Clinical characteristics of 71 death cases of COVID‐19

Objective: To provide a basis for the early identification and treatment of severe and critical coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID - 19) by analyzing the clinical characteristics of the death cases. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the clinical characteristics of 71 COVID - 19 cases which died during hospitalization. The clinical data included general data, underlying disease, clinical manifestation, biochemical laboratory examination, imaging examination, complications, and treatment, then the influencing factors of in - hospital survival were analyzed. Results: Most of the 71 patients were ≥60 years old (78. 9%) and had underlying diseases (74. 6%), in which hypertension ranked first, and fever was the most common first symptom. Biochemical laboratory tests showed that D-Dimer and C-reactive protein maintained at high levels during hospitalization, and lymphocyte count declined. Leukocyte/neutrophil counts, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, procalcitonin, creatine kinase, and lactate dehydrogenase increased. The main imaging features of the dead cases were the multifocal ground glass changes and consolidation of the lungs. The most common complications were acute respiratory distress syndrome (89. 9%), shock (34. 3%), and acute myocardial injury (30. 4%). 90% of the patients received auxiliary ventilation, and the decrease of blood oxygen saturation and the increase of procalcitonin may be the risk factors for shorter in-hospital survival. Conclusion: Severe and critical COVID-19 patients show different characteristics in clinical manifestations, biochemical laboratory examination, imaging examination, complications, and treatment reactions, which need early identification and treatment, and bewaring of acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiple organs failure. © 2022 Editorial Board of Medical Journal of Wuhan University. All rights reserved.

Neurological complications of COVID-19.

Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused several pandemic peaks worldwide due to its high variability and infectiousness, and COVID-19 has become a long-standing global public health problem. There is growing evidence that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) frequently causes multi-organ injuries and more severe neurological manifestations. Therefore, increased awareness of possible neurological complications is beneficial in preventing and mitigating the impact of long-term sequelae and improving the prognostic outcome of critically ill patients with COVID-19. Here, we review the main pathways of SARS-CoV-2 neuroinvasion and the potential mechanisms causing neurological damage. We also discuss in detail neurological complications, aiming to provide cutting-edge basis for subsequent related basic research and clinical studies of diagnosis and treatment.

Levels and drivers of urban black carbon and health risk assessment during pre- and COVID19 lockdown in Augsburg, Germany

This study aimed to evaluate the levels and phenomenology of equivalent black carbon (eBC) at the city center of Augsburg, Germany (01/2018 to 12/2020). Furthermore, the potential health risk of eBC based on equivalent numbers of passively smoked cigarettes (PSC) was also evaluated, with special emphasis on the impact caused by the COVID19 lockdown restriction measures. As it could be expected, peak concentrations of eBC were commonly recorded in morning (06:00–8:00 LT) and night (19:00–22:00 LT) in all seasons, coinciding with traffic rush hours and atmospheric stagnation. The variability of eBC was highly influenced by diurnal variations in traffic and meteorology (air temperature (T), mixing-layer height (MLH), wind speed (WS)) across days and seasons. Furthermore, a marked "weekend effect” was evidenced, with an average eBC decrease of ∼35% due to lower traffic flow. During the COVID19 lockdown period, an average ∼60% reduction of the traffic flow resulted in ∼30% eBC decrease, as the health risks of eBC exposure was markedly reduced during this period. The implementation of a multilinear regression analysis allowed to explain for 53% of the variability in measured eBC, indicating that the several factors (e.g., traffic and meteorology) may contribute simultaneously to this proportion. Overall, this study will provide valuable input to the policy makers to mitigate eBC pollutant and its adverse effect on environment and human health. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Data Mining and Analysis of Prescription Rules for Plague in Ancient Books of Case Records of Qing Dynasty

Objective To analyze the prescription rules for pestilence in ancient books of case records, and provide reference for treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19);Methods The medical cases of warm diseases in ancient times were selected as the source before data extraction rules were made. TCM Miner was used to conduct the counts and analysis of association rules, and Cloud Platform of Ancient and Modern Medical Cases was used for complex network analysis. Results A total of141 medical cases were found in the 14 ancient books of case records, involving 66 formulae and 142 Chinese medicinals. The formulae mainly included Xiao Chaihu Tang (Minor Bupleurum Decoction), Dayuan Yin (Membrane Source-Opening Beverage), and JiuweiQianghuo Tang (Nine Ingredients Notopterygium Decoction), while the medicinals mainly included Lianqiao (Fructus Forsythiae), Fuling (Poria), and Shichangpu (RhizomaAcoriTatarinowii). Conlusion The prescriptions against pestilence in ancient times highlight clearing heat and toxins, cooling the blood, resolving dampness and opening the orifices, which is also combined with releasing the exterior. © 2022 IEEE.

FACTORS DETERMINING THE DEGREE OF THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN VIETNAM

Human lives all over the world had changed in unprecedented ways due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Vietnam, efforts to control said pandemic coupled with businesses’ efforts to change for their survival and preparation of post-pandemic recovery have brought certain achievements. This chapter examines how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam had been affected by the pandemic and what the factors that determined the degree of impact the pandemic had on SMEs were, and how SMEs had been supported by the Vietnamese government during the crisis. Based on data drawn from organizations’ business surveys, we discussed the pandemic’s impact on SMEs and its transmission channels. We also explored SMEs’ plight through reports and indexes from national statistics and through voices from victims. We then advanced the model to identify the factors that determined the degree of impact the pandemic had on SMEs. The chapter concludes that most SMEs in Vietnam suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, four factors that determined the degree of impact the pandemic had on SMEs were: A decrease in financial resources;a decrease in working hours and wages;a decrease in demand;lack of government support. This chapter also suggests that policies for supporting SMEs should be simple regarding their implementation. To achieve successful digital transformation, SMEs should be supported by the government in technical knowledge training and fundraising, as this was proven to have relieved the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic for enterprises. © 2022 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Hydrophobic RuO2/Graphene/N-doped porous carbon hybrid catalyst for Li-air batteries operating in ambient air

Li–air batteries have received significant attention for their ultrahigh theoretical energy density. However, the byproducts induced by attacking air hinder the conversion of Li–O2 batteries to Li–air batteries. Humidity is one of the main obstacles, not only causing side reactions with the discharge products but also leading to rapid corrosion of the lithium anode. Here, we fabricated a novel composite hydrophobic catalyst by loading RuO2 and graphene on N-doped porous carbon. The catalyst was endowed with hydrophobicity and showed superior catalytic performance and low affinity to water in the air. A Li–air battery equipped with this novel composite catalyst exhibited eminent cycling performance in pure oxygen (over 470 h), humid oxygen [∼40% relative humidity (RH), over 310 h], and ambient air (∼42% RH, over 330 h) at a current density of 500 mA g−1, and the discharge specific capacity increased from 13122.1 to 19358.6 mAh g−1. © 2022

The Impact of he COVID-19 Pandemic on the Behavior of Online Gig Workers

Problem definition: Using labor supply data from a large online education plat-form with more than 100,000 gig workers, we investigate how online gig workers changed their behavior after the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and what drove the changes. Methodology and Results: Online gig workers sharply increased their labor supply on the platform by 23% from the announcement of national emergency to the end of April (stage 1);the increase became smaller in May and June (stage 2) and disappeared in July and August (stage 3). Year to year difference-in-difference analyses show that these findings are robust after controlling for seasonality and worker heterogeneity. Results: We show that the increase in gig workers' labor supply is not driven by a higher demand or excessive entry of new workers during the pandemic. A series of mediation analyses indicates that unemployment and nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) rather than the risk of contracting COVID-19 can better explain why online gig workers increased their labor supply. The impact of unemployment is smaller than that of NPI policies, indicating that the increase in gig workers' labor supply is more driven by temporary changes in working arrangements because of the policies rather than relatively long-term changes in employment situations. We also examine how online gig workers change their quality of work and how their earning potential on the platform relates to their changes in behavior during the pandemic. Managerial implications: Our findings provide insights for the management of online gig workers during major disruptions, like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Improved VGG-16 Neural Network for Parameter Reduction

With the development of Deep Learning, image recognition technology has been applied in many aspects. And convolutional neural networks have played a key role in realizing image recognition under the increasing computing power and massive data. However, if developers want to implement the training of convolutional neural networks and achieve the subsequent applications in scenarios such as personal computers, IoT devices, and embedded platforms with low Graphics Processing Units(GPUs) memory, a large number of parameters during training of convolutional neural networks is a great challenge. Therefore, this paper uses depthwise separable convolution to optimize the classic convolutional neural network model VGG-16 to solve this problem. And the VGG-16-JS model is proposed using the Inception structure dimensionality reduction and depthwise separable convolution on the VGG-16 convolutional neural network model. Finally, this paper compares the classification success rates of VGG-16 and VGG-16-JS for the application scenario of the COVID-19 mask-wearing. A series of reliable experimental data show that the improved VGG-16-JS model significantly reduces the number of parameters required for model training without a significant drop in the success rate. It solves the GPU memory requirements for training neural networks to a certain extent. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

An Analytical Study of Cross-Cultural Design Factors Affecting Virtual Reality Teaching Experience

Objectives: With the COVID-19 epidemic, more and more schools are choosing online education and electronic devices for learning. Due to the uniqueness of the VR model, many teachers are introducing the use of VR in educational teaching activities. Generally speaking, virtual reality is widely used in the field of education and training because of its potential to promote interactivity and motivation. It also offers a new approach to teaching and learning due to the increasing number of online learners sharing and presenting educational content, and the technological possibilities of spreading knowledge over the global web and allowing students to participate in educational courses remotely. Therefore, this study focuses on relevant design factors through the study of teaching scenarios such as VR experience teaching training in the field of product design. In the preliminary questionnaire survey, we concluded that the three key words that students care most about VR teaching tools are user interface, usability and interaction design, but from the questionnaire survey we cannot accurately understand the specific preferences of students for these three factors. Therefore, we want to understand specifically whether students care more about user interface, usability, or interaction design for VR teaching tools, that is, which of these three factors will be more preferred and valued by students, in order to consider how to weigh the three factors in the VR design and production process. By studying the design factors of VR teaching and learning experiences, VR educational content developers can better understand the factors to be considered in this field. It can also guide VR content producers to produce more content that meets students’ needs. Methods: In this study, firstly, 80 questionnaires were mainly used to organize and collect the key words of relevant factors, and after the key words were obtained, the AHP tool was used to obtain the hierarchical model, and then according to the 1–9 scale method, 10 experts in the design field and 10 students were invited to score the three design factors of VR teaching tools in a two-by-two comparison, and finally the weight values were analyzed and organized according to the AHP calculation formula. Finally, the weight values were analyzed and sorted according to the AHP formula to determine the ranking of the weight values of the design factors of VR teaching tools. Results: The AHP method is used to study the factors that influence students in the design and production of VR courses and software, and to form a hierarchy in which different factors are sequentially generated. Designers and content producers can determine the relative importance of each factor in the hierarchy through pairwise comparisons. Based on the results, we can find that user interface is the most important VR design factor that students are concerned about, followed by interactivity. The findings can be used as a framework tool to design VR content according to students’ needs and make the product a better experience. Conclusions: According to the results, we can find that the user interface is the VR design factor that students are most concerned about, followed by interactivity, which also gives us a hint that when we are making VR teaching tools, we should pay more attention to the design and presentation of VR content, choosing appropriate VR materials, materials that are closer to the real world, and at the same time designing more beautiful, simpler, and more obvious buttons or The interface should be designed with more beautiful, simple and obvious buttons or prompts. The user interface is also important, when students enter the virtual reality, they want to be as in the real world in general scenes, rather than poor quality 3D production of animation graphics, virtual reality to provide students with a realistic reproduction of the world, where they can operate, learn, practice and even experiment, and designers to do is to provide them with as much as possible to meet the needs of the VR tools. Similarly, interactivity is also important in this process. If you can only watch, but not effectively interact with VR as if it were reality, then VR is obviously inappropriate. Therefore, the weighting of these three factors will hopefully provide some meaningful inspiration to the designers of VR teaching tools. When students use VR educational products, it is very important for VR content providers and VR designers to improve the actual value of the product content, as it can help them design VR educational products that better meet the market demand. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Sibling relationship qualities during the COVID-19 pandemic: A brief report of protective effect

We explored child sibling relationship qualities during the COVID-19 pandemic in a Chinese setting. Using a web-based survey, 154 parents reported on their kindergarten children's (age range = 3 to 6 years) sibling relationships. The descriptive data and correlations analysis showed that the siblings had a good degree of interaction and acceptance. Regression analysis results revealed that the parents/guardians perceived significant differences in sibling relationship qualities. Specifically, female child siblings were more interactive and emotionally secure compared to male child siblings. This sex effect was stronger for female first born children. Further research is needed to examine the quality of sibling relationships in other critical life situations to assist in improving the quality of sibling relationships.

Ten-year Development of General Practice in China:Opportunities and Challenges

Objective: To review the strengths and limitations of the development of general practice in China during the last decade(2010-2020) and to assess the opportunities and challenges for its future development. Methods: Data were collected from statistic reports, journal articles and official policies and guidelines regarding general practice development in China from 2010-2020. Donabedian model was applied to examine and assess the quality of essential general practice services in China. SWOT analysis was used to identify internal and external determinants of general practice development in China. Results: (1)Structural quality of general practice:the ten-year policies about general practice development were a continuation of the past relevant policies in essence but with developments, with highlights on continuous construction of general practice workforce and discipline, tiered diagnosis and treatment and regional medical consortium, but relevant fiscal and management policies still need improvements. The number of general medical workers has increased rapidly, while the lion's share of them are still allocated at tertiary hospitals. Full-time equivalent is suggested to be used to predict the staffing and assess the performance of these workers. The number of community health centres showed a steady increase, but its growth rate was still slower than that of hospital facilities. Relevant health economics data need to be further supplemented. (2)Process quality of general practice:in 2020, there were 2.045 billion visits in community health centers(stations) and township health centers, that is, 1.5 visits per person per year on average. There was a significant development when found only 1 visit per person per year for primary care in 2010. However, the frequency of visits for primary care was still lower than that of visiting hospital-based outpatients(an average of 2.7 visits per person per year). The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on community health services/general medical services, and the number of outpatient visits dropped by about 20%. The number of general practice research articles reached a peak in 2018, mainly focusing on bi-directional referrals, tiered diagnosis and treatment, general practitioners(GPs)/family doctors, general medicine, community health services, chronic disease management(especially hypertension and diabetes), and analysis of factors associated with aspects involved in general medical services. General practice research is expected to provide more support for developing innovative and critical thoughts, more practice-based evidence for clinical services, and more assistance for service quality and patient outcomes improvement as the discipline advances. (3)Results of implementing general medical services:there is no sufficient evidence on the influence of general medical services on people's health. The experiences and views of people including healthy individuals and patients indicated that those receiving general medical services or contracted family doctor services perceived positive experience and expressed high satisfaction, but perceptions and views of general population in the community toward general medical services need to be explored. GPs' own experience and opinions on general practice were quite different. Gender, age, professional title, urban and rural areas, and geographical location may be associated with their experience and job satisfaction. There may be instability in the general practice workforce, mainly due to personal income, workload and time pressure. (4)The major strengths of developing general practice in China are as follows:strong policy-based promotion and government leadership;rapidly constructing and developing GPs teams owing to the excellent resource allocating ability shown by the centralized system from central to all local governments;significantly enhanced general practice education and training systems;increased core professionals as general practice educators and trainers;special development of general practice characterized by th integration of medical sciences and Chinese traditional humanistic theories. (5)The development of general practice in China has been facing limitations similar to those in other countries. Besides that, its special limitations include late development of the discipline, unsatisfactory quality of workforce, high work pressure and high prevalence of burnout in the workforce, as well as impact of generation gap on education and practice among GPs. In addition, the relation between specialists and GPs is on transition of from undifferentiated attachment to self-recognised uniquity, and further seeking transdisciplinary. The teaching competences of GPs teachers, especially those teaching community and clinical care, are inadequate. GPs team building and management need to advance from the formation to the storming and performing phases. (6)Opportunities for further development of general practice in China include strategies for achieving the goals of Healthy China, and an all-round well-off society, the important role of primary health care in sustainable development and universal health coverage reaffirmed by the Declaration of Astana, as well as significantly improved health literacy of people. (7)Challenges for the development of general practice in China include population ageing, and aging-related changes in burden of disease and socio-economic status, the aging and dynamic changes of GPs human resources, the variation of urban and rural areas and regional differences, and the inverted pyramid structure of allocation of medical and health resources(namely, the largest part is allocated to tertiary care while the smallest to primary care). Relevant recommendations to address these challenges comprise strengthening the advocacy of the development of general practice services, establishing a wide-ranging community collaborative network, and developing general practice professional organizations. Conclusion: The development of general practice in China is advancing, which is manifested as rapidly increased number of general medical workers, strong government promotion, quickly improved accessibility of essential medical services, and notably increased utilization rate of primary care services. However, the development is facing challenges, such as high discipline and social expectations regarding general practice, instability in the workforce due to high work pressure of the knowledge- and labor-intensive job, GPs' insufficient recognition of their self-identity, and unclear status of financial funding for general practice development. Given that there are unprecedented favorable conditions for general practice development, medical industries and general medical workers are suggested to make efforts to turn challenges into opportunities to develop general medical services, thereby universal health outcomes will be improved. Copyright © 2022 by the Chinese General Practice.

MODELING THE SECOND OUTBREAK OF COVID-19 WITH ISOLATION AND CONTACT TRACING

The first case of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Since then, COVID-19 has quickly spread out to all provinces in China and over 150 countries or territories in the world. With the first level response to public health emergencies (FLRPHE) launched over the country, the outbreak of COVID-19 in China is achieving under control in China. We develop a mathematical model based on the epidemiology of COVID-19, incorporating the isolation of healthy people, confirmed cases and contact tracing measures. We calculate the basic reproduction numbers 2.5 in China (excluding Hubei province) and 2.9 in Hubei province with the initial time on January 30 which shows the severe infectivity of COVID-19, and verify that the current isolation method effectively contains the transmission of COVID-19. Under the isolation of healthy people, confirmed cases and contact tracing measures, we find a noteworthy phenomenon that is the second epidemic of COVID-19 and estimate the peak time and value and the cumulative number of cases. Simulations show that the contact tracing measures can efficiently contain the transmission of the second epidemic of COVID-19. With the isolation of all susceptible people or all infectious people or both, there is no second epidemic of COVID-19. Furthermore, resumption of work and study can increase the transmission risk of the second epidemic of COVID-19.

Ethical Challenges in Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Vaccine as Well as New Drug Research and Development

To review systematically the progress of all domestic and foreign clinical trials since the emergence of the COVID-19 epidemic and the overview of human challenge study (HCS) in the past year, grasp relevant information of ethical review, and explores the feasibility of human challenge study and provide references for stake holders. Based on the Chinese Clinical Trial Registration Center and clinical trial. gov, clinical trials that were consistent with COVID-19 was searched, and the deadline was June 11, 2020.Basic information was extracted and the number of trials was selected from the research type, clinical stage, recruitment status, and ethical passing status. Literature search was conducted based on Pubmed between January 1, 2019 and June 11, 2020.According to the included literature, basic information was extracted and opinions were reported on HCS. 638 and 1935 clinical trials were carried out at home and abroad respectively, of which the number of clinical trials carried out in Hubei reached 323. China and the United States conducted more interventional trials, and the United States had the most clinical trials entered in Phase II, there were a total of 142. Most of the clinical trials were in the stage of recruiting research subjects. In addition, a total of 539 clinical trials in China had passed ethical approval. A total of 5 documents were included in the Human Challenge Study, four maintained a positive attitude towards HCS and put forward corresponding thinking about ethical review. Under the COVID-19, clinical trials for new drugs and new coronavirus vaccines have rapidly increased, which puts forward higher requirements for the progress of ethical review. In the face of such public health emergencies and special research, it is urgent to establish a sound ethical review system and an ethical review system, as well as to construct an ethical model for special research. © 2021, Editorial Board of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. All right reserved.

Construction and practice about the fine management of cancer patients during the epidemic of Covid-19

Purpose: This paper explored the construction and practice of the fine management of cancer patients during the Covid-19 outbreak. Methods: To establish the medical groups for the fine management of cancer patients during the Covid-19 outbreak, 6 doctors and 6 backbone nurses were selected from the oncology department since January 28th, 2020. And then the medical needs of cancer patients were obtained through telephone follow-up network. Next, the medical group was further divided and the we-media was used for the fine management of cancer patients based on patients' needs. When the we-media failed to solve problems in some special or emergent situations, a pattern combining hospitals, communities with patients was used to provide continuous medical care for cancer patients. Results: The medical group effectively completed the information collection registration of 198 cancer patients through the telephone follow-up network. The current needs of 198 patients were ranked from high to low, and they were: knowledge of diseases, psychological support, PICC maintenance, complication treatment, medication use instructions, rehabilitation exercise instructions and diet combination methods, respectively. Based on patients' needs, the medical group has carried out the fine management for 198 patients through the following activities: 16 live broadcast, 4 recorded videos, 27 group activities targeted at patients, 48 one-to-one telephone counselling, 1 disease brochure, 1 nutritional diet recipe and 1 list for self-monitoring patients' diseases. During the epidemic outbreak, no death or infection cases were found. Conclusion: The fine management effectively helped meet the urgent needs of cancer patients who sought medical service and treatment during the epidemic outbreak. © 2021 A. CARBONE Editore. All rights reserved.

Coronavirus pandemic analysis through tripartite graph clustering in online social networks

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the world hard. The reaction to the pandemic related issues has been pouring into social platforms, such as Twitter. Many public officials and governments use Twitter to make policy announcements. People keep close track of the related information and express their concerns about the policies on Twitter. It is beneficial yet challenging to derive important information or knowledge out of such Twitter data. In this paper, we propose a Tripartite Graph Clustering for Pandemic Data Analysis (TGC-PDA) framework that builds on the proposed models and analysis: (1) tripartite graph representation, (2) non-negative matrix factorization with regularization, and (3) sentiment analysis. We collect the tweets containing a set of keywords related to coronavirus pandemic as the ground truth data. Our framework can detect the communities of Twitter users and analyze the topics that are discussed in the communities. The extensive experiments show that our TGC-PDA framework can effectively and efficiently identify the topics and correlations within the Twitter data for monitoring and understanding public opinions, which would provide policy makers useful information and statistics for decision making. © 2018 Tsinghua University Press.

Unsupervised Detection of Pulmonary Opacities for Computer-Aided Diagnosis of COVID-19 on CT Images

COVID-19 emerged towards the end of 2019 which was identified as a global pandemic by the world heath organization (WHO). With the rapid spread of COVID-19, the number of infected and suspected patients has increased dramatically. Chest computed tomography (CT) has been recognized as an efficient tool for the diagnosis of COVID-19. However, the huge CT data make it difficult for radiologist to fully exploit them on the diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a computer-aided diagnosis system that can automatically analyze CT images to distinguish the COVID-19 against to community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). The proposed system is based on an unsupervised pulmonary opacity detection method that locates opacity regions by a detector unsupervisedly trained from CT images with normal lung tissues. Radiomics based features are extracted insides the opacity regions, and fed into classifiers for classification. We evaluate the proposed CAD system by using 200 CT images collected from different patients in several hospitals. The accuracy, precision, recall, fl-score and AUC achieved are 95.5%, 100%, 91%, 95.1% and 95.9% respectively, exhibiting the promising capacity on the differential diagnosis of COVID-19 from CT images.

Cross-Cultural Education: The Effects of AR Technology and Learning Styles on Learning Achievements of Sculpture Course

Objectives: In the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic, more and more schools are opting for online learning, and the integration of AR or VR technology into learning is becoming a trend that is gaining popularity. For learners from different cultures around the world, cross-cultural AR technology may help them improve their learning effectiveness. With the development of technology, it has become common to integrate technology in teaching and learning. There is a growing debate about the way teachers teach in the school classroom, and there is a general desire for teachers to be the leaders of students, helping them to think and solve learning problems. Such a situation forces teachers to be constantly receptive to new knowledge, to improve themselves, and to better guide their students through flexible and varied teaching styles. Therefore, the use of appropriate technology in the classroom will improve the quality of teaching and the learning experience of students, and the development of augmented reality (AR) technology has brought a great change to the learning in the classroom. AR technology supports interaction between real and virtual environments, allowing users to manipulate the application interface of AR software. AR technology offers many benefits to the education sector, as it has the potential to engage students in more effective learning than traditional methods. It allows students to participate in real-life 3D environment simulations, increase their attention span, and engage in interactive learning through virtual manipulation. At the same time, in the learning process, students from different cultural backgrounds will follow their own preferred learning styles to conduct learning activities. Students perform tasks and learning activities in the learning process in accordance with their preferred learning styles. The study of learning styles has been of great value to the field of education, and therefore has received a lot of attention and input from educational researchers, gradually evolving into a separate field of study. The Sculpture Course is a required course for product design majors and is taught in a way that the instructor demonstrates to students the techniques of making relief clay sculptures. Since no previous research has applied AR technology to the teaching of relief sculpture, this study attempts to investigate the effect of AR teaching style on learning effectiveness when applied to Sculpture Course by using teaching style and learning style as independent variables, and then analyze the difference in learning effectiveness between students with different learning styles in traditional teaching and AR teaching style. Since no previous research has applied AR technology to the teaching of relief sculpture, this study attempts to apply the unique interactive function of AR technology to the relief sculpture course, allowing students to use AR technology to make relief clay models in the relief sculpture course. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the effect of AR teaching style on learning effectiveness when applied to relief courses by using teaching style and learning style as independent variables, and then analyze the difference in learning effectiveness between students with different learning styles in traditional teaching and AR teaching style. Methods: In this study, 39 students from the product design department of a university in China, who were basically from different regions and had different cultural backgrounds, were selected for the experimental design. The students in the experimental group practiced relief sculpture in the AR teaching method, while the students in the control group studied in the traditional teaching method. They were given a pre-test of VAK (Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learning Styles) learning styles to distinguish which learning style type they were. In the pre-test portion, the subjects are first asked to fill out the VAK learning style scale to classify those with different learning styles. After the pre-test, students were info med of the grouping requirements and provided with the same instructional materials and resources (i.e., picture study sheets and AR tools) before proceeding to the experimental design, with the difference being that the control group used the picture study sheets to learn to make the relief clay sculptures, while the experimental group used the picture study sheets and AR tools to learn. The experiment was conducted in a professional sculpture classroom, and the control group and the experimental group were in two different classrooms for the experiment. At the end of the relief sculpture course, the teacher will score the students’ works and the scores of the works will be analyzed as the learning effectiveness of the study. Results: The results of the experiment showed that the AR teaching method significantly improved students’ learning outcomes compared to traditional teaching, and that the visual and kinesthetic students performed better than the auditory students in the different learning styles. Auditory students did not differ significantly between the traditional and AR teaching styles. Conclusions: The results of the study also showed that the AR teaching method has significant differences for different learning styles in cross-cultural contexts, and has a certain enhancement effect for students who are good at learning with their hands. The AR teaching method does have a substantial effect on the Sculpture Course, and will also provide beneficial help in product design education research in the future. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The epidemiological characteristics of clusters of novel coronavirus pneumonia in Chenzhou, China

Objective: This study was designed to analyze the characteristics of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic in seven clusters in the city of Chenzhou, China, to act as a reference for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic. Methods: The data of confirmed COVID-19 cases reported between January 23 and February 24, 2020, were obtained from the Chenzhou infectious disease surveillance system. In line with the diagnostic criteria of the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Diagnosis and Treatment Plan (Sixth Edition, Trial Implementation), 33 patients in seven clusters were selected as the research subjects, and epidemiological data were collected for descriptive analysis. Results: Between January 23 and February 24, 2020, 46 patients with COVID-19 were diagnosed in the city of Chenzhou, comprising 24 male patients and 22 female patients. The age of these patients ranged from seven months to 72 years old. The average age was 35.88 ± 17.98 and included 13 individual patients and 33 patients in seven clusters. Six clusters were exposed to the virus in Wuhan (the Wuhan group), and the other cluster was exposed to it in Shenzhen (the Shenzhen group). In the Wuhan group, the disease was spread in clusters of one family. The incubation period was 1-9 days, and the average length of hospital stay was 13.25 ± 2.67 days. Only close contacts were infected. In the Shenzhen group, three different families were infected in the same cluster. The incubation period was 11-14 days, the time of positive-to-negative conversion in the nucleic acid test was longer, and the average hospitalization time was 17.33 ± 5.87 days. Contacts who were not in close contact were infected. Conclusion: Patients are infectious in the incubation period, and asymptomatic patients are also infectious. The infectivity of the Shenzhen group was stronger than that of the Wuhan group. In the Shenzhen group, the time of positive-to-negative conversion of COVID-19 nucleic acid was longer, and the length of hospital stay was longer.

VIETNAMESE STUDENTS' ACCEPTANCE OF USING VIDEO CONFERENCING TOOLS IN DISTANCE LEARNING IN COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has strongly influenced teaching and learning in Vietnam's higher education institutions. Social distancing - the health care practice of increasing the physical space between people to avoid spreading illness due to COVID-19 has required schools to employ distance learning. As such, video conferencing tools (VCTs) have been used nationwide to ensure effective responses to the requirement. Although teaching and learning with VCTs have been proven effective by many researchers, it is not clear what benefits and challenges they bring to higher education in Vietnam, especially with respect to students' acceptance to the classroom uses of technology in the time of unexpected events. This study aims to address this gap by examining external factors that affected students' acceptance of VCTs during the COVID pandemic. Data were collected online from university students between April 14, 2020 and April 23, 2020. After this period, the research group received 294 records, in which 227 were analyzed using an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The result indicated that external factors such as subject norm and computer playfulness had a significant impact on most TAM constructs. Furthermore, output quality was found to have a positive influence on students' perceived usefulness in the acceptance of VCTs in distance learning.

A wireless, low-power and miniaturized EIT system for remote and long-term monitoring of lung ventilation in the isolation ward of ICU

Individualized lung-protective ventilation strategy is essential for patients with COVID-19. In this study, a wireless, low-power and miniaturized electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system was developed for remote and long-term monitoring of lung ventilation for patients with COVID-19 in the isolation ward of ICU. A new strategy of combining filtering and improved voltage-controlled current was employed to design the current source for a simplified system structure, and a new differential receiver circuit consisting of a buffer amplification and a differential amplification was proposed to design the voltage measurement unit for high precision. Moreover, a Bluetooth interface was adopted for wireless data transmission, and components characterized by low power consumption were selected to minimize the system power consumption. The proposed EIT system occupies a total size of 6.5*4.5*0.6 cm3 and can work stably within 25 m from the wireless terminal installed with host EIT software. The system has a signal-to-noise of 70 dB at 50 kHz, stability of 0.1% relative change, and power consumption of 114 mW, as tested with a resistor phantom. Further, a comparison between the proposed system and a commercial ICU EIT device was conducted on nine healthy volunteers for ventilation monitoring. The correlation between lung volume and relative impedance changes was higher than 0.9 for both EIT systems (p<0.001). The analysis of the corresponding EIT images revealed that both systems delivered comparable images in terms of linearity, repeatability and regional ventilation distribution. The test and experimental results suggested that the proposed system could conveniently provide reliable data acquisition for remote and long-term lung ventilation monitoring. CCBYNCND