The Impact of COVID-19 on Human Mobility: A Case Study on New York

COVID-19 has dramatically changed people's mobility patterns. This report aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on people's mobility through statistics and comparing the visits of POIs (Point-Of-Interests) in New York State in 2019 and 2020. The report uses data from SafeGraph, which is a data company. The raw data contains POI visits across the United States in 2019 and 2020. Considering the analysis size and difficulty of the data, POI visits from New York State are extracted for analysis, and POI locations are classified according to the tags provided by the source data. The scale of analysis is from macro to micro, and they are the total POI visits data of New York State based on different ways in 2019 and 2020, the POI visits of CBG (Census Block Group) division in New York City, and three representative POI samples to do individual analysis. The analysis methods are: (1) use line plot and bar plot statistics to compare the trends of POI visits data from 2019 to 2020, and (2) make the spatial visualization comparison, which includes grid map, scatter map, heatmap, and OD map, between the first peak of epidemic impact in the first full week of April 2019 and April 2020, and the scope is narrowed to New York City. Wherein the OD maps are drawn based on the CBG division. Compared to related work, the analysis object includes CBG, categories, and individual POI. In addition, the analysis method combines statistical graphs and spatial visualizations and explores the policy impact of the New York City government. This report adopts more multidimensional analysis methods and objects to improve the comprehensiveness and reliability of the analysis content. © 2022 IEEE.

Developments and Trends in Energy Poverty Research—Literature Visualization Analysis Based on CiteSpace

The purpose of this paper is to help better understand the problem of energy poverty;to grasp the research context, evolution trends and research hotspots of energy poverty;and to find clues from research on energy poverty. In this paper, we use the scientific quantitative knowledge graph method and CiteSpace software to analyze 814 studies in the WOS (Web of Science) and CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) databases, such as a literature characteristic analysis, a core author and research institution network analysis, a research hotspot analysis, research trends and a frontier analysis. The results show that the specific connotations of energy poverty are different between developed countries and developing countries. In developed countries, energy poverty is mainly manifested in the affordability of energy consumption, while in developing countries, energy poverty is manifested in the availability of energy. The causes, impacts and solutions of energy poverty are the focus of CNKI and WOS literature, and their perspectives of the impacts and solutions are relatively consistent. However, in terms of the causes, scholars of WOS discuss the energy supply side and the demand side, while scholars of CNKI mainly analyze the energy demand side. The quantitative evaluation system of energy poverty has not been unified, which restricts the depth and breadth of energy poverty research. Topics such as the expanding scope of research objects;the interaction among energy poverty, the "two-carbon” target and other macro factors;the complex and severe energy poverty situation following the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine;and the ways to solve the energy poverty problem in the context of China may become the focus of research in the future. This study provides an overview for researchers who are not familiar with the field of energy poverty, and provides reference and inspiration for future research of scholars in the field of energy poverty research. © 2023 by the authors.

Path to sustainable development: Does digital economy matter in manufacturing green total factor productivity?

In the context of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and China's "digital power” strategy, the realization of a green shift of manufacturing has become a necessary condition to promote the economy, and the digital factor has increasingly become a new driving force. The DEA-Malmquist index and entropy method were used to measure the manufacturing green total factor productivity (GTFP) and the level of digital economy level from 2011 to 2018, respectively. This study then explored the impact of digital economy on manufacturing GTFP based on the system generalized method of moments (GMM) model, as well as the adjustment effects of talent aggregation and financial scale according to the moderating model. This research came to four conclusions. (1) The digital economy can significantly improve the manufacturing GTFP of China, and the influence shows the characteristic of a "marginal increase”;(2) notably, the perspective of manufacturing GTFP decomposition indicates that the digital economy exerts a significant positive effect on manufacturing technical efficiency during the current period but obviously hinders technical progress;(3) interestingly, a mechanistic test showed that the two dimensions of innovation environment—talent aggregation (0.385) and financial scale (0.359)—play critical moderating roles in the influencing process;and (4) the influence has evident regional heterogeneity—it is significantly positive in the east and negative in the central region and west. Finally, corresponding policy suggestions are suggested. © 2022 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Travel pattern variation effects on utility factor after COVID-19: An empirical case

Carbon emission is largely reduced during the COVID-19 due to the lockdown. However, the accurate impact in the personal transport sector after the epidemic is still not clear. To accurately measure the travel pattern variation effects on utility factor of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV s) due to COVID-19, travel pattern, charging pattern, and utility factors (UF) are compared in a typical city based on actual travel data before and after the pandemic. The result shows that the number of trips and the daily vehicle kilometers travelled decreased significantly during the pandemic while the average daily travel mileage increased quickly after the pandemic and is only 9% lower than that before the pandemic. Some consumers even travel longer with personal vehicles to avoid possible health risks from public transportation. The electricity utility factor after the pandemic is 0.022 larger compared to that before the pandemic due to the variation of travel patterns, a 60-km-range PHEV has a pre-pandemic standard UF of 0.745 and a post-pandemic standard UF of 0.767. Besides, the actual UF is 15% smaller compared to the standard UF due to the actual charging frequency in reality. © 2021 IEEE.

Pharmacokinetic and Safety Phase 1 Study and Microneutralization Assay Results with BRII-196/BRII-198, a Novel Antibody Cocktail Active Against a Wide Range of SARS-CoV-2 Variants

Background. BRII-196 and BRII-198 are human monoclonal antibodies (mAb) with an extended half-life targeting distinct epitopes of the spike protein on SARSCoV-2. Mutations in these epitope regions are continuously emerging, potentially conferring resistance to COVID-19 therapeutics in development. Individual phase I studies showed that BRII-196 or BRII-198 alone were safe and well tolerated in healthy subjects. The BRII-196 and BRII-198 cocktail is currently under evaluation in Phase 2/3 studies for the treatment of COVID-19. Methods. Preclinical study: BRII-196 and BRII-198 were evaluated in the microneutralization assay using pseudo-viruses encoding mutations identified in the spike protein of a panel of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concerns, including strains originating in UK, SA, BR, CA, and India. The fold-change in neutralization IC50 titers relative to wild-type virus was calculated. Phase 1 study: healthy adults received sequential IV BRII-196 and BRII-198 (n=9) or placebo (n=3);and were followed for 180 days. Two dose levels (750mg/750mg and 1500mg/1500mg) were evaluated for safety, pharmacokinetics and immunogenicity. Interim analysis results are presented. Results. Preclinical: BRII-196 and BRII-198 exhibited neutralizing activity against pseudo-virus variants that contained spike mutations of a panel of variants including B.1.1.7 (UK), B.1.351(SA), P.1(BR), B.1.427/429 (CA), B.1.526 (NY), and B.1.617 (IN), comparable to that against wild-type virus. Phase I study: BRII-196 plus BRII-198 was well tolerated with no dose-limiting adverse events (AEs), deaths, serious adverse events, or infusion reactions. The majority of AEs were isolated asymptomatic grade 1-2 laboratory abnormalities. (Table 1). Each mAb displayed pharmacokinetic characteristics expected of extended half-life YTE-antibodies. Conclusion. The BRII-196 and BRII-198 cocktail was well-tolerated, and maintains neutralization against currently reported circulating variants of concern. These preclinical and clinical results support further development of BRII-196 and BRII-198 as a therapeutic or prophylactic option for SARS-CoV-2.

DARNet: Dual-Attention Residual Network for Automatic Diagnosis of COVID-19 via CT Images

The ongoing global pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses a serious threat to public health and the economy. Rapid and accurate diagnosis of COVID-19 is essential to prevent the further spread of the disease and reduce its mortality. Chest Computed tomography (CT) is an effective tool for the early diagnosis of lung diseases including pneumonia. However, detecting COVID-19 from CT is demanding and prone to human errors as some early-stage patients may have negative findings on images. Recently, many deep learning methods have achieved impressive performance in this regard. Despite their effectiveness, most of these methods underestimate the rich spatial information preserved in the 3D structure or suffer from the propagation of errors. To address this problem, we propose a Dual-Attention Residual Network (DARNet) to automatically identify COVID-19 from other common pneumonia (CP) and healthy people using 3D chest CT images. Specifically, we design a dual-attention module consisting of channel-wise attention and depth-wise attention mechanisms. The former is utilized to enhance channel independence, while the latter is developed to recalibrate the depth-level features. Then, we integrate them in a unified manner to extract and refine the features at different levels to further improve the diagnostic performance. We evaluate DARNet on a large public CT dataset and obtain superior performance. Besides, the ablation study and visualization analysis prove the effectiveness and interpretability of the proposed method. © 2021 IEEE.

The International Spillover Effect of Import Trade on Energy Efficiency in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Evidence From China

China is in a transition period—its government has been expanding imports and pushing itself to shift from a world factory to a world market. One of the aims is to promote energy reform and ensure energy security. Taking the resource-based regions of China as objects, based on 2003–2017 panel data, this paper investigates energy efficiency loss by the stochastic frontier approach and the effects of different technical inefficiency items. Surprisingly, quantitative results show that 99.9% energy efficiency loss in these regions is caused by technical inefficiency (which had never been found and discussed in previous studies). However, this does not mean that China’s efforts to expand imports as a way to improve energy efficiency and energy security are undesirable. Instead, interestingly, it is import (−0.083***) rather than industrial structure (0.524***) that can significantly reduce energy efficiency loss. Then, it employs the counter-fact test to quantify the positive accelerating effect of human capital (average as high as 4.1%) as a key factor of absorptive capacity in the technology spillover. Lastly, it puts forward the corresponding policy suggestions in energy fields, to solve the problem effectively, especially the “comprehensive technology spreading center” and “innovative three-dimensional talent supplementary and flow mechanism”. Copyright © 2022 Hao, Wang and Xue.

Boosting Fairness for Masked Face Recognition

Face recognition achieved excellent performance in recent years. However, its potential for unfairness is raising alarm. For example, the recognition rate for the special group of East Asian is quite low. Many efforts have spent to improve the fairness of face recognition. During the COVID-19 pandemic, masked face recognition is becoming a hot topic but brings new challenging for fair face recognition. For example, the mouth and nose are important to recognizing faces of Asian groups. Masks would further reduce the recognition rate of Asian faces. To this end, this paper proposes a fair masked face recognition system. First, an appropriate masking method is used to generate masked faces. Men, a data re-sampling approach is employed to balance the data distribution and reduce the bias based on the analysis of training data. Moreover, we propose an asymmetric-arc-loss which is a combination of arc-face loss and circle-loss, it is useful for increasing recognition rate and reducing bias. Integrating these techniques, this paper obtained fairer and better face recognition results on masked faces.

A study of Chinese college students' COVID-19-related information needs and seeking behavior

Purpose: To better meet people's information needs under the public health crisis, this study explored the information needs and seeking behavior of college students in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: This research utilized a survey and the convenience snowball sampling method. A sample of 400 college students was obtained. Findings: The results revealed that college students have paid great attention to COVID-19-related information. They sought the information mainly for personal protection, obtaining the latest information and seeking information for family and friends. Their COVID-19-related information needs were diverse;at different stages, the concerns were different. Social media and mass media were both found to be the most useful tools for seeking COVID-19 information. Too much repetitive information, unclear authoritative and reliable informational sources, and difficulties in judging the authenticity of the information were the most common obstacles for them in information seeking. Nevertheless, the majority of the students agreed that they were very satisfied and somewhat satisfied with the current information services. This did not affect the students' understanding of the importance of health services provided by libraries. Originality/value: Insights into the people's information needs and information-seeking behavior of this study could help the information providers to offer appropriate information in better ways to improve the public's virus protection capabilities and maintain the stability of social order. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Effects and associated mechanisms of surfactants on wastewater treatment in the context of Covid-19

Hand washing enhanced by the Covid-19 has caused more surfactants to flow into wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), which might affect both wastewater treatment and sludge disposal. Surfactants in municipal wastewater are usually at 5~20 mg·L−1, but it could climb to 10~30 mg·L−1 during the pandemic. Only about 1% of the influent surfactants generally remains in the effluent, and approximately 10%~20% is adsorbed into excess sludge. Although the content of surfactants in wastewater is not so high, their special amphiphilic molecular structures could reduce oxygen transfer efficiency, destroy sludge flocs, and affect the activity and abundance of microorganisms associated with nitrogen and phosphorus removal. As for sludge treatment, however, surfactants seem positive on dehydration, cell disintegration, solubilizing sludge flocs, and even anaerobic digestion like hydrolysis and acidification. Thus, it is a high priority to address the source, structure and migration &transformation of surfactants first, then to elucidate their influences and associated countermeasures on wastewater treatment, and finally to demonstrate their positive impacts on sludge treatment/disposal. The review is proposed to pay attention to the long-term effect of surfactants at a high content due to the pandemic, so as to study future operational measures that could alleviate the negative effects on wastewater treatment and simultaneously utilizes the positive effects on sludge treatment. © 2021, Science Press. All right reserved.

Recent Developments in the Pathogenesis of COVID-19-associated Myocarditis

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2(SARS-CoV-2)was initially thought to mainly affect the respiratory system. A growing body of research has found that SARS-CoV-2 infection can affect multiple human organ systems, and heart is a major target organ secondary to lung. COVID-19-associated cardiac injury is often seen clinically, about 1%-7% of which is myocarditis. COVID-19-associated myocarditis often has a poor outcome. However, the possible pathogenesis mechanisms of COVID-19-associated cardiac injury, and its progression to COVID-19-associated myocarditis, as well as related pathophysiological changes are still unknown. Available data analysis has revealed that the recognized mechanism of cardiac injury in COVID-19 is ACE2-mediated cardiac injury, and cytokine storm-mediated or immune-mediated cardiac injury is only suggestive currently. Due to limited use of cardiac MRI and endocardial biopsy as well as insufficient autopsy findings and other basic research data in patients with COVID-19-associated myocarditis, the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19-associated myocarditis are challenges that still exist for clinicians. We reviewed the possible pathophysiological mechanisms of COVID-19-associated myocarditis, which will contribute to improving medical workers' understanding of this disease so that its related mortality may be reduced. Copyright © 2021 by the Chinese General Practice.

Changes of clinical characteristics of asymptomatic patients with positive SARS-Cov-2 nucleic acid test during treatment cycle and related risk factors

Objective: This study was designed to explore the clinical characteristics, outcomes, and related influencing factors for asymptomatic patients with positive Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) nucleic acid test. Methods: Clinical data of 1568 patients with positive SARS-Cov-2 nucleic acid test (SNAT) were collected retrospectively. The patients were assigned to an asymptomatic group and a symptomatic group according to the existence of clinical symptoms when they got positive result in nucleic acid test, and the clinical data of the two groups were analyzed and compared. In addition, the data of asymptomatic patients who showed clinical symptoms later and the results of two-week follow-up after cure were analyzed. Results: Among all enrolled patients, there were 1489 patients with positive symptoms and 79 asymptomatic patients, including 34 patients who developed symptoms during treatment. Logistic analysis revealed that age ≤45 years (OR=2.722, P<0.001), history of diabetes mellitus (OR=0.446, P=0.007), and history of cancer (OR=0.259, P=0.008) were independent factors for asymptomatic presentation in patients with positive SNAT, and age ≥46 years (OR=1.562, P=0.012) and history of hypertension (OR=2.077, P<0.001) were risk factors for the occurrence of clinical symptoms in asymptomatic patients with positive SNAT during hospitalization. During the follow-up after cure, 8 patients got reoccurring positive SNAT result. Conclusion: Asymptomatic patients with positive SNAT are mostly young and middle-aged people, and old age and hypertension are risk factors for the occurrence of positive clinical characteristics in asymptomatic patients.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Elderly's Bus Travel Behavior

COVID-19 has caused huge negative impacts on traffic and transportation. Existing research focused on the impact of COVID-19 on the traffic during the outbreak phase. There are still few studies related to the impact of COVID-19 on travel behavior during the post-epidemic phase. This paper analyzed the impact of COVID-19 during the post-epidemic phase, travelers' demographic characteristics, and perception of the COVID-19 severity on the elderly's travel behavior, with the confirmative factor analysis and Logit modeling. The results show that COVID-19 and perception of its severity have no significant impact on the elderly's short-distance trips. However, they have a significant impact on the elderly's willingness to travel by bus. Furthermore, these two factors have significant impacts on the elderly's trip frequency and bus trips. Copyright © 2020 by Science Press.

Efficacy analysis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 DNA vaccine and recombinant subunit vaccine inducing neutralizing antibodies in mice

Objective To investigate the efficacy of neutralizing antibodies induced by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) receptor-binding domain (RBD) and spike (S) protein S1 subunit. Methods The SARS-CoV-2 RBD and mouse immunoglobulin G1 (IgG1) Fc fragment (mFc) fusion protein expression plasmid pVRCRBD- mFc was constructed and transfected into human embryonic kidney 293T cells. The RBD-mFc fusion protein in the cell supernatants was detected by Western blotting. The effect of RBD-mFc in cell supernatants and CHO recombinant S1-human IgG1 Fc (S1-hFc) fusion protein on SARS-CoV-2 infection was detected by microneutralization test. BALB/c mice were immunized with plasmid pVRC-RBD-mFc and S1-hFc fusion protein via intramuscular injection. Anti-S1 IgG antibodies in mouse sera were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and the virus neutralization activity of mouse sera was detected by microneutralization test. Results The RBD-mFc fusion protein could be detected in the culture supernatants of 293T cells transfected with the plasmid pVRC-RBD-mFc, the concentrated supernatants and the S1- hFc fusion protein could inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection on Vero E6 cells in a concentration-dependent manner. Anti-S1 IgG antibodies could be detected in the sera of mice immunized with plasmid pVRC-RBD-mFc and S1-hFc fusion protein, and the sera of both groups could neutralize SARS-CoV-2 infection. The serum antibody titers and virus neutralization activity of S1- hFc fusion protein immunized mice were significantly higher than those of plasmid pVRC-RBD-mFc immunized mice (both P<0.01). Conclusion Both SARS-CoV-2 RBD and S1 subunit may be used as effective vaccine antigens. Compared with DNA vaccine, recombinant subunit vaccine can induce neutralizing antibody more effectively..