The virus is a test. We have the freedom to respond.

The Mississauga Food Bank says a $100,000 donation made earlier this week by New York Knicks rookie RJ Barrett will provide 200,000 meals as part of the community's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the first two weeks of the operation, the sports organization's meal program has used almost 25,000 pounds of chicken, 15,000 pounds of potatoes, 10,000 pounds of mixed vegetables and 8,000 pounds of pasta.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury will issue significantly more debt than the market had expected in the wake of...

The post What The 20-Year Bond Means for Interest Rate Markets appeared first on OpenMarkets.

Taking mom out for Mother's Day brunch is a tradition for many. But with people staying home and restaurants closed except for delivery or pick-up, this year's Mother's Day will be a little bit different. Food columnist Andrew Coppolino looks at options.

Jamal Campbell was never quite sure how the box of food ended up at his home while growing up in the community of Jane and Finch in Toronto, but he understood what it meant to his family.

The new reality of life under COVID-19 means Montreal Alouettes GM Danny Maciocia will be physically alone in his basement while he and his staff participate in the CFL draft.

Even though this year's food truck season is looking dicey, Tyler Schmidt says he's doing his best to find business where he can.

Region of Waterloo Public Health says there are 44 positive cases of COVID-19 at the Breslau meat processing facility Conestoga Meats.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, there are so many numbers flying around, it's hard to keep track. Here, we'll do our best to keep track for you, with new charts updated daily and the context surrounding the data.

Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby is easing the burden for many Pennsylvania families struggling during the COVID-19 virus.

Sofina Foods plants in Burlington and Mississauga have each had an employee test positive.

Determining the concentration of protein samples generally is accomplished either by measuring the UV absorbance at 280 nm or by reacting the protein quantitatively with dyes and/or metal ions (Bradford, Lowry, or BCA assays). For purified proteins, UV absorbance remains the most popular method because it is fast, convenient, and reproducible; it does not consume the protein; and it requires no additional reagents, standards, or incubations. No method of protein concentration determination is perfect because each is subject to a different set of constraints such as interference of buffer components and contaminating proteins in direct UV determination (A₂₈₀) or reactivity of individual proteins and buffer components with the detecting reagents in colorimetric assays. In cases in which protein concentration is critical (e.g., determination of catalytic rate constants for an enzyme), it may be advisable to compare the results of several assays.

Central Bank of Chile Working Papers by Andrés Sagner

A public baptism ceremony at the river becomes an opportunity to teach an onlooker about the true meaning of baptism.

The Creative Arts team perform their Christmas show for school children all over Ireland in the course of three weeks.

It matters not if we are from 200 countries; we are one in Christ and shall be for eternity. OMNI-team member Greg Kernaghan about ‘globalisation’.

A Christian football coach experiences what he says is the best gift from God, something “so much more than winning”.

A landlord asks if his current tenants will still be able to move out at the end of the month as planned and whether his new tenant would be hindered from taking occupation. An attorney responds.

Try to make sense of this if you can. The other day, a fund-raising event for the Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, was disrupted by protesters. But they weren’t the kind of protesters you’d expect to get angry about a gay candidate. The protesters were gay themselves. It was a protest against a gay man staged by gays. It was gays against gays. It was pink on pink. It was confusing.

A Crimean Tatar man shares how he gained courage and learnt vital truths through reading Into the Den of the Infidels, produced by OM EAST.

While millions of people have taken advantage of easing coronavirus lockdowns to enjoy the outdoors, some of the world’s most populous countries have reported worrying new peaks in infections.

"In order to fulfil our mandate, there are several needs we must invest in," says Stephan Bauer.

Scotland's crime levels have dropped by around 25% since lockdown measures were introduced.

Next week, Nicola Sturgeon is promising to outline her proposals for lifting the lockdown. Good luck with that. She is unlikely to open the schools because she can't rely on parents to send their children.

Your cheat sheet to the ESEA rewrite's teacher provisions.

In this Facebook Live discussion, Education Week reporters Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa discuss President Trump's budget, and what it means for public education.

Loaded or empirical? Incendiary or honest? Unavoidable or misleading? There’s a big disconnect around how we use the word “segregation.”

Rick talks with the CEO of Panorama Education, an ed-tech company whose college- and career-readiness tools are currently used each year in 11,500 schools.

Supporters of the bill say it would extend critical civil rights protections to more students. But opponents say it ignores parents' rights in schools and could lead to confusing situations for some children.

The effects of an ongoing measles outbreak centered in Washington state have spread well beyond the patients who’ve contracted the virus, creating logistical challenges for schools and public health officials.

A group of testing experts says that opt-out could jeopardize the ability to target educational resources appropriately.

Primary care providers (PCPs) identify patients with undescended testis (UDT) and refer them to surgical specialists. Referral beyond the recommended times for orchiopexy has been reported, and PCPs' accuracy in identifying and distinguishing UDTs from retractile testes has been questioned.

We describe 3 observations that are strongly correlated with UDT, that is, birth history of UDT, prematurity, and visible scrotal asymmetry. UDT diagnoses are best made by 8 months of age, to reduce confusion with testicular retraction and to facilitate timely orchiopexy. (Read the full article)

There are known gaps in quality measures for children. More clinical effectiveness research is needed. The patient-centered medical home may serve as a model to guide the development of quality measures, particularly for children with complex medical conditions.

This study combined systematic literature review and the Rand/University of California Los Angeles appropriateness method to develop quality measures for children with complex medical conditions. These are valid and feasible quality measures based on the patient-centered medical home framework that may be used to assess care. (Read the full article)

The availability of rapid response systems to assist deteriorating patients is the standard of care in children’s hospitals. Metrics for evaluating their effectiveness include cardiac and respiratory arrest rates, rare events that require years of data to show significant improvements.

A proximate outcome for in-hospital mortality among patients receiving rapid response system assistance was developed. This "critical deterioration" metric was eightfold more common than arrests and demonstrated criterion and construct validity, facilitating meaningful evaluation over shorter periods of time. (Read the full article)

Transcutaneous bilirubinometry was originally developed as a potential replacement for invasive blood sampling, but its clinical application is still limited to a screening method for hyperbilirubinemia. Reasons for this limited clinical value may be diverse.

This study provides insight into the reasons for the limited clinical value of transcutaneous bilirubinometry. This aids to both better interpretation of the measured TcB value from a patient and to possible improvement of the clinical value of the technique. (Read the full article)

Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures are widely used to assess the reliability of pediatric immunization delivery. The extent to which these measures provide accurate ("is this child up-to-date on immunizations?") and useful ("is this child due for catch-up immunizations?") information is unclear.

Overall, HEDIS childhood immunization measures are accurate and useful. Users of HEDIS data should be aware, however, that certain immunizations (eg, hepatitis B, pneumococcal conjugate) and children (eg, those with a single overdue immunization) are more prone to HEDIS misclassification. (Read the full article)

Febrile seizure risk 7 to 10 days after measles-mumps-rubella-varicella (MMRV) is double that of separate measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) and varicella vaccines among 1-year-olds. Whether MMRV or MMR and varicella affect febrile seizure risk among 4- to 6-year-olds has not been reported.

Using Vaccine Safety Datalink data, we examined risk for febrile seizures after measles-containing vaccines. This study provides reassurance that MMRV and separately administered MMR and varicella were not associated with increased risk of febrile seizures among 4- to 6-year-olds. (Read the full article)

As a result of safety and environmental concerns about mercury, aneroid sphygmomanometers have replaced mercury-filled devices for blood pressure measurements. Despite this change, few studies have compared the 2 devices.

Little clinical variation exists between blood pressure measurements obtained from an aneroid or mercury device, suggesting that either device could be used in a research or clinical setting. (Read the full article)

Many children are vaccinated against measles with a delay. This may influence effective measles vaccine coverage even in countries with high overall immunization levels. Official vaccine coverage statistics do not usually report on the impact of timeliness of measles vaccination.

Delayed measles vaccination results in 48.6% effective coverage in children aged 6 months to 2 years when 84.5% of 25-month-olds are up-to-date for 1 measles vaccination. Analyzing patterns of measles vaccination could help to address low coverage in infants and toddlers. (Read the full article)

Asthma is a major reason for pediatric hospital admission. The Joint Commission requires freestanding children’s hospitals to report compliance with 3 Children’s Asthma Care quality measures. High compliance with these measures should result in decreased admissions and emergency department visits.

Implementation of a standardized care process model for hospitalized asthmatic children resulted in high compliance with all 3 measures. Measures 1 and 2 did not provide an opportunity for improvement. Compliance with measure 3 resulted in significant decreases in readmission. (Read the full article)

The Global Trigger Tool uses a sampling methodology to identify and measure harm rates. It has been shown to effectively detect adverse events when applied in the adult environment, but it has never been evaluated in a pediatric setting.

The Global Trigger Tool can be used in the pediatric inpatient environment to measure adverse safety events. We detected a 2 to 3 times higher harm rate than previously found with different metrics in this setting. (Read the full article)

Mumps outbreaks continue to occur among unvaccinated and highly vaccinated populations. In highly vaccinated populations, options for outbreak control are limited. No previous study has documented the impact of a third measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine dose on a mumps outbreak.

Our study assessed the use of a third MMR vaccine dose for mumps outbreak control in a setting with preexisting high 2-dose vaccine coverage. The findings suggest a potential role of MMR vaccine for outbreak control in such limited settings. (Read the full article)

Asthma is a common focus of pediatric quality improvement efforts. Various processes of care have been postulated as markers of high-quality pediatric asthma care, but it is not clear which processes correlate with a lower risk of asthma exacerbations.

This study analyzed the correlation of processes of care identifiable through administrative data with asthma exacerbations. The use of 0 vs ≥1 controller medications and the asthma medication ratio had the strongest correlation with asthma exacerbations. (Read the full article)

When research involving children is determined to present greater than minimal risk but no potential for direct benefit, permission is required from both parents, unless one is not reasonably available. These requirements are variably understood and applied, and guidance is lacking.

In a study on newborn screening, a sizeable percentage of fathers were not reasonably available, reflecting complexities of parental status and family relations. Guidelines developed in this project may provide tools for researchers and institutions to apply in other contexts. (Read the full article)

Few reports have explored the measurement validity of the relative value unit (RVU) system, particularly in pediatrics. The RVU system, although broadly applied in health care settings, was developed for the adult population and thus may possess unique inadequacies in pediatrics.

We found deficiencies in the ability of the RVU system to capture features of case mix complexity and differences related to age. Additional investigation may be warranted to determine the validity of RVU as a measurement tool in pediatrics. (Read the full article)

Readmissions have been identified as a priority area for pediatric inpatient quality measurement nationally. However, it is unknown whether readmission rates vary meaningfully across hospitals and how many hospitals would be identified as high- or low-performers.

Only a few hospitals that care for children are high- or low-performers when their condition-specific revisit rates are compared with average rates across hospitals. This limits the usefulness of condition-specific readmission or revisit measures in pediatric quality measurement. (Read the full article)

School outbreak investigation in Quebec, Canada suggested that adolescents previously vaccinated with 2 doses of measles vaccine beginning at 12 months of age were at greater measles risk than those whose first dose was given at ≥15 months of age.

Greater measles risk among earlier first-of-2-dose vaccine recipients was replicated as a generalized provincial finding during the 2011 epidemic in Quebec, Canada. The mechanism remains unknown, but the findings warrant additional evaluation in the context of measles elimination efforts. (Read the full article)

Mobile devices are ubiquitous in children’s lives, but how caregivers and children use them in everyday situations, and how use of devices affects caregiver–child interactions, has not been studied.

In naturalistic mealtime observations, we documented the behavior of many caregivers whose attention was highly absorbed in their mobile devices, with varying child reactions to this absorption. This study raises several hypotheses about mobile device use and caregiver-child interaction. (Read the full article)

The use of electronic health record systems to measure adolescent health care quality requires an operational definition of sexual activity for measuring recommended health promotion activities such as Chlamydia screening and others related to reproductive health.

This study is the first to compare operational definitions of sexual activity by using information electronically abstracted from electronic health records of adolescent females. Our research supports the use of broader operational definitions of sexual activity for health quality measurement. (Read the full article)