Exploring the communication effects of signals and messages in the COVID-19 health crisis

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents an unprecedented global public health crisis. In this scenario, crisis communication on social media that largely influences people’s emotions, attitudes and interaction behaviours towards a large-scale public health crisis plays a critical role in persuading the public’s behaviour adjustment and coping with the risk. The effects of crisis communication strategies and signals embedded in social media topics and messages warrant further investigation. This study explored and tested the communication effects of crisis messages and topics from the initial event stage to the normalized control stage of the COVID-19 crisis using texts scraped from a Chinese social media website, namely Weibo. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques, i.e., sentiment and emotion analysis, positivist text coding, and ordinary least squares (OLS) were used in data analysis. This study contributes to the crisis management literature and theories by identifying and testing a number of factors and signals in crisis communication on social media that influence receivers’ reactions and behaviours. In doing so, this study provides suggestions for practitioners and policymakers on effective communication of the crisis situation and prevention behaviours to the public

Cognitive and Action Sequence Prediction using Deductive Reasoning

Early in the process of the development of an aircraft cockpit, although the designers always introduce a set of operational procedures with the expectation that all pilots would follow, it is very difficult to guarantee that the flight crew will do exactly they are expected to do. The deviation of the pilots’ operation from the intended procedures may lead to an unsafe situation, and could also be an indication to the inherent reason for the biases in the pilots’ cognitive process. It became very obvious that a tool that could help to predict a comprehensive set of possible operations that the pilots would operate the aircraft will be very useful both in the flight deck design process and pilot training practices. This paper presents the development of the researches in the “Cognitive and Action Sequence Prediction using Deductive Creation Theory (CASEPREDICT)”. Unlike any human-made system which the response of the system can be predicted to certain degree of accuracy, a human-in-theloop system is always associated with a great deal of uncertainty issues which comes from the cognitive process of human operators

Pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase regulates macrophage polarization in metabolic and inflammatory diseases

Macrophages are highly heterogeneous and plastic, and have two main polarized phenotypes that are determined by their microenvironment, namely pro- and anti-inflammatory macrophages. Activation of pro-inflammatory macrophages is closely associated with metabolic reprogramming, especially that of aerobic glycolysis. Mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK) negatively regulates pyruvate dehydrogenase complex activity through reversible phosphorylation and further links glycolysis to the tricarboxylic acid cycle and ATP production. PDK is commonly associated with the metabolism and polarization of macrophages in metabolic and inflammatory diseases. This review examines the relationship between PDK and macrophage metabolism and discusses the mechanisms by which PDK regulates macrophage polarization, migration, and inflammatory cytokine secretion in metabolic and inflammatory diseases. Elucidating the relationships between the metabolism and polarization of macrophages under physiological and pathological conditions, as well as the regulatory pathways involved, may provide valuable insights into the etiology and treatment of macrophage-mediated inflammatory diseases

Evolutionary Characterization of the Pandemic H1N1/ 2009 Influenza Virus in Humans Based on Non-Structural Genes

The 2009 influenza pandemic had a tremendous social and economic impact. To study the genetic diversity and evolution of the 2009 H1N1 virus, a mutation network for the non-structural (NS) gene of the virus was constructed. Strains of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza A virus could be divided into two categories based on the V123I mutation in the NS1 gene: G1 (characterized as 123 Val) and G2 (characterized as 123 Ile). Sequence homology analysis indicated that one type of NS sequence, primarily isolated from Mexico, was likely the original type in this pandemic. The two genotypes of the virus presented distinctive clustering features in their geographic distributions. These results provide additional insight into the genetics and evolution of human pandemic influenza H1N1

Frailty in hypertensive population and its association with all-cause mortality: data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

ObjectivesThis study aimed to investigate the relationship between frailty and all-cause mortality in hypertensive population.MethodsWe used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999–2002 and mortality data from the National Death Index. Frailty was assessed using the revised version of the Fried frailty criteria (weakness, exhaustion, low physical activity, shrinking, and slowness). This study aimed to evaluate the association between frailty and all-cause mortality. Cox proportional hazard models were used to evaluate the association between frailty category and all-cause mortality, adjusted for age, sex, race, education, poverty–income ratio, smoking, alcohol, diabetes, arthritis, congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, stroke, overweight, cancer or malignancy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic kidney disease, and taking medicine for hypertension.ResultsWe gathered data of 2,117 participants with hypertension; 17.81%, 28.77%, and 53.42% were classified as frail, pre-frail, and robust, respectively. We found that frail [hazard ratio (HR) = 2.76, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.33–3.27] and pre-frail (HR = 1.38, 95% CI = 1.19–1.59] were significantly associated with all-cause mortality after controlling for variables. We found that frail (HR = 3.02, 95% CI = 2.50–3.65) and pre-frail (HR = 1.35, 95% CI = 1.15–1.58) were associated with all-cause mortality in the age group ≥65 years. For the frailty components, weakness (HR = 1.77, 95% CI = 1.55–2.03), exhaustion (HR = 2.25, 95% CI = 1.92–2.65), low physical activity (HR = 2.25, 95% CI = 1.95–2.61), shrinking (HR = 1.48, 95% CI = 1.13–1.92), and slowness (HR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.22–1.69) were associated with all-cause mortality.ConclusionThis study demonstrated that frailty and pre-frailty were associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality in patients with hypertension. More attention should be paid to frailty in hypertensive patients, and interventions to reduce the burden of frailty may improve outcomes in these patients

Delineating the molecular landscape of different histopathological growth patterns in colorectal cancer liver metastases

BackgroundHistopathological growth patterns (HGPs) have shown important prognostic values for patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases, but the potential molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown.MethodsWe performed an exploratory analysis by conducting the RNA sequencing of primary colorectal lesions, colorectal liver metastatic lesions and normal liver tissues.FindingsWe found that desmoplastic HGPs of the metastatic lesions were significantly enriched in EMT, angiogenesis, stroma, and immune signaling pathways, while replacement HGPs were enriched in metabolism, cell cycle, and DNA damage repair pathways. With the exception of immune-related genes, the differentially expressed genes of the two HGPs from colorectal liver metastases were mostly inherited from the primary tumor. Moreover, normal liver tissue in the desmoplastic HGP subgroup was markedly enriched in the fibrinous inflammation pathway.ConclusionsWe surmised that HGPs are observable morphological changes resulting from the regulation of molecular expressions, which is the combined effect of the heterogeneity and remodeling of primary tumors seeds and liver soils

Influence of paste thickness on the coated aggregates on properties of high-density sulphoaluminate cement concrete

An improved method for the densified mixture design algorithm and Fuller curve were used to design high-density sulphoaluminate cement concrete (HDSC). The performance of HDSC is significantly influenced by the paste thickness on the coated aggregates. Sulphoaluminate cement concrete mixtures containing aggregates coated with 3 different paste thickness of t=10μm, 20μm, and 30μm and water-binder ratios (W/B) of 0.25, 0.30 and 0.35 were prepared. The results of experiments show that paste thickness on the coated aggregates significantly influences the mechanical properties and durability of HDSC. With the increase of paste thickness, the compressive strength is increased, but the electrical resistivity is decreased, particularly at the early ages of 1 and 3 days. The sulfate corrosion resistance coefficients of HDSC are larger than 1.0, the total porosity can be less than 7%, and the micropore (i.e. with pore size less than 20nm) can be larger than 70%

Design and cold test of period-tapered double-ridge-loaded folded waveguide slow wave structure for Ka band TWTs

A double-ridge-loaded folded waveguide (DRL-FW) travelling wave tube (TWT) based on period-tapered structure is proposed. Through analysing the dispersion characteristics of the DRL-FW slow wave structure (SWS), the physical mechanism of the band-edge oscillation is obtained. Period-tapered SWS is proposed and analysed for verifying the feasibility in suppressing upper-band-edge oscillation and increasing the output power. Then the electromagnetic characteristics and the beam-wave interaction of TWT based on the period-tapered DRL-FW SWS are investigated. The calculation results predict that it potentially could provide continuous wave power over 600W from 29 GHz to 32 GHz without upper-band-edge oscillation. The bandwidth expands from 29-31GHz to 29-32GHz and electron efficiency is increased from more than 8.3% to more than 11%, while the range of operating voltage expands from 22kV-22.5kV to 22kV-24kV. The corresponding saturated gain can reach over 36.8 dB. In addition, we have carried out experimental tests on the transmission characteristics of period-tapered DRL-FW SWS. The cold test results show that the voltage stand-wave ratio (VSWR) is below 1.8 in the range of 29-32GHz. Good transmission characteristics greatly reduce the risk of reflection wave oscillation, thus improving the stability of DRL-FW TWT

Integration of airflow zonal model and building energy simulation for large space buildings

Contemporarily, large spaces prevail in many diverse and complex buildings, but meanwhile, incur more demanding requirements about thermal comfort and energy saving. Conventional building energy simulation (BES) computes the whole building based on the assumption of quiescent and uniform air. By contrast, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can obtain rich and detailed airflow results, but consumes tremendous computational time and resources. Then, the zonal model as an intermediate method between these two models has gradually approached to the visual field of the public, which plays an important role in rapidly predicting the overall thermal stratification of large spaces. Therefore, this paper discussed a practical and automatic method of integration of the zonal model and BES. In this way, annual dynamic energy consumption of large space buildings can be analysed, which will exhibit significant potential in the engineering field, especially at primary design stage