A Theoretical Essay on Interactions of SARS-CoV-2 Infection with Chronic Obesity Inflammation: an Application of Theoretical Knockouts

Pathophysiological characteristics of obesity includes chronic inflammation. Complications in the respiratory tract are related to bodily problems, which lead to a restriction of lung function due to reduced volume, inducing an increase in respiratory work. SARS-CoV-2 has a high potential for contamination by respiratory secretions and, therefore, obesity is one of the main risk factors for complications. The relations between obesity and SARS-CoV-2 are complex, since the immunological agents that are activated by these processes are ubiquitous. It is well-known that network analysis can generate results about the dynamics of complex biological phenomena, such as signalling networks, neural networks, immunological networks, and so on. Here we propose and analysis and interpretation of the complex relationships between obesity and COVID-19 in a meta-analysis study using complex network modelling and the theoretical knockouts technique. In a complex network of this kind, vertices are considered as immunological agents and their relation as directed edges. We built two networks: one related to COVID-19 and obesity (synergy) and another only with COVID-19. In both networks, we have performed the knockout of all 52 vertices. These knockouts indicated that, besides the Infected Host Cell and COVID viral particle, IL-17;CD40, AR and AL channels;and Th17, were the most relevant agents in this complex network. Overall, our study indicated the superior role and importance of IL-17 in this context. Such result corroborates with the role of IL-17 in identification and prognosis of Acute Respiratory Discomfort Syndrome (ARDS).

Who has to act? A qualitative exploration of emerging adults' critical consciousness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and violence against people of Color during 2020 brought troubling racial inequities to the forefront of American discourse. In line with the Critical Consciousness (CC) and Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) frameworks, emerging adults may have developed their capacity for critical reflection, motivation, and action against systemic inequities. We drew from interviews with 27 emerging adults (ages 18-23) across the US, and used thematic analysis to explore differences in their reflections, motivations to act, and actions based on their racial/ethnic identification. We found nuanced variability in their critical reflections based on self, social, or global awareness and experiences of marginalization. White and Asian emerging adults used vague language or expressed feeling their reflections were insufficient. Black and Latinx emerging adults emphasized the importance of education and raising awareness. Although all emerging adults took action based on a sense of duty, few engaged in critical action; decisions to take in-person action varied based on whether they viewed racism or COVID-19 as a greater threat. Findings demonstrate that emerging adults' experiences of racialization may have related to their CC development. We share implications for community psychologists conducting antiracist research addressing White fragility and dismantling racial hierarchy.

E-Cigarette Vapour Increases ACE2 and TMPRSS2 Expression in a Flavour- and Nicotine-Dependent Manner.

COVID-19 infects via the respiratory system, but it can affect multiple systems and lead to multi system failure. There is growing evidence that smoking may be associated with higher rates of COVID-19 infections and worse outcomes due to increased levels of ACE2 in lung epithelial cells, but it is unknown whether E-cigarette use may lead to increased risk of COVID-19 infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In this study, healthy donor bronchial epithelial cells (NHBE) and monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM) were exposed to cigarette smoke extract (CSE) or nicotine or flavoured E-cigarette vapour extract (EVE) before the assessment of SARS-CoV-2 recognition receptors ACE2 and TMPRSS2 genes. MDMs exposed to CSE and Tobacco EVE showed increased ACE2 expression; however, no treatment altered the TMPRSS2 expression. ACE2 was found to be upregulated by >2-fold in NHBE cells exposed to CSE, as well as nicotine, banana, or chocolate EVE, while TMPRSS2 was only upregulated by CSE or nicotine EVE exposure. These findings suggesting that flavourings can increase ACE2 expression in multiple cell types, while TMPRSS2 expression increases are limited to the epithelial cells in airways and may be limited to nicotine and/or cigarette smoke exposure. Therefore, increased risk of COVID-19 infection cannot be ruled out for vapers.

Federated Learning for Physical Violence Detection in Videos

Domestic violence has increased globally as the COVID-19 pandemic combines with economic and social stresses. Some works have used traditional feature extractors to identify body positions to detect physical violence. Besides, the use of Machine Learning is limited by the trade-off between collecting more data while keeping users' privacy. Federated Learning (FL) is a technique that allows the creation of client-server networks, in which anonymized training data can be uploaded to a central model, responsible for aggregating and keeping the model up to date, and then distributing the updated model to the clients' nodes. This paper proposed an FL approach to the violence detection problem in video. The framework was evaluated on AIRTLab Dataset, in which frames were extracted. It used pretrained Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to address the image classification problem. Inception v3, MobileNet v2, ResNet-152 v2, and VGG-16 architectures were evaluated, with the MobileNet architecture presenting the best performance, in terms of accuracy (99.4%), with a loss of 0.5% when compared to the non-FL setting. © 2022 IEEE.

‘Unsuitable’ environments: a qualitative study of US college youth learning online while sheltering-in-place in spring 2020

In late April 2020, we asked young adult college students to describe how they were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study analyzes data from the 370 students (52.3% of all students surveyed) who chose to describe their experiences with online learning in their response. Many students, and especially students from marginalized backgrounds (e.g. women and transgender and gender diverse, LGBTQ+, low-socioeconomic position), reported diverse hardships that were induced and/or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic that affected their learning. Most of these adverse experiences were tied to students’ shelter-in-place and remote learning conditions, which we frame as ‘unsuitable environments’, that limited students from engaging academically in the same ways they might have on campus. We situate these unsuitable environments within an intersectional social-ecological model to demonstrate how students’ transformed nested environments impact academic engagement and have implications for equity within institutions of higher education – an ecological disruption whose impacts remain important to evaluate in future research on online learning in higher education. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Youth Studies is the property of Routledge 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.)

Coronavirus Disease 2019-Related Extensive Thrombosis in a Patient Receiving Therapeutic Anticoagulation With Dabigatran.

Introduction and Objective: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with respiratory failure and a hypercoagulable state. Studies have shown the use of oral anticoagulants, specifically dabigatran, can significantly decrease mortality from COVID-19. Dabigatran is an oral direct thrombin inhibitor commonly used for nonvalvular atrial fibrillation and for the treatment or prevention of venous thromboembolism. The association of COVID-19-related extensive thrombosis while receiving full therapeutic anticoagulation with dabigatran has not been well-established in current literature. Case Report: We present a 73-year-old male patient with a history of persistent atrial fibrillation anticoagulated with dabigatran presenting with an active COVID-19 infection admitted to the intensive care unit. On hospital day 7, he developed extensive arterial and venous thromboembolisms. To our knowledge, this is the first published case of COVID-19-related extensive thrombosis while receiving full therapeutic anticoagulation with dabigatran. Discussion: Guidelines recommend prophylactic or therapeutic-dose anticoagulation with unfractionated heparin or low-molecular weight heparin for all patients if no contraindications exist; however, recommendations for the use of therapeutic oral anticoagulants have not been well established. Further studies are warranted to establish appropriate use of oral anticoagulants in the setting of COVID-19. Conclusion: Evidence from this report suggests clinicians should closely monitor patients at risk for hypercoagulability regardless of the anticoagulation therapy the patient may be receiving. Additionally, evidence from this case suggests a possible inferiority in the anticoagulation ability of dabigatran in patients with active COVID-19.

Analysis of information technologies and strategies in academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic

The main objective of this study was to analyze digital academic factors that increase academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Technological factors that increase average grades in online classes were determined through a multiple linear regression model. The results showed that the factors that obtained the highest values in the coefficients of the predictive model were: classes by mail, development of case study projects, digital presentations, and links to the internet suggested by the teacher. Other factors that also improved academic performance were: the subject, classes by teams, computer, access to IT (information technologies), explaining of topics, videos, evaluations, and notes. It is concluded that the academic performance of students in times of the COVID-19 pandemic depends on the digital tools that students have access to and use. © 2022. All Rights Reserved.

IoT-Based COVID-19 Health Monitoring System: Context, Early Warning and Self-Adaptation

The Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled novel solutions for monitoring patients' health through wearable sensors in conditions of both non-communicable and infectious diseases. In this paper, we report work in progress involving the development of an IoT-based COVID-19 health monitoring system that can effectively monitor the essential physiological functions of a patient through wireless sensors, thus supporting the early detection of severe cases and the continuous assessment of the patient status. The work provides several main contributions, as it includes: (i) a brief description of the current IoT-based system for remote monitoring of COVID-19 patients;(ii) a description of embedded characteristics of our device, including its contextual functions, early warning score mechanisms and self-adaptive features;and (iii) a description of our preliminary experiment results. Our proposed solution reduced drastically the amount of redundancy in data and still maintain monitoring accuracy. Given the COVID-19 scenarios, in which human resources are extended to the limit and the number of patients in severe conditions is often high, a system that can support IoT-based continuous monitoring are essential to identify changes in clinical status promptly and accurately and can potentially transform the way patients are monitored. © 2021 IEEE.

Transitioning the Teaching/Learning Process to Online Environment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The adaptation of both teachers and students to the application of pedagogical techniques in remote teaching/learning platforms of a Portuguese technology and engineering school of a higher education institution, due to the confinement imposed by the safety measures taken against the COVID-19 pandemic, is presented in this paper. The teachers’ behavior and students’ attitude concerning the change to remote teaching and learning methods is analysed. The actions taken, the difficulties experienced by the academic community in the transition from face-to-face to remote education, in particular the changeover of technical-scientific and pedagogical components in the course units, the evaluation of the teaching-learning process and the improvement needs are presented. Considerations on possible solutions and some relevant conclusions are also pointed out, showing that both teachers and students are not ready to switch to new digital means of education. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

"Emotional Distancing": Change and Strain in U.S. Young Adult College Students' Relationships During COVID-19.

We analyzed qualitative data from 707 USA college students aged 18-22 in late April 2020 regarding if and how their relationships had changed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most (69%) participants experienced relationship changes, most of whom (77%) described negative changes: less overall contact, feeling disconnected, and increased tension, some of which was due to conflict over pandemic-related public health precautions. Physical distancing from social contacts also created emotional distancing: it was harder to maintain affective connections via online platforms and within the isolating context of shelter-in-place. Due to emerging adulthood being a sensitive window for social development, the COVID-19 pandemic-induced emotional distancing could have long-term ramifications for this cohort's relationships over the course of their lives.

Mesoscopic Evaluation of DNA Mismatches in PCR Primer-Target Hybridisation to Detect SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern

Mismatches are any type of base-pairs other than AT and CG. They are an expected occurrence in PCR primer-target hybridisation and may interfere with the amplification and in some cases even prevent the detection of viruses and other types of target. Given the natural occurrence of mutations it is expected that the number of primer-target mismatches increases which may result in a larger number of false-negative PCR diagnostics. However, mismatches may equally improve the primer-target hybridisation since some types of mismatches may stabilize the helix. Only very recently have thermodynamic parameters become available that would allow the prediction of mismatch effects at buffer conditions similar to that of PCR. Here we collected primers from WHO recommendation and aligned them to the genomes of the current variants of concern (VOC): Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. We calculated the hybridisation temperatures taking into account up to three consecutive mismatches with the new parameters. We assumed that hybridisation temperatures to mismatched alignments within a range of 5 ∘ C of the non-mismatched temperature to still result in functional primers. In addition, we calculated strict and partial coverages for complete and mismatched alignments considering only single, double and triple consecutive mismatches. We found that if mismatches are taken into account, the coverage of WHO primers actually increase for VOCs and for the Delta variant it becomes 100%. This suggest that, at least for the moment, these primers should continue to be effective for the detection of VOCs. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Army home visitors' implementation of military family violence prevention programming in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

The Army New Parent Support Program (Army NPSP) provides home visitation services that promote positive parenting strategies and aims to prevent family violence for expectant military parents and military families with children from birth to age 3. Since the onset of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Army NPSP services have rapidly adapted to a telehealth model to fit with the suggested practices of physical distancing. Employing a grounded theory approach, nine virtual focus groups with 30 Army NPSP home visitors across eight installations were conducted to examine how this rapid shift has impacted their services, practice, and professional role. The present study identified two overarching themes: (1) working with families (e.g., continued engagement with families, increased communication, shifting family needs) and (2) adjusting to telework (e.g., technology, professional collaboration and communication, professional growth). Findings from these focus groups indicated that home visitors were actively engaged with their clients and experienced both challenges and benefits of telehealth. While the rapid transition was a big change, and home visitors missed the face-to-face interactions, they expressed that they were adapting and improving their virtual service delivery with time. Increased concerns regarding families' well-being due to social and physical isolation, increased symptoms of anxiety and depression, and grief for losses due to COVID-19, along with the ability to continue connections with these highly mobile families, points to the importance of telehealth as a means to implement parenting programs vital to military family well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Opportunities to Reduce Young Adult College Students' COVID-19-Related Risk Behaviors: Insights From a National, Longitudinal Cohort.

PURPOSE: To study how young adult college students are managing their health behaviors and risks related to spreading COVID-19. METHODS: We created a national cohort of full-time college students in late April 2020 (n = 707), and conducted a follow-up survey with participants in July 2020 (n = 543). Participants reported COVID-19-related health risk behaviors and COVID-19 symptoms, and also responded to an open-ended prompt about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their lives. Quantitative data were analyzed in Stata and we conducted content analysis to identify themes in the qualitative data. RESULTS: For most health protective behaviors (e.g., frequent handwashing, social distancing), participants were less compliant in summer 2020 than spring 2020, with the exception of face mask use, which increased. In each month of the first half of 2020, only approximately half of participants with any symptoms that could indicate COVID-19 stayed home exclusively while symptomatic (there was no meaningful change from pre-pandemic or over the course of the pandemic). In qualitative data, the participants who had gone to bars or clubs at least twice within a 4-week period this summer reported being bored and/or isolated, stressed, and/or taking pandemic safety measures seriously. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest multiple areas for intervention, including harm reduction and risk management education approaches for the students who are going to bars and clubs, and creating policies and programs to better incentivize young people with symptoms to stay home exclusively while symptomatic.

Framing social media and web-based communities within the COVID-19 pandemic: Enduring social isolation and subsequent deconfinement

As images circulate of people, all around the world, watching their cities from their windows and balconies, a sense of solemnity emerges. The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people to seclusion in an attempt to control contagion. The social isolation deriving from the adoption of containment strategies have displaced social interaction to online settings. Social media and web-based communities assume an increasingly central role in this scenario of pandemic, with an ever-growing number of people turning to these platforms to maintain social connection, to obtain information and to keep a sense of community. This paper aims to examine and frame the role of social media and web-based communities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It reviews current literature to propose a framework based on five main purposes of social media use and web-based communities: preserving physical health, promoting mental health, tending to education/business, searching and sharing information and socialising. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Developing a Training Web Application for Improving the COVID-19 Diagnostic Accuracy on Chest X-ray.

In December 2019, a new coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV emerged in Wuhan, China. The virus has spread globally and the infection was declared pandemic in March 2020. Although most cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are mild, some of them rapidly develop acute respiratory distress syndrome. In the clinical management, chest X-rays (CXR) are essential, but the evaluation of COVID-19 CXR could be a challenge. In this context, we developed COVID-19 TRAINING, a free Web application for training on the evaluation of COVID-19 CXR. The application included 196 CXR belonging to three categories: non-pathological, pathological compatible with COVID-19, and pathological non-compatible with COVID-19. On the training screen, images were shown to the users and they chose a diagnosis among those three possibilities. At any time, users could finish the training session and be evaluated through the estimation of their diagnostic accuracy values: sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and global accuracy. Images were hand-labeled by four thoracic radiologists. Average values for sensitivity, specificity, and global accuracy were .72, .64, and .68. Users who achieved better sensitivity registered less specificity (p < .0001) and those with higher specificity decreased their sensitivity (p < .0001). Users who sent more answers achieved better accuracy (p = .0002). The application COVID-19 TRAINING provides a revolutionary tool to learn the necessary skills to evaluate COVID-19 on CXR. Diagnosis training applications could provide a new original manner of evaluation for medical professionals based on their diagnostic accuracy values, and an efficient method to collect valuable data for research purposes.

Socioeconomic factors and the probability of death by Covid-19 in Brazil.

BACKGROUND: To design better measures to contain the Covid-19 epidemics, it is relevant to know whether socioeconomic factors are associated with a higher risk of death by Covid-19. This work estimates the effects of individual socioeconomic characteristics on the risk of death by Covid-19. METHODS: Logistic models were estimated to assess the effect of socioeconomic characteristics (income, race/ethnicity, schooling, occupation and economic activity) on the risk of death from Covid-19. For this purpose, Covid-19 individual death records in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil were combined with the Annual Register of Social Information, which contains socioeconomic information about formal workers. FINDINGS: Workers employed in establishments in the health and public safety sectors present a risk of dying 2.46 and 2.25 times higher than those employed in other activities. Non-white people, men, and those who work in the Metropolitan Region are also more likely to die from Covid-19. People with higher education are 44% less likely to die from the disease. CONCLUSIONS: Some population groups are more vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic and individual socioeconomic conditions play a relevant role in the probability of death by the disease. That should be considered in the design of prevention policies to be adopted.