Research progress of ulinastatin in treatment of COVID-19.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still spreading worldwide. At present, no specific drug has been developed for the virus. Ulinastatin plays an important role in anti-inflammatory. Clinically, it is mainly used in acute pancreatitis, shock and disseminated intravascular coagulation. It also has the effects of antioxidant stress, anticoagulation and immune regulation, which may be of great significance to reduce the severity and mortality of COVID-19. Combined with the pharmacological effect of ulinastatin and its clinical application in the treatment of COVID-19 complications such as acute respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis lung injury, this paper discusses the feasibility of its application in COVID-19, so as to provide help for the clinical treatment and new drug research and development of this disease.Copyright © 2022 Tianjin Press of Chinese Herbal Medicines. All Rights Reserved.

[Performance of screening of contacts of COVID-19 cases in same flight].

Objective: To understand the performance of 2019-nCoV nucleic acid detection in screening of contacts of COVID-19 cases in same flights and provide evidence for the effective screening of persons at high risk for the infection in domestic flights. Methods: The information of passengers who took same domestic flights with COVID-19 cases in China from April 1, 2020 to April 30, 2022 were retrospectively collected,and χ2 test was used to analyze positive nucleic acid detection rates in the passengers in different times before the onsets of the index cases, in different seat rows and in epidemic periods of different 2019-nCoV variants. Results: During the study period, a total of 433 index cases were identified among 23 548 passengers in 370 flights. Subsequently, 72 positive cases of 2019-nCoV nucleic acid were detected in the passengers, in whom 57 were accompanying persons of the index cases. Further analysis of the another 15 passengers who tested positive for the nucleic acid showed that 86.67% of them had onsets or positive detections within 3 days after the diagnosis of the index cases, and the boarding times were all within 4 days before the onsets of the index cases. The positive detection rate in the passengers who seated in first three rows before and after the index cases was 0.15% (95%CI: 0.08%-0.27%), significantly higher than in the passengers in other rows (0.04%, 95%CI: 0.02%-0.10%, P=0.007),and there was no significant difference in the positive detection rate among the passengers in each of the 3 rows before and after the index cases (P=0.577). No significant differences were found in the positive detection rate in the passengers, except the accompanying persons, among the epidemics caused by different 2019-nCoV variants (P=0.565). During the Omicron epidemic period, all the positive detections in the passengers, except the accompanying persons, were within 3 days before the onset of the index cases. Conclusions: The screening test of 2019-nCoV nucleic acid can be conducted in the passengers took the same flights within 4 days before the onsets of the index cases on board. Passengers who seated within 3 rows from the index cases can considered as the close contacts at high risk for 2019-nCoV, for whom screening should be conducted first and special managements are needed. The passengers in other rows can be classified as general risk persons for screening and management.

Development of PCR diagnostic method for Trichomonas foetus infection based on 18S rRNA.

To establish a PCR detection method for Trichomonas foetus, the primers were designed and synthesized according to the 18S rRNA gene sequence of T. foetus published by GenBank. The positive recombinant plasmid pUCm-T-TF18S of T. foetus was used as the template, and the genomic DNA of Giardia felis, Coccidia +e-lis, feline parvovirus and cDNA of feline coronavirus were used as the control for PCR detection to analyze the specificity of this method. The positive T. foetus recombinant plasmid was serial to 8 different concentrations with a gap of 10 folds, and PCR was performed to analyze the sensitivity of this method. The pUCm-T-TF18S plasmids stored at -20 " for 3, 6, 9 and 12 months were detected by PCR to analyze the stability of the method. Twenty cat fecal samples were tested using this established PCR assay and compared with those of microscopic examination. The results showed that the recombinant plasmid pUCm-T- TF18S gave specific bands after PCR amplification. The sequencing results showed that the length of the product sequence was 1 264 bp, and the BLAST sequence comparison analysis showed 99.53% sequence identity, which is consistent with that of T. foetus from cats (GenBank registration number M81842.1). The PCR method for detection of T. foetus had no cross-reactivities with C. felis, G. felis, feline coronavirus and feline parvovirus;the minimum detectable template concentration is 4.52 X 105 copies/xl;The target band of T. foetus DNA can still be detected after being stored in the refrigerator at -20 " for 12 months. This method detected 16 positive samples of T. foetus nucleic acid from 20 cat fecal samples, which is more accurate and sensitive than the results from traditional microscopy (13 samples). It is suggested that the PCR method for the detection of T. foetus is highly specific, sensitive and stable, and can be used for clinical detection and epidemiological investigation of T. foetus.Copyright © 2022, National Institute of Parasitic Diseases. All rights reserved.

Integrated surveillance and early warning system for emerging infectious diseases based on One Health concept: Structures and innovations.

One Health is an upgrade and optimization of health concepts, which recognizes the integrated health of the human-animal-environment. It emphasizes the use of interdisciplinary collaboration, multi-sectoral coordination, and multi-organizational One Health approaches to solve scientific questions. The surveillance and early warning system is the basis of public health emergency prevention and control. The COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging infectious disease (EID) have put great challenges on the existing surveillance and early warning systems worldwide. Guided by the concept of One Health, we attempt to build a new pattern of integrated surveillance and early warning system for EID. We will detail the system including the One Health-based organizational structure, zoonotic and environmental science surveillance network, EID reporting process, and support and guarantee from education and policy. The integrated surveillance and early warning system for EID constructed here has practical and application prospects, and will provide guidance for the prevention and control of COVID-19 and the possible EID in the future.Copyright © 2022, National Institute of Parasitic Diseases. All rights reserved.

COVID-19 diagnosis prediction using classical-to-quantum ensemble model with transfer learning for CT scan images

At present, there are problems of low detection efficiency and accuracy in chest CT images of COVID-19 as well as limited computational power of deep learning model training. Developing a classical-to-quantum (CQ) ensemble model with transfer learning to efficiently detect patients with COVID-19 using chest CT images.: Attributes were extracted from chest CT scans using pre-trained networks ResNet50, VGG16 and AlexNet, while dressed quantum circuits were used as classifiers. The overall accuracy of the CQ method based on three aforementioned networks on the chest CT dataset is 83.2%, 86.2% and 85.0%, respectively. The proposed ensemble model has a precision of 89.0% for pneumonia samples, an overall accuracy of 88.6% and a pneumonia class recall rate of 83.0%. In addition, to further verify the robustness of the ensemble model, breast ultrasound and brain tumour images were used in it. The suggested ensemble approach is effective for classifying and detecting medical pictures with complicated features, particularly for detecting COVID-19 patients using chest CT images.

Learning Culture in a Virtual Classroom: A Case Study of "A Glimpse of China"

The study reports how "A Glimpse of China," a cultural course that had been typically conducted offline for cultural immersion, adapted to the COVID-19-imposed challenges of an online transition. The teaching team sought the guidance of social constructivism and the WisCom Framework, made adaptations in the instructional design, assessed the learning outcomes and course effects, and proposed a plan for future improvements. Content analysis of the course reports of 10 students from Class 2020 and 2021 confirmed the success of the online transition, and yet indicated that experiential learning and interactive collaboration should be strengthened for better learning experience and outcomes. As an improvement for future students, a set of experiential projects is developed. Each project constitutes a collaborative inquiry cycle that aims to build a more desirable wisdom community for both the learners and the instructor.

Segmentation of covid-19 lesions based on deep learning

Accurate segmentation of infected areas in computed tomography (CT) images of the lungs of patients with novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) can assist doctors in diagnosing the patient's condition. This paper proposes an end-to-end new coronary pneumonia lung CT image segmentation model: SCA-Unet, which introduces the Cascading Context Module in the skip connection to expand the receptive field while retaining the context information of different layers to the greatest extent. At the same time, an Adaptive Select Module is added before each decoding layer to enhance the model's attention to segmentation targets and capture long-range dependencies. Experiments show that the model can better segment the infected area of COVID-19 patients, especially the infected area that is not easy to be segmented in the early stage, and each segmentation index is better than multiple comparison methods. © 2022 IEEE.

Preliminary Recommendations on the Timing of Lung Surgery after Novel Coronavirus Infection in Patients with Pulmonary Nodules and Lung Cancer.

In recent years, the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge impact on the global medical, political and economic fields. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, our understanding of the impact of COVID-19 has grown exponentially. Recently, the COVID-19 epidemic has changed rapidly in China, and there has been controversy over how to carry out surgical operations for patients with lung neoplastic lesions. Some studies have shown that lung cancer patients undergoing surgery are more likely to experience respiratory failure and perioperative death after contract-ing COVID-19 than the general population, however, delays in cancer treatment are also associated with increased mortality among these patients. In particular, the novel coronavirus Omikron variant has a higher transmissibility and may escape the immunity obtained through the previous novel coronavirus infection and vaccination. In order to minimize the risk of novel coronavirus infection in surgical patients, it is necessary to develop new treatment guidelines, expert consensus and preventive measures. However, the current rapid change of the epidemic situation has led to insufficient time and evidence to develop guidelines and consensus. Therefore, thoracic surgeons need to evaluate specific patient populations at higher risk of severe complications before surgery and weigh the benefit of surgical treatment against the risk of novel coronavirus infection. We try to give some recommendations on lung surgery during the current domestic epidemic situation based on the guidelines and consensus of oncology and thoracic surgery organizations in different regions on lung surgery.Copyright © 2023, Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer. All rights reserved.

[Emphasis on Post-ICU Syndrome].

With the development of technology and medicine, the mortality rate of intensive care unit (ICU) has declined significantly, and more and more professionals in the medical field are also aware that the disability rate of ICU survivors remains high. More than 70% of ICU survivors have Post-ICU Syndrome (PICS), which is mainly manifested by cognitive, physical, and mental dysfunction, which seriously affects the quality of life of survivors and their caregivers. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a series of problems such as shortage of medical staff, restricted family visits, and lack of personalized care, which have brought unprecedented challenges to the prevention of PICS and the care of patients with severe COVID-19. In the future, the treatment of ICU patients should change from reducing short-term mortality to improving long-term quality of life of patients, from disease-centered to health-centered, and to practice " the health promotion, the prevention, the diagnosis, the control, the treatment, and the rehabilitation " six-in-one concept to promote comprehensive health care with pulmonary rehabilitation.

Effect of low-to-moderate dose glucocorticoids on viral clearance in COVID-19: a retrospective study.

Objective: To study the effect of low-to-moderate dose glucocorticoid therapy on viral clearance in patients with COVID-19. Methods: A total of 72 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from January 19 to February 17, 2020 at the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine were recruited. All patients received oral arbidol and combination of lopinavir/ritonavir or darunavir/cobistitat for antiviral therapy, and symptomatic supportive care. Among them, 51 patients received methylprednisolone (0.75-1.50 mg.kg-1.d-1) (glucocorticoid treatment group), and 21 patients did not use glucocorticoid (control group). The time of virologic negative conversion in sputum and the time of radiologic recovery in lung since onset were compared between the two groups. The Kruskal-Wallis test or Fisher exact test was used to compare the difference between groups. Results: The median ages of the glucocorticoid group and the control group were 52 (45, 62) and 46 (32, 56) years (chi2=4.365, P<0.05). The clinical conditions at hospital admission were different between the two groups (P<0.01). The severe cases accounted for 52.0%, while moderate cases in the control group accounted for 71.4%. The median times from the onset to virologic negative conversion in the two groups were 15 (13, 20) and 14 (12, 20) days (P>0.05). The median times from onset to radiologic recovery were 13 (11, 15) and 13 (12, 17) days in the two groups (P>0.05). In moderate cases, the median times from the onset to virologic conversion in sputum were 13 (11, 18) days in the glucocorticoid group and 13 (12, 15) days in the control group (P>0.05). The median times from onset to radiologic recovery in lung were 12 (10, 15) and 13 (12, 17) days, respectively (P>0.05). Conclusion(s): Low-to-moderate glucocorticoid treatment has no effect on the time of virus clearance in patients with different clinical types of COVID-19, and also no effect on accelerating radiologic recovery in lung, so it is not recommended.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.

Effect of low-to-moderate dose glucocorticoids on viral clearance in COVID-19: a retrospective study.

Objective: To study the effect of low-to-moderate dose glucocorticoid therapy on viral clearance in patients with COVID-19. Methods: A total of 72 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from January 19 to February 17, 2020 at the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine were recruited. All patients received oral arbidol and combination of lopinavir/ritonavir or darunavir/cobistitat for antiviral therapy, and symptomatic supportive care. Among them, 51 patients received methylprednisolone (0.75-1.50 mg.kg-1.d-1) (glucocorticoid treatment group), and 21 patients did not use glucocorticoid (control group). The time of virologic negative conversion in sputum and the time of radiologic recovery in lung since onset were compared between the two groups. The Kruskal-Wallis test or Fisher exact test was used to compare the difference between groups. Results: The median ages of the glucocorticoid group and the control group were 52 (45, 62) and 46 (32, 56) years (chi2=4.365, P<0.05). The clinical conditions at hospital admission were different between the two groups (P<0.01). The severe cases accounted for 52.0%, while moderate cases in the control group accounted for 71.4%. The median times from the onset to virologic negative conversion in the two groups were 15 (13, 20) and 14 (12, 20) days (P>0.05). The median times from onset to radiologic recovery were 13 (11, 15) and 13 (12, 17) days in the two groups (P>0.05). In moderate cases, the median times from the onset to virologic conversion in sputum were 13 (11, 18) days in the glucocorticoid group and 13 (12, 15) days in the control group (P>0.05). The median times from onset to radiologic recovery in lung were 12 (10, 15) and 13 (12, 17) days, respectively (P>0.05). Conclusion(s): Low-to-moderate glucocorticoid treatment has no effect on the time of virus clearance in patients with different clinical types of COVID-19, and also no effect on accelerating radiologic recovery in lung, so it is not recommended.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.

Effect of low-to-moderate dose glucocorticoids on viral clearance in COVID-19: a retrospective study.

Objective: To study the effect of low-to-moderate dose glucocorticoid therapy on viral clearance in patients with COVID-19. Methods: A total of 72 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from January 19 to February 17, 2020 at the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine were recruited. All patients received oral arbidol and combination of lopinavir/ritonavir or darunavir/cobistitat for antiviral therapy, and symptomatic supportive care. Among them, 51 patients received methylprednisolone (0.75-1.50 mg.kg-1.d-1) (glucocorticoid treatment group), and 21 patients did not use glucocorticoid (control group). The time of virologic negative conversion in sputum and the time of radiologic recovery in lung since onset were compared between the two groups. The Kruskal-Wallis test or Fisher exact test was used to compare the difference between groups. Results: The median ages of the glucocorticoid group and the control group were 52 (45, 62) and 46 (32, 56) years (chi2=4.365, P<0.05). The clinical conditions at hospital admission were different between the two groups (P<0.01). The severe cases accounted for 52.0%, while moderate cases in the control group accounted for 71.4%. The median times from the onset to virologic negative conversion in the two groups were 15 (13, 20) and 14 (12, 20) days (P>0.05). The median times from onset to radiologic recovery were 13 (11, 15) and 13 (12, 17) days in the two groups (P>0.05). In moderate cases, the median times from the onset to virologic conversion in sputum were 13 (11, 18) days in the glucocorticoid group and 13 (12, 15) days in the control group (P>0.05). The median times from onset to radiologic recovery in lung were 12 (10, 15) and 13 (12, 17) days, respectively (P>0.05). Conclusion(s): Low-to-moderate glucocorticoid treatment has no effect on the time of virus clearance in patients with different clinical types of COVID-19, and also no effect on accelerating radiologic recovery in lung, so it is not recommended.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.

Preliminary Recommendations on the Timing of Lung Surgery after Novel Coronavirus Infection in Patients with Pulmonary Nodules and Lung Cancer.

In recent years, the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge impact on the global medical, political and economic fields. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, our understanding of the impact of COVID-19 has grown exponentially. Recently, the COVID-19 epidemic has changed rapidly in China, and there has been controversy over how to carry out surgical operations for patients with lung neoplastic lesions. Some studies have shown that lung cancer patients undergoing surgery are more likely to experience respiratory failure and perioperative death after contract-ing COVID-19 than the general population, however, delays in cancer treatment are also associated with increased mortality among these patients. In particular, the novel coronavirus Omikron variant has a higher transmissibility and may escape the immunity obtained through the previous novel coronavirus infection and vaccination. In order to minimize the risk of novel coronavirus infection in surgical patients, it is necessary to develop new treatment guidelines, expert consensus and preventive measures. However, the current rapid change of the epidemic situation has led to insufficient time and evidence to develop guidelines and consensus. Therefore, thoracic surgeons need to evaluate specific patient populations at higher risk of severe complications before surgery and weigh the benefit of surgical treatment against the risk of novel coronavirus infection. We try to give some recommendations on lung surgery during the current domestic epidemic situation based on the guidelines and consensus of oncology and thoracic surgery organizations in different regions on lung surgery.Copyright © 2023, Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer. All rights reserved.

The Intersectoral Systemic Risk Shock of Emergency Crisis Events in China's Financial Market: Nonparametric Methods and Panel Event Study Analyses

By employing two systemic risk methods, the marginal expected shortfall (MES) and the component expected shortfall (CES), this paper measures the systemic risk level of all sectors in China's financial market from 2014 to 2022;thereby, it researches the total effect of sectoral systemic risk using a panel event study model during the three main emergency crisis events. Moreover, two nonparametric methods are utilized, the Wilcoxon signed rank sum test and the bootstrap Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, in order to investigate the changes in individual effects and the dominant ranks of sectoral systemic risk. The empirical results show that (1) the mean values and volatilities of CES and MES of all sectors have a higher level of magnitude in the extreme risk status than those in the normal risk status;(2) by comparing the total effects of three crisis events, we find that different from the continuous shock effect caused by two other events, sectoral systemic risk has a hysteresis effect on the entire market after the outbreak of COVID-19;(3) the long-term and short-term individual effects of sectoral systemic risk in all sectors are different from each other during three events;and (4) the dominance tests of MES are more sensitive and thus better demonstrate the changes in the rankings of sectoral systemic risk than the dominant tests of CES during the emergency crisis events. © 2023 by the authors.

Utilization of Lung Transplantation in Patients with Covid-19

Lung transplantation (LTx) had been the only survival option in selected Covid-19 infected ARDS patients. We evaluated surgical outcome in such group from multi-center ECLS study. LTx patient data (n=1488)were collected from multiple institutions through the National ECLS Registry and was stratified on presence of COVID-19 infection. LTx procedure details, patient demographics and post-operative outcomes were compared between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients along with pre-op ECMO vs. no ECMO COVID-19 patients using Wilcoxon rank sum test or Chi-square testing to determine distribution. Time to 30-day post-operative survival was analyzed in combination with Kaplan-Meier survival curves with log-rank testing to assess mortality in these groups of patients. P values <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Out of 1488 LTx patients, our results included a total of 34 patients infected with COVID-19 at time of LTx. When compared between covid LTx (n=34) vs. non-covid LTx (n=1,454), demographic data revealed significant differences in tracheostomy (p=0.0001), lung allocation score (p=0.0001), type of pre-op ECMO support (p=0.0001), type of ECMO support (p=0.001), conversion (p=0.006), and ventilator support time (p=0.0001);but no significant differences in gender (p=0.30), BMI (p=0.32), EVLP (p=0.078), PGD score at T24 (p=0.13), and waitlist time (p=0.75). 30-day post-operative mortality analysis showed K-M graph with no statistical significance (p=0.41) in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients. In addition, we compared pre-ECMO utilized COVID-19 patients (n=21) vs. non-ECMO utilized COVID-19 patients (n=13) who were transplanted. Covid-19 infected patients when transplanted showed no significant differences in survival. Propensity score matched study indicated similar results. Selective ARDS patients may benefit from end-stage surgical options like lung transplantation. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Heart & Lung Transplantation is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Short-Term Mindfulness Intervention on Adolescents' Negative Emotion under Global Pandemic

Objective: In this research, we tried to explore how short-term mindfulness (STM) intervention affects adoles-cents' anxiety, depression, and negative and positive emotion during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: 10 classes were divided into experiment groups (5 classes;n = 238) and control (5 classes;n = 244) randomly. Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were used to measure par-ticipants' dependent variables. In the experiment group, we conducted STM practice interventions every morning in their first class from March to November 2020. No interventions were conducted in the control group. Methods: Paired-sample t-tests were used to identify if a significant difference exists between every time point of the experimental and control groups. Repeated ANOVA and Growth Mixture Model (GMM) were used to analyze the tendency of positive and negative emotions, anxiety, and depression in the experimental group. Results and Conclusions: (1) With the intervention of STM, there was a significant decrease in negative emotions and an increase in positive emotions in the experimental group, whereas there were non-significant differences in the control group. (2) To explore the heterogeneity trajectories of dependent variables, we built a GMM and found there were two latent growth classes in the trajectories. (3) The results of the models showed their trajectories were downward, which meant that the levels of anxiety, depression, and negative emotions of participants decreased during the STM training period. Nonetheless, the score of positive affect showed upward in three loops of intervention, which indicated that the level of the participants' positive affect increased through the STM inter-vention. (4) This research indicated that STM should be given increasing consideration to enhance mental health during the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19. © 2023, Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.

Surface control approach for growth of cerium oxide on flower-like molybdenum disulfide nanosheets enables superior removal of uremic toxins

Due to the high incidence of kidney disease, there is an urgent need to develop wearable artificial kidneys. This need is further exacerbated by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. However, the dialysate regeneration system of the wearable artificial kidney has a low adsorption capacity for urea, which severely limits its application. Therefore, nanomaterials that can effectively remove uremic toxins, especially urea, to regenerate dialysate are required and should be further investigated and developed. Herein, flower-like molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) nanosheets decorated with highly dispersed cerium oxide (CeO2) were prepared (MoS2/CeO2), and their adsorption performances for urea, creatinine, and uric acid were studied in detail. Due to the open interlayer structures and the combination of MoS2 and CeO2, which can provide abundant adsorption active sites, the MoS2/CeO2 nanomaterials present excellent uremic toxin adsorption activities. Further, uremic toxin adsorption capacities were also assessed using a self-made fixed bed device under dynamic conditions, with the aim of developing MoS2/CeO2 for the practical adsorption of uremic toxins. In addition, the biocompatibility of MoS2/CeO2 was systematically analyzed using hemocompatibility and cytotoxicity assays. Our data suggest that MoS2/CeO2 can be safely used for applications requiring close contact with blood. Our findings confirm that novel 2-dimensional nanomaterial adsorbents have significant potential for dialysis fluid regeneration. © 2022

Analysis of the Correlation between the Mental Stress of College Students and Their Learning Initiative during the Outbreak of COVID-19

The spread of COVID-19 has brought negative impacts on the life and study of college students and thus aggravated their mental stress in this environment. Existing research has focused more on the status quo of the problem while having ignored its process variability, and there is no research on the correlation between the mental stress of college students and their learning initiative during the outbreak of COVID-19. To this end, this paper conducts an analysis of the correlation between the mental stress of college students and their learning initiative during the outbreak of COVID-19. In-depth analysis was carried out by the factor analysis method in SPSS, and an evaluation model was built for the mental stress of college students during the outbreak of COVID-19 based on four stressors, with the process of how to obtain the evaluation results given. The grey correlation analysis method was used to quantitatively analyze the correlation between the mental stress of college students and their learning initiative during the outbreak of COVID-19, that is, the factors affecting college students' learning initiative during the outbreak of COVID-19 were investigated through the grey correlation analysis. Finally, the relevant experimental results were given © 2022, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning.All Rights Reserved.

Establishment and Evaluation of a Prediction Model of BLR for Severity in Coronavirus Disease 2019

Background:Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging infectious disease and has spread worldwide. Clinical risk factors associated with the severity in COVID-19 patients have not yet been well delineated. The aim of this study was to explore the risk factors related with the progression of severe COVID-19 and establish a prediction model for severity in COVID-19 patients.Methods:We retrospectively recruited patients with confirmed COVID-19 admitted in Enze Hospital, Taizhou Enze Medical Center (Group) and Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital between January 24 and March 12, 2020. Take the Taizhou cohort as the training set and the Nanjing cohort as the validation set. Severe case was defined based on the World Health Organization Interim Guidance Report criteria for severe pneumonia. The patients were divided into severe and non-severe groups. Epidemiological, laboratory, clinical, and imaging data were recorded with data collection forms from the electronic medical record. The predictive model of severe COVID-19 was constructed, and the efficacy of the predictive model in predicting the risk of severe COVID-19 was analyzed by the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC).Results:A total of 402 COVID-19 patients were included in the study, including 98 patients in the training set (Nanjing cohort) and 304 patients in the validation set (Nanjing cohort). There were 54 cases (13.43%) in severe group and 348 cases (86.57%) in non-severe group. Logistic regression analysis showed that body mass index (BMI) and lymphocyte count were independent risk factors for severe COVID-19 (all P < 0.05). Logistic regression equation based on risk factors was established as follows: Logit (BL)=-5.552-5.473 ×L + 0.418 × BMI. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of the training set and the validation set were 0.928 and 0.848, respectively (all P < 0.001). The model was simplified to get a new model (BMI and lymphocyte count ratio, BLR) for predicting severe COVID-19 patients, and the AUC in the training set and validation set were 0.926 and 0.828, respectively (all P < 0.001).Conclusions:Higher BMI and lower lymphocyte count are critical factors associated with severity of COVID-19 patients. The simplified BLR model has a good predictive value for the severe COVID-19 patients. Metabolic factors involved in the development of COVID-19 need to be further investigated. © 2021 The Chinese Medical Association, Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

YoloMask: An Enhanced YOLO Model for Detection of Face Mask Wearing Normality, Irregularity and Spoofing

Wearing of surgical face masks has become the new norm of our daily life in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under many conditions at various public places, it is necessary to check or monitor whether the face mask is worn properly. Manual judgement of mask wearing not only wastes manpower but also fails to monitor it in a way of all-time and real-time, posing the urge of an automatic mask wearing detection technology. Earlier automatic mask wearing methods uses a successive means in which the face is detected first and then the mask is determined and judged followingly. More recent methods take the end-to-end paradigm by utilizing successful and well-known CNN models from the field of object detection. However, these methods fail to consider the diversity of face mask wearing, such as different kinds of irregularity and spoofing. Thus, we in this study introduce a comprehensive mask wearing detection dataset (named as Diverse Masked Faces) by distinguishing a total of five different classes of mask wearing. We then adapt the YOLOX model for our specific task and further improve it using a new composite loss which merges the CIoU and the alpha-IoU losses and inherits both their advantages. The improved model is referred as YoloMask. Our proposed method was tested on the new dataset and has been proved to significantly outperform other SOTA methods in the literature that are either successive or end-to-end. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.