Correlation between Periodontal Diseases and COVID-19: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective: To finding the correlation of COVID-19 with periodontal status. Methods: This systematic review and meta-analysis were aimed to overview studies of the relationship between periodontal disease and the severity of COVID-19 (hospitalization). There were nine studies, analyzed in this systematic review (nine reviews and three meta-analyses). The quality assessment of studies was using Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) and the pooling effect of meta-analysis were using random-effects model. Results: The NOS scores were Satisfied (5-6 stars) for seven studies, meanwhile good (7 stars) for two studies. The estimated OR was 2.68 (P= 0.006). The heterogeneity (I2 ) was 61%, showed moderate (P=0.006). The heterogeneity (I2 ) was 61%, showed moderate het-erogeneity. COVID-19 and severity depended on the host and viral factors that influence the immune response. The surge of cytokines (especially IL-6) was found as an imperative role in the COVID-19 and periodontal diseases. Finally, periodontal diseases were found positively contributed to the severity of COVID-19. Conclusion: Periodontal diseases were found associated with the severity and mortality of COVID-19. However, further studies are a necessity to generalize in other populations of COVID-19 patients. © 2022 JDMFS.

Sustainable indigenous cattle production in Brebes Regency, Indonesia: opportunities and threats during pandemic

This study assesses the sustainability of indigenous cattle production (Jabres Cattle) during the COVID 19 pandemic in Brebes Regency, Indonesia. The sustainability of Jabres cattle production is considered from the aspects of production, socio-economic, and environmental aspects. The study was conducted on 64 Jabres farmers in 5 sub-districts (Ketanggungan, Bantarkawung, Banjarharjo, Larangan, and Salem). Respondents were taken using a simple random sampling method and data was taken using online questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The indigenous cattle farmers in Brebes Regency have a long experience as beef cattle farmers (10.7 years on average) with an average ownership scale of 7 heads. During the pandemic, there was an increase of 54.7 percent of farmers who felt it was difficult to get cattle breeds compared to before the pandemic. The number of farmers who found it difficult to get forage also showed an increase of 36 percent compared to before the pandemic. Likewise, an increase in the number of farmers (75 percent) felt that it was increasingly difficult to sell beef cattle, which resulted in not making it easy for profits. However, the COVID 19 pandemic can encourage all farmers to pay more attention to the cleanliness of cowshed and the cage environment. Most of the indigenous cattle farmers (89 percent) remain committed to continuing their business despite difficulties in obtaining calves, feed, and selling cattle. Farmers still have confidence that the difficult situation will pass, and demand slaughter cattle will recover.

The prediction of coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak on Bangladesh perspective using machine learning: a comparative study

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has made a huge pandemic situation in many countries of the world including Bangladesh. If the increase rate of this threat can be forecasted, immediate measures can be taken. This study is an effort to forecast the threat of present pandemic situation using machine learning (ML) forecasting models. Forecasting was done in three categories in the next 30 days range. In our study, multiple linear regression performed best among the other algorithms in all categories with R2 score of 99% for first two categories and 94% for the third category. Ridge regression performed great for the first two categories with R2 scores of 99% each but performed poorly for the third category with R2 score of 43%. Lasso regression performed reasonably well with R2 scores of 97%, 99% and 75% for the three categories. We also used Facebook Prophet to predict 30 days beyond our train data which gave us healthy R2 scores of 92% and 83% for the first two categories but performed poorly for the third category with R2 score of 34%. Also, all the models’ performances were evaluated with a 40-day prediction interval in which multiple linear regression outperformed other algorithms. © 2022 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved.

Engaging Novice Writers in Online Collaborative Review through Peer-Review Circles

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, this article presents online Peer-Review Circles (PRC) as an innovative and collaborative approach to academic writing, mainly proofreading and copy-editing processes. It aims to engage novice second language (L2) writers in online joint review and increase their understanding of pre-reviewing scholarly papers before submission. The authors had observed that a large number of doctoral students are still considered novice writers. Therefore, there was a need for a practical approach to improve their review skills and engage them in online PRC activities. Grounded in Monologue-Dialogue-Discussion (MDD) Circles (Manning & Jobbitt, 2018), this article extends its potential to be adopted and used beyond the classroom and mandatory ELT contexts. MDD requires three consecutive stages: 1) primary reviewer’s monologue, 2) primary and secondary reviewer’s dialogue, and 3) writer and the reviewers perform a group discussion. These activities will help the writers to look after the manuscripts simultaneously from a PRC perspective. We also developed peer review Feedback Questions (FQs) to guide the reviewers to perform meaningful discussions. The output of the PRCs will likely be an initial review or a pre-evaluation process to improve the manuscript quality, readability, and publishability. © 2022, Universitas Negeri Makassar- Faculty of Languages and Literature. All rights reserved.

Analysis of Online Education System of Bangladesh during COVID-19 Pandemic Based on NLP and Machine Learning: Problem and Prospect

The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has interrupted the education system throughout the world. Bangladesh is no unlike;all educational institutions are shut down across the country. The online teaching method is quite new especially for the developing countries like Bangladesh. Therefore, the main aim of this work is to mine student's opinions about online class during this COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve this aim, this paper uses a questionnaire survey through the google form to collect Bangladeshi student's opinion on online class, build a corpus of 5005 data containing both Bangla and Romanized Bangla text. After data pre-processing and extracting the features, machine learning classifiers were deployed. Then performance measurement was done in terms of accuracy, precision, recall and F1 score. In the final evaluation, we achieved highest of 80% accuracy with SVM classifier, where the accuracy achieved by Logistic Regression, Random Forest and Multinomial Naïve Bayes classifier was 78%, 77% and 77% respectively. We tried to predictthe problems faced by students and suggested possible solutions about online class. The result showed that 27.9% student faced financial problem and 25.8% student faced unstable internet problem. 54.8% user suggested stable internet facility in low cost or free and 23.1% suggested financial assistance for online class as the possible solution of aforementioned problems. © 2021 IEEE.

Detrimental impact of Indonesian food estate policy: Conflict of norms, destruction of protected forest, and its implication to the climate change

In response to the food crisis threat due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indonesian Government initiates a national food supply enhancement program recognized as food estate which was then established as a part of National Strategic Programs. To maintain its implementation, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry through PermenLHK 24/2020 allows the legalization of forest land utilization, including the protected forest land for the food estate program. This study aims to analyze emerging conflict norms related to the utilization of the protected forest in Indonesia’s food estate program. The method used is normative legal research conducted by reviewing various forestry-related legal instruments and principles in Indonesia. The main findings reveal that the legalization of the utilization of protected forests for food estate projects by PermenLHK 24/2020 does not meet legal certainty and contradicts the norms incorporated in the hierarchical higher related regulations. In connection to climate change, the legalization of utilizing protected forests for the food estate program will open up opportunities for deforestation and encourage degradation of the protected function of these forests. The forestry sector has become one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Indonesia, with deforestation and land degradation as the root of the problem. The implication of food estate becomes a regressive action for the realization of Indonesia’s commitment to reduce GHG emissions from the forestry sector up to 17.2% with unconditional mitigation scenario (CM 1) and 23% with conditional mitigation scenario (CM 2) by 2030.

Critical COVID-19 is associated with distinct leukocyte phenotypes and transcriptome patterns.

BACKGROUND: Prognostic markers for disease severity and identification of therapeutic targets in COVID-19 are urgently needed. We have studied innate and adaptive immunity on protein and transcriptomic level in COVID-19 patients with different disease severity at admission and longitudinally during hospitalization. METHODS: Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were collected at three time points from 31 patients included in the Norwegian SARS-CoV-2 cohort study and analysed by flow cytometry and RNA sequencing. Patients were grouped as either mild/moderate (n = 14), severe (n = 11) or critical (n = 6) disease in accordance with WHO guidelines and compared with patients with SARS-CoV-2-negative bacterial sepsis (n = 5) and healthy controls (n = 10). RESULTS: COVID-19 severity was characterized by decreased interleukin 7 receptor alpha chain (CD127) expression in naïve CD4 and CD8 T cells. Activation (CD25 and HLA-DR) and exhaustion (PD-1) markers on T cells were increased compared with controls, but comparable between COVID-19 severity groups. Non-classical monocytes and monocytic HLA-DR expression decreased whereas monocytic PD-L1 and CD142 expression increased with COVID-19 severity. RNA sequencing exhibited increased plasma B-cell activity in critical COVID-19 and yet predominantly reduced transcripts related to immune response pathways compared with milder disease. CONCLUSION: Critical COVID-19 seems to be characterized by an immune profile of activated and exhausted T cells and monocytes. This immune phenotype may influence the capacity to mount an efficient T-cell immune response. Plasma B-cell activity and calprotectin were higher in critical COVID-19 while most transcripts related to immune functions were reduced, in particular affecting B cells. The potential of these cells as therapeutic targets in COVID-19 should be further explored.

Applying video for writing descriptive text in senior high school in the covid-19 pandemic transition

The emergence of the Covid-19 as the global pandemic with its social and physical distancing consequence has affected educational practices. This paper reports the experience of carrying out a study on applying video for writing of descriptive text in EFL Class. The purpose of this research was to examine whether the videos can develop students’ ability in writing descriptive text or not. The study took place in the time before and during the covid-19 emergence. As quantitative research, this study applied pre-experimental design. The participant of this research was the 1st year students of one of the prominence senior high schools in Manado, Indonesia. They were 26 students of language class. The results indicated that the mean score of the post-test is significantly higher that of the pre-test. This points out that the use of video in teaching the writing of descriptive text is effective. However, the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic influenced the implementation of intervention that later affected students’ achievement. The result of this study is not fully in line with the outcome of the previous studies which hypothetically resulted in two to four gains of scores. In addition, it implies that the use of video in this pandemic transition period seems to be helpful mostly to low level students as they displayed higher gains. Besides, this study denotes the challenges for teachers and students in the Covid-19 pandemic era namely the competence in online learning, and the internet connectivity access and learning mode system. © 2020 Global Research Online. All rights reserved.