The Impact of the Scientific Metaverse on the Biotech Industry: How Virtual Reality Helped Researchers Fight Back Against COVID-19

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic not only precipitated a digital revolution but also led to one of the largest scientific collaborative open-source initiatives. The EXaSCale smArt pLatform Against paThogEns for CoronaVirus (EXSCALATE4CoV) consortium, led by Dompé farmaceutici S.p.A., brought together 18 global organizations to counter international pandemics more rapidly and efficiently. The consortium also partnered with Nanome, an extended reality software company whose software facilitates the visualization, modification, and simulation of molecules via augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality applications. To characterize the molecular structure of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and to identify promising drug targets, the EXSCALATE4CoV team utilized methods such as homology modeling, molecular dynamics simulations, high-throughput virtual screening, docking, and other computational procedures. Nanome provided analysis of those computational procedures and supplied virtual reality headsets to help scientists better understand and interact with the molecular dynamics and key chemical interactions of SARS-CoV-2. Nanome's collaborative ideation platform enables scientific breakthroughs across research institutions in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and other diseases. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Does the Corona crisis lead to a displacement of media attention for the refugee and climate crises? A case study on issue attention processes

In der vorgelegten Studie werden klassische Annahmen zur Dramatisierungstendenz medialer Krisenberichterstattung bei gleichzeitiger Verdrängung übriger gesellschaftlich relevanter Themen auf den Prüfstand gestellt. Anwendungsbeispiel ist die Corona-Thematisierung (September 2019 bis Dezember 2020) und ihr Einfluss auf die Thematisierungsprozesse von «Klima» und «Geflüchtete». Anhand einer multivariat dynamischen Zeitreihenanalyse von 437 784 Onlineartikeln wird als übergeordnete Hypothese untersucht, ob Themenverdrängung festgestellt werden kann. Die Mechanismen der Verdrängung werden dann differenziert als phasenabhängige Aufmerksamkeitsverschiebung und als direkte also zeitgleiche Themenverdrängung untersucht. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen die Annahme der Themenkonkurrenz und zeigen je nach Thematisierungsphase unterschiedliche Verdrängungsprozesse. Im Trend hat Corona die Thematisierung der beiden anderen Krisenphänomene zwar nicht komplett verdrängt, aber sehr deutlich reduziert. Bezüglich der direkten Verdrängung sind Effekte messbar, aber eher klein. Als Fazit zeigt sich Themenverdrängung im Onlinejournalismus hier also eher als Effekt der Fokusverschiebung öffentlicher Aufmerksamkeit als ein Problem direkter Verdrängung aufgrund beschränkten Berichterstattungsraums. In the following, classical hypotheses on the dramatization tendency of media crisis reporting and the assumed simultaneous suppression of other socially relevant topics are put to the test. For this case study, we rely on news reporting during the first year of the COVID19 pandemic (September 2019 to December 2020) to evaluate its influence on the thematization processes of «climate» and «refugees.» Based on a multivariate dynamic time series analysis of 437 784 online articles, we first confirm whether overall issue displacement can be detected and then delve deeper by differentiating into two possible mechanisms of displacement: 1) as a phase-dependent but global shift in attention and 2) as a direct i.e., simultaneous effect pointing toward editorial competition. Results from our analysis confirm the overarching hypothesis of topic competition, clearly showing displacement processes depending on the thematization phase. Globally, while not being rendered invisible, media attention for the other two crisis phenomena was reduced significantly following the onset of the pandemic. Regarding direct displacement, effects are measurable, but rather small. We conclude that the displacement of media attention seems to be attributable more to a shift in public attention and overall trends than to classic assumptions based on limited resources in the editorial process. © 2022. the authors. This work is licensed under the “Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivatives 4.0 International” license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).