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Sex differences in COVID-19 infections / Könsberoende skillnader i COVID-19 infektionerSpahi, Majlinda January 2020 (has links)
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak have shown that there may be sex-dependent differences in morbidity and mortality among individuals contracted with the disease. The aim of the study was to analyse the extent that sex differences appear in COVID-19 infections and to explore whether any differences are due to intrinsic factors in the sexes that cause sex-bias in the disease susceptibility and mortality. The study presents an age and sex-disaggregated analysis of reported cases of total infections, intensive care cases, and deaths across 13 countries due to the disease. The results demonstrated that there is a general trend for the disease prevalence, and it shows a female bias among the proportion of individuals infected with COVID-19. However, males appear to require more intensive care treatment and higher rates of death when compared to females. The results also show that more women than men are reportedly infected by the corona virus up to a certain age. After the age of 60, the proportion of men affected is higher than women, and it is also at this age that the death rate among men increases significantly. In conclusion, the results of this work indicate that males could possibly be at a significantly higher risk of severe disease and death than females, and that the patterns of sex bias in intensive care cases to some extent follows the expected pattern if sex hormones played a role in influencing the immune system response to COVID-19. / Utbrottet av Coronavirus sjukdomen 2019 (COVID-19) har visat att det kan finnas könsberoende skillnader i sjuklighet och dödlighet bland individer som drabbats av sjukdomen. Syftet med studien var att analysera i vilken utsträckning könsskillnader förekommer i COVID-19-infektioner och att undersöka om skillnaderna beror på inre faktorer hos könen som möjligtvis orsakar könsfördomar i sjukdomens mottaglighet och dödlighet. Denna studie presenterar en ålder-och könsfördelad analys av totala antalet rapporterade fall, intensivvårdsfall och dödsfall i 13 länder till följd av COVID-19. Resultaten visade att det finns en generell trend för sjukdomens utbredning, och den visar en högre andel kvinnor än män som har smittats med COVID-19. Men det är män som är mer i behov av intensivvård och har högre dödsnivåer i jämförelse med kvinnor. Resultaten visar även att fler kvinnor än män smittas av coronaviruset upp till en viss ålder. Efter 60-årsåldern är andelen drabbade män högre än kvinnor, det är även vid den här åldern som dödsnivån bland män ökar markant. Sammanfattningsvis indikerar resultaten av denna studie att män eventuellt skulle kunna ha en betydligt högre risk för en allvarligare sjukdom och död än kvinnor.
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Researching nurses' use of digital technology during the COVID-19 pandemicDowding, D., Skyrme, S., Randell, Rebecca, Newbould, L., Faisal, Muhammad, Hardiker, N. 15 June 2023 (has links)
Yes / The adoption of digital technology by nurses accelerated during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, not all nurses were familiar with the various digital systems used in their organisations and there were reports of digital technology not being fit for purpose. This article describes a service evaluation that used an online survey to obtain nurses' feedback on the digital systems used to support patient care during the pandemic. Fifty-five respondents provided details about 85 separate digital systems. The usability of these systems varied significantly across technology types, while barriers to their use included nurses' lack of digital literacy and inadequate access to IT infrastructure. However, most of the nurse respondents felt that digital technology had supported effective patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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STUDENTS PERSPECTIVE ON SHIFTING FROM ON-CAMPUS TO DIGITAL EDUCATION : A qualitative study on the effects of the unexpected change from on-campus to digital education from Malmö university systems development students perspectiveJoulak, Adam, Menhem, Ali January 2021 (has links)
Context: The COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in many changes in education, and it is reasonable to expect that this change would have a significant effect on students. According to government recommendations, many educational institutions around the world have temporarily switched to online learning methods to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of the sudden shift to online learning, imposed on students due to COVID-19 outbreak.Method: We started a systematic mapping study and analyzed the findings thematically. Furthermore, we conducted interviews with Malmö University students, which were then analyzed using the same approach.Results: We identified 23 publications that were grouped into 9 themes based on student reports of different effects of online education. According to the findings, students often experience technical issues when studying online. Many students believe that communication is crucial for a positive online learning experience. Research also shows that online education benefits students by allowing them to be more flexible and improving their self-study habits. The systematic mapping study on the interview showed that the students did not experience any significant challenges related to technical issues. Many students missed the social aspect of online education and experienced challenges such as lack of communication and difficulties to perform academically.Conclusion: The most significant challenges found were communication and academic performance. Students claim they have lost some or all ways of contact with their peers as a result of the transition to online learning, and the majority believe this has made it more difficult for them to perform academically. The findings cannot be generalized outside of higher institutions in Sweden since different countries have different levels of technological infrastructure which is critical for institutions and for providing students with a smooth and reliable online learning experience.
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Neurosurgical Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Central Germany: A Retrospective Single Center Study of the Second WaveSander, Caroline, von Dercks, Nikolaus, Fehrenbach, Michael Karl, Wende, Tim, Stehr, Sebastian, Winkler, Dirk, Meixensberger, Jürgen, Arlt, Felix 04 May 2023 (has links)
The healthcare system has been placed under an enormous burden by the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. In addition to the challenge of providing sufficient care for COVID-19 patients, there is also a need to ensure adequate care for non-COVID-19 patients. We investigated neurosurgical care in a university hospital during the pandemic. We examined the second wave of the pandemic from 1 October 2020 to 15 March 2021 in this retrospective single-center study and compared it to a pre-pandemic period from 1 October 2019 to 15 March 2020. Any neurosurgical intervention, along with patient- and treatment-dependent factors, were recorded. We also examined perioperative complications and unplanned readmissions. A statistical comparison of the study groups was performed. We treated 535 patients with a total of 602 neurosurgical surgeries during the pandemic. This compares to 602 patients with 717 surgeries during the pre-pandemic period. There were 67 fewer patients (reduction to 88.87%) admitted and 115 fewer surgeries (reduction to 83.96%) performed, which were essentially highly elective procedures, such as cervical spinal stenosis, intracranial neurinomas, and peripheral nerve lesions. Regarding complication rates and unplanned readmissions, there was no significant difference between the COVID-19 pandemic and the non-pandemic patient group. Operative capacities were slightly reduced to 88% due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, comprehensive emergency and elective care was guaranteed in our university hospital. This speaks for the sufficient resources and high-quality processes that existed even before the pandemic.
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Real-Time Computed Tomography-based Medical Diagnosis Using Deep LearningGoel, Garvit 24 February 2022 (has links)
Computed tomography has been widely used in medical diagnosis to generate accurate images of the body's internal organs. However, cancer risk is associated with high X-ray dose CT scans, limiting its applicability in medical diagnosis and telemedicine applications. CT scans acquired at low X-ray dose generate low-quality images with noise and streaking artifacts. Therefore we develop a deep learning-based CT image enhancement algorithm for improving the quality of low-dose CT images. Our algorithm uses a convolution neural network called DenseNet and Deconvolution network (DDnet) to remove noise and artifacts from the input image. To evaluate its advantages in medical diagnosis, we use DDnet to enhance chest CT scans of COVID-19 patients. We show that image enhancement can improve the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnosis (~5% improvement), using a framework consisting of AI-based tools. For training and inference of the image enhancement AI model, we use heterogeneous computing platform for accelerating the execution and decreasing the turnaround time. Specifically, we use multiple GPUs in distributed setup to exploit batch-level parallelism during training. We achieve approximately 7x speedup with 8 GPUs running in parallel compared to training DDnet on a single GPU. For inference, we implement DDnet using OpenCL and evaluate its performance on multi-core CPU, many-core GPU, and FPGA. Our OpenCL implementation is at least 2x faster than analogous PyTorch implementation on each platform and achieves comparable performance between CPU and FPGA, while FPGA operated at a much lower frequency. / Master of Science / Computed tomography has been widely used in the medical diagnosis of diseases, such as cancer/tumor, viral pneumonia, and more recently, COVID-19. However, the risk of cancer associated with X-ray dose in CT scans limits the use of computed tomography in biomedical imaging. Therefore we develop a deep learning-based image enhancement algorithm that can be used with low X-ray dose computed tomography scanners to generate high-quality CT images. The algorithm uses a state-of-the-art convolution neural network for increased performance and computational efficiency. Further, we use image enhancement algorithm to develop a framework of AI-based tools to improve the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnosis. We test and validate the framework with clinical COVID-19 data. Our framework applies to the diagnosis of COVID-19 and its variants, and other diseases that can be diagnosed via computed tomography. We utilize high-performance computing techniques to reduce the execution time of training and testing AI models in our framework. We also evaluate the efficacy of training and inference of the neural network on heterogeneous computing platforms, including multi-core CPU, many-core GPU, and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), in terms of speed and power consumption.
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"Som att uppfinna hjulet medan det rullar" : en kvalitativ intervjustudie om svenska sjukhuskuratorers arbete, mående och hantering under covid-19-pandemin 2020Gabrielle, Gillhover January 2020 (has links)
The covid-19-pandemic spread across the entire world during 2020 and the hospital counselors’ workplace has during this time been in the centre of pandemic management. The aim of this study has been to investigate how hospital counselors in Sweden experience and manage their health and work during the covid-19-pandemic between January and October 2020. Eight hospital counselors have been studied using semi-structured interviews which were thematically sorted and analyzed based on Antonovsky's theory Sense of Coherence. The results showed that the counselors have experienced a different work situation with new routines such as supporting patients over the phone or while wearing personal protective equipment. The counselors have had to deal with increased patient mortality and more complicated cases that have challenged them emotionally and physically. As a consequence this has involved increased fatigue, muscle tension, worry and anxiety. At the same time, they have felt that they lacked the necessary staffing and work equipment to meet the increased demands. They have handled this by adding more importance to the collegial support and making sure to get a break from information about the pandemic in their spare time.
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När Storkyrkan ställde om : En studie av Stilla veckan och påsken i Storkyrkan under pandemin 2020 / The readjustment of Storkyrkan : A study of Holy Week and Easter in the Cathedral of Stockholm during the 2020 pandemicMolander, Adelie January 2020 (has links)
In times of social distancing and restrictions, ecclesiological challenges arise for the church as a room that under normal circumstances gather people for services. When the church cannot be used the way it is intended to, it raises questions about the functions of the room. The new corona virus pandemic is a crisis that challenges our perception of the church buildings’ functions and aspects. This thesis is a case study that took place in the Cathedral of Stockholm, also called Storkyrkan, during Holy week and Easter. The purpose of this thesis is to study what ecclesiological implications this new reality has on how co-workers and visitors make use of the room. Through observation of the room and interviews of visitors and co-workers I identify five aspects of Storkyrkan that characterize what functions a church building can have during a crisis. The study finds that through the circumstantial changes of the usage of the room, the materiality of it is amplified. It also shows that many types of people visit and use the room in various ways. They are all connected as a collective in a network through the words, artifacts, music, and practises that are a part of this space. Instead of closing due to the pandemic, Storkyrkan was an open room which generated possibilities for people to use it. In times of social distancing, when people are encouraged to stay away from each other, the church brought people together, though in a much smaller number. This happened both in the physical room and in the virtual room online. These are all sources of lived ecclesiology, which is understood through people’s lives and actions.
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Informationsvideo om coronaviruset : Att visualisera textbaserad information så att den blir tillgängligZens, Oscar January 2020 (has links)
I takt med coronaviruspandemin arbetade myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap (MSB) med att utveckla information om coronaviruset. En del av den nya informationen publicerades på krisinformation.se. Informationen som fanns på krisinformation.se var överlag textbaserad. I det här arbetet har jag utifrån ett kvalitativt förhållningssätt arbetat med att göra delar av den textbaserade informationen multimodal, men med särskild hänsyn till de med dyslexi. Syftet är att med en informationsvideo visualisera textbaserad information på ett multimodalt sätt. Målet med arbetet var att utforma ett gestaltningsförslag som informerar och engagerar betraktaren till att vilja bromsa takten som smittspridningen sprider sig på. I ett försök att uppnå syftet och målet utformades följande frågeställning: Hur tillgängliggörs information med illustrationer och animationer i en informationsvideo? Frågeställningen besvarades genom att samla empiri utifrån en ikonologisk analys av en befintlig informationsvideo. Vidare utformades ett gestaltningsförslag som testades vid två tillfällen via intervjuer. Vid det första tillfället testades en storyboard och vid det andra tillfället testades en informationsvideo. Vid utformandet av gestaltningsförslaget var kognitions- och retorik-teori av särskild stor betydelse. Det främsta fyndet är att de med dyslexi inte verkar ha några större problem med att ta till sig information som kommuniceras med illustrationer, animationer och ljud i en informationsvideo. / In line with the coronavirus pandemic, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) worked to develop information about the coronavirus. Some of the new information was published on krisinformation.se. The information found on krisinformation.se was generally text-based. In this essay I have worked on making parts of the text-based information multimodal with a qualitative approach, but with a special attention to those with dyslexia. The purpose is to visualize text-based information in a multimodal way with an information video. The goal was to create a design proposal that can inform and engages the viewer to slow down the spread of infection. In order to achieve the purpose, the following question was designed: How is information made available with illustrations and animations in an information video? The question was answered by collecting empirical data based on an iconological analysis of an existing explainer video. Furthermore, I created a design proposal that was tested on two occasions via interviews. On the first occasion, a storyboard was tested and on the second occasion an information video was tested. When designing the design proposal, cognition- and rhetoric-theory was of particular importance. The main finding is that those with dyslexia do not seem to have any major problems in acquiring information that is communicated with illustrations, animations and sounds in an information video.
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Grönstrukturens funktion och betydelse för studenternas återhämtning (under covid-19 restriktioner) / Green structure's function and importance for students' recovery (during Covid-19 restrictions)Ahmad, Doaa January 2020 (has links)
Tidigare forskning har visat att exponering för grön miljö tillhandahåller hälsofördelar. Dessa fördelar indikerar bland annat återhämtningseffekt av stress, trötthet och uppmärksamhetsutmattning, vilket är särskilt viktigt för universitetsstudenter. Därför syftade denna studie att undersöka om det finns en koppling mellan universitetsstudenters kontakt med grönstruktur i/nära studiemiljö och studenternas upplevelse av sin studiemiljö under covid-19 restriktionerna. Detta med hjälp av en dagbokundersökning som förstudie och telefonintervjuer. Analysverktyget bestod av teoretiska ramverk, Attention Restoration Theory (ART) och Stress Reduktion Theory (SRT). Resultat och analys har bekräftat Attention Restoration Theory (ART), där det uppges att gröna naturliga miljöer ger återhämtningseffekt och väcker uppmärksamhet efter en mental trötthet. Därtill bekräftade den även Stress Recovery Theory (SRT), där det uppges att gröna naturliga miljöer ger positiva effekt på stressminskning, -bearbetning och -återhämtning. Slutsatsen till denna undersökning är att grönstruktur har en stor betydelse för universitetsstudenterna, detta då alla väljer att vistas eller komma i kontakt med gröna naturen på ett eller annat sätt, till exempel gå en promenad i naturen eller åka till en stuga i skogen. Att naturen är en del av studenternas vardag verkar vara framför allt en omedveten upplevelse för de flesta och sker utan erkännande eller bearbetning av miljön. Dock framkommer det att processen kan vara medveten för vissa studenter. / Previous research has shown that exposure to the green environment provides health benefits. These benefits indicate among other things, recovery effect of stress, fatigue and attention-exhaustion, which is especially important for university students. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether there is a connection between university students' contact with the green structure in / near the study-environment and the students' experience of their study environment during the covid-19 restrictions. This with the help of a diary-survey as a pilot-study and telephone interviews. The analysis tool consisted of theoretical frameworks, Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and Stress Reduction Theory (SRT). Results and analysis have confirmed Attention Restoration Theory (ART), where it states that green natural environments have a recovery effect and attracts attention after a mental fatigue. In addition, it also confirmed the Stress Recovery Theory (SRT), which states that green natural environments have a positive effect on stress reduction, processing and recovery. The conclusion of this study is that green structure is of great importance to university students, as everyone chooses to reside or get in touch with green nature in one way or another, for example going for a walk in a green environment or staying in a cottage in the forest. That nature is a part of the students' everyday life seems to be above all an unconscious experience for most and takes place without recognition or processing of the environment. However, it appears that the process may be conscious for some students.
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