Analysis of Newspaper Reporting of Non-fatal Suicide Attempts During the Covid-19 Lockdown in Pakistan.

Background: This study was aimed to observe newspaper reports about non-fatal suicide attempts in Pakistan during the COVID-19 lockdown. Methods: We performed content analysis of news reports about incomplete suicides from four vernacular newspapers of Pakistan between March and August 2020. Results: A total of 87 news reports about suicide attempts were examined; the vast majority of the suicide attempters was Muslims (78%), males (64%), females (36%) with (33%) mentions of age, ranging from 19-30 years, and married were (76%). However, occupation was largely missing from (93%) of the news. Self-poisoning was the commonly reported method in (65%) of suicide attempts, whereas familial discord was the leading risk factor for (72%) of suicide attempts. Conclusions: Although psychological intervention is crucial to reduce familial discords as risk factors, monitoring the mental health conditions of people vulnerable to suicide and the figures on attempted suicides should be maintained and collected nationally and regionally.

A rare case of pulmonary benign metastasising leiomyomatosis in a woman with a previous history of hysterectomy for uterine fibroids.

Benign metastasising leiomyomatosis (BML) is a rare disease, predominantly seen in premenopausal women. It poses a diagnostic dilemma and can be misdiagnosed as malignancy. Here we present a case of 41-year-old woman with a previous history of hysterectomy 10 years ago for multiple fibroids. She presented with shortness of breath and chest discomfort. Chest X-ray showed pulmonary infiltrates. She was diagnosed with sarcoidosis and treated with steroids without any improvement. Further investigations including CT scan and bronchoscopy and lavage failed to confirm a diagnosis. Subsequently she underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery and histopathology revealed leiomyomatosis (so-called leiomyomatous hamartomas/benign metastasising leiomyomatosis). Oestrogen and progesterone receptors showed diffuse and strong nuclear staining. The patient was commenced on tamoxifen and a repeat chest X-ray in 8 weeks showed significant improvement. In women of reproductive age with previous hysterectomy and multiple lung nodules on imaging, the diagnosis of BML should be taken into consideration.

Emergency remote teaching of foreign languages at Saudi universities: Teachers' reported challenges, coping strategies and training needs.

Though considerable research has been reported on COVID-19-related distance education, some dimensions of remote foreign language teaching experiences during the pandemic crisis remain to be explored. The study reported in this paper investigated Saudi university foreign language teachers' accumulated experiences and reflective beliefs of emergency remote instruction. The study focused specifically on: a) the general educational challenges the teachers encountered and their attempts to overcome them; b) the teachers' perceived difficulties in remotely teaching and assessing foreign language areas and their strategies for coping with them; and c) their reflective evaluation of remote foreign language teaching after doing it for three academic terms. Questionnaire data was collected from 112 teachers of Arabic and English as foreign languages, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 teachers. The analysis of both data types showed that the participants had a number of general educational and language-teaching-specific challenges in their COVID-19-related remote teaching. The teachers generally viewed the remote assessment of language areas is a more challenging task than teaching them. Reading was rated as the least difficult language area to teach and assess remotely, whereas writing was the most difficult one. The teachers reported using various coping strategies to overcome the educational and language teaching-specific challenges. They perceived their remote teaching experiences positively, but reported their needs for further training in developing better online assessment methods, using different teaching platforms and technological tools, and managing classroom interactions. The paper ends by discussing the results of the study and their implications.

Facial Mask Detection Using Image Processing with Deep Learning

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has a significant impact on human life. The novel pandemic forced humans to change their lifestyles. Scientists have broken through the vaccine in many countries, but the face mask is the only protection for public interaction. In this study, deep neural networks (DNN) have been employed to determine the persons wearing masks correctly. The faster region-based convolutional neural networks (RCNN) model has been used to train the data using graphics processing unit (GPU) device. To achieve our goals, we used a multiphase detection model: first, to label the face mask, and second to detect the edge and compute edge projection for the chosen face region within the face mask. The current findings revealed that faster RCNN was efficient and precise, giving 97% accuracy. The overall loss after 200,000 epochs is 0.0503, with a trend to decrease. While the loss is falling, we are getting more accurate results. As a result, the faster RCNN technique effectively identifies whether a person is wearing face masks or not, and the training period was decreased with better accuracy. In the future, Deep Neural Network (DNN) might be used first to train the data and then compress the dimensions of the input to run it on low-powered devices, resulting in a lower computational cost. Our proposed system can achieve high face detection accuracy and coarsely obtain face posture estimation based on the specified rule. The faster RCNN learning algorithm returns high precision, and the model's lower computational cost is achieved on GPU. We use the "label-image" application to label the photographs extracted from the dataset and apply Inception V2 of faster RCNN for face mask detection and classification. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Mathematical Problems in Engineering is the property of Hindawi Limited and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Immune mechanisms in cancer patients that lead to poor outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Patients with cancers have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is highlighted by the adverse outcomes in cancer patients with COVID-19 as well as by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer care. Patients with cancer constitute a heterogeneous population that exhibits distinct mechanisms of immune dysfunction, associated with distinct systemic features of hot (T-cell-inflamed/infiltrated) and cold (Non-T-cell-inflamed and/or infiltrated) tumors. The former show hyper immune activated cells and a highly inflammatory environment while, contrastingly, the latter show the profile of a senescent and/or quiescent immune system. Thus, the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 infection in different types of cancers can show distinct trajectories which could lead to a variety of clinical and pathophysiological outcomes. The altered immunological environment including cytokines that characterizes hot and cold tumors will lead to different mechanisms of immune dysfunction, which will result in downstream effects on the course of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This review will focus on defining the known contributions of soluble pro- and anti-inflammatory mediators on immune function including altered T-cells and B-cells responses and as well on how these factors modulate the expression of SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2, TMPRSS2 expression, and lymph node fibrosis in cancer patients. We will propose immune mechanisms that underlie the distinct courses of SARS-CoV-2 infection in cancer patients and impact on the success of immune based therapies that have significantly improved cancer outcomes. Better understanding of the immune mechanisms prevalent in cancer patients that are associated to the outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection will help to identify the high-risk cancer patients and develop immune-based approaches to prevent significant adverse outcomes by targeting these pathways.

A yeast expressed RBD-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine formulated with 3M-052-alum adjuvant promotes protective efficacy in non-human primates.

Ongoing SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development is focused on identifying stable, cost-effective, and accessible candidates for global use, specifically in low and middle-income countries. Here, we report the efficacy of a rapidly scalable, novel yeast expressed SARS-CoV-2 specific receptor-binding domain (RBD) based vaccine in rhesus macaques. We formulated the RBD immunogen in alum, a licensed and an emerging alum adsorbed TLR-7/8 targeted, 3M-052-alum adjuvants. The RBD+3M-052-alum adjuvanted vaccine promoted better RBD binding and effector antibodies, higher CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies, improved Th1 biased CD4+T cell reactions, and increased CD8+ T cell responses when compared to the alum-alone adjuvanted vaccine. RBD+3M-052-alum induced a significant reduction of SARS-CoV-2 virus in respiratory tract upon challenge, accompanied by reduced lung inflammation when compared with unvaccinated controls. Anti-RBD antibody responses in vaccinated animals inversely correlated with viral load in nasal secretions and BAL. RBD+3M-052-alum blocked a post SARS-CoV-2 challenge increase in CD14+CD16++ intermediate blood monocytes, and Fractalkine, MCP-1, and TRAIL in the plasma. Decreased plasma analytes and intermediate monocyte frequencies correlated with reduced nasal and BAL viral loads. Lastly, RBD-specific plasma cells accumulated in the draining lymph nodes and not in the bone marrow, contrary to previous findings. Together, these data show that a yeast expressed, RBD-based vaccine+3M-052-alum provides robust immune responses and protection against SARS-CoV-2, making it a strong and scalable vaccine candidate.

Impact of Heat Index and Ultraviolet Index on COVID-19 in Major Cities of Pakistan.

INTRODUCTION: The world population is under the grip of global pandemic of COVID-19. The present study analyzed relationship between meteorological parameters and COVID-19 in three major cities of Pakistan, that is, Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar. METHODS: The impacts of heat index (HI) and ultraviolet index (UVI) over daily COVID-19 cases have examined to identify its transmission and propagation. The significance of basic reproductive number (R0), growth rate (Gr) and doubling time (Td) of COVID-19 with HI and UVI was determined. RESULTS: Both indices show a significant positive correlation (at 5% significance level) to R0, Td, and Gr of COVID-19 patients. Our results showed that the minimum threshold temperature of 33 °C for HI (with a positive variation of 3 °C to 5 °C) put a significant impact on new cases. CONCLUSION: HI and UVI impacted significantly to decline COVID-19 cases over the region.