SARS-CoV-2 infection in children accounts for about 1-8% of cases world-wide, most of them asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. Neonatal infection is rare and usually asymptomatic. Since April 2020, severe manifestations were seen in children in Europe and North America, presenting as Kawasaki disease-like illness involving multiple organs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention termed this multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and developed a case definition. The World Health Organization developed a similar case definition with slight modifications. The appropriateness of this definition for neonatal scenarios is debatable. Anecdotal reports reveal that the second wave of SARS-CoV-2 in the Indian context has affected neonates with more severity and a wide spectrum of presentations. Neurological manifestations presenting as seizures and encephalopathy, cardiac manifestations with shock, coronary artery dilatation, arrhythmias, disseminated intravascular coagulation, renal problems and death are seen. [1][2][3][4] We report a case of SARS-CoV-2 infection in a 7-day-old term neonate with possible MIS-C, presenting with features of encephalitis.

A dual-disk ring (DDR) structure with broken symmetry and weakly dissipating material, silver, is proposed to achieve Fano resonance in visible wavelength range. Symmetry breaking of a metallic ring is realized by placing two disks inside the ring. The excitation of the Fano resonance is interpreted in terms of coupling of the ring and the dual-disk plasmonic modes. The potential of using an array of such DDR nano structures as a biochemical sensor is evaluated with the figure of merit (FOM). Based on our design and simulation, arrays with DDR structures are fabricated and the Fano resonance peak is observed in visible wavelength range of extinction spectra of individual silver DDR nanostructures.

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Hearing is one of the most important sense organs for man. Hearing loss is often associated with delayed speech and language development in young children. Early identification and intervention improves the chance a child gets to lesser delays in development and improving the overall quality of life. To find out the prevalence of hearing loss in neonates in the rural taluka of Maval, Pune, Maharashtra, India. Prospective Non Randomized Clinical Study. The study was carried out between April 2012 and April 2015. A total of 8192 babies were screened across various centers around the Maval area. The babies who had some high risk factors were 1683 in number and babies who had no high risk factors i.e. well babies were 6509. In our study, the overall prevalence of hearing loss in neonates in Maval taluka of Maharashtra was found to be 3.54 per 1000 live births, in normal born neonates (well babies) was 1.689 per 1000 births, in high risk babies was 10.69 per 1000 high risk births. The prevalence of low birth weight neonates, hyperbilirubinemia neonates and neonates with craniofacial abnormalities developing hearing impairment was found to be 5.9, 3.56 and 1.18 per 1000 high risk births respectively. India is the second most populated country in the world with nearly a fifth of the world's population. There is a need for the universal neonatal screening for deafness for earlier detection of deafness and rehabilitation. : Level IV.

Authors are at the heart of academic publishing, but their voices are underrepresented in discussions about improving the academic publishing system. To understand the viewpoints of authors on various aspects of academic publishing and the challenges they face, we developed a large-scale survey entitled "Author perspectives on the academic publishing process" and made it available in December 2016. The survey has received 8,795 responses; this paper is based on the interim results drawn from 5,293 survey responses, and presents some interesting and thought-provoking trends that were observed in the authors' responses, such as their interpretation of plagiarism and decisive factors in journal selection, as well as their thoughts on what needs to change in the publishing system for it to be more author-friendly. Some of the most important findings of the survey were: (1) the majority of the authors found manuscript preparation to be the most challenging task in the publication process, (2) the impact factor of a journal was reported to be the most important consideration for journal selection, (3) most authors found journal guidelines to be incomplete, (4) major gaps existed in author-journal communication, and (5) although awareness of ethics was high, awareness of good publication practice standards was low. Moreover, more than half of the participants indicated that among areas for improvement in the publishing system, they would like to see changes in the time it takes to publish a paper, the peer review process, and the fairness and objectivity of the publication process. These findings indicate the necessity of making the journal publication process more author-centered and smoothing the way for authors to get published.