scholarly journals Application of SARS-CoV-2 Serology to Address Public Health Priorities

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy C. Sherman ◽  
Teresa Smith ◽  
Yerun Zhu ◽  
Kaitlin Taibl ◽  
Jessica Howard-Anderson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Population Surveillance ◽  
Health Priorities ◽  
Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay ◽  
Roc Curve Analysis ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
Igg Binding ◽  
Wide Availability ◽  
The Individual

Background: Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 can be detected by various testing platforms, but a detailed understanding of assay performance is critical.Methods: We developed and validated a simple enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect IgG binding to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2, which was then applied for surveillance. ELISA results were compared to a set of complimentary serologic assays using a large panel of clinical research samples.Results: The RBD ELISA exhibited robust performance in ROC curve analysis (AUC> 0.99; Se = 89%, Sp = 99.3%). Antibodies were detected in 23/353 (6.5%) healthcare workers, 6/9 RT-PCR-confirmed mild COVID-19 cases, and 0/30 non-COVID-19 cases from an ambulatory site. RBD ELISA showed a positive correlation with neutralizing activity (p = <0.0001, R2 = 0.26).Conclusions: We applied a validated SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG ELISA in multiple contexts and performed orthogonal testing on samples. This study demonstrates the utility of a simple serologic assay for detecting prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly as a tool for efficiently testing large numbers of samples as in population surveillance. Our work also highlights that precise understanding of SARS-CoV-2 infection and immunity at the individual level, particularly with wide availability of vaccination, may be improved by orthogonal testing and/or more complex assays such as multiplex bead assays.

Ethics and Stochastic Processes

1989 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Hardin
Keyword(s):  
Stochastic Processes ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Complete Separation ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Gallows Humor ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Policy Problems

There is some irony, and perhaps a bit of gallows humor, in opening a paper in this volume with the claim that “applied ethics” is a misnomer. Yet that claim is true in the following sense. What we need for most of the issues that have sparked the contemporary resurgence of moral and political theory is not the application of ethics as we know it, but the revamping of ethics to make it relevant to the issues we face. It is in our concern with major policy programs that ethics and political philosophy are most commonly rejoined to become a unified enquiry after a nearly complete separation through most of this century. Yet, ethical theories may be shaken to their foundations by our effort to apply them to policy problems. I do not propose to revamp ethics here, but only to show that much ethical theory cannot readily be applied to major policy problems.There are at least three important characteristics of major policy issues in general that may give traditional moral theories difficulties. First, such issues can generally be handled only by institutional intervention; they commonly cannot be resolved through uncoordinated individual action. Theories formulated at the individual level must therefore be recast to handle institutional actions and possibilities. Second, major policy issues typically have complicating strategic interactions between individuals at their bases. Third, they are inherently stochastic in the important sense that they affect large numbers with more or less determinable (or merely guessable) probabilities. C. H. Waddington calls such issues instances of “the problem of the ethics of stochastic processes.”

scholarly journals 1603 A Google Trends Analysis of Interest in Ear, Nose and Throat Surgery During The COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_6) ◽  
Author(s):  
C Y K Williams ◽  
A F Ferreira ◽  
A T Townson ◽  
A Pace
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Relative Effect ◽  
Google Trends ◽  
Sinus Surgery ◽  
Health Priorities ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Structural Time Series ◽  
Structural Time Series Models ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Nose And Throat

Abstract Aim The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging effects on healthcare, society and everyday life. As the public’s health priorities shift, we sought to investigate the resulting impact of COVID-19 on global interest in Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) surgery. Method We used Google Trends to examine worldwide search interest in the following core ENT operations following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: Tonsillectomy, Adenoidectomy, Thyroidectomy, Rhinoplasty, Septoplasty, Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery, Mastoidectomy, and Tympanoplasty. Bayesian structural time-series models were used to generate counterfactual time series, and relative differences between observed and expected search interest were calculated. Causal effects were subsequently determined, along with 95% CIs and posterior probabilities. R version 4.0.3 was used for analyses. Results Search interest in all measured ENT procedures was significantly reduced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interest in Rhinoplasty recovered after 8 weeks and continued to rise to a peak of 27% greater than expected, with a cumulative Relative effect of + 11% [95% CI: 3.9%, 20%]. In contrast, significantly reduced search interest was observed for all other procedures analysed (Relative effect, range: -16% to -36%, all p values < 0.05). Conclusions Our findings suggest divergent changes in public interest in common ENT procedures. While all other ENT operations investigated were less frequently searched following the pandemic onset, interest in Rhinoplasty at times increased to over 25% greater than expected. This could represent a shift in patient attitudes to disorders of the Ear, Nose and Throat and warrants further investigation at the individual-level.

scholarly journals Constructing SHiP and an International Historical Coding System for Causes of Death

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 64-70
Author(s):  
Angélique Janssens
Keyword(s):  
Cause Of Death ◽  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Coding System ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Coding Scheme ◽  
Disease Patterns ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Individual

SHiP is a network of European researchers studying mortality dynamics in port cities across Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. All members make use of unique individual-level cause-of-death data for roughly the period 1850–1950 which allows the study of mortality to move beyond what was captured in nineteenth-century highly-aggregated national statistics. Apart from registering the individual cause of death, most datasets provide a wealth of information, such as name and address of the deceased, date of death, his/her age, sex, marital status, and religion and occupation of the deceased. Port cities are viewed as 'gateways of disease' in the same way that airports today function as hubs for the transmission of infectious diseases. The SHiP network aims to study the particular epidemiological profiles of the port cities in a truly comparative fashion across the different European maritime areas. To that end the SHiP team members have embarked upon the construction of a joint coding scheme, called ICD10h, which assigns codes to a large number of causes of death in a systematic way. Its main features are that the ICD10h coding scheme can deal well with large numbers of historical disease descriptions, from different linguistic areas in Europe, while at the same time it is able to connect to current day disease patterns.

Differential Effects of Competence and Morality on Self-Esteem at the Individual and the Collective Level

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
Wiktor Soral ◽  
Mirosław Kofta
Keyword(s):  
Self Esteem ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

Abstract. The importance of various trait dimensions explaining positive global self-esteem has been the subject of numerous studies. While some have provided support for the importance of agency, others have highlighted the importance of communion. This discrepancy can be explained, if one takes into account that people define and value their self both in individual and in collective terms. Two studies ( N = 367 and N = 263) examined the extent to which competence (an aspect of agency), morality, and sociability (the aspects of communion) promote high self-esteem at the individual and the collective level. In both studies, competence was the strongest predictor of self-esteem at the individual level, whereas morality was the strongest predictor of self-esteem at the collective level.

Metonymy in Dance: Ballet Bunheads Take a Cognitive Turn

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34
Author(s):  
Edward C. Warburton
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Artistic Development ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Level I ◽  
Dance Educators ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Metaphor And Metonymy

This essay considers metonymy in dance from the perspective of cognitive science. My goal is to unpack the roles of metaphor and metonymy in dance thought and action: how do they arise, how are they understood, how are they to be explained, and in what ways do they determine a person's doing of dance? The premise of this essay is that language matters at the cultural level and can be determinative at the individual level. I contend that some figures of speech, especially metonymic labels like ‘bunhead’, can not only discourage but dehumanize young dancers, treating them not as subjects who dance but as objects to be danced. The use of metonymy to sort young dancers may undermine the development of healthy self-image, impede strong identity formation, and retard creative-artistic development. The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of metonymy in dance and implications for dance educators.

Exploring the effect of weight loss on food reward at the individual level

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Oustric ◽  
Kristine Beaulieu ◽  
Nuno Casanova ◽  
Francois Husson ◽  
Catherine Gibbons ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Weight Loss ◽  
Food Reward ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual

Personality change and environmental concerns

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher James Hopwood ◽  
Ted Schwaba ◽  
Wiebke Bleidorn
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Personality Change ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Big Five Personality ◽  
German Population ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Sustainable Behavior ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Over Time

Personal concerns about climate change and the environment are a powerful motivator of sustainable behavior. People’s level of concern varies as a function of a variety of social and individual factors. Using data from 58,748 participants from a nationally representative German sample, we tested preregistered hypotheses about factors that impact concerns about the environment over time. We found that environmental concerns increased modestly from 2009-2017 in the German population. However, individuals in middle adulthood tended to be more concerned and showed more consistent increases in concern over time than younger or older people. Consistent with previous research, Big Five personality traits were correlated with environmental concerns. We present novel evidence that increases in concern were related to increases in the personality traits neuroticism and openness to experience. Indeed, changes in openness explained roughly 50% of the variance in changes in environmental concerns. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the individual level factors associated with changes in environmental concerns over time, towards the promotion of more sustainable behavior at the individual level.

Reply to Connor and Evers (2020): Critique of the Bias of Crowds Model Simply Restates the Model

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Payne ◽  
Heidi A. Vuletich ◽  
Kristjen B. Lundberg
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Core ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
The Individual

The Bias of Crowds model (Payne, Vuletich, & Lundberg, 2017) argues that implicit bias varies across individuals and across contexts. It is unreliable and weakly associated with behavior at the individual level. But when aggregated to measure context-level effects, the scores become stable and predictive of group-level outcomes. We concluded that the statistical benefits of aggregation are so powerful that researchers should reconceptualize implicit bias as a feature of contexts, and ask new questions about how implicit biases relate to systemic racism. Connor and Evers (2020) critiqued the model, but their critique simply restates the core claims of the model. They agreed that implicit bias varies across individuals and across contexts; that it is unreliable and weakly associated with behavior at the individual level; and that aggregating scores to measure context-level effects makes them more stable and predictive of group-level outcomes. Connor and Evers concluded that implicit bias should be considered to really be noisily measured individual construct because the effects of aggregation are merely statistical. We respond to their specific arguments and then discuss what it means to really be a feature of persons versus situations, and multilevel measurement and theory in psychological science more broadly.

Leadership Enactment for Information System Acceptance: an Explanation from a Sensemaking Perspective

2019 ◽  
pp. 78-106
Author(s):  
Aruna Dayanatha ◽  
J A S K Jayakody
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
User Involvement ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Is Success ◽  
Managerial Leadership ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
System Acceptance ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Leadership Intervention ◽  
Is Failure

Information system (IS) projects have been seen to be failing at an alarmingly high rate. The prevailing explanations of IS failure have had only a limited success. Thus, the time may be right to look at the reasons for IS failure through an alternative perspective. This paper proposes that IS success should be explained in terms of managerial leadership intervention, from the sensemaking perspective. Managers are responsible for workplace outcomes; thus, it may be appropriate to explain their role in IS success as well. The sensemaking perspective can explain IS success through holistic user involvement, a concept which critiques of existing explanations have stated to be a requirement for explaining IS failure. This paper proposes a framework combining the theory of enactment and leadership enactment to theorize managerial leadership intervention for “IS success.” The proposed explanation postulates that the managerial leader’s envisioning of the future transaction set influences the liberation of the follower and cast enactment, while liberating followers and cast enactment constitute manager sensegiving. The managerial leader’s sense-giving influences follower sensemaking. Follower sensemaking, under the influence of managerial sensegiving, will lead to followers’ IS acceptance, and that constitutes IS success at the individual level. Further, collective level IS acceptance constitutes IS adaption/success, and this will influence the leader’s sensegiving, for the next round of sensemaking.

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