Fertility and digital technology: narratives of using smartphone app ‘Natural Cycles’ while trying to conceive

Fertility awareness apps, which help to identify the ‘fertile window’ when conception is most likely, have been hailed as ‘revolutionising’ women’s reproductive health. Despite rapidly growing popularity, little research has explored how people use these apps when trying to conceive and what these apps mean to them. We draw on in‐depth, qualitative interviews, adopting a critical digital health studies lens (a sub‐field of science and technology studies), to explore the experiences of cisgender women and partners with one such app, Natural Cycles, in the context of their daily lives. We found that many women valued the technology as a ‘natural’, inobtrusive alternative to biomedical intervention, and a means of controlling and knowing their bodies, amid a dearth of fertility‐related education and care. Yet this technology also intervened materially and affectively into the spaces of their lives and relationships and privileged disembodied metrics (temperature) over embodied knowledge. Meanwhile, app language, advertising and cost have contributed to characterising ‘typical’ users as white, heterosexual, affluent, cisgender women without disabilities. In the context of neoliberal shifts towards bodily self‐tracking, technologies appealing as novel, liberating and ‘natural’ to individuals who can access them may nevertheless reproduce highly gendered reproductive responsibilities, anxieties and broader health and social inequalities.     

The potential effects of deploying SARS-Cov-2 vaccines on cold storage capacity and immunization workload in countries of the WHO African Region

BackgroundSARS-CoV-2 vaccines will be deployed to countries with limited immunization systems.MethodsWe assessed the effect of deploying SARS-Cov-2 vaccines on cold storage capacity and immunization workload in a simulated WHO African Region country using region-specific data on immunization, population, healthcare workers (HCWs), cold storage capacity (quartile values for national and subnational levels), and characteristics of an approved SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. We calculated monthly increases in vaccine doses, doses per vaccinator, and cold storage volumes for four-month SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaigns targeting risk groups compared to routine immunization baselines.ResultsAdministering SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to risk groups would increase total monthly doses by 27.0% for ≥ 65 years, 91.7% for chronic diseases patients, and 1.1% for HCWs. Assuming median nurse density estimates adjusted for absenteeism and proportion providing immunization services, SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaigns would increase total monthly doses per vaccinator by 29.3% for ≥ 65 years, 99.6% for chronic diseases patients, and 1.2% for HCWs. When we applied quartiles of actual African Region country vaccine storage capacity, routine immunization vaccine volumes exceeded national-level storage capacity for at least 75% of countries, but subnational levels had sufficient storage capacity for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines for at least 75% of countries.ConclusionsIn the WHO African Region, SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaigns would substantially increase doses per vaccinator and cold storage capacity requirements over routine immunization baselines. Pandemic vaccination campaigns would increase storage requirements of national-level stores already at their limits, but sufficient capacity exists at subnational levels. Immediate attention to strengthening immunization systems is essential to support pandemic responses.     

知识模式转换在医学科技创新中的作用

医学科技创新是医院赖以生存与发展的动力,医学科技创新的过程也是医学知识模式不断转换的过程,本文从知识模式转换的视角,探讨知识管理对医学科技创新的意义与作用     

论高校科技产业的创新与发展

２１世纪是以信息技术和生物工程技术为代表的高瓣技术及其产业迅猛发展的知识经济世纪,本文主要讨论了在新世纪里高校职能的变化及其在知识创新、技术创新和国家经济建设中的地位、作用等问题。作者认为,坚持创新是高校生存和发展的根本需要;高校科技产业则是具有中国特色的知识经济的产物。对完善我国教育体制、提高办学实力、调整我国的知识结构和产业结构都具有十分重要的意义。     

内蒙古医学病毒学研究进展

目的：总结改革开放２０年来,内蒙古医学病毒学取得的一些瞩目成绩。方法：查阅中国生物医学文献光盘数据库,分析宾些年来内蒙古医学病毒学各类科研究进展。结果：内蒙古医学病毒学各学科研究均取得了一睦成绩,其中乙型肝炎、出血热病毒、化状病毒、巨细胞病毒、艾滋病病毒以及人类基因工程研究方面的成果已达到国内先进水平。结论：２０世纪内蒙古的医学成果已为下一世纪的研究尊定了基础,相信内蒙古的医学病毒学研究在２１世纪     

Basic Science in Medical Reasoning: An Artificial Intelligence Approach

A new generation of intelligent systems is growing up in the community of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. The main goal of these systems is the representation and use of real theory of diseases, as they are represented in medical textbooks or in scientific articles, rather than the heuristic shortcuts of human experts. In this paper, we will argue that the difficulties in the integration of basic science and clinical knowledge in intelligent systems arise from ontological differences between these kinds of knowledge and that the solution can be found in their dynamic integration during the reasoning process. In order to illustrate this point, we will first describe an epistemological analysis of the interplay between basic science knowledge and clinical knowledge, and then we will provide the example of a computational architecture implementing this view. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The effects of d-cycloserine and MK-801 on the performance of rats in two spatial learning and memory tasks

The present study was undertaken to investigate the effects of modulation of the (NMDA) receptor on learning and memory. Thus, the performance of rats treated with d-cycloserine, a partial agonist at the glycine recognition site of the NMDA receptor complex, and MK-801, a noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist, either alone or concurrently were assessed in radial arm maze and water maze tasks. Administration of MK-801 (0.1 mg/kg, i.p.) impaired acquisition in the water maze (increased escape latency and distance) and working memory in the radial arm maze (increased re-entries) in rats. Moreover, in the radial arm maze, MK-801 disrupted locomotion (increased latencies and decreased arm entries per minute) and impaired the acquisition of reference memory (increased number of errors) performance of rats. d-Cycloserine (0.03, 0.3, 1.0, 3.0, 10 mg/kg, i.p.) had no effects on acquisition or memory performance of control or MK-801-treated rats in either of these tasks. However, d-cycloserine (0.03, 0.3, 3.0 mg/kg) reversed the MK-801-induced disruption in locomotion. Furthermore, 3.0 mg/kg d-cycloserine increased behavioral activity and also decreased the time needed to complete the task in control animals. To conclude, our results suggest that the consequences of NMDA receptor modulation on learning and memory processes and sensorimotor functions may be functionally different or have distinct anatomical locations.     

医学高职教育的不可行性分析

医学高等教育,是一种生命科学理论、人体科学技术与自然科学知识相结合的超综合性教育活动,是关于人与人服务的社会特点而开展的知识传授、技术传递、思维培训、个人社会技术引导的"人"的教育过程.由此赋予该专业的课程门类众多、专业理论纵深、知识技术要求娴熟、医德意识最大唤醒等多重功能,不仅基础课程课时量大,而且知识链条关系十分紧密,课程的排列与进度只能是递进式的,因而长时间周期是实施医学教学的第一保证.