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Visual detection of nucleic acids is important to diagnose the serious acute infectious diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). During this pandemic, reliable visual detection kits have been in high demand for screening and prevention of the virus. While developing these visual detection kits, a real-time monitoring platform is usually applied to study the amplification and detection processes of nucleic acids and optimize the detecting conditions. Herein, we developed a real-time monitoring platform of colorimetric loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) to investigate the amplification and detection processes of nucleic acids. Using this platform, we could obtain the real-time amplification curves, and optimize the reaction temperature, color change, and detection time. Based on the optimized conditions, a visual detection kit for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was successfully developed with a sensitivity of 102 copies µL−1 in 12 min. This real-time monitoring platform has advantages of simple construction, steady performance, high sensitivity, and outstanding anti-pollution capability, and could replace the traditional colorimetric methods by photographing and reading values. This platform would accelerate the development of visual detection kits for colorimetric LAMP, help to explore the amplification and transcription of nucleic acids, and provide support for the prevention of emerging biological threats. © 2023
ABSTRACT
Atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) is a potentially promising small-scale approach to alleviate the water crisis in arid or semiarid regions. Inspired by the asymmetric structure of tillandsia leaves, a plant species native to semiarid regions, we report the development of a bioinspired composite (BiC) to draw moisture for AWH applications. With the advent of the post-COVID era, the nonwoven materials in used masks are discarded, landfilled, or incinerated along with the masks as medical waste, and the negative impact on the environment is inevitable. The nonwoven sheet has porosity, softness, and certain mechanical strength. We innovatively developed BiCs, immobilizing hygroscopic salt with a nonwoven mask for fast vapor liquefaction and using a polymer network to store water. The resulting BiC material manages to achieve a high-water adsorption capacity of 1.24 g g-1 under a low-moderate humidity environment and a high-water release ratio of ca. 90% without the use of photothermal materials, while maintaining high structural integrity in cyclic testing. © 2023 American Chemical Society.
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Flows are usually represented as vector lines from origins to destinations and can reflect the movements of individuals or groups in space and time. Revealing and analyzing the spatiotemporal flow patterns are conducive to understanding information underlying movements. This paper proposes a new method called the OD–EOF (Origin–Destination–Empirical Orthogonal Function) to discover important spatiotemporal flow patterns on the premise of maintaining the pairwise connections between origins and destinations. We first construct a spatiotemporal flow matrix that contains connection information between origins and destinations and temporal flow information by adding a temporal dimension to the OD map. Then, we decompose the spatiotemporal flow matrix into spatial modes and corresponding time coefficients by EOF decomposition. The decomposition results depict the prominent spatial distribution of and temporal variation in flows, with most of the spatiotemporal characteristics highly concentrated into the first few spatial modes. The method is evaluated by five synthetic datasets and a user study and subsequently applied to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the spatiotemporal patterns of human mobility in China during the Spring Festival travel rush in 2020 and 2021. The results show the prominent spatiotemporal patterns of human mobility during these periods under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and the normalization of pandemic prevention and control. © 2023 Cartography and Geographic Information Society.
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Introduction: COPD patients are considered at risk of severe COVID-19 illness, however there are limited data on the burden of COVID-19 disease in this patient population. This study investigated the rate of COVID-19 diagnosis and hospitalization for COPD due to COVID-19 (pre-vaccination) over time, stratified by disease severity. Method(s): A retrospective cohort of COPD patients aged >=35 years, FEV1/FVC score <0.7, indexed from Mar-Aug 2020, using the English Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum database and Hospital Episode Statistics datasets. Monthly incidence rates of COVID-19 diagnosis and overall inpatient hospitalizations were described for all patients and by GOLD 2019 disease grade. Result(s): The study identified 103,105 COPD patients (mean [SD] age: 69.6 [10.6] years, 54.1% males) with 42.0%, 25.9%, 4.5%, and 6.3% in GOLD A, GOLD B, GOLD C, and GOLD D disease grade groups respectively, in the 12 months prior to index. Results over time are shown in Figure 1. Incidence rates of COVID-19 hospitalization (95% CI) per 100,000 person-days for the Mar-Aug period were GOLD A (2.2 [1.9, 2.6]), GOLD B (4.7 [4.1, 5.4]), GOLD C (4.6 [3.2, 6.3]), and GOLD D (7.9 [6.3, 9.7]). Conclusion(s): Among COPD patients, COVID-19 incidence peaked in April 2020. COVID-19 hospitalization rates were significantly higher in patients with more severe COPD and highest in GOLD D group patients. (Figure Presented).
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During the CIVID-19 pandemic, water samples were collected from 26 sampling points in 18 typical drinking water sources in Wuhan, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) methods were used to measure the concentrations of 31 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the water samples. The pollution characteristics of PPCPs were analyzed and their ecological and health risks were assessed. The results showed that a total of 23 PPCPs were detected in the 26 sampling points. Among them, five types of PPCPs were detected with a detection rate of 100%, with total concentrations ranging from 102.44 ng•L -1 to 745.78 ng•L -1, and the average concentration was 206.87 ng•L -1. The highest concentrations were in salicylic acid (SA) and doxycycline (DIC), ranging from 28.24 to 534.24 ng•L -1 and 28.72 to 416.6 ng•L -1, respectively. According to the spatial distribution of PPCPs, the concentration of antibiotics in the Hanjiang River was higher than that in the Yangtze River, whereas the concentration of other types of PPCPs in the Yangtze River was higher than that in the Hanjiang River. The ecological risk assessment results showed that the toxic risk in algae was higher than those in invertebrates and fish. The risks of salicylic acid (SA), doxycycline (DIC), lincomycin (LIN), and chlortetracycline (CTE) to algae were at a high level, and the ecological risk of PPCPs in the Hanjiang River was generally higher than that in the Yangtze River. The health risk assessment results showed that the risk to adults and children by drinking water ranged from 1.14 × 10 -4 to 0.136 and from 1.04 × 10 -4 to 0.821, respectively. The health risk to children was higher than that to adults, although their levels were low. Compared with the concentrations of PPCPs in drinking water sources of Wuhan in recent years, under the CIVID-19 pandemic, the pollution status of PPCPs in the Yangtze River was at a medium level, whereas it was at a high level in the Hanjiang River. © 2022 Science Press. All rights reserved.
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The wide spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has significantly impacted the global human activities. Compared to numerous studies on conventional air pollutants, atmospheric mercury that has matched sources from both anthropogenic and natural emissions is rarely investigated. At a regional site in eastern China, an intensive measurement was performed, showing obvious decreases in gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) during the COVID-19 lockdown, while it was not as significant as most of the other measured air pollutants. Before the lockdown, when anthropogenic emissions dominated, GEM showed no correlation with temperature and negative correlations with wind speed and the height of the boundary layer. In contrast, GEM showed significant correlation with temperature, while the relationship between GEM and the wind speed/boundary layer disappeared during the lockdown, suggesting the enhanced natural emissions of mercury. By applying a machine learning model and the SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) approach, it was found that the mercury pollution episodes before the lockdown were driven by anthropogenic sources, while they were mainly driven by natural sources during and after the lockdown. Source apportionment results showed that the absolute contribution of natural surface emissions to GEM unexpectedly increased (44 %) during the lockdown. Throughout the whole study period, a significant negative correlation was observed between the absolute contribution of natural and anthropogenic sources to GEM. We conclude that the natural release of mercury could be stimulated to compensate for the significantly reduced anthropogenic GEM via the surface-air exchange in the balance of mercury.
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The COVID-19 lockdown has opened a unique window for investigating aerosol formation and evolution with controlled anthropogenic emissions in urban areas. Here, variations of PM2.5 chemical compositions, gaseous pollutants, meteorological conditions, and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) molecular tracers were monitored during three stages at an urban site (Pudong) and a suburban site (Qingpu) in Shanghai, which were defined as pre-COVID lockdown (PL), during COVID lockdown (DL), and after COVID lockdown (AL) in 2020. Abundances of pollutants during the same periods back in 2019 were also analyzed for a more comprehensive intercomparison and evaluation of the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown on regional air quality. With the sudden cessation of anthropogenic activities during the lockdown, significant reductions in PM2.5 were observed compared to both PL in 2020 (32% in Pudong and 36% in Qingpu) and the DL period back in 2019 (31% in Pudong and 35% in Qingpu), which was accompanied by the significantly reduced PM2.5 components (29-44% and 14-44% reductions in sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, organic carbon, and elemental carbon for Pudong and Qingpu, respectively). In particular, with the reduced secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA), the time series of SOA molecular tracers also underwent significant reduction that was characteristic to the lockdown. Amid the uncontrolled biogenic emissions and even slightly enhanced atmospheric oxidation capacity during the 2020 DL period, controlling anthropogenic emissions exhibits synergistic effects on the reduction of SIA and SOA, which could be further attributed to the changes in the aerosol aqueous-phase environment, such as aerosol liquid water content (ALWC), ionic strength, sulfate content, and particulate NH4+. Based on thermodynamic modeling, greatly reduced ALWC was observed during 2020 DL, which can prevent the partitioning of oxygenated organics into the condensed phase as well as the aqueous-phase formation of SOA. Higher ionic strength in 2020 DL may have a "salting-out" effect on gas- particle partitioning of oxygenated organics. The reduced SOA during 2020 DL at both sites can generally be reflected by the predicted heterogeneous reaction kinetics (gamma) of the isoprene SOA formation pathway. Overall, our study showed a synergistic effect in suppressing SIA and SOA formation upon the reduction of anthropogenic emissions during the COVID-19 lockdown, which shed light on the importance of controlling anthropogenic emissions in regulating secondary aerosol formation in typical urban areas of East China.
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The global economic recession caused by COVID-19 has posed a severe threat to the feasibility of renewable energy projects, hampering the United Nation (UN) sustainable development goals. Sustainable financing (SF) is a crucial instrument for promoting investment in renewable energy (IRE) sources, as it is regarded as a crucial aspect in achieving long-term sustainability. This study sheds insight on the impact of SF, geopolitical risk (GPR), economic growth (EG), and environmental regulation (ER) on IRE sources by evaluating 10 years of data from 35 Chinese energy businesses from 2012 to 2021. The data analysis is done by utilizing quantile regression and dynamic analytic techniques, demonstrating that SF, EG, and ER have a significant positive effect on IRE sources. However, GPR has a significant detrimental impact on IRE in China. This is one of the early studies to examine the crucial role of SF, GPR, EG, and ER in IRE, which is critical for environmental sustainability. In addition, it provides policymakers and environmentalists with crucial insights for developing and executing environmental strategies that can deliver long-term benefits and meet SD goals.
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S75 Figure 1ConclusionAmong patients with asthma, the frequency of severe exacerbations declined steeply between March 2020 and May 2020 for all stratification groups and remained low through to August 2020. When comparing GINA step at baseline, a higher proportion of patients in GINA steps 4 and step 5 experienced a severe exacerbation compared with patients in GINA steps 1/2, step 2 and step 3 throughout the observation period. Further research on the long-term impact of COVID-19 on asthma exacerbations in routine clinical practice in England is warranted.Please refer to page A211 for declarations of interest related to this .
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S39 Figure 1ConclusionAmong patients with asthma, COVID-19 diagnosis rates peaked in April 2020, declined steeply to June 2020 and remained low through to August 2020. COVID-19 hospitalisation rates were substantially higher in patients with more severe asthma and highest among patients in GINA step 5 treatment group. Future studies on the long-term impact of COVID-19 in asthma are warranted.Please refer to page A209 for declarations of interest related to this .
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Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world, people's diet environment has also changed, and gastrointestinal diseases have become a common disease around us so far, and the prevalence is on the rise. But because traditional treatments for gastrointestinal diseases are unfriendly to patients, they often require the administration of anesthetics, which can cause side effects. Wireless capsule endoscope is a kind of medical robot that can alleviate the pain of patients, and the research on wireless capsule endoscope has been gradually mature at home and abroad, this paper designed a new four-page propeller-driven biopsy capsule robot. The optimal number of propeller pages is obtained by comparing the velocity of three different numbers of propeller blades in the pipeline. The three axis Helmholtz coil driving system and biopsy module based on CAM structure are also introduced. At the same time, the anchoring module used for precise biopsy of the robot is introduced, so as to ensure that the biopsy capsule robot can reach the specified position quickly and accurately and complete the biopsy task. Finally, we use simulation software to simulate the velocity and pressure of different propeller blades in the same liquid. © 2022 IEEE.
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Wuhan Tianhe International Airport (WUH) was suspended to contain the spread of COVID-19, while Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport (SHA) saw a tremendous flight reduction. Closure of a major international airport is extremely rare and thus represents a unique opportunity to straightforwardly observe the impact of airport emissions on local air quality. In this study, a series of statistical tools were applied to analyze the variations in air pollutant levels in the vicinity of WUH and SHA. The results of bivariate polar plots show that airport SHA and WUH are a major source of nitrogen oxides. NOx, NO2 and NO diminished by 55.8%, 44.1%, 76.9%, and 40.4%, 33.3% and 59.4% during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to those in the same period of 2018 and 2019, under a reduction in aircraft activities by 58.6% and 61.4%. The concentration of NO2, SO2 and PM2.5 decreased by 77.3%, 8.2%, 29.5%, right after the closure of airport WUH on 23 January 2020. The average concentrations of NO, NO2 and NOx scatter plots at downwind of SHA after the lockdown were 78.0%, 47.9%, 57.4% and 62.3%, 34.8%, 41.8% lower than those during the same period in 2018 and 2019. However, a significant increase in O3 levels by 50.0% and 25.9% at WUH and SHA was observed, respectively. These results evidently show decreased nitrogen oxides concentrations in the airport vicinity due to reduced aircraft activities, while amplified O3 pollution due to a lower titration by NO under strong reduction in NOx emissions. © 2022
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Under the impact of COVID-19, supply chains were interrupted globally. The market demand was reduced, production and circulation across the country are almost at a standstill, and companies suffer from operating difficulties and cash flow risks. Generally, SMEs are affected most during disasters but have the least post- disaster reconstruction abilities. This chapter investigates the COVID- 19's impact on the Shenzhen supply chain in China from the public data and analyzes the internal factors and external factors. Policy responses issued by Shenzhen municipal government are gathered and comparatively analyzed using Disaster Management Theory. Shenzhen municipal government has issued many policies to support enterprises, especially SMEs, in responding to pandemic shocks, mainly including the following five categories: financial support, preferential tax, resumption of production, social security support, optimize services, and reduce costs. These policies are critical for SMEs' post- disaster reconstruction in the country. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2021. All rights reserved.
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The unintentional emission reductions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to investigate the impact of energy, industry, and transportation activities on air pollutants and CO2 emissions and their synergy. Here, we constructed an approach to estimate city-level high resolution dynamic emissions of both anthropogenic air pollutants and CO2 by introducing dynamic temporal allocation coefficients based on real-time multisource activity data. We first apply this approach to estimate the spatiotemporal evolution of sectoral emissions in eastern China, focusing on the period around the COVID-19 lockdown. Comparisons with observational data show that our approach can well capture the spatiotemporal changes of both short-lived precursors (NOx and NMVOCs) and CO2 emissions. Our results show that air pollutants (SO2, NOx, and NMVOCs) were reduced by up to 31%-53% during the lockdown period accompanied by simultaneous changes of 40% CO2 emissions. The declines in power and heavy industry sectors dominated regional SO2 and CO2 reductions. NOx reductions were mainly attributed to mobile sources, while NMVOCs emission reductions were mainly from light industry sectors. Our findings suggest that differentiated emission control strategies should be implemented for different source categories to achieve coordinated reduction goals. © 2021 American Chemical Society.
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Since the outbreak of COVID-19, universities, primary and secondary schools all over the country have earnestly implemented the directives of the CPC Central Committee, The State Council and the Ministry of Education, strengthened the use of mobile Internet technology and organized online teaching by means of information technology. This paper by analyzing the epidemic situation of sports education informatization development in learning, learning tasks, learning companions, way of thinking and evaluation way change and the five aspects such as teaching, put forward the following policy recommendations: as a whole sports education informatization development, perfecting the education informatization experts team construction, to promote physical education resource development, accelerate the construction of physical education information platform, and increase investment in sports education informatization service funds. © 2021 IEEE.
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BACKGROUND: A pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) has rapidly spread across the globe. Although many articles have established the clinical characteristics of adult COVID-19 patients so far, limited data are available for children. The aim of this study was to reveal the clinical features, laboratory findings and nucleic acid test results of ten pediatric cases. METHODS: In this retrospective single-center cohort study, pediatric cases with COVID-19 infection were consecutively enrolled in one hospital in Huangshi, China from January 1 to March 11, 2020. RESULTS: A total of 10 children with COVID-19 were recruited. Of them, four were the asymptomatic type, one was the mild type, and five were the moderate type (including two subclinical ones). All patients were from family clusters. Only fever, nasal discharge and nasal congestion were observed. Lymphopenia and leukopenia were uncommon in our sample but elevated levels of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and alpha-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase (alpha-HBDH) were observed frequently. Of these laboratory test variables, no statistical difference was identified between asymptomatic and symptomatic patients. Abnormalities in radiological data were detected in five patients, and representative findings of chest CT images were patchy shadows and ground-glass opacities. There were two cases whose oropharyngeal nucleic acid tests reversed to positive after one negative result, and two patients whose oropharyngeal swabs tested negative but rectal swabs showed positive. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical symptoms were mild in children with COVID-19. Increased levels of LDH and alpha-HBDH were potential clinical biomarkers for pediatric cases. More attention should be paid to the SARS-CoV-2 viral assessment of rectal swabs before patients are discharged.
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The febrile respiratory disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become the focus of global attention. Up to now, the infection has been continuing to spread all over the world and it is urgent to develop specific drugs for SARS-CoV-2. Finding effective and safe drugs which are already available in the market for treating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of the main strategies to solve the problem in time. As quinoline alkaloids against malaria, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been proved to have the anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity. Quinoline alkaloids are expected to be important drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. In this article, the research and application of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are reviewed from the aspects of pharmacokinetics, drug interaction, clinical research progress, treatment plan optimization and resolution of optical enantiomers. The possible problems are summarized in order to provide reference for further research and clinical application of quinoline alkaloids in the treatment of COVID-19.
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At present, the prevention and control of new coronavirus has entered a critical period. However, the use of quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR)assays for the detection of viral nucleic acid, as a crucial diagnostic approach, has been doubted in clinical practice. Herein, we have reviewed the current status of epidemic prevention and control, latest development of detection technologies, disease characteristics, clinical sampling and transport. It has also discussed the factors that may affect the performance of viral nucleic acid detection, and suggested some effective methods to improve the detection performance of the assays.