Bringing resilience together: On the co-evolutionary capacities of boundary organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic in Rotterdam.

For a city to maintain its vitality during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, social resilience is pivotal. It is a manifestation of adaptive and transformative capacities in a city, through a multitude of interactions between initiatives and organizations, including local government. Resilience can take many forms: coping, adaptive, transformative; community-based, organizational, and institutional. Due to this hybridity and multiplicity, it remains to be seen how all forms of resilience interact and mutually benefit from one another in a city under crisis. Building further in the relational and dynamic dimensions of resilience, we conceptualize these mutual influences as co-evolution and hypothesise that for mutually beneficial co-evolution a city requires boundary organizations, i.e., organizations that facilitate collaboration and information-flow between differently organized societal domains. In our study of the activities of boundary organizations in the Dutch city Rotterdam during the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that boundary organizations were indeed supportive in building social and especially community resilience, but mainly coping and adaptive. Evidence for co-evolutions between various forms of resilience and institutional transformative resilience remained limited. Transformative potential seemed to get lost in procedural translations, was jeopardized by recentralization policies, and seemed only possible on the currents of already ongoing change.

Exploring the Effect of Social Media and Spatial Characteristics During the COVID-19 Pandemic in China

The declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic has largely amplified the spread of related information on social platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and WeChat. In this work, we investigate how the disease and information co-evolve in the population. We focus on COVID-19 and its information during the period when the disease was widely spread in China, i.e., from January 25th to March 24th, 2020. The co-evolution between disease and information is explored via the spatial analysis of the two spreading processes. We visualize the geo-location of both disease and information at the province level and find that disease is more geo-localized compared to information. High correlation between disease and information data is observed, and also people care about the spread of disease only when it comes to their neighborhood. Regard to the content of the information, we obtain that positive messages are more negatively correlated with the disease compared to negative and neutral messages. Additionally, two machine learning algorithms, i.e., linear regression and random forest, are introduced to further predict the number of infected using characteristics, such as disease spatial related and information-related features. We obtain that both the disease spatial related characteristics of nearby cities and information-related characteristics can help to improve the prediction accuracy. The methodology proposed in this paper may shed light on new clues of emerging infections prediction. © 2013 IEEE.

Revisiting the Faure report: Contemporary legacy and challenged legitimacy.

Since its publication in 1972, the Faure report has been regarded as a foundational text on the subject of lifelong learning, offering a plethora of ideas and repertoires. This article contemplates why and how the notions of self-fulfilment and self-learning are interrelated and profoundly important in understanding contemporary lifelong learning discourses, and how both have been appropriated by subsequent policy texts embedded in neoliberal thinking. The author argues that pursuing lifelong learning for self-fulfilment becomes voluntary self-exploitation as the individual's desire to learn unwittingly becomes driven by the instinct to survive and thrive in neoliberal socio-political environments. He also demonstrates that the ideas and repertoires provided in the Faure report function as a fertile ground for lifelong learning discourses, even though the abundant mix of ideas and propositions make it difficult to view the report as an ideologically coherent and conceptually tight-knit blueprint for the future of education. Nonetheless, the author argues that the legacy of the Faure report is still valid beyond its historical specificity. He points out that when read within the context of the unprecedented worldwide experience of COVID-19, the Faure report's proposition and reservations regarding mass media and cybernetics can shed light on the potential for contemporary technologies to strengthen emancipatory experiences of lifelong learning. Reflecting on this, he suggests that it is necessary to think collectively about how we can appreciate and harness technological innovation as an emancipatory tool to liberate ourselves from ignorance and prejudice through borderless and limitless connections to others, and to learn how to live with them.

Réétudier le rapport Faure : un héritage contemporain et une légitimité remise en question ­ Depuis sa publication en 1972, le rapport Faure fait figure de texte fondateur sur l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie au sujet duquel il offre pléthore d'idées et de répertoires. Le présent article examine non seulement pourquoi et comment les notions d'épanouissement personnel et d'autoapprentissage sont interdépendantes et profondément essentielles pour comprendre les discours sur l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie, mais aussi comment les textes politiques ultérieurs ancrés dans la pensée néolibérale se les sont appropriées. L'auteur affirme qu'apprendre tout au long de la vie dans une optique d'épanouissement personnel devient une autoexploitation volontaire étant donné que le souhait de la personne d'apprendre incidemment est mu par l'instinct de survie et de réussite dans des environnements sociopolitiques néolibéraux. Il démontre aussi que les idées et répertoires présentés dans le rapport Faure servent de terreau fertile aux discours sur l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie bien que la profusion d'idées et propositions rendent difficile de le considérer pour l'avenir de l'éducation comme un plan cohérent sur le plan idéologique et rigoureux du point de vue conceptuel. Néanmoins, l'auteur affirme que l'héritage du rapport Faure conserve sa validité au-delà de sa spécificité historique. Il indique que lu dans le contexte de la covid-19, une expérience sans précédent dans le monde entier, la proposition et les réserves du rapport Faure concernant les médias de masse et la cybernétique peuvent fournir un éclairage sur ce que les technologies contemporaines sont susceptibles d'apporter pour renforcer les expériences émancipatrices de l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie. En se penchant sur la question, il indique qu'il est nécessaire de réfléchir collectivement à la façon d'apprécier et d'exploiter les innovations technologiques en tant qu'outils émancipateurs pour nous affranchir de l'ignorance et des préjugés en créant des liens sans frontières et illimités avec les autres, et en apprenant comment vivre avec eux.

Interactomics: Dozens of Viruses, Co-evolving With Humans, Including the Influenza A Virus, may Actively Distort Human Aging.

Some viruses (e.g., human immunodeficiency virus 1 and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) have been experimentally proposed to accelerate features of human aging and of cellular senescence. These observations, along with evolutionary considerations on viral fitness, raised the more general puzzling hypothesis that, beyond documented sources in human genetics, aging in our species may also depend on virally encoded interactions distorting our aging to the benefits of diverse viruses. Accordingly, we designed systematic network-based analyses of the human and viral protein interactomes, which unraveled dozens of viruses encoding proteins experimentally demonstrated to interact with proteins from pathways associated with human aging, including cellular senescence. We further corroborated our predictions that specific viruses interfere with human aging using published experimental evidence and transcriptomic data; identifying influenza A virus (subtype H1N1) as a major candidate age distorter, notably through manipulation of cellular senescence. By providing original evidence that viruses may convergently contribute to the evolution of numerous age-associated pathways through co-evolution, our network-based and bipartite network-based methodologies support an ecosystemic study of aging, also searching for genetic causes of aging outside a focal aging species. Our findings, predicting age distorters and targets for anti-aging therapies among human viruses, could have fundamental and practical implications for evolutionary biology, aging study, virology, medicine, and demography.

Exploring the effect of social media and spatial characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic in China

The declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic has largely amplified the spread of related information on social platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and WeChat. In this work, we investigate how the disease and information co-evolve in the population. We focus on COVID-19 and its information during the period when the disease was widely spread in China, i.e., from January 25th to March 24th, 2020. The co-evolution between disease and information is explored via the spatial analysis of the two spreading processes. We visualize the geo-location of both disease and information at the province level and find that disease is more geo-localized compared to information. High correlation between disease and information data is observed, and also people care about the spread of disease only when it comes to their neighborhood. Regard to the content of the information, we obtain that positive messages are more negatively correlated with the disease compared to negative and neutral messages. Additionally, two machine learning algorithms, i.e., linear regression and random forest, are introduced to further predict the number of infected using characteristics, such as disease spatial related and information-related features. We obtain that both the disease spatial related characteristics of nearby cities and information-related characteristics can help to improve the prediction accuracy. The methodology proposed in this paper may shed light on new clues of emerging infections prediction. Author

Rapidly evolving viral motifs mostly target biophysically constrained binding pockets of host proteins.

Evolutionary changes in host-virus interactions can alter the course of infection, but the biophysical and regulatory constraints that shape interface evolution remain largely unexplored. Here, we focus on viral mimicry of host-like motifs that allow binding to host domains and modulation of cellular pathways. We observe that motifs from unrelated viruses preferentially target conserved, widely expressed, and highly connected host proteins, enriched with regulatory and essential functions. The interface residues within these host domains are more conserved and bind a larger number of cellular proteins than similar motif-binding domains that are not known to interact with viruses. In contrast, rapidly evolving viral-binding human proteins form few interactions with other cellular proteins and display high tissue specificity, and their interfaces have few inter-residue contacts. Our results distinguish between conserved and rapidly evolving host-virus interfaces and show how various factors limit host capacity to evolve, allowing for efficient viral subversion of host machineries.

Co-evolution dynamics of epidemic and information under dynamical multi-source information and behavioral responses

In the absence of effective treatment programs and limited medical resources, multi-source information dynamically evolves with an epidemic and motivates people to adopt behavioral responses, which contributes much to reducing their infection risk and suppressing the epidemic spread. Here, we aim at studying the effects of dynamical multi-source information and behavioral responses on the co-evolution of epidemic and information in time-varying multiplex networks. We propose the UAU-SIS (unaware-aware-unaware susceptible-infected-susceptible) model with time-varying self-awareness and behavioral responses. Under the framework of time-varying multiplex networks and with a microscopic Markov chain approach, we analytically derive the epidemic thresholds for the proposed model. Experimental results for artificial networks show that time-varying behavioral responses can effectively suppress the epidemic spread with an increased epidemic threshold, while time-varying self-awareness can only reduce the scale of epidemic spread. In addition, the role of dynamical multi-source information in suppressing epidemic spread is limited. When the information transmission rate is beyond a certain critical value or the information efficiency is low, it will no longer affect the epidemic spread. Detailed analysis on the co-evolution of epidemic and information has to consider the heterogeneity of individuals in obtaining multi-source information and taking behavioral responses. Only when many people can obtain multi-source information and take behavioral responses, time-varying self-awareness and behavioral responses have a great impact on suppressing epidemic spread. Furthermore, we apply our proposed framework to two typical real-world networks and find that the results on real-world networks are consistent with those on artificial networks. Thus, the proposed method is expected to provide helpful guidance for coping with the COVID-19 or future emerging epidemics.

An integrated understanding of the evolutionary and structural features of the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor binding domain (RBD).

Conventional drug development strategies typically use pocket in protein structures as drug-target sites. They overlook the plausible effects of protein evolvability and resistant mutations on protein structure which in turn may impair protein-drug interaction. In this study, we used an integrated evolution and structure guided strategy to develop potential evolutionary-escape resistant therapeutics using receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 spike-protein/S-protein as a model. Deploying an ensemble of sequence space exploratory tools including co-evolutionary analysis and deep mutational scans we provide a quantitative insight into the evolutionarily constrained subspace of the RBD sequence-space. Guided by molecular simulation and structure network analysis we highlight regions inside the RBD, which are critical for providing structural integrity and conformational flexibility. Using fuzzy C-means clustering we combined evolutionary and structural features of RBD and identified a critical region. Subsequently, we used computational drug screening using a library of 1615 small molecules and identified one lead molecule, which is expected to target the identified region, critical for evolvability and structural stability of RBD. This integrated evolution-structure guided strategy to develop evolutionary-escape resistant lead molecules have potential general applications beyond SARS-CoV-2.

The co-evolution of knowledge management and business model transformation in the post-COVID-19 era: insights based on Chinese e-commerce companies

Purpose>This study aims to answer the question of how business models (BMs) maintain stability while coping with environmental uncertainties. This study proposes a dynamic co-evolution of knowledge management and business model transformation based on a comparative analysis of the focal firms’ BMs and their main partners in two e-commerce ecosystems in China.Design/methodology/approach>The open data of listed companies regarding the introduction of emerging topics on the transformation tendency of BMs in the post-COVID-19 business world is qualitatively analysed. The theoretical foundation is based on a critical review of the literature.Findings>Three aspects of the co-evolution between knowledge management and business model transformation are introduced. These three aspects are as follows: knowledge integration helps with multi-system business integration and decision-making collaborations;knowledge sharing helps to enhance cognitive ability and network value based on businesses;and the creation of new knowledge helps enrich the knowledge base and promote the transformation of BMs.Research limitations/implications>Solely attributing a firm’s ability to cope with environmental uncertainties to its business model weakens the importance of its knowledge management. This study argues that the co-evolution between knowledge management and business model transformation also plays a key role in a firm’s response to issues post-COVID-19.Originality/value>This study calls for the development of a normative theory of co-evolution between knowledge management and business model transformation, implying uncharted territories of knowledge management based on interaction with business model designs in e-business ecosystems.

The co-evolution of remote work and expectations in a COVID-19 world utilizing an expectation disconfirmation theory lens

Purpose: As researchers are being called to examine the evolving technology research issues for COVID-19 and other pandemics, remote work has been accelerated and represents the future of work. Although it is known that one of the top forces shaping the future of work is changing employee expectations, the knowledge of remote work during a pandemic remains scant. Thus, this paper aims to determine the impact of remote worker’s expectations on their level of satisfaction and intention to continue to work remotely. Design/methodology/approach: Using one of the prominent theories on expectations, Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT), the authors conduct an online survey of 146 individuals who are currently working remotely. Findings: By applying EDT, the findings demonstrate that an individual’s expectations regarding remote work impact their level of satisfaction with remote work and intention to continue to work remotely. Incorporating extant research, the findings extend the research stream to indicate that employees’ expectations about remote work significantly impact both their level of satisfaction and level of productivity. Originality/value: The discussion elucidates the significance of understanding employee expectations regarding remote work in the evolving new normal. The findings from the study demonstrate the importance of an individual’s expectations regarding remote work on their level of satisfaction with remote work and intention to continue to work remotely. Thus, this study fills a gap in the literature by applying EDT to the remote work context. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

MicroRNAs for Virus Pathogenicity and Host Responses, Identified in SARS-CoV-2 Genomes, May Play Roles in Viral-Host Co-Evolution in Putative Zoonotic Host Species.

Our recent study identified seven key microRNAs (miR-8066, 5197, 3611, 3934-3p, 1307-3p, 3691-3p, 1468-5p) similar between SARS-CoV-2 and the human genome, pointing at miR-related mechanisms in viral entry and the regulatory effects on host immunity. To identify the putative roles of these miRs in zoonosis, we assessed their conservation, compared with humans, in some key wild and domestic animal carriers of zoonotic viruses, including bat, pangolin, pig, cow, rat, and chicken. Out of the seven miRs under study, miR-3611 was the most strongly conserved across all species; miR-5197 was the most conserved in pangolin, pig, cow, bat, and rat; miR-1307 was most strongly conserved in pangolin, pig, cow, bat, and human; miR-3691-3p in pangolin, cow, and human; miR-3934-3p in pig and cow, followed by pangolin and bat; miR-1468 was most conserved in pangolin, pig, and bat; while miR-8066 was most conserved in pangolin and pig. In humans, miR-3611 and miR-1307 were most conserved, while miR-8066, miR-5197, miR-3334-3p and miR-1468 were least conserved, compared with pangolin, pig, cow, and bat. Furthermore, we identified that changes in the miR-5197 nucleotides between pangolin and human can generate three new miRs, with differing tissue distribution in the brain, lung, intestines, lymph nodes, and muscle, and with different downstream regulatory effects on KEGG pathways. This may be of considerable importance as miR-5197 is localized in the spike protein transcript area of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Our findings may indicate roles for these miRs in viral-host co-evolution in zoonotic hosts, particularly highlighting pangolin, bat, cow, and pig as putative zoonotic carriers, while highlighting the miRs' roles in KEGG pathways linked to viral pathogenicity and host responses in humans. This in silico study paves the way for investigations into the roles of miRs in zoonotic disease.

Intra-species sialic acid polymorphism in humans: a common niche for influenza and coronavirus pandemics?

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to more than 159 million confirmed cases with over 3.3 million deaths worldwide, but it remains mystery why most infected individuals (∼98%) were asymptomatic or only experienced mild illness. The same mystery applies to the deadly 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic, which has puzzled the field for a century. Here we discuss dual potential properties of the 1918 H1N1 pandemic viruses that led to the high fatality rate in the small portion of severe cases, while about 98% infected persons in the United States were self-limited with mild symptoms, or even asymptomatic. These variations now have been postulated to be impacted by polymorphisms of the sialic acid receptors in the general population. Since coronaviruses (CoVs) also recognize sialic acid receptors and cause severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemics and pandemics, similar principles of influenza virus evolution and pandemicity may also apply to CoVs. A potential common principle of pathogen/host co-evolution of influenza and CoVs under selection of host sialic acids in parallel with different epidemic and pandemic influenza and coronaviruses is discussed.