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The COVID-19 lockdown contributes to the improvement of air quality. Most previous studies have attributed this to the reduction of human activity while ignoring the meteorological changes, this may lead to an overestimation or underestimation of the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on air pollution levels. To investigate this issue, we propose an XGBoost-based model to predict the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2022, Shanghai, and thus explore the limits of anthropogenic emission on air pollution levels by comprehensively employing the meteorological factors and the concentrations of other air pollutants. Results demonstrate that actual observations of PM2.5 and PM10 during the COVID-19 lockdown period were reduced by 60.81% and 43.12% compared with the predicted values (regarded as the period without the lockdown measures). In addition, by comparing with the time series prediction results without considering meteorological factors, the actual observations of PM2.5 and PM10 during the lockdown period were reduced by 50.20% and 19.06%, respectively, against the predicted values during the non-lockdown period. The analysis results indicate that ignoring meteorological factors will underestimate the positive impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on air quality. © 2023 by the authors.
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Objective To analyze the disinfection quality and influencing factors of nurseries in Nanjing during 2019-2021 so as to provide a scientific basis for optimizing preventive disinfection strategies and measures in nurseries. Methods Environmental samples from 389 nurseries in Nanjing from January 2019 to December 2021 were tested and the change of disinfection quality qualification rate was compared. Results The overall disinfection qualification rate of nurseries of year 2019-2021 were 96.32% 95.85% and 94.60% respectively showing a downward trend χ2trend = 8.67 P<0.05 . Specifically disinfection qualification rate of object surfaces staff hands and tableware showed a downward trend while the disinfection qualification rate of dynamic air showed an upward trend and the differences were statistically significant χ2trend = 23.17 12.32 5.37 21.48 P<0.05 . The total qualification rate of disinfection in Jiangning and Liuhe districts increased during 2019-2021 χ2trend = 21.46 24.05 P<0.05 . Conclusion Disinfection quality of nurseries in Nanjing has declined by year during 2019-2021 especially the object surfaces and staff hands. It is urgent to optimize and refine the strategies and measures for preventive disinfection in nurseries strengthen the training of personnel on disinfection knowledge and ensure the quality of disinfection in nurseries. © 2023 Chinese Journal of General Surgery. All rights reserved.
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A 5-month-old, intact male, yellow Labrador retriever was presented with a 24-hour history of anorexia and vomiting. Abdominal imaging revealed the presence of a mechanical obstruction in the jejunum and peritoneal effusion. Cytologic evaluation and culture of the effusion prior to surgery identified a suppurative exudate with bacteria consistent with septic peritonitis and suspected to be related to the intestinal lesion. An exploratory laparotomy was performed, and a segment of jejunum was circumferentially severely constricted by an off-white, fibrous band of tissue. Resection and anastomosis of the strangulated segment of jejunum and excision of the constricting band provided resolution of the clinical signs. The dog made a complete recovery. Histologic evaluation revealed the band to be composed of fibrovascular and smooth muscle tissue, consistent with an idiopathic anomalous congenital band. No other gastrointestinal lesions were observed, either grossly at surgery or histologically in the resected segment of intestine. To our knowledge, a similar structure has not been reported in the veterinary literature.Copyright © 2022 Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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This study explores the strategic issues related to the mobile learning quality in Taiwanese higher education during the COVID-19 pandemics. While much previous study determined the factors affecting mobile learning quality, seldom research works discussed the influence weights of the elements and their interrelations in the higher education through a comprehensive view. Hence, the purpose of this research is to explore the interrelationships and feedback between the factors affecting mobile learning quality via a combined multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) method, which will include decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and DEMATEL-based ANP (DANP) approaches. This recommended approach can offer guidance to prioritize the influence elements in the enhancement plans for mobile learning quality. This research uses the recommended approach in the higher education in Taiwan as an empirical study during COVID-19. These findings results state which service quality needs to be enhanced primarily, and learning ability is the most important factor influencing mobile learning quality during COVID-19. Furthermore, the results show that system quality perspective has the strongest impact on the relations and it also has an important effect on other perspectives. The results can provide guidance on assigning resources of limit to improve this mobile learning quality in Taiwanese higher education in the COVID-19 pandemics. © 2023 World Scientific Publishing Company.
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During the outbreak of the COVID-19, colleges and universities across the country carried out online teaching through information-based teaching platforms, and online teaching has developed rapidly, which has a far-reaching impact on Teaching in our country. In the post epidemic era, the continuous promotion of online and offline hybrid teaching mode is of great significance to the reform and innovation of higher education. Taking the course "supply chain management"as an example, around the teaching objectives of the course, develop and build the curriculum resources under the hybrid teaching mode, build the implementation plan of the hybrid teaching mode, summarize the teaching characteristics and shortcomings of the course, and put forward improvement strategies. Practice shows that blended teaching is of great significance to promote educational modernization and improve the quality of talent training. © 2022 ACM.
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At present, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2(SARS-CoV-2)infection is still rampant worldwide.As of September 10, 2021, there were about 222 million confirmed cases of corona virus disease 2019(COVID-19)and more than 4.6 million deaths worldwide.With the development of COVID-19 vaccines and the gradual vaccination worldwide, the increasing number of cases in children and unvaccinated young people has drawn attention.According to World Health Organization surveillance data, the proportion of COVID-19 infection cases in children gradually increased, and the proportion of cases in the age groups of under 5 years and 5-14 years increased from 1.0% and 2.5% in January 2020 to 2.0% and 8.7% in July 2021, respectively.At present, billions of adults have been vaccinated with various COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, and their protective effects including reducing infection and transmission, reducing severe disease and hospitalization, and reducing death, as well as high safety have been confirmed.Canada, the United States, Europe and other countries have approved the emergency COVID-19 vaccination in children and adolescents aged 12 to 17 years, and China has also approved the phased vaccination of COVID-19 vaccination in children and adolescents aged 3 to 17 years. For smooth advancement and implementation of COVID-19 vaccination in children, academic institutions, including National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Diseases, National Center for Children's Health, and The Society of Pediatrics, Chinese Medical Association organized relevant experts to reach this consensus on COVID-19 vaccination in children.Copyright © 2021 by the Chinese Medical Association.
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The outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) has become the most severe public health issue at the moment, threatening people's lives. Pediatricians in Shanghai have recently launched a discussion on the focused questions of NCP, including the incidence situation, epidemiological features, essentials of early screening, treatment and nosocomial infection prevention of children's novel coronavirus infection (2019-nCoV), and further put forward the experts proposal upon the patterns of disease occurrence, development, diagnosis and control, for the reference of frontline pediatricians.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.
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Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2(SARS-CoV-2)infection is still worldwide.As a vulnerable group, severe and dead pediatric cases are also reported.Under this severe epidemic situation, children should be well protected.With the widespread vaccination of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in adults, the infection rate have decreased.Therefore, SARS-CoV-2 vaccine inoculation for children groups step by step is of great significance to the protection of children and the prevention and control of corona virus disease 2019(COVID-19) as a whole.But the safety of children vaccinated with SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is a main concern of parents.Therefore, in order to ensure the safety of vaccination and the implementation of vaccination work, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Diseases, National Center for Children's Health and the Society of Pediatrics, Chinese Medical Association organized experts to interpret the main issue of parents about SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for children, in order to answer the doubts of parents.Copyright © 2021 by the Chinese Medical Association.
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Mobile government social media (GSM) plays a crucial role in facilitating government–citizen crisis communication and pandemic-related information delivery during public health emergencies. However, the lack of interaction and supervision, as well as deviations from the government's crisis communication position, can lead to some mobile GSM accounts gradually becoming "zombie” and "empty shell” accounts, resulting in high discontinuance rates. To investigate the underlying mechanism of mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies, this study utilized hybrid structural equation modeling with an artificial neural network approach to estimate linear and non-linear relations. Data were collected from 748 Chinese mobile GSM users during the COVID-19 pandemic from August to September 2021. The findings revealed that perceived risks and barriers, information overload, information irrelevance, and social media fatigue significantly affected mobile GSM users' discontinuous usage intentions during public health emergencies, while perceived internet censorship and information equivocality did not. The hybrid method predicted mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies with an accuracy of 87.9%. This study provides a holistic understanding of the antecedents of mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies. Practical insights were presented for mobile GSM managers to avoid user churn during public health emergencies. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
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2019 novel coronavirus(2019-nCoV) outbreak is one of the public health emergency of international concern.Since the 2019-nCoV outbreak, China has been adopting strict prevention and control measures, and has achieved remarkable results in the initial stage of prevention and control.However, some imported cases and sporadic regional cases have been found, and even short-term regional epidemics have occurred, indicating that the preventing and control against the epidemic remains grim.With the change of the incidence proportion and the number of cases in children under 18 years old, some new special symptoms and complications have appeared in children patients.In addition, with the occurrence of virus mutation, it has not only attracted attention from all parties, but also proposed a new topic for the prevention and treatment of 2019-nCoV infection in children of China.Based on the second edition, the present consensus further summarizes the clinical characteristics and experience of children's cases, and puts forward recommendations on the diagnostic criteria, laboratory examination, treatment, prevention and control of children's cases for providing reference for further guidance of treatment of 2019-nCoV infection in children.Copyright © 2021 Chinese Medical Association
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Faced with COVID-19 and the trend of aging, it is demanding to develop an online health metrics sensing solution for sustainable healthcare. An edge radio platform owning the function of integrated sensing and communications is promising to address the challenge. Radar demonstrates the capability for noncontact healthcare with high sensitivity and excellent privacy protection. Beyond conventional radar, this article presents a unique silicon-based radio platform for health status monitoring supported by coherent frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar at Ku-band and communication chip. The radar chip is fabricated by a 65-nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process and demonstrates a 1.5-GHz chirp bandwidth with a 15-GHz center frequency in 220-mW power consumption. A specific small-volume antenna with modified Vivaldi architecture is utilized for emitting and receiving radar beams. Biomedical experiments were implemented based on the radio platform cooperating with the antenna and system-on-chip (SoC) field-programmable gate array (FPGA) edge unit. An industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM)-band frequency-shift keying (FSK) communication chip in 915-MHz center frequency with microwatt-level power consumption is used to attain communications on radar-detected health information. Through unified integration of radar chip, management software, and communication unit, the integrated radio platform featuring <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$-$</tex-math> </inline-formula>72-dBm sensitivity with a 500-kb/s FSK data rate is exploited to drastically empower sustainable healthcare applications. IEEE
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In this paper, we proposed COVID-19 lung CT (computed tomography) images recognition with superscalar winograd circuit based on VGG19. We adopt the VGG-19 machine learning architecture to recognize lung CT images and speed up neural network operations through Superscalar Winograd Circuit. After a series of experiments, our proposed method has a high pneumonia recognition rate and high computational efficiency. © 2022 IEEE.
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While the immunogenicity of inactivated vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been characterized in several well-conducted clinical trials, real-world evidence concerning immune responses against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) raised by such vaccines is currently missing. Here, we comprehensively characterized various parameters of SARS-CoV-2-specific cellular and humoral immune responses induced by inactivated COVID-19 vaccines in 126 individuals under real-world conditions. After two doses of vaccination, S-receptor binding domain IgG (S-RBD IgG) and neutralizing antibody (NAb) were detected in 87.06% (74/85) and 78.82% (67/85) of individuals, respectively. Female participants developed higher concentrations of S-RBD IgG and NAb compared to male vaccinees. Interestingly, a longer dosing interval between the first and second vaccination resulted in a better long-term SARS-CoV-2 S-RBD IgG response. The frequencies of CD4+ T cells that produce effector cytokines (IFN-gamma, IL-2, and TNF-alpha) in response to stimulation with peptide pools corresponding to the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S), nucleocapsid (N) or membrane (M) protein were significantly higher in individuals received two doses of vaccine than those received one dose of vaccine and unvaccinated individuals. S, N, or M-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses were detectable in 95.83% (69/72) and 54.16% (39/72) of double-vaccinated individuals, respectively. The longitudinal analysis demonstrated that CD4+ T cell responses recognizing S, N, and M waned quickly after a single vaccine dose, but were boosted and became more sustained following a second dose. Overall, we provide a comprehensive characterization of immune responses induced by inactivated COVID-19 vaccines in real-world settings, suggesting that both humoral and cellular SARS-CoV-2 specific immunity are elicited in the majority of individuals after two doses of inactivated COVID-19 vaccines.
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S40 Figure 1Mortality rates of high-, medium- and low-dose statin patient groups, converted to Atorvastatin equivalent2, and those not prescribed a statin. Medium-dose statin patients featured independent association with greater mortality rates (*p=0.039)[Figure omitted. See PDF]ConclusionWe highlight a cohort of patients who demonstrated greater mortality from COVID-19 when prescribed medium-dose statins, with an otherwise non-significant effect on mortality of statins of all doses when compared to non-statin patients. Medium-dose statin patients may be those at highest risk of cardiovascular sequelae of COVID-19 with multiple comorbidities, but unable to tolerate maximum doses. We advocate caution when prescribing statins with established COVID-19 therapies until specific groups are identified from prospective clinical trials that may benefit from their use.ReferencesZhang XJ, et al. Cell Metab 2020;32(2):176–187.e4. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2020.06.015Hu D, et al. Zhonghua Nei Ke Za Zhi 2015;54:467–477