Patients with B-cell malignancies experience reduced antibody responses with class switching defect following BNT162b2 SARS-CoV-2 vaccination

Vaccines having aided in escaping the majority of the population from immunological naïvety, our strategies are now shifting towards an increased focus on identifying and protecting the extremely vulnerable. We here describe the results of testing 12 patients, those with lymphoid malignancies having been targeted their B-cells for therapy with rituximab-containing regimens or a Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor, for anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike antibodies after receiving the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine doses. The interval from last dosing of B-cell depletion therapy to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination was at median 5.3 (range 3.1–6.6) months. Using the ‘seroprotection' threshold of 775 [BAU/mL] for the anti-spike antibody titer, our finding points out the crucial unresponsiveness of the targeted population with 0/12 (0%) achieving ‘seroprotection'. Although IgG seroconversion was observed in 4/12 (33%), supporting the overall benefit of vaccination, the figures still point out a potential need for optimization of practice. IgA was further less responsive (unsuccessful ‘seroconversion' in 11/12 (92%)), implicating an underlying class switch defect. Those with depletion on B-cells are caught at a dilemma between, being too early and too late on receiving SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. They wish to get over their immunological naïvety at the earliest, while, in order to assure quality immune memory, are also required to hold the patience for their B-cells to repopulate. Although it remains an issue whether intensified vaccine schedules and/or regimens will lead to stronger immunogenicity or more effective boosters for non-responders, we shall take advantage of every increasing evidence in order to optimize current options. © 2022 Japanese Society of Chemotherapy and The Japanese Association for Infectious Diseases

The Effect of Telework Frequency on Communication Media and Knowledge Sharing in Japan

Covid-19 has forced millions of office workers to telework without proper training or job redesign. This paper investigates how telework frequency has affected the use of communication media, and subsequently knowledge sharing. A large sample of full-time Japanese employees with no prior telework experience is examined using mediation analysis. Results suggest that telework resulted in a lower use of face-to-face meetings and phone calls, and in a higher use of chat and virtual meetings, and had no effect on email use. Moreover, phone call, chat, and virtual meeting frequencies were found to mediate the relationship between telework frequency and knowledge sharing. These findings highlight the importance of both existing and newer communication media in offsetting the loss of face-to-face meeting opportunities, and show that companies have found ways to achieve effective knowledge sharing during mandatory telework. Firms should therefore invest in tools and training to speed up the adoption of instant messaging and virtual meeting solutions. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

COVID-19 and mandatory teleworking from home in Japan: taking stock to improve satisfaction and job performance

Purpose This exploratory paper aims to examine attitudes and practices with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the effects of mandatory teleworking from home in the wake of the first state of emergency orders in Japan in 2020. Design/methodology/approach An online survey of married employees retrospectively assessed changes in work style, subjective well-being, work-family conflict and job performance before and during forced teleworking from home in Tokyo and three of the surrounding prefectures. Findings Regular employees reported high levels of anxiety and to have thoroughly implemented government-recommended hygiene and safety practices. A majority of respondents were satisfied with mandatory telework from home and desired to continue partial telework after the end of the pandemic. The strongest predictor of satisfaction with mandatory telework from home turned out to be adequate workspace at home for both men and women. However, the antecedents of the desire to continue working from home differed by gender. Practical implications These findings can help individuals, firms and governments better understand the effects of mandatory teleworking from home and devise countermeasures to maximize employee well-being and job performance. This is all the more crucial, as Japan has had successive waves of the virus and has declared numerous states of emergency since the beginning of the pandemic, forcing office workers to continue social distancing and remote working for the time being. Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this research is one of the first to provide insights on how imposed teleworking from home in the context of COVID-19 in Japan affected regular employees' personal and professional lives and to identify predictors of satisfaction with teleworking and the desire to continue doing so.

Development of Highly Reliable Crack Resistive Build-up Dielectric Material with Low Df Characteristic for Next-Gen 2.5D Packages

Due to the full-scale start-up of 5G communications as well as increase in use of online video sharing services and various teleworking services due to the impact of COVID-19, investments in data centers and high performance servers are accelerating leading to higher data transmission speed requirements in semiconductor device used in high performance computing (HPC). Technological breakthrough not only in silicon technologies but packaging technologies have become more crucial to enable these demands. One such technology, 2.5D packaging utilizing silicon interposers have emerged with increasing number of dies being placed in a single package, thereby making the size of silicon interposers larger. This has also led to advanced organic build-up laminated substrates, commonly used in these devices to connect the die/interposer to the PCBs, becoming ever complex and larger in size, requiring many features such as low insertion loss at high frequency even at elevated temperatures and high humidity conditions. Furthermore, maintaining reliability of these substrates are becoming more challenging as the size of the substrates continue to increase and greater stress is exerted on the substrates. In this paper, we present a newly developed dielectric build-up material;one of the main component of advanced organic build-up substrates, with designs to enable lower insertion loss even at elevated humidity and temperature. Furthermore, flexible segment was introduced into the resin to enable higher fracture toughness in an attempt to enable better reliability of larger substrates. The material design philosophy as well as the data showing the contribution of the flexible component to suppress substrate cracking and thus, enabling higher fracture toughness even at low temperatures, and the result of Thermal Shock Cycle Reliability Test will be presented. © 2021 IEEE

Numerical estimation of new COVID-19 positive cases using time series analysis by machine learning

As described herein, we propose a method to make more accurate predictions based on COVID-19 positive case data from Tokyo, which are provided as open data. Our proposed method uses prediction results of related variables to infer an objective function. Prediction of the number of infected people in Tokyo based on this method yielded better correlation between the predicted results and the actual number of COVID-19 positive cases than prediction of the number of infected people. Results also showed better correlation between prediction results and the actual number of COVID-19 positive cases than prediction based on the number of infected cases alone, indicating that our prediction method provides higher accuracy. © 2021 ACM.