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Eliminating pathogen exposure is an important approach to control outbreaks of epidemics such as COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019). To deal with pathogenic environments, using disinfection robots is a practicable choice. This research formulates a 3D (three-dimensional) spatial disinfection strategy for a disinfection robot. First, a disinfection robot is designed with an extensible control framework for the integration of additional functions. The robot has eight degrees of freedom that can handle disinfection tasks in complex 3D environments where normal disinfection robots lack the capability to ensure complete disinfection. An ingenious clamping mechanism is designed to increase flexibility and adaptability. Secondly, a new coverage path planning algorithm targeted at the spraying area is used. This algorithm aims to achieve an optimal path via the rotating calipers algorithm after transformation between a 2D (two-dimensional) array and 3D space. Finally, the performance of the designed robot is tested through a series of simulations and experiments in various spaces that humans usually live in. The results demonstrate that the robot can effectively perform disinfection tasks both in computer simulation and in reality.
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Worldwide, up to 8.8 million excess deaths/year have been attributed to air pollution, mainly due to the exposure to fine particulate matter (PM). Traffic-related noise is an additional contributor to global mortality and morbidity. Both health risk factors substantially contribute to cardiovascular, metabolic and neuropsychiatric sequelae. Studies on the combined exposure are rare and urgently needed because of frequent co-occurrence of both risk factors in urban and industrial settings. To study the synergistic effects of PM and noise, we used an exposure system equipped with aerosol generator and loud-speakers, where C57BL/6 mice were acutely exposed for 3d to either ambient PM (NIST particles) and/or noise (aircraft landing and take-off events). The combination of both stressors caused endothelial dysfunction, increased blood pressure, oxidative stress and inflammation. An additive impairment of endothelial function was observed in isolated aortic rings and even more pronounced in cerebral and retinal arterioles. The increase in oxidative stress and inflammation markers together with RNA sequencing data indicate that noise particularly affects the brain and PM particularly affects the lungs. Noise also increased levels of circulating stress hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline, while PM increased levels of circulating cytokines CD68 and MCP-1. The combination of both stressors has additive adverse effects on the cardiovascular system that are based on PM-induced systemic inflammation and noise-triggered stress hormone signaling. We demonstrate an additive upregulation of ACE-2 in the lung, suggesting that there may be an increased vulnerability to COVID-19 infection. The data warrant further mechanistic studies to characterize the propagation of primary target tissue damage (lung, brain) to remote organs such as aorta and heart by combined noise and PM exposure.Copyright © 2023
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In pricing extreme mortality risk, it is commonly assumed that interest rate and mortality rate are independent. However, the COVID-19 pandemic calls this assumption into question. In this paper, we employ a bivariate affine jump-diffusion model to describe the joint dynamics of interest rate and excess mortality, allowing for both correlated diffusions and joint jumps. Utilizing the latest U.S. mortality and interest rate data, we find a significant negative correlation between interest rate and excess mortality, and a much higher jump intensity when the pandemic experience is considered. Moreover, we construct a risk-neutral pricing measure that accounts for both diffusion and jump risk premia, and we solve for the market prices of risk based on mortality bond prices. Our results show that the pandemic experience can drastically change investors' perception of the mortality risk market in the post-pandemic era. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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Overall survival (OS) is considered the standard clinical endpoint to support effectiveness claims in new drug applications globally, particularly for lethal conditions such as cancer. However, the source and reliability of OS in the setting of clinical trials have seldom been doubted and discussed. This study first raised the common issue that data integrity and reliability are doubtful when we collect OS information or other time-to-event endpoints based solely on simple follow-up records by investigators without supporting material, especially since the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic. Then, two rounds of discussions with 30 Chinese experts were held and 12 potential source scenarios of three methods for obtaining the time of death of participants, including death certificate, death record and follow-up record, were sorted out and analysed. With a comprehensive assessment of the 12 scenarios by legitimacy, data reliability, data acquisition efficiency, difficulty of data acquisition, and coverage of participants, both short-term and long-term recommended sources, overall strategies and detailed measures for improving the integrity and reliability of death date are presented. In the short term, we suggest integrated sources such as public security systems made available to drug inspection centres appropriately as soon as possible to strengthen supervision. Death certificates provided by participants' family members and detailed standard follow-up records are recommended to investigators as the two channels of mutual compensation, and the acquisition of supporting materials is encouraged as long as it is not prohibited legally. Moreover, we expect that the sharing of electronic medical records and the legal disclosure of death records in established health registries can be realized with the joint efforts of the whole industry in the long-term. The above proposed solutions are mainly based on the context of China and can also provide reference for other countries in the world. © 2022 The Authors
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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a huge challenge to world health systems. The harm of public panic is more serious than that of the virus infection. Public panic will create a lot of rumours;Rumours will not only hinder the government's handling of public health emergencies, but also disrupt the public's awareness and behaviour of preventing viruses and cause social unrest. Purpose(s): In order to investigate the demand of the ordinary personnel and health professionals for emergency popularisation of science, discover the current problems in popular science work during public health emergencies, and provided suggestions for future health popular science work. Method(s): This study designed two versions of the health emergency science questionnaire, which are divided into ordinary personnel version and health professional version. From 21st February to 10th March 2020, the authors received questionnaires from 25,935 ordinary personnel and 30,143 professionals from all provinces of China. Result(s): The public has a high demand for health emergency popularisation of science about COVID-19, and the professional demand is higher than the ordinary personnel. Ordinary personnel's evaluation of the role of health emergency popular science in COVID-19 pandemic is 8.58+/-1.80 points (out of ten points), and the professional's evaluation is 8.93+/-1.44 points. Conclusion(s): Ordinary personnel and professionals have highly evaluated the role of health emergency popular science during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mobile Internet is currently the main channel for the public to obtain emergency popular science information, but due to rumours, the public's trust in mobile Internet is low.
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In recent years, we have witnessed an exorbitant growth of online interactions, especially during the pandemic of COVID-19, which requires diversified digital agreements in different application scenarios. In essence, multi-party agreement signing (MPAS) can be reckoned as a special case of the multi-party fair exchange (MPFE) for signatures over a digital agreement. However, such general MPAS protocols have not seen wide adoptions in practice, possibly due to the lack of incentives to maintain the signing platform. Practically, monetary-incentivized enterprises exist to act as a trusted third party (TTP) and provide signing services. However, such an agreement signing flow still suffers from certain limitations in terms of insecure and inefficient operations. To this end, we propose a secure and efficient framework for multi-party agreement signing based on decentralized identity, blockchain and decentralized storage network (DSN). The framework consists of two subsystems where the identity subsystem contains an extensible three-tier user identity model atop decentralized identity, and the agreement signing subsystem, empowered by the identity subsystem, DSN and several novel designs, achieves security and efficiency design goals. For the convenience of explanation, we suppose that a centralized signing service provider (SSP) is properly involved, i.e., sensitive information is still protected against the SSP, and acts as a TTP to ensure the crucial properties such as fairness and coordinate the signing activities. Our design is also compatible with other methods, e.g., ensuring fairness via blockchain, which removes the single point of failure of SSP. We prototype the framework and the performance evaluation shows effectiveness and efficiency. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Respiratory symptoms are most commonly experienced by patients in the early stages of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, with a better understanding of COVID-19, gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting have attracted increasing attention. The gastrointestinal tract may be a target organ of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The intestinal microecological balance is a crucial factor for homeostasis, including immunity and inflammation, which are closely related to COVID-19. Herbal medicine can restore intestinal function and regulate the gut flora structure. Herbal medicine has a long history of treating lung diseases from the perspective of the intestine, which is called the gut–lung axis. The physiological activities of guts and lungs influence each other through intestinal flora, microflora metabolites, and mucosal immunity. Microecological modulators are included in the diagnosis and treatment protocols for COVID-19. In this review, we demonstrate the relationship between COVID-19 and the gut, gut–lung axis, and the role of herbal medicine in treating respiratory diseases originating from the intestinal tract. It is expected that the significance of herbal medicine in treating respiratory diseases from the perspective of the intestinal tract could lead to new ideas and methods for treatment.Graphical :: http://links.lww.com/AHM/A33.
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As emerging pollutants, microplastics (MPs) are widely distributed in water, soil and atmosphere, and have become a popularly concerned environmental and social issue. The research on atmospheric microplastics (AMPs) started later than that on the MPs in soil and water, but AMPs’ potential environmental impacts are explored in an even wider range. Based on the literatures on AMPs since 2015 as well as those about MPs in water and soil, this paper systematically reviews the distribution, source, transport of AMPS and the environmental and ecological impacts of AMPs. The results show that AMPs are distributed in global atmosphere, and have been detected in the atmosphere of urban, suburban, remote areas and indoor air. The concentrations of AMPs were detected in a range 2 to 77000 n m–2 d–1 or 0 to 1583 n m–3. The distribution characteristics of MPs in atmosphere are affected by environmental factors such as indoor and outdoor environment, underlying surface type and airflow, etc. In general, the concentration and the diversity of AMPs’ shape and composition are higher in the places near to MPs the source, but the wind, precipitation and even local animals could reshape the characters of AMPs. The sources of AMPs are mainly the production, use and recycling processes of plastic products, as well as land and sea where MPs accumulated. Studies also showed that abrasion of vehicle tires and the use of synthetic textile are major sources. What’s noteworthy is that the COVID-19 pandemic has made masks as necessities of life, which indirectly exacerbated the pollution of AMPs. The transport of MPs can occur in atmospheric environment, such as suspension, deposition and diffusion, and is affected by the morphology of MPs, wind direction, precipitation and other atmospheric factors. The diffusion of MPs in atmosphere, also known as atmospheric transport, is an important part of the global plastic cycle. AMPs’ transport path is mostly studied of Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) by conducting backward trajectory simulation, and their transport volume is estimated mainly through deposition and aerodynamic model. In addition, AMPs have unique physical and chemical properties, which can affect regional atmospheric environmental quality, change regional and global climate. It could also adsorb heavy metals, organic pollutants and harmful microorganisms during transport, resulting in greater health risks to human. Also, AMPs could affect atmospheric ecosystems through food chains and providing microbial niches, and alter structure and functions of terrestrial forest and water ecosystems through deposition. There are still some unsolved scientific and technical questions. Due to the lack of standardized sampling and identification means, the past research methods on AMPs are different on sampling and physical analysis, which make information comparison difficult. The observations of AMPs’ environmental behaviors, the atmospheric transport, source attribution and trans-regional effects of AMPs are still limited. Therefore, some conclusions from laboratory researches cannot fully explain the uncertainty of in natural environment. Based on the analysis, it is suggested that future scientific research on AMPs should focus on standardization of research methods, the establishment of source list, transport mechanism and environmental and ecological impacts. It is necessary for the study of AMPs to establish a set of scientifically credible and technically feasible monitoring techniques as well. Because AMPs could be transported to different ecosystems and could enter the human body through a variety of ways, it is urgent to study the physiological and ecological status of human body and ecosystems which are continuously exposed to AMPs pollution. © 2022 Chinese Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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Knowledge graphs capture the complex relationships among various entities, which can be found in various real world applications, e.g., Amazon product graph, Freebase, and COVID-19. To facilitate the knowledge graph analytical tasks, a system that supports interactive and efficient query processing is always in demand. In this demonstration, we develop a prototype system, CheetahKG, that embeds with our state-of-the-art query processing engine for the top-k frequent pattern discovery. Such discovered patterns can be used for two purposes, (i) identifying related patterns and (ii) guiding knowledge exploration. In the demonstration sessions, the attendees will be invited to test the efficiency and effectiveness of the query engine and use the discovered patterns to analyze knowledge graphs on CheetahKG. © 2022 IEEE.
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In the current COVID-19 pandemic, manual contact tracing has been proven to be very helpful to reach close contacts of infected users and slow down spread of the virus. To improve its scalability, a number of automated contact tracing (ACT) solutions have been proposed, and some of them have been deployed. Despite the dedicated efforts, security and privacy issues of these solutions are still open and under intensive debate. In this article, we examine the ACT concept from a broader perspective, by focusing on not only security and privacy issues but also functional issues such as interface, usability, and coverage. We first elaborate on these issues and particularly point out the inevitable privacy leakages in existing Bluetooth Low Energy based ACT solutions, including centralized and decentralized ones. In addition, we examine the existing venue-based ACT solutions and identify their privacy and security concerns. Then, we propose a generic venue-based ACT solution and a concrete instantiation based on Bluetooth Low Energy technology. Our solution monitors users' contacting history only in virus-spreading-prone venues and offers higher-level protection for both security and privacy than its predecessors. Finally, we evaluate our solution from security, privacy, and efficiency perspectives, and also highlight how to reduce false positives in some specific indoor environments.
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Therapeutic inhibition of critical viral functions is important for curtailing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We sought to identify antiviral targets through the genome-wide characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV- 2) proteins that are crucial for viral pathogenesis and that cause harmful cytopathogenic effects. All 29 viral proteins were tested in a fission yeast cell-based system using inducible gene expression. Twelve proteins, including eight nonstructural proteins (NSP1, NSP3, NSP4, NSP5, NSP6, NSP13, NSP14, and NSP15) and four accessory proteins (ORF3a, ORF6, ORF7a, and ORF7b), were identified that altered cellular proliferation and integrity and induced cell death. Cell death correlated with the activation of cellular oxidative stress. Of the 12 proteins, ORF3a was chosen for further study in mammalian cells because it plays an important role in viral pathogenesis and its activities are linked to lung tissue damage and a cytokine storm. In human pulmonary and kidney epithelial cells, ORF3a induced cellular oxidative stress associated with apoptosis and necrosis and caused activation of proinflammatory response with production of the cytokines tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and IFN-beta 1, possibly through the activation of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappa B). To further characterize the mechanism, we tested a natural ORF3a Beta variant, Q57H, and a mutant with deletion of the highly conserved residue, Delta G188. Compared with wild-type ORF3a, the Delta G188 variant yielded more robust activation of cellular oxidative stress, cell death, and innate immune response. Since cellular oxidative stress and inflammation contribute to cell death and tissue damage linked to the severity of COVID-19, our findings suggest that ORF3a is a promising, novel therapeutic target against COVID-19. IMPORTANCE The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has claimed over 5.5 million lives with more than 300 million people infected worldwide. While vaccines are effective, the emergence of new viral variants could jeopardize vaccine protection. Treatment of COVID-19 by antiviral drugs provides an alternative to battle against the disease. The goal of this study was to identify viral therapeutic targets that can be used in antiviral drug discovery. Utilizing a genome-wide functional analysis in a fission yeast cell-based system, we identified 12 viral candidates, including ORF3a, which cause cellular oxidative stress, inflammation, apoptosis, and necrosis that contribute to cytopathogenicity and COVID-19. Our findings indicate that antiviral agents targeting ORF3a could have a great impact on COVID-19.
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Patients with novel coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pneumonia continue to have problems with respiratory function, physical and psychological function, the ability to perform activities of daily living, and social participation after discharge from the hospital. As such, strengthening rehabilitation treatments for discharged patients and relapse prevention after recovery are important aspects of the prevention and control of COVID-19. This paper combined the principles and practices of in Chinese and Western medicine and compiled the recommendations of both for home rehabilitation in the post-COVID-19 epidemic stage. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the self-rehabilitation of patients with COVID-19 and to promote the prevention and control of COVID-19 at this current stage.
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Contribution: This article presents a teaching experiment platform for an undergraduate laboratory program designed to fulfill the needs of control engineering classroom experiment teaching. The teaching experiment platform is a cost-effective teaching tool that can be promoted on a large scale in colleges and universities. The teaching experiment platform is a portable device that breaks through the limitations of the time and place of experiments. The platform can be used for many courses, which helps students combine theory with practice. Background: 1) Undergraduate programs usually follow traditional educational methods, which lead to students often unable to connect knowledge learned in class to actual situations;2) the price of existing experimental devices is far beyond the affordability of students and teachers;and 3) most undergraduate students have to learn at home due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Therefore, students need a kind of cost-effective take-home teaching experiment platform, which can enable them to do experiments at home and improved the learning efficiency. Intended Outcomes: The teaching experimental platform gives the students out of the classroom more time to analyze the results of the experiment and to relate the concepts presented in the lecture course to the results of the experiment. With the aid of the platform, students can achieve the learning objectives, significantly improve interactivity in the classroom and fulfill the ABET requirement. Application Design: The course of Principle of Automatic Control taught at the Hunan University is given as a case study in which the evaluation process was based on the corresponding student outcomes and ABET criteria. Findings: The analysis based on positive student feedback as well as their academic grades indicates that the teaching platform presented in this article is an effective learning tool during the learning process of undergraduate students. IEEE
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The novel coronavirus pneumonia has had a great impact on the prices of agricultural products. The current domestic research focuses on theoretical analysis and does not focus on a specific city. Aiming at the changes in agricultural product prices in Chengdu, this article first proposes hypotheses in terms of income effect, price expectation effect and cost effect, and then selects the prices of agricultural products around the Spring Festival in 2020 and uses Difference-in-Difference for analysis. The empirical results show that among different types of agricultural products, livestock and poultry rose the most, at 6.6%, and grain and oil rose the least, at 0.3%. From the perspective of residents' income and geographic area, the prices of agricultural products in Chengdu have risen overall, and the price fluctuations are greatest in areas with small agricultural production values. The research in this article is helpful to understand the agricultural product price adjustment mechanism under the impact of the epidemic, and provides decision-making reference for effective formulation of relevant policies to stabilize prices and ease the pressure on residents' lives. © 2021 IEEE.
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Great changes have taken place in modern education methods under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Information science technology has broken through the time and space limits of education, as well as the boundary between physical and virtual objects in learning, and has converted the process of learning from passive to active. These characteristics just meet the needs of education under the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the new education mode which integrates information science technology has been developing rapidly during this period of time. This paper summarizes how the development of modern information science, especially network technology, multimedia technology and virtual reality technology, has influenced modern education. Meanwhile, our efforts and work in regard with digital museum will be introduced in this article. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.
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Objective: To study the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) patients′ serum myocardial injury markers, coagulation markers and inflammatory markers, and to explore their value in prognosis. Methods: A retrospective study was performed on 67 patients with covid-19 admitted to Tongji Hospital of Huazhong University of Science and Technology from February 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020. According to the severity of the disease, they were divided into general group (n=20), severe group (n=20) and critical group (n=27). According to the discharge condition of the patients, the patients were divided into cure group (n=12) and death group (n=15), and the end point of observation was patients′ improvement and discharge or death during hospitalization. The clinical data of the patients were collected, the venous blood was collected and the serum levels of hs-cTnI, MYO, CK-MB, NT-proBNP, D-dimer, WBC, PT, APPT, FIB, hs-CRP and ferritin were detected. The differences of the above indexes were compared among the three groups. Results: There was no significant difference in Red Blood Cell, Platelet (PLT), FIB and hemoglobin among the three groups (P>0.05). However, the levels of WBC, hs-CRP, ferritin, PT, APPT and D-dimer in the normal group, the severe group and the critical recombination group were significantly different (P<0.05), and the critical recombination group was higher than that of the severe group and the ordinary group (P<0.05). NT-proBNP, CK-MB, MYO, hs-cTnI of critical patients were significantly higher than those of normal group and severe group, and pro BNP, CK-MB, MYO, hs-cTnI of death patients in critical severe group were higher than those of cured patients (all P<0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the increase of hs-cTnI (OR=1.053, 95%CI 1.010-1.098, P=0.016) and D-dimer (OR=1.253, 95%CI 1.026-1.531, P=0.005) were the risk factors of death in patients with COVID-19. Conclusion: COVID-19 critical and severe patients were accompanied with coagulation dysfunction and the increase of inflammatory factors. There were different degrees of myocardial injury, and the increase of hs-cTnI and D-dimer are the risk factors of death in patients with severe COVID-19.