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The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought unexpected economic downturns and accelerated digital transformation, leading to stronger financial fraud motives and more complicated fraud schemes. Although scholars, practitioners, and regulators have begun to focus on the new characteristics of financial fraud, a systematic and effective anti-fraud strategy during the pandemic still needs to be explored. This paper comprehensively analyzes the lessons of anti-fraud that we should learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. By exploring the complex motives and schemes of fraud, we summarize the characteristics of financial fraud activities and further analyze the regulatory challenges posed by financial fraud during the outbreak. To better cope with the fraudulent activities during the pandemic, policy proposals on how to improve the supervision of financial fraud activities are put forward. In particular, the panoramic data and graph-based techniques are powerful tools for future fraud detection.
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This study investigates the aerosol transmission in queuing and dining scenarios in canteens and explores the effectiveness of control measures. An improved Wells-Riley equation is adopted to calculate the infection risk. The dilution of exhaled aerosols is difficult in the crowded queuing scenario, where the replacement of queuing positions increases the cross-infection risk. The highest infection risk is 1.16% and 1.08% for the linear-queue and cross-queue condition, respectively. Shortening the queuing duration, increasing the separation distance, and wearing masks can considerably reduce the infection risk. In the dining scenario, the effect of increasing ACH is limited on reducing the local concentration. An exhaust vent installed close to the top of the partition can effectively remove the local high-concentration aerosols. Intermittent occupation of a seat can considerably reduce the transmission risk between the consecutive dinners taking that seat. These findings should contribute to improved control of infectious transmission in canteens.
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Background: Viral infections such as influenza and COVID-19 pose a serious threat to human health, which increases the demand for a new approach to enhance the host immunity. Previous studies showed that exercise activities could enhance the anti-viral neutralizing antibody titers after vaccination. We developed a novel digital device, SAT-008, as a mobile application based on an algorithm to regulate physical activity which are related to boosting innate and adaptive immune systems against virus. SAT-008 aimed to improve the activity of immune cells and the immune response in the body, which can be induced by software -designed -intensity levels of daily physical activities. Method(s): A randomized, open-label, and controlled study was conducted for 13 weeks (Oct 20 to Jan 21). A total of 42 healthy adults aged 24 to 46 years were recruited for this study and 32 among them served for analysis. Subjects were administered a single-dose quadrivalent influenza vaccine. The control group maintained daily life without using SAT-008, while the experimental group used SAT-008 during the study. Result(s): Compared to the control group, the experimental group showed a significant increase in neutralizing antibody titers of antigen subtype B Yamagata lineage after 4 weeks of vaccination and antigen subtype B Victoria lineage after 12 weeks of vaccination (P < 0.05), whereas the controls did not reach a significant level in any antibody titer. In the case of type 'A' influenza, there was no significant difference in neutralizing antibody titers between control and experimental groups. Stimulated NK cells of subjects in the control group decreased significantly between 4 weeks and 12 weeks after the vaccination (P < 0.05) while the subjects in the experimental group slightly increase the NK activity between 4 weeks and 12 weeks after the vaccination, however, there was no significance. The interaction effect was observed between control and experimental groups at weeks 4 and 12 by subsequent analysis (P < 0.05). Conclusion(s): We conclude that a novel approach using the digital device may play an important role to enhance the host immune system to act as a vaccine adjuvant against viral diseases such as influenza.
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Four copper (II) complexes bearing tris-(2-pyridyl)-pyrazolyl borate (Tppy) ligand with corresponding chloride (Cu-1), aqua (Cu-2), azide (Cu-3), and thiocyanide (Cu-4) substitutions were synthesized and characterized by spectroscopic and analytical methods. Spectroscopic and molecular docking studies were employed to investigate the interactions of these complexes with calf thymus (CT) DNA and bovine serum albumin (BSA). The results inferred intercalation binding mode of the complexes with DNA. All the complexes exhibited good binding with BSA as well. In addition, the binding efficacy of the Cu (II) complexes with SARS-Cov-2 was tested in silico. Further, in vitro anticancer activity of the complexes was investigated against the HeLa-cervical, HepG2-liver and A549-lung cancer, and one normal (L929-fibroblast) cell line. IC50 values unveiled that the complexes were more active than cisplatin against all three cancer cells. It was understood that complex Cu-3 containing azide substitution displayed the highest activity on the HeLa cell line (IC50 = 6.3 μM). More importantly, TppyCu (II) complexes were not active against the normal cell line. Lastly, the acridine orange/ethidium bromide (AO/EB) and 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole staining assays indicated that Cu-3 induced cell death in HeLa cells at the late apoptotic stage. This complex also efficiently generated ROS in HeLa cells promoting apoptosis as understood from the DCFH-DA assay. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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As hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) has been shown to mitigate the COVID-19 symptoms, we were interested in studying whether HBO exposure affects expression of viral entry genes and innate immune genes in the air-liquid interface (ALI)-cultured human bronchial epithelial cells (HBECs) derived from normal individuals (NHBECs) and age-matched COPD patients (DHBECs), which were cultured under normoxia or daily exposure of 40-min hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) with 100% O2 at 2.5 ATA for 28 days in total. We found for the first time that HBO exposure differentially regulated mucociliary differentiation of HBECs by respectively decreasing and increasing expression of CGRP, MUC5AC, FOXJ1, NOTCH3 and HEYL in NHBECs and DHBECs, and respectively decreased and increased FOXO1 expression whereas increased and decreased NFE2L2 and NFKB1 expression in NHBECs and DHBECs, in association with respectively decreased and increased expression the SARS-CoV-2 entry genes ACE2 and 2 TMPRSS2 and the tight junction protein genes TJP1 and TJP2, and in association with respectively increased and decreased expression of the cell growth and inflammatory transcription factors SRF, c-FOS and TP63, as well as the TLR pathway genes TLR3, AKT1, IL-1B, IL-5, IL-6, IL-33, IRAK4 and NFKBIA in NHBECs and DHBECs. (Figure Presented).
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COVID-19 content spreads wildly on social media and produces significant effects in both causing social panic and assisting pandemic management. However, what really enhances the diffusion of pandemic-related content during COVID-19, particularly from the perspective of the content itself, remains unexplored. Using large-scale COVID-19 tweets posted on Twitter, this paper empirically examines the effects of the four key characteristics, namely emotions, topics, hashtags, and mentions, on information spread in the pandemic. The empirical results show that most negative emotions have positive effects on retweeting. Nevertheless, the positive effect of trust on retweeting is unexpectedly the strongest. And the positive effects of the political topics and mentioning politicians further indicate that people are sensitive to the politicization of information during the pandemic. The strongest anger intensity in the political topic also needs to be noticed. The results complement the extant understanding of information diffusion during COVID-19 and provide insights for the governments to understand the psychology and behavior of large population during disasters like global pandemics. © 2022 IEEE.
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This poster presents preliminary findings from a study in progress, which indicate that a specially-designed mobile app can serve as a viable delivery system for a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) intervention for historically underserved and minority communities experiencing mental health effects of worry and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our early data suggest that the app is well-received and usable for the target population and serves as an effective delivery platform for MBSR interventions for underserved and minority communities. © 2022 ACM.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning became a major alternative to college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses in postsecondary education. Faculty members, although subject matter experts, often lack pedagogical knowledge and training on how to effectively teach new generations of students online, or incorporate appropriate technologies. Faculty teaching online courses needed a new guiding framework to balance domain goals and emerging technologies. We present grounded design for STEM courses to align domain goals and instructional methods and technologies while reflecting instructors' pedagogical beliefs and addressing cultural and pragmatic issues. It is critical to provide students with aligned STEM learning experience and engagement via defensible theories and research-evidenced pedagogy in online and blended courses while technological, cultural, and pragmatic considerations are also addressed. We suggest grounded design as the conceptual and design framework for designing online and blended courses and discuss the assumptions, approaches, and examples. We provide practical guidelines to apply grounded design to online and blended learning environments and suggest future research. This article can assist both novice and seasoned STEM faculty to connect theory and research to teaching practices and optimise their online and blended courses. Implications for practice • University STEM instructors can use grounded design framework for online, blended, and technology-enhanced teaching. • Instructors should begin the course design by aligning the domain goals with optimal psychological and pedagogical foundations. • When choosing technology to support online learning, instructors should align it with learning goals and needs of students, and consider cultural and pragmatic foundations. © Articles published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) are available under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Authors retain copyright in their work and grant AJET right of first publication under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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The outbreak of COVID-19 since the end of 2019 has led many people to work for home, reducing economic activity in many countries except online shopping, which is thriving during the pandemic. However, shopping is not take-and-go activity,as it needs references to help make the decision. Buying goods online is not as convenient as buying at physical stores where the customers can check the actual state of goods, obtain recommendations from the clerks or compare it with other similar goods. All these physical activities are persuasions. However, the main references for buying online are online third-party comments and brand image. People noticed the comments online, whether positive or negative about the product. Consumers write comments on the Internet according to their different impressions on the brands. Therefore, how the brand image and online comments affect persuasion is worthy of study. This pilot study thus takes the purchase of mobile phones as an example to explore the factors of people's evaluation of comments and brand image. The analytical results of exploratory factor analysis show that the questionnaire design is suitable. The formal study can take these research results as a reference. © 2021 ACM.
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Misinformation presented in different modalities about the COVID-19 pandemic has been prevalent. One approach to reducing the negative effects of misinformation is through corrective information. However, it is possible that people develop counter-attitude towards the corrective information and reaffirm their belief in misinformation, called the boomerang effect. Fewer studies examined how different modes of corrective information about COVID-19 may address the boomerang effect. With a 3-by-3 between-subject experiment design (n = 210), we first presented one of the three modalities of misinformation (text, image, video) to the participants, followed by one of the three modalities of corrective information (text, image, video) to examine the effect of the corrective information. The results showed that there was no boomerang effect after correction in all modalities, indicating that all corrective information successfully reduced participants' perceived credibility and potential action for misinformation. In the post-hoc analysis, the correction in the video mode worked best on text misinformation. Our results also suggested that image misinformation worked least effectively in terms of conveying misinformation. © 2022 Owner/Author.
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Background. Vaccination strategies that provide enhanced immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants are needed. We evaluated the safety and immunogenicity of a bivalent omicron containing vaccine, mRNA-1273.214 (50 mug), administered as a second booster dose in adult participants. Methods. In this ongoing phase 2/3 trial, 50 mug of the bivalent vaccine mRNA-1273.214 (25 mug each ancestral Wuhan-Hu-1 and omicron BA.1 spike mRNAs) or 50 mug of the authorized mRNA-1273 were administered as second boosters in adults who previously received a 2 dose (100 mug) primary series and a first booster (50 mug) dose of mRNA-1273 (>= 3 months prior). Primary objectives were safety and reactogenicity and immunogenicity 28 days post-booster dose. Results. In participants with no prior SARS-CoV-2 infection who received booster doses of mRNA-1273.214 (n=334) or mRNA-1273 (n=260), neutralizing antibody (nAb) geometric mean titers (GMTs [95% confidence interval (CI)]) against omicron BA.1 were 2372.4 (2070.6-2718.2) and 1473.5 (1270.8-1708.4), respectively. The model-based GMT ratio (GMR [97.5% CI]) of mRNA-1273.214 compared to mRNA-1273 was 1.75 (1.49-2.04), meeting the pre-specified superiority criterion against omicron BA.1. The pre-specified criterion for non-inferiority against the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain was also met. Additionally, mRNA-1273.214 elicited higher GMTs (727.4 [632.8-836.1]) than mRNA-1273 (492.1 [431.1-561.9]) against omicron subvariants BA.4/BA.5 [GMR (95% CI) 1.69 [1.51-1.90])]. Binding antibody responses against alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and omicron were numerically higher in the mRNA-1273.214 group compared to mRNA-1273. mRNA-1273.214 GMTs were consistently higher across age (18-< 65 and >= 65 years) and pre-booster SARS-CoV-2 infection subgroups (Figure). Safety and reactogenicity were similar for both vaccine groups. Conclusion. The bivalent omicron containing mRNA-1273.214 elicited superior nAb responses against omicron 28 days post-immunization compared to mRNA-1273 regardless of age and prior SARS-CoV-2 infection;no new safety concerns were identified. (Figure Presented).
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This article seeks to analyse how the aviation market is influenced by political policies. It begins by introducing the background of aviation regulation and the negotiations that have taken place between Taiwan and China over the past decades. It reviews what happened during the past decades, in particular the Cross-Strait Air Transport Agreement reached between Taiwan and China in January 2005. It also highlights the restricting factors of Cross-Strait aviation development and define the problems related to air freedoms. It goes on to measure the dependency degree that Taoyuan Airport relied on Chinese Airports in recent years. Finally, the impact on cross-strait aviation market due to Chinese political policies and the influence on air routes as a consequence of China military drills have been analysed. It concludes that the increased routes of direct flights have attracted Taiwanese passengers to transfer via Chinese airports to the US and Europe. However, the limitation of Chinese passengers to travel to Taiwan since 2019 and the spread of COVID-19 from 2020, destinations of Cross-Strait direct flights have reduced from sixty-one to four. The military drills in August 2022 also severely deteriorated the relation of the two sides. It seems that the development of the Cross-strait aviation market has gone back to the drawing board after fifteen years of success due to the current circumstances. From the case of Taiwan and China, the aviation market is indeed significantly influenced by the political policies. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.
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The assessment of mental status is an important task in psychiatry. But the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic has reduced the number of face-to-face assessments with physicians, and thus making it difficult. In recent years, some studies have used EEG (electroencephalogram) to help assess depression or mental state. Users can thus further assess mental state through simple EEG measurement. Since the EEG measurement will obtain multiple frequency bands related to mental or emotion state, if only one frequency band is used to evaluate a specific emotion or mental state, it may be insufficient. Some studies have proposed an ensemble method of multiple frequency bands for emotion recognition. In this study, we will use ensemble multi-bands EEG frequency to do and assist mental state or depression assessment. Through the method of ensemble learning, we integrate the frequency bands which is mainly related to mental state to assist the evaluation of mental state. From the experimental results, we can find that this method has a good effect. © 2022 IEEE.
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This paper studies how the Covid-19 pandemic changed the operational risk profiles of the financial industry. We find that the textual risk disclosures in financial reports contain abundant information on operational risk. A text mining method is introduced to analyze changes in operational risk in an innovative way based on a massive textual data set of financial institutions’ textual risk disclosures, which aggregates senior managers’ risk perceptions of the whole financial industry. Based on 4624 financial reports released by 1330 financial institutions from 2017 to 2020, this empirical study finds that operational risk remained the most prominent major risk type after the outbreak of Covid-19, and that disclosures of operational risk increased by 5.19% compared with the samples from before the outbreak. The drivers of operational risk also changed, with significant increases in disclosure of litigation risk, transaction modes and product and service problems as a proportion of total disclosures. In addition, two emerging operational risk drivers identified during the pandemic are data safeguarding and goodwill impairment. Our findings could help financial institutions and regulators to identify and manage the critical drivers of operational risk during a future pandemic. © 2022 Infopro Digital Risk (IP) Limited.
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Conventional public transportation is an important part of public transportation, and it has always been the focus of urban transportation research to excavate the characteristics of public transportation and analyze residents' travel patterns. In 2020, the new crown epidemic broke out. The outbreak and continuation of the epidemic have caused shocks and challenges to conventional public transportation, and the characteristics of conventional public transportation have developed significantly. Taking Guangzhou as an example, this paper conducts bus IC card mining based on multi-source data fusion, and conducts research on the characteristics of changes in Guangzhou's regular bus travel rules under the influence of the new crown epidemic. Research shows that under the continuous influence of the epidemic, the scale of bus trips has dropped significantly, the attraction of conventional buses to commuter passengers has been weakened, special groups are important users of public transport, and the ride code has become the most important payment method. © 2022 SPIE.
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Introduction/Background Sarcoidosis is a T cell mediated systemic disease of unknown etiology that results in granulomatous inflammation and multiorgan dysfunction. Individuals with sarcoidosis have been shown to be at increased risk for infection arguing the importance of vaccination as a primary prevention strategy. However, current knowledge as to how individuals with sarcoidosis respond to vaccination is limited. Furthermore, proteomic and transcriptomic profiling post vaccination will offer integrated insight into the immune mechanisms that drive sarcoidosis disease. Objective(s) The objective of this study is to determine the quantitative antibody response to COVID-19 vaccination to correlate to the unique proteomic and transcriptomic profiles underlying the immune response. Methods With local institutional review board approval, a prospective case control study was conducted to compare the proteomic and transcriptomic profiles of subjects with and without sarcoidosis before and after vaccination with the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. Recruited subjects included individuals -18 years who received two doses of the vaccine at the University of Illinois (UIC). Sixteen subjects with biopsy proven sarcoidosis were recruited, six of whom were not on any treatment while 10 were on immunosuppressive therapy, while 23 age-gender matched healthy controls were recruited. Blood was sampled prior to each vaccine dose as well as one and seven days after vaccination. Anti-spike protein IgG titers and serum cytokine profiles were quantified with ELISA while bulk RNA sequencing was performed on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Results Sarcoidosis subjects had significantly less antibody production after two doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine than controls (p-val 0.0040). A multivariate regression analysis indicated that a sarcoidosis diagnosis (p-val 0.026) was significantly and independently predictive with lower follow up antibody titers, which was more pronounced if subjects were on immunosuppressive therapy (p-val 0.00013). Differential gene expression will compare temporal individual variation after vaccination and identify group differences to identify transcriptomic pathways associated with the diminished antibody response. Weighted gene co-expression analysis will identify likely expressed genes to determine distinct profiles that may be predictive of sarcoidosis disease. Conclusion Subjects with sarcoidosis mount a decreased antibody response to the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine supporting a dysregulated immune response inherent to sarcoidosis pathogenesis. Correlated transcriptomic and proteomic profiling offers a unique opportunity to comprehensively study the genes and pathways underlying the immune response to vaccination in sarcoidosis.
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Background: Cystic fibrosis (CF)-related diabetes (CFRD) is associated with decline in lung function and nutritional status. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) guidelines recommend annual CFRD screening in patients starting at age 10. A review of our adult program data showed a decline in screening during 2020. We identified barriers, in addition to the COVID pandemic, that contributed to a decline in adherence. In July 2020, our clinic moved to a new location and began offering morning visits. After a quality improvement review, we began offering annual oral glucose tolerance testing (OGTT) within a routine clinic visit along with annual routine labs. Our objective was to use this multidisciplinary approach to increase OGTT screening to 50% within the first year of moving to our new location. Method(s): The CFF Patient Registry was used to compile a list of our nondiabetic patients overdue for annual OGTT. The list was reviewed during our multidisciplinary preclinic conference to identify patients who needed testing. Each patient was re-educated during clinic, and barriers to testing identified through patient interview and questionnaires. Common barriers to testing adherencewere length of testing time, time missed from work, COVID concerns, and needle phobia. The nurse and nurse coordinators made follow-up appointments, incorporating OGTT into next clinic appointment to increase adherence. Patients received phone call reminders for these appointments and the fasting criteria for testing. Result(s): CFF Registry Report data showed a decline in OGTT screening from 26% in 2019 to 21% in 2020.We identified 76 eligible patients who needed OGTT in 2021. Patient interviews were conducted during clinic visits and barriers identified. We offered routine clinic appointments in conjunction with lab appointments to increase screening adherence. We were able to capture seven patients in the first 6 months and 14 in the second 6 months, increasing our OGTT screening rate to 28%. Conclusion(s): Using a multimodal approach in a multidisciplinary team,we increased our OGTT annual screening rate by 7 percentage points. The ability to incorporate recommended screening into routine clinic visits supported adherence and patient satisfaction. Limitations to OGTT screening include continued COVID concerns and transportation to clinic.We plan to continue this quality improvement approach to increase adherence to 50% within this next year by continued consolidation of lab work and OGTT with visits and assisting patients with scheduling lab appointments and transportation to the clinic Copyright © 2022, European Cystic Fibrosis Society. All rights reserved
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Respiratory sound classification is an important tool for remote screening of respiratory-related diseases such as pneumonia, asthma, and COVID-19. To facilitate the interpretability of classification results, especially ones based on deep learning, many explanation methods have been proposed using prototypes. However, existing explanation techniques often assume that the data is non-biased and the prediction results can be explained by a set of prototypical examples. In this work, we develop a unified example-based explanation method for selecting both representative data (prototypes) and outliers (criticisms). In particular, we propose a novel application of adversarial attacks to generate an explanation spectrum of data instances via an iterative fast gradient sign method. Such unified explanation can avoid over-generalisation and bias by allowing human experts to assess the model mistakes case by case. We performed a wide range of quantitative and qualitative evaluations to show that our approach generates effective and understandable explanation and is robust with many deep learning models. Copyright © 2022 ISCA.
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Metformin is one of the commonly used hypoglycemic drugs in clinical practice. In addition to hypoglycemia, there are a variety of medical biological values that have been constantly discovered and attracted much attention. In recent years, studies have shown that metformin through activation of AMPK inhibition of sterols regulating element binding protein 1 (SREBP-1) reduce lipid synthesis, in the treatment of liver steatosis, improve insulin sensitivity, prevention Metformin is one of the commonly used hypoglycemic drugs in clinical practice. In addition to hypoglycemia, there are a variety of medical biological values that have been constantly discovered and attracted much attention. In recent years, studies have shown that metformin through activation of AMPK inhibition of sterols regulating element binding protein 1 (SREBP-1) reduce lipid synthesis, in the treatment of liver steatosis, improve insulin sensitivity, prevention of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular dysfunction, tumor, polycystic ovary syndrome and adjuvant therapy of COVID-19 aspects play a role. Therefore, this article reviews the possible mechanism and clinical application of metformin in regulating glucose and lipid metabolism by inhibiting SREBP-1 through activating AMPK. Copyright © 2022 Chinese Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. All rights reserved.