Black Carbon Particles Physicochemical Real-Time Data Set in a Cold City: Trends of Fall-Winter BC Accumulation and COVID-19.

Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in climate and health sciences. Using the combination of a year real-time BC observation (photoacoustic extinctiometer) and data for PM2.5 and selected co-pollutants, we herein show that annual BC Mass concentration has a bi-modal distribution, in a cold-climate city of Montreal. In addition to the summer peak, a winter BC peak was observed (up to 0.433 µg/m3), lasting over 3 months. A comparative study between two air pollution hotspots, downtown and Montreal international airport indicated that airborne average BC Mass concentration in downtown was 0.344 µg/m3, whereas in the residential areas around Montreal airport BC Mass values were over 400% higher (1.487 µg/m3). During the numerous snowfall events, airborne BC Mass concentration decreased. High-resolution scanning/transmission electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis of the snow samples provided evidence that airborne BC particles or carbon nanomaterials were indeed transferred from polluted air to snow. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the BC concentration and selected co-pollutants, decreased up to 72%, confirming the predominance of anthropogenic activities in BC emission. This first cold-climate BC data set can be essential for more accurate air quality and climate modeling. About one-third of the Earth's land surface receive snow annually, the impact of this study on air quality, health and climate change is discussed.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on a visceral surgical department in western Austria.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV­2 virus has strongly affected the visceral and thoracic surgery department in southern Vorarlberg in Austria, which comprises two locations: the focus hospital in Feldkirch and the regional hospital in Bludenz. METHODS: The complete lockdown lasted 6 weeks (from March 16 to April 26, 2020), after which the hospital in Bludenz started day surgery again and in Feldkirch the capacity was slowly increased. We compared how oncological and acute operations differed during those 6 weeks to the 6 weeks before lockdown. RESULTS: Our findings show a clear increase in emergency operations for acute cholecystitis (+133%) and acute appendicitis (+157%). While the acute operations increased, some oncological operations decreased, which was especially apparent for oncological colorectal resections (-66%) and oncological lung resections (-43%). CONCLUSION: This survey shows that due to the increased catchment area, more acute operations were performed and also demonstrated that we were confronted with more advanced stages of those diseases. Furthermore, cancer operations which rely on short-term peripheral diagnostics decreased considerably.

Examining the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown in Wuhan and Lombardy: A Psycholinguistic Analysis on Weibo and Twitter.

Many countries are taking strict quarantine policies to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) around the world, such as city lockdown. Cities in China and Italy were locked down in the early stage of the pandemic. The present study aims to examine and compare the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on individuals' psychological states in China and Italy. We achieved the aim by (1) sampling Weibo users (geo-location = Wuhan, China) and Twitter users (geo-location = Lombardy, Italy); (2) fetching all the users' published posts two weeks before and after the lockdown in each region (e.g., the lockdown date of Wuhan was 23 January 2020); (3) extracting the psycholinguistic features of these posts using the Simplified Chinese and Italian version of Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary; and (4) conducting Wilcoxon tests to examine the changes in the psycholinguistic characteristics of the posts before and after the lockdown in Wuhan and Lombardy, respectively. Results showed that individuals focused more on "home", and expressed a higher level of cognitive process after a lockdown in both Wuhan and Lombardy. Meanwhile, the level of stress decreased, and the attention to leisure increased in Lombardy after the lockdown. The attention to group, religion, and emotions became more prevalent in Wuhan after the lockdown. Findings provide decision-makers timely evidence on public reactions and the impacts on psychological states in the COVID-19 context, and have implications for evidence-based mental health interventions in two countries.