Older Adults Using Technology for Meaningful Activities During COVID-19: An Analysis Through the Lens of Self-Determination Theory

Restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected people's opportunities to engage in activities that are meaningful to their lives. In response to these constraints, many people, including older adults, turned to digital technologies as alternative ways to pursue meaningful activities. These technology-mediated activities, however, presented new challenges for older adults' everyday use of technology. In this paper, we investigate how older adults used digital technologies for meaningful activities during COVID-19 restrictions. We conducted in-depth interviews with 40 older adults and analyzed the interview data through the lens of self-determination theory (SDT). Our analysis shows that using digital technologies for meaningful activities can both support and undermine older people's three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We argue that future technologies should be designed to empower older adults' content creation, engagement in personal interests, exploration of technology, effortful communication, and participation in beneficent activities. © 2023 ACM.

Study on Dynamic Change of Land Usage in Hongta District Based on Sentinel-2

This work utilizes Sentinel-2A L1C remote sensing photographs from the years 2018, 2020, and 2022 to identify the different land use categories in the study area using the support vector machine (SVM) technique. The accuracy of categorization is greater than 90%. This research explores four factors of the dynamic change in land use in Hongta District from 2018 to 2022: the proportion of various types of land;the extent of something like the changing land usage;land use transfer;and the dynamic degree of the change in land use. According to the study's results, the proportion of cultivated and grassland land grew, while the quantity of barren and construction land fell by 1.90 percent, 0.03 percent, and 0.69 percent, respectively. The water system land portion of total area increased by 2.58 percent and 0.13 percent, respectively. After comparing the two research periods, the entire dynamic degree of the second stage is determined to be 3.5 percent lower than that of the first stage, and the pace of land use change is quite sluggish, which may be associated with the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. The outcomes of the research may give the natural resources department the knowledge it needs to manage land resources properly. © 2023 SPIE.

Technology Deployment for Social Connection in Residential Aged Care: Care and Technology Providers' Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Information and communication technologies are being used for the social connection of people living in residential aged care. However, in HCI research concerning technology use in aged care, the perspectives of care and technology providers have received limited attention. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 aged care workers and technology providers to investigate the challenges and opportunities of deploying technologies in aged care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings highlighted that technologies such as videoconferencing and smart displays connected residents with family and friends, kept families informed and reassured, and were used in small groups to meet individual needs. However, limitations in video calling, staff fatigue, volunteer availability, and infrastructural resources presented barriers to technology deployment. Future use of technology for social connection in aged care requires careful facilitation from staff, better resourcing and infrastructural support, collaborations with volunteers, and more attention to individual needs. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Study of emergency supplies based dispatch in a persistent epidemic

The continued outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) has had a huge impact on people's lives. In the context of the ongoing epidemic and the limited distribution capacity due to the multi-regional epidemic closure, it has become an urgent reality to minimise the damage caused to people's daily lives under the epidemic and other emergencies, and to implement safe, fair and economical dispatch of emergency supplies for the epidemic area. The problem. Based on this, a mixed integer linear programming model is constructed to maximise the fairness and minimise the transportation cost of emergency material dispatch. © 2023 SPIE.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the International Geographical Union

Having broken out in late 2019, COVID-19 has resulted in a once-in-a-century health emergency that has rapidly evolved into a global socio-economic crisis. As of March 2022, more than 450 million people were infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of COVID-19, resulting in more than six million deaths (WHO, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) situation dashboard, 2022). The medical systems of many countries have been stretched to the verge of collapse and more than half of the global labor force has stood down. Not only has the pandemic doubled the number of people at risk of starvation to 270 million (Nature, 589:329-330, 2021), but it also pushed 100 million people into poverty in 2020, triggering the worst global recession since World War II (Blake and Wadhwa, 2020 year in review: the impact of COVID-19 in 12 charts, 2020), and increasing the risk of exposure to other pandemics related to ecosystem degradation (IPBES, Workshop report on biodiversity and pandemics of the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Retrieved from Bonn, Germany, 2020;Yin et al., Geogr Sustain 2(1):68-73, 2021). The normal functioning of many organizations has also been hampered by the pandemic and disruptions to the global travel and tourism industry have been unprecedented. By way of an example, travel restrictions led to the postponement of the 2020 34th International Geographical Congress to the following year and, ultimately, the decision was made to transition to an entirely online format for the event. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Intelligent Tourism Platform Model Construction Based on Artificial Intelligence: Taking Wudang Mountain as an example

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in December 2019, has brought huge changes to people's lives. In terms of tourism, the prevention and control measures taken to stop the spread of the epidemic have led to a decline in the number of global trips, and the development of the tourism economy has entered a trough. The economic losses caused by the tourism industry and its corresponding service industry need to be resolved urgently. At the same time, with the development of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other technologies, the concept of smart tourism was proposed. Based on this, we put forward a website platform model for tourists to inquire about tourism, which takes Wudang Mountain as an example and uses artificial intelligence as technical support. This platform model can meet the needs of users to carry out cloud tour of scenic spots online and enjoy scenic spots without leaving home. It can also conduct intelligent query of offline scenic spots, including route customization, ticket ordering, scenic spot recommendation and many other contents, to meet the various needs of tourists. In addition, the highlight of the platform model is the guide assistant that can conduct dialogues. Based on artificial intelligence technology, it can solve users' specific problems and give feasible solutions in the process of dialogues with users. © 2023 IEEE.

Smartphone Built-in Features: Do They Help Our Diabetic Patients?

Objective: To evaluate the pre-set features of smartphones and the inclusion of ADCES7 guidelines for Diabetes self-care during the COVID-19 era. Method(s): The pre-loaded applications of the iPhone 13 and Samsung S22 Ultra were tested with the ADCES7 parameters: 1) Healthy eating, 2) Being Active, 3) Monitoring, 4) Taking Medication, 5) Problem Solving, 6 )Healthy coping, 7) Reducing Risks. We evaluated the smartphones for the following subcategorties of the ADCES7 parameters: 1a) Nutrition, 1b) Calorie-counting;2a) Step-counting, 2b) Calorie-burning, 3a): Blood pressure, 3b) Blood glucose, 3c) HbA1c, 3d) Weight, 3e) Push notification, 4a) Med Log, 5a) Contact healthcare team, 5b) Contact family;6a) Mental health outreach, 7a) Goal-Setting, 7b) Graph analysis. We added additional categories 8) Insulin pumps and 9) Language. Result(s): 1. Nutrition facts= Apple(Yes), Samsung(No);2. Calorie counting= Apple(Yes), Samsung(Yes);3. Step counting= Apple(Yes), Samsung(Yes);4. Calorie Burning= Apple(No), Samsung(Yes);5. Monitoring BP= Apple(No). Samsung(Yes);6. Monitoring Blood Glucose= Apple(No), Samsung(Yes);7. Monitoring HbA1c= Apple(No), Samsung(Yes);8. Weight Monitoring= Apple(Yes), Samsung(Yes);9. Push Notifications and Med Reminders= Apple(Yes), Samsung(Yes);10. Goal setting= Apple(No), Samsung(Yes);11. Med Log= Apple(No), Samsung(Yes);12. Facetime, Samsung Video Call= Apple(Yes), Samsung(Yes);13. Healthy Coping= Apple(No), Samsung(No);14. Goal Setting for Steps= Apple(No), Samsung(Yes);15. Graph Analysis= Apple(Yes), Samsung(Yes);16. Insulin pumps= Apple(No), Samsung(No);17. Foreign languages= Apple(46), Samsung(187) Samsung provides more ADCES7 parameters and more language options than Apple. Conclusion(s): The smartphones have internal resources for patients to self-manage their Diabetes Mellitus. As MDs, we can continue to partner with our patients for diabetes management during COVID-19 and beyond.

Hydrocarbon Security Strategy and Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutral Strategy: Relationship and Path

A century of changes combined with the COVID-19 pandemic has sounded the alarm on energy security around the world. How to deeply understand the relationship between energy transition and energy security, and how to explore the path of China's energy security and the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality (abbreviated as "dual carbon”) strategy have become a major problem. Based on detailed analyses of China's energy consumption predictions and dual carbon strategy requirements, this study proposes: (1) Energy security is the foundation of energy transition. The oil and gas shortage situation in China may persist for a long time. The "dual carbon” goal does not conflict with hydrocarbon security strategy. (2) China's hydrocarbon security needs to be considered at two levels. The deployment needs to be made in the near-, medium-and long-term. First, it is necessary to continue exploring traditional oil and gas resources, including land and sea, conventional and unconventional resources. The second is to actively explore at new areas of oil and gas resources, and focus on organizing the "three revolutions” of in-situ conversion of medium-low mature shale oil, thermal conversion and utilization of oil-rich coal and underground coal gasification to prepare for large-scale increase of oil and gas production. (3) The "dual carbon” strategy is an extensive and profound system revolution. The withdrawal of fossil energy must be based on energy security. The clean use of fossil energy, the increased use of renewable energy, the construction of flexible smart grids, the construction of energy storage infrastructure and the improvement of efficiency in energy utilization, must be paid close attention to simultaneously. On the basis of ensuring energy security, the goal of "carbon neutrality” can be achieved through multiple ways relying on technological progress. © 2023, Science Press. All rights reserved.

To Mask or Not To Mask? A Machine Learning Approach to Covid News Coverage Attitude Prediction Based on Time Series and Text Content

In the past few decades, with the explosion of information, a large number of computer scientists have devoted themselves to analyzing collected data and applying these findings to many disciplines. Natural language processing (NLP) has been one of the most popular areas for data analysis and pattern recognition. A significantly large amount of data is obtained in text format due to the ease of access nowadays. Most modern techniques focus on exploring large sets of textual data to build forecasting models;they tend to ignore the importance of temporal information which is often the main ingredient to determine the performance of analysis, especially in the public policy view. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, a dataset called COVID-News is collected from three news agencies, which consists of article segments related to wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we propose a long-short term memory (LSTM)-based learning model to predict the attitude of the articles from the three news agencies towards wearing a mask with both temporal and textural information. Experimental results on COVID-News dataset show the effectiveness of the proposed LSTM-based algorithm. © 2022 IEEE.

Node Research on the Involvement of China's Carbon Tax Policy in the Context of COVID-19

The outbreak of COVID-19 provides a rare opportunity for the implementation of the carbon tax. To determine which stage is the most appropriate for introducing the policy, a simulation model based on China's panel data is established to analyze the impact of the carbon tax on government revenue and residents' income from five scenarios. A new GM-SD modeling method is proposed to ensure the accuracy of the model. The results show that the impact of the carbon tax on the government and the public is significantly different at different stages, and even the implementation of the carbon tax in the early stage of COVID-19 will reduce the government's tax revenue. The score analysis of government tax revenue, residents' surplus disposable income, residents' emotional value, and government administrative power finds that the middle period of COVID-19 is the best time to implement the policy. In addition, a more detailed analysis of five aspects, including total population, energy consumption, and national income, shows that the best time to implement the carbon tax policy is when the damage degree of COVID-19 is moderate. The analysis results can provide a reference and basis for China to introduce the carbon tax in the event of similar events as COVID-19, and have reference significance for other countries that have not implemented a carbon tax. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Environmentally persistent free radicals in PM2.5 from a typical Chinese industrial city during COVID-19 lockdown: The unexpected contamination level variation

The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused concerns globally. To reduce the rapid transmission of the virus, strict city lockdown measures were conducted in different regions. China is the country that takes the earliest home-based quarantine for people. Although normal industrial and social activities were suspended, the spread of virus was efficiently controlled. Simultaneously, another merit of the city lockdown measure was noticed, which is the improvement of the air quality. Contamination levels of multiple atmospheric pollutants were decreased. However, in this work, 24 and 14 air fine particulate matter (PM2.5) samples were continuously collected before and during COVID-19 city lockdown in Linfen (a typical heavy industrial city in China), and intriguingly, the unreduced concentration was found for environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFRs) in PM2.5 after normal life suspension. The primary non-stopped coal combustion source and secondary Cu-related atmospheric reaction may have impacts on this phenomenon. The cigarette-based assessment model also indicated possible exposure risks of PM2.5-bound EPFRs during lockdown of Linfen. This study revealed not all the contaminants in the atmosphere had an apparent concentration decrease during city lockdown, suggesting the pollutants with complicated sources and formation mechanisms, like EPFRs in PM2.5, still should not be ignored. © 2022

[Progress on specific and non-specific immune effects of Bacille Calmette-Guerin].

Currently, Bacille Calmette-Guerin(BCG) is still the only admitted vaccine to prevent tuberculosis around the world. The target population is infants and children, but its protective efficacy is limited. As more and more studies have shown that re-vaccination with BCG protects against tuberculosis in adults, BCG can also induce non-specific immunity against other respiratory diseases and some chronic diseases by training immunity, especially the immune effects against COVID-19. At present, the epidemic of COVID-19 has not been effectively contained, and it is worth considering whether BCG vaccine can be used as an intervention to prevent COVID-19. The WHO and China do not have a policy to support BCG revaccination, and as more and more BCG vaccines are discovered, whether selective revaccination can be carried out in some high-risk populations and whether the vaccine can be used more widely have led to intense discussions. This article reviewed the effects of specific immunity and non-specific immunity of BCG on tuberculosis and non-tuberculous diseases.

Exploring the potentials of micro-environment ventilation in mitigating airborne transmission risk

In the background of COVID-19, new requirements are occurring in the novel ventilation systems to mitigate airborne transmission risk in indoor environments. In this study, two micro-environment ventilation systems: personalized ventilation combined with radiant panel system (PVRP) and low velocity unit combined with radiant panel system (LVRP) were studied to explore the potential of reducing the airborne infection risk. In a simulated double layout office, the droplets generated by a thermal breathing manikin were used to simulate the breathing process of an infected person. Opposite the manikin, a heated dummy was as an exposed person. During the 102-minute measurement, the results show that the infection risk at the inhaled air with micro-environment systems is lowest. The heat gain levels do have much effect on infection risk with the PVRP system, but higher heat gain will increase the risk slightly with the LVRP system. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Understanding Older Adults' Participation in Online Social Activities

Restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have limited opportunities for older people to participate in face-to-face organised social activities. Many organisations moved these activities online, but little is known about older adults' experiences of participating in those activities. This paper reports an investigation of older adults' experiences of participating in social activities that they used to attend in-person, but which were moved online because of strict lockdown restrictions. We conducted in-depth interviews with 40 older adults living independently (alone or with others). Findings from a reflexive thematic analysis show that online social activities were important during the pandemic for not only staying connected to other people but also helping older adults stay engaged in meaningful activities, including arts, sports, cultural, and civic events. Online activities provided older adults with opportunities to connect with like-minded people;share care, encouragement, and support;participate in civic agendas;learn knowledge and develop new skills;and experience entertainment, distraction, and mental stimulation. Our participants had diverse perceptions of the transition from in-person to online social activities. Based on the findings, we present a taxonomy of multi-layered meaningful activities for older adults' digital social participation and highlight implications for future technology design. © 2022 ACM.

Mechanism and Experimental Verification of the Use of Rhodiola crenulata to Cytokine Storm Based on Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking

Objective: To identify the potential biological mechanisms by which Rhodiola crenulata (RC) treats cytokine storm (CS) using network pharmacology, molecular docking, and experimental verification. Method(s): The ingredients and targets of RC were collected from the Organchem database. CS-related genes were collected using the GeneCards and OMIM databases. Cytoscape 3.7.2 software was used to construct the RC-CS network diagram. These data were inputted into the STRING database to construct a protein-protein interaction network. we performed gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analysis using DAVID and R software. Molecular docking of the active ingredient and pathway-related targets was carried out using AutoDock Vina and PyMOL, and then a CS model was established in rats induced by lipopolysaccharide for in vivo experimental verification. Result(s): The network pharmacology results showed that kaempferol was the most important active component of RC in the treatment of CS, and IL6 and STAT3 were identified as key targets. Molecular docking results showed that RC active components kaempferol had a good binding ability to IL6/STAT3. At the same time, compared with the model group, different doses of kaempferol could down-regulate the expression of inflammatory factors (P <.05), and protect against systemic inflammatory response multiple organ damage. Conclusion(s): This study preliminarily revealed that RC can prevent and treat CS by regulating the expression of inflammatory factors, inhibiting the systemic inflammatory response induced by lipopolysaccharide, and providing a theoretical basis for the study of its pharmacodynamic material basis and mechanism of action. Copyright © The Author(s) 2022.

Regression Study on Influencing Factors of COVID-19 Diagnosis Rate and Mortality: A Global Perspective

The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) refers to the pulmonary infection caused by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which has become an urgent public health event of global concern at present. In order to help local governments to find out the factors that curb the spread of COVID-19, we explored the influence factors that cause COVID-19 infection and death in the fields of economy, society, life, and health in this paper. Through correlation analysis, we found that COVID-19 transmission and mortality are relatively strongly associated with human development index (HDI), Median Age, human life expectancy, proportion of smokers, and GDP per capita. Further regression analysis and machine learning regression algorithms also confirmed that HDI, proportion of smokers, GDP per capita, and Median Age have significant effects on COVID-19 transmission and mortality, with GBDT performing best with R² of 0.585 and 0.415 per million confirmed cases and deaths, respectively. This study aims to explore the impact of relevant factors on COVID-19 in the international community, inform the development of measures to reduce diagnosis and mortality rates in countries, and improve the capacity to respond to such public health emergencies. © 2022 ACM.

In flammatory Representation of COVID-19 at the Time of Hospitalization: An Insight into the Mild, Moderate, Severe and Critical COVID-19 Disease

Background. The ongoing state of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates the characterization of the biological basis of disease severity. We aimed to correlate the clinical severity of illness upon hospitalization with inflammatory sero-biomarker levels. Methods. A single-center prospective cohort study was conducted at a 776-bed tertiary care urban academic medical center in Detroit, Michigan. Adults with con-firmed reverse-transcriptase-polymerase-chain-reaction assay for COVID-19 were recruited in equal numbers into four disease severity categories, as defined by the WHO, upon hospital admission from January 8th, 2021 to September 1st, 2021. Electronic medical charts were reviewed. In addition to clinical markers, cytokines and chemokines were assessed to gain detailed understanding of COVID-19 pathology. Results. We included 200 patients with 50 patients each in the mild, moderate, severe and critical illness. The mean age of the cohort was 58.6. +/-15.9 yrs, 104 (52%) were males, and 135(67.5%) were blacks. The common comorbidities were hypertension (67.5%), diabetes (37%) and chronic lung diseases (26.5%). At the time of admission, oxygen therapy was needed in 49.5% but intubation in only 0.5%. Conclusion. We noted COVID-19 severity dependent changes in the clinical representation as well as the biomarker profiles. Clinical markers such as CRP, LDH, D-dimer and Ferritin were relatable to COVID-19 severity. Inflammatory cytokines and chemokines such as CCL-2, CXCL-10, IL-1ra, IL-6 and TNF-alpha also varied with the severity of disease. Our results provide a system level insight into the inflammatory state of COVID-19 at the time of hospital representation.

[Prediction and analysis of B cell and T cell epitopes in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 by bioinformatics]

Objective To analyze structural features for spike (S) protein of the SARS-CoV-2 and to predict potential B cell and T cell epitopes using bioinformatics. Methods The amino acid sequence of S protein from the NCBI GenBank database was retrieved. Its physicochemical properties were analyzed using ProtParam online program. The secondary structure of S protein was analyzed using Lasergene software and SOPMA online service. The tertiary structure model of S protein was established by Phyre2 and Rasmol software. Finally, B cell epitopes were predicted using ABCpred, BepiPred and BcePred;T cell epitopes were predicted using IDBE software. Results S protein is a 1273 amino acid sequence with the isoelectric point at 6.24 and atomic composition as C(6336)H(9770)N(1656)O(1894)S(54), which was classified as a stable and hydrophilic protein. GramierRobson method analysis revealed that the secondary structure of S protein comprised 23.5% α-helixes, 53.7% β-sheets, 14.9% β-turns and 8.33% random coils. Chou-Fasman method analysis revealed that the secondary structure of S protein comprised 20.9% α-helixes, 35.5% β-sheets, 35.2% β-turns. Online service SOPMA analysis revealed that the secondary structure of S protein comprised 28.59% α-helixes, 23.25% β-sheets, 3.38% β-turns and 44.78% random coils. The numbers of B cell epitopes according to ABCpred, BepiPred and BcePred databases were 5,11 and 6. Five epitopes for CD8(+) T cell and CD4(+) T cell were chosen as potential epitopes. Conclusion Bioinformatics can predict B cell and T cell epitopes in the S protein of the SARS-CoV-2, which lays a foundation for developing vaccines.

TRAUMATIC “ANGIOEDEMA”: EXTENSIVE SUBCUTANEOUS EMPHYSEMA MASQUERADING AS ANGIOEDEMA

Introduction: COVID 19 pandemic related precautions have resulted in suboptimal physical examination of the patients which may have affected the patient care and training of medical professionals. We present a case of a patient whose subcutaneous emphysema was misdiagnosed as angioedema. Case Description: 25 years old female with cerebral palsy and developmental delay presented to hospital in June, 2020 with asymmetric left facial and periorbital swelling which developed an hour after her regular Depo-Provera injection. She had elevated blood pressure readings with tachycardia without hives, respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms. Facial swelling did not improve after IM epinephrine, IV steroids and antihistamines. Flexible laryngoscopy noted mild edema of lingual surface of the epiglottis. Allergy service was consulted to evaluate for drug-induced anaphylaxis. Our physical examination revealed significant asymmetric periorbital edema, neck and chest swelling with distant breath sounds and distinct palpable crepitus. Serum Trytpase and C1-Estrase inhibitor levels were normal at 3.2ug/L and 28 mg/dl, respectively. Emergent imaging was recommended, which demonstrated multiple rib fractures, pneumomediastinum with extensive chest wall subcutaneous emphysema tracking to extra-cranial soft tissue. Patient was intubated and chest tube was placed due to concerns for airway compromise. She stayed in ICU for one week before being discharged to home. Discussion: Facial edema, concerning for angioedema, is potentially life threatening condition and an allergic reaction should be higher on the differential diagnoses. Our case represents a learning opportunity regarding other potentially life threatening conditions that can mimic angioedema, requiring higher index of clinical suspicion and thorough physical examination.