ABSTRACT
The molecular docking-based virtual screening technique evaluates the binding abilities between multiple ligand compounds and receptors to screen for the active compounds. In the context of the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale and rapid drug virtual screening is crucial for identifying potential drug molecules from massive datasets of ligand structures. The powerful computing power of supercomputer provides hardware guarantee for drug virtual screening, but the super large-scale drug virtual screening still faces many challenges that affects the effective execution of the calculation. Based on the analysis of the challenges, this paper proposes a centralized task distribution scheme with a central database, and designs a multi-level task distribution framework. The challenges are effectively solved through multi-level intelligent scheduling, multi-level compression processing of massive small molecule files, dynamic load balancing and high error tolerance management technology. An easy-touse"tree”multi-level task distribution system is implemented. A fast, efficient and stable drug virtual screening task distribution, calculation and result analysis function is realized, and the computing efficiency is nearly linear. Then, heterogeneous computing technology is used to complete the drug virtual screening of more than 2 billion compounds, for two different active sites for COVID-19, on the domestic super computing system, which provides a powerful computing guarantee for the super large-scale rapid virtual screening of explosive malignant infectious diseases. © 2023, Journal of Computer Engineering and Applications Beijing Co., Ltd.;Science Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
To prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and enhance the nutrition management for patients, the Beijing Quality Control and Improvement Center for Clinical Nutrition Therapy organized relevant experts to formulate "The Nutrition Management of Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 in the Hospital: An Expert Opinion (2020)". It clearly stated that food safety, food hygiene, and nutrition management should be incorporated into the whole process of prevention, control, treatment, and rehabilitation of COVID-19. The reasonable and standardized pathway of nutrition management, which includes nutrition-risk screening, malnutrition diagnosis, nutritional support therapy and nutrition monitoring, should be established to improve the immune status, clinical outcome, and quality of life of patients with COVID-19.Copyright © 2021, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 is currently a major global public health challenge. In the battle against the outbreak of COVID-19, how to manage and share the COVID-19 Electric Medical Records (CEMRs) safely and effectively in the world, prevent malicious users from tampering with CEMRs, and protect the privacy of patients are very worthy of attention. In particular, the semi-trusted medical cloud platform has become the primary means of hospital medical data management and information services. Security and privacy issues in the medical cloud platform are more prominent and should be addressed with priority. To address these issues, on the basis of ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption, we propose a blockchain-empowered security and privacy protection scheme with traceable and direct revocation for COVID-19 medical records. In this scheme, we perform the blockchain for uniform identity authentication and all public keys, revocation lists, etc are stored on a blockchain. The system manager server is responsible for generating the system parameters and publishes the private keys for the COVID-19 medical practitioners and users. The cloud service provider (CSP) stores the CEMRs and generates the intermediate decryption parameters using policy matching. The user can calculate the decryption key if the user has private keys and intermediate decrypt parameters. Only when attributes are satisfied access policy and the user's identity is out of the revocation list, the user can get the intermediate parameters by CSP. The malicious users may track according to the tracking list and can be directly revoked. The security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme is indicated to be safe under the Decision Bilinear Diffie-Hellman (DBDH) assumption and can resist many attacks. The simulation experiment demonstrates that the communication and storage overhead is less than other schemes in the public-private key generation, CEMRs encryption, and decryption stages. Besides, we also verify that the proposed scheme works well in the blockchain in terms of both throughput and delay.
ABSTRACT
The standardized nutrition support therapy can improve the nutritional status, immunity, quality of life, and clinical outcomes of patients with novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection. The latest Chinese government policy also clearly states that nutrition support therapy should be included in the whole process of treatment and recovery of patients with COVID-19. Therefore, the Beijing Quality Control and Improvement Center for Clinical Nutrition Therapy has organized relevant experts to formulate the Recommendations of Nutritional Treatment for Patients with COVID-19 Infection (2023), following the latest clinical nutrition guidelines, research evidence and clinical practice of nutrition support of COVID-19. The recommendations suggest that individualized nutrition management be implemented by fol-lowing the standardized pathway of nutrition management, which includes nutrition-risk screening, malnu-trition diagnosis, nutrition treatment and nutrition monitoring, and by taking into account the clinical char-acteristics of patients with COVID-19.Copyright © 2023, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The empirical likelihood ratio (ELR) test is proposed for uncovering a structural change in integer-valued autoregressive (INAR) processes. The limiting distribution is derived under the null hypothesis that the parameter did not change at the anticipated change points. To evaluate the finite-sample performance of the proposed ELR test, the empirical sizes and powers are investigated in a simulation study. The ELR test is also applied to real data on infectious disease and crime counts. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
Detecting protective measures (e.g., masks, goggles and protective clothing) is a momentous step in the fight against COVID-19. The detection mode of unmanned devices based on Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and fusion technology is more efficient, economical and safe than the traditional manual detection. In this paper, a tightly-coupled nonlinear optimization approach is used to augment the visual feature extraction of SLAM by the gyroscope of the IMU to obtain a high-precision visual inertial system for joint position and pose estimation. Based on the VINS-Mono frame, first, an LSD algorithm based on a conditional selection strategy is proposed to extract line features efficiently. Then, we propose recovering missing point features from line features. Moreover, we propose a strategy to recover vanishing point features from line features, and add residuals to the SLAM cost function based on optimization, which optimizes point-line features in real time to promote the tracking and matching accuracy. Second, the wavelet threshold denoising method based on the 3σ criterion is used to carry out real-time online denoising for gyroscope to improve the output precision. Our WD-PL-VINS was measured on publicly available EuRoC datasets, TUM VI datasets and evaluated and validated in lab testing with a unmanned vehicle (UV) based on the NVIDIA Jetson-TX2 development board. The results show that our method's APE and RPE on MH-03-easy sequences are improved by 69.28% and 97.66%, respectively, compared with VINS-Mono. © 2001-2012 IEEE.
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OBJECTIVE: To explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sleep-wake patterns of preschool children. METHODS: A cohort of preschoolers established before the COVID-19 pandemic was invited to participate in this study. Data including children's demographics, their own and parental sleep-wake patterns, physical activities, and screen time were collected through an online questionnaire from August to September 2020. A comparison was made on the collected data from the same cohort of children before and during the pandemic. RESULTS: The cohort which was established before the pandemic consisted of 3720 preschoolers. For this current study, 642 (17%) participated, and 497 (13%) children who fulfilled the eligibility criteria were included in the final analysis. They showed a delay in their bedtime and wake time on both weekdays and weekends with a 15-30 min increase in nocturnal sleep duration. However, with a reduction in nap time, the average daily sleep duration was shortened by 16.3 ± 64.3 min (p < 0.001) and 27.5 ± 72.9 min (p < 0.001) during weekdays and weekends, respectively. Screen time was increased while outdoor activity duration was decreased. Parental sleep/wake times were also delayed with an increase in sleep duration. Children's sleep habits were associated with screen time and parental sleep/wake patterns. CONCLUSION: Despite school suspension during the COVID-19 pandemic, preschoolers were not sleeping longer. Screen time and parental sleep/wake patterns were the major factors driving the preschoolers' sleep habits. Health education is required to control screen time in children and to promote sleep hygiene among all family members.
ABSTRACT
Devices for the filtration and sterilization of indoor spaces have been widely used owing to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). There is a need for a standard method to test the effectiveness of such devices. In this study, we aimed to identify important factors that must be considered while evaluating the efficiency of air purifiers in a large chamber. Investigation of the distribution characteristics of airborne viruses in the large chamber show that they were evenly distributed. Natural (gravitational) reduction of airborne viruses in the large chamber was also investigated. We found that the airborne-virus removal efficiency of an air purifier in a large chamber should be evaluated after 40 min for better accuracy because the concentration of airborne viruses rapidly decreased within the first 40 min and the settling velocity reduced after 40 min. In addition, the minimum standard deviation of airborne-virus removal efficiency of air purifier was 1.9% with a natural reduction time of 40 min. Moreover, the sampling efficiencies of three types of samplers were compared. The impactor showed the highest sampling efficiency (4.8 x 104-5.1 x 104 PFU/m3-min) and a small standard deviation (0.9 x 104 PFU/m3-min). Copyright © The Author(s) 2023.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged older Chinese immigrants' lives in physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects. This study employed a socioecological perspective of resilience to examine how older Chinese immigrants perceived and navigated through pandemic-related adversities. We conducted a time-bound retrospective qualitative investigation to capture participants' lived experiences between December 2019 to August 2021. Three phases of the pandemic-related adversities were identified, including uncertain threats and psychological impacts at the beginning, unmet needs and fatigue at 2nd and 3rd wave of infections, and benefit-risk balance after vaccinated. Despite adversities, the integration of strengths, opportunities, and social services at the individual, interpersonal, and neighborhood levels allows participants to appraise and individualize their problem-focus coping (e.g., risk mitigation), selective engagement (e.g., maintaining habits through other means), or emotion-focus coping strategies (e.g., acceptance). Findings highlight the importance of personal and community resources in fostering resilient responses.
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Chinese older immigrants who live in senior housing communities are at high risks of experiencing discrimination and social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines how and to what extent the pandemic has affected this population's social network and mental health. Participants reported a decrease in social contact with their family and friends. Before the pandemic, many paid regular visits back to the home country and could not do so in the past two years. The loss of connection left some feeling despaired and expressed uncertainty on whether they could ever go back "home” before death. Participants also reported being in a low mood and feeling bored constantly. Participants reported resilience generated from their religious beliefs, having neighbors as role models, and wisdom learned from past life experiences. Knowledge produced in this project can inform the planning for responding to future crises in affordable senior housing.
ABSTRACT
Epidemiological studies suggest that social isolation is a risk factor of dementia although the underlying mechanisms are not well known. A core component of social isolation is a lack of conversational interactions. We recently completed a NIH-funded multi-center randomized controlled trial called Internet-Based Conversational Engagement Clinical Trial (I-CONECT, ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02871921), which aimed to examine whether social engagement, specifically conversational interactions through webcam and internet, could improve cognitive function in socially isolated older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or normal cognition. The data was un-blinded in August, 2021. We found strong evidence of efficacy in the primary (global cognitive function, Cohen's d = 0.73, p=0.03) and secondary (memory function, Cohen's d=0.67, p=0.03) outcomes at Month 6 (high-dose post-trial endpoint) and Month 12 (maintenance-dose post-trial-endpoint), respectively, using the mixed model for repeated measures. We will present the background, COVID-19 pandemic related protocol modifications and the primary results of this intervention project.
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From Lawton's seminal Ecological Theory of Aging (ETA) to the recent development of Wahl's COntext Dynamics of Aging (CODA), conceptual and empirical work has repeatedly shown that the living environments fundamentally influence health and wellbeing in later life. The CODA framework posits five correlated contexts that can predict developmental outcomes in aging: physical, social, service, socioeconomic, and technological contexts. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic further manifested the lack of environmental justice for marginalized and minoritized older adults, calling for reflection on the paradigm for ecological aging research, practice, and actionable policymaking. This SRPP/ESPO symposium featured emerging and established scholars' work that shed light on reimagining environmental justice for older adults with diverse abilities, backgrounds, and resources. Panelists will share stories of their professional development journeys, highlighting empirical evidence with under-researched, systematically excluded populations and examining new directions in aging and environment research. Topics include accessible and affordable housing, built environment, neighborhood contexts, conceptualizing the community, and the experiences of those most likely to bear the burden of precarious housing in later life. This symposium will hold the space for emerging scholars to learn and discuss short- and long-term practice and policy priorities for promoting environmental justice for older adults and provide tools to conceptualize their research informed through ecological and equity-centered perspectives.
ABSTRACT
Discriminatory events against Asians, especially Chinese, became rampant during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is difficult for older Chinese immigrants to effectively protect themselves from racism-related attacks due to their personal and social disadvantages. This study explored older Chinese immigrants' experience of discrimination and coping strategies, as well as factors that influence their perceptions, attitudes, and coping preferences. Among 27 interviewees, 11 experienced discriminatory incidents themselves or known people around had been discriminated against during the pandemic. Thematic analysis revealed negative psychological impact of discrimination risk or experience. Most participants tended to adopt disengagement coping styles, such as avoidance, rationalization, and reducing social participation. Three primary influencing factors are: (1) perceived unkindness from government and public opinions;(2) concern for own health;(3) limited acculturation. Our findings suggest needing efforts to protect the safety of older Chinese immigrants, and raise their awareness and ability to defend themselves from racism and discrimination.
ABSTRACT
Older immigrants in affordable housing have unique sets of challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic posed by limited English proficiency and resources. The aggregated living condition could increase their risk of being exposed to the contagious disease. This symposium reports empirical findings of the social Network of Immigrant Chinese older adults in affordable Housing Environment (NICHE) project, which focused on the influence of COVID-19 on underprivileged Chinese older immigrants. We conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with foreign-born older Chinese immigrants (mean age 78.1, 69.23% female) in an affordable housing in Los Angeles to learn about their lived experiences and coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first presentation focused on the changes in older Chinese immigrants' social life after the onset of the pandemic and aimed to understand the pandemic's impact on their depressive symptoms and loneliness. The second presentation describes older Chinese immigrants' perceived pandemic-related stressors and resilience across phases of the pandemic, including at the beginning, after they got vaccinated, and the rising of delta variant. The participants explained what supportive services had been helpful and what support they wished they could have over the past two years in the pandemic. The third presentation reports the experience of being discriminated against during the pandemic, the Chinese older adults' attitudes towards these discriminatory events, and coping strategies. Together, these three presentations will depict the lived experience of Chinese immigrants over two years during the pandemic and discuss intervention strategies and policy considerations for preparing for future crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
Over the years, the concept of the garden city has been widely misinterpreted. So argue Nano Langenheim, lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne, and Kongjian Yu, professor and founding dean of the Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape and founder principal designer of Turenscape. They introduce a more refined transdisciplinary approach to the greening and wilding of cities and some of the consequent complex ecological issues that have to be addressed. Copyright © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ABSTRACT
Background: Around 800 ESRD patients from March 2021 to July 2021 were affected by COVID-19 in a tertiary specialized hospital in the Philippines, with a case fatality rate of 2.3%. These subset of patients have one of the highest morbidity and mortality among others. That is why numerous tools such as the COVID GRAM and 4C Mortality Score were formulated to predict the critical events in COVID-19 patient and may hopefully be useful for ESRD patients as well. Method(s): This is a retrospective cohort design to determine the diagnostic value of COVID GRAM and Mortality 4C score in predicting critical events. Participants were end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients infected with COVID19 seen at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute from March 2020 to July 2021. Chart review was done from August 2021 to October 2021. Inclusion Criteria: Age >=19 years old Admitted patients for at least 24hrs COVID-19 confirmed via RT PCR or GeneXpert with nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swab, provided that: Testing performed in an accredited institution ESRD Filipino patients already on RRT or for RRT initiation Exclusion Criteria: Kidney transplant patients Acute kidney injury needing renal replacement therapy Incomplete data on 4C mortality and COVID GRAM Results: This study included a total of 97 patients (41 in the critical group, 56 in non-critical group). Both COVID GRAM and 4C mortality score showed high levels of discriminative ability, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity. The discriminative ability or AUC of both COVID GRAM and 4C Mortality Score were at 0.93 and 0.95, respectively. Overall accuracy was at 93.81% and 96.91%. Conclusion(s): Even with the advent of vaccination, COVID 19 remains to be a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in our country and has cost the Philippine government $30.72B. Therefore, proper allocation of the budget and expenses remains to be a priority. With both COVID GRAM and 4C Mortality, these tools can aid physicians in decision making especially for those at high risk of experiencing a critical event and maybe be used to determine if patients need to be admitted or can be managed at an outpatient basis.
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Aim/Purpose Social media platforms have been increasingly incorporated into teaching and learning. However, studies using mixed methods to explore WhatsApp's poten-tial to broaden online teaching and learning remain limited.Background This study reports the experiences and perspectives of undergraduate students in terms of their WhatsApp usage patterns and preferences during COVID-19 using a sequential mixed method. Methodology Through a quantitative survey of undergraduate students from the Education Faculty in one South African university, quantitative data were collected from 92 participants. Qualitative interviews were followed with ten willing participants to further explore their perceptions and preference.Contribution This study addresses the literature gap identified by Klein et al. (2018, p. 2) that "few studies that explore WhatsApp use in the natural environment of higher education" and the methodology gap Hashim identifies (2018) that the majority of the literature adopts a quantitative research methodology while only 10% use the mixed method.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Olfactory dysfunction is a common symptom associated with COVID-19 infection. While often transient, nearly 1 in 8 patients experience persistent dysfunction after initial infection resolution. Given the known association between impaired olfaction and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), this persistent COVID-19 olfactory dysfunction may impede early detection of cognitive decline. Method(s): Patients with confirmed COVID-19-associated hyposmia (n=73), MCI (n=58), and normal controls (n=86) were prospectively enrolled. Demographic data were collected alongside formal olfactory testing via AROMA (Affordable Rapid Olfaction Measurement Assay) at time of initial enrollment. MCI was assessed via MoCA (Montreal Cognitive Assessment). Multivariate logistic regressions were utilized to evaluate for associations between variables and etiology of olfactory dysfunction. Result(s): After controlling for age and gender, when compared against normal controls, the inability to smell licorice, cinnamon, and lemon at the lowest 3 concentrations increased odds of COVID-19 hyposmia by 10.8 (95% CI, 4.6-25.6), 5.7 (95% CI, 2.7-11.7), and 5.3 (95% CI, 2.6-10.8), respectively. While the inability to smell coffee (9.9 odds ratio [OR];95% CI, 2.02-48.1), eucalyptus (6.7 OR;95% CI, 2.2-20.0), and rose (4.0 OR;95% CI, 1.7-9.7) were associated with MCI, decreased ability to smell licorice, cinnamon, and lemon were not. When combined into a composite score and compared against controls, decreased detection of licorice, cinnamon, and lemon was associated with a 16.5 OR (95% CI, 6.6-41.3) for COVID-19 hyposmia. This composite score was not significantly associated with MCI (1.2 OR;95% CI, 0.6-2.2) and, as such, performed well at discriminating between COVID-19 and MCI patients (receiver operating characteristic area under the curve=0.76). Conclusion(s): Distinct patterns of impaired olfaction were noted for COVID-19. We show that this etiology-specific phenotype has good discriminative performance when differentiating from MCI-associated hyposmia, which may allow for continued utilization of olfactory screening for MCI even among those with previous COVID-19 infection.
ABSTRACT
Background: The health and work productivity burden informal cHL patient (pt) caregivers face is unknown. As part of the US-based CONNECT study, we evaluated caregivers' burden and role in treatment (tx) decisions by relation to the pt: spouse/partner (SP) vs other (parent, child, friend, other relative). Methods: The CONNECT caregiver survey was an IRB-approved online survey administered from Dec 2020-Mar 2021 to self-identified current or former adult cHL pt caregivers. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL, PROMIS-Global), work impact (WPAI), decision-making, tx selection, and physician communication were assessed. Statistical significance was at the 95% confidence level. Results: 209 caregivers (58% women;median age 47 yrs;54% employed;53% SP) completed the survey. At completion, 69% cared for pts diagnosed in the past 1-2 yrs;48% of pts cared for had stage III/IV cHL and 58% were in remission/not receiving active tx. While caregiver HRQoL was similar to that of the general population on the PROMIS-Global, employed caregivers had work impairment (29%) from caregiving activities (Table) which was higher when the pt was on vs off tx. Caregiving began at pt symptom onset for more SP vs other caregivers (61 vs 27%), and after the pt's first tx for more other vs SP caregivers (34 vs 5%). 88% of caregivers discussed tx options with the pt. Cure, caregivers' top tx goal (49%), was rated higher by SP vs other caregivers (56 vs 42%). Tx decisions with the pt (54 vs 23%) and tx option discussions with the doctor (52 vs 28%) were more common for SP vs other caregivers. More SP vs other caregivers had extensive tx option discussions with the pt (88 vs 68%), said it was important the doctor discussed managing side effects (94 vs 84%), felt the doctor provided adequate information about side effects (91 vs 71%), and felt aligned with the pt's tx goals (93 vs 79%). Caregivers noted COVID-19 impacts like limiting daily activities to reduce COVID-19 risks (72%). Conclusions: Although cHL pt caregivers reported good HRQoL, caregiving impacted their work productivity regardless of relation to the pt. Cure was caregivers' top tx goal. SP vs other caregivers were more involved and earlier, reporting alignment with pt tx goals and decision-making.
ABSTRACT
The empirical likelihood ratio (ELR) test is proposed for uncovering a structural change in integer-valued autoregressive (INAR) processes. The limiting distribution is derived under the null hypothesis that the parameter did not change at the anticipated change points. To evaluate the finite-sample performance of the proposed ELR test, the empirical sizes and powers are investigated in a simulation study. The ELR test is also applied to real data on infectious disease and crime counts.