Rethinking "again” girls at-promise: A vicennial response

This article presents a brief commentary on Abrams' Rethinking Girls "At-Risk” (2002) and uses a vicennial perspective to retrospectively explore the conceptual structure respecting adolescent female development. Acknowledging the change in collective ideological values and social normative influences, the piece comments on how certain theories and approaches argued by Abrams in the 2000s have either evolved or been phased out, and accordingly repositioned adolescent girls' developmental experiences in the present-day dialogue. An up-to-date examination of contextual and sociocultural factors is put forward in this commentary, along with the three components summarized in empowering women's agency today: participation, authority, and deliverance. What follows is a discussion of topical issues concerning recent global activities and milestones, with a particular attention to cyberactivism and the impact of COVID-19, for the understanding of the risks concerned with girls' development and the enquiry into young women's lives at the present time. This reflective piece is a useful conceptual basis in juxtaposition with Abrams' article, providing those involved in adolescent female development with conceptualizations and a thematic frame of reference in tackling adolescent girls' development, against the backdrop of cultural, political, and social trends. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Research progress in high value-added utilization technology of waste plastics

The low degradability of waste plastics will continue to pollute the environment, and the spread of the COVID-19 has exacerbated the use and accumulation of plastics, and thus the efficient treatment of waste plastic resources has become an urgent technical problem to be solved. By analyzing several mainstream waste plastics treatment technologies, it was clear that resourceful and high value-added utilization technology was the most competitive and environmentally friendly waste plastics treatment route in the market. The research progress of high value-added utilization technology of waste plastics at home and abroad in recent years were reviewed. The development and variation of conventional thermal cracking technology were discussed. Through this route, the highest yield of waste plastics into fuel products can reach 97%—98%. It was pointed out that the conversion of waste plastics into jet fuel, high value-added chemicals and functional materials for special applications through chemical, catalytic and biological technologies was the mainstream research direction and development trend in this field. Among them, the yield of conversion to high value-added monomer could reach more than 97%, so as to realize the upgrading of plastic waste from the primary treatment stage of "waste clearance” to "turning waste into use” and "turning waste into treasure”, and help China achieve the goal of "double carbon”。. © 2023 Chemical Industry Press. All rights reserved.

QR code beautification by instance segmentation (IS-QR)

Due to the popularity of smartphones, cameras can be seen everywhere. QR codes are widely used daily, and their application is becoming more and more diverse, such as for warehouse management, electronic tickets, mobile payment, etc. As COVID-19 rapidly spread worldwide, people were forced to change their payment habits. Contactless systems, such as electronic tickets, became increasingly used to display information and avoid traditional queues. However, the standard QR code comprises black and white squares in monochrome images, which is not visually appealing. Yet, the easiest way to present a theme in a QR code is an image, which is more eye-catching and easier to understand than text. In this study, we devise an IS-QR method to integrate full-color images with QR codes by instance segmentation, using BlendMask to extract image feature regions and take Human Visual System into account. Discrete wavelet transform and contrast sensitivity were used to lessen the impact of reduced readability of QR codes during printing. Representative image visual quality measures, including PSNR, MSE, SSIM, FSIM, and GMSD, were used to measure the experimental results in order to validate the effectiveness of QR code beautification. The subjective quality evaluation is also performed. Finally, the measurement results indicate that the beautified QR codes generated by the method IS-QR designed in this study perform better than other related studies in terms of visualization and beautification. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.

Neutralising antibody titers and COVID outcomes in cancer patients

Background: Cancer patients are at high risk of severe COVID infection and recommended at least three doses of SARS-CoV2 mRNA vaccines. Various anti-neoplastic treatments may affect long-term vaccine immunogenicity. Methods: Patients with solid or haematological cancer were recruited from two Singapore hospitals between July 2021 and March 2022. GenScript cPASS surrogate virus neutralisation assays measured antibody responses, which were correlated with clinical outcomes obtained from medical records and national mandatory-reporting databases. Results: In total, 273 patients were recruited (40 with haematological malignancies and the rest solid tumours). Two-hundred and four patients (74.7%) were receiving active cancer therapy: 98 (35.9%) receiving systemic chemotherapy and the rest targeted or immunotherapy. All patients were seronegative at baseline. After receiving one, two and three doses of SARS-CoV-2-mRNA vaccination, seroconversion rate was 35.2%, 79.4% and 92.4% respectively. After three doses, patients on active treatment for haematological malignancies had lower antibodies (57.3%±46.2) as compared to patients on immunotherapy (94.1%±9.56, p<0.05) and chemotherapy (92.8%±18.1, p<0.05). SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported in 77 (28.2%) patients of which 18 were severe. Conclusion: This study demonstrates high immunogenicity of three doses of vaccines and protection against severe infection in cancer patients.

COVID-19 Visualization Platform Based on Population Density Propagation Model

Based on the classical SIR model and CEMM intercity model, a new model was established by adding "population density"parameter to analyze and predict the spread of virus. In addition, the current trend of the epidemic and forecast data can be referenced to the public in an intuitive web view to improve the perception of risk information in the society. The real-time epidemic data interface was adopted to analyze the real-time pneumonia epidemic data captured by the deployment of timing crawler combined with the regional population density to build a model. Then, the diversified charts, Python and Web front-end technologies were used to realize the visualization of epidemic information. COVID-19 grows exponentially without obstruction, and when a place has a high population density, the spread of the virus accelerates and the number of people infected increases. The research shows that the integration of population density parameters can further improve the epidemic prediction function, provide epidemic data reference in a more effective and accurate way, and further improve the public's ability to perceive social risk information. © 2022 IEEE.

An overview of COVID-19 vaccine candidates

For the past two years, people worldwide were experiencing one of the most massive pandemics, the COVID-19. It is caused by a virus that is called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which mainly attacks the respiratory system. Since there is no previous experience treating the disease, the drug development process is extremely difficult. People in dire need of vaccines were urgently needed to restore their lives to normal. As time went by, medical staff and experts spent numerous amounts of time and effort studying this virus. Nowadays, as the vaccine technology of various countries was very mature, vaccines with various technological paths have entered the experimental stage one after another. Eventually, effective vaccines are finally ready for wild inoculation for everyone by collaborating with all medical researchers. Currently, there are four kinds of COVID-19 vaccines available in different countries. They are inactivated vaccines, mRNA-based vaccines, viral vector vaccines, and recombinant vaccines. Most of these COVID-19 vaccines are in Phase 3 and provided in different countries. Those vaccines were manufactured in different countries, and their general production and technical characteristics will be discussed in the following paragraphs. The main purpose is trying to provide some fundamental and comprehensive background knowledge about currently available COVID-19 vaccines. It could be a reference list for those audiences who have not decided to take which vaccine. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences.

Measuring Characteristics and Influence of Fluctuating Teamwork Processes Based on Natural Language Processing: The Relationship Between Equal Participation and Creativity

To leverage different skills of transdisciplinary teams, understanding team processes critical for team performance is crucial. This study examined temporal participation equality and creativity using behavioral data and natural language processing. Twenty-one teams of four people generated business ideas for post COVID19 societies in teams. We segmented their discussion based on lexical similarity and clarified the relationship between each segment and generated ideas. Then we calculated the equality of turn-taking and speaking time and examined their relationship with creativity scores of ideas using hierarchical regression analysis. The result suggested temporal participation equality did not relate to creativity. We discussed its implication and future studies. © 2022 The authors and IOS Press.

Impact Analysis of COVID-19 on Travel Behavior and Mode Preferences of Hong Kong Residents

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the unprecedented policies issued by the government have compelled citizens to reshape their daily travel behavior. Questionnaires were designed to obtain three main related indicators of socio-economic and demographic characteristics, primary travel purposes and patterns, and factors influencing mode choice to explore the impact of the pandemic on travel behavior and mode preferences of urban residents. By applying the online survey method with Snowball sampling techniques, a total of 591 valid questionnaire responses from Hong Kong residents were received in the designated time period. Then, the non-parametric test methods (e.g., McNemar-Bowker test and Mann-Whitney U test) were employed to implement the statistical analysis. Traffic administrators can use the survey findings to adjust current policies or delineate new policies to align with the passenger travel behavior. This will ensure more fluid and safer transportation. © ASCE.

When Edge Computing Meets Agile Software Development

Agile development has been a common methodology in software development. In response to the covid-19, most software development teams choose to work remotely. As a result of the different network environments, the company cloud center network load cannot meet the requirements of remote development and fault tolerance requirements of the agile development process. We designed a mixed-method called the Edge Development approach for improving Agile software development during the decision-making process. The extensive literature review provided us with three categories of challenges as well as solutions to support Edge Development's decision-support process. In the light of the survey, Five main software development decision-making challenges were identified in this study. In addition, we made a series of recommendations to improve the decision-making process of Edge Development from a variety of perspectives. © 2022 IEEE.

[Introduction and implications of WHO position paper: vaccines against influenza, May 2022].

On May 13, 2022, World Health Organization(WHO) Position Paper on Influenza Vaccine (2022 edition) was published. This position paper updates information on influenza epidemiology, high risk population, the impact of immunization on disease, influenza vaccines and effectiveness and safety, and propose WHO's position and recommendation that all countries should consider implementing seasonal influenza vaccine immunization programmes to prepare for an influenza pandemic. In addition, it proposes that the influenza surveillance platform can be integrated with the surveillance of other respiratory viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2 and Respiratory Syncytial Virus. This position paper has some implications for the prevention and control of influenza and other respiratory infectious diseases in China: (1) Optimize influenza vaccine policies to facilitate the implementation of immunization services; (2) Influenza prevention and control should from the perspective of Population Medicine focus on the individual and community to integrate with "Promotion, Prevention, Diagnosis, Control, Treatment, Rehabilitation"; (3) Incorporate prevention and control of other respiratory infectious diseases such as influenza, COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus and adenovirus, and intelligently monitor by integrating multi-channel data to achieve the goal of co-prevention and control of multiple diseases.

Machine Learning Methods for Signal, Image and Speech Processing

The signal processing (SP) landscape has been enriched by recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), yielding new tools for signal estimation, classification, prediction, and manipulation. Layered signal representations, nonlinear function approximation and nonlinear signal prediction are now feasible at very large scale in both dimensionality and data size. These are leading to significant performance gains in a variety of long-standing problem domains like speech and Image analysis. As well as providing the ability to construct new classes of nonlinear functions (e.g., fusion, nonlinear filtering). This book will help academics, researchers, developers, graduate and undergraduate students to comprehend complex SP data across a wide range of topical application areas such as social multimedia data collected from social media networks, medical imaging data, data from Covid tests etc. This book focuses on AI utilization in the speech, image, communications and yirtual reality domains. © 2021 River Publishers. All rights reserved.

Psychological and Emotional Responses during Different Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic Based on a Survey of a Mental Health Hotline

Background: The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in 2019 triggered psychological and emotional responses. This research investigates the psychological status and emotional problems of those who sought psychological assistance during the epidemic period by calling a mental health hotline. Methods: This study aims to combine qualitative and quantitative research. Descriptive analysis was used for undertaking qualitative research. We analyzed the data from group 1 (n = 706), in which the people used the mental health hotline from 25 January 2020 to 23 June 2020. A self-designed questionnaire was developed in accordance with the classification and summarized items from group 1’s psychological problems and emotional status. To implement the quantitative research, we conducted a cross-sectional descriptive survey and used the self-compiled scale and HADS to investigate group 2 (n = 553) from May 2020 to June 2020. Results: Descriptive statistics and comparative analysis revealed that: ①Visitors mainly reported behavior, emotional, family relationship problems and sleep disorders. ② Anxiety, comorbidities, sleep disorders and coping problems were the most frequently reported problems. ③ There were significant differences in the number of visitors experiencing various problems or exhibiting harmful behaviors (sorrow, worry, fear, depression, sleep disorders, self-harm or suicide, and coping problems, anxiety, hypochondria, and comorbidity) in the four stages of the epidemic. ④ More than a quarter of participants still suffered from anxiety or depression in the later stages of the epidemic. Conclusion: Different problems manifested at different stages of the epidemic, and psychological interventions and assistance should be tailored to reflect this. © 2022, Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.

Spatio-temporal Transmission of COVID-19 Pandemic in Susceptible-exposed of Small-world Network Model

This paper proposes the Susceptible-exposed of Small-world Network Model (SSEM) by combining the Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) model with the Small-world Network (SN) model. The scenarios of COVID-19 propagation in urban public transport network was set by the specific model parameters. A study area, Huicheng District, Huizhou City, Guangdong Province, China, was selected to estimate the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of COVID-19 within 12 hours based on SSEM. The results show that, without taking protective measures, if the two infectious source were in a bus, after 12 hours, 324 bus stations, 762 infected people and 68.85km2 were covered in the study area. The results of this study will provide a reference for the future study of COVID-19 virus transmission mechanism in the small enclosed environment. © 2021 IEEE.

Analysis of Influencing Factors of Multi-value Chain Collaborative Operation Efficiency in Power Manufacturing Industry Based on FISM-ANP

Affected by the COVID-19, the global manufacturing industry has been greatly impacted. In order to adapt to the current new normal of economy, the multi-value chain collaborative operation mode of power manufacturing industry has come into being. In order to deeply study the influencing factors of multi-value chain collaborative operation efficiency in power manufacturing industry, this paper constructs an influencing factors system in terms of management level, technology level and policy level, combines fuzzy interpretative structural model (FISM) with analytic network process (ANP) to develop an analysis model from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Accordingly, it is suggested that: power manufacturing enterprises should promote the construction of R&D-production-sales-logistics-services multi-chain collaboration;promote the construction of data space to realize the sharing of data and information;accelerate the development of digital operation mode under Industry 4.0;and build third-party platform to efficiently integrate upstream and downstream resources. © 2022 IEEE.

Excitement Projector: Augmenting Excitement-Perception and Arousal through Bio-signal-based Haptic Feedback in Remote-SportWatching

For non-sport fans, perceiving the excitement of surrounding fan groups and the arousal of collective emotions are some of the crucial factors that motivate their engaged excitement and loyalty in a sport;these factors are closely related to the process of evolution from a non-fan to a fan. The global COVID-19 pandemic changed the way of sport-watching from watching at the arena to watching from home alone. This has highlighted significant difficulties in the excitement transmission and arousal channel between non-sport fans and fans. Previous remote emotional intervening mediums had been limited to the use of virtual avatars to convey partners' external cues (such as appearance), to enhance the sense of presence from visual-audio perspectives. In this study, we explored a novel remote emotional intervening medium that conveys sport-fans' internal cues (bio-signals) that are widely believed to be related to internal emotional states of human, and displays those signals in a way that gives non-sport fans a deeper and more immersive experience: haptic feedback experience. Three bio-signal-based haptic feedback prototypes were developed, including heart-rate-based vibration, electromyography (EMG)-based pressure, and skin-temperature-based thermal feedbacks. An exploratory pilot study was conducted on a group of non-sport fans in a lab-control environment of remote-sport-watching to explore the effectiveness of the proposed mediums in enhancing their perception of sport-fan's excitement (emotion perception). Besides, we also analyzed non-sport fans' heart rate data when they were participants in the experiments to measure the performance of the proposed mediums in evoking the engaged excitement of non-sport fans (emotion arousal). Our results indicate the outstanding ability of EMG-based pressure feedback in effectively enhancing the process of emotion perception and the notable advantage of heart-rate-based vibration feedback in the arousal of non-sport fans' engaged excitement. This study presents the potential utility of bio-signal-based haptic feedback in augmenting remote emotional perception and arousal and also provides the underlining support for the future exploration and development directions for social computing based on bio-signals and haptic technologies. © 2022 ACM.

Development Wells Optimum Management Technique Coping with Production Curtailment for Stacked Oilfields Consisting of Multiple Complex Reservoirs

Affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and low oil prices, OPEC members were forced to curtail production. The H oilfield in Iraq commenced production curtailment in early March 2020 and then oil production gradually decreased. By the end of 2020, production was less than one-third of the rate before curtailment. There are multiple sets of oil-bearing formations in the H Oilfield vertically. The developed oil reservoirs have a total of more than three hundreds development wells. The reservoir types are diverse, the relationship among multiphase fluids is complex, and the development methods are different. The reduction of the daily production will inevitably require a comprehensive strategy adjustment to cope with the new situation. Any intentional or unintentional shut-in has a price. Therefore, the key is how to reasonably control the production in many oil reservoirs and re-adjust the oil reservoir development plan at the minimum cost while meeting the overall changing production restriction target for each oil reservoir. In this study, the author established a simple and fast process for judging open and closed wells through years of experience in reservoir dynamic analysis and field management. Step 1: Wells are classified according to production characteristics. For pre-selected wells, some wells with unique functions that need to be opened and those that need to be closed for objective reasons should be excluded. Step 2: Conduct single well cost analysis with reference to production status. Respectively evaluate the performance of the production well under the state of opening and closing. Step 3: Establish the model with economic indicators as the objective function. According to different goals, the model established is slightly different. Step 4: Optimize the best solution based on actual needs. Solve the optimal solution under the target and optimize the number of reasonably configured wells in each reservoir. Through this process, combined with historical and current actual production conditions, different types of oil wells in all reservoirs are classified. Their priorities of reopening are evaluated to meet the needs of other production restriction targets and ensure the smooth transition of oilfield development. © Copyright 2021, Society of Petroleum Engineers

Evidence of aircraft activity impact on local air quality: A study in the context of uncommon airport operation

Wuhan Tianhe International Airport (WUH) was suspended to contain the spread of COVID-19, while Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport (SHA) saw a tremendous flight reduction. Closure of a major international airport is extremely rare and thus represents a unique opportunity to straightforwardly observe the impact of airport emissions on local air quality. In this study, a series of statistical tools were applied to analyze the variations in air pollutant levels in the vicinity of WUH and SHA. The results of bivariate polar plots show that airport SHA and WUH are a major source of nitrogen oxides. NOx, NO2 and NO diminished by 55.8%, 44.1%, 76.9%, and 40.4%, 33.3% and 59.4% during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to those in the same period of 2018 and 2019, under a reduction in aircraft activities by 58.6% and 61.4%. The concentration of NO2, SO2 and PM2.5 decreased by 77.3%, 8.2%, 29.5%, right after the closure of airport WUH on 23 January 2020. The average concentrations of NO, NO2 and NOx scatter plots at downwind of SHA after the lockdown were 78.0%, 47.9%, 57.4% and 62.3%, 34.8%, 41.8% lower than those during the same period in 2018 and 2019. However, a significant increase in O3 levels by 50.0% and 25.9% at WUH and SHA was observed, respectively. These results evidently show decreased nitrogen oxides concentrations in the airport vicinity due to reduced aircraft activities, while amplified O3 pollution due to a lower titration by NO under strong reduction in NOx emissions. © 2022

Identification and Ontology Term Enrichment Analysis of Genes Associated with COVID-19 and Acute Kidney Disease

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is the main comorbidity of COVID-19, and the pathogenesis remains unclear. This study first performed a gene set enrichment analysis of 6 AKI-related Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) studies and identified 3,876 AKI-associated genes. By incorporating COVID-19 related interactions from BioGRID, we further found 1,027 genes associated with both COVID-19 and AKI. Our Gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis of these genes showed that viral and inflammation-related biological processes played important roles on COVID-19 related AKI. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pathways ranked second in the top 5 KEGG-enriched pathways, in which 66 enriched genes were all upregulated in the kidney tissue of the above 6 GEO studies. Ontology modeling is currently undergoing to systematically and logically represent the AKI pathogenesis process in COVID-19 patients. © 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors.