Contaminated surfaces in clinics pose a pathogen transmission risk. Far ultraviolet-C light (UVC), with a favorable safety profile for human exposure, has the potential for continuous pathogen inactivation in occupied clinical areas. This study demonstrated real-world bioburden reduction on surfaces, despite frequent contamination from routine use by staff and patients in clinics.

After offering a definition of “conspiracy theory” and highlighting some interesting interconnections between conspiracy theories and religious worldviews, we turn to epistemologically relevant analogies. Proponents of conspiracy theories and religions have often been accused of the same biases and epistemic vices, e.g., gullibility, hypersensitive proneness to personal explanations, or overemphasis on holistic thinking. So-called Generalism is best understood as the thesis that conspiracy theories are guilty until proven innocent because they share certain “bunkum-making properties.” However, we argue for the particularist position, i.e. the position that a general epistemic presumption against conspiracy theories is not tenable. Building a negative valence into the very notion of conspiracy theory is not convincing either. Given the analogies, our analysis supports similar verdicts with respect to religious worldviews: Like conspiracy theories, they should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis rather than being dismissed simply for being religious. Finally, we reject Bezazel’s view that both conspiracy theories and religious worldviews constitute a-rational frames or “bliks” that, besides other things, ground what counts as an explanation. Such a proposal squares badly with epistemic misgivings about particularly preposterous examples of conspiracy theories and religious worldviews.

Background: Patients without urinary tract infection (UTI) symptoms but with a positive urine culture are considered to have asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB). This often represents colonization and treatment is not recommended or clinically beneficial. Treatment of ASB can promote antimicrobial resistance and increased rates of Clostriodies difficile infections. Many cases of ASB are incorrectly assigned as CAUTIs due to over-culturing practices. We hypothesized that a urine culture algorithm, embedded within a best practice alert (BPA) in the electronic medical record (EMR), would reduce urine culturing practices for ASB. Methods: From Feb 2022 through May 2023, a multidisciplinary team implemented an Inpatient Urine Culturing Stewardship Guideline. A BPA fired when a provider placed a urinalysis with reflex to culture (UACC) or urine culture (UC) order for patients who met criteria (Image 1). The BPA directed providers to remove the order, select the appropriate pathway from the guideline, or provide a rationale for placing the order. The intervention was piloted on three intensive care units and two progressive care units, containing both medical and surgical patients. Monthly ordering practices, CAUTI rates, and gram-negative rod (GNR) bacteremia rates from a 13-month pre-intervention baseline period were compared to a 16-month intervention period. Over the same time periods, we also assessed changes in ordering practices for comparison units which did not implement the intervention. Pre-and-post intervention cohorts were analyzed using median two sample tests and Exact Poison Method, as appropriate. Results: On intervention units there was a 41.0% reduction in the median number of UACC and UC orders per 1000 patient days from 16.31 during the baseline period to 9.62 in the intervention period (p=0.0036). Pan cultures per 1000 patient days in which one of the orders was a UACC or UC fell by 42.2% from a median of 10.20 per 1000 patient days to 5.90 (p=0.0008). The comparison units saw no significant reductions in UACC and UC orders (p=0.21) or pan cultures (p=1.0). On the intervention units, the CAUTI rate for the baseline period was 1.31 per 1000 catheter days versus 0.79 in the intervention period (IRR = 1.65; p=0.44). GNR bacteremias remained stable on the intervention units between the baseline and intervention periods (p=0.82). Conclusion: This multidisciplinary intervention, leveraging EMR clinical decision support, reduced urine and pan culturing practices while demonstrating a trend towards a reduced CAUTI rate. The prevalence of GNR bacteremias remained consistent with baseline levels, suggesting the intervention did not cause harm.

The modern marine megafauna is known to play important ecological roles and includes many charismatic species that have drawn the attention of both the scientific community and the public. However, the extinct marine megafauna has never been assessed as a whole, nor has it been defined in deep time. Here, we review the literature to define and list the species that constitute the extinct marine megafauna, and to explore biological and ecological patterns throughout the Phanerozoic. We propose a size cut-off of 1 m of length to define the extinct marine megafauna. Based on this definition, we list 706 taxa belonging to eight main groups. We found that the extinct marine megafauna was conspicuous over the Phanerozoic and ubiquitous across all geological eras and periods, with the Mesozoic, especially the Cretaceous, having the greatest number of taxa. Marine reptiles include the largest size recorded (21 m; Shonisaurus sikanniensis) and contain the highest number of extinct marine megafaunal taxa. This contrasts with today’s assemblage, where marine animals achieve sizes of >30 m. The extinct marine megafaunal taxa were found to be well-represented in the Paleobiology Database, but not better sampled than their smaller counterparts. Among the extinct marine megafauna, there appears to be an overall increase in body size through time. Most extinct megafaunal taxa were inferred to be macropredators preferentially living in coastal environments. Across the Phanerozoic, megafaunal species had similar extinction risks as smaller species, in stark contrast to modern oceans where the large species are most affected by human perturbations. Our work represents a first step towards a better understanding of the marine megafauna that lived in the geological past. However, more work is required to expand our list of taxa and their traits so that we can obtain a more complete picture of their ecology and evolution.

The New Alexandrian Library is to be inaugurated at the end of 1998 on the royal site of the great ancient metropolis, that is, on the site of the Museum founded by Ptolemy I to enclose his mythical collection of books. This ambitious project of a “public research library “ was undertaken on the initiative of the Egyptian government and has, since 1986, received the support of UNESCO.

The history of encyclopedism seeks to trace the metamorphoses and various cultural adaptations of three essential components. The first of these is an intellectual endeavor, reflecting the conception, hierarchy, and articulation of knowledge in a given society: How is the map of knowledge organized and defined? How do human thought and memory gather together and master all accessible knowledge? The second component can take the form of a material object, the encyclopedia - whether conceived as a book that unites the knowledge found in all other books, or again as the body of texts that, though not titled as such, belong nevertheless to an encyclopedic genre. The last constituent of the trilogy consists of the group of practices that fan out between these two poles, between the intellectual endeavor and the material object, and contribute to collecting, shaping, and transmitting the knowledge in a given society and time.

Maps and libraries are ways of externalising memory and knowledge, making them not only concrete, visible and accessible, but also durable, reproducible, communicable and socially active. Both are linked to processes of totalisation. Maps add together and incorporate individual, particular and partial experiences of a space: they provide a summary and synthesis of points of view concerning a given territory, obscuring their empirical content in order to construct a coherent degree of visibility and intelligibility. Libraries represent the sum of the reading and knowledge of the individual readers who frequent them. A library is one of the places that embody the intellectual, literary and spiritual heritage of a community; it is here that written memory, with its importance as a foundation for identity, can be seen in complete and tangible form.

Our methods of research, duly elaborated hereafter, would benefit from being applied to the realm of the East. For that matter, the examination of Syriac, Armenian, Coptic or Arabic manuscripts does not differ in the least from that of a Greek or Latin manuscript. The rules developed by classical philologists are just as valid for the study of the Maxims of Phtahhotep and the Precepts of Kagemeni…

Alphonse Dain (1975), Les Manuscrits (Paris, Les Belles Lettres)

One of the objects of a comparative history of the scholarly practices in the West, the Far East, the Arab world and classical antiquity is the role of libraries in the constitution, transmission and transformations of the great textual corpora. To the institutional and social aspects of the politics of social memory should be added the range of intellectual and technical practices which have as their aim the conservation of this inheritance: material conservation and transmission - copying texts, restoring them, transferring them from one medium, one script and one language to another - but also work on the literal level and the meaning, the content and the form.

The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery (WCPCCS) will be held in Washington DC, USA, from Saturday, 26 August, 2023 to Friday, 1 September, 2023, inclusive. The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery will be the largest and most comprehensive scientific meeting dedicated to paediatric and congenital cardiac care ever held. At the time of the writing of this manuscript, The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery has 5,037 registered attendees (and rising) from 117 countries, a truly diverse and international faculty of over 925 individuals from 89 countries, over 2,000 individual abstracts and poster presenters from 101 countries, and a Best Abstract Competition featuring 153 oral abstracts from 34 countries. For information about the Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, please visit the following website: [www.WCPCCS2023.org]. The purpose of this manuscript is to review the activities related to global health and advocacy that will occur at the Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery.

Acknowledging the need for urgent change, we wanted to take the opportunity to bring a common voice to the global community and issue the Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action on Addressing the Global Burden of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Diseases. A copy of this Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action is provided in the Appendix of this manuscript. This Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action is an initiative aimed at increasing awareness of the global burden, promoting the development of sustainable care systems, and improving access to high quality and equitable healthcare for children with heart disease as well as adults with congenital heart disease worldwide.

The purpose of this investigation was to expand upon the limited existing research examining the test–retest reliability, cross-sectional validity and longitudinal validity of a sample of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) devices as compared with a laboratory four-compartment (4C) model. Seventy-three healthy participants aged 19–50 years were assessed by each of fifteen BIA devices, with resulting body fat percentage estimates compared with a 4C model utilising air displacement plethysmography, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and bioimpedance spectroscopy. A subset of thirty-seven participants returned for a second visit 12–16 weeks later and were included in an analysis of longitudinal validity. The sample of devices included fourteen consumer-grade and one research-grade model in a variety of configurations: hand-to-hand, foot-to-foot and bilateral hand-to-foot (octapolar). BIA devices demonstrated high reliability, with precision error ranging from 0·0 to 0·49 %. Cross-sectional validity varied, with constant error relative to the 4C model ranging from −3·5 (sd 4·1) % to 11·7 (sd 4·7) %, standard error of the estimate values of 3·1–7·5 % and Lin’s concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) of 0·48–0·94. For longitudinal validity, constant error ranged from −0·4 (sd 2·1) % to 1·3 (sd 2·7) %, with standard error of the estimate values of 1·7–2·6 % and Lin’s CCC of 0·37–0·78. While performance varied widely across the sample investigated, select models of BIA devices (particularly octapolar and select foot-to-foot devices) may hold potential utility for the tracking of body composition over time, particularly in contexts in which the purchase or use of a research-grade device is infeasible.

Sea-level projections depend sensitively on the parameterization used for basal slip in glacier flow models. During slip over rock-beds, ice-bed separation increases with slip velocity and basal water pressure. We present a method for using these variables and measured bed topography to estimate the average bed slope in contact with ice, ${\bar m}$. Three-dimensional numerical modeling of slip over small areas of former beds has shown that changes in ${\bar m}$ with increasing slip velocity and water pressure mimic changes in basal drag. Computed values of ${\bar m}$ can thus provide the form of the slip law that relates drag to velocity and water pressure, avoiding computationally expensive numerical modeling. The method is applied to 618 sections from four former glacier beds. Results generally show an increase in ${\bar m}$, and hence inferred basal drag, with slip velocity up to a limiting value, consistent with a regularized Coulomb slip law.

The main aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of Na intake and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) on body composition. The study was also intended to assess whether Na intake and/or CRF mediate the genetic susceptibility to obesity. Analyses were performed on a sample of 526 adult participants from the Quebec Family Study for whom a complete data set was available for nutrient and energy intake, CRF and body composition variables. The effects of Na, CRF and their interaction were analysed by comparing sex-specific tertiles using general linear mixed models. In both males and females, we observed a significant effect of Na intake and CRF on all body composition variables. However, in females only, we found that the effect of Na intake on body composition variables varies according to CRF level such that high Na intake was associated with increased body fatness, but only in females with low CRF. This interaction effect remained significant after statistical adjustment for total sugar, fat and energy intake. Using mediation analysis, we also found Na intake and CRF to be significant mediators of the relationship between a polygenic risk score of obesity based on > 500 000 genetic variants and BMI or waist circumference. In conclusion, the current study shows that Na intake influences body composition via mechanisms that interact with aerobic fitness, especially in females. Furthermore, both Na intake and CRF seem to be involved in the expression of the genetic susceptibility to obesity.

Tribology—the study of contacting, sliding surfaces—seeks to explain the fundamental mechanisms underlying friction, adhesion, lubrication, and wear, and to apply this knowledge to technologies ranging from transportation and manufacturing to biomedicine and energy. Investigating the contact and sliding of materials is complicated by the fact that the interface is buried from view, inaccessible to conventional experimental tools. In situ investigations are thus critical in visualizing and identifying the underlying physical processes. This article presents key recent advances in the understanding of tribological phenomena made possible by in situ experiments at the nanoscale. Specifically, progress in three key areas is highlighted: (1) direct observation of physical processes in the sliding contact; (2) quantitative analysis of the synergistic action of sliding and chemical reactions (known as tribochemistry) that drives material removal; and (3) understanding the surface and subsurface deformations occurring during sliding of metals. The article also outlines emerging areas where in situ nanoscale investigations can answer critical tribological questions in the future.