Asian communities' well-being in Aotearoa during Covid-19: The mitigating role of sense of belonging in the relationship between racism and life satisfaction

INTRODUCTION: Anti-Asian racism was a feature of the social response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact on the well-being of Asian communities warrants closer examination. The current study aimed to gauge whether the sense of belonging mitigated the adverse effects of racism on life satisfaction for self-identified Asian New Zealanders.METHODS: This analysis included 1341 responses to a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 2021. Descriptive analyses outline how components of a sense of belonging were distributed among participants and those who experienced racism during the Covid-19 pandemic. We used linear regression to examine the role of a sense of belonging as a potential pathway variable in the association between experiencing racism and life satisfaction.FINDINGS: In this survey, four out of 10 participants reported experiencing racism in the first 18 months of the pandemic. Participants' life satisfaction decreased slightly since January 2020 (p<0.001). Experiencing racism was associated with decreased life satisfaction. All the components of sense of belonging reduced the magnitude of this negative association between racism experience and life satisfaction, in particular, expressing one's own ethnic identity and belonging in Aotearoa.CONCLUSIONS: Given that anti-Asian racism is currently a feature of life and a significant stressor during the pandemic, this study provides empirical evidence of the protective role of a sense of belonging against anti-Asian racism. This study focused on Asian members in Aotearoa New Zealand, but its practical implications have the potential to support other minoritised ethnic communities who also experience racism during the pandemic and beyond.

Analysis of the Deactivating Factors for Telework within Architectural Design Organization

The long-term pandemic caused by COVID-19 has changed many aspects of the work environment. Companies stalled to seriously consider telework and many have actually adopted it as an alternative way to work, hi fact 73.9% of overseas architect firms are using the telework while domestic architect firms shows no signs of introducing it yet. Various causes are suggested as to why the telework is not yet implemented in architectural practice even with the necessity of introduction, they are only unverified speculations and in order to understand the causes and solve the problems, a sophisticated analysis of the cause is required, hi addition, telework is not just a temporary option in pandemic situation but it needs to be established as another type of work in arcliitectiiral industiy in preparation for similar situation that may occur in the future. Therefore, this study aims to derive the impediments recognized by architect in introducing telework into domestic architect offices, and based on the results of the analysis from the derived factors, it was attempted to find a way to activate telework. Through the literature review, it is conformed that the research regarding the telework of architect office was insufficient and for this reason, telework consideration factors were derived from related studies targeting general companies. The questionnaire was prepared in consideration of the derived factors and the characteristics of the design work, and it was conducted at a time when the government's social distancing guidelines and telework recommendations were made. The study was conducted using the responses of 103 persons working in architect offices of the metropolitan area. As a result, it was confirmed that the cause of hindrace for teleworking perceived by the workers in the architect office was due to the specific characteristics of the design work, and it was confimed that the communication of visual information was the biggest hindrance factor ill the design work, hi addition, as a result of ANOVA on the questionnaire results, it was confirmed that there was a difference in the perceptions of architects about telework, and the main difference came from the work position and project experience. Afterwards. through factor analysis, specific directions were presented for three aspects: communication of design work when working from home, support within the organization, and establishment of IT infrastructure as a way to revitalize it. © 2022 Architectural Institute of Korea

Leveraging metabolic modeling to identify functional metabolic alterations associated with COVID-19 disease severity.

OBJECTIVE: Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, SARS-CoV2 has claimed more than six million lives world-wide, with over 510 million cases to date. To reduce healthcare burden, we must investigate how to prevent non-acute disease from progressing to severe infection requiring hospitalization. METHODS: To achieve this goal, we investigated metabolic signatures of both non-acute (out-patient) and severe (requiring hospitalization) COVID-19 samples by profiling the associated plasma metabolomes of 84 COVID-19 positive University of Virginia hospital patients. We utilized supervised and unsupervised machine learning and metabolic modeling approaches to identify key metabolic drivers that are predictive of COVID-19 disease severity. Using metabolic pathway enrichment analysis, we explored potential metabolic mechanisms that link these markers to disease progression. RESULTS: Enriched metabolites associated with tryptophan in non-acute COVID-19 samples suggest mitigated innate immune system inflammatory response and immunopathology related lung damage prevention. Increased prevalence of histidine- and ketone-related metabolism in severe COVID-19 samples offers potential mechanistic insight to musculoskeletal degeneration-induced muscular weakness and host metabolism that has been hijacked by SARS-CoV2 infection to increase viral replication and invasion. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the metabolic transition from an innate immune response coupled with inflammatory pathway inhibition in non-acute infection to rampant inflammation and associated metabolic systemic dysfunction in severe COVID-19.

Isolation and genomic analyses of an early sars-cov-2 strains from the 2020 epidemic in gwangju, south korea

Since the first identification of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in China in late December 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread fast around the world. RNA viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, have higher gene mutations than DNA viruses during virus replication. Variations in SARS-CoV-2 genome could contribute to efficiency of viral spread and severity of COVID-19. In this study, we analyzed the locations of genomic mutations to investigate the genetic diversity among isolates of SARS-CoV-2 in Gwangju. We detected non-synonymous and frameshift mutations in various parts of SARS-CoV-2 genome. The phylogenetic analysis for whole genome showed that SARS-CoV-2 genomes in Gwangju isolates are clustered within clade V and G. Our findings not only provide a glimpse into changes of prevalent virus clades in Gwangju, South Korea, but also support genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 to aid in the development of efficient therapeutic antibodies and vaccines against COVID-19. © This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.