Platinum(IV) compounds as potential drugs: a quantitative structure- activity relationship study

Introduction: Machine learning methods, coupled with a tremendous increase in computer power in recent years, are promising tools in modern drug design and drug repurposing.Methods: Machine learning predictive models, publicly available at chemosophia. com, were used to predict the bioactivity of recently synthesized platinum(IV) complexes against different kinds of diseases and medical conditions. Two novel QSAR models based on the BiS algorithm are developed and validated, capable to predict activities against the SARS-CoV virus and its RNA dependent RNA polymerase.Results: The internal predictive power of the QSAR models was tested by 10-fold cross-validation, giving cross-R2 from 0.863 to 0.903. 38 different activities, ranging from antioxidant, antibacterial, and antiviral activities, to potential anti-inflammatory, anti-arrhythmic and anti-malarial activity were predicted for a series of eighteen platinum(IV) complexes.Conclusion: Complexes 1, 3 and 13 have high generalized optimality criteria and are predicted as potential SARS-CoV RNA dependent RNA polymerase inhibitors.

Transferring AI Explainability to User-Centered Explanations of Complex COVID-19 Information

This paper presents a user-centered approach to translating techniques and insights from AI explainability research to developing effective explanations of complex issues in other fields, on the example of COVID-19. We show how the problem of AI explainability and the explainability problem in the COVID-19 pandemic are related: as two specific instances of a more general explainability problem, occurring when people face in-transparent, complex systems and processes whose functioning is not readily observable and understandable to them ("black boxes”). Accordingly, we discuss how we applied an interdisciplinary, user-centered approach based on Design Thinking to develop a prototype of a user-centered explanation for a complex issue regarding people's perception of COVID-19 vaccine development. The developed prototype demonstrates how AI explainability techniques can be adapted and integrated with methods from communication science, visualization and HCI to be applied to this context. We also discuss results from a first evaluation in a user study with 88 participants and outline future work. The results indicate that it is possible to effectively apply methods and insights from explainable AI to explainability problems in other fields and support the suitability of our conceptual framework to inform that. In addition, we show how the lessons learned in the process provide new insights for informing further work on user-centered approaches to explainable AI itself. © 2022, The Author(s).

The Economic Impact of the First Two Years of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Czech Culture

The article deals with negative economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related countermeasures on the Czech culture. It proceeds from statistical data treated by the National Information and Consulting Centre for Culture (NIPOS) and the Czech Statistical Office. It compares 2020-2021 economic achievements of culture with the period before the pandemic. It demonstrates that the biggest losses caused by the drop in attendance to cultural activities were suffered by performing arts and cultural heritage. The immediate cause consisted in the restriction on the movement of people, which had a negative impact particularly on tourism. In view of the fact that domestic and inbound tourism affect the attendance of cultural events roughly equally, the article also pays attention to the relationship between culture and tourism. Culture is not a homogeneous entity. Along with activities aimed at the audience in a given place and time, it also includes market-oriented industries (press, media), and for this reason the impact of the pandemic on culture is not unambiguous. In contrast to the financial and economic crisis of 2011−2013, when market-oriented cultural disciplines were affected more than performing arts and cultural heritage, the opposite is the case during the pandemic. In the Czech Republic, the decline in total financial resources entering culture was accompanied by a decrease in household spending and, conversely, an increase in public spending on culture. In the case of both sources of finance, however, the portion of spending on culture in total expenditure decreased. Analysis of available data shows that the economic impact on cultural heritage and performing arts in the first two years of the pandemic is more than CZK 10 billion. © 2022 National Institute of Folk Culture. All rights reserved.

Family Patterns’ Role in IT Security Aware Behavior

IT security awareness is becoming an increasingly important issue as more and more of our lives are conducted virtually. But security awareness is not included in competences that public education is expected to develop, and we can only guess how it works during socialization in the family. My study focuses on this gap area. The survey was conducted in April 2021. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 emergency limited the possibilities: only online data collection was possible. A total of 1185 respondents completed the questionnaires, and after data cleaning, 1113 respondents were included in the database. The results show that in case of students, the gender of the respondent significantly influences security-conscious behaviour. However, when looking at parental behaviour, the gender of the student is not significant. The results also show that students whose parents use more ICT devices are more likely to protect their ICT devices and use firewalls, in sum family patterns have important role. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature B.V.

Consequence of acute lack of exercise: detraining and overall decrease in functional capacity

Almost everyone will experience a short-term lack of physical activity during their lifetime. In athletes who train regularly, the rea-son is most often an acute illness or injury. In the untrained population, restrictions on physical activity at any age are most often linked to health problems, but may also be related to anti-pandemic measures, as we have recently seen in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. As "detraining" we mean a condition that occurs with such an extraordinary reducing of physical activity. It is manifested mainly by a decrease or loss of adaptive abilities, achieved by previous training or previous normal daily physical activity. In athletes there is a decrease in performance, in average fit people there is a weakening of the state of health, which requi-res convalescence. For people who have previously suffered from health problems, "detraining" can lead to loss of independence and deepening of their frailty to complete dependence on the environment. In the prevention of these negative consequences, it is necessary to reduce the period of restriction of movement to a minimum, ensure sufficient protein in the diet, minimize time spent in bed or sedentary and use online instruction on how to exercise at home. Otherwise, only a few weeks without optimal movement leads to a very significant reduction in physical condition, manifested in particular by a very significant decrease of adaptations earned from training especialy of cardiorespiratory capacity. © 2021, Czech Medical Association J.E. Purkyne. All rights reserved.

Global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stroke care and intravenous thrombolysis

Objective: The objectives of this study were to measure the global impact of the pandemic on the volumes for intravenous thrombolysis (IVT), IVT transfers, and stroke hospitalizations over 4 months at the height of the pandemic (March 1 to June 30, 2020) compared with two control 4-month periods. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread repercussions on the delivery of health care worldwide. Design/Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional, observational, retrospective study across 6 continents, 70 countries, and 457 stroke centers. Diagnoses were identified by ICD-10 codes and/or classifications in stroke center databases. Results: There were 91,373 stroke admissions in the 4 months immediately before compared to 80,894 admissions during the pandemic months, representing an 11.5% (95%CI,-11.7 to-11.3, p<0.0001) decline. There were 13,334 IVT therapies in the 4 months preceding compared to 11,570 procedures during the pandemic, representing a 13.2% (95%CI,-13.8 to-12.7, p<0.0001) drop. Interfacility IVT transfers decreased from 1,337 to 1,178, or an 11.9% decrease (95%CI,-13.7 to-10.3, p=0.001). There were greater declines in primary compared to comprehensive stroke centers (CSC) for stroke hospitalizations (-17.3% vs-10.3%, p<0.0001) and IVT (-15.5% vs-12.6%, p=0.0001). Recovery of stroke hospitalization volume (9.5%, 95%CI 9.2-9.8, p<0.0001) was noted over the two later (May, June) versus the two earlier (March, April) months of the pandemic, with greater recovery in hospitals with lower COVID-19 hospitalization volume, high volume stroke center, and CSC. There was a 1.48% stroke rate across 119,967 COVID-19 hospitalizations. SARS-CoV-2 infection was noted in 3.3% (1,722/52,026) of all stroke admissions. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a global decline in the volume of stroke hospitalizations, IVT, and interfacility IVT transfers. Primary stroke centers and centers with higher COVID19 inpatient volumes experienced steeper declines. Recovery of stroke hospitalization was noted in the later pandemic months, with greater recovery in hospitals with lower COVID-19 hospitalizations, high volume stroke centers, and CSCs.