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Basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) is one of the popular sequence similarity analysis tools. However, some students and researchers just blindly use the default parameters. Moreover, some students are confused about how to choose the right program. In a word, it is prone to be misused and researchers often draw conclusions incorrectly. In view of this, we traced back the internet hot topic in early 2020 - "MORDERATELY STRONG CONFIRMATION OF A LABORATORY ORIGIN OF COVID-19", and took it as teaching materials to guide the student to use BLAST currently through reanalyzing and reproducing the source of errors. Then we arranged an interesting experiment about fabricating dinosaur genes through modifying a chicken gene. In the experimental design to make the students grasp the BLAST tools better, one group fabricated the dinosaur gene and the other group decrypted the added bases. This instructional design could be conducive to cultivate students ' ability about distinguishing different viewpoints correctly, and we hope it can be enlightening and helpful to the teaching of BLAST tools.Copyright © 2022 by the authors.
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The unprecedented outbreak of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in extreme volatility in stock markets. This study mainly examines the predictive ability of the Internet concern about COVID-19 on stock index returns, based on the framework of GARCH type models. Instead of using the whole sample period, we divide the Internet concern about COVID-19 into high-concern and low-concern periods by breakpoint test method and then examine its predictive ability for stock returns in different periods, respectively. Using stock indexes of 10 countries and abnormal Google search volume of 'coronavirus' as study samples, the results reveal that (1) the Internet concern about COVID-19 has a negative impact on the stock index returns in the whole and high-concern periods, while its influence in the low-concern period is mixed;(2) the Internet concern about COVID-19 improves the prediction accuracy of stock index returns in the high-concern period, while seems to lose its powerful predictive ability in the whole and low-concern periods.
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The exponential model is a commonly used epidemic model for the analysis of initial outbreak data due to an infectious disease. But there have been questions about its validity in practice. This article examines this issue through statistical analysis on 22 countries' initial COVID-19 outbreak data provided by the World Health Organization. For each of 22 countries, a general regression analysis is conducted for the cumulative confirmed cases. Our regression function is a 3-5 piecewise fitted functions which are obtained via regression analysis
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Increasing local fiscal pressure and insufficient enterprise environmental protection investment are considerable problems in China. Based on the data of A-share-listed companies in heavily polluting industries in China from 2015 to 2021, this paper uses COVID-19 as an exogenous shock of local fiscal pressure and investigates the impact of local fiscal pressure on enterprise environmental protection investment by the continuous DID method. The study found that local fiscal pressure significantly reduces enterprise environmental protection investment and has a greater impact on non-state-owned enterprises, large enterprises, enterprises located in the "two-control-zone” cities and enterprises located in cities with low fiscal self-sufficiency rates. The mechanism of analysis shows that local governments ease fiscal pressure by "increasing revenue” and "cutting expenditure”. The former increases the non-tax burden of enterprises, while the latter reduces enterprise environmental protection subsidies, which leads to a decrease in environmental protection investment. The findings of this paper indicate that it is necessary to focus on solving the local fiscal pressure dilemma to increase green investment and achieve green development. © 2023 by the authors.
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Elevated medical waste has urged the improvement of sustainable medical waste treatments. A bibliometric analysis is initially conducted to investigate scientific development of medical waste management to pinpoint the publication trends, influential articles, journals and countries and study hotspots. Publications on medical waste and its management sharply increased since 2020. The most influential article was written by Klemeš et al., and "Waste Management and Research” is the most productive journal. India, China, the United Kingdom, Iran and Italy have published the most works. The research spotlights have switched from "human” and "sustainable development” in 2019 to "COVID-19” and "circular economy” in 2021. Since government acts essentially in handling medical waste and controlling disease transmission, rule implementations among the abovementioned countries are summarized to seek gaps between scientific advancement and regulatory frameworks. For accomplishing a circular economy, waste-to-energy technologies (incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, plasma-based treatments, carbonization, hydrogenation, liquefaction, biomethanation, fermentation and esterification) are comprehensively reviewed. Incineration, gasification, pyrolysis and carbonization are relatively feasible methods, their characteristics and limitations are further compared. By holistically reviewing current status of medical waste research, the focal points involved in management at the policy and technical level have been highlighted to find proper routes for medical waste valorization. © 2023 by the authors.
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Industry 4.0 brought a new revolution in industries by making them fully automated via innovative technologies, without considering human-power. Industry 4.0 aims to establish 'smart manufacturing industry' by emphasizing on Information Technology (IT), Internet of Things (IOT), Cyber Physical System (CPS), Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Robotics. This highly automated industry neglected human's intellectual and cognitive skills, causing an increase in unemployment rate and devastation of ecosystem. In this paper, we proposed a framework of emerging technologies of Industry 5.0. Here, we examined how Industry 5.0 will further extend the development of Industry 4.0 and how humans can contribute to its manufacturing process. In addition, prestigious and significant skills for workforce in manufacturing industry are also explored. We also investigated how the Covid-19 epidemic was associated to Industry 5.0 and the idea of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Finally, we highlighted some of the challenges facing the industrial sector as research direction of Industry 5.0. © 2022 IEEE.
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Due to increasing pollution that can be attributed primarily to fossil fuel consumption the world has been facing unprecedented challenges. This has caused global warming and aggravated the current pandemic (COVID-19) problem, as well. Owing to the increasing demand for fossil fuels and excessive consumption of petroleum-based resources, it has become vital to adopt alternative renewable sources. In recent times, biomass waste is being used efficiently as an ideal green corrosion inhibitor because of its availability, ecological acceptability, biodegradability, renewability, phytoconstituent-rich nature, and, most significantly, nontoxic nature. Their valorizations expand potential application in the industry rather than "waste to energy" in the circular economy perception. There is a strong interest globally in developing suitable technology that can use biomass wastes for different applications, including corrosion inhibitors. In this regard, this chapter presents a collection of articles designed to inform metallurgists, designers, and engineers of the nature of corrosion and means of its prevention. Beginning with the analysis of fundamental scientific principles involved in corrosion science, it covers the basics as well as other topics such as causes of corrosion, methods of mitigating corrosion, the use and characteristics of inhibitors, classes of corrosion inhibitors, factors to consider in selecting corrosion inhibitor, and classification of corrosion inhibitors. Attention is given to biomass waste inhibitors through literature review and the biomass wastes extract used as corrosion inhibitors and their acting mechanisms are presented. Sections include an introduction, corrosion inhibitors, and biomass waste extract as corrosion inhibitors. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. All rights reserved.
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Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is a highly contagious viral infection, without any available targeted therapies. The high mortality rate of COVID-19 is speculated to be related to immune damage. Methods: In this study, clinical bioinformatics analysis was conducted on transcriptome data of coronavirus infection. Results: Bioinformatics analysis revealed that the complex immune injury induced by coronavirus infection provoked dysfunction of numerous immune-related molecules and signaling pathways, including immune cells and toll-like receptor cascades. Production of numerous cytokines through the Th17 signaling pathway led to elevation in plasma levels of cytokines (including IL6, NF-kB, and TNF-a) followed by concurrent inflammatory storm, which mediates the autoimmune response. Several novel medications seemed to display therapeutic effects on immune damage associated with coronavirus infection. Conclusions: This study provided insights for further large-scale studies on the target therapy on reconciliation of immunological damage associated with COVID-19. Copyright © 2021 Shandong University, published by Wolters Kluwer, Inc.
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Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a science and cultural treasure of our country, with thousands of years of clinical experience in medication. TCM has significant advantages in prevention and treatment of complex diseases and chronic diseases, and has also demonstrated its advantages in prevention and treatment of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that is currently raging around the world, but due to unclear mechanism problem, the promotion and application of TCM have been seriously limited. Mechanism of Western medicine is clear, and it has mature drug target discovery technology, mainly including chemical modification technology and non-chemical modification technology. Due to the characteristics of multi-component, multi-target action of TCM, the application of chemical modification technology in TCM mechanism study has certain limitations. Thus, the principle, operation steps and application of non-chemically modified drug target technology such as cellular thermal shift assay, molecular docking, drug affinity responsive target stability, surface plasmon resonance are introduced in this paper. The potential advantages and disadvantages of such non-chemically modified drug target technologies are discussed in the study on mechanism of TCM, in order to explore a target discovery model of TCM target discovery, provide reference for elucidating the mechanism of TCM, and promote the modernization process of TCM. Copyright © 2022 Editorial Office of Chinese Traditional and Herbal Drugs. All rights reserved.
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Corona Virus Disease 2019 (Corona Virus Disease 2019，COVID-19) has become a public health emergency that has attracted global attention because of its large-scale outbreak resulting in numerous human infections and deaths. COVID-19 is a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. Due to a large number of infections and fast transmission speed, it's significant to diagnose the infected people quickly and detect the asymptomatic infected people as soon as possible. At present, the preliminary screening is judged by the clinical manifestations of the patients, mainly involving the respiratory system, but recent studies have found that the patients infected with COVID-19 have unique oral manifestations, such as taste disturbance, xerostomia, halitosis, inflammation of salivary glands, necrotizing periodontal disease and some of them are earlier than typical symptoms such as dry cough, fever, etc. Paying attention to the oral manifestations of patients can further improve the COVID-19 screening procedure. At present, symptomatic treatment is mainly used for these oral symptoms. © 2022, J Prev Treat Stomatol Dis. All rights reserved.
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Objective To understand the status of family services and residents’demands for services in Shanghai in order to construct and improve the key elements of family services in public health events. Methods We used a combining method of individual in-depth interviews and focused group interviews. The informants were domestic and foreign experts in public health, health services, education, safety, etc., community workers and residents. The interview questions were as follow：problems in family services, residents’demands and suggestions for family services, etc. Results We found 7 major family services problems in Shanghai’s response to public health events：The boundary of authorities and responsibilities were not clearly defined between the upper and lower departments. The team construction of public health professions at the community level was flawed. There were miscommunications between upper and lower medical institutions during the epidemic outbreaks. Residents were not aware of the available family services provided by their communities. Unnoticed insanitary spots still existed in public spaces, and the maintenance of residential emergence equipment needs to be strengthened. The public opinion guidance required further strengthening, and the elderly people lack an effective medium for information acquisition. The emergency plan of closed management to solve practical problems after Shanghai’s COVID lockdown was insufficient. The residents’demands included the following 6 aspects：comprehensive family services, supply and guarantee of basic living materials and special materials, professionals providing family services as a means of support, emergency medical services, receiving psychological intervention and understanding knowledge of mental health, security of food and food supply chain security. Conclusion ‘Government led’‘cross-border cooperation’‘clear executive body’and ‘based on the needs of residents’were key factors. Therefore, we suggest family services are included in the normalizing construction of government. © 2022 Fudan University. All rights reserved.
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Border studies conducted so far have always focused on areas close to or outside the border of a country and rarely on the dynamic process of its inward border. The inward border represents the construction or deconstruction of a country’s internal borders by different agents at different scales. As the city with the highest population mobility on China’s southeast border, Ruili was considered for analyzing China’s inward border amid its border epidemic containment. The analysis revealed that the production of Ruili’s inward border demonstrated distinct multiscalar characteristics. First, an isolated zone was formed owing to the enhanced materialization of Ruili’s border and the interruption in Ruili’s normal contact with the outside world;a contact zone was also created owing to the support provided by the central government to Ruili. Second, border residents’ participation broke the dominance of border authorities in border control. Therefore, Ruili’s border became more resilient with the stable coexistence of isolation and contact. © 2022 Association for Borderlands Studies.
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The high demand for Covid-19 vaccines due to the pandemic increases the need for vaccine transportation and storage worldwide, and a cold chain is often required for many vaccines. The existing cold chains are confronting some obstacles today but are facing many great opportunities at the same time with the emerging new technologies. This paper aims to address the trend of modern cold chain management of vaccine logistics through a literature review on the topic of Covid-19 vaccine transportation and storage. Empirical studies are needed in future research. The transportation and storage of the Covid-19 vaccines are important for the overall vaccine administrations and can save large amounts of money and lives when improved. Failures of the cold chain can lead to great economic loss and damage of the vaccine potency;therefore, it is essential to study the characteristics of the current cold chain and how related innovations influence its development. © 2021 IEEE.
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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) extend the traditional ground-based Internet of Things (IoT) into the air. UAV mobile edge computing (MEC) architectures have been proposed by integrating UAVs into MEC networks during the current novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) era. UAV mobile edge computing (MEC) shares personal data with external parties (such as edge servers) during intelligent medical analytics. However, this technique raises privacy concerns about patients' health data. More recently, the concept of federal learning (FL) has been set up to protect mobile user data privacy. Compared to traditional machine learning, federated learning requires a decentralized distribution system to enhance trust for UAVs. Blockchain technology provides a secure and reliable solution for FL settings between multiple untrusted parties with anonymous, immutable, and distributed features. Therefore, blockchain-enabled FL provides both theories and techniques to improve the performance of intelligent UAV edge computing networks from various perspectives. This survey begins by discussing the current state of research on blockchain and FL. Then, compare the leading technologies and limitations. Second, we will discuss how to integrate blockchain and FL into UAV edge computing networks and the associated challenges and solutions. Finally, we discuss the fundamental research challenges and future directions.
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Basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) is one of the popular sequence similarity analysis tools. However, some students and researchers just blindly use the default parameters. Moreover, some students are confused about how to choose the right program. In a word, it is prone to be misused and researchers often draw conclusions incorrectly. In view of this, we traced back the internet hot topic in early 2020 - "MORDERATELY STRONG CONFIRMATION OF A LABORATORY ORIGIN OF COVID-19", and took it as teaching materials to guide the student to use BLAST currently through reanalyzing and reproducing the source of errors. Then we arranged an interesting experiment about fabricating dinosaur genes through modifying a chicken gene. In the experimental design to make the students grasp the BLAST tools better, one group fabricated the dinosaur gene and the other group decrypted the added bases. This instructional design could be conducive to cultivate students ' ability about distinguishing different viewpoints correctly, and we hope it can be enlightening and helpful to the teaching of BLAST tools. © 2022 by the authors.
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Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown was related to a significant reduction in air pollutant emissions. However, severe air pollution events still occurred frequently in Taiyuan, north China. To better understand this unusual phenomenon, O3 and other pollutants have been investigated before, during and after the COVID-19 lockdown in the early 2020. Results show that PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2 and CO underwent a more marked reduction while O3 pollution was amplified during lockdown and the average concentrations O3-8hr during AL stage (101.92 μg m-3) exceeded its Grade I limiting value (100 μg m-3). O3 were negatively correlated with the other pollutants and positively correlated with temperature, visibility and the average solar irradiance during the daytime. The increase in daylight hours and average solar irradiance might be the key factors leading to the increase in O3 concentrations. The reduction of PM2.5 and NO2 promoted the rise in O3 during the lockdown. The majority of the O3 was likely formed by photooxidation in the shadow of Taiyuan and linked with air masses from the northern part of Shanxi Province before the lockdown and Henan, Hebei and Shandong during and after the lockdown. © 2022, HARD Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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Scintillators as the core materials of radiation detection play an important role in industrial nondestructive testing, medical imaging, high energy physics and safety inspection, etc.. Theexisting scintillator research faces both opportunities and challenges, especially in the context of COVID-19 pandemic period. It is of great practical significance to develop cost-effective scintillators and optimize their overall performance. The nano-glass composites (i.e., glass ceramics) have some advantages like high emission efficiency of scintillator crystals, simple preparation and low cost as an effective star scintillator. Based on the different luminescence centers, such scintillators can be broadly divided into rare-earth element ions doped or rare-earth-free luminescent nanocrystals embedded materials. This review represented recent development on the preparation of these materials, the relationship between the types of nanocrystals and their luminescence properties, and the potential applications of these materials in high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray detection. In addition, the existing problems in the research were discussed and the future development direction of nano-glass composite scintillators was also prospected. © 2022, Editorial Department of Journal of the Chinese Ceramic Society. All right reserved.
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Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading like a wildfire everywhere in the globe. It has been challenging the global health care system ever since the end of 2019, with its virulence and pathogenicity. Recent studies have shown the association between ABO blood group, Rhesus blood type and susceptibility to COVID-19 infection. Various studies and few meta-analyses have been done and some might be inconsistent; therefore, this meta-analysis was done to assess the relationship between different ABO and Rhesus blood types on the susceptibility to COVID-19 infections. This meta-analysis assessed the odds ratio of COVID-19 infection of different ABO and Rhesus blood types. Subgroup analyses according to (1) age and gender matched; (2) different blood group antigens; (3) Rhesus positive and negative of each blood group were carried out. Publication bias and Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2) were also done to assess the risk of bias in these publications. It was found that blood group A showed significant difference in odds ratio of COVID-19 infection (OR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.08-1.24). Blood group AB showed significant difference in odds ratio when studies with lower QUADAS-2 score were removed. This means that populations with blood group A and AB are more likely to be infected with COVID-19. As there is a higher tendency that blood group A and AB to be infected with COVID- 19, precautious care should be taken by these populations.
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COVID-19 , ABO Blood-Group System , Humans , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
Three cases of herpes zoster occured after COVID-19 vaccination. The relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and occurring of these 3 cases needs to be verified. © 2022 Shandong Yinbao Technology Co. Ltd