Stroke and COVID-19: The Value of Narrative Medicine

Stroke and COVID-19 are both traumatic and life-altering experiences that are marked by uncertainty, fear, and medical intervention. The devastation that stroke and COVID-19 oppress on an individual and a population is well established, and these traumas are potently magnified in the troughs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, stroke has been shown to be a potential complication of COVID-19 infection, and while there is global controversy regarding this finding, it is undeniable that there are patients across the world presenting with both conditions concurrently. Thus, the topic of isolated stroke and the co-occurrence of stroke and COVID-19 amidst the pandemic both warrant considerable investigation on both a basic science level and a humanistic level. This opinion article advocates for a narrative medicine approach to better explicate the intertwining of stroke and COVID-19. Interviewing patients who presented with both stroke and COVID-19 as well as patients who present with stroke during the pandemic will provide the opportunity to gather and juxtapose individual illness experiences, including encounters with the health care system, relationship with care teams and care takers, recovery, and insights into the future. Creating, analyzing, and comparing such an anthology of illness narratives of the 2 patient populations will offer a unique understanding into the experience of different, yet over-lapping, medical traumas in an unprecedented time. With this deeper appreciation of patient accounts, the health care system can better recognize how to provide for future patients who present specifically with stroke or stroke and COVID-19. However, more broadly, this study can also afford insight into how the health care system can better provide for and support patients who present with complex diagnoses in the context of a complex healthcare system, which most probably will operate under the effects of the pandemic for time to come as well as other, future complicating factors.

Recovery Improvement Using Geological, Technical and Operational Factors of Field Development That Influence the Character of Inflow Profiles in Horizontal Laterals

Currently, it is hard to imagine oil field development management without various surveys, involving resource optimisation for more economical reserves recovery. In this context, the application of new technologies aimed at diagnostics of the state of producing wells opens up multiple opportunities to identify the causes of premature water flooding and reduction in oil production, clarify the geology of the developed deposit, and obtain other useful information in a cost-efficient manner. For several decades now, well logging has been the source of information for field operators on the producing reservoir performance and the composition of fluid flowing across the reservoir through target intervals. However, in the course of time, the industry tends to seek advanced technologies and alternative production logging techniques for well performance diagnostics. Marker-based production logging is just one of the techniques employed to obtain additional data that can be extremely important for prompt decision-making in case of any complicating factors. At the same time, such information requires proper processing and interpretation. The information on how various factors impact the production profile helps develop a set of measures to adjust the oil flow into the well. In this regard, the task above offers a promising outlook for improving the development system efficiency using selective reservoir stimulation, as far as unconventional reservoirs and hard-to-recover reserves are concerned. Therefore, the upstream industry puts a strong focus on further research in this area today.

Forehead Tactile Hallucination Is Augmented by the Perceived Risk and Accompanies Increase of Forehead Tactile Sensitivity

Tactile hallucinations frequently occur after mental illnesses and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Despite their common occurrence, there are several complicating factors that make it difficult to elucidate the tactile hallucinations. The forehead tactile hallucination, evoked by the physical object approaching to the forehead, can be easily and consistently evoked in healthy-bodied subjects, and therefore it would help with investigating the mechanism of tactile hallucinations. In this pilot study, we investigated the principles of the forehead tactile hallucination with eight healthy subjects. We designed the experimental setup to test the effect of sharpness and speed of objects approaching towards the forehead on the forehead tactile hallucination, in both a physical and virtual experimental setting. The forehead tactile hallucination was successfully evoked by virtual object as well as physical object, approaching the forehead. The forehead tactile hallucination was increased by the increase of sharpness and speed of the approaching object. The forehead tactile hallucination also increased the tactile sensitivity on the forehead. The forehead tactile hallucination can be solely evoked by visual feedback and augmented by the increased perceived risk. The forehead tactile hallucination also increases tactile sensitivity. These experimental results may enhance the understanding of the foundational mechanisms of tactile hallucinations.

A diagnostic conundrum in the context of a pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

ABSTRACT A 52-year-old with lung cancer and brain metastases, on a 3-month weaning regime of dexamethasone, had a coincidental finding of bilateral, patchy ground-glass opacifications of both central and peripheral lung fields on computed tomography (CT). This was reported to be a sign of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). On Day 13, due to poor clinical progression and multiple negative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction tests for COVID-19, an alternative diagnosis was sought. Subsequently, this led to a diagnosis of Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia. This case demonstrates complicating factors in the diagnosis of COVID-19 and the presence of cognitive bias during a pandemic, which may lead clinicians to overlook a diagnosis, which may otherwise be addressed earlier.

Immature Insect Assemblages from the Early Cretaceous (Purbeck/Wealden) of Southern England

The record of immature insects from the non-marine Purbeck and Wealden groups (Lower Cretaceous) of southern England is reviewed and expanded. Fossils of adult terrestrial insects are locally common, but terrestrial immature remains are restricted to transported hemipterans, most of which are sessile nymphs or puparia resembling those of extant whiteflies (Aleyrodidae). Remains of immature aquatic insects are more diverse and comprise the extant orders Plecoptera, Ephemeroptera, Odonata, Trichoptera, Hemiptera and Diptera. The Trichoptera are represented by larval cases constructed from a variety of materials corresponding to several ichnogenera. The Wealden immature insects were preserved in predominantly freshwater fluvial settings, whereas the Purbeck ones occur in lagoonal palaeoenvironments, ranging in salinity from brackish to hypersaline. The composition of aquatic immature insect faunas in the latter offers potential for palaeosalinity analysis, although there are complicating factors relating to habitat stability. Uncommon trace fossils such as beetle borings in wood provide evidence of immature insects not represented by body fossils.

The Local Corrosion Rate Determination According to Weight Measurements Corrosion Coupons in Oilfield Conditions

Complications associated with a corrosive environment, according to Rosneft's data as of 01.01.2020, are among the prevailing at oil and gas production facilities and rank fourth among other factors complicating production - 12% the complicated mechanized wells. Failures due to corrosion are the second largest complicating factors. Based on the results of approbation, the article proposes a method for calculating the maximum rate of local carbon dioxide corrosion, applicable in oilfield conditions, including to complicated stocks of oil wells and pipelines of oil gathering systems. Based on the approbation results, a method for calculating the maximum rate of local carbon dioxide corrosion, applicable in oilfield conditions, including to complicated stocks of oil wells and oil gathering pipelines systems is proposed in the article. The proposed technique is realizable according to the results one of "traditional" methods the corrosion monitoring - weight (or gravimetric). The approbation results and application possibility the technique in the pilot tests process in assessing the protective ability of corrosion inhibitors and the selection the effective dosages in relation to local damages, which are the main cause the oilfield equipment failures according the factor "Corrosive aggressiveness" (one of the complicating factors in terms of gradation, adopted in the Rosneft Company regulations). On practical examples the oilfield equipment operation, the results of corrosion monitoring and the summary statistics the corrosive stock of wells (using the example of an oil Company), the current situation with respect to this type of complication and relevance the issue under consideration is shown.

SenseCollect

On-body sensor-based human activity recognition (HAR) lags behind other fields because it lacks large-scale, labeled datasets; this shortfall impedes progress in developing robust and generalized predictive models. To facilitate researchers in collecting more extensive datasets quickly and efficiently we developed SenseCollect. We did a survey and interviewed student researchers in this area to identify what barriers are making it difficult to collect on-body sensor-based HAR data from human subjects. Every interviewee identified data collection as the hardest part of their research, stating it was laborious, consuming and error-prone. To improve HAR data resources we need to address that barrier, but we need a better understanding of the complicating factors to overcome it. To that end we conducted a series of control variable experiments that tested several protocols to ascertain their impact on data collection. SenseCollect studied 240+ human subjects in total and presented the findings to develop a data collection guideline. We also implemented a system to collect data, created the two largest on-body sensor-based human activity datasets, and made them publicly available.

Understanding Election Violence in the Philippines: Beware the Unknown Assassins of May

Despite election violence being a commonly agreed upon phenomena in the Philippines, there has been a dearth in academic research on the topic in recent years, largely due to a lack of reliable information. To address this, our article adapts recognized methods from studies such as Lindsay Shorr Newman's 2013 paper, together with Stephen McGrath and Paul Gill's 2014 research on terrorism and elections. To expose the timing of election violence, we tracked incidents relative to election dates for the period from 2004 to 2017, with the results indicating that violence increased closer to an election date, and frequency substantially increased during the 14-year period. This is the first academic journal article since John Linantud in 1998 to focus on the issue of election violence in the Philippines but through adaptive methodologies goes further, enabling national analysis. Furthermore, our findings reveal statistically significant differences regarding the types of terrorist attacks and targets when comparing election and non-election periods. We highlight complicating factors such as the majority of attacks being attributed to "unknown" actors and the complex situation during elections. The results also demonstrate that election violence in the Philippines is dominated by the New People's Army and the use of assassination. The paper makes the case for further research and the creation of a dedicated database of election violence in the Philippines and elsewhere, and evaluates the measures implemented by the government that have failed to stem election violence.