ABSTRACT
Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between psychological distress and loneliness in adolescents during the COVID-19 epidemic, make relevant discussions through demographic variables, and construct a Taiwanese Adolescents Loneliness Scale (TALS). Methods: The research adopts the survey research method. The scale data were collected from 6,646 high school students to construct the TALS from Oct 2021 to Mar 2022. And the score of The 5-item Brief Symptom Rating Scale (BSRS-5), suicidal ideation, and demographic variables were also collected. Results:(1)The TALS has a total of six items and with good reliability and validity;(2) The adolescents' loneliness has significant positive correlations with psychological distress and suicidal ideation;(3) The adolescents' loneliness has significant negative correlations with peer relationship and caregiver relationship;(4) Both loneliness and psychological distress show significant differences in gender, grades and parental marital relationship;the psychological distress also shows a among different primary caregivers. Conclusions: The TALS can be applied as an assessment tool in the post-pandemic era. It provides the basis for the screening of in-crisis adolescents and the guidance for the following interventions. Furthermore, the TALS can assist the adolescent with psychological distress and suicidal ideation. The adolescents' loneliness has significant correlations with psychological distress, suicidal ideation, peer relationship and caregiver relationship. © 2022 Chinese Public Health Association of Taiwan. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing global pandemic exerting considerable strain on the health-care system. Sudden-onset sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) among patients with COVID-19 had been reported sparingly in the literature. Hearing loss can be easily overlooked in intensive care settings and establishing diagnosis can also be challenging. Proposed causes include injury to inner ear structures, cochlear nerve, or auditory brainstem. Prompt diagnosis and treatment is recommended to avoid long-term morbidity. All patients presenting with sudden-onset hearing loss should be screened for COVID-19. Here, we report a case of COVID-19 patient with SSNHL and how the hearing level is determined. Copyright © 2022 Indian Journal of Otology Published by Wolters Kluwer-Medknow.
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Background: Several studies have demonstrated immunogenicity after COVID-19 vaccination in patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases (AIRD) [1], but the differences between mRNA-based and vector vaccines and the cellular responses to COVID-19 vaccines according to distinct immunogenicity in AIRD patients are still unclear. Objectives: To investigate the differences in efficacy and safety between the vector vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19/AZD1222 (Oxford-AstraZeneca) and mRNA-based vaccine mRNA-1273 (Moderna) in patients with AIRD, and to explore the cell-cell interactions between high and low anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG levels in patients with rheumatic arthritis (RA) by single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). Methods: From September 16 to November 15, 2021, we consecutively enrolled 243 participants aged ≥20 years with AIRD who received COVID-19 vaccination, of whom 113 were immunized with AZD1222 and 130 with mRNA-1273. The level of serum IgG antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain on the spike protein S1 subunit was quantifed by electrochemiluminescence immuno-assay at 4-6 weeks after vaccination. Moreover, peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated from two RA patient with high anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG level and four RA patients with low level for scRNA-seq and cell-cell communication signal was analyzed by CellChat. Results: The anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG seropositivity rate was 78.8% (89/113) for AZD1222 and 83.1% (108/130) for mRNA-1273. The level of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG was higher in patients who received mRNA-1273 than in those who received AZD1222 (β: 30.15, 95% CI: 11.67-48.63, p=0.002) (Table 1). Prednisolone-equivalent dose >5 mg/day and methotrexate (MTX) use in AIRD patients, and non-anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α biologics and Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor use in RA patients were associated with inferior immunogenicity. ScRNA-seq revealed CD16-monocytes were predominant in RA patients with high anti-SARS-CoV2-IgG antibody level, and enriched pathways related to antigen presentation via major histocompatibility complex class II (MHC class II) were found (Figure 1). HLA-DRA and CD4 interaction was vigorous among all identifed MHC-II pathway and was enhanced in high anti-SARS-CoV2-IgG antibody group. Conclusion: mRNA-1273 and AZD1222 vaccines exhibited differential immunogenicity in patients with AIRD. Enriched pathways related to antigen presentation via MHC class II in CD16-monocytes might be associated with higher anti-SARS-CoV2-IgG level in RA patients and further study is warranted.
ABSTRACT
Mask mandate has been applied in many countries in the last two years as a simple but effective way to limit the Covid-19 transmission. Besides the guidance from authorities regarding mask use in public, numerous vision-based approaches have been developed to aid with the monitoring of face mask wearing. Despite promising results have been obtained, several challenges in vision-based masked face detection still remain, primarily due to the insufficient of a quality dataset covering adequate variations in lighting conditions, object scales, mask types, or occlusion levels. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of a lightweight masked face detection system under different lighting conditions and the possibility of enhancing its performance with the employment of an image enhancement algorithm and an illumination awareness classifier. A dataset of human subjects with and without face masks in different lighting conditions is first introduced. An illumination awareness classifier is then trained on the collected dataset, the labeling of which is processed automatically based on the difference in detection accuracy when an image enhancement algorithm is taken into account. Experimental results have shown that the combination of the masked face detection system with the illumination awareness and an image enhancement algorithm can boost the system performance to up to 8.6%, 7.4%, and 8.5% in terms of Accuracy, F1-score, and AP-M, respectively. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Detecting the crisis of supply chain management is an important subject for the sustainable management of e-commerce. The purpose of this study was to explore the application of Q-technique to the detection of supply chain crises in the imported food industry under the influence of COVID-19. Literature analysis, expert consultation, and Q-technique methods were adopted. We used an expert consultation and questionnaire survey combined with Q-technique using the imported food industry in Taiwan as an example. Fifteen business owners were interviewed to identify priorities for supply chain crises, and 137 questionnaires were collected to determine the strength of each item. By investigating suppliers, distributors, wholesalers, platform operators, online sellers, and logistics operators, this study obtained the priority of supply chain crisis items and the strength of factors for each item. The results show that Q-technique can effectively detect the crisis of cross-border supply chain management, clarifying import food industry e-commerce supply chain crisis items and determining their priority and strength, to help enterprises make emergency decisions regarding supply chain operation, and they can also be used as a reference for enterprises to respond to the crisis. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
ABSTRACT
Well-being is a complex concept with objective and subjective elements that contribute to life satisfaction. Medical students experience inevitable transition from pre-clinical to clinical training with increasingly more independence and responsibility. This study aimed to identify well-being issues in undergraduate clinical students. The emotional, physical, social, spiritual, occupational and intellectual aspects of well-being were focused on. A thorough literature search was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Studies reporting issues from the six aspects of well-being in undergraduate clinical students, and published in peer-reviewed journals in English language from the year 2000 to 2020 with full-text available online were included. The initial search from PubMed, OVID Medline, Psych INFO and CINAHL Plus retrieved 623 articles with 51 studies included in this review. Evidence from the previous studies demonstrated poor well-being among undergraduate clinical students. Stress, lack of exercise, low peer and family support, and mistreatment by clinicians and patients were common well-being issues encountered. Based on this literature review, the five aspects of well-being except the emotional aspect were less explored. Thus, it will be of interest to investigate well-being issues among Malaysian undergraduate clinical students from the physical and occupational aspects, which are further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify possible contributing factors. Undergraduate clinical students are faced with several well-being issues. Thus, early detection of these issues is important to avoid devastating consequences to students and patients. © Malaysian Association of Education in Medicine and Health Sciences and Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia. 2021