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Context and aims. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of environmental development in the seashore waters of Maluan Bay on the current situation of sustainable development of coastal villages. Methods. We used SPSS statistical software (ver. 26.0) to analyse the data with statistical verification, Student's t-test and ANOVA, the used the inverview method to solicit opinions on the questionnarie results, and, finally, conducted multivariate inspection and analysis to explore the results. Key results. The development of seashore waters can effectively enhance people's positive perceptions of the current economic, social, environmental and coastal ecological development, and increase their willingness to revisit and purchase property. Also, the insufficient number of security guards in villages can be improved, the environmental awareness of residents and their willingness to participate in decision-making can be enhanced. Conclusions and implications. Providing tourists with better tourism facilities, transportation, hotel and restaurant management and planning will increase leisure opportunities and solve environmental and waste problems such as in this scenic location. It will help achieve the goal of sustainable circular economy of water.
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Background: Patients with end-stage kidney disease who are undergoing dialysis have reduced immune responses to COVID-19 vaccination. Frailty is extremely common among dialysis patients and may contribute to the impaired immune responses. However, little is known about its effects on the immunogenicity following COVID-19 vaccination in the dialysis population. Method(s): Adult hemodialysis patients without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection who received one dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine were assessed for eligibility. Participants were categorized as robust, pre-frail, or frail using the Fried frailty criteria. Humoral responses were assessed at 28 days after vaccination by measuring titers of IgG antibody to the receptor-binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Seroconversion was defined as antibody levels >= 50 AU/mL. Multivariate logistic regression analyses compared humoral responses of frail or pre-frail participants with robust participants. Result(s): A total of 206 participants were included in the study, of whom 50 (24.3%) were considered frail, 86 (41.7%) pre-frail, and 70 (34.0%) robust. Compared with robust patients, a significantly smaller proportion of pre-frail and frail patients developed antispike antibody seroconversion (87.1%, 66.3%, and 40.0%, respectively;P <0.001). Frailty was associated with the absence of humoral responses after adjustment for confounders including age, sex, body mass index, diabetes, coronary artery disease, serum albumin, and lymphocyte count (odds ratio, 0.25;95% CI, 0.08-0.80;P for trend = 0.025). Conclusion(s): Frailty is independently associated with impaired humoral responses following COVID-19 vaccination in hemodialysis patients. Whether repeated booster vaccination may improve the immunogenicity in frail hemodialysis patients needs further research.
ABSTRACT
The kernel of an agent based simulation system for spreading of infectious disease needs a so called household structure (HSD) of the area being simulated which contains a list of households with the age of each member in the household being recorded. Such a household structure is available in a Census that is usually released every 10 years. Previous researches have shown the changing of the household structure has a great impact on disease spreading patterns. It is observed that the changing of the household structure e.g., the average citizen ages and household size, is at a faster speed. However, serious infectious diseases, such as SARS (year 2002), H1N1 (year 2009) and COVID-19 (year 2019), occur with a higher frequency now than previous eras. For example, it would be bad to use HSD2010 built using Census 2010 to simulate COVID-19. In view of this situation, we need a better way to obtain a good household structure in between the Census years in order for an agent-based simulation system to be effective. Note that though a detailed Census is not available every year, aggregated information such as the number of households with a particular size, and the number of people of a particular age are usually available almost monthly. Given HSDx, the household structure for year x, and the aggregated information from year y where y > x, we propose a Monte-Carlo based approach "patching" HSDx to get an approximated HSDy. To validate our algorithm, we pick x and y - x + 10 which both Censuses are available and find out the root-mean-square error (RMSE) between Census's HSDy and generated HSDy is fairly small for x = 1990 and 2000. The spreading patterns obtained by our simulation system have good matches. We hence obtain HSD2020 to be used in your system for studying the spreading of COVID-19.
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Caota Sand Dunes Geopark was established in June 2020 and conserves a landscape of coastal sand dunes at the Taoyuan coastline. This is the first geopark in Taiwan to promote the value of coastal dunes, recognizing their ecological value and their protection function in the face of climate change. This geopark has been actively promoted and attracts many visitors owing to its unique and photogenic landscape. In the initiation phase of a geopark it is significant to get feedback on the planning and services, to evaluate the existing management strategies for future development. Therefore, this study will assess tourist perceptions through visitor comments from Google reviews, to explore how well the core values of the geopark are represented in visitors’ experiences. A qualitative methodology based on review analysis has been used to find themes and patterns. Many reviews point out that washed-up waste is still a huge issue at the Caota dunes and mention that the Geopark development has not been completed. However, there is consensus on the fact that Caota Dunes is a very promising site, and with more planning underway it can become a successful geopark. Future management strategies should address the issues that are pointed out in the reviews for the sustainable development of this scenery post the Covid-19 Pandemic.
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Covid-19 is associated with a higher risk of thrombotic complications, and prophylactic dose anticoagulants are recommended for hospitalized nonpregnant patients by international treatment guidelines. Whether the benefit and efficacy of using anticoagulants among Taiwanese patients remains uncertain, we aimed to evaluate the use of anticoagulants and to investigate the risk factors of the patients. 144 patients with confirmed SARSCoV-2 infection were admitted to a regional teaching hospital in Taipei, Taiwan between May, 2021 and July, 2021. We retrospectively collected these patients' data from electronic medical records. Descriptive statistics, independent t-test and Chi-square were applied for patients' characteristics and important factors. Medication use evaluation was performed through SOAP format for every patient by dedicated pharmacists. There were 29% patients receiving anticoagulants, 90% of the use were for Covid-19 thromboprophylaxis. Among these patients, old age, hypertension and diabetes have a high correlation with mortality and the use of anticoagulants. There was no medication related problem that remains unresolved, all patients were completely assessed. © 2022 Society of Internal Medicine of Taiwan. All rights reserved.
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China's increasingly frequent multilateral economic trade activities require continuous cultivate high-quality foreign language talents. With the outbreak of the COVID-19, foreign language teaching in universities is confronted with the rapid transition of teaching mode, and teacher's using status of online teaching platforms is urgently demanded to be understood. The purpose of this research is to explore the variable factors that influence teachers' intention to use online teaching platforms. This research uses the Technology Acceptance Model which has a relatively complete explanatory ability as the theoretical basis, extracts two core independent variables and introduces experience as interference factors to construct the framework of this research. Taking Guangxi universities as an example, a questionnaire survey was distributed to 35 universities, with 263 foreign language teachers participated anonymously. The results of data analysis can help education researchers comprehend the current foreign language teachers' using status of online teaching platforms, at the same time provide a knowledge-based understanding of how to optimize and cultivate teachers informationization teaching capabilities to governments and universities. © 2021 ACM.
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Objectives: Cleanliness of hospitals' public environmental equipment or contact surfaces are frequently overlooked in the prevention of COVID-19. This paper discusses the cleaning frequency, with the purpose of preventing COVID-19 infection and controlling its dissipation during the pandemic. Methods: Using the ATP cold light reaction detection method, we quantified the degree of pollution in hospitals' public environmental equipment or contact surfaces to reflect the effect of actual cleaning frequency. Results: Empirical findings indicated that according to the conventional cleaning and enhanced cleaning frequency, different test results are expected as generally predicted. Routine cleaning cannot meet the standard recommended in the literature (i.e., <250 RLU). Conclusions: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting surfaces of objects frequently contacted by general public should be increased to every 2 hours. Moreover, these results should be regularly monitored and reflected to the cleaning staff, so that they can support strict compliance with environmental and hand hygiene to meet infection control goals for COVID-19. © 2020 Chinese Public Health Association of Taiwan. All rights reserved.