ABSTRACT
This paper uses the TVP-VAR frequency connectedness approach to compare the volatility connectedness induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Both shocks induce increased connectedness, but the pandemic shock is stronger. High-frequency and medium-frequency connectedness dominate during the early stage of the pandemic, while low-frequency connectedness dominates during the conflict. Moreover, fossil energy is the risk transmitter in the early phase of the pandemic, while agricultural commodities become the transmitter during the conflict. We should take precautions against risks contagion from fossil energy and agricultural commodities to the post-conflict economy, and prevent inflation and economic slowdown. © 2023 The Author(s)
ABSTRACT
In the era of "Post-epidemic" and "Dual-carbon targets", the focus of research on China's carbon trading market has changed from basic framework design to problem solving and development paths in the process of practice. Foreign carbon trading markets have developed for many years, and have experienced the financial crisis and the impact of the coronavirus epidemic. By analyzing the important problems and countermeasures encountered in the process of carbon trading market by representative organizations such as EU, USA, New Zealand, Korea and Japan, the valuable experience and reference significance of foreign carbon trading practice were summarized. At the same time, comparing the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign carbon trading national conditions, and taking into account the current development of China's carbon trading market, this paper put forward some carbon trading strategies with Chinese characteristics and absorbing foreign advanced experience, such as choosing appropriate emission caps, balancing regulation, formulating price stabilization mechanism, and leaving interfaces for international cooperation. © 2023 Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, SINOPEC. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Online education has been still a common way for teaching and learning in the post epidemic era. However, the related research on service quality for the online Yue kiln celadon art education industry is still a vital research gap during this period. Thus, a hybrid method of FANP and GRA is proposed in this study to analyse and evaluate the key factors for providing and maintaining high service quality of online Yue kiln celadon art education industry in the post coronavirus era. In this research, whether in the model of FANP and GRA, factors such as safety mechanism of transaction and education, personnel quality, and the ability of customer need handling are essential conditions for providing excellent service quality in the post-COVID-19 era. The main contribution of this study is to propose an integrated method of FANP and GRA to calculate and rank potential solutions of online Yue kiln celadon art education service quality in the post-COVID-19 era under fuzzy environment and discrete conditions. Finally, the research findings of this study have a guiding role, thereby becoming a guide for the industries related to online Yue kiln celadon art education to maintain good service quality in similar scenarios in the future. © 2023 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
In the era of "Post-epidemic" and "Dual-carbon targets", the focus of research on China's carbon trading market has changed from basic framework design to problem solving and development paths in the process of practice. Foreign carbon trading markets have developed for many years, and have experienced the financial crisis and the impact of the coronavirus epidemic. By analyzing the important problems and countermeasures encountered in the process of carbon trading market by representative organizations such as EU, USA, New Zealand, Korea and Japan, the valuable experience and reference significance of foreign carbon trading practice were summarized. At the same time, comparing the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign carbon trading national conditions, and taking into account the current development of China's carbon trading market, this paper put forward some carbon trading strategies with Chinese characteristics and absorbing foreign advanced experience, such as choosing appropriate emission caps, balancing regulation, formulating price stabilization mechanism, and leaving interfaces for international cooperation. © 2023 Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, SINOPEC. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Objective: To explore the epidemiological characteristic of a COVID-19 outbreak caused by 2019-nCoV Omicron variant BF.7 and other provinces imported in Shenzhen and analyze transmission chains and characteristics. Methods: Field epidemiological survey was conducted to identify the transmission chain, analyze the generation relationship among the cases. The 2019-nCoV nucleic acid positive samples were used for gene sequencing. Results: From 8 to 23 October, 2022, a total of 196 cases of COVID-19 were reported in Shenzhen, all the cases had epidemiological links. In the cases, 100 were men and 96 were women, with a median of age, M (Q1, Q3) was 33(25, 46) years. The outbreak was caused by traverlers initial cases infected with 2019-nCoV who returned to Shenzhen after traveling outside of Guangdong Province.There were four transmission chains, including the transmission in place of residence and neighbourhood, affecting 8 persons, transmission in social activity in the evening on 7 October, affecting 65 persons, transmission in work place on 8 October, affecting 48 persons, and transmission in a building near the work place, affecting 74 persons. The median of the incubation period of the infection, M (Q1, Q3) was 1.44 (1.11, 2.17) days. The incubation period of indoor exposure less than that of the outdoor exposure, M (Q1, Q3) was 1.38 (1.06, 1.84) and 1.95 (1.22, 2.99) days, respcetively (Wald χ2=10.27, P=0.001). With the increase of case generation, the number and probability of gene mutation increased. In the same transmission chain, the proportion of having 1-3 mutation sites was high in the cases in the first generation. Conclusions: The transmission chains were clear in this epidemic. The incubation period of Omicron variant BF.7 infection was shorter, the transmission speed was faster, and the gene mutation rate was higher. It is necessary to conduct prompt response and strict disease control when epidemic occurs.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Epidemics , Male , Humans , Female , SARS-CoV-2 , COVID-19/epidemiology , Disease Outbreaks , China/epidemiologyABSTRACT
The recent remarkable success and safety of mRNA lipid nanoparticle technology for producing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines has stimulated intensive efforts to expand nanoparticle strategies to treat various diseases. Numerous synthetic nanoparticles have been developed for pharmaceutical delivery and cancer treatment. However, only a limited number of nanotherapies have enter clinical trials or are clinically approved. Systemically administered nanotherapies are likely to be sequestered by host mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS), resulting in suboptimal pharmacokinetics and insufficient drug concentrations in tumors. Bioinspired drug-delivery formulations have emerged as an alternative approach to evade the MPS and show potential to improve drug therapeutic efficacy. Here we developed a biodegradable polymer-conjugated camptothecin prodrug encapsulated in the plasma membrane of lipopolysaccharide-stimulated macrophages. Polymer conjugation revived the parent camptothecin agent (e.g., 7-ethyl-10-hydroxy-camptothecin), enabling lipid nanoparticle encapsulation. Furthermore, macrophage membrane cloaking transformed the nonadhesive lipid nanoparticles into bioadhesive nanocamptothecin, increasing the cellular uptake and tumor-tropic effects of this biomimetic therapy. When tested in a preclinical murine model of breast cancer, macrophage-camouflaged nanocamptothecin exhibited a higher level of tumor accumulation than uncoated nanoparticles. Furthermore, intravenous administration of the therapy effectively suppressed tumor growth and the metastatic burden without causing systematic toxicity. Our study describes a combinatorial strategy that uses polymeric prodrug design and cell membrane cloaking to achieve therapeutics with high efficacy and low toxicity. This approach might also be generally applicable to formulate other therapeutic candidates that are not compatible or miscible with biomimetic delivery carriers. © 2022 The Authors
ABSTRACT
The number of deaths caused by COVID-19 is still rising. People still cannot predict the end of this pandemic. Finding out people who may be infected and then monitoring their vitals is an emergency matter. Using medical images to make a diagnosis can provide more information than nucleic acid tests can provide, such as what period the patient was in and the lesion site. In this paper, we use wavelet entropy combined with genetic algorithm to make detection of COVID-19 through CT images. In this method, we expect to use wavelet entropy to extract signal features and genetic algorithm to find the optimal solution. The K fold cross-validation method does not need a large amount of data to complete the verification, and small data sets can also achieve the effect. In the last section, we compare our results with other methods, including RBFNN, KELM, BA. The accuracy of this method reached 73.45%, which is higher than other methods for comparison. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Purpose This paper aims to unveil the importance of knowledge management on a firm's strategic emergency response during the great negative shock from global public health threats. Through analyzing how representative firms in China's new economy industries dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic before, during and after the crisis, the significant problems confronted by these firms are pointed out, and the important role knowledge management capabilities played in solving these problems is proven. Design/methodology/approach The open data of listed companies regarding the important role knowledge management played in firms' strategic emergency response during the COVID-19 pandemic are qualitatively analyzed. Based on theoretical sampling, this paper selects representative samples of enterprises and analyzes the positive response measures they took after being hit by this public health event to gain qualitative insight into the importance of knowledge management capabilities in strategic emergency response. Findings Three aspects of the important role of knowledge management capabilities in a firm's strategic emergency response during the COVID-19 pandemic are introduced: before the crisis, firms should strengthen the acquisition, sharing and integration of knowledge so that they can intensify their monitoring for uncertain risks;during the crisis, firms should boost the transmission, transformation and diffusion of knowledge to improve emergency cooperation;and after the crisis, companies should reinforce knowledge evaluation, creation and application to enhance "immunity" in similar emergencies. Research limitations/implications This paper has important implications for bolstering strategic emergency management practice and knowledge management capability among firms. Future research must focus on the following two aspects for further investigation: the dynamic relationship between firm knowledge management capability and strategic emergency response ability;and the collaboration system between firm knowledge management and strategic emergency response behaviors. Originality/value This paper discusses the important role knowledge management capabilities play in firms' strategic emergency responses based on insights gained from the significant changes that the COVID-19 pandemic caused to representative Chinese new economy firms. By analyzing the three stages of before, during and after the emergency, this paper proposes the exact efforts that new economy companies should make in improving knowledge management capability.
ABSTRACT
News outlets often depict the coronavirus as a “burglar” or a “killer”—even though viruses are not technically alive. While imbuing this virus with human-like qualities may enable the public to feel as if they are better able to understand it, does anthropomorphizing the coronavirus lead people to adopt protective behaviors against the spread of the disease? Integrating construal level theory, we argue that anthropomorphizing an agent makes it seem more understandable, which decreases its psychological distance. And through construal matching between the message and con-sumers’ temporal focus, we demonstrate that when the coronavirus is anthropomorphized, people are more likely to adopt protective measures when they are focused on the present versus the future because consumers believe the anthropomorphized coronavirus to be more powerful. Our findings contribute to both anthropomorphism and construal level theory research. Additionally, our findings offer implications for health communication strategies and public policy. © 2021 Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: In response to the disruption to medical education caused by COVID-19, there is a need for wide-scale robust medical education research and the generation of research capacity for the future. Trainee research collaboratives have demonstrated they can nurture the research skills of students and trainees while delivering high quality research outputs. However, we have been unable to identify a permanent medical education research collaborative for trainees and students. Methods: We started the MedEd Collaborative in September 2020 to fill this gap, consisting of a trainee-and student-led medical education research collaborative supported by senior medical education experts and clinicians. Results: Our vision is to increase engagement of students and trainees in high-quality medical education research that informs practice. The MedEd Collaborative will engage students and trainees in medical education research by completing at least one national multicentre study per year, the first being the COVID Ready 2 study. This is a national cross-sectional survey of the educational impact of medical student volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions: We anticipate the MedEd collaborative will: increase exposure to medical education research, thereby increasing the number of medical students and trainees aiming to pursue an academic medical education career;provide training in medical education research methodologies, such as qualitative analysis;improve the quality of medical education research outputs from students and trainees;encourage collaboration between medical schools and deaneries;and provide support to other trainee research collaboratives that aim to explore education research in their own specialties.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: COVID-19 led to global disruption of healthcare and many students volunteered to provide clinical support. Volunteering to work was a unique medical education opportunity;however, it is unknown whether this was a positive learning experience. Methods: The COVID Ready 2 study is a national cross-sectional study of all medical students at UK medical schools. We will compare opinions of those who did and did not volunteer to determine the educational benefit and issues they faced. We will use thematic analysis to identify themes in qualitative responses, in addition to quantitative analysis. Results: The primary objective is to explore the effect of volunteering during the pandemic on medical education in comparison to those who did not volunteer. Our secondary objectives are to identify: whether students would be willing to assume similar roles in a non-pandemic setting;if students found the experience more or less beneficial than traditional hospital placements and reasons for this;what the perceived benefits and disadvantages of volunteering were;the difference in perceived preparedness between students who did and did not volunteer for foundation training year one and the next academic year;training received by volunteers;and to explore issues associated with volunteering, including safety issues and issues with role and competence. Conclusions: We anticipate this study will help identify volunteer structures that have been beneficial for students, so that similar infrastructures can be used in the future;and help determine whether formal voluntary roles should be introduced into the non-pandemic medical curriculum.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: We aimed to identify motivators and barriers to volunteering during a disaster and knowledge and medical school curriculum of disaster and pandemic medicine. Method: We systematically searched the literature on 28/6/2020, following PRISMA guidelines. Results: A total of 37 studies met inclusion criteria including 11,168 medical students and 91 medical schools. 24 studies evaluated knowledge (64.9%), 16 evaluated volunteering (43.2%), and five evaluated medical school curricula (13.5%). Weighted mean willingness to volunteer during a disaster was 68.4% (SD=21.7%, n=2911), and there was a significant difference between those planning to volunteer and those who actually volunteered (P<.001). We identified a number of modifiable barriers which may contribute to this difference. Overall, knowledge of disasters was poor with a weighted mean of 48.9% (SD=15.1%, n=2985). Conclusions: There is a large number of students who are willing to volunteer during pandemics. However, they are likely to be under-prepared for these roles due to poor overall knowledge and limited teaching. During the current COVID-19 pandemic and in future disasters, medical students may be required to volunteer as auxiliary staff. Medical schools need to develop infrastructure to facilitate this process. as well as providing education and training to ensure students are adequately prepared for these roles.
ABSTRACT
Coronaviruses (CoVs) are associated with some mammalian infectious diseases, which have caused several outbreaks of respiratory system infectious diseases in recent years. There is no effective vaccine or approved drug treatment against coronaviruses, and the development of anti-coronavirus agents is an urgent priority. Pheno-thiazines are a class of antipsychotic drugs, which were found that they have some other biological activities, like promising antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, antiviral, etc. They can be used for drug repurposing. This review summarizes current researches on the potential anti-coronavirus activity of phenothiazine, discusses the mechanisms and some research difficulties, and provides a foundation for developing anti-coronavirus drugs which use phenothiazine as the lead compound.
ABSTRACT
The lockdowns imposed worldwide to curb the coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) spread has positive effects on the environment. However, it is unclear what fraction is caused by weather and what is related to lockdown. Here we used Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) height anomaly time series to quantify the spatio-temporal characteristics of lockdown-induced noise anomalies at 231 selected sites over mainland China. The results indicated that apparent declines (0.52 mm) in noise in 6 days (24–29 January 2020) after the lockdown in Wuhan resulted in drastically reduced human activities, which accounts for 71% of the total noise decrease. The lockdown effects persisted for 8 weeks and reached the maximum in the third week (6–12 February 2020) with reduced GNSS noise anomalies occurring at 81% of the GNSS sites. With the control of pandemic, increased noise anomalies occurred at more than 60% of the sites during the 9th week, which correlated well with the easing of lockdown in many cities in China. We concluded that this study provides new insights to quantifying the effects of human activities on geodetic measurements during the COVID-19 lockdown. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) was in common in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients and associated with unfavorable outcomes. We aimed to compare the clinical observations and outcomes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-infected patients with or without CVD. METHODS: Patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were clinically evaluated at Wuhan Seventh People's Hospital, Wuhan, China, from 23 January to 14 March 2020. Demographic data, laboratory findings, comorbidities, treatments and outcomes were collected and analyzed in COVID-19 patients with and without CVD. RESULTS: Among 596 patients with COVID-19, 215 (36.1%) of them with CVD. Compared with patients without CVD, these patients were significantly older (66 vs. 52 years) and had higher proportion of men (52.5% vs. 43.8%). Complications in the course of disease were more common in patients with CVD, included acute respiratory distress syndrome (22.8% vs. 8.1%), malignant arrhythmias (3.7% vs. 1.0%) including ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation, acute coagulopathy(7.9% vs. 1.8%) and acute kidney injury (11.6% vs. 3.4%). The rate of glucocorticoid therapy (36.7% vs. 25.5%), Vitamin C (23.3% vs. 11.8%), mechanical ventilation (21.9% vs. 7.6%), intensive care unit admission (12.6% vs. 3.7%) and mortality (16.7% vs. 4.7%) were higher in patients with CVD (both P < 0.05). The multivariable Cox regression models showed that older age (≥65 years old) (HR 3.165, 95% CI 1.722-5.817) and patients with CVD (HR 2.166, 95% CI 1.189-3.948) were independent risk factors for death. CONCLUSIONS: CVD are independent risk factors for COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 patients with CVD were more severe and had higher mortality rate, early intervention and vigilance should be taken.