Use of Breath Analysis for Diagnosing COVID-19: Opportunities, Challenges, and Considerations for Future Pandemic Responses.

Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there is currently a need for accurate, rapid, and easy-to-administer diagnostic tools to help communities manage local outbreaks and assess the spread of disease. The use of artificial intelligence within the domain of breath analysis techniques has shown to have potential in diagnosing a variety of diseases, such as cancer and lung disease, by analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath. This combined with their rapid, easy-to-use, and noninvasive nature makes them a good candidate for use in diagnosing COVID-19 in large scale public health operations. However, there remains issues with their implementation when it comes to the infrastructure currently available to support their use on a broad scale. This includes issues of standardization, and whether or not a characteristic VOC pattern can be identified for COVID-19. Despite these difficulties, breathalyzers offer potential to assist in pandemic responses and their use should be investigated.

The BNT-15 provides an accurate measure of English proficiency in cognitively intact bilinguals - a study in cross-cultural assessment.

This study was designed to replicate earlier reports of the utility of the Boston Naming Test - Short Form (BNT-15) as an index of limited English proficiency (LEP). Twenty-eight English-Arabic bilingual student volunteers were administered the BNT-15 as part of a brief battery of cognitive tests. The majority (23) were women, and half had LEP. Mean age was 21.1 years. The BNT-15 was an excellent psychometric marker of LEP status (area under the curve: .990-.995). Participants with LEP underperformed on several cognitive measures (verbal comprehension, visuomotor processing speed, single word reading, and performance validity tests). Although no participant with LEP failed the accuracy cutoff on the Word Choice Test, 35.7% of them failed the time cutoff. Overall, LEP was associated with an increased risk of failing performance validity tests. Previously published BNT-15 validity cutoffs had unacceptably low specificity (.33-.52) among participants with LEP. The BNT-15 has the potential to serve as a quick and effective objective measure of LEP. Students with LEP may need academic accommodations to compensate for slower test completion time. Likewise, LEP status should be considered for exemption from failing performance validity tests to protect against false positive errors.