COVID-associated pernio: Mechanistic insights to an abortive, seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection

Introduction: SARS-CoV-2 replicates primarily in the airways but generates a systemic immune response mediated by Type I interferons (IFN-I). Pernio is a rare skin manifestation of disorders characterized by excessive IFN-I signalling. Although pernio increased in incidence during the pandemic, the relationship to SARS-CoV-2 remains controversial. Because of the pivotal nature of interferons in COVID-19 outcomes, pernio offers a window to investigate the biology underlying host resiliency to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Method(s): To further assess COVID-associated pernio, we characterized clinical samples from affected patients across 4 waves of the pandemic and investigated mechanistic feasibility in a rodent model. Patients were followed longitudinally with banking of blood and tissue. Golden hamsters were mock-treated or intra-nasally infected with SARS-CoV-2 and harvested at 3-and 30-days post-infection. Result(s): In affected tissue, immunophenotyping utilizing multiplex immunohistochemistry profiled a robust IFN-1 signature characterized by plasmacytoid dendritic cell activation. Viral RNA was detectable in a subset of cases using in situ hybridization for the SARS-CoV-2 S gene transcript. Profiling of the systemic immune response did not reveal a durable type 1 interferon signature. Consistent with previous literature, antibody and T-cell specific responses to SARS-CoV-2 were not detected. Nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 inoculation in hamsters resulted in rapid dissemination of viral RNA and the generation of an IFN-I response that were both detectable in the paws of infected animals. Conclusion(s): Our data support a durable local IFN signature, with direct evidence of viral SARS-CoV-2 RNA in acral skin and suggest that COVID-associated pernio results from an abortive, seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Machine Learning Approaches for Temporal and Spatio-Temporal Covid-19 Forecasting: A Brief Review and a Contribution

In December 2019 an outbreak of a new disease happened, in Wuhan city, China, in which the symptoms were very similar to pneumonia. The disease was attributed to SARS-CoV-2 as the infectious agent and it was called the new coronavirus or Covid-19. In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a worldwide pandemic of the new coronavirus. We have already counted more than 110 million cases and almost 2.5 million deaths worldwide. In order to assist in decision-making to contain the disease, several scientists around the world have engaged in various efforts, and they have proposed a lot of systems and solutions for tracking, monitoring, and predicting confirmed cases and deaths from Covid-19. Mathematical models help to analyze and understand the evolution of the disease, but understanding the disease was not enough, it was necessary to understand the problem in a quantitative way to lead the decision-making during the pandemic. Several initiatives have made use of Artificial Intelligence, and models were designed using machine learning algorithms with features for temporal and spatio-temporal investigation and prediction of cases of Covid-19. Among the algorithms used are Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), Ecological Niche Models (ENMs), Long-Short Term Memory Networks (LSTM), linear regression, and others. And these had good results, and to analyze them, the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Log Root Mean Squared Error (RMSLE), correlation coefficient, and others were used as metrics. Covid-19 presents a huge problem to public health worldwide, so it is of utmost importance to investigate it, and with these two approaches it is possible to track not only how the disease evolves but also to know which areas are at risk. And these solutions can help in supporting decision-making by health managers to make the best decisions for the disease that is in the outbreak. This chapter aims to present a literature review and a brief contribution to the use of machine learning methods for temporal and spatio-temporal prediction of Covid-19, using Brazil and its federative units as a case study. From canonical methods to deep networks and hybrid committee-based, approaches will be investigated. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Does tracheostomy predict outcome in severe COVID-19?

Introduction: The association of tracheostomy timing and clinical outcomes in ventilated COVID-19 patients remains controversial. Data from the pre-pandemic era has demonstrated the use of tracheostomy for ventilator weaning [1]. However, the use of tracheostomy in COVID- 19 patients was a subject of discussion [2]. Nevertheless, evidence of the impact of tracheostomy on the outcome in critically ill COVID patients is still lacking. This study aims to evaluate the impact on Intensive Care Unit (ICU) outcome (survival) of tracheostomy in COVID- 19 ventilated patients. Method(s): Monocentric descriptive observational study. Demographic and clinical data, timing of tracheostomy and outcome (ICU mortality) from 1st January to 31st December 2021 were registered. Analysis of descriptive statistics for continuous variables and survival analysis (log rank test). Result(s): 115 patients were included (72% males), all mechanically ventilated, 7 (6%) were subjected to tracheostomy. The mean age was 67.2 years (range 36-84 years). The ICU mortality was 62% (71). The group of patients not submitted to tracheostomy had a mean survival time of 24.4 days (SD +/- 1.5) and median survival time of 22 days (SD +/- 1.7). The group of patients that were subjected to tracheostomy, the mean survival time was 68.5 days (SD +/- 12.2) and median survival time was 50 days (SD +/- 2). This comparison is significative (Log Rank test, p = 0.0001). Conclusion(s): The present study demonstrates a better survival likelihood of the tracheostomized subpopulation. Tracheostomy was only done in 6% of patients, which elucidates a need to further prospective, randomized studies to assess the impact on the outcome of tracheostomy in ventilated COVID19 patients.

The Need for Dialogue during a Pandemic Period: Report on the Adaptation of Presential Classes of the Usp Course of Languages from the Act of Listening to the Students

This report aims to expose the path and the results of the adaptation, in 2020, of two classes of the Letters Course at the University of Sao Paulo to the needs imposed by the suspension of face-to-face classes due the Covid-19 pandemic. In the report, it is narrated that, inspired by Paulo Freire's pedagogical assumptions, particularly his dialogical perspective of teaching, attempts were made to create channels of communication with the students, having been adopted, after some of these attempts, a format that included not only online classes, but also asynchronous moments provided by sending study and analysis materials in order to respect a new reality imposed by social isolation. Positive results are described in the teacher-trainee-student interaction and in the student-student interaction. It is expected to contribute to the debate about the forms of education in the pandemic.

The performance of pedagogical coordinators in pandemic times

Education, as a macro field of social and political issues, is the path to the realization of the possibilities for changes in the macro structures of society. The objective of the research was to understand the challenges in the performance of the coordinators of public pandemic (Covid-19). as a technique, exploratory research. questionnaire. pointed out that the pedagogical coordinators develop actions that contribute to the monitoring of student learning and the work of teachers, with a view to alleviating the challenges posed in education in times of pandemic. schools in the municipal network of Maceio pedagogical in times of The methodology was based on the qualitative approach and, In all, 44 pedagogical The data collection instrument was the online coordinators participated. The main results

Anacleta Pires Da Silva: Body, (Re)Existence and Quilombola Territory as an Event That Breaks out in the Defense of a Dignified Life in Latin America

Born from the force of enchantment, from the struggle for free territories and in a territory crossed by the logistics of developmental projects, Santa Rosa dos Pretos quilombola territory, in the municipality of Itapecuru-Mirim, state of Maranhao, Brazil. Anacleta speaks! She herself carries out systemic and daily analyzes on autonomy, resistance and healing in the face of a society marked by the myth of racial democracy, by racism. Anacleta while narrating everyday ways of resisting and existing, she shows us how black women are from the margins making political use of the body to exist in the face of the paradigm of racial exclusion in Brazil. Black, Afro-Pindoramic voices give birth to a new day daily, hope. These voices narrate dynamic territories guided by other ontologies, which emanate from the relationships with the enchanted ones of Tambor de Mina. We share here an insurgent interview carried out on January 20, 2021, in the midst of a global pandemic caused by Covid-19. The life story will be told by Dona Anacleta herself, a conversation that was carried out by the WhatsApp application and transcribed in full. "To change society the way we want? It's fighting without fear, without fear of being a woman!".

Risk Perception and Misinformation in Brazilian Twitter during COVID-19 Infodemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, different groups had different perceptions of how dangerous the coronavirus was. This difference in behavior was intensified by the large amount of misinformation shared across social media. This work presents an analysis aimed at understanding the extent to which people perceived risk at different levels, and at uncovering the relationship between these differences and the spread of misinformation. In particular, we focus on Brazil, because it is well-known that its Ministry of Health has sponsored campaigns that raised suspicious regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines. To achieve this goal, we gathered tweets written in Portuguese related to the COVID-19 and analyzed their psycholinguistic traits. Among those traits, we found 'Anxiety' to be a good proxy for risk perception. We validate this choice by showing that, at moments of high (resp. low) infection rates in the world, the Anxiety score was higher (resp. lower). We grouped users into 'low' and 'high' risk perception based on the users' anxiety score, and analyzed the relation of each group with the spread of misinformation. Our results show that Twitter users with a lower perceived risk were more inclined to share fake news and harmful information, while the group with a higher level of anxiety tends to share more scientifically-backed information. This is an important step towards helping minimize the spread of false and harmful health information around the internet. © 2022 IEEE.

IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON HUMAN RIGHTS: PERCEPTIONS OF RESIDENTS OF THE CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO

The concept of human rights is not consensual, however, it persists in the moral, political and legal culture of the modern world. The State has always occupied an ambiguous and dialectical place, sometimes being directly or indirectly responsible for the offense, sometimes responsible for the protection of rights. In addition to the aspect of legitimacy, the Covid-19 pandemic led to a much more serious problem related to the policy adopted by the Brazilian Government and its effects. In order to know the perception of residents of the city of Rio de Janeiro on aspects related to the impacts of Covid-19 on 5 basic rights: health, education, freedom to come and go, work and income, and voting, a survey of the type web survey. To reach the respondents, the snowball method was used, having as a starting point the contact list of the study authors. As a result, most respondents identified the five rights mentioned as Human Rights and revealed that they believe that: 1) public authorities are responsible for limiting rights;2) the restriction of any of the aforementioned rights is justifiable during the pandemic;3) the impact of limitations on rights on lower socioeconomic classes was greater;4) are dissatisfied with the performance of the Federal Government regarding the measures adopted;and, finally, 5) who are complying with the rules of social isolation at the same time that other residents of the city of Rio de Janeiro are not. © 2022 AIUB Office of Research and Publication. All rights reserved.

TEACHING-EDUCATING AND PROFESSORALITY/PROFESSORSHIP: unfolding conversation in station rotation turns

This paper pursues the production of subjectivities during the process of teaching -educating developed in Teaching and Diversity, a curricular component offered by a multiprofessional graduate program in a Bahia Public University. It aims at presenting experience as education/formation in the constitution of professorality, intertwined with diversity, as a formative ontological and epistemic principle. Conversation is the elected method, founded on Freire's dialogical presuppositions, interfacing with online education during covid 19 pandemic context. The assessment-formation dispositives proposed were: online station rotation and conversation circles registered in collective and individual journals, which have spread themselves as a rhizome via hyperlinks. The findings point to evidence of learning, creation and co authorship embodied in diverse strategies to appropriate the concepts and provocations posed, such as: creation of a co authorial metaphor, anti-art intervention, and the production of narratives In Derrida's supplement perspective. The organizative and epistemological principles as well as the didactic design allowed students and professors to immerse in hybrid environments to exercise and experiment teaching collectively. Conversation circles, also, were pointed as triggers to experiences-experiments as a way to confer new meanings to the nostalgia of traditional (face-to-face) teaching and initial resistances, such as cameras in off and low student-student and student-professors interaction. However, Self and hetero assessment emerged as a fragility since moral aspetcts (interest and effort) took the role of main parameters, and gaps in teaching-educating backgrounds were viewed as flaws and projected onto other aspects (professors, the readings, the theories etc), avoinding the assumption of corresponsability towards self and collective formative processes.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Latin American Insurance and Reinsurance Market

As elsewhere in the world, the Latin American region and its diverse economies have been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and, particularly, by the different government measures adopted by each country. The region's insurance and reinsurance markets have not been exempted from these effects, notwithstanding their less developed nature compared to the large world economies. The smaller extent of insurance coverage offered, the regulatory and legislative features of each country, and the uninsurable nature of the pandemic, are some of the aspects to be considered when studying the market in the region and, together with this, account for the impossibility of applying, in most cases, the caselaw criteria of the more developed markets in the Latin American region. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Liquid biopsy on serum samples: Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy as fatality predictor for COVID-19

The fatality prediction in hyperinflammation diseases like COVID-19 is a challenge. We show here that FTIR could probe the degree of IgG glycosylation discriminating subpopulations of COVID-19 patients depending on their degree of severity. © Optica Publishing Group 2022 The Authors.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on accounting information systems and organizations' performance

This paper empirically examines the impact of COVID-19 on accounting information systems and organizations' performance. It follows a quantitative approach. For data collection, an online questionnaire was developed and tested. The final version of the questionnaire was applied to the 2556 largest companies in Portugal. The 3 research hypotheses under study were tested with 101 valid answers. The results reveal a high rate of implementation of accounting and performance measurement instruments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding the dynamics of the updates of organizations' performance measurement systems, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed and described as primarily positive. In turn, the performance of the companies was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study contributes to a better understanding of the role of accounting and performance instruments in organizations under a high level of organizational uncertainty. Copyright © 2023 by Author/s and Licensed by IADITI.

Liquid biopsy on serum samples: Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy as fatality predictor for COVID-19

The fatality prediction in hyperinflammation diseases like COVID-19 is a challenge. We show here that FTIR could probe the degree of IgG glycosylation discriminating subpopulations of COVID-19 patients depending on their degree of severity. © Optica Publishing Group 2022 The Authors.

RETHINKING TOURISTIFICATION AS A LONG-TERM PROCESS THE IMPACT OF TOURISM ON THE MADEIRAN CUISINE (19TH-21ST CENTURIES)

In the last decade, we have witnessed a growth of contestation movements against touristification on the global scale. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the intensive, disordered flux of travelers in some popular destinations was blamed for negatively affecting the everyday life of local inhabitants. One effect was the degradation of their intangible cultural heritage (ICH), including culinary legacies, and more research has focused on this issue from different disciplinary areas. However, the approaches usually adopted only consider the immediate consequences of the ongoing phenomenon that can be observed during a field enquiry. This paper explores a new path. Assuming that cultural heritage is a long-term social construction, an historian's outlook is needed to see the big picture. The case study of the Madeiran cuisine allows us to understand to what extent receiving guests has long-term effects on the ICH of host communities. Madeira is one of the oldest destinations of the world, with a hospitality industry in activity since the early 19th century. Additionally, numerous documents attest the evolution of dietary patterns of the insular society, not only at this period, but also before and after. From this point of view, it is an excellent place to monitor the socio-cultural impact of tourism. Historical sources from different periods are confronted to understand the dynamic of the culinary repertoire in the archipelago. The point of view of local stakeholders currently involved in this arena are also considered. The results obtained by this diachronic approach enable us to relativize the Manichean vision of holidaymakers as a threat to cultural heritage, demonstrating that touristification studies should take into account the longue durée. © 2022, Ponteditora. All rights reserved.

Covid-19 and its propagation dynamics in the urban network of Maranhão, Brazil

The present work aims to analyze the dynamics of the spread of covid-19 from the urban network of Maranhão. To this end, it establishes the relationship between the phenomenon and the provision of health services in the state. The period analyzed comprises one year of a pandemic, counting from the first recorded case. Data from the spatialization of medical specialties and medical-hospital equipment are considered, as well as information on viral evolution in this period, based on the number of cases and deaths. The main sources of data are the survey Regions of Influence of Cities 2018 (Regic 2018), by IBGE;the Datasus database, from the Ministry of Health;and the Secretary of State for Health of Maranhão. The results suggest that the spread of covid-19 in Maranhão has been triggered, to some extent, in a hierarchical way, following the centralities and polarizations of the main centers towards the smallest, based on the rarefied supply of health services in Maranhão. © 2022, Universidade Federal de Goias. All rights reserved.

PROTECTION OF PERSONAL DATA AND RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN THE CONTEXT OF PANDEMICS: AN ANALYSIS OF CONTACT TRACING APPLICATIONS CONSIDERING THE PROPORTIONALITY

Several countries are taking exceptional measures to control the high spreading capacity of SARS-CoV-2 virus. In order to ensure efficiency in monitoring compliance with these determinations, countries began to use information technology, including the development of contact tracing applications. However, the use of this technology entails State intervention in the right to privacy, as it implies the processing of personal data, so that its constitutionality is questioned in the context of the Brazilian legal system. In this context, this work aims to identify the legal and constitutional limits in the use of contact tracing applications in a pandemic context by the Brazilian State, taking into consideration the right to privacy and the principle of proportionality. This research applied the deductive method and was based on an exploratory and interdisciplinary analysis, making use of both legal-constitutional dogmatics and technical knowledge of information technology. Thus, it is possible to conclude that contact tracing applications must be built following a decentralized architecture, using a proximity-based approach and secure data transmission and information encryption techniques to facilitate data anonymization. © 2022 Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Escola de Direito de Sao Paulo. All rights reserved.

The coordination role of Rio Grande do Norte state government in response to covid-19: Innovation in times of crisis?

From a case study of the State of Rio Grande do Norte, in Brazil, this article discusses the role of states in coordinating healthcare with its local governments in the context of the new coronavirus pandemic. The absence of federal government initiatives in responding to the pandemic in Brazil have been acknowledged by several specialists as an unprecedented event in the Brazilian federation, breaking with a recurrent pattern of national coordination and regulation by different governments since the 1988 Constitution. In this sense, states and municipalities had to adopt their own initiatives to respond to the pandemic. Qualitative research based on the collection of documents (local media, epidemiological reports, and state regulations) and in-depth interviews with state and municipal managers reveals significant changes in the state-municipal relationship throughout the pandemic period in Rio Grande do Norte, a state historically characterized by the lack of state coordination. The pandemic, thus, functioned as an exogenous shock, which induced changes in the pattern of state coordination in healthcare. It is unclear, however, whether these changes are one-off or permanent since the weight of increasing returns - a specification of a path dependency process - seem to work as a mechanism producing inertial dynamics of difficult disruption with the past. Copyright © 2022, Universidade de Sao Paulo. Museu de Zoologia. All rights reserved.

Evaluating User Experience of the Portuguese District Archives websites

The aim of this study is to analyse the user experience (UX) that researchers have when accessing the websites of the Portuguese district archives. There are 20 Portuguese districts, 16 in the mainland, one in Madeira and three in the Azores islands. The Coimbra and Braga district archives are also university archives and are the only ones that aren't under the supervision of the National Archives Institute. In a year marked by the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the gradual opening of public services, the use of websites to search for information has often become the only possibility of research, thus justifying the urgency of carrying out this study, unprecedented in Portugal.