ABSTRACT
One Health is an upgrade and optimization of health concepts, which recognizes the integrated health of the human-animal-environment. It emphasizes the use of interdisciplinary collaboration, multi-sectoral coordination, and multi-organizational One Health approaches to solve scientific questions. The surveillance and early warning system is the basis of public health emergency prevention and control. The COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging infectious disease (EID) have put great challenges on the existing surveillance and early warning systems worldwide. Guided by the concept of One Health, we attempt to build a new pattern of integrated surveillance and early warning system for EID. We will detail the system including the One Health-based organizational structure, zoonotic and environmental science surveillance network, EID reporting process, and support and guarantee from education and policy. The integrated surveillance and early warning system for EID constructed here has practical and application prospects, and will provide guidance for the prevention and control of COVID-19 and the possible EID in the future.Copyright © 2022, National Institute of Parasitic Diseases. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
One Health is an upgrade and optimization of health concepts, which recognizes the integrated health of the human-animal-environment. It emphasizes the use of interdisciplinary collaboration, multi-sectoral coordination, and multi-organizational One Health approaches to solve scientific questions. The surveillance and early warning system is the basis of public health emergency prevention and control. The COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging infectious disease (EID) have put great challenges on the existing surveillance and early warning systems worldwide. Guided by the concept of One Health, we attempt to build a new pattern of integrated surveillance and early warning system for EID. We will detail the system including the One Health-based organizational structure, zoonotic and environmental science surveillance network, EID reporting process, and support and guarantee from education and policy. The integrated surveillance and early warning system for EID constructed here has practical and application prospects, and will provide guidance for the prevention and control of COVID-19 and the possible EID in the future. © 2022, National Institute of Parasitic Diseases. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Aim To determine the antiviral and anti-inflammatory effects of the recommended prescription for COVID-2019-lung-spleen qi deficiency(4-1)against in vitro infection of SARS-CoV-2 and common coronaviruses.Methods The main chemical substances of 4-1 were analyzed by LC-MS.The toxicity and antiviral effects of of 4-1 were detected by MTT and by CPE assay, respectively.The viral loads in cell supernatant and the expression of inflammatory factors induced by viral infection were determined by qRT-PCR.Results The recommended prescription 4-1 contained 94 chemical compounds, including flavonoids, steroids, sesquiterpenoids, and so on.The range of selection indexes for SARS-CoV-2 and common coronaviruses was 8.44+/-0.49~52.26+/-2.3.This prescription could inhibit the proliferation of SARS-CoV-2, the expression of ACE2 and S mRNA, and down regulate IL-1alpha and CCL-5/RANTES at 10, 5, and 2.5 g*L-1 doses.Further, at doses of 20, 10 and 5 g*L-1, it could inhibit the proliferation of three common coronaviruses and suppress the overexpression of IL-6, CXCL-8/IL-8, CXCL-10/IP-10, TNF-alpha, IFN-alpha, CCL-2/MCP-1, MIG and CCL-5/RANTES induced by OC43/229E infection.The inhibitory effects were dose-dependent.Conclusions The prescription 4-1 has antiviral and anti-inflammation effects against multiple coronaviruses.This study provides the research basis for the treatment of common respiratory viral infections and emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19 by using traditional Chinese medicine. Copyright © 2022 Publication Centre of Anhui Medical University. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Prior to Covid-19, Chinese students spent US$30 billion on overseas tuition fees but the pandemic is unlikely to dampen future demand for international education. However, while China sends more students abroad than any other nation, this market's current landscape and its associated data are insufficiently studied. This paper outlines the scope of a study using primarily data from www.mygoodagency.com, a new free platform for Chinese students to share and get information about global education. Currently, in a soft launch pilot phase, the platform aims to help students in their application process, while we simultaneously gather and study data related to students' destination choices, concerns, and use of educational agencies. Two sources of data from the platform appear promising. Firstly, all registered users are asked to complete a questionnaire surveying their intentions, education background, as well as services required from, satisfaction with, and fees paid to agencies. Secondly, users can post questions and replies in our forums comprising 100 plus topics. With nearly 5000 questions and replies in the forums, we are using content analysis software to generate a word frequency count to evaluate what issues are of importance to users. Preliminary data suggest changing trends of interest to educators, agencies, and students. For example, there is almost two times more discussion about IELTS than TOEFL, and the test of English proficiency used in the US. There is evidence of increasing interest in pursuing further studies in the greater China area and Asia in general, including in Hong Kong and Singapore. Regardless of the destination, 67.43% of respondents said they would pay substantial sums, sometimes in excess of US$23,000 to agencies for services such as writing application essays, securing internships, and selecting schools. The success of this pilot study will allow us to spread the platform's use across China, to support the continuing high demand for tertiary education, and help Chinese students make informed decisions, as well as enable us to conduct further research on their intentions and application processes, and possibly develop data-driven models to predict the results of their applications.
ABSTRACT
Chest computed tomography (CT) scans of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease usually come from multiple datasets gathered from different medical centers, and these images are sampled using different acquisition protocols. While integrating multicenter datasets increases sample size, it suffers from inter-center heterogeneity. To address this issue, we propose an augmented multicenter graph convolutional network (AM-GCN) to diagnose COVID-19 with steps as follows. First, we use a 3-D convolutional neural network to extract features from the initial CT scans, where a ghost module and a multitask framework are integrated to improve the network's performance. Second, we exploit the extracted features to construct a multicenter graph, which considers the intercenter heterogeneity and the disease status of training samples. Third, we propose an augmentation mechanism to augment training samples which forms an augmented multicenter graph. Finally, the diagnosis results are obtained by inputting the augmented multi-center graph into GCN. Based on 2223 COVID-19 subjects and 2221 normal controls from seven medical centers, our method has achieved a mean accuracy of 97.76%. The code for our model is made publicly.(1)
ABSTRACT
The systemic risk induced by climate change represents one of the most prominent threats facing humanity and has attracted increasing attention since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019. The existing literature highlights the importance of systemic risk induced by climate change, but there are still deficiencies in understanding its dynamics and assessing the risk. Aiming to bridge this gap, this study develops a theoretical framework and employs two cases to illustrate the concept, origin, occurrence, propagation, evolution, and assessment framework of systemic risk induced by climate change. The key findings include: 1) systemic risk induced by climate change derives from the rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions, increasingly complex connections among different socioeconomic systems, and continuous changes in exposure and vulnerability;2) systemic risk induced by climate change is a holistic risk generated by the interconnection, interaction, and dynamic evolution of different types of single risks, and its fundamental, defining feature is cascading effects. The extent of risk propagation and its duration depend on the characteristics of the various discrete risks that are connected to make up the systemic risk;3) impact domains, severity of impact, and probability of occurrences are three core indicators in systemic risk assessment, and the impact domains should include the economy, society, homeland security, human health, and living conditions. We propose to deepen systemic risk research from three aspects: to develop theories to understand the mechanism of systemic risk;to conduct empirical research to assess future risks;and to develop countermeasures to mitigate the risk. © 2021 The Authors
ABSTRACT
Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore the mechanisms of the implementation of wage (including the living expenses) payment obligation when the employer stops its work or production, and to evaluate the Chinese experience of continuous wage payment in the process of the prevention and control of COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach - Based on the law, regulation, and administrative interpretation of the obligation of continuous wage payment, this paper focuses on how the employer chooses wage payment strategies of enforce labor law in the process of epidemic prevention and control. Drawing on the risk burden theory, the theory of corporate social responsibility, and the relational theory within the enterprise organization, this paper studies the general approach of the continuous wage payment rules in view of the judicial practice, administrative enforcement and labor relations especially under the background of COVID-19 pandemic. Findings - Following the two-way feedback mechanism of legal rules, legal interpretation and legal practice, this paper finds three characters in the implementation of continuous wage payment: (a) the administrative interpretation of labor law has not been paid attention to for a long time, but it has played an important role in epidemic prevention and control;(b) the wage payment obligation without equal consideration has been obeyed in the practice of epidemic prevention and control, and its vague problems even has been resolved by a feasible and realistic explanation;(c) the practice of epidemic prevention and control provides a sample of general application of continuous wage payment rules,which is different from the marketoriented layoffs. Research limitations/implications - This paper is an discussion on a kind of macro implementation and its effect, which does not mean that every enterprise would choose so in the micro level, but only indicates that most enterprises abide by and carry out the administrative orders during the period of the prevention and control of the virus COVID-19. This paper provides answers for how to interpret the rules of continuous wage payment in judicial, and affirms that the great anti-COVID-19 actions and the traditional enterprise culture in China provide support for stable employment and healthy labor relations during the epidemic situation. Originality/value - This study develops the theory of operating risk burden work and puts forward the relational theory within the enterprise organization instead of the theory of corporate social responsibility. This paper contributes to the legal theory of wage protection in the context of epidemic situation and provide the Chinese experience of human resources management in anti- virus practice.