The Positive and Negative Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Towards Youths’ Mental Health

Due to quarantine measures, the impact of COVID-19 on youths\u27 mental health may be more significant than on their physical health. This study aims to map out the positive and negative implications that COVID-19 brings concerning mental health. The main dependent variable of our study will be the evaluated mental health of Singaporean youths. Based on previous research and articles, we have chosen the difference in education level as our key independent variable and social isolation, lack of physical activity, family conflicts, and family emotional support as the control variables. Our study will be conducted through a survey on Singapore\u27s primary and secondary school students by multi-stage cluster sampling and stratified sampling. The cross-sectional data collected will be sorted and analyzed through t-test, chi-square test, and regression analysis. The findings of this study can help schools and governments in their development and implementation of policies to improve our youths’ mental health which has become an important issue in recent times. The survey data will aid us in better understanding the pandemic\u27s effects on Singaporean youths\u27 mental health, especially since the pandemic has been continuing longer than most expected

Debris Disks: Seeing Dust, Thinking of Planetesimals and Planets

Debris disks are optically thin, almost gas-free dusty disks observed around a significant fraction of main-sequence stars older than about 10 Myr. Since the circumstellar dust is short-lived, the very existence of these disks is considered as evidence that dust-producing planetesimals are still present in mature systems, in which planets have formed - or failed to form - a long time ago. It is inferred that these planetesimals orbit their host stars at asteroid to Kuiper-belt distances and continually supply fresh dust through mutual collisions. This review outlines observational techniques and results on debris disks, summarizes their essential physics and theoretical models, and then places them into the general context of planetary systems, uncovering interrelations between the disks, dust parent bodies, and planets. It is shown that debris disks can serve as tracers of planetesimals and planets and shed light on the planetesimal and planet formation processes that operated in these systems in the past.Comment: Review paper, accepted for publication in "Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security