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"Presents a collection' of essays by senior diplomats, academics and young researchers on different aspects of the profound transformation taking place in the West Asian region. The principal focus is on the main drivers of this transformation and on the major players. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of Islamic thought and practice in the region." (Publisher's description)

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken tragic proportions and has disrupted lives globally. In the wake of governmental lockdowns, ophthalmologists need practical and actionable guidelines based on advisories from national health departments on how to conduct their duties during nationwide lockdowns and after these are lifted. In this paper, we present a preferred practice pattern (PPP) based on consensus discussions between leading ophthalmologists and health care professionals in India including representatives from major governmental and private institutions as well as the All India Ophthalmological Society leadership. In this document, the expert panel clearly defines the range of activities for Indian ophthalmologists during the ongoing lockdown phase and precautions to be taken once the lockdown is lifted. Guidelines for triage, governmental guidelines for use of personal protective equipment from ophthalmologists' point of view, precautions to be taken in the OPD and operating room as well as care of various ophthalmic equipment have been described in detail. These guidelines will be applicable to all practice settings including tertiary institutions, corporate and group practices and individual eye clinics and should help Indian ophthalmologists in performing their professional responsibilities without being foci of disease transmission.

This is Old Dominion University's 13th annual State of the Region Report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the university, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion or it's president, John R. Broderick. The report maintains the goal of stimulating thought and discussion that ultimately will make Hampton Roads an even better place to live. We are proud of our region's many successes, but realize that it is possible to improve our performance. In order to do so, we must have accurate information about "where we are" and a sound understanding of the policy options open to us. ; https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/economics_books/1006/thumbnail.jpg

This is Old Dominion University's 11th annual State of the Region Report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the university, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion or it's president, John R. Broderick. The report maintains the goal of stimulating thought and discussion that ultimately will make Hampton Roads an even better place to live. We are proud of our region's many successes, but realize that it is possible to improve our performance. In order to do so, we must have accurate information about "where we are" and a sound understanding of the policy options open to us. ; https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/economics_books/1008/thumbnail.jpg

This is Old Dominion University's eighth annual State of the Region report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the university, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion or it's president, Roseann Runte. The report maintains the goal of stimulating thought and discussion that ultimately will make Hampton Roads an even better place to live. We are proud of our region's many successes, but realize that it is possible to improve our performance. In order to do so, we must have accurate information about "where we are" and a sound understanding of the policy options open to us. ; https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/economics_books/1011/thumbnail.jpg

This report is part of an ongoing annual series of reports on Fixing the Business of Food initiated and actively supported by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN). The report is the product of a team including BCFN, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) at Columbia University, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN), and the Santa Chiara Lab (SCL) of the University of Siena. CCSI and UN SDSN are responsible for Section 1 of the report, on the Four Pillar Framework. Santa Chiara Lab is responsible for Section 2 of the report, on applying the Four Pillar Framework to a selection of major food companies. The BCFN has generously and actively supported the entire project and has been involved in all aspects of this work. We emphasize that Fixing the Business of Food is an annual report and very much a work in progress. The challenges that we are describing and aiming to address are deep, complex, and still very much under-addressed. Food companies are just becoming aware of the magnitude of the crisis, and many governments remain wholly unaware. The UN Food System Summit aims to change this reality, with all due urgency. We recognize that we are just at the start of a longterm transformation of the food system, and other parts of society (energy, infrastructure, health, education, and others) to achieve the SDGs, fulfill the Paris Climate Agreement, and ultimately, to build the future we want. Companies are just now becoming aware of the Four Pillar Framework. We intend to continue to develop, deepen, and expand our work in the years ahead, and therefore welcome comments, feedback, and opportunities for exchanging viewpoints and information.

BACKGROUND: The rapid spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic demonstrates the value of regional cooperation in infectious disease prevention and control. We explored the literature on regional infectious disease control bodies, to identify lessons, barriers and enablers to inform operationalisation of a regional infectious disease control body or network in southeast Asia. METHODS: We conducted a scoping review to examine existing literature on regional infectious disease control bodies and networks, and to identify lessons that can be learned that will be useful for operationalisation of a regional infectious disease control body such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Center for Public Health Emergency and Emerging Diseases. RESULTS: Of the 57 articles included, 53 (93%) were in English, with two (3%) in Spanish and one (2%) each in Dutch and French. Most were commentaries or review articles describing programme initiatives. Sixteen (28%) publications focused on organisations in the Asian continent, with 14 (25%) focused on Africa, and 14 (25%) primarily focused on the European region. Key lessons focused on organisational factors, diagnosis and detection, human resources, communication, accreditation, funding, and sustainability. Enablers and constraints were consistent across regions/ organisations. A clear understanding of the regional context, budgets, cultural or language issues, staffing capacity and governmental priorities, is pivotal. An initial workshop inclusive of the various bodies involved in the design, implementation, monitoring or evaluation of programmes is essential. Clear governance structure, with individual responsibilities clear from the beginning, will reduce friction. Secure, long-term funding is also a key aspect of the success of any programme. CONCLUSION: Operationalisation of regional infectious disease bodies and networks is complicated, but with extensive groundwork, and focus on organisational factors, diagnosis and detection, human resources, communication, accreditation, funding, and sustainability, it is achievable. Ways to promote success are to include as many stakeholders as possible from the beginning, to ensure that context-specific factors are considered, and to encourage employees through capacity building and mentoring, to ensure they feel valued and reduce staff turnover.

IMPORTANCE: The COVID-19 pandemic created the need for rapid and urgent guidance for clinicians to manage COVID-19 among patients and prevent transmission. OBJECTIVE: To appraise the quality of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) using the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) criteria. EVIDENCE REVIEW: A search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials to December 14, 2020, and a search of related articles to February 28, 2021, that included CPGs developed by societies or by government or nongovernment organizations that reported pharmacologic treatments of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Teams of 2 reviewers independently abstracted data and assessed CPG quality using the 15-item National Guideline Clearinghouse Extent of Adherence to Trustworthy Standards (NEATS) instrument. FINDINGS: Thirty-two CPGs were included in the review. Of these, 25 (78.1%) were developed by professional societies and emanated from a single World Health Organization (WHO) region. Overall, the CPGs were of low quality. Only 7 CPGs (21.9%) reported funding sources, and 12 (37.5%) reported conflicts of interest. Only 5 CPGs (15.6%) included a methodologist, described a search strategy or study selection process, or synthesized the evidence. Although 14 CPGs (43.8%) made recommendations or suggestions for or against treatments, they infrequently rated confidence in the quality of the evidence (6 of 32 [18.8%]), described potential benefits and harms (6 of 32 [18.8%]), or graded the strength of the recommendations (5 of 32 [15.6%]). External review, patient or public perspectives, or a process for updating were rare. High-quality CPGs included a methodologist and multidisciplinary collaborations involving investigators from 2 or more WHO regions. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this review, few COVID-19 CPGs met NAM standards for trustworthy guidelines. Approaches that prioritize engagement of a methodologist and multidisciplinary collaborators from at least 2 WHO regions may lead to the production of ...

One of the main goals of machine learning is to make a General Artificial Intelligence. Currently, human artificial intelligence researchers work on meticulously manipulating model parameters by hand in order to arrive at highly optimized machine learning models. In the future, a system will be needed such that a software is able to completely arrive at an optimized model to a specific topic all by itself. An increasingly aware human problem is stress, which can oftentimes lead to a variety of health issues. In this study, a novel machine learning platform was created that could learn how to assess the environmental factors relating to stress in a knowledge graph all by itself. Deep learning algorithms, in particular Graph Convolutional Algorithms, were employed to train the software on a small subset of topics in the aim of recreating additional knowledge graphs through automated Internet searches. By using constructed knowledge graphs with input plaintext for specific areas of environmental stressors as a dataset - weather, income, and societal class-, the software was able to accurately train and predict knowledge graphs for environmental stressors outside of its specific training domain for human analysis. These knowledge graphs could then be used in order to diagnose the total environmental stress through an analysis of how much a specific environment would traverse down the constructed knowledge graph.

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept has attracted a lot of attention from the research and innovation community for a number of years already. One of the key drivers for this hype towards the IoT is its applicability to a plethora of different application domains. However, infrastructures enabling experimental assessment of IoT solutions are scarce. Being able to test and assess the behavior and the performance of any piece of technology (i.e., protocol, algorithm, application, service, etc.) under real-world circumstances is of utmost importance to increase the acceptance and reduce the time to market of these innovative developments. This paper describes the federation of eleven IoT deployments from heterogeneous application domains (e.g., smart cities, maritime, smart building, crowd-sensing, smart grid, etc.) with over 10,000 IoT devices overall which produce hundreds of thousands of observations per day. The paper summarizes the resources that are made available through a cloud-based platform. The main contributions from this paper are twofold. In the one hand, the insightful summary of the federated data resources are relevant to the experimenters that might be seeking for an experimental infrastructure to assess their innovations. On the other hand, the identification of the challenges met during the testbed integration process, as well as the mitigation strategies that have been implemented to face them, are of interest for testbed providers that can be considering to join the federation. ; This work is partially funded by the European project "Federated Interoperable Semantic IoT/cloud Testbeds and Applications (FIESTA-IoT" from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme with the Grant Agreement No. CNECT-ICT-643943. It was also supported by Institute for Information & communications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2015-0-00849, Federated Interoperable Semantic IoT/Cloud Testbeds and Application). The authors would also like to thank the FIESTA-IoT consortium for fruitful discussions.