The global response: How cities and provinces around the globe tackled Covid-19 outbreaks in 2021

Background: Tackling the spread of COVID-19 remains a crucial part of ending the pandemic. Its highly contagious nature and constant evolution coupled with a relative lack of immunity make the virus difficult to control. For this, various strategies have been proposed and adopted including limiting contact, social isolation, vaccination, contact tracing, etc. However, given the heterogeneity in the enforcement of these strategies and constant fluctuations in the strictness levels of these strategies, it becomes challenging to assess the true impact of these strategies in controlling the spread of COVID-19.Methods: In the present study, we evaluated various transmission control measures that were imposed in 10 global urban cities and provinces in 2021 Bangkok, Gauteng, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, London, Manila City, New Delhi, New York City, Singapore, and Tokyo.Findings: Based on our analysis, we herein propose the population-level Swiss cheese model for the failures and pit-falls in various strategies that each of these cities and provinces had. Furthermore, whilst all the evaluated cities and provinces took a different personalized approach to managing the pandemic, what remained common was dynamic enforcement and monitoring of breaches of each barrier of protection. The measures taken to reinforce the barriers were adjusted continuously based on the evolving epidemiological situation.Interpretation: How an individual city or province handled the pandemic profoundly affected and determined how the entire country handled the pandemic since the chain of transmission needs to be broken at the very grassroot level to achieve nationwide control

A New Quantum Advantage in Quantum Secret Sharing

In this letter, we consider a simple three-party scenario, with one Dealer (Alice), one Assistant (Bob) and a Reconstructor (Charlie). We find the classical limit of reconstructing the quantum secret under this framework. Interestingly this happens to be 2/3. We formulate the expression for reconstruction fidelity in terms of the Bloch parameters of the shared resource state. It is imperative to say at this point any resource state for which the score is beyond 2/3, gives us a quantum advantage in context of reconstructing the secret. Interestingly, this fidelity not only depends upon the tripartite correlation tensor but also on the existent bipartite channel between the dealer and the reconstructor. This fidelity in a sense is able to measure, the amount of information we are able to reconstruct. As a result of which it also takes into account the contribution of the teleportation capacity of the channel between the dealer and reconstructor in addition to the secret sharing capacity of three qubit resource state. In this work along with example we also discuss the cases when the quantum advantage in the reconstruction fidelity is entirely because of the secret sharing process (where involvement of three party is necessary) or entirely because of the teleportation in subsystem or because of. We are able to show quantum advantages in all possible scenarios with states other than the standard GHZ state. We also obtain necessary conditions based on the correlation tensor between three parties and correlation matrix between the dealer and the reconstructor. In this letter we discover a new kind of interoperability that happens in the process of secret sharing and teleportation for a given tripartite resource. This result benchmarks the identification process of three qubit resources for these tasks while setting up large scale quantum network.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

Development and quality assessment of regular wheat and rice flours incorporated mango flavored breads

Ready-to-eat food products are becoming a necessity. Bread is the most consumed and easily available product used for breakfast in several households. In this study, mango bread was developed by incorporating whole wheat flour into brown rice flour. The mango breads were formulated with different levels of brown rice flour incorporation (0, 20, 40, and 60 %), and the breads were abbreviated as MB0, MB1, MB2, and MB3, respectively. The findings of the study revealed that with the increase in the concentration of brown rice flour, there was an increase in the ash and fiber contents, which increased from 0.85 to 3.58 % and 0.86 to 1.76 %, respectively. Increasing the concentration of brown rice flour increased hardness, whereas gumminess, chewiness, stickiness, and adhesiveness decreased proportionately. The results showed that brown rice flour could be an effective ingredient by missing it in whole wheat flour up to a level of 40 % to yield breads of acceptable sensory attributes with average liking sensory scores of 7 (like moderately) and above

The Global Response: How Cities and Provinces Around the Globe Tackled Covid-19 Outbreaks in 2021.

Background: Tackling the spread of COVID-19 remains a crucial part of ending the pandemic. Its highly contagious nature and constant evolution coupled with a relative lack of immunity make the virus difficult to control. For this, various strategies have been proposed and adopted including limiting contact, social isolation, vaccination, contact tracing, etc. However, given the heterogeneity in the enforcement of these strategies and constant fluctuations in the strictness levels of these strategies, it becomes challenging to assess the true impact of these strategies in controlling the spread of COVID-19. Methods: In the present study, we evaluated various transmission control measures that were imposed in 10 global urban cities and provinces in 2021- Bangkok, Gauteng, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, London, Manila City, New Delhi, New York City, Singapore, and Tokyo. Findings: Based on our analysis, we herein propose the population-level Swiss cheese model for the failures and pitfalls in various strategies that each of these cities and provinces had. Furthermore, whilst all the evaluated cities and provinces took a different personalized approach to managing the pandemic, what remained common was dynamic enforcement and monitoring of breaches of each barrier of protection. The measures taken to reinforce the barriers were adjusted continuously based on the evolving epidemiological situation. Interpretation: How an individual city or province handled the pandemic profoundly affected and determined how the entire country handled the pandemic since the chain of transmission needs to be broken at the very grassroot level to achieve nationwide control. Funding: The present study did not receive any external funding