Comprehensive and safe school strategy during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract Background Although several studies have tried to evaluate the real efficacy of school closure for pandemic control over time, no definitive answer to this question has been given. Moreover, it has not been clarified whether children or teenagers could be considered a problem for SARS-CoV-2 diffusion or, on the contrary, whether parents and school workers play a greater role. The aims of this review are to discuss about children’s safety at school and the better strategies currently able to reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection at school. Main aim Compared to adults, very few cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in children, who generally suffered from an asymptomatic infection or a mild disease. Moreover, school closure is systematically associated with the development of problems involving students, teachers and parents, particularly among populations with poor resources. Although several researches have tried to evaluate the real efficacy of school closure for pandemic control over time, no definitive answer to this question has been given. Available findings seem to confirm that to ensure adequate learning and to avoid social and economic problems, schools must remain open, provided that the adults who follow children at home and at school absolutely comply with recommendations for prevention measures and that school facilities can be optimized in order to significantly reduce the spread of infection. In this regard, the universal use of face masks in addition to hand hygiene and safe distancing in schools, at least starting from the age of 6 years, seems extremely useful. Moreover, since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak the use of telemedicine to manage suspected SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals in the community has appeared to be an easy and effective measure to solve many paediatric problems and could represent a further support to schools . Conclusions We think that schools must remain open, despite COVID-19 pandemic. However, several problems strictly related to school frequency and reduction of infectious risk must be solved before school attendance can be considered completely safe. A single more in-depth guideline agreed between countries with the same school problems could be very useful in eliminating doubts and fostering the compliance of students, teachers and non-teaching school staff reducing errors and misinterpretations.

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School in Italy: a safe place for children and adolescents

Italian Journal of Pediatrics ◽

10.1186/s13052-021-00978-w ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Alberto Villani ◽

Luana Coltella ◽

Stefania Ranno ◽

Federico Bianchi di Castelbianco ◽

Paola Maria Murru ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Real Time Pcr ◽

Target Genes ◽

School Closure ◽

N Gene ◽

Second Phase ◽

School Buildings ◽

Prevention Measures ◽

Safe Place ◽

The Third ◽

Safety Procedures

Abstract Background During the first SARS-CoV-2 pandemic phase, the sudden closure of schools was one of the main measures to minimize the spread of the virus. In the second phase, several safety procedures were implemented to avoid school closure. To evaluate if the school is a safe place, students and staff of two school complexes of Rome were monitored to evaluate the efficacy of prevention measures inside the school buildings. Methods Oral secretions specimens were collected from 1262 subjects for a total of 3431 samples, collected over a 3 months period. Detection of Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was performed by real-time PCR. Target genes were represented by E gene, RdRP/S gene and N gene. Results Among the 3431 samples analyzed, just 16 sample resulted as positive or low positive: 1 sample in the first month, 12 samples in the second month and 3 in the third month. In each period of evaluation, all positive children attended different classes. Conclusions Even if the school has the potential for spreading viruses, our preliminary results show the efficacy of the implementations undertaken in this setting to minimize virus diffusion. Our evidence suggests that school does not act as an amplifier for transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and can be really considered a safe place for students.

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The Basics of Microbiology

10.33442/vt202101 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Werner Solbach

Keyword(s):

Infectious Diseases ◽

Defense Mechanisms ◽

Wide Spectrum ◽

Severe Disease ◽

Laboratory Diagnosis ◽

Asymptomatic Infection ◽

The Body ◽

Sufficient Evidence ◽

Effective Measure ◽

Hygiene Measures

Microorganisms constitute 70 percent of the biomass on Planet Earth. Comparatively few species are adapted to colonize human surfaces and form a complex Meta-Organism with manyfold mutual benefits. Occasionally, microorganisms may overcome the barriers of the skin and mucosal surfaces and may multiply locally or in multiple sites inside the body. This process is called infection. Infections can be caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites, helminths, and fungi. Immediately after infection, numerous defense mechanisms of the immune system are activated to combat replication of the microbes. There is a balance between microorganism and human defense mechanisms, which may lead to either asymptomatic infection or result in a wide spectrum of symptoms from mild to severe disease and even death. The most important factors in the diagnosis of infectious diseases are a careful history, physical examination and the appropriate collection of body fluids and tissues. Laboratory diagnosis requires between 2 and 72 hours. Wherever possible, antibiotics should only be used when sufficient evidence of efficacy is available. Then, however, they should be used as early as possible and in high doses. In addition to everyday hygiene measures, vaccination is the most effective measure to prevent infectious diseases.

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Learning Personalized Itemset Mapping for Cross-Domain Recommendation

Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.24963/ijcai.2020/355 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Yinan Zhang ◽

Yong Liu ◽

Peng Han ◽

Chunyan Miao ◽

Lizhen Cui ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Single Domain ◽

Model Parameters ◽

The Real ◽

Cross Domain ◽

Proposed Model ◽

Latent Space ◽

Learning Parameter ◽

Generation Procedure ◽

Over Time

Cross-domain recommendation methods usually transfer knowledge across different domains implicitly, by sharing model parameters or learning parameter mappings in the latent space. Differing from previous studies, this paper focuses on learning explicit mapping between a user's behaviors (i.e. interaction itemsets) in different domains during the same temporal period. In this paper, we propose a novel deep cross-domain recommendation model, called Cycle Generation Networks (CGN). Specifically, CGN employs two generators to construct the dual-direction personalized itemset mapping between a user's behaviors in two different domains over time. The generators are learned by optimizing the distance between the generated itemset and the real interacted itemset, as well as the cycle-consistent loss defined based on the dual-direction generation procedure. We have performed extensive experiments on real datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, comparing with existing single-domain and cross-domain recommendation methods.

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Approximate Method for Calculating the Pressure Change in a Nonequilibrium-Deformable Reservoir in the Case of Real Gas Flow to the Well

Oil and Gas technologies ◽

10.32935/1815-2600-2021-135-4-36-39 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 135 (4) ◽

pp. 36-39

Author(s):

B. Z. Kazymov ◽

◽

K. K. Nasirova ◽

Keyword(s):

Approximate Method ◽

Gas Flow ◽

Pressure Change ◽

Reservoir Pressure ◽

Gas Reservoir ◽

Real Gas ◽

The Real ◽

Over Time

A method is proposed for determining the distribution of reservoir pressure over time in a nonequilibrium-deformable gas reservoir in the case of real gas flow to the well under different technological conditions of well operation, taking into account the real properties of the gas and the reservoir.

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Estimating the effectiveness of routine asymptomatic PCR testing at different frequencies for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 infections

10.1101/2020.11.24.20229948 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Joel Hellewell ◽

Timothy W. Russell ◽

Rupert Beale ◽

Gavin Kelly ◽

Catherine Houlihan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Vulnerable Populations ◽

Research Unit ◽

Asymptomatic Infection ◽

Nasopharyngeal Swab ◽

Rt Pcr ◽

Symptomatic Infection ◽

Testing Frequency ◽

Peak Sensitivity ◽

Pcr Test ◽

Over Time

AbstractBackgroundRoutine asymptomatic testing using RT-PCR of people who interact with vulnerable populations, such as medical staff in hospitals or care workers in care homes, has been employed to help prevent outbreaks among vulnerable populations. Although the peak sensitivity of RT-PCR can be high, the probability of detecting an infection will vary throughout the course of an infection. The effectiveness of routine asymptomatic testing will therefore depend on testing frequency and how PCR detection varies over time.MethodsWe fitted a Bayesian statistical model to a dataset of twice weekly PCR tests of UK healthcare workers performed by self-administered nasopharyngeal swab, regardless of symptoms. We jointly estimated times of infection and the probability of a positive PCR test over time following infection, we then compared asymptomatic testing strategies by calculating the probability that a symptomatic infection is detected before symptom onset and the probability that an asymptomatic infection is detected within 7 days of infection.FindingsWe estimated that the probability that the PCR test detected infection peaked at 77% (54 - 88%) 4 days after infection, decreasing to 50% (38 - 65%) by 10 days after infection. Our results suggest a substantially higher probability of detecting infections 1–3 days after infection than previously published estimates. We estimated that testing every other day would detect 57% (33-76%) of symptomatic cases prior to onset and 94% (75-99%) of asymptomatic cases within 7 days if test results were returned within a day.InterpretationOur results suggest that routine asymptomatic testing can enable detection of a high proportion of infected individuals early in their infection, provided that the testing is frequent and the time from testing to notification of results is sufficiently fast.FundingWellcome Trust, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit, Medical Research Council (UKRI)

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Longitudinal Relationships Among Fear of COVID-19, Smartphone Online Self-Disclosure, Happiness, and Psychological Well-being: Survey Study (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.28700 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jörg Matthes ◽

Kevin Koban ◽

Ariadne Neureiter ◽

Anja Stevic

Keyword(s):

Psychological Health ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Well Being ◽

Attrition Rate ◽

Survey Study ◽

Prevention Measures ◽

Psychological Well Being ◽

Self Disclosure ◽

The Impact ◽

Over Time

BACKGROUND Given that governmental prevention measures restricted most face-to-face communications, online self-disclosure via smartphones emerged as an alternative coping strategy that aimed at reducing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s psychological health. Prepandemic research demonstrated that online self-disclosure benefits people’s psychological health by establishing meaningful relationships, obtaining social support, and achieving self-acceptance, particularly in times of crisis. However, it is unclear whether these dynamics transition well to lockdown conditions where online self-disclosure must stand almost entirely on its own. Longitudinal investigations are needed to gain insights into the psychological functionalities of online self-disclosure during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to determine the temporal associations between smartphone online self-disclosure (as a communicative behavior) and critical indicators of psychological health (including psychopathological, as well as hedonic and eudaimonic states) during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Austria. METHODS We conducted a representative 2-wave panel survey between late March/April 2020 and May 2020. A total of 416 participants completed both waves (43.1% attrition rate, given n=731 participants who completed the first wave). A partially metric measurement invariant overtime structural equation model was used to determine the temporal associations among online self-disclosure, fear of COVID-19, happiness, and psychological well-being. RESULTS The analysis revealed that fear of COVID-19 significantly predicted online self-disclosure over time (b=0.24, P=.003) and happiness over time (b=−0.14, P=.04), but not psychological well-being (b=0.03, P=.48), that is, stronger COVID-19 fears at T1 prompted more online self-disclosure and less happiness at T2. Online self-disclosure, on the other hand, significantly predicted happiness (b=0.09, P=.02), but neither fear of COVID-19 (b=−0.01, P=.57) nor psychological well-being (b=−0.01, P=.57) over time. Participants who engaged more strongly in online self-disclosure at T1 felt happier at T2, but they did not differ from less-disclosing participants concerning COVID-19 fears and psychological well-being at T2. Importantly, happiness and psychological well-being were significantly related over time (happiness T1 → psychological well-being T2: b=0.11, P<.001; psychological well-being T1 → happiness T2: b=0.42, P<.001). CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that online self-disclosure might play a pivotal role in coping with pandemic stressors. With restrictions on their options, individuals increasingly turn to their smartphones and social media to disclose their feelings, problems, and concerns during lockdown. While online self-disclosure might not alleviate fears or improve psychological well-being, our results demonstrate that it made people experience more happiness during this crisis. This psychological resource may help them withstand the severe psychological consequences of the COVID-19 crisis over longer timeframes.

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Ontology Versioning Driven by Instance Evolution in the τOWL Framework

Journal of Information & Knowledge Management ◽

10.1142/s0219649222500022 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Zouhaier Brahmia ◽

Fabio Grandi ◽

Abir Zekri ◽

Rafik Bouaziz

Keyword(s):

Semantic Web ◽

Real World ◽

Ontology Construction ◽

Web Based ◽

The Real ◽

Initial Design ◽

Design Time ◽

Schema Versioning ◽

History Of ◽

Over Time

Like other components of Semantic Web-based applications, ontologies are evolving over time to reflect changes in the real world. Several of these applications require keeping a full-fledged history of ontology changes so that both ontology instance versions and their corresponding ontology schema versions are maintained. Updates to an ontology instance could be non-conservative that is leading to a new ontology instance version no longer conforming to the current ontology schema version. If, for some reasons, a non-conservative update has to be executed, in spite of its consequence, it requires the production of a new ontology schema version to which the new ontology instance version is conformant so that the new ontology version produced by the update is globally consistent. In this paper, we first propose an approach that supports ontology schema changes which are triggered by non-conservative updates to ontology instances and, thus, gives rise to an ontology schema versioning driven by instance updates. Note that in an engineering perspective, such an approach can be used as an incremental ontology construction method driven by the modification of instance data, whose exact structure may not be completely known at the initial design time. After that, we apply our proposal to the already established [Formula: see text]OWL (Temporal OWL 2) framework, which allows defining and evolving temporal OWL 2 ontologies in an environment that supports temporal versioning of both ontology instances and ontology schemas, by extending it to also support the management of non-conservative updates to ontology instance versions. Last, we show the feasibility of our approach by dealing with its implementation within a new release of the [Formula: see text] OWL-Manager tool.

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A School-Based Mental Health Counseling Intervention with Students in Title I Elementary Schools

Children & Schools ◽

10.1093/cs/cdz011 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 161-168 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Glenn W Lambie ◽

Coralis Solomon ◽

J Richelle Joe ◽

Viki P Kelchner ◽

Mary K Perleoni

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Elementary Schools ◽

Title I ◽

School Attendance ◽

Mental Health Counseling ◽

Health Counseling ◽

Counseling Intervention ◽

School Based ◽

Title I Elementary Schools ◽

Over Time

Abstract The present study investigated the influence of a school-based mental health counseling intervention (SBMHCI) on elementary school students’ (N = 49) behavioral and emotional problems and school attendance at two Title I elementary schools. The study used a single-group, pretest–posttest design to examine change in the participants’ scores after participating in the five-week SBMHCI. The results identified that participants’ internalizing and total problem scores exhibited significant improvement over time, per parent report. In addition, participants’ school attendance significantly improved over time, from the previous academic year, following the SBMHCI.

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Leadership of Presidents of Brazilian Olympic Sport Federations: Comparison between Real and Ideal Perceived Competencies Profiles According to Their Experience

International Business Research ◽

10.5539/ibr.v9n5p146 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 9 (5) ◽

pp. 146 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Daiane Miranda de Freitas ◽

Maria José Carvalho ◽

Israel Teoldo da Costa ◽

António Manuel Fonseca

Keyword(s):

Management Practices ◽

Leadership Competencies ◽

Minas Gerais ◽

The Self ◽

Self Perception ◽

The Real ◽

Olympic Sport ◽

Over Time

This research aimed at verifying whether there are differences in behavioural self-perception of presidents of the Brazilian Olympic Sport Federations regarding the real and ideal leadership competencies profiles, taking their time of experience in position into account. This study comprised two complementary studies. The sample of the first study included 83 participants who filled out a translated and adapted version of the Managerial Behaviour Instrument. In the second study, ten presidents of the Olympic Sport Federations of Minas Gerais were interviewed and their answers were content analysed; complementary, there were consulted the statutes of their organizations in what concerns to their duties. Overall, the analysis of the results of both studies showed that all presidents perceived themselves as being competent and, in general, they considered the need of some improvements in their leadership competencies. Furthermore, the presidents declared that, over time, some knowledge and competencies have been acquired and developed, allowing them to adjust management practices. In sum, the time of experience seems to play an important role in the self-perception and development of leadership competencies in these Brazilian presidents.

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Institutional Failure, Monetary Scarcity, and the Depreciation of the Continental

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700004149 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 47-68 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Charles W. Calomiris

Keyword(s):

Economic Welfare ◽

Monetary Policies ◽

The Real ◽

Institutional Failure ◽

Paper Money ◽

Government Involvement ◽

Over Time ◽

The Revolution

The efforts of some American colonials, who complained of monetary scarcity and advocated increased government involvement in supplying paper money, were valid attempts to improve economic welfare and facilitate transactions. The potential for improvement depended crucially on the fiscal and monetary policies of colonial governments. This approach to monetary scarcity is useful for explaining variation in the real supply of money across colonies and over time. The role of fiscal and monetary policies in determining the changing value of the continental, and the consequences for real currency supply during and after the Revolution, are examined in detail.

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