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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge effect on adolescents' health and learning. Health promotion strategies should be valued, and life skill education is a potential approach in this direction. This study aimed to investigate the implementation of an evidence-based life skill education programme during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Lombardy Region (Italy) by collecting opinions about the programme's usefulness and feasibility and identifying the strategies for implementing it through distance teaching. The study involved 63 middle school expert teachers, principals or coordinators in life skill education. An online questionnaire with closed- and open-ended questions was used. A qualitative content analysis was carried out using N-Vivo Answers software. The participants recognized the high value of life skill education at the time of COVID-19, but they showed reticence regarding its feasibility. Positive effects of the programme on both health and learning outcomes were reported. The obstacles were related to interpersonal aspects, student involvement, methods, organization and planning. Many strategies were suggested related to the teaching method, the curriculum organization and the adaptation needs. These strategies can be used to implement active and cooperative learning at a distance to reinforce students' life skills to cope with the crisis and promote their health.

Manipulating underwater pressure waves is crucial for marine exploration, as electromagnetic signals are strongly absorbed in water. However, the multi-path phenomenon complicates the accurate capture of acoustic waves by receivers. Although graded index lenses, based on metamaterials with smoothly varying properties, successfully focus pressure waves, they tend to have high directivity, which hinders practical application. This work introduces three 2D acoustic lenses made from a metamaterial composed of solid inclusions in water. We propose an optimization scheme where the pressure dynamics is governed by Helmholtz's equation, with control parameters affecting each lens cell's density and bulk modulus. Through an appropriate cost function, the optimization encourages a broadband, low-directivity lens. The large-scale optimization is solved using the Lagrangian approach, which provides an analytical expression for the cost gradient. This scheme avoids the need for a separate discretization step, allowing the design to transition directly from the desired smooth refractive index to a practical lattice structure. As a result, the optimized lens closely aligns with real-world behavior. The homogenized numerical model is validated against finite elements, which considers acoustic-elastic coupling at the microstructure level. When homogenization holds, this approach proves to be an effective design tool for achieving broadband, low-directivity acoustic lenses., (© 2024 Acoustical Society of America.)

Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) is emerging as a solution for monitoring species and environmental change over large spatial and temporal scales. However, drawing rigorous conclusions based on acoustic recordings is challenging, as there is no consensus over which approaches are best suited for characterizing marine acoustic environments. Here, we describe the application of multiple machine-learning techniques to the analysis of two PAM datasets. We combine pre-trained acoustic classification models (VGGish, NOAA and Google Humpback Whale Detector), dimensionality reduction (UMAP), and balanced random forest algorithms to demonstrate how machine-learned acoustic features capture different aspects of the marine acoustic environment. The UMAP dimensions derived from VGGish acoustic features exhibited good performance in separating marine mammal vocalizations according to species and locations. RF models trained on the acoustic features performed well for labeled sounds in the 8 kHz range; however, low- and high-frequency sounds could not be classified using this approach. The workflow presented here shows how acoustic feature extraction, visualization, and analysis allow establishing a link between ecologically relevant information and PAM recordings at multiple scales, ranging from large-scale changes in the environment (i.e., changes in wind speed) to the identification of marine mammal species., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge effect on adolescents' health and learning. Health promotion strategies should be valued, and life skill education is a potential approach in this direction. This study aimed to investigate the implementation of an evidence-based life skill education programme during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Lombardy Region (Italy) by collecting opinions about the programme's usefulness and feasibility and identifying the strategies for implementing it through distance teaching. The study involved 63 middle school expert teachers, principals or coordinators in life skill education. An online questionnaire with closed- and open-ended questions was used. A qualitative content analysis was carried out using N-Vivo Answers software. The participants recognized the high value of life skill education at the time of COVID-19, but they showed reticence regarding its feasibility. Positive effects of the programme on both health and learning outcomes were reported. The obstacles were related to interpersonal aspects, student involvement, methods, organization and planning. Many strategies were suggested related to the teaching method, the curriculum organization and the adaptation needs. These strategies can be used to implement active and cooperative learning at a distance to reinforce students' life skills to cope with the crisis and promote their health., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Background: The Mediterranean subpopulation of fin whale Balaenoptera physalus (Linnaeus, 1758) has recently been listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of threatened species. The species is also listed as species in need of strict protection under the Habitat Directive and is one of the indicators for the assessment of Good Environmental Status under the MSFD. Reference values on population abundance and trends are needed in order to set the threshold values and to assess the conservation status of the population., Methods: Yearly summer monitoring using ferries as platform of opportunity was performed since 2008 within the framework of the FLT Med Network. Data were collected along several fixed transects crossing the Western Mediterranean basin and the Adriatic and Ionian region. Species presence, expressed by density recorded along the sampled transects, was inspected for assessing interannual variability together with group size. Generalized Additive Models were used to describe density trends over a 11 years' period (2008-2018). A spatial multi-scale approach was used to highlight intra-basin differences in species presence and distribution during the years., Results: Summer presence of fin whales in the western Mediterranean area showed a strong interannual variability, characterized by the alternance of rich and poor years. Small and large groups of fin whales were sighted only during rich years, confirming the favorable feeding condition influencing species presence. Trends highlighted by the GAM can be summarized as positive from 2008 to 2013, and slightly negative from 2014 to 2018. The sub-areas analysis showed a similar pattern, but with a more stable trend during the second period in the Pelagos Sanctuary sub-area, and a negative one in the other two sub-areas. Our findings further confirm the need for an integrated approach foreseeing both, large scale surveys and yearly monitoring at different spatial scales to correct and interpret the basin wide abundance estimates, and to correlate spatial and temporal trends with the ecological and anthropogenic drivers., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests., (©2020 Tepsich et al.)

This study assesses vessel-noise exposure levels for Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW) in the Salish Sea. Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) was used to delineate SRKW summer core areas. Those areas were combined with the output of a regional cumulative noise model describing sound level variations generated by commercial vessels (1/3-octave-bands from 10 Hz to 63.1 kHz). Cumulative distribution functions were used to evaluate SRKW's noise exposure from 15 vessel categories over three zones located within the KDE. Median cumulative noise values were used to group categories based on the associated exposure levels. Ferries, Tugboats, Vehicle Carriers, Recreational Vessels, Containers, and Bulkers showed high levels of exposure (L eq-50 th  > 90 dB re 1 μPa) within SRKW core areas. Management actions aiming at reducing SRKW noise exposure during the summer should target the abovementioned categories and take into consideration the spatial distribution of their levels of exposure, their mechanical and their operational characteristics., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Left ventricular dimensions tend to reduce after aortic valve replacement in patients with aortic stenosis. Whether concomitant coronary artery disease has an influence on postoperative ventricular dimensions has not been evaluated. Between 1998 and 2002, 112 patients underwent aortic valve replacement for aortic stenosis; 68 had isolated aortic valve replacement, and 44 had combined coronary artery bypass grafting. Left ventricular dimensions were assessed by echocardiography preoperatively and at 3 and 12 months postoperatively. Transvalvular mean gradient, left ventricular end-diastolic diameter, and left ventricular mass index decreased significantly postoperatively, while left ventricular ejection fraction improved. Preoperative left ventricular dimensions in patients with isolated aortic stenosis were worse than in those with aortic stenosis and coronary artery disease. After aortic valve replacement with coronary artery bypass, left ventricular mass index regression was less than that after valve replacement alone, and there was no improvement in ejection fraction. This suggests that coronary artery disease has a negative impact on postoperative myocardial recovery.

Objective: In patients with human immunodeficiency virus, body weight (BW) loss, due mainly to loss of fat-free mass, is associated with progression of disease and mortality. Recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) may promote BW gain by restoring FFM., Methods: We investigated the results of adding to highly active antiretroviral therapy of routine rhGH treatment in 34 patients with human immunodeficiency virus who had lost 5% to 20% of their usual BWs. They were recruited by their physicians in Switzerland and were instructed to self-administer the drug. Patients were given 6 mg of rhGH each day for 12 wk. BW and body composition, measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis (50 kHz, tetrapolar), were recorded at baseline and at 4, 8, and 12 wk of treatment., Results: At week 12, BW gain averaged 3.0 +/- 0.5 kg (P < 0.001), fat-free mass gain was 4.8 +/- 0.5 kg (P = 0.001), and body fat mass loss was 1.8 +/- 0.4 kg (P = 0.008). BW and fat-free mass increases and FM decrease were evident by week 4 and tended to plateau by week 8. Therapy was well tolerated; one patient developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Five patients abandoned the study for reasons unrelated to the rhGH treatment., Conclusion: Our data strongly support the use of rhGH in the treatment of unintentional BW loss associated with human immunodeficiency virus. The low rate of dropouts and the low incidence of side effects make the use of rhGH suitable for primary care management.