Evaluation of patient characteristics, management and outcomes for COVID-19 at district hospitals in the Western Cape, South Africa: descriptive observational study.

Objectives: To describe the characteristics, clinical management and outcomes of patients with COVID-19 at district hospitals.

Design: A descriptive observational cross-sectional study.

Setting: District hospitals (4 in metro and 4 in rural health services) in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Likelihood-ratio-based verification in high-dimensional spaces.

The increase of the dimensionality of data sets often leads to problems during estimation, which are denoted as the curse of dimensionality. One of the problems of second-order statistics (SOS) estimation in high-dimensional data is that the resulting covariance matrices are not full rank, so their inversion, for example, needed in verification systems based on the likelihood ratio, is an ill-posed problem, known as the singularity problem. A classical solution to this problem is the projection of the data onto a lower dimensional subspace using principle component analysis (PCA) and it is assumed that any further estimation on this dimension-reduced data is free from the effects of the high dimensionality.

Radiation-induced apoptosis is modulated by the post-irradiation tumor microenvironment.

The sensitivity of cells to radiation-induced apoptosis is considered to be low in solid tumors. This is thought to arise largely from inherent resistance caused by apoptotic pathway mutations. However, other factors may contribute to apoptotic resistance.

Can radiation-induced apoptosis be modulated by inhibitors of energy metabolism?

Purpose: To determine the effect of the inhibitors of energy metabolism, 2-deoxyglucose (2DG) and sodium azide, on radiation-induced apoptosis.

Materials And Methods: Radiation-induced apoptosis was determined in U937 monocytic leukaemia cells exposed to energy inhibitors post-irradiation. Apoptosis was scored microscopically using morphological criteria.