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Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the impact of the stay-at-home orders, especially closing and reopening bars and other drinking establishments, on binge drinking patterns in US populations in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Method(s): Data on binge drinking and heavy binge drinking for this study was extracted from the 2018-2021 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Data on regulations were collected by National Academy for State Health Policy. We used two staggered differences-in-differences strategies to account for monthly variations in bar regulations. We implemented a strategy that used never treated states as controls via the Stata package CSDID and a strategy that directly imputed counterfactuals for treated states via the Stata package FECT. The outcomes were measured by the number of binge drinkers or heavy binge drinkers per 1000 population. The treatment effect was estimated while controlling for age, income level, race, chronic conditions, gender, MSA fixed effects, and month fixed effects. Stay-at-home orders were coded as 1 in the first full month of implementation and were assumed to impact the entire state equally. Bars were assumed to reopen if the indoor service has been reactivated at any capacity. Result(s): For heavy binge drinking, the average treatment effect on the treated group was 4.86 per 1000 population (p=0.027) using FECT package and 6.74 per 1000 population (p = 0.025) using CSDID package. No significant effect was found for binge drinking. Conclusion(s): We provide suggestive evidence that stay-at-home orders may have increased heavy binge drinking in metropolitan areas. We estimated this led to a 3.38% (FECT) or 4.68% (CSDID) increase in heavy binge drinking during the pandemic. Future work will assess the characteristics of areas that saw the greatest increase in heavy binge drinking, and explore why heavy binge drinkers were more vulnerable than binge drinkers during the Covid.Copyright © 2023
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Objective: To explore the predictive value of the duration of positive SARS‐CoV‐2 nucleic acid test in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) on clinical outcome. Methods: A total of 128 COVID‐19 patients admitted to Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University from March 2020 to May 2020 were selected and received symptomatic treatment. According to the clinical outcome of the patients, they were divided into a cured group (88 cases) and a death group (40 cases). The gender, age, time from onset to first diagnosis, clinical manifestations, past history, chest CT manifestations, respiratory support methods, blood gas indexes, the first laboratory test result after admission, and the duration of nucleic acid positive were compared between the two groups. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine the influencing factors of the clinical outcome of patients, and the ROC curve for each index was drawn to predict the clinical outcome of COVID‐19 patients. Results: Statistically significant difference between cure group and death group was found in age, arterial oxygen partial pressure, blood oxygen saturation, white blood cell count, neutrophil count, lymphocyte count, platelet count, urea nitrogen, blood potassium, D‐dimer, lactic acid, serum IL‐10, TNF‐α, and nucleic acid positive duration (P<0. 05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that arterial blood oxygen partial pressure (OR=0. 602, 95%CI: 0. 411 ‐ 0. 882), lymphocyte count (OR= 0. 710, 95%CI: 0. 534 ‐ 0. 944), blood potassium (OR=2. 166, 95%CI: 1. 223 ‐ 3. 836), lactic acid (OR=2. 675, 95%CI: 1. 311 ‐ 5. 458), and nucleic acid positive duration (OR=1. 894, 95%CI: 1. 248‐2. 874) were the influencing factors of the clinical outcome of patients (P<0. 05). The areas under the ROC curve of lactate, arterial partial pressure of oxygen, nucleic acid positive duration, blood potassium, and lymphocyte count to predict the clinical outcome of patients were 0. 922 (95%CI: 0. 8867 ‐ 0. 968) and 0. 897 (95%CI: 0. 837 ‐ 0.957), 0.854 (95%CI: 0. 778 ‐ 0. 931), 0. 731 (95%CI: 0. 637‐0. 826), and 0. 704 (95%CI: 0. 608‐0. 812), respectively, which showed higher predictive value, and their best cut‐off values were 3. 35 mmol/L, 62 mmHg, 31 d, 4. 22 mmol/L, and 0. 91×109/ L, respectively, the sensitivities were 0. 914, 0. 906, 0. 844, 0. 750, and 0. 711, respectively, and the specificities were 0. 766, 0. 797, 0. 813, 0. 836, and 0. 820, respectively. Conclusion: Arterial partial pressure of oxygen, lymphocyte count, blood potassium, lactic acid, and nucleic acid positive duration are the influencing factors for the clinical outcome of COVID‐19 patients, and have a high predictive value for the death of the patients. © 2022 Editorial Board of Medical Journal of Wuhan University. All rights reserved.
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Objective: In this research, we tried to explore how short-term mindfulness (STM) intervention affects adoles-cents' anxiety, depression, and negative and positive emotion during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: 10 classes were divided into experiment groups (5 classes;n = 238) and control (5 classes;n = 244) randomly. Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were used to measure par-ticipants' dependent variables. In the experiment group, we conducted STM practice interventions every morning in their first class from March to November 2020. No interventions were conducted in the control group. Methods: Paired-sample t-tests were used to identify if a significant difference exists between every time point of the experimental and control groups. Repeated ANOVA and Growth Mixture Model (GMM) were used to analyze the tendency of positive and negative emotions, anxiety, and depression in the experimental group. Results and Conclusions: (1) With the intervention of STM, there was a significant decrease in negative emotions and an increase in positive emotions in the experimental group, whereas there were non-significant differences in the control group. (2) To explore the heterogeneity trajectories of dependent variables, we built a GMM and found there were two latent growth classes in the trajectories. (3) The results of the models showed their trajectories were downward, which meant that the levels of anxiety, depression, and negative emotions of participants decreased during the STM training period. Nonetheless, the score of positive affect showed upward in three loops of intervention, which indicated that the level of the participants' positive affect increased through the STM inter-vention. (4) This research indicated that STM should be given increasing consideration to enhance mental health during the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19. © 2023, Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing masks in public spaces has become a protective strategy. Field tests and questionnaire surveys were carried out at a university library in Guangzhou, China, during June 2021 and January 2022. The indoor environmental parameters were observed, thermal sensation votes of students on various environmental parameters were collected, symptoms of students wearing masks were quantified, and the appropriate amount of time to wear masks was established. To identify acceptable and comfortable temperature ranges, the relationship between thermal sensation and thermal index was investigated. During summer and winter, people wearing masks are symptomatic for a certain duration. The most frequently voted symptom was facial heat (62.7 % and 54.6 % during summer and winter, respectively), followed by dyspnea. During summer, more than 80 % of the participants subjects were uncomfortable and showed some symptoms after wearing masks for more than 2 h (3 h during winter). In the summer air conditioning environment in Guangzhou, the neutral Top was 26.4 °C, and the comfortable Top range was 25.1–27.7 °C. Under the natural ventilation environment in winter, the neutral Top was 20.5 °C, and the comfortable Top range was 18.5–22.5 °C. This study may provide guidance for indoor office work and learning to wear masks in Guangzhou. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd
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Monetary wisdom asserts that decision-makers select their deep-rooted personal values as a lens and frame the critical concerns in the proximal-immediate and distal-omnibus contexts to maximize their expected utilities and ultimate serenity. In the Holy Bible, Jesus talked about the Parable of Talents in the book of Matthew. "A man who was going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents;to another, two;to a third, one-to each according to his ability." These three servants' handling of the entrusted possessions tells us an exciting story of the Matthew Effect, their values toward the money, and their Monetary Wisdom. The Matthew Effect has bright and dark sides. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. I summarize my journey from the Matthew Effect, the love of money, serving God and mammon, to the development of Monetary Wisdom-a global theory of organization science. For decades, scholars have substantiated this psychological construct in 45 countries across six continents. Avaricious monetary aspiration predicts not only behavioral intentions but also actions. This theory applies to decision-makers at the individual, group, organization, country, global levels, and stressful COVID-19 pandemic. Serving God leads to growth and prosperity. Serving mammon leads to death and poverty. Monetary Wisdom sparks our interest in the Holy Bible and behavioral economics, helping us become healthier, happier, and wealthier than before. © 2021 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
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Public health measures to reduce COVID-19 transmission include masking in public places, physical distancing, staying home when ill, avoiding high-risk locations, using a contact tracing app, and being willing to take a COVID-19 vaccine. However, adoption of these measures varies greatly. We aimed to improve health messaging to increase adherence to public health behaviours to reduce COVID-19 transmission by: (1) determining attitudes towards public health measures and current behaviours;(2) identifying barriers to following public health measures;and, (3) identifying public health communication strategies. We recruited participants from a random panel of 3000 phone numbers across Alberta to fill a predetermined quota: age (18-29;30-59;60+ years), geographic location (urban;rural), and whether they had school-age children. Two researchers coded and themed all transcripts. We performed content analysis and in-depth thematic analysis. Nine focus groups were conducted with 2-8 participants/group in August-September, 2020. Several themes were identified: (1) importance of public health measures;(2) compliance with public health measures;(3) critiques of public health messaging;and (4) suggestions for improving public health messaging. Physical distancing and masking were seen as more important than using a contact tracing app. There were mixed views around willingness to take COVID-19 vaccine. Current public health messaging was perceived as conflicting. Participants felt that consistent messaging and using social media to reach younger people would be helpful. In conclusion, these findings provide insights that can be used to inform targeted (e.g., by age, current behaviour) public health communications to encourage behaviors that reduce COVID-19 transmission.
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With the worldwide pandemic of COVID-19, a tremendous amount of face masks have been consumed and discarded, resulting in serious environment pollution and infectious hazards. Herein a green and high-yield route has been developed to recycle waste masks (WMs) into CNTs/Ni hybrids via catalytic carbonization. Our results exhibited that the yield of carbon was as high as 64.4 g/100 g WMs. Furthermore, the as-fabricated CNTs/Ni hybrids were applied for microwave absorption, which displayed superior performances, including a strong reflection loss of -56.3 dB and an absorption bandwidth of 4.3 GHz with absorber thickness of only 2.0 mm. The mechanism was mainly ascribed to the favorable synergistic effects of CNTs and Ni on conduction and magnetic losses, dipolar polarization, interfacial polarization and impedance matching. Thus, this work provides an environmentally friendly, scalable and cost-effective strategy for recycling waste masks into high-valuable carbon nanomaterials, and exploits their potential application for microwave absorption. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.
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Purpose: In an ongoing War for Talent, what are the intangible and tangible return on investments (ROIs) for boundary-spanning employees? This study aims to develop a formative structural equation model (SEM) of the Matthew effect in talent. management. Design/methodology/approach: This study develops a formative SEM theoretical model. Training and development (T&D) are the two antecedents of the latent construct – talent management strategy (TMS). This study frames the latent construct (TMS) in the proximal context of reducing burnout (cynicism and inefficacy), the distal context of subjective and intangible outcomes (job and life satisfaction) and the omnibus context of objective, tangible and financial rewards (the sales commission). The study collected data from multiple sources – objective sales commission from personnel records and subjective survey data from 512 sales employees. Findings: The empirical discoveries support the theory. Both T&D contribute significantly to the TMS, which reduces burnout in the immediate context. TMS enhances job satisfaction more than life satisfaction in the distal context. TMS significantly and indirectly improves boundary spanners’ sales commission in the omnibus context via life satisfaction, but not job satisfaction. The model prevails for the whole sample, men, but not women. Practical implications: Our discoveries offer practical implications for the Matthew effect in talent management: policymakers must cultivate T&D, develop TMS, facilitate the spillover effect from job satisfaction to life satisfaction, concentrate on the meaning in their lives and take their mind off money. TMS ultimately helps ignite these boundary spanners’ sales commission and their organization’s bottom line and financial health. The rich get richer. Originality/value: It is life satisfaction (not job satisfaction) that excites boundary-spanning employees’ high level of sales commission. Our model prevails for the whole sample and men, but not for women. Job satisfaction spills over to life satisfaction for the entire sample, for men, but not for women. The results reveal gender differences. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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The outbreak of COVID-19 has turned many areas into disaster areas. In order to provide timely relief to the disaster areas, accurate supply of post-disaster emergency resources has become the primary factor to ensure the safety of the people in the disaster areas. In this paper, SEIR was used to predict the number of infected people in each disaster area at the decision-making moment, and then the weight of urgency degree and material demand in the disaster area were calculated. Based on the degree of urgency, a multi-objective optimization model of emergency resource scheduling was constructed to maximize the satisfaction of the victims, minimize the total cost and consider the fairness of distribution. A multi-objective artificial bee colony algorithm is proposed. Aiming at the disadvantages of artificial bee colony algorithm such as precocity, the dynamic parameter and Pareto solution set are used to define the new bee colony location updating formula, and the teaching optimization is used to disturb the bee colony location, so as to avoid the algorithm falling into local extremum. The simulation results show that the proposed model and algorithm can effectively solve the problem of optimal allocation of emergency resources at multiple disaster points under epidemic events, and the improved algorithm has better performance. © 2021, The Editorial Department of Complex Systems and Complexity Science. All right reserved.
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The virus 2019-nCoV rapidly crossed the globe in the first quarter of 2020, and the global civil aviation industry contributed to the spread of the virus. The aircraft deplaning process is one of the critical stages of the spread of infectious diseases and merits careful research accordingly. However, little effort has been made to tailor the civil aircraft deplaning process to the existence of patients with severe acute airborne disease. In this study, we explore a mixed patient-health pedestrian deplaning flow from a Boeing 737-300’s with a full economy-class layout as per the virus spread dynamics during the process. We develop feasible deplaning management strategies that can reduce the inflection risk to the healthy passengers during the deplaning process. We then quantitatively compare the deplaning process before and after adopting the proposed strategies. The numerical results show that the proposed strategies effectively reduce the risk of infection during the deplaning process but sacrifice deplaning efficiency. We assert that health outweighs efficiency, and find that the proposed strategy may thus have practical value and potentially be of use to administrators. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC and The University of Tennessee.
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Chloroquine, a 4-aminoquinoline derivative, was initially used to treat malaria. It was later found to have immunomodulating, anti-infective, anti-thrombotic, anti-tumor, and metabolic effects. Recently, many studies have focused on the application of chloroquine in viral infections. Most in vitro studies suggested that chloroquine exerted some benefit in infections from viruses. However, animal experiment and clinical trials that attempted to use chloroquine in prevention or treatment of viral infections have reported disappointing results. It might be attributable to inadequate steady-state whole blood chloroquine concentration necessary for exerting its antiviral effects. A 16 µM/L steady-state whole blood concentration of chloroquine should suffice in antiviral treatment with minimal toxicity. Furthermore, chloroquine has both acute and cumulative toxicity. Hence, not only the appropriate treatment dose is crucial, the occurrence of adverse reactions should also be closely monitored and treated in time. Herein, we report the antiviral mechanisms, effects, safety and adverse effects of chloroquine.