Soft, Modular Power for Composing Robots with Embodied Energy.

The adaptable, modular structure of muscles, combined with their confluent energy storage allows for numerous architectures found in nature: trunks, tongues, and tentacles to name some more complex ones. To provide an artificial analog to this biological soft muscle, a self-powered, soft hydrostat actuator is presented. As an example of how to use these modules, a worm robot is assembled where the near totality of the body stores electrochemical potential.

"Financially Palliative": The Need to Address a Perplexing Financial Conundrum in Emergency and Critical Care.

Unlabelled: The terminology "Financially Palliative" is a pseudonym and refers to a unique challenge faced in countries where public healthcare insurance coverage is not robust and the percentage of out-of-pocket health expenditure continues to be high. Emergency and critical care healthcare expenditures in such circumstances usually pose additional burden as they are unforeseen expenses, disproportionately high, for which most people are unprepared. Such situations may lead into a vicious cycle that initiates with expenditure hesitancy and delay in definitive care, which in turn leads to deterioration in the patient's condition and delay-related complications.

Toward Heart-Healthy and Sustainable Cities: A Policy Statement From the American Heart Association.

Nearly 56% of the global population lives in cities, with this number expected to increase to 6.6 billion or >70% of the world's population by 2050. Given that cardiometabolic diseases are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in people living in urban areas, transforming cities and urban provisioning systems (or urban systems) toward health, equity, and economic productivity can enable the dual attainment of climate and health goals.

Euglycemic Diabetic Ketoacidosis Presenting as Hypoglycemia in a Patient With Type 2 Diabetes and Von Gierke's Disease.

Von Gierke's disease (VGD) is rarely associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2). We present a case of VGD with DM2 that presented with hypoglycemia in the setting of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) in a young male with VGD using the sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor empagliflozin. The patient required resuscitation with fluids containing glucose prior to the administration of insulin for DKA protocol with significant clinical improvement.

Learning to switch gears - Steering palliative care into emergency medicine.

Emergency care is largely seen as synonymous with resuscitation and saving lives. In most of the developing world where Emergency Medicine (EM) is still evolving, the concept of EM palliative care is alien. Provision of palliative care in such settings poses its own challenges in terms of knowledge gaps, socio-cultural barriers, dismal doctor-to-patient ratio with limited time for communication with patients, and lack of established pathways to provide EM palliative care.

Biopsy-proven fungal pyelonephritis complicating delayed graft function in a renal transplant patient.

Delayed graft function (DGF) is a common phenomenon following renal transplantation, which can be due to several factors. A rare cause includes invasive fungal infections, which can often be a challenge to diagnose. Nonetheless, prompt identification of such infections particularly within transplant patients is essential as they can lead to severe downstream sequelae, including graft loss and even death.

Nebulized vs IV Tranexamic Acid for Hemoptysis: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Tranexamic acid (TA) is used to control bleeding in patients with hemoptysis. However, the effectiveness of the different routes of TA administration has not been studied.

Research Question: Does the nebulized route of TA administration reduce the amount of hemoptysis compared with the IV route in patients presenting to the ED with hemoptysis?

Study Design And Methods: This was a pragmatic, open-label, randomized, parallel, single-center, pilot trial of nebulized TA (500 mg tid) vs IV TA (500 mg tid) in adult patients presenting to the ED with active hemoptysis.

Prevalence of blood-borne viruses and hepatitis B vaccination status among haemodialysis patients in Central Australia.

Objective: A cross-sectional study to determine the prevalence of blood-borne viruses and hepatitis B vaccination status in haemodialysis patients in Central Australia.

Methods: Our study comprised 366 Aboriginal and 1 non-Indigenous Australian in Central Australia who had commenced haemodialysis between January 1996 and December 2019.

Results: Chronic hepatitis B infection was seen in 8.

Clinical Outcomes of Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant in Multiple Myeloma Patients: A 5-year Experience from a Single Centre in North India.

Swati Pabbi  Multiple myeloma (MM) forms a significant proportion of hematological malignancies. Autologous transplantation continues to be an effective consolidation strategy in resource-restricted settings such as India.  The main objective of the study was to analyze the clinical outcomes of autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) in MM patients in a single tertiary care center in north India over a period of 5 years.

Impact of Circular, Waste-Heat Reuse Pathways on PM-Air Quality, CO Emissions, and Human Health in India: Comparison with Material Exchange Potential.

India is home to 1.3 billion people who are exposed to some of the highest levels of ambient air pollution in the world. In addition, India is one of the fastest-growing carbon-emitting countries.

Occupational Sharp Injury and Splash Exposure among Healthcare Workers in a Tertiary Hospital.

Occupational hazards like sharp injury and splash exposure (SISE) are frequently encountered in health-care settings. The adoption of standard precautions by healthcare workers (HCWs) has led to significant reduction in the incidence of such injuries, still SISE continues to pose a serious threat to certain groups of HCWs. This was a retrospective study which examined the available records of all patients from January 2015 to August 2019 who self-reported to our emergency department with history of sharp injury and/or splash exposure.

Characterizing COVID-19 waves in urban and rural districts of India.

Understanding spatial determinants, i.e., social, infrastructural, and environmental features of a place, which shape infectious disease is critically important for public health.

Current state of non-hematologic cancer-associated thrombosis at a tertiary care hospital in India.

Introduction: Cancer-associated thrombosis is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in malignancy patients. Prophylactic anticoagulation is under-utilized and the cost of low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) and direct oral anticoagulants is a major barrier in developing countries.

Material And Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed of all cancer-associated thrombosis patients attending the thrombosis clinic at a tertiary-level referral hospital based in North India between 2011 and 2015.

Strengthening sepsis care at a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi, India.

Introduction: Failure of early identification of sepsis in the emergency department (ED) leads to significant delays in antibiotic administration which adversely affects patient outcomes.

Aim: The primary objective of our Quality Improvement (QI) project was to reduce the door-to-antibiotic time (DTAT) by 30% from the preintervention in patients with suspected sepsis. Secondary objectives were to increase the blood culture collection rate by 30% from preintervention, investigate the predictors of improving DTAT and study the effect of these interventions on 24-hour in-hospital mortality.

COVID-19-associated mucormycosis presenting to the Emergency Department-an observational study of 70 patients.

Background: Mucormycosis (MM) is a deadly opportunistic fungal infection and a large surge in COVID-19-associated mucormycosis (CAM) is occurring in India.

Aim: Our aim was to delineate the clinico-epidemiological profile and identify risk factors of CAM patients presenting to the Emergency Department (ED).

Design: This was a retrospective, single-centre, observational study.

Measuring social equity in urban energy use and interventions using fine-scale data.

Cities seek nuanced understanding of intraurban inequality in energy use, addressing both income and race, to inform equitable investment in climate actions. However, nationwide energy consumption surveys are limited (<6,000 samples in the United States), and utility-provided data are highly aggregated. Limited prior analyses suggest disparity in energy use intensity (EUI) by income is ∼25%, while racial disparities are not quantified nor unpacked from income.

All urban areas' energy use data across 640 districts in India for the year 2011.

India is the third-largest contributor to global energy-use and anthropogenic carbon emissions. India's urban energy transitions are critical to meet its climate goals due to the country's rapid urbanization. However, no baseline urban energy-use dataset covers all Indian urban districts in ways that align with national totals and integrate social-economic-infrastructural attributes to inform such transitions.

Understanding subjective well-being: perspectives from psychology and public health.

Background: Individual subjective well-being (SWB) is essential for creating and maintaining healthy, productive societies. The literature on SWB is vast and dispersed across multiple disciplines. However, few reviews have summarized the theoretical and empirical tenets of SWB literature across disciplinary boundaries.

Impact of Urban Expansion and In Situ Greenery on Community-Wide Carbon Emissions: Method Development and Insights from 11 US Cities.

Biogenic CO emissions in cities are shaped by urban land cover change which can release carbon stocks, and, carbon sequestration by in situ vegetation. To date, these two processes have not been studied together and compared with transboundary fossil fuel-based CO emissions of urban energy use. We leverage remote sensing and machine learning to quantify biogenic CO emissions between 2006 and 2012, across 11 U.

Transboundary Environmental Footprints of the Urban Food Supply Chain and Mitigation Strategies.

Food supply has been the central issue of human development for millennia and has become increasingly critical in an urbanizing world. However, the environmental footprints and associated mitigation strategies of food consumption have rarely been comprehensively characterized at urban or regional scales. Here, we analyze the water, carbon, reactive nitrogen, and phosphorus footprints of food consumption in Chinese urban regions and demonstrate how such information can help to formulate tailored mitigation strategies.

Connecting Air Quality with Emotional Well-Being and Neighborhood Infrastructure in a US City.

Cities in the United States have announced initiatives to become more sustainable, healthy, resilient, livable, and environmentally friendly. However, indicators for measuring all outcomes related to these targets and the synergies between them have not been well defined or studied. One such relationship is the linkage between air quality with emotional well-being (EWB) and neighborhood infrastructure.

Impact of Locational Choices and Consumer Behaviors on Personal Land Footprints: An Exploration Across the Urban-Rural Continuum in the United States.

Land is a scarce resource. We develop consumption-based land footprints (CBLF) for urban and rural U.S.