A Study on the Improvement of COVID-19 Prevention Guidelines in School Facilities

Since the COVID-19 epidemic, the response of educational facilities regarding infectious diseases has been through software quarantine guidelines that involved installing partitions and keeping distance. However, this is a temporary prevention method, and hardware supplementation is needed with consideration of the placement of space or movement path of infectious diseases that could occur in the future. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the infectious disease guidelines of educational facilities that could occur even afterwards, and derive implications through surveys and interviews with related officials and experts. Reports and documents from the Ministry of Education and the provincial education office related to infection prevention management and response manuals were analyzed. This study was divided into institutional and spatial aspects that entailed the prevention of infectious diseases related to school facilities after 2019. Opinions were collected through a survey conducted on operators of these educational facility guidelines and implications were derived from status analysis based upon interviews and surveys taken from architectural design experts. Finally, the direction for improving these guidelines for preventative COVID-19 measures in school facilities was suggested from the responses of school operators and architectural experts. © 2022 Architectural Institute of Korea.

Numerical Analysis of RF-Induced Heating While Wearing Face Mask at Magnetic Resonance Imaging

In response to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, wearing face masks in public places and common facilities has been strongly recommended to help prevent the further spread of the virus. However, conductive components of the face mask carry the potential risk of radio-frequency (RF)-induced heating when exposed to an RF electromagnetic field, particularly during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In this study, a realistic human head model wearing a face mask exposed to a strong RF electromagnetic field in 1.5 T, 3 T, and 7 T MRI was simulated. A nose wire in contact with the skin and a mask sheet with relatively high electrical conductivity, emulating a silver nanoparticle-coated face mask, was modeled to investigate the worst case of RF-induced heating that could occur during the MRI scan. 24 scenarios were simulated by using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD)-based electromagnetic solver and thermal-transient solver from Sim4Life commercial simulation software. According to the results, a notable enhancement in the specific absorption rate (SAR) and temperature rise was observed in the local region of the skin where the wire contacted the skin around the edge of the high-conductive mask sheet. In particular, a maximum of a 12-fold increase in mass-averaged SAR and a temperature increase of more than 8.0 degrees C occurred because of the conductive face mask at 3 T, compared to the normal polymer-based face mask with low conductivity. Our results confirmed that the degree of RF-induced heating due to the face mask could be completely different depending on the RF frequency of the MRI, location where the nose wire contacted the skin, and conductivity of the mask sheet. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the face mask as a factor for RF-induced heating during MRI. These findings are important for providing a safety guide that allows patients to safely undergo MRI while wearing a face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Social Computing Based Analysis on Team Efficacy and Outcome of Real-time Online Sports Capstone Design Class

Recently, non-face-to-face classes are increasing in university education, and classes including practical classes and team activities as well as theory classes are often conducted non-face-to-face due to COVID-19. In particular, recently, capstone design classes at universities are being conducted not only in the engineering field but also in other majors. In the case of these capstone design classes, there are many professors who show difficulty in conducting non-face-to-face classes. This study investigates team efficacy and team activity-related performance in an online capstone design class. The subjects of this study were 30 sports major students who took a sports capstone design class. The real-time video class was conducted through Webex, and a Padlet was used as a tool for more active interaction. Analysis was performed using SPSS statistical analysis. The results of a questionnaire survey on team effectiveness and learning performance among participants are as follows. The average of team effectiveness was high, which means that team activities, which were considered difficult as non-face-to-face activities, were performed effectively. There were many items that had a significant correlation with team efficacy and learning performance when conducting a team project in capstone design learning. In other words, to achieve positive results, it will be necessary to increase the sense of team efficacy, as well as to actively utilize technology to increase the sense of team efficacy. The results and analysis of this study are expected to be helpful not only for non-face-to-face capstone design classes, but also for non-face-to-face classes centered on team activities. © 2022, Success Culture Press. All rights reserved.

Impaired metabolic health rather than obesity is associated with coronavirus disease 2019 severity in the Korean population

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the relative and independent contributions of impaired metabolic health and obesity to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outcomes. METHODS: We analyzed 4,069 COVID-19 patients between January and June 2020 in South Korea, classified into four groups according to metabolic health status and body mass index (BMI): metabolically healthy normal weight (MHNW), metabolically unhealthy normal weight (MUNW), metabolically healthy obese (MHO), and metabolically unhealthy obese (MUO). The primary outcome was a composite of intensive care unit (ICU) admission, invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), and death. Multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) for the outcome. RESULTS: The incidence rate (per 100 person-months) of severe COVID-19 outcomes was the lowest in the MHNW group (0.90), followed by the MHO (1.64), MUNW (3.37), and MUO (3.37) groups. Compared with MHNW, a significantly increased risk of severe COVID-19 was observed in MUNW (HR, 1.41;95% CI, 1.01-1.98) and MUO (HR, 1.77;95% CI, 1.39-2.44) but not in MHO (HR, 1.48;95% CI, 0.98-2.23). The risk of ICU admission or IMV/ECMO was increased only in MUO;however, the risk of death was significantly higher in MUNW and MUO. The risk of severe COVID-19 increased insignificantly by 2% per 1 kg/m2 BMI increase but significantly by 13% per 1 metabolically unhealthy component increase, even after mutually adjusting for BMI and metabolic health status. CONCLUSION: Metabolic health is more important to COVID-19 outcomes than obesity.

Stream-AI-MD: Streaming AI-driven adaptive molecular simulations for heterogeneous computing platforms

Emerging hardware tailored for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods provide novel means to couple them with traditional high performance computing (HPC) workflows involving molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We propose Stream-AI-MD, a novel instance of applying deep learning methods to drive adaptive MD simulation campaigns in a streaming manner. We leverage the ability to run ensemble MD simulations on GPU clusters, while the data from atomistic MD simulations are streamed continuously to AI/ML approaches to guide the conformational search in a biophysically meaningful manner on a wafer-scale AI accelerator. We demonstrate the efficacy of Stream-AI-MD simulations for two scientific use-cases: (1) folding a small prototypical protein, namely ββα-fold (BBA) FSD-EY and (2) understanding protein-protein interaction (PPI) within the SARS-CoV-2 proteome between two proteins, nsp16 and nsp10. We show that Stream-AI-MD simulations can improve time-to-solution by ~50X for BBA protein folding. Further, we also discuss performance trade-offs involved in implementing AI-coupled HPC workflows on heterogeneous computing architectures. © 2021 ACM.

Effects of personal hygiene habits on self-efficacy for preventing infection, infection-preventing hygiene behaviors, and product-purchasing behaviors

Since there is no cure for the COVID-19 pandemic yet, personal hygiene management is important for protecting oneself from the deadly virus. Personal hygiene management comes from personal hygiene habits. Thus, this study investigated the association between personal hygiene habits, consumers’ infection-prevention behaviors, and the effects of social support on the latter. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire survey of 620 Korean adults. An online survey agency was used to conduct the questionnaire over eight days, from 18 May to 25 May, 2020. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results were as follows. First, personal hygiene habits positively affected self-efficacy for infection prevention (β = 0.123, p < 0.01). Moreover, personal hygiene habits indirectly affected virus spread-prevention behaviors (β = 0.457, p < 0.000) and product-purchasing behaviors for infection prevention (β = 0.146, p < 0.01) through self-efficacy for infection prevention. Second, informational support for infection prevention increased self-efficacy influence for infection prevention on the virus spread prevention behaviors among the public (composite reliability: −2.627). Thus, continued education of the public is imperative to ensuring compliance with personal hygiene practices. Furthermore, timely dissemination of relevant information on infection-prevention practices through various media during an infection outbreak is critical. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.