting on signal transduction was held from 15 to 17 November 2021 in Weimar, Germany. As usual, keynote presentations by invited scientists introduced the respective workshops, and were followed by speakers chosen from the submitted abstracts. A special workshop focused on "Target Identification and Interaction". Ample time was reserved for the discussion of the presented data during the workshops. Unfortunately, due to restrictions owing to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the poster sessions-and thus intensive scientific discussions at the posters-were not possible. In this report, we provide a concise summary of the various workshops and further aspects of the scientific program.

Science and Technology for Humanity: An STS View from Singapore

With this short essay, we aim to raise awareness of the NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity (NISTH) initiative and to invite our colleagues to partake in the research programs we hope to see initiated at NISTH in years to come. In particular, building on the launch of the Institute, supplemented by the extraordinary global experience of COVID-19, we suggest ways in which STS scholars from around the world might contribute to the public conversation regarding the 4IR and thereby also to the ways in which the relationships between technology, states, and citizens might be imagined with specific reference to Asia’s future.

Approach to childhood asthma in the era of COVID-19: The official statement endorsed by the Saudi Pediatric Pulmonology Association (SPPA).

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that infect humans, which may result in mild symptoms similar to those of the common cold. COVID-19 is most recent subtype similar or even worse than the two previous pandemic strains which were the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The first cases of COVID-19 emerged in December 2019. Since then, the virus causing the disease has infected more than four million people around the globe and led to hundreds of thousands deaths. We think addressing the management of asthma in the era of this pandemic is important for several reasons: high prevalence of asthma in Saudi Arabia, further, majorities were uncontrolled disease. The statement will provide special instructions and answers to common questions of physicians dealing with asthmatic children during this pandemic.