Relational Ethics of Globalization under the COVID-19 Pandemic

Globalization has been going on for a long process, although controversial, never stopping the pace of development. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 which profoundly changed human society and human life, globalization has been facing unprecedented resistance and challenges. Returning to various debates on globalization ethics, analyzing various problems that occur in the process of globalization development, this article starts from relational ethics, aiming to demonstrate the rationality of the sustainable development of globalization in the post-pandemic era. It will argue that although globalization will have new forms and contents under the new situation, the overall trend will not be reversed. It stresses the significance and urgency to explore the discourse construction of the human community with a shared future and the relational ethics of globalization in the post-pandemic era from the perspectives of history, reality, and methodology.

Analyzing Jo-Ha-Kyu Mechanism in Japanese Traditional Performing Art Ningyo Joruri

IoT devices that connect people without physical contact become more and more important after the COVID-19 impact. However, strange appearances and movements performed by IoT devices (interactive humanoid robots) cause human discomfort, so-called the uncanny valley, preventing widespread use of humanoid IoT devices. On the contrary, a Japanese traditional performing art named Ningyo Joruri (puppet theater) is recognized as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, and the sophisticated puppet motions and its unique music style somehow can avoid causing human discomfort even if the appearance of puppets is close enough to humans. One of the most important factors in empathizing humans with the puppet without uncomfortable is the modulation technique of both music tempo and motion speed known as Jo-Ha-Kyu. In this study, we analyzed Ningyo Joruri based on the Jo-Ha-Kyu mechanism, which is an art concept adopted in the puppet theater to interact with audiences according to modulation of the tempo. First, we obtained puppet movements using motion capture systems with the music. Second, we detected the changing tempo in Ningyo Joruri using the deep learning method to demonstrate the Jo-Ha-Kyu mechanism quantitatively. Finally, we showed the correlation of Jo-Ha-Kyu between Ningyo Joruri music and puppet manipulation techniques in the frequency domain using the Hilbert Huang transform. Our results revealed that low-frequency movements play an important role in synchronizing motion to the tempo of corresponding music, presenting novel knowledge to motion designers for humanoid robots IoT devices. © 2022 IEEE.

[Obesity and hypertriglyceridemia: high risks for disease severity and mortality in COVID-19 patients]

As COVID-19 pandemic approaching its third year, more data have shown that obesity and hypertriglyceridemia are the high-risk factors for the major complications such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, thromboembolism, coagulopathy and cytokine storm, which are responsible for the majority of disease severity and mortality. In this review article, we have analyzed the public available clinical reports and laboratory research results of the COVID-19 studies by researchers and clinicians of many nations around the world. Many of these reports covered COVID-19 patients of different ethnic groups. We suggested that obesity and high triglycerides are high risks for severe COVID-19 and death. We also summarized the possible underlying molecular mechanism likely connecting the severe COVID-19 with obesity and hypertriglyceridemia. From public health perspective, we highlight the importance of the healthy diet and lifestyle in fighting against SARS-CoV-2 virus in long period of time.

Theoretical Study on Raman Characteristic Peaks of Coronavirus Spike Protein Based on Deep Learning

COVID-19, which has lasted for a year, has caused great damage to the global economy. In order to control COVID-19 effectively, rapid detection of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is an urgent problem. Spike protein is the detection point of Raman spectroscopy to detect SARS-CoV-2. The construction of spike protein Raman characteristic peaks plays an important role in the rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 using Raman technology. In this paper, we used Deep Neural Networks to construct the amide I and III characteristic peak model of spike proteins based on simplified exciton model, and combined with the experimental structures of seven coronaviruses (HCoV-229E, HCoV-HKUl, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2) spike proteins, analyzed the differences of amide I and III characteristic peaks of seven coronaviruses. The results showed that seven coronaviruses could be divided into four groups according to the amide I and III characteristic peaks of spike proteins: SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV form a group;HCoV-HKUl, HCoV-NL63 form a group;HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43 form a group independently. The frequency of amide I and III in the same group is relatively close,and it is difficult to distinguish spike proteins by the frequency of amide I and III ;the characteristic peaks of amide I and III in different groups are quite different, and spike proteins can be distinguished by Raman spectroscopy. The results provide a theoretical basis for the development of Raman spectroscopy for rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2. © 2022 Science Press. All rights reserved.

A Novel Fatigue Driving Detection Method Under the Mask-Wearing Condition

Fatigue driving is one of the major contributors to road accidents. Nowadays, COVID-19 is reaching epidemic proportions, which directly leads to the phenomenon of mask-wearing becomes ordinary among drivers. Most of the existing fatigue detection systems are unable to effectively determine the factual fatigue status of a driver that wearing a mask. Therefore, we propose a quick-witted fatigue detection system to counteract the obstruction of masks. The system detects faces by means of a pyramidbox-based approach. Then a modified PFLD-based method will predict the facial landmarks, from which the eye aspect ratio (EAR) is calculated. Ultimately, our self-made FDUM dataset was tested by using the evaluation method that combined PERCLOS and a method for blink frequency based on Gaussian distribution. Our system can achieve 97.06% accuracy in determining the fatigue status of the driver under the mask, which represents an excellent recognition rate of the system. © 2021 IEEE.

Surface-enhanced Raman effect of new coronavirus S protein in gold nanoparticles

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) technology has been widely used in viral molecular detection due to its high sensitivity, simple operation and rapid detection. The research of virus detection by Raman technology at home and abroad mainly focuses on the detection of the SERS spectrum of viral nucleic acids and various bases that make up the nucleic acids, and detection of viral proteins is rare. In this paper, the S protein of the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is used as the detection object, and with the label-free SERS detection method, the ordinary Raman spectra of solid and saturated liquid S protein of the SARS-CoV-2 and the SERS spectra of the low-concentration S protein of SARS-CoV-2 on the substrate of gold nanoparticles with a size of 40 nm are compared. The results show that it is completely feasible to use SERS technology to detect the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 on the substrate of 40 nm gold nanoparticles. The carboxyl groups in the S protein molecule of SARS-CoV-2 and gold nanoparticles are molecularly enhanced, and the amino groups and gold nanoparticles are electromagnetically enhanced, so that the Raman effect of the S protein of the SARS-CoV-2 is enhanced and the peak position is moved to a certain extent. The experiments obtained relatively good SERS spectra of the low-concentration S protein of SARS-CoV-2, which provides a method for the establishment of a sensitive, specific and rapid detection technology for the S protein of the SARS-CoV-2. © 2021, Editorial Office of High Power Laser and Particle Beams. All right reserved.

Application of Aromatherapy in Public Space in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the mental health of the public. In such a severe situation, aromatherapy can be applied to the daily life and injected into public Spaces such as parks and street green space, which can help the healthy development of the society. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the aromatherapy and its functions so far and explore the application of aromatherapy in landscape architecture. Based on healing garden case analysis of different groups, such as the elderly, rehabilitation trainers, people with disabilities and people with mental disorders, the following points should be paid attention to when aromatherapy is applied in public space: (1) the main purpose of aromatherapy is to relieve people’s pessimism, anxiety, depression and other psychological problems;(2) Aromatherapy should be placed where people are exposed to it on a daily basis. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Exploring individuals' effective preventive measures against epidemics through reinforcement learning

Individuals' preventive measures, as an effective way to suppress epidemic transmission and to protect themselves from infection, have attracted much academic concern, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, a reinforcement learning-based model is proposed to explore individuals' effective preventive measures against epidemics. Through extensive simulations, we find that the cost of preventive measures influences the epidemic transmission process significantly. The infection scale increases as the cost of preventive measures grows, which means that the government needs to provide preventive measures with low cost to suppress the epidemic transmission. In addition, the effective preventive measures vary from individual to individual according to the social contacts. Individuals who contact with others frequently in daily life are highly recommended to take strict preventive measures to protect themselves from infection, while those who have little social contacts do not need to take any measures considering the inevitable cost. Our research contributes to exploring the effective measures for individuals, which can provide the government and individuals useful suggestions in response to epidemics. © 2021 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd

Changes of air pollutants emission from vehicles on national and provincial roads of Hebei during the COVID-19 epidemic in China

In order to investigate the changes of air pollutants emissions from vehicles on national and provincial roads in Hebei province during the COVID-19 epidemic in China, the emission inventory of on-road mobile sources was established based on the daily traffic flow monitoring data of national and provincial roads from Jan. to Mar. of 2019 and 2020, respectively. The total traffic flow from Jan. to Mar. in 2020 decreased for 38.1% compared with that in 2019, while the emission intensity of CO, VOCs, NOx, PM2.5, PM10 decreased 31.3%, 32.7%, 19.1%, 20.2%, 20.0%, respectively. The total traffic flow on ordinary roads kept decreasing tendency in the first quarter of 2020, while for the national and the provincial highway, this number increased for 5.6% and 37.2% in Mar., respectively. During the Spring Festival travel rush of 2020, the total traffic flow of passenger cars and trucks was the 44.2% and 51.0% of that in the same period in 2019, and the emitted CO, VOCs, NOx, PM2.5, PM10 was 51.4%, 50.6%, 52.6%, 52.3%, 52.3% of that in last year, respectively. Passenger and truck traffic flow began to recover gradually from Feb. 14 in 2020, and at the end of Mar., the total traffic flow was 46.6% of that in last year, passenger cars and truck was 34.5% and 70.3% of that in last year, respectively. © 2021, Science Press. All right reserved.

Accurate Evaluation on the Interactions of SARS-CoV-2 with Its Receptor ACE2 and Antibodies CR3022/CB6*

The spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become a global health crisis. The binding affinity of SARS-CoV-2 (in particular the receptor binding domain, RBD) to its receptor angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and the antibodies is of great importance in understanding the infectivity of COVID-19 and evaluating the candidate therapeutic for COVID-19. We propose a new method based on molecular mechanics/Poisson-Boltzmann surface area (MM/PBSA) to accurately calculate the free energy of SARS-CoV-2 RBD binding to ACE2 and antibodies. The calculated binding free energy of SARS-CoV-2 RBD to ACE2 is -13.3 kcal/mol, and that of SARS-CoV RBD to ACE2 is -11.4 kcal/mol, which agree well with the experimental results of -11.3 kcal/mol and -10.1 kcal/mol, respectively. Moreover, we take two recently reported antibodies as examples, and calculate the free energy of antibodies binding to SARS-CoV-2 RBD, which is also consistent with the experimental findings. Further, within the framework of the modified MM/PBSA, we determine the key residues and the main driving forces for the SARS-CoV-2 RBD/CB6 interaction by the computational alanine scanning method. The present study offers a computationally efficient and numerically reliable method to evaluate the free energy of SARS-CoV-2 binding to other proteins, which may stimulate the development of the therapeutics against the COVID-19 disease in real applications.

Feasibility of manual ventilation replacing mechanical ventilation

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic it is anticipated that there will be a shortage of mechanical ventilators available for patients in critical condition. This has sparked many discussions about rationing resources and withholding care;however, an alternative may be to implement manual ventilation in these situations instead. Manual ventilation and a safety device were assessed for efficacy of extended use, such as may be required during this pandemic. Methods: To evaluate physical output characteristics of extended manual ventilation and efficacy of a barotrauma mitigation device, 47 medical students, nurses and medics completed two 1-hour manual ventilation sessions using the SmartLung 2000 Lung Simulator and 5300 Series Mass Flow Meter with a SPUR II resuscitator bag and endotracheal tube, mimicking a healthy adult with normal lung physiology, both with and without the Sotair device. Providers were randomised to complete their initial session either with or without the Sotair device. Findings: Collected data show wide variability in tidal volume and peak pressure in unmitigated manual breaths despite prior training and independent exploration of the resuscitation equipment prior to testing. The mean (±SD) tidal volume with bag only was 563.9±128.8 mL and with the safety device 536.1±80.9 mL (p<0.0001). The mean peak inspiratory pressure with bag only was 17.2±6.3 cm H2O and with the safety device 14.9±2.4 cm H2O (p<0.0001). Interpretation: While extended manual ventilation cannot replace mechanical ventilation, it is feasible with a safety device, which may reduce barotrauma, underventilation and overventilation. These results also demonstrate that withholding care and rationing resources may not be necessary. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.