Abstract The recent outbreak of the novel COVID-19 is posing a severe public health risk across the globe. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is one of the greatest destinations of religious congregations of Muslims. One of the largest religious gatherings is the Hajj that is anticipated to produce serious challenges of mass level exposures and spread to every corner of the world. Therefore, it is highly recommended that the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah (KSA), must regularly analyze the prevailing situation of COVID-19, and involve the religious scholars to make appropriate decisions about Hajj 2020. Although the Saudi government has been continuously taking all possible measures to contain the pandemic, people's cooperation is crucial in the fight against COVID-19.

The immune responses underlying the infection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remain unclear. To help understand the pathology of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemics, public data were analyzed and the expression of PDCD1 (encoding PD-1) and CD274 (encoding PD-L1) in T cells and macrophages were identified to correlate positively with COVID-19 severity.

INTRODUCTION Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a critical procedure in psychiatric treatment, but as typically delivered involves the use of bag-mask ventilation (BMV), which during the COVID-19 pandemic exposes patients and treatment staff to potentially infectious aerosols. OBJECTIVE To demonstrate the utility of a modified anesthesia protocol for ECT utilizing preoxygenation by facemask and withholding the use of BMV for only those patients who desaturate during the apneic period. METHODS This chart review study analyzes patients who were treated with ECT using both the traditional and modified anesthesia protocols. RESULTS A total of 106 patients were analyzed, of whom 51 (48.1%) required BMV using the new protocol. Of clinical factors, only patient BMI was significantly associated with the requirement for BMV. Mean seizure duration reduced from 52.0 22.4 to 46.6 17.1 s, but seizure duration was adequate in all cases. No acute physical, respiratory, or psychiatric complications occurred during treatment. CONCLUSIONS A modified anesthesia protocol reduces the use of BMV by more than 50%, while retaining adequate seizure duration.

As public transport operators try to resume their services, they have to operate under reduced capacities due to COVID-19. Because demand can exceed capacity at different areas and across different times of the day, drivers have to refuse passenger boardings at specific stops. Towards this goal, many public transport operators have modified their service routes by avoiding to serve stops with high passenger demand at specific times of the day. Given the urgent need to develop decision support tools that can prevent the overcrowding of vehicles, this study introduces a dynamic integer nonlinear program that proposes service patterns to individual vehicles that are ready to be dispatched. In addition to the objective of satisfying the imposed vehicle capacity due to COVID-19, the proposed service pattern model caters for the waiting time of passengers. The model is tested in a bus line connecting the university of Twente with its surrounding cities demonstrating the improvement in terms of vehicle overcrowding, and analyzing the potential negative effects related to unserved passenger demand and excessive waiting times.

This article outlines a secondary analysis of two European studies on innovative teacher professional development, through the lens of the Personal, Social and Learning to Learn European key competence. The 2018 European Recommendation describes it as being resilient, reflecting upon oneself, working with others, and managing time, information, learning and career. Adaptive, socio-emotional and metacognitive competences can be essential to harness other competences and navigate an unpredictable world, as argued in the LifeComp European framework. To nurture this key competence, teachers have to develop it themselves throughout the career. Innovative professional development can be a catalyst, addressing the complex and situated nature of teacher learning. It entails re-thinking time, space and mode of delivery, embedding active learning, relevance to practice, collaboration, coaching, feedback, and reflection. Innovative examples are presented as reciprocally related to Personal, Social and Learning to Learn, for resilient education systems in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of European Journal of Teacher Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigated the impacts of the insurgency on the arrival of Malaysian tourists to the Betong district in Yala province by applying the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with the intervention model. The results revealed that ten incidents had a significant impact on the number of Malaysian tourist arrivals, such as the bombing of electricity pole that led to the highest decrease in tourist arrivals to approximately 17,413 persons in July 2015. Moreover, the forecasts of the SARIMA (1,1,1) (1,0,1)12 with intervention model revealed that the number of Malaysians traveling to Betong in the first quarter of 2020 before COVID-19 pandemic were 24,193, 31,659 and 25,309 persons, respectively, which are close to the preliminary number of the international tourist arrivals to Yala. ? 2022 Kasetsart University.

The introduction of social distancing and quarantine orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have temporarily limited the ability for queer communities to engage in physical forms of social leisure. This pandemic also serves as a reminder of the importance of leisure spaces for queer communities and their unique leisure experiences. Given this opportunity to (re)examine the importance of queer leisure spaces, this paper will take a critical look at the impact this pandemic has had on queer leisure provision and the ramifications for queer leisure and queering leisure in a post-pandemic world. This paper will examine the current absence of queer leisure outlets, portrayal of public queer spaces, how the response to the sudden elimination of queer leisure spaces can inform our current understanding of leisure, and potential lessons about the connection between physical social engagement and queer leisure spaces.

The COVID-19 disease spread at different rates in the different countries and in different regions of the same country, as happened in Italy. Transmission by contact or at close range due to large respiratory droplets is widely accepted, however, the role of airborne transmission due to small respiratory droplets emitted by infected individuals (also asymptomatic) is controversial. It was suggested that outdoor airborne transmission could play a role in determining the differences observed in the spread rate. Concentrations of virus-laden aerosol are still poorly known and contrasting results are reported, especially for outdoor environments. Here we investigated outdoor concentrations and size distributions of virus-laden aerosol simultaneously collected during the pandemic, in May 2020, in northern (Veneto) and southern (Apulia) regions of Italy. The two regions exhibited significantly different prevalence of COVID-19. Genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 (RNA) was determined, using both real time RT-PCR and ddPCR, in air samples collected using PM10 samplers and cascade impactors able to separate 12 size ranges from nanoparticles (diameter D<0.056 m) up to coarse particles (D>18 m). Air samples tested negative for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 at both sites, viral particles concentrations were <0.8 copies m-3 in PM10 and <0.4 copies m-3 in each size range investigated. Outdoor air in residential and urban areas was generally not infectious and safe for the public in both northern and southern Italy, with the possible exclusion of very crowded sites. Therefore, it is likely that outdoor airborne transmission does not explain the difference in the spread of COVID-19 observed in the two Italian regions.

The importance of breastfeeding for maternal and infant health is well-established, yet complex and intertwined sociocultural barriers contribute to suboptimal breastfeeding rates in most countries. Large-scale campaigns for evidence dissemination and promotion through targeted interventions on social media may help overcome some of these barriers. To date, most breastfeeding research on social media only focuses on content analysis, and there remains limited knowledge about the social networks of online communities (who interacts with whom), influencers in the breastfeeding space and the diffusion of evidence-based knowledge. This study, grounded in social network theory, aims to better understand the breastfeeding communication landscape on Twitter including determining the presence of a breastfeeding network, communities and key influencers. Further, we characterize influencer interactions, roles and the content being shared. The study revealed an overall breastfeeding social network of 3,798 unique individuals (users) and 3,972 tweets with commonly used hashtags (e.g., #breastfeeding and #normalizebreastfeeding). Around one third of users (n = 1,324, 34%) exchanged pornographic content (PC) that sexualized breastfeeding. The non-PC network (n = 2,474 users) formed 144 unique communities, and content flowing within the network was disproportionately influenced by 59 key influencers. However, these influencers had mostly inward-oriented interaction (% composition, E-I index: 47% professionals, -0.18; 41% interested citizens, -0.67; 12% companies, -0.18), limiting opportunities for evidence-based dissemination to the lay public. Although more tweets about peer-reviewed research findings were sent compared with tweets about nonevidence-based lay recommendations, our findings suggest that it is the lay public who often communicated findings, which may be overcome through a targeted social network-based intervention.

From a healthcare perspective, infection due to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and the ensuing syndrome called COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) represents the biggest challenge the world has faced in several decades. Particularly worrisome are the high contagiousness of the virus and the saturation of hospitals' capacity due to overwhelming caseloads. Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as quarantine and inter-personal distancing are crucial to limiting the spread of the virus in the general population, but more tailored interventions may be needed at an individual level on a case-by-case basis. In this perspective, the most insidious situation is when an individual has contact with a contagious subject without adequate protection. If rapidly recognized afterwards, this occurrence may be promptly addressed through a post-exposure chemoprophylaxis (PEP) with antiviral drugs. This strategy has been implemented for other respiratory viruses (influenza above all) and was successfully used in South Korea among healthcare workers against the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, by providing people who were exposed to high-risk contacts with lopinavir-ritonavir plus ribavirin. Initial experiences with the use of hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 also seem promising. Post-exposure chemoprophylaxis might help mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the current phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the emergence of the pandemic H1N1pdm09 virus in Mexico and California, biannual increases in the number of cases have been detected in Mexico. As observed in previous seasons, pandemic A/H1N1 09 virus was detected in severe cases during the 2011C2012 winter season and finally, during the 2013C2014 winter season it became the most prevalent influenza virus. Molecular and phylogenetic analyses of the whole viral genome are necessary to determine the antigenic and pathogenic characteristics of influenza viruses that cause severe outcomes of the disease. In this paper, we analyzed the evolution, antigenic and genetic drift of Mexican isolates from 2009, at the beginning of the pandemic, to 2014. We found a clear variation of the virus in Mexico from the 2011C2014 season due to different markers and in accordance with previous reports. In this study, we identified 13 novel substitutions with important biological effects, including virulence, T cell epitope presented by MHC and host specificity shift and some others substitutions might have more than one biological function. The systematic monitoring of mutations on whole genome of influenza A pH1N1 (2009) virus circulating at INER in Mexico City might provide valuable information to predict the emergence of new pathogenic influenza virus

Several avian influenza A viruses (IAVs) have adapted to mammalian species, including humans. To date, the mechanisms enabling these host shifts remain incompletely understood. Here, we show that a host factor, human TRA2A (huTRA2A), inhibits avian IAV replication, but benefits human IAV replication by altered regulation of viral messenger RNA (mRNA) splicing. huTRA2A depresses mRNA splicing by binding to the intronic splicing silencer motif in the M mRNA of representative avian YS/H5N1 or in the NS mRNA of representative human PR8/H1N1 virus, leading to completely opposite effects on replication of the human and avian viruses in vitro and in vivo. We also confirm that the M-334 site and NS-234/236 sites are critical for TRA2A binding, mRNA splicing, viral replication, and pathogenicity. Our results reveal the underlying mechanisms of adaptation of avian influenza virus to human hosts, and suggest rational strategies to protect public health.

3,4-Methylenedioxy-N-methylcathinone (methylone) is a new psychoactive substance with stimulant properties and potential for abuse. Despite its popularity, limited studies have examined relationships between brain concentrations of methylone, its metabolites, and pharmacodynamic effects. The goal of the present study was two-fold: 1) to determine pharmacokinetics of methylone and its major metabolites, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy-N-methylcathinone (HMMC), 3,4-dihydroxy-N-methylcathinone (HHMC), and 3,4-methylenedioxycathinone (MDC) in rat brain and plasma; 2) to relate brain pharmacokinetic parameters to pharmacodynamic effects including locomotor behavior and post-mortem neurochemistry. Male Sprague-Dawley rats received s.c. methylone (6, 12, or 24 mg/kg) or saline vehicle (n=16/dose), and subgroups were decapitated after 40 or 120 min. Plasma and prefrontal cortex were analyzed for concentrations of methylone and its metabolites by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Frontal cortex and dorsal striatum were analyzed for dopamine, 5-HT, and their metabolites by high-performance liquid chromatography-electrochemical detection. Brain and plasma concentrations of methylone and its metabolites rose with increasing methylone dose, but brain methylone and MDC concentrations were greater than dose-proportional. Brain-to-plasma ratios for methylone and MDC were >3 (range 3-12), whereas those for HHMC and HMMC were <0.2 (range 0.01-0.2). Locomotor activity score was positively correlated with brain methylone and MDC, whereas cortical 5-HT was negatively correlated with these analytes at 120 min. Our findings show that brain concentrations of methylone and MDC display non-linear accumulation. Behavioral and neurochemical effects of systemically administered methylone are related to brain concentrations of methylone and MDC, but not its hydroxylated metabolites, which do not effectively penetrate into the brain. Significance Statement Behavioral and neurochemical effects of methylone are related to brain concentrations of methylone and its metabolite MDC, but not its hydroxylated metabolites, HMMC and HHMC, which do not effectively penetrate into the brain. Methylone and MDC display non-linear accumulation in the brain, which could cause untoward effects on 5-HT neurons in vulnerable brain regions, including the frontal cortex.

The text clustering technique is an unsupervised text mining method which are used to partition a huge amount of text documents into groups. It has been reported that text clustering algorithms are hard to achieve better performance than supervised methods and their clustering performance is highly dependent on the picked text features. Currently, there are many different types of text feature generation algorithms, each of which extracts text features from some specific aspects, such as VSM and distributed word embedding, thus seeking a new way of obtaining features as complete as possible from the corpus is the key to enhance the clustering effects. In this paper, we present a hybrid multisource feature fusion (HMFF) framework comprising three components, feature representation of multimodel, mutual similarity matrices and feature fusion, in which we construct mutual similarity matrices for each feature source and fuse discriminative features from mutual similarity matrices by reducing dimensionality to generate HMFF features, then k-means clustering algorithm could be configured to partition input samples into groups. The experimental tests show our HMFF framework outperforms other recently published algorithms on 7 of 11 public benchmark datasets and has the leading performance on the rest 4 benchmark datasets as well. At last, we compare HMFF framework with those competitors on a COVID-19 dataset from the wild with the unknown cluster count, which shows the clusters generated by HMFF framework partition those similar samples much closer.

The pandemic has accelerated the pervasiveness of social media as tools to obviate, in times of forced distancing, the need for social relations. As Deborah Lupton notes, digital media played a much more important role in the COVID-19 phase than in the 1990s and the HIV/AIDS emergency;however they have also contributed to the spread of misinformation and fake news, often characterized by conspiracy-type narratives The investigation, carried out in line with the Digital Methods approach, analyses how a popular conspiracy theory on Twitter-the flat Earth theory C activates and reinforces the spread of other intertwined conspiracies by exploiting some popular hashtags used as popularity multipliers. The essay analyses the role of Twitter in reinforcing informational cascades related to multiple conspiracies such as the flat Earth, the COVID-19 /5G and the no-vax theories. Moreover, the analysed contents reveal a significant polarisation identified by hate content and an aggressive lexicon used both by conspiracy supporters and by those who tend to contrast them. ? 2021 by authors;licensee OJCMT.

Covid-19 has affected 16Millions people worldwide with 644K death as of July 26th, 2020. It is associated with inflammation and microvascular thrombosisanticoagulation in widely used in these patients especially in patients with elevated D-Dimers. The significance of anticoagulation in these patients is not yet established. We aim to define the anticoagulation pattern and its impact on outcomes (28-day survival, LOSICU, DVT, and PE and bleeding complications. We also observe if levels of D-Dimers affect the anticoagulation prescription. Methods: We analyzed data of all consecutive patients with Covid-19 ARDS admitted to ICU retrospectively. The primary variable of interest was anticoagulation. The daily dose of anticoagulant medication for each patient was recorded. Survival (28-day survival), Length of stay in ICU (LOSICU), the occurrence of DVT, PE, or bleeding were primary outcome variables. We also recorded confounding factors with potential impact on clinical outcomes. We assign Patients to one of the four groups based on anticoagulant dosing during the ICU (increasing dose, decreasing dose, increase followed by a decrease, multiple changes). We analyze the effect of different anticoagulation dosing strategies on 28-day survival, LOSICU, the occurrence of DVT, PE, and bleeding. We also observe if levels of D-Dimers affect the anticoagulation prescription. Results: The sample includes 149 patients. The most frequently used medication was subcutaneous Enoxaparin (85.2%). The Enoxaparin mean dose per day for the whole sample was 49.5mg + 15.7 (mean + SD). There was no significant difference in doses of anticoagulants between survivors and nonsurvivors (62.8 mg + 21.7 mg vs. 61.2 mg + 25.7mg, p 0.3). Multinomial regression showed no difference in 28-day survival among four-dose modification (increasing dose, decreasing dose, increase followed by a decrease, multiple changes). Logistic regression showed that BMI, D-Dimers, platelets, and the use of mechanical ventilation predict 28-day survival. Kaplan-Meier Survival plots for 4 anticoagulant groups showed no survival advantage for any anticoagulant strategy. Secondary outcome analysis showed that d-dimer levels significantly affect anticoagulants doses. Conclusion: Prescription of anticoagulation is quite variable in patients admitted to ICU for Covid-19 associated ARDS. Anticoagulation dosing strategy has no significant effect on 28-day survival, LOSICU, the occurrence of DVT, PE, or bleeding.

The human enzyme dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (HsDHODH) has been studied for being a target for development of new antineoplasic and antiproliferative drugs. The synthetic peptide N-t(DH) represents the N-terminal microdomain of this enzyme, responsible for anchoring it to the inner mitochondrial membrane. Also, it is known to harbor quinones that are essential for enzyme catalysis. Here we report structural features of the peptide/membrane interactions obtained by using CD and DEER spectroscopic techniques, both in micelles and in lipid vesicles. The data revealed different peptide conformational states in micelles and liposomes, which could suggest that this microdomain acts in specific regions or areas of the mitochondria, which can be related with the control of the quinone access to the HsDHODH active site. This is the first study to report on conformational changes of the HsDHODH N-terminal microdomain through a combination of CD and DEER spectroscopic techniques.

BACKGROUND: The negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic on public mental health can be persistent and substantial over a long period of time, but little is known regarding what psychological factors or processes can buffer such impact. The present study aimed to examine the mediating roles of coping, psychological flexibility and prosociality in the impacts of perceived illness threats toward COVID-19 on mental health. METHOD: Five-hundred and fourteen Hong Kong citizens (18 years or above) completed an online survey to measure illness perceptions toward COVID-19, coping, psychological flexibility, prosociality, and mental health, together with their socio-demographic variables. Structural equation modelling was used to explore the explanatory model that was the best-fit to illustrate the relationships between these constructs. RESULTS: Serial mediation structural equation model showed that only psychological flexibility (unstandardised beta coefficient, = ? 0.12, 95% CI [? 0.20, ? 0.02], p = 0.031) and prosociality (unstandardised = 0.04, 95% CI [0.01, 0.08], p = 0.001) fully mediated the relationship between illness perceptions toward COVID-19 and mental health. In addition, psychological flexibility exerted a direct effect on prosociality (standardised = 0.22, 95% CI [0.12, 0.32], p < 0.001). This best-fit model explained 62% of the variance of mental health. CONCLUSIONS: Fostering psychological flexibility and prosocial behaviour may play significant roles in mitigating the adverse effects of COVID-19 and its perceived threats on public mental health.

Massive vaccination is one of the most effective epidemic control measures. Because ones vaccination decision is shaped by social processes (e.g., socioeconomic sorting and social contagion), the pattern of vaccine uptake tends to show strong social and spatial heterogeneity, such as urban-rural divide and clustering. Examining through network perspectives, here we quantify the impact of spatial vaccination heterogeneity on COVID outbreaks and offer policy recommendations on location-based vaccination campaigns. Leveraging fine-grained mobility data and computational models, we investigate two network effectsthe hub effect (hubs in the mobility network usually have higher vaccination rates) and the homophily effect (neighboring places tend to have similar vaccination rates). Applying Bayesian deep learning and fine-grained epidemic simulations, we show a negative effect of homophily and a positive effect of highly vaccinated hubs on reducing COVID-19 case counts;these two effects are estimated to jointly increase the total cases by approximately 10% in the U.S. Moreover, inspired by these results, we propose a vaccination campaign strategy that targets a small number of regions with the largest gain in protective power. Our simulation shows that we can reduce the number of cases by 20% by only vaccinating an additional 1% of the population. Our study suggests that we must examine the interplay between vaccination patterns and mobility networks beyond the overall vaccination rate, and that accurate location-based targeting can be equally if not more important than improving the overall vaccination rate.

The recent introduction of the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) into the North American swine herd has highlighted again the need for effective vaccines for swine coronaviruses. While vaccines for transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) have been available to producers around the world for a long time, effective vaccines for PEDV and deltacoronaviruses were only recently developed or are still in development. Here, we review existing vaccine technologies for swine coronaviruses and highlight promising technologies which may help to control these important viruses in the future.