Ultraefficiently Calming Cytokine Storm Using Ti3C2T x MXene.

During the global outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, "cytokine storm" conditions are regarded as the fatal step resulting in most mortality. Hemoperfusion is widely used to remove cytokines from the blood of severely ill patients to prevent uncontrolled inflammation induced by a cytokine storm. This article discoveres, for the first time, that 2D Ti3C2T x MXene sheet demonstrates an ultrahigh removal capability for typical cytokine interleukin-6. In particular, MXene shows a 13.4 times higher removal efficiency over traditional activated carbon absorbents. Molecular-level investigations reveal that MXene exhibits a strong chemisorption mechanism for immobilizing cytokine interleukin-6 molecules, which is different from activated carbon absorbents. MXene sheet also demonstrates excellent blood compatibility without any deleterious side influence on the composition of human blood. This work can open a new avenue to use MXene sheets as an ultraefficient hemoperfusion absorbent to eliminate the cytokine storm syndrome in treatment of severe COVID-19 patients.

Mechanisms controlling the transport and evaporation of human exhaled respiratory droplets containing the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus: a review.

Transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 is still ongoing despite mass vaccination, lockdowns, and other drastic measures to control the pandemic. This is due partly to our lack of understanding on the multiphase flow mechanics that control droplet transport and viral transmission dynamics. Various models of droplet evaporation have been reported, yet there is still limited knowledge about the influence of physicochemical parameters on the transport of respiratory droplets carrying the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Here we review the effects of initial droplet size, environmental conditions, virus mutation, and non-volatile components on droplet evaporation and dispersion, and on virus stability. We present experimental and computational methods to analyze droplet transport, and factors controlling transport and evaporation. Methods include thermal manikins, flow techniques, aerosol-generating techniques, nucleic acid-based assays, antibody-based assays, polymerase chain reaction, loop-mediated isothermal amplification, field-effect transistor-based assay, and discrete and gas-phase modeling. Controlling factors include environmental conditions, turbulence, ventilation, ambient temperature, relative humidity, droplet size distribution, non-volatile components, evaporation and mutation. Current results show that medium-sized droplets, e.g., 50 µm, are sensitive to relative humidity. Medium-sized droplets experience delayed evaporation at high relative humidity, and increase airborne lifetime and travel distance. By contrast, at low relative humidity, medium-sized droplets quickly shrink to droplet nuclei and follow the cough jet. Virus inactivation within a few hours generally occurs at temperatures above 40 °C, and the presence of viral particles in aerosols impedes droplet evaporation.

Municipal solid waste, an overlooked route of transmission for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2: a review.

Municipal solid waste could potentially transmit human pathogens during the collection, transport, handling, and disposal of waste. Workers and residents living in the vicinity of municipal solid waste collection or disposal sites are particularly susceptible, especially unprotected workers and waste pickers. Recent evidence suggests that municipal solid waste-mediated transmission can spread the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to humans. Such risks, however, have received little attention from public health authorities so far and may present an under-investigated transmission route for SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious agents during pandemics. In this review, we provide a retrospective analysis of the challenges, practices, and policies on municipal solid waste management during the current pandemic, and scrutinize the recent case reports on the municipal solid waste-mediated transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We found abrupt changes in quantity and composition of municipal solid wastes during the COVID-19. We detail pathways of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens carried on municipal solid wastes. We disclose evidence of pathogenic transmission by municipal solid waste to humans and animals. Assessments of current policies, gaps, and voluntary actions taken on municipal solid waste handling and disposal in the current pandemic are presented. We propose risk mitigation strategies and research priorities to alleviate the risk for humans and vectors exposed to municipal solid wastes.

Unanswered questions on the airborne transmission of COVID-19.

Policies and measures to control pandemics are often failing. While biological factors controlling transmission are usually well explored, little is known about the environmental drivers of transmission and infection. For instance, respiratory droplets and aerosol particles are crucial vectors for the airborne transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the causation agent of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic (COVID-19). Once expectorated, respiratory droplets interact with atmospheric particulates that influence the viability and transmission of the novel coronavirus, yet there is little knowledge on this process or its consequences on virus transmission and infection. Here we review the effects of atmospheric particulate properties, vortex zones, and air pollution on virus survivability and transmission. We found that particle size, chemical constituents, electrostatic charges, and the moisture content of airborne particles can have notable effects on virus transmission, with higher survival generally associated with larger particles, yet some viruses are better preserved on small particles. Some chemical constituents and surface-adsorbed chemical species may damage peptide bonds in viral proteins and impair virus stability. Electrostatic charges and water content of atmospheric particulates may affect the adherence of virion particles and possibly their viability. In addition, vortex zones and human thermal plumes are major environmental factors altering the aerodynamics of buoyant particles in air, which can strongly influence the transport of airborne particles and the transmission of associated viruses. Insights into these factors may provide explanations for the widely observed positive correlations between COVID-19 infection and mortality with air pollution, of which particulate matter is a common constituent that may have a central role in the airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10311-022-01557-z.

Unanswered questions on the airborne transmission of COVID-19

Policies and measures to control pandemics are often failing. While biological factors controlling transmission are usually well explored, little is known about the environmental drivers of transmission and infection. For instance, respiratory droplets and aerosol particles are crucial vectors for the airborne transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the causation agent of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic (COVID-19). Once expectorated, respiratory droplets interact with atmospheric particulates that influence the viability and transmission of the novel coronavirus, yet there is little knowledge on this process or its consequences on virus transmission and infection. Here we review the effects of atmospheric particulate properties, vortex zones, and air pollution on virus survivability and transmission. We found that particle size, chemical constituents, electrostatic charges, and the moisture content of airborne particles can have notable effects on virus transmission, with higher survival generally associated with larger particles, yet some viruses are better preserved on small particles. Some chemical constituents and surface-adsorbed chemical species may damage peptide bonds in viral proteins and impair virus stability. Electrostatic charges and water content of atmospheric particulates may affect the adherence of virion particles and possibly their viability. In addition, vortex zones and human thermal plumes are major environmental factors altering the aerodynamics of buoyant particles in air, which can strongly influence the transport of airborne particles and the transmission of associated viruses. Insights into these factors may provide explanations for the widely observed positive correlations between COVID-19 infection and mortality with air pollution, of which particulate matter is a common constituent that may have a central role in the airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10311-022-01557-z.

It is time to acknowledge coronavirus transmission via frozen and chilled foods: Undeniable evidence from China and lessons for the world.

Since the broke out of the novel coronavirus disease at the end of 2019, nearly 650 million people have been infected around the globe, and >6.6 million have died from this disease. The first wave of infections in mainland China had been effectively controlled within a short period, with no domestic cases of infection for 56 consecutive days from April 16, 2020. Nonetheless, the re-emergence of several outbreaks in multiple Chinese cities posed a new challenge for public health authorities after new cases of infections were found in Xinfadi Market in Beijing on June 11, 2020. In the following series of re-emergent outbreaks, findings from epidemiological investigations suggested that more than twenty re-emergent outbreaks were caused by fomite transmission, predominantly via imported frozen and chilled foods contaminated by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Seven of the eleven incidents involving frozen and chilled foods were identified by screening individuals with occupational exposure to imported cold-chain foods and associated individuals. Evidence showed that low temperatures and poor ventilation typically maintained through cold-chain logistics create amenable environments for the survival of SARS-CoV-2, making transnational cold chain logistics a congenial vehicle to spread the virus through global transport of consumer goods. To address this gap, here we present a scrutiny of the findings from epidemiological investigations in recent re-emergent outbreaks in China caused by fomite transmission via imported foods and goods. A national regime of traceable cold-chain foods and reinforced customs inspection protocols were established by public health authorities in mainland China as emergency responses to recurring outbreaks from fomite transmission via imported goods. We urge that more attention needs to be given to this specific route of pathogenic transmission to ensure biosecurity and to increase the preparedness for epidemic or pandemic scenarios by the global food industry and logistics carriers.

Remote Heart Rate Estimation by Pulse Signal Reconstruction Based on Structural Sparse Representation

In recent years, the physiological measurement based on remote photoplethysmography has attracted wide attention, especially since the epidemic of COVID-19. Many researchers paid great efforts to improve the robustness of illumination and motion variation. Most of the existing methods divided the ROIs into many sub-regions and extracted the heart rate separately, while ignoring the fact that the heart rates from different sub-regions are consistent. To address this problem, in this work, we propose a structural sparse representation method to reconstruct the pulse signals (SSR2RPS) from different sub-regions and estimate the heart rate. The structural sparse representation (SSR) method considers that the chrominance signals from different sub-regions should have a similar sparse representation on the combined dictionary. Specifically, we firstly eliminate the signal deviation trend using the adaptive iteratively re-weighted penalized least squares (Airpls) for each sub-region. Then, we conduct the sparse representation on the combined dictionary, which is constructed considering the pulsatility and periodicity of the heart rate. Finally, we obtain the reconstructed pulse signals from different sub-regions and estimate the heart rate with a power spectrum analysis. The experimental results on the public UBFC and COHFACE datasets demonstrate the significant improvement for the accuracy of the heart rate estimation under realistic conditions.

Municipal solid waste, an overlooked route of transmission for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2: a review

Municipal solid waste could potentially transmit human pathogens during the collection, transport, handling, and disposal of waste. Workers and residents living in the vicinity of municipal solid waste collection or disposal sites are particularly susceptible, especially unprotected workers and waste pickers. Recent evidence suggests that municipal solid waste-mediated transmission can spread the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to humans. Such risks, however, have received little attention from public health authorities so far and may present an under-investigated transmission route for SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious agents during pandemics. In this review, we provide a retrospective analysis of the challenges, practices, and policies on municipal solid waste management during the current pandemic, and scrutinize the recent case reports on the municipal solid waste-mediated transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We found abrupt changes in quantity and composition of municipal solid wastes during the COVID-19. We detail pathways of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens carried on municipal solid wastes. We disclose evidence of pathogenic transmission by municipal solid waste to humans and animals. Assessments of current policies, gaps, and voluntary actions taken on municipal solid waste handling and disposal in the current pandemic are presented. We propose risk mitigation strategies and research priorities to alleviate the risk for humans and vectors exposed to municipal solid wastes.

Prussian Blue@Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework Composite Toward Solar-triggered Biodecontamination

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) featuring composition and bandstructure diversity, are an emerging class of photoresponsive disinfectants. In this study, we demonstrated the superiority of core-shell arranged photoactive MOFs (prussian blue (PB) and zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8)) for pathogen inactivation in terms of biocidal efficiency and broad-spectrum sensitivity. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was significantly promoted after the integration of PB due to the photosensitization effect and initiation of in situ Fenton reaction. Favorably, another inactivation channel was also opened owing to the unique photothermal effect of PB. Attributed to the facilitated ROS intracellular penetration by heat, the composite outperforms not only individual component but anatase TiO2 in pathogen elimination. Specifically, the Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) inactivation efficiency of the composite (6.6 log) is 2, 1.8 and 5.1 times higher than that of PB (3.3 log), ZIF-8 (3.7 log) and TiO2 (1.3 log) over 45 min of simulated sunlight illumination. Significantly, the infectivity of Bacillus anthracis and murine coronavirus in droplets on composite-coated filter surface could be greatly reduced (approximately 3 log reduction in colony number/coronavirus titer) within few minutes of solar exposure, indicative of the great potential of MOF composites toward life-threatening microbial infection prevention.

Perspectives of Hybrid Performing Arts Education in the Post-Pandemic Era: An Empirical Study in Hong Kong

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been raging across the continents, performing arts educators have unlearned and adjusted their pedagogies in course delivery to surmount the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Subject to the COVID-19 pandemic situation easing in Hong Kong and around the world, the whole education sector seems to be bouncing back to normal gradually. Meanwhile, there are effective lessons and insights to be learned from the hybrid pedagogy during the pandemic, which could further benefit the new normal period (post-pandemic) of performing arts education. To examine the current practice of digital learning among students and faculty (attitudes towards hybrid, online, and face-to-face learning and preferences about learning mode for professional development/training workshops), this empirical study looks at 408 students and 17 faculty members at a leading performing arts institute in Hong Kong. This study locates the key issues for performing arts educators regarding online/hybrid teaching and learning. It presents lessons and insights for quality insurance and improvement. Findings can inform the future development of digital teaching and learning for the performing arts as well as for other practice-based subjects.

Barcoding drug information to recycle unwanted household pharmaceuticals: a review.

Huge quantities of unwanted pharmaceuticals are left in households, notably as a consequence of the rising drug demand caused by improved healthcare and the aging population. Unwanted pharmaceuticals may thus easily end up polluting ecosystems upon disposal. This pharmaceutical waste issue has been aggravated during the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) by excess prescription and panic buying. Unwanted household pharmaceuticals are normally collected by owners and volunteers, then incinerated in centralized facilities, yet with low efficiency during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Most pharmaceuticals could be recycled because they are rather stable, however there is actually no sustainable strategy to manage unwanted pharmaceuticals in a pandemic. Here I review the management of unwanted pharmaceuticals in households during the pandemic, with emphasis on drug take-back programs, waste minimization and recycling efforts. Reducing pharamaceutical waste could be done by informing people on what to do with unwanted pharmaceutical products; using machine-readable codes for automatic sorting; and applying existing techniques for recovery of active pharmaceutical ingredients for reuse. I propose a new strategy where owners sort their unwanted pharmaceuticals and submit information online. This will generate coded mailing labels that allow the owner to separate pharmaceuticals into categories such as opened, unused, expired, and non-expired. Once collected by recycling facilities and manufacturers, active ingredients will be extracted to create new pharmaceuticals which will be recycled to other patients.

Electrostatic fine particles emitted from laser printers as potential vectors for airborne transmission of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected more than 14 million people globally. Recently, airborne transmission has been postulated to be a major contributor to the spread of the novel coronavirus, especially in enclosed public spaces. While many studies have demonstrated positive correlations between atmospheric pollutants and SARS-CoV-2 infection, the impact of indoor air pollutants on airborne transmission has been largely overlooked. In particular, laser printers are a primary source of particle emission that increases the concentrations of particulate matter in indoor atmosphere by releasing substantial quantities of electrostatic fine particles, at rates comparable with tobacco smoking and incense burning. We hypothesized that particles emitted from laser printers present a potential risk factor for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in offices and other indoor environments with high user occupancy. To test this hypothesis, we reviewed recent knowledge on the characteristics of particles emitted by laser printing, including their emission rates and accumulation in indoor air, electrostatic charges, localized emission and subsequent particle diffusion in relation to the human breathing zone. We then discuss the potential impact on the transmission of SAR-CoV-2 in indoor spaces. We found that emission rates from laser printers ranged from 108 to 1012 particles min-1, and these fine particles typically remain suspended for prolonged periods in indoor air. Electrostatic charges carried by these particles can reach 260-379 e per particle, thus enhancing their surface adsorption and deposition in human airways. Localized emission by laser printers and subsequent diffusion highly increase particle concentrations near the human breathing zone.

Bracing for impact: operational upshots from the National Centre for Infectious Diseases Screening Centre (Singapore) during the COVID-19 outbreak.

To combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore has adopted a rigorous screening approach that involves aggressive contact tracing, rapid isolation of confirmed or suspect cases, and immediate ring-fencing of emerging local clusters and hotspots. Our screening centre team has been involved in running Singapore's designated screening centre since the end of January this year. With a well-defined blueprint and substantial pre-outbreak preparatory work, initial operations at our screening centre commenced within a day on activation and full operational status was attained in 3 days. As of 8 April 2020, the screening centre had screened more than 14,000 patients. We have adopted a "whole-of-hospital" approach, enlisting the help from other departments and subspecialties to augment manpower. Meticulous infrastructure planning to facilitate patient flow and strict measures to prevent nosocomial transmission and occupational exposure were instituted to safeguard both the staff and patients. This paper aims to describe our key takeaways in the course of operations and discuss the challenges encountered.

Quality Assurance for Performing Arts Education: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis Approach

Senior management in tertiary institutions desires an efficient system that could help them assess and evaluate learning outcomes so that effective policies can be implemented to enhance teaching and learning. This gets intensified as broader issues arise and higher expectations are put on tertiary education—build a creative workforce and adapt to new technologies to analyze the large volume of teaching and learning data. Government and higher education policymakers have to rapidly adjust relevant policies to surmount the challenges from the pandemic and also to keep up with technological advancement. This demands a novel and efficient way for policymakers and senior management to see and gain insights from a large volume of data (e.g., student course and teacher evaluation). In this study, the researchers present such a system through various examples. The findings generated from this study contribute to the scholarship, and they provide a solution to senior management in tertiary institutions wanting to implement effective policies efficiently. The use of online analytical processing, virtual campus, online, and machine learning in education is growing. However, the use of these technology-enhanced approaches is rare in performing arts education. There has been no in-depth study, especially on technology-enhanced learning that leads to the improvement of teaching. This study utilizes a multi-dimensional analysis approach on the course student evaluation, a key aspect of the teaching and learning quality assurance for higher education. A novel analytical framework is developed and implemented at a leading performing arts university in Asia. It analyzes the course evaluation data of all courses (669 courses and 2664 responses) in the academic year 2018/2019 to make evidence-based recommendations. Such a framework provides an easy and effective visualization for senior management to identify courses that need closer scrutiny to ascertain whether and what areas of course enhancement measures are warranted.

Worldwide Research Trends on Artemisinin: A Bibliometric Analysis From 2000 to 2021.

Objective: Artemisinin is an organic compound that comes from Artemisia annua. Artemisinin treatment is the most important and effective method for treating malaria. Bibliometric analysis was carried out to identify the global research trends, hot spots, scientific frontiers, and output characteristics of artemisinin from 2000 to 2021. Methods: Publications and their recorded information from 2000 to 2021 were retrieved through the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). Using VOSviewer and Citespace, the hotspots and trends of studies on artemisinin were visualized. Results: A total of 8,466 publications were retrieved, and for the past 22 years, the annual number of publications associated with artemisinin kept increasing. The United States published most papers. The H-index and number of citations of the United States ranked first. The University of Oxford and MALARIA JOURNAL were the most productive affiliation and journal, respectively. A paper written by E.A. Ashley in 2011 achieved the highest global citation score. Keywords, such as "malaria," "artesunate," "plasmodium-falciparum," "in-vitro," "artemisinin resistance," "plasmodium falciparum," "resistance," and "artemether-lumefantrine," appeared most frequently. The research on artemisinin includes clinical research and animal and cell experiments. Conclusion: The biosynthesis, drug resistance mechanism, and combination of artemisinin have become more popular than before. Studies on artemisinin treating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been carried out, and good research results have been obtained.

Urban flooding events pose risks of virus spread during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Since the first report in December 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread to most parts of the world, with over 21.5 million people infected and nearly 768,000 deaths to date. Evidence suggests that transmission of the virus is primarily through respiratory droplets and contact routes, and airborne carriers such as atmospheric particulates and aerosols have also been proposed as important vectors for the environmental transmission of COVID-19. Sewage and human excreta have long been recognized as potential routes for transmitting human pathogens. The causative agent of the COVID-19 pandemic, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been detected in human feces and urine, where it could remain viable for days and show infectivity. Urban flooding, a common threat in summer caused by heavy rainfalls, is frequently reported in urban communities along with sewage overflows. With summer already underway and economy re-opening in many parts of the world, urban flooding and the often-accompanied sewage overflows could jeopardize previous mitigation efforts by posing renewed risks of virus spread in affected areas and communities. In this article, we present the up-to-date evidence and discussions on sewage-associated transmission of COVID-19, and highlighted the roles of sewage overflow and sewage-contaminated aerosols in two publicized events of community outbreaks. Further, we collected evidence in real-life environments to demonstrate the shortcuts of exposure to overflowed sewage and non-dispersed human excreta during a local urban flooding event. Given that communities serviced by combined sewer systems are particularly prone to such risks, local municipalities could prioritize wastewater infrastructure upgrades and consider combined sewer separations to minimize the risks of pathogen transmission via sewage overflows during epidemics.

Have artificial lighting and noise pollution caused zoonosis and the COVID-19 pandemic? A review.

Where did the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) come from? Did it spread to 'patient zero' through proactive human-animal contact? Why did humans faced an increasing number of zoonotic diseases in the past few decades? In this article, we propose a new theory by which human pollution such as artificial lighting and noise accentuate pathogen shedding from bats and other wild habitants in urban environments. This theory differs from the current hypothesis that wildlife trades and bushmeat consumption largely contribute to the spillover of zoonotic pathogens to humans. As natural reservoirs, bats harbor the greatest number of zoonotic viruses among all mammalian orders, while they also have a unique immune system to maintain functioning. Some bat species roost in proximity with human settlements, including urban communities and surrounding areas that are potentially most impacted by anthropogenic activities. We review the behavioral changes of wild habitants, including bats and other species, caused by environmental pollution such as artificial lighting and noise pollution, with focus on the spillover of zoonotic pathogens to humans. We found that there is a strong positive correlation between environmental stress and the behavior and health conditions of wild species, including bats. Specifically, artificial lighting attracts insectivorous bats to congregate around streetlights, resulting in changes in their diets and improved likelihood of close contact with humans and animals. Moreover, many bat species avoid lit areas by expending more energies on commuting and foraging. Noise pollution has similar effects on bat behavior. Bats exposed to chronic noise pollution have weakened immune functions, increased viral shedding, and declined immunity during pregnancy, lactation, and vulnerable periods due to noised-induced stress. Other wild species exposed to artificial lighting and noise pollution also show stress-induced behaviors and deteriorated health. Overall, evidence supports our hypothesis that artificial lighting and noise pollution have been overlooked as long-term contributors to the spillover of zoonotic pathogens to humans in urban environments.