CURRENT SITUATION INVESTIGATION AND COUNTERMEASURE RESEARCH OF STUDENTS’ ONLINE LEARNING DURING THE EPIDEMIC PERIOD: A CASE STUDY OF ZHEJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA

A survey of 538 students in 6 primary and secondary schools and colleges in Hangzhou, Ningbo and Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China has found: (1) Chinese schools suspended offline teaching in February-May, 2020 due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. All students studied online at home and 93% of them studied 2-7 hours a day online on average. Among all of them, students in primary schools spent least time online and college students spent most time. The science courses in middle school accounted for 46% of total studied courses, English accounted for 17%, and university major courses accounted for 21%. Furthermore, students spent 1-7 hours per day on watching TV and playing video games, and 1-4 hours on homework to review lessons. (2) After the end of the epidemic in China, more than 51% of students are still studying online for 1-4 hours a day, the epidemic situation has made online teaching in China popularized 10-20 years in advance, and students' online learning has become normal. (3) 32% of students like to study online, and they think that online class has the following advantages: numerous high-quality courseware that can be learned at any time anywhere, easy to communicate, save the time to go and from school, high learning efficiency, and online tutoring class charges are cheaper than offline ones. (4) The proportion of students who feel neutral and dislike the online study account for 56% and 9% respectively; they think online learning has the following problems: the online courses provided by schools are boring but they were forced to learn, and also have to clock in, which cannot bring the advantages of online education; the price of online tutoring course is very high; communication is not as easy as offline; the submission and correction of homework is more complicated than offline, and the learning effect is not good; students’ eyesight is decreased rapidly; online examination is not allowed. (5) 21% of parents are very supportive of online teaching, 62% of parents think it is acceptable, 17% of parents do not support or oppose, the reason for opposition is that their children do not have enough self-control, online learning effect is more difficult to ensure, eyesight loss is faster and so on. Therefore, the following countermeasures are put forward: (1) students are ought to be guided to pay attention to online learning; (2) to strengthen the reform of teaching methods, improve courseware quality, control teaching time, and leave students time for notes to ensure recess; (3) reduce video and broadcast courses, advocate live courses, strengthen the communication and interaction between teachers and students; (4) reform to simplify the online homework submission method, explore a reasonable online examination model; (5) strengthens the home-school cooperation, encourages the supervision function of parents, and strengthens the online teaching results. Article visualizations

mixiTUI:A Tangible Sequencer for Electronic Live Performances

With the rise of crowdsourcing and mobile crowdsensing techniques, a large number of crowdsourcing applications or platforms (CAP) have appeared. In the mean time, CAP-related models and frameworks based on different research hypotheses are rapidly emerging, and they usually address specific issues from a certain perspective. Due to different settings and conditions, different models are not compatible with each other. However, CAP urgently needs to combine these techniques to form a unified framework. In addition, these models needs to be learned and updated online with the extension of crowdsourced data and task types, thus requiring a unified architecture that integrates lifelong learning concepts and breaks down the barriers between different modules. This paper draws on the idea of ubiquitous operating systems and proposes a novel OS (CrowdOS), which is an abstract software layer running between native OS and application layer. In particular, based on an in-depth analysis of the complex crowd environment and diverse characteristics of heterogeneous tasks, we construct the OS kernel and three core frameworks including Task Resolution and Assignment Framework (TRAF), Integrated Resource Management (IRM), and Task Result quality Optimization (TRO). In addition, we validate the usability of CrowdOS, module correctness and development efficiency. Our evaluation further reveals TRO brings enormous improvement in efficiency and a reduction in energy consumption

Accelerated evolution of dim-light vision-related arrestin in deep-diving amniotes

Arrestins are key molecules involved in the signaling of light-sensation initiated by visual pigments in retinal photoreceptor cells. Vertebrate photoreceptor cells have two types of arrestins, rod arrestin, which is encoded by SAG and is expressed in both rods and cones, and cone arrestin, encoded by ARR3 in cones. The arrestins can bind to visual pigments, and thus regulate either dim-light vision via interactions with rhodopsin or bright-light vision together with cone visual pigments. After adapting to terrestrial life, several amniote lineages independently went back to the sea and evolved deep-diving habits. Interestingly, the rhodopsins in these species exhibit specialized phenotypes responding to rapidly changing dim-light environments. However, little is known about whether their rod arrestin also experienced adaptive evolution associated with rhodopsin. Here, we collected SAG coding sequences from >250 amniote species, and examined changes in selective pressure experienced by the sequences from deep-diving taxa. Divergent patterns of evolution of SAG were observed in the penguin, pinniped and cetacean clades, suggesting possible co-adaptation with rhodopsin. After verifying pseudogenes, the same analyses were performed for cone arrestin (ARR3) in deep-diving species and only sequences from cetacean species, and not pinnipeds or penguins, have experienced changed selection pressure compared to other species. Taken together, this evidence for changes in selective pressures acting upon arrestin genes strengthens the suggestion that rapid dim-light adaptation for deep-diving amniotes require SAG, but not ARR3

A gate-programmable van der Waals metal-ferroelectric-semiconductor memory

Ferroelecticity, one of the keys to realize nonvolatile memories owing to the remanent electric polarization, has been an emerging phenomenon in the two-dimensional (2D) limit. Yet the demonstrations of van der Waals (vdW) memories using 2D ferroelectric materials as an ingredient are very limited. Especially, gate-tunable ferroelectric vdW memristive device, which holds promises in future neuromorphic applications, remains challenging. Here, we show a prototype gate-programmable memory by vertically assembling graphite, CuInP2S6, and MoS2 layers into a metal-ferroelectric-semiconductor architecture. The resulted devices exhibit two-terminal switchable electro-resistance with on-off ratios exceeding 105 and long-term retention, akin to a conventional memristor but strongly coupled to the ferroelectric characteristics of the CuInP2S6 layer. By controlling the top gate, Fermi level of MoS2 can be set inside (outside) of its band gap to quench (enable) the memristive behaviour, yielding a three-terminal gate programmable nonvolatile vdW memory. Our findings pave the way for the engineering of ferroelectric-mediated memories in future implementations of nanoelectronics

OpenFraming: open-sourced tool for computational framing analysis of multilingual data

When journalists cover a news story, they can cover the story from multiple angles or perspectives. These perspectives are called “frames,” and usage of one frame or another may influence public perception and opinion of the issue at hand. We develop a web-based system for analyzing frames in multilingual text documents. We propose and guide users through a five-step end-to-end computational framing analysis framework grounded in media framing theory in communication research. Users can use the framework to analyze multilingual text data, starting from the exploration of frames in user’s corpora and through review of previous framing literature (step 1-3) to frame classification (step 4) and prediction (step 5). The framework combines unsupervised and supervised machine learning and leverages a state-of-the-art (SoTA) multilingual language model, which can significantly enhance frame prediction performance while requiring a considerably small sample of manual annotations. Through the interactive website, anyone can perform the proposed computational framing analysis, making advanced computational analysis available to researchers without a programming background and bridging the digital divide within the communication research discipline in particular and the academic community in general. The system is available online at http://www.openframing.org, via an API http://www.openframing.org:5000/docs/, or through our GitHub page https://github.com/vibss2397/openFraming.Published versio

Global, regional, and national burden of disorders affecting the nervous system, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BackgroundDisorders affecting the nervous system are diverse and include neurodevelopmental disorders, late-life neurodegeneration, and newly emergent conditions, such as cognitive impairment following COVID-19. Previous publications from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor Study estimated the burden of 15 neurological conditions in 2015 and 2016, but these analyses did not include neurodevelopmental disorders, as defined by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11, or a subset of cases of congenital, neonatal, and infectious conditions that cause neurological damage. Here, we estimate nervous system health loss caused by 37 unique conditions and their associated risk factors globally, regionally, and nationally from 1990 to 2021.MethodsWe estimated mortality, prevalence, years lived with disability (YLDs), years of life lost (YLLs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), with corresponding 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs), by age and sex in 204 countries and territories, from 1990 to 2021. We included morbidity and deaths due to neurological conditions, for which health loss is directly due to damage to the CNS or peripheral nervous system. We also isolated neurological health loss from conditions for which nervous system morbidity is a consequence, but not the primary feature, including a subset of congenital conditions (ie, chromosomal anomalies and congenital birth defects), neonatal conditions (ie, jaundice, preterm birth, and sepsis), infectious diseases (ie, COVID-19, cystic echinococcosis, malaria, syphilis, and Zika virus disease), and diabetic neuropathy. By conducting a sequela-level analysis of the health outcomes for these conditions, only cases where nervous system damage occurred were included, and YLDs were recalculated to isolate the non-fatal burden directly attributable to nervous system health loss. A comorbidity correction was used to calculate total prevalence of all conditions that affect the nervous system combined.FindingsGlobally, the 37 conditions affecting the nervous system were collectively ranked as the leading group cause of DALYs in 2021 (443 million, 95% UI 378–521), affecting 3·40 billion (3·20–3·62) individuals (43·1%, 40·5–45·9 of the global population); global DALY counts attributed to these conditions increased by 18·2% (8·7–26·7) between 1990 and 2021. Age-standardised rates of deaths per 100 000 people attributed to these conditions decreased from 1990 to 2021 by 33·6% (27·6–38·8), and age-standardised rates of DALYs attributed to these conditions decreased by 27·0% (21·5–32·4). Age-standardised prevalence was almost stable, with a change of 1·5% (0·7–2·4). The ten conditions with the highest age-standardised DALYs in 2021 were stroke, neonatal encephalopathy, migraine, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, diabetic neuropathy, meningitis, epilepsy, neurological complications due to preterm birth, autism spectrum disorder, and nervous system cancer.InterpretationAs the leading cause of overall disease burden in the world, with increasing global DALY counts, effective prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation strategies for disorders affecting the nervous system are needed

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BACKGROUND Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. METHODS The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model-a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates-with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality-which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. FINDINGS The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2-100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1-290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1-211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4-48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3-37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7-9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. INTERPRETATION Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. FUNDING Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The effect of survey design on response rates, costs, and sampling representativeness in the British Columbia Health Survey : a randomized experiment

Background: Population-based survey is an essential surveillance tool applicable to various settings, including collecting information regarding community health and public living standards. In the recent decades, there have been numerous reports of decreasing response rates in population-based data collection. There is a need to redesign surveys in a way that is both more appealing to participants and maximizes response rats. Objectives: The current study explored the effects of several survey design features on participant response rates, costs, and data representativeness in a general population health survey in British Columbia. Methods: The British Columbia Health Survey was conducted by the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada and was designed to target all non-institutionalized adults in BC. Seven variants of the survey, each contained a different combination of survey design features, were developed. Survey features under examination were survey mode of administration (paper vs. online), prepaid cash incentive ($2 vs. none), lottery (instant vs. end-of-study lottery), questionnaire length (10 min vs. 30 min), and sampling frame (Info Canada vs. Canada Post). 8000 households in BC were randomly allocated to one of the seven sample groups (Table 6.1). Results: The overall response rate was 27.9$12.76), while the paper survey group (including all possible incentives) showed the highest cost per survey sent ($17.87). Data representativeness results showed significant differences between our survey and the population-weighted Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) in terms of socio-demographic variables, but similar distributions for health variables. Findings from this study provided further insight into ways to improve response rates as well as cost-efficiency in self-administered general population health surveys.Medicine, Faculty ofPopulation and Public Health (SPPH), School ofGraduat