COVID-19 virus: the immune reaction to vaccines

The immune system is developed to preserve its hosts from an ever-expanding cluster of pathogenic microbes. The elimination of toxic substances, allergens, or any other harmful existences that come in, passing the mucosal surfaces, is as well the responsibility of this special system. Its ability to distinguish self (our bodies' functioning cells and tissues) from non-self is the key aspect to its ability to mobilize some reaction to an invasion initiated by the stranger substances listed above. To identify and kill unsafe microorganisms, the host applies both natural and versatile systems, our innate and adaptive immune systems. Vaccines are used to combat the current SARS-CoV-2 strain by utilizing immune system mechanisms, specifically the adaptive immune system. Vectored vaccines, protein vaccines, genetic vaccine, and monoclonal antibody for passive vaccination are among the vaccine platforms under consideration for SARS-CoV-2. Each vaccine has its own benefits and drawbacks. This paper is written to describe the three major forms of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the unique mechanisms of elements of the immune system associated with the virus. © 2023 SPIE.

The multi-method approach to analyzing motivations and perceived travel risks: impacts on domestic tourists' adaptive behaviors and tourism destination advocacy

The study investigated factors influencing tourists' adaptive behaviors and advocacy for domestic destinations during COVID-19 using a combination of integrated generalized structured component analysis (IGSCA) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). One thousand tourists from Thailand, South Korea, and China participated in the study. The results revealed that fsQCA's multiple configurations provided valuable insights into the antecedents affecting adaptive behavior and destination advocacy, which complemented IGSCA's symmetric results. The study affirmed the complexity of antecedents that impact outcomes and supported the notion of complexity theory in explaining tourists' destination supporting behavior. The study provided implications for future research in this area.

The impact of dynamic adaptive teaching model on surgical education.

Objective To investigate the impact of dynamic adaptive teaching model on surgical education. Methods Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we adopted dynamic adaptive teaching model in the Department of Breast Surgery, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, which divided the whole curriculum into several individual modules and recombined different modules to accommodate to student's levels and schedules. Meanwhile, adaptive strategy also increased the proportion of online teaching and fully utilized electronic medical resources. The present study included quantitative teaching score (QTS) recorded from January 2020 to June 2020, and used the corresponding data from 2019 as control. The main endpoint was to explore the impact of dynamic adaptive teaching model on overall QTS and its interaction effect with trainer's experience and student category. Results Totally, 20 trainers and 181 trainees were enrolled in the present study. With implementation of dynamic adaptive strategy, the overall QTS decreased dramatically (1.76+/-0.84 vs. 4.91+/-1.15, t=4.85, P=0.005). The impact was consistent irrespective of trainers' experience (high experience trainers: 0.85+/-0.40 vs. 2.12+/-0.44, t=4.98, P=0.004;medium experience trainers: 0.85+/-0.29 vs. 2.06+/-0.53, t=4.51, P=0.006;and low experience trainers: 0.10+/-0.16 vs. 0.44+/-0.22, t=2.62, P=0.047). For resident (including graduate) and undergraduate student teaching, both QTS was lower with dynamic strategy (residents: 0.18+/-0.34 vs. 0.97+/-0.14, t=4.35, P=0.007;undergraduate students 1.57+/-0.55 vs. 3.77+/-1.24, t=3.62, P=0.015), but dynamic strategy was effective for post-doc student subgroup and reached comparable QTS as traditional model (0.00+/-0.00 vs. 0.17+/-0.41, t=1.00, P=0.363). Conclusions Dynamic adaptive teaching strategy could be a useful alternative to traditional teaching model for post-doc students. It could be a novel effective solution for saving teaching resources and providing individualized surgical teaching modality.Copyright © 2023, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. All rights reserved.

Characterization of Adaptive Immune Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Updated Bivalent Booster

Bivalent COVID-19 vaccines that contain two mRNAs encoding Wuhan-1 and Omicron BA.4/5 spike proteins are successful in preventing infection from the original strain and Omicron variants, but the quality of adaptive immune responses is still not well documented. This study aims at characterizing adaptive immune responses to the bivalent booster vaccination in 46 healthy participants. Plasma and PBMC were collected prior and three weeks after bivalent booster. We measured anti-N, anti-S, and RBD IgM, IgA, IgG plasma titers against original, Omicron BA.1, and BA.5 variants (pending) as well as total anti-S IgG titers and surrogate Virus Neutralization capacity against the Alpha, Delta, and BA.1 variant. With spectral flow-cytometry we identified peripheral blood B-cells specific for the RBD of the S-protein of the original and BA.1 variants. T-cell-specific responses were assessed by cytokine release assay after stimulation with SARS-CoV-2 peptides from the original, BA.1, BA.4, and BA.5 variants (pending). Finally, we performed TRB and IGH repertoire studies on sorted CD4+, CD8+, CD19+ lymphocytes, to study breadth of SARS-CoV-2 specific clonotypes (pending). 27/46 participants were analyzed;9 had SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID+), while 18 are infection naive (COVID-). In both groups, median time since last dose of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (3rd or 4th) was 11 months. All subjects were positive for anti-S IgG prior to bivalent booster. The COVID + group displayed anti-S IgG pre-booster levels and neutralization against BA.1 higher than the COVID- group. Significant increase post-boost of total anti-S IgG and BA.1 neutralizing activity was detected in the COVID- but not in the COVID+ group;however, no difference in neutralization activity post-boost was detected between the two groups. Furthermore, the COVIDgroup showed significant increase in the frequency of CD19+ and CD27+ switched memory B-cells specific for BA.1 RBD in post-boost compared to pre-boost samples. However, post-boost frequencies of the same B-cells were higher in the COVID+ compared to the COVID- group. These preliminary findings confirm that among individual immunized with the original COVID-19 mRNAvaccine, prior COVID infection provides increased protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants. They also demonstrate that booster immunization with the bivalent vaccine induces robust adaptive immune responses against Omicron variant.[Formula presented][Formula presented]Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc.

Intelligent Methods and Models for Assessing Level of Student Adaptation to Online Learning

The problem of introducing online learning is becoming more and more popular in our society. Due to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, there is an urgent need for the transition of educational institutions to online learning, so this paper will help people not make mistakes in the process and afterward. The paper's primary purpose is to investigate the effectiveness of machine learning tools that can solve the problem of assessing student adaptation to online learning. These tools include intelligent methods and models, such as classification techniques and neural networks. This work uses data from an online survey of students at different levels: school, college, and university. The survey consists of questions such as gender, age, level of education, whether the student is in the city, class duration, quality of Internet connection, government/non-government educational institution, availability of virtual learning environment, whether the student is familiar with IT, financial conditions, type of Internet connection, a device used for studying, etc. To obtain the results on the effectiveness of online education were used the following machine learning algorithms and models: Random Forest (RF), Extra Trees (ET), Extreme, Light, and Simple Gradient Boosting (GB), Decision Trees (DT), K-neighbors (K-mean), Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naїve Bayes (NB) classifier and others. An intelligent neural network model (NNM) was built to address the main issue. © 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)

POSSIBLE ROLE OF PEPTIDE EPITOPES OF COVID-19 BNT-162B2 MRNA VACCINE IN FOMENTING AUTOIMMUNITY: AN IN SILICO ANALYSIS

BackgroundFollowing the launch of the global COVID-19 vaccination campaign, there have been increased reports of autoimmune diseases developing de novo following vaccination. These cases include rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune hepatitis, immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, and connective tissue diseases. Nevertheless, COVID-19 vaccines are considered safe for patients with autoimmune diseases and are strongly recommended.ObjectivesThe aim of this in silico analysis is to investigate the presence of protein epitopes encoded by the BNT-162b2 mRNA vaccine, one of the most commonly administered COVID-19 vaccines, that could elicit an aberrant adaptive immune response in predisposed individuals.MethodsThe FASTA sequence of the protein encoded by the BNT-162b2 vaccine was retrieved from http://genome.ucsc.edu and used as a key input to the Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource (www.iedb.org). Linear peptides with 90% BLAST homology were selected, and T-cell, B-cell, and MHC ligand assays without MHC restriction were searched and evaluated. HLA-disease associations were screened on the HLA-SPREAD platform (https://hla-spread.igib.res.in) by selecting only positive markers.ResultsA total of 183 epitopes were found, corresponding to 178 SARS-CoV-2 and 5 SARS-CoV spike epitopes, respectively. Results were obtained from 22 T-cell assays, 398 B-cell assays, and 2 MHC ligand assays. Complementary receptors included 1080 T-cell receptors and 0 B-cell receptors.Specifically, the IEDB_epitope:1329790 (NATNVVIKVCEFQFCNDPFLGVYY) was shown to bind to HLA-DRB1*15:02 and HLA-DRB1*15:03 alleles, whereas the IEDB_epitope:1392457 (TKCTLKSFTVEKGIYQTSNFRVQPT) was reported to bind to HLA-DRB1*07:01, HLA-DRB1*03:01, HLA-DRB3*01:01, and HLA-DRB4*01:01 alleles. The HLA alleles detected were found to be positively associated with various immunological disorders (Table 1).Table 1.MHC-restricted epitopes of the BNT-162b2 vaccine and potentially associated immunological conditionsEpitopeAssayMHC moleculeAssociated disease (population)NATNVVIKVCEFQFCNDPFLGVYY + OX(C10)cellular MHC/mass spectrometry ligand presentationHLA-DRB1*15:02Takayasu arteritis (Japanese) Arthritis (Taiwanese) Scleroderma (Japanese) Colitis (Japanese)HLA-DRB1*15:03Systemic lupus erythematosus (Mexican American)TKCTLKSFTVEKGIYQTSNFRVQPT + SCM(K2)as aboveHLA-DRB1*07:01Allergy, hypersensitivity (Caucasian)HLA-DRB1*03:01Type 1 diabetes (African) Sarcoidosis, good prognosis (Finnish)HLA-DRB3*01:01Graves' disease (Caucasian) Thymoma (Caucasian) Sarcoidosis (Scandinavian) Autoimmune hepatitis (Caucasian)HLA-DRB4*01:01Vitiligo (Saudi Arabian)ConclusionSimilar to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the protein product of the BNT-162b2 mRNA vaccine contains immunogenic epitopes that may trigger autoimmune phenomena in predisposed individuals. Genotyping for HLA alleles may help identify at-risk individuals. However, further research is needed to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and potential clinical implications.References[1]Vita R, Mahajan S, Overton JA et al. The Immune Epitope Database (IEDB): 2018 update. Nucleic Acids Res. 2019 Jan 8;47(D1):D339-D343. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky1006.[2]Dholakia D, Kalra A, Misir BR et al. HLA-SPREAD: a natural language processing based resource for curating HLA association from PubMed s. BMC Genomics 23, 10 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-021-08239-0[3]Parker R, Partridge T, Wormald C et al. Mapping the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein-derived peptidome presented by HLA class II on dendritic cells. Cell Rep. 2021 May 25;35(8):109179. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109179.[4]Knierman MD, Lannan MB, Spindler LJ et al. The Human Leukocyte Antigen Class II Immunopeptidome of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein. Cell Rep. 2020 Dec 1;33(9):108454. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.108454.Acknowledgements:NIL.Disclosure of InterestsNone Declared.

Informational inefficiency on bitcoin futures

This paper investigates the dynamics and drivers of informational inefficiency in the Bitcoin futures market. To quantify the adaptive pattern of informational inefficiency, we leverage two groups of statistics which measure long memory and fractal dimension to construct a global-local market inefficiency index. Our findings validate the adaptive market hypothesis, and the global and local inefficiency exhibits different patterns and contributions. Regarding the driving factors of the time-varying inefficiency, our results suggest that trading activity of retailers (hedgers) increases (decreases) informational inefficiency. Compared to hedgers and retailers, the role played by speculators is more likely to be affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Extremely bullish and bearish investor sentiment has more significant impact on the local inefficiency. Arbitrage potential, funding liquidity, and the pandemic exert impacts on the global and local inefficiency differently. No significant evidence is found for market liquidity and policy uncertainty related to cryptocurrency.

Adaptive reuse of closed malls for dementia programs and services: Community focus group feedback

The double societal hit of dementia and infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19 have raised a convergence of concerns for the future of care settings for people living with dementia. Images of institutionalized older adults who are quarantined in closed settings have led developers, government agencies, and care administrators to search for innovative options to create more autonomy and quality of life in care settings while protecting the health of residents. This chapter describes the qualitative work being conducted by a Midwestern university research team, laying the groundwork for the conceptual adaptive reuse of an 800,000 square-foot closed mall site for centralized dementia programs, services, housing, and an on-site quarantine and medical center. Focus group outcomes from architects and developers highlighted five principle themes relating to the barriers and benefits of adaptive reuse for this model which include: mixed-use precedents, linking the old with the new, economic factors, development partnerships, and sustainable building practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Sojourning Educators at International Schools Overseas and the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has jolted educational organizations and their stakeholders. Mobility between countries is a requisite feature at international schools, with students and educators shifting between home, host, and intermediary countries. Stakeholders are diverse in international schools, representing transcultural interests, giving rise to complex needs and considerations for school leadership. This article explores a subset of data from a study on educator acculturation in international schools that unpacks the effects of, and responses to, the pandemic by sojourning educators at international schools in Southeast and East Asia. Effects on students were not examined. Findings include adaptive responses, mobility barriers and role/school precarity, spikes in acculturative stress, and creative problem-solving. These effects have generated substantial leadership enigmas. Implications include an urgent need to activate adaptive leadership practices, including contingency planning and action research projects aiming at experiential learning from different stakeholder groups in international schools.

Cyber-Physical Modeling of Intelligent Traffic Controllers Using Simulator for Urban Mobility (SUMO)

Transportation problems have always been a global concern. The challenges in traffic congestion were easily observed during pre-pandemic times. However, traffic congestion still persists even during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and present) where there has been less number of vehicles because of travel restrictions. The emergence of wireless communication technologies and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) pave the way for solving some of the problems found in the transportation industry. Subsequently, traffic control systems are used at various intersections to manage the flow of traffic and reduce car collisions. However, some intersections are better off without these traffic control systems. The proposed study will analyze a T-junction road in five different setups using different types of traffic controllers. The simulation tool used is SUMO. The study found that an adaptive or vehicle-actuated traffic controller is the ideal method for regulating traffic flow in a T-junction with a one-way or two-way main road. It was observed in the simulation that it reduced the potential car collisions in the non-TL junction. However, the average speed and completion time of the road network was affected by the method. © 2022 IEEE.

Boosting the Immune System with Vitamin D: Special Focus on Prevention of COVID-19 and Complications

In addition to the classical functions of the musculoskeletal system and calcium homeostasis, the function of vitamin D as an immune modulator is well established. The vitamin D receptors and enzymes that metabolize vitamin D are ubiquitously expressed in most cells in the body, including T and B lymphocytes, antigen-presenting cells, monocytes, macrophages and natural killer cells that trigger immune and antimicrobial responses. Many in vitro and in vivo studies revealed that vitamin D promotes tolerogenic immunological action and immune modulation. Vitamin D adequacy positively influences the expression and release of antimicrobial peptides, such as cathelicidin, defensin, and anti-inflammatory cytokines, and reduces the expression of proinflammatory cytokines. Evidence suggestss that vitamin D's protective immunogenic actions reduce the risk, complications, and death from COVID-19. On the contrary, vitamin D deficiency worsened the clinical outcomes of viral respiratory diseases and the COVID-19-related cytokine storm, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and death. The study revealed the need for more preclinical studies and focused on well-designed clinical trials with adequate sizes to understand the role of vitamin D on the pathophysiology of immune disorders and mechanisms of subduing microbial infections, including COVID-19.Copyright © 2023 Bentham Science Publishers.

Knowledge of African Traditional Medicine System: Immunomodulation

African traditional medicine is one of the oldest forms of health-care system in the continent that has continued to be relevant. It is usually holistic, treating mind and body, and includes aromatherapy, bone setting, circumcision, herbs, homeopathy massaging, spiritual therapies, maternity care, psychiatric care, music therapy, and many more. It is a very old and culturally informed method of health management that humans have used against diseases that have threatened existence. More than 60,000 of the world's higher plant species can be found in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands. These are about one-fourth of the global total and less than the 8% of the medicinal plants sold internationally from Africa. This scarcity could be due to lack of data on the traditional uses of many African plants as the knowledge is transferred orally by storytellers and traditional healers though in recent times, there are some information in print. Immunomodulation is seen as an essential feature of immunotherapy whereby immune responses are provoked, heightened, decreased, or avoided. Immune responses have been observed to be either cellular co-receptor expression, class switching, cytokine secretion, histamine release, immunoglobulin secretion, lymphocyte expression, or phagocytosis. Immune system dysfunction is responsible for various diseases like allergies, asthmas, arthritis, cancers, and infectious diseases. So modulation of immune responses is required in controlling diseases. This is requisite nowadays because of the upsurge of infectious diseases like superbugs caused by Multi-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and the coronavirus (COVID-19) plus other emerging diseases. The historical view of African Traditional Medicine (ATMs) will be discussed from the point of view of specific plants used for immunomodulation in the ATMs and their efficacies following the trend of use and development of herbal medicines from crude formulations to refined dosage forms and procedures over time. Most of the ATMs are prepared as tonics and bitters to heighten and keep up immune defenses. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.

Should Young Covid-19 Patients be Suplemented with Vitamin D?

It is well known that vitamin D's general immunomodulatory actions are helpful in viral infections and that a shortage is linked to a more serious prognosis for Covid-19. In this sistematic review, we examined the existing literature on evidence as to whether there is also link between vitamin D range levels in pediatric population and the outcome of the Covid-19 infection. We looked for studies that measured vitamin D blood concentrations and examined the effects of vitamin D supplementation in young infected patients. Vitamin D may decrease the risk of respiratory infections in a number of ways through its interactions with numerous cells, including by decreasing viral survival and replication, reducing the cytokine storm, raising angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 concentrations (ACE2) while not damaging the endothelial integrity. The incidence or severity of Covid-19 is linked with blood 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations, according to many observational studies. However experimental verification is still needed. Given their safety and broad therapeutic window, vitamin D supplements seem to be an effective way for individuals and doctors to prevent or treat Covid-19. Nonetheless, the outcomes of significant vitamin D randomized controlled trials are further needed.Copyright © 2022 Maria Nicolae et al., published by Sciendo.

A Long Short Term Memory Machine Learning Technique for Covid-19 Patient Count Prediction

The Corona-virus H19 pandemic is quickly spreading throughout the globe. Every three to four times, waves occur and have a major effect on people's lives. Other illnesses including covid disorders are misdiagnosed in this setting. There is no reliable statistics on the total number of covid patients in the nation, and no system exists to track them. This prevents the patients from receiving the necessary care and treatment. The number of patients in a given dataset may be determined with more precision using AI methods. In this article, we show how to forecast how many patients will be included in the Covid-19 database by using an adaptive method. Python spyder is used to run the simulation. . © 2023 IEEE.

Survival of the fittest: the multiple paths of entrepreneurial leadership driving adaptive innovation in uncertain environment

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the multiple influence paths or underlying mechanisms of entrepreneurial leadership (EL) on adaptive innovation from the perspectives of organizational learning and resource management, drawing on complex adaptive system theory.Design/methodology/approachWith a questionnaire survey of 317 senior and middle managers from different firms in China, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized conceptual model, and bootstrapping method was employed to examine the multiple mediating effects.FindingsResults indicate that EL has a significant and positive effect on adaptive innovation. This relationship is partially mediated through exploitative learning, exploratory learning, resource bricolage and boundary-spanning integration, respectively. The impact of EL on adaptive innovation is also sequentially transmitted through exploitative learning and resource bricolage or exploratory learning and boundary-spanning integration.Originality/valueAdaptive innovation has become a firm competition strategy to cope with dynamic changes in current uncertain environment where EL can play its effectiveness to engage firms in such innovation activities. However, the question of why and how EL drives adaptive innovation has yet to be discussed. This study highlights the innovation effectiveness of EL and the triggering process of adaptive innovation, and contributes to several countermeasures for firms to implement leadership and innovation practices responding to uncertain environment.

Altered immune response to vaccination in patients with plasma cell premalignancy

Introduction Patients with hematological malignancies, including multiple myeloma (MM), experience suboptimal responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance (MGUS) and Smoldering Multiple Myeloma (SMM) are precursors to MM and exhibit altered immune cell composition and function. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the subsequent population-wide vaccination represent an opportunity to study the real-life immune response to a common antigen. Here, we present updated results from the IMPACT study, a study we launched in November 2020 to characterize the effect of plasma cell premalignancy on response to SARS-CoV2 vaccination (vx). Methods We performed: (i) ELISA for SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies on 1,887 peripheral blood (PB) samples (237 healthy donors (HD), and 550 MGUS, 947 SMM, and 153 MM patients) drawn preand post-vx;(ii) single-cell RNA, T cell receptor (TCR), and B cell receptor (BCR) sequencing (10x Genomics) on 224 PB samples (26 HD, and 20 MGUS, 48 SMM, and 24 MM patients) drawn preand post-vx;(iii) plasma cytokine profiling (Olink) on 106 PB samples (32 HD, and 38 MGUS and 36 SMM patients) drawn pre- and post-vx;and (iv) bulk TCR sequencing (Adaptive Biotechnologies) on 8 PB samples from 4 patients (2 MGUS, 2 SMM) drawn pre- and post-vx. Results Patients with MGUS and SMM achieved comparable antibody titers to HD two months post-vx. However, patient titers waned significantly faster, and 4 months post-vx we observed significantly lower titers in both MGUS (Wilcoxon rank-sum, p=0.030) and SMM (p=0.010). These results indicate impaired humoral immune response in patients with MGUS and SMM.At baseline, the TCR repertoire was significantly less diverse in patients with SMM compared to HD (Wilcoxon rank-sum, p=0.039), while no significant difference was observed in the BCR repertoire (p=0.095). Interestingly, a significant increase in TCR repertoire diversity was observed post-vx in patients with SMM (paired t-test, p=0.014), indicating rare T cell clone recruitment in response to vaccination. In both HD and patients, recruited clones showed upregulation of genes associated with CD4+ naive and memory T cells, suggesting preservation of the T cell response in SMM, which was confirmed by bulk TCR-sequencing in 4 patients.Lastly, by cytokine profiling, we observed a defect in IL-1beta and IL-18 induction post-vx in patients with SMM compared to HD (Wilcoxon rank-sum, p=0.047 and p=0.015, respectively), two key monocyte-derived mediators of acute inflammation, suggesting an altered innate immune response as well. Conclusion Taken together, our findings highlight that despite the absence of clinical manifestations, plasma cell premalignancy is associated with defects in both innate and adaptive immune responses. Therefore, patients with plasma cell premalignancy may require adjusted vaccination strategies for optimal immunization.

Principles for Water Governance in a Post-COVID World: Water Sector Needs to Be Embedded in Environmental Justice

This paper argues that the crisis in humanity's relationship with water reflected in rapidly escalating demand and dangerously depleting freshwater and groundwater reserves, can be understood as the outcome of the anthropocentric assumptions underlying our current development models. These assumptions have given rise to both the challenge of severe water scarcity as well as to the kind of policies used to address it. Drawing on principles from an environmental justice framework, it calls for a drastic restructuring of the water sector on more equitable, sustainable and democratic lines. Some of the guiding principles for water governance that are suggested include ensuring that interventions in nature or river systems are along the contours of nature, focusing on managing the demand for water as against the present emphasis on supply augmentation, recognition of structural and historical inequities which determine access to water, adoption of an approach to water management that is adaptive to rapidly changing circumstances and promotion of the participation of all stakeholders in governance and knowledge production. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.

Analysis of the COVID19 Pandemic Behaviour Based on the Compartmental SEAIRD and Adaptive SVEAIRD Epidemiologic Models

A significant number of people infected by COVID19 do not get sick immediately but become carriers of the disease. These patients might have a certain incubation period. However, the classical compartmental model, SEIR, was not originally designed for COVID19. We used the simple, commonly used SEIR model to retrospectively analyse the initial pandemic data from Singapore. Here, the SEIR model was combined with the actual published Singapore pandemic data, and the key parameters were determined by maximizing the nonlinear goodness of fit R2 and minimizing the root mean square error. These parameters served for the fast and directional convergence of the parameters of an improved model. To cover the quarantine and asymptomatic variables, the existing SEIR model was extended to an infectious disease model with a greater number of population compartments, and with parameter values that were tuned adaptively by solving the nonlinear dynamics equations over the available pandemic data, as well as referring to previous experience with SARS. The contribution presented in this paper is a new model called the adaptive SEAIRD model;it considers the new characteristics of COVID19 and is therefore applicable to a population including asymptomatic carriers. The predictive value is enhanced by tuning of the optimal parameters, whose values better reflect the current pandemic. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Work from Home and Adaptive Performance: Job Autonomy and Humble Leadership as a Moderator

The Covid-19 pandemic has opened up the landscape for the advantages of work from home (WFH) and adapting oneself in performing tasks. Leadership style and work autonomy also have the potential to assist employees to adapt the flexible work environment. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the effect of WFH, work autonomy and humble leadership on adaptive performance as well as its moderating effect. Self-determination theory is referred to as an underlying theory to identify the extent to which work autonomy and humble leadership may assist employees to be more motivated in performing work from home. The Partial Least Square (PLS) technique was used to test the hypothesized relationships among variables using the 200 responded data. The results of this study indicated that the WFH, job autonomy and humble leadership influenced adaptive performance and employees with high job autonomy and perceived high humble leadership strengthen the relationship between WFH and adaptive performance. The study sheds new light on the theoretical contribution that the extensive of work autonomy and the influence of a humble leadership style has improved adaptive performance even when working from home. Whereas in practice, organizations need to equip supervisors with a humble leadership style and expand work autonomy to strengthen employee performance regardless of where they work. © 2023 Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. All rights reserved.