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Community engagement is heralded as a panacea for the inherent political challenges of public health governance. For COVID-19 vaccination planning in the United States, appeals for community engagement emerged in response to the disproportionate mortality and morbidity burdens on marginalized groups and as a bulwark against a political climate of vaccine hesitancy, scientific disinformation, and mistrust of public health. In this article, we use a culture-centered analytical framework to critique the discursive construct of "community" within public health documents that discuss community engagement strategies for COVID-19 vaccination. Through a critical-abductive analysis of more than 400 state public health department documents, we recognized the diverse axes on which appeals to the community are framed. Our findings show that the construct of "community" refers to both a material/tangible space marked by discursive struggle and one containing a moral economy of responsibility. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of conceptualizing community in these ways.
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Nanotechnology is nowadays very much successful in producing specifically functionalized nano-sized particles. In this work, copper nanoparticles were prepared by reduction method which is greener and environmentally suitable, cheap and best as compared to other conventional methods, particularly in the context of COVID in globalized world. The formation and size of copper nanoparticles was evidenced by the X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. The very high surface area of 35-50 m2/gm and very small crystallite sizes of 5-15 nm of these metal nanoparticles is mainly responsible for their effective involvement in removal of carbon dioxide gas as one of major hazardous pollutants from the environment. This chapter, as its main objective, mainly focuses on utility of nano technology and its beneficiary in creating a sustainable environment in economic world. Apart from laboratory experimental procedure and characterizations for preparation of copper nanoparticles, appropriate research methods such as simple statistical, econometric tools and mathematical tools have been used for economic analysis. However, as major findings of the results, developed countries have been successful in maintaining a sustainable human development, in spite of having higher per capita income (PCI) growth as compared to the role of developing countries with lower PCI in this global world. © 2022 by Emerald Publishing Limited.
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In view of the global pandemic caused in 2020 by the Novel Corona Virus, commonly known as COVID-19 it has become crucial to develop easy and rapid detection techniques for early and accurate diagnosis of the virus strain in human bodies. The major challenge in controlling COVID-19 is the massive percentage of infected people. However, early detection, precise diagnosis and management of severely infected cases are the key points in combating the current situation. With the day to day surge in the affected number of people, it has become utterly important to detect the virus at an early stage. Various diagnostic measures for COVID-19 with and without the aid of nanoparticles have been discussed in the current chapter. Preliminary diagnostic methods like CT scans, sensors like electrochemical bio sensors, optical bio sensors, thermal biosensors and piezoelectric bio sensors have been elucidated in the following sections as well as popular methods like RT PCR, POCs and LAMP techniques have also been discussed. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Aim: The aim of the study is to devise an innovative, ultraviolet (UV) enabled, self-sanitizing prosthesis trimming unit for dental prostheses in order to safeguard the dental operators and technicians from fine material pollutants and prevent nosocomial infection due to cross-contamination. Background: As the prosthesis remains soaked in the saliva, it tends to harbor microbes forming a safe haven for them. The process of trimming, for subsequent adjustments and corrections, makes these contaminated particles from the denture become airborne. The inhalation of the same infects the dental personnel. Therefore, trimming and smoothening of contaminated prostheses is considered a biological hazard, and it requires innovation and development to minimize the same. Technique: A closed unit of 12 × 15 inches Plexi fiber fitted with a straight handpiece and UV light was made for trimming of the prosthesis and later sanitization of the unit. A large transparent lid was hinged to the box from the top. A light-emitting diode (LED) light was used to enhance visibility during trimming. The box was fitted with gloves for the operator to insert their hands to trim the prosthesis with the handpiece inside. An inlet window of 2 × 4 inches covered with a split rubber dam sheet facilitated the placement of the prosthesis inside the unit for trimming. Sanitization of the unit was achieved by switching on an UV light of wavelength 222 nm placed inside the unit for 30 minutes. Conclusion: The unit has been designed to be effective in negating the danger of inhalation of contaminants released during denture trimming. The design helps in preventing aerosol contamination to the staff and cross-contamination to subsequent patients and the environment. Clinical significance: The unit has been developed to decrease aerosol contamination and safeguard the operatory from infections, especially considering the current COVID-19 scenario. The equipment can be effectively used in dental clinics and laboratories. It may be modified to accommodate dental lathes. Microbiological analysis of the unit to evaluate its quantitative efficacy can be further incorporated. © The Author(s).
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Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. It has affected over 200 countries and inflicted significant mortalities as well as disrupted the normal social and economic processes. In the absence of an established effective vaccination, the cornerstone of COVID-19 management largely depends on containment and mitigation strategies. However, it is increasingly felt that digital health can be widely used to facilitate COVID-19 pandemic management effectively, which is otherwise difficult to attain manually. Many countries depended on health technology to contain the impact of the virus. However, Singapore, a small country in the South-East Asian region demonstrated exemplary pandemic preparedness skills coupled with adoption of digital health technology to attain remarkable success in containing the virus. © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2” (SARS-CoV-2) disease gives a challenge to the healthcare facilities and economic systems across the world. To overcome this COVID-19 pandemic different vaccines are produced across the world like Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca-University of Oxford, Johnson & Johnson, Russia’s Sputnik V, Sinovac Biotech, Novavax, CanSino Biologics, and COVAXIN Bharat Biotech. These vaccines are injected to improved the immunity to fight against the SARS-CoV-2 infection. All these vaccine storage, efficiency, price are different and all vaccines work different variants of the virus. Some of the vaccines are mRNA type, Some are inactivated SARS-CoV-2, some are different. Our work is using the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique, we ranking the vaccine with respect to different criteria. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Conjunctivitis is a common ocular disease characterized by infection or swelling in the outer membrane of human eye. This contagious ocular disease could be controlled and well treated by medicines depending upon it’s category. To realize the connection between Conjunctivitis and other viral diseases, even for COVID-19, timely detection plays an important role. In this study, we have designed a mobile healthcare application (iConDet) through which initial level of Conjunctivitis detection is possible. Deep learning techniques have been used upon the Conjunctivitis dataset prepared by us in support of the claim and to achieve the desired accuracy of 84%. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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News and information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic is ever-evolving and accumulating. Due to the global relevance and importance, it is critical to be able to parse through the available information in an efficient and reliant manner to gauge scientific progression and understandings surrounding COVID-19. In this research, abstracts from a corpus of scientific articles are evaluated using different Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, including Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), and sentiment analysis, to better understand the breadth of extant literature. Results from the analyses show that in the very large corpus datasets, a large group of documents encompasses the overall or dominant general theme. However, the smaller clusters of documents reveal very precise and niche themes. Generalized COVID-19 is the dominant theme present in largest clusters. Smaller clusters include more specific terms (e.g., popular drugs, popular terms, key features/impacts related to COVID). With the resulting clusters, sentiment analysis was run to discover slight fluctuations over time depending on cluster with an overall relatively neutral sentiment. Overall, the precision of the BERT clusters distinguishes niche topics within the large corpus of literature and enables interesting and meaningful text analytics. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Complex Adaptive Systems Conference, June 2021.
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Introduction: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has necessitated closure of physical classroom for maintaining social distancing norms, prompting learning environment to shift from offline to online. Medical education has also undergone similar changes, and online education and assessment methods had to be implemented. Student's perception regarding the same was assessed through this study. Aim: To assess the perception of first year MBBS students about the online education and assessment during the lockdown period of two months. Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on the first year MBBS students of North Bengal Medical College (NBMCH) during the COVID-19 Lockdown period. All first year MBBS students of NBMCH were added in WhatsApp groups created for academic purposes by Department of Anatomy, NBMCH during the lockdown period. Respective teachers in the academic groups carried out sharing of Digital Education Material (DEM), holding Online Interaction (OI) and correspondence with students, and taking Online Assessments (OA) through sharing questions framed in Google Forms. After two months, the perception of the students was assessed through a voluntary participation based online survey designed in google forms, the results of which were tabulated later and analysed. Results: A total 95 students (54 Male, 41 Female) out of 200 had participated in the survey. Most students were reliant on smartphones (n=90, 94.7%) and mobile internet (n=78, 82%). Most agreed on DEM being relevant (83.2%) and informative (80.7%) but showed diverging opinion on ease of understanding, revision and overall fulfillment of learning objective. On OI majority students responded positively on promptness, relevancy, informative and helpfulness but only 46.8% considered DEM and OI fulfilled the overall learning objective. Regarding OA students had an overall positive opinion. Comparing the online mode with offline, students mostly preferred the latter, though agreeing that online method of education was effective and it was easier to score in OAs. Conclusion: While most students accepted online education, interaction and assessment positively, at the end most of them still preferred offline mode of education and assessment. This could reflect lack of student-student interaction and indicated need of further studies to explore the matter, to help us approach online education better.
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Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases (AD, PD) have a pediatric and young adult onset in Metropolitan Mexico City (MMC). The SARS-CoV-2 neurotropic RNA virus is triggering neurological complications and deep concern regarding acceleration of neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative processes already in progress. This review, based on our MMC experience, will discuss two major issues: 1) why residents chronically exposed to air pollution are likely to be more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 systemic and brain effects and 2) why young people with AD and PD already in progress will accelerate neurodegenerative processes. Secondary mental consequences of social distancing and isolation, fear, financial insecurity, violence, poor health support, and lack of understanding of the complex crisis are expected in MMC residents infected or free of SARS-CoV-2. MMC residents with pre-SARS-CoV-2 accumulation of misfolded proteins diagnostic of AD and PD and metal-rich, magnetic nanoparticles damaging key neural organelles are an ideal host for neurotropic SARS-CoV-2 RNA virus invading the body through the same portals damaged by nanoparticles: nasal olfactory epithelium, the gastrointestinal tract, and the alveolar-capillary portal. We urgently need MMC multicenter retrospective-prospective neurological and psychiatric population follow-up and intervention strategies in place in case of acceleration of neurodegenerative processes, increased risk of suicide, and mental disease worsening. Identification of vulnerable populations and continuous effort to lower air pollution ought to be critical steps. © 2021 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.