A Study on Real Estate Purchase Decisions

This study examines the influence of joint information framing and personality traits on housing purchase decisions, specifically in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a between-subjects experimental design, we found that negative framing has a stronger impact on purchase decisions for optimistic participants compared with pessimistic ones. Additionally, high-price anchoring has a greater negative effect on purchase intention for pessimists, while low-price anchoring has a stronger positive effect for optimists. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the low-price real estate market has been less severely impacted by the pandemic than the high-price market. The real estate market seeks to minimize information asymmetry to achieve sustainable and healthy development. These results contribute to creating inclusive, safe, and sustainable cities.

Experimental study of the disinfection performance of a 222-nm Far-UVC upper-room system on airborne microorganisms in a full-scale chamber

222-nm Far-UVC light is an emerging and promising tool for rapidly inactivating airborne pathogens. In this study, we experimentally evaluated the performance of a 222-nm Far-UVC upper-room disinfection system with a 15 W Far-UVC lamp in a full-scale chamber (11.9 m3). One gram-positive bacteria, namely Staphylococcus epidermidis and two gram-negative bacteria, namely Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica were selected for the experiments. The aerosolized bacteria were injected into the chamber and exposed to 222-nm Far-UVC light. The first-order decay rates of indoor bioaerosols concentration with and without Far-UVC treatment were estimated. According to the results, the 222-nm Far-UVC induced decay rates of three bacteria were 0.0611 ± 0.003, 0.409 ± 0.048, and 0.474 ± 0.015 min−1, respectively. Besides, the UV susceptibility constants (Z-values) of these three bacteria were estimated as 0.157, 0.974, and 1.18 m2/J, respectively. The gram-positive bacteria, S. epidermidis, showed higher resistance to Far-UVC light as compared to the gram-negative bacteria, E. coli and S. enterica. In addition, a case study on airborne SARS-CoV-2 indoor transmission was simulated, and the infection risk of SARS-CoV-2 was compared using the Far-UVC and enhanced ventilation approaches. The results showed that both UV inactivation and ventilation approaches can significantly reduce the infection risk. More importantly, the Far-UVC may be a feasible and sustainable solution for reducing infection risk and improving indoor air quality. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Evaluating the Mobile Learning Quality for Promoting the User Needs in Taiwanese Higher Education During COVID-19

This study explores the strategic issues related to the mobile learning quality in Taiwanese higher education during the COVID-19 pandemics. While much previous study determined the factors affecting mobile learning quality, seldom research works discussed the influence weights of the elements and their interrelations in the higher education through a comprehensive view. Hence, the purpose of this research is to explore the interrelationships and feedback between the factors affecting mobile learning quality via a combined multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) method, which will include decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and DEMATEL-based ANP (DANP) approaches. This recommended approach can offer guidance to prioritize the influence elements in the enhancement plans for mobile learning quality. This research uses the recommended approach in the higher education in Taiwan as an empirical study during COVID-19. These findings results state which service quality needs to be enhanced primarily, and learning ability is the most important factor influencing mobile learning quality during COVID-19. Furthermore, the results show that system quality perspective has the strongest impact on the relations and it also has an important effect on other perspectives. The results can provide guidance on assigning resources of limit to improve this mobile learning quality in Taiwanese higher education in the COVID-19 pandemics. © 2023 World Scientific Publishing Company.

The relative transmissibility of asymptomatic COVID-19 infections among close contacts. (Coronavirus (COVID-19) collection.)

Asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 is an important topic. A recent study in China showed that transmissibility of the asymptomatic cases is comparable to that of symptomatic cases. Here, we discuss that the conclusion may depend on how we interpret the data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the relative transmissibility of asymptomatic COVID-19 infections is quantified.

How Information Diffuse in a Nomination Network?

During the special period of the COVID-19 outbreak, this project investigated the driving factors in different information diffusion modes (i.e. broadcasting mode, contagion mode) based on the nomination relations in a charitable social relay campaign on Sina Weibo. Specifically, we mapped a nomination social network and tracked the core communicators in both modes. Besides, we also observed the network from perspectives such as relationships between core communicators and modularity of the whole network. We extracted homophily factors and tested them on representative communities within the largest component of the network. We found that some core communicators distributed in a co-dependent way. At last, we presented several explanations to the phenomenon which can be explored in further research.

How Pandemic Spread in News: Text Analysis Using Topic Model

COVID-19 pandemic has made tremendous impact on the whole uorld, both the real uorld and the media atmosphere. Our rest-arch conducted a text analysis using 1.DA topic model. We firs( scraped 1 127 articles and 5563 comments IIP covering COVIII)-19 from Jan 24/ to May 19. Ilien we trained the A model and tuned parameters based on the coherence as the model evaluation method, With the optimal model, dominant topics, representative documents of each topic and the inconsistency between articles and comments are analyzed. Some factors of the inconsistency are discussed at last.

Inferring the Association between the Risk of COVID-19 Case Fatality and N501Y Substitution in SARS-CoV-2

As COVID-19 is posing a serious threat to global health, the emerging mutation in SARS-CoV-2 genomes, for example, N501Y substitution, is one of the major challenges against control of the pandemic. Characterizing the relationship between mutation activities and the risk of severe clinical outcomes is of public health importance for informing the healthcare decision-making process. Using a likelihood-based approach, we developed a statistical framework to reconstruct a time-varying and variant-specific case fatality ratio (CFR), and to estimate changes in CFR associated with a single mutation empirically. For illustration, the statistical framework is implemented to the COVID-19 surveillance data in the United Kingdom (UK). The reconstructed instantaneous CFR gradually increased from 1.0% in September to 2.2% in November 2020 and stabilized at this level thereafter, which monitors the mortality risk of COVID-19 on a real-time basis. We identified a link between the SARS-CoV-2 mutation activity at molecular scale and COVID-19 mortality risk at population scale, and found that the 501Y variants may slightly but not significantly increase 18% of fatality risk than the preceding 501N variants. We found no statistically significant evidence of change in COVID-19 mortality risk associated with 501Y variants, and highlighted the real-time estimating potentials of the modelling framework.

Reducing the Effect of Functional Disability on Life Satisfaction Among Persons With a Lived Experience of an Infectious Viral Disease in Taiwan: A Tri-Mediation Model

The purpose of the study was to examine whether disability acceptance, hope, and resilience mediate the relationship between functional disability and life satisfaction in people with a lived experience of an infectious viral disease (i.e., polio and postpolio syndrome [PPS]). Participants consisted of 157 individuals diagnosed with polio or PPS who were recruited from two community support organizations in Taiwan. Participants completed self-report questionnaires. Data were analyzed with a simultaneous regression analysis. The tri-mediation model indicated that disability acceptance, hope, and resilience were associated with life satisfaction, accounting for a large effect size of 46% of the variance in the life satisfaction scores. The direct effect of functional disability on life satisfaction became insignificant when the mediators were controlled for in the model. Hope, disability acceptance, and resilience were found to fully explain the association between functional disability and life satisfaction. This study demonstrated that positive psychosocial factors might help to buffer the indirect and direct negative effects of functional disability on life satisfaction. Implications of these findings for future research and clinical practice when supporting individuals with a lived experience of an infectious viral disease, including COVID-19, are discussed. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2020.

Estimating the Serial Interval of the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): A Statistical Analysis Using the Public Data in Hong Kong From January 16 to February 15, 2020

Background: The emerging virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused a large outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) since the end of 2019. As of February 15, there were 56 COVID-19 cases confirmed in Hong Kong since the first case with symptom onset on January 23, 2020. Methods: Based on the publicly available surveillance data in Hong Kong, we identified 21 transmission events as of February 15, 2020. An interval censored likelihood framework is adopted to fit three different distributions including Gamma, Weibull, and lognormal, that govern the serial interval (SI) of COVID-19. We selected the distribution according to the Akaike information criterion corrected for small sample size (AICc). Findings: We found the lognormal distribution performed slightly better than the other two distributions in terms of the AICc. Assuming a lognormal distribution model, we estimated the mean of SI at 4.9 days (95% CI: 3.6–6.2) and SD of SI at 4.4 days (95% CI: 2.9–8.3) by using the information of all 21 transmission events. Conclusion: The SI of COVID-19 may be shorter than the preliminary estimates in previous works. Given the likelihood that SI could be shorter than the incubation period, pre-symptomatic transmission may occur, and extra efforts on timely contact tracing and quarantine are crucially needed in combating the COVID-19 outbreak. © Copyright © 2020 Zhao, Gao, Zhuang, Chong, Cai, Ran, Cao, Wang, Lou, Wang, Yang, He and Wang.