Science communication in the media and human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic: a time series and content analysis

Objectives The relationship between human mobility and nature of science (NOS) salience in the UK news media was examined. Study design This is a mixed-method study. Methods A time series NOS salience data set was established from the content analysis of 1520 news articles related to non-pharmaceutical interventions of COVID-19. Data were taken from articles published between November 2021 and February 2022, which correlates with period of the change from pandemic to endemic status. Vector autoregressive model fitting with human mobility took place. Results The findings suggest that it was not the number of COVID-19 news articles nor the actual number of cases/deaths, but the specific NOS content that was associated with mobility change during the pandemic. Data indicate a Granger causal negative direction (P 0.1). Conclusions The findings of the study suggest that the ways in which the news media discuss epidemics can influence changes in human mobility. It is therefore essential that public health communicators emphasise the basis of scientific evidence to eliminate potential media bias in health and science communication for the promotion of public health policy. The present study approach, which combines time series and content analysis and uses an interdisciplinary lens from science communication, could also be adopted to other interdisciplinary health-related topics

Optimum structures

The design of the best structure for a given purpose depends upon the criterion used for optimisation. Structures may be designed to safely transmit a given system of forces using the least weight of material.. They may also be designed to have maximum stiffness of a certain type for a given weight or alternatively to have the greatest possible fundamental frequency of vibration. These problems, although in general distinct from one another, are closely related and much can be achieved towards maximisation of stiffness and frequency by the use of minimum weight designs. In fact it can be shown that a minimum weight framework is the stiffest structure of that weight for the force system, which it is designed to carry.x The present report is concerned exclusively with the problem of the design of structures of minimum weight, which are required to transmit specified forces. Some attention will be given to frameworks because, in particular, methods of approximate numerical analysis are more readily formulated for this type of structure, but the main emphasis will be placed upon the design of structures formed from plates of variable thickness reinforced by direct load carrying members. See para,l.

Enhanced ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties in doped lead-free (Bi0.5Na0.5)0.94Ba0.06TiO3 thin films

Doping effects with respect to the electrical properties of morphotropic phase boundary Bi0.5Na0.50.94Ba0.06TiO3 thin films epitaxially grown on CaRuO3 electroded LaAlO30.3Sr2AlTaO60.35 (001) substrates were investigated. Substantial enhancement of ferroelectricity and piezoelectricity has been achieved in La+Ce codoped films with a remanent polarization Pr of 29.5 C/cm2 and a remanent piezoelectric coefficient d33f of 31 pm/V, whereas Mn doping seems more favorite to reduce the leakage current by two order of magnitude. Both doped films exhibited diodelike I-V characteristics, which are correlated with resistance switching effect

Nonlinear forecasts of ?<i>o</i>F2: variation of model predictive accuracy over time

International audienceSpace weather effects can strongly influence high-frequency (HF) communications by changing the ionospheric environment through which the radio waves propagate. Since many systems utilize HF communications, the ability to make real-time assessments of propagation conditions is an important part of space weather monitoring systems. In this paper, we present new techniques for measuring high-latitude HF communications link parameters using data from SuperDARN radars. These techniques use ground-scatter returns to define the variation in skip distance with frequency. From these data, the maximum usable frequency (MUF) as a function of range is determined and ionospheric critical frequencies are estimated. These calculations are made in near-real-time and the results are made available on the World Wide Web. F-region critical frequencies calculated using this method show good agreement with ionosonde data