Availability and Suitability of Digital Health Tools in Africa for Pandemic Control: Scoping Review and Cluster Analysis

Background Gaining oversight into the rapidly growing number of mobile health tools for surveillance or outbreak management in Africa has become a challenge. Objective The aim of this study is to map the functional portfolio of mobile health tools used for surveillance or outbreak management of communicable diseases in Africa. Methods We conducted a scoping review by combining data from a systematic review of the literature and a telephone survey of experts. We applied the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines by searching for articles published between January 2010 and December 2020. In addition, we used the respondent-driven sampling method and conducted a telephone survey from October 2019 to February 2020 among representatives from national public health institutes from all African countries. We combined the findings and used a hierarchical clustering method to group the tools based on their functionalities (attributes). Results We identified 30 tools from 1914 publications and 45 responses from 52% (28/54) of African countries. Approximately 13% of the tools (4/30; Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System, Go.Data, CommCare, and District Health Information Software 2) covered 93% (14/15) of the identified attributes. Of the 30 tools, 17 (59%) tools managed health event data, 20 (67%) managed case-based data, and 28 (97%) offered a dashboard. Clustering identified 2 exceptional attributes for outbreak management, namely contact follow-up (offered by 8/30, 27%, of the tools) and transmission network visualization (offered by Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System and Go.Data). Conclusions There is a large range of tools in use; however, most of them do not offer a comprehensive set of attributes, resulting in the need for public health workers having to use multiple tools in parallel. Only 13% (4/30) of the tools cover most of the attributes, including those most relevant for response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as laboratory interface, contact follow-up, and transmission network visualization.

FISCHER, Frank y MILLING, Carsten. Easy Linavis. Simple Network Visualization for Literary Texts, 2017.

En este texto se reseña la herramienta digital online Easy Linavis (Ezlinavis), desarrollada principalmente para la extracción de datos sobre personajes de un texto dramático y para generar la visualización de los mismos en grafos o redes. Se analizarán sus distintas funcionalidades a través de la descripción de la herramienta. Finalmente, se presentarán unas conclusiones sobre la experiencia de uso y las posibilidades de Ezlinavis como recurso y como proyecto de Humanidades Digitales.

Cartografía de la revista Profesional de la información: mapa visual de 30 años de historia

The process of creating a cartography, an interactive visualization, from the bibliographic data of the contents of the scientific journal Profesional de la información during its almost 30 years of life is presented. The cartography is available on the EPI journal website: https://profesionaldelainformacion.com/cartografia/EPI_GLOBAL/index.html. Its objective is to serve as a navigable index for the quick localization of information of interest to readers as well as a visual map that highlights the characteristics of the knowledge network that these data form through the interconnection of relationships between its nodes. This device has been created by extracting data from the journal’s website using web scraping tools and the free software Gephi for network visualization. A graph viewer allows access and manipulation through the web. Navigation through the bibliographic data network is facilitated by different strategies: (1) the use of different colors for each category of node (author, keyword, number, and article); (2) the viewer’s search tools, including a node label finder, a zoom bar, a magnifying glass, and a button to hide the network of relationships; and (3) the possibility of displaying different linked graphs. Selecting a node opens a side-space where all the attributes providing information about that node are displayed and that enables a new window to be opened, displaying all the information linked to an external page. The information on the authors is obtained from the Directory of Experts in the Management of Information (EXIT). This tool thus undeniable provides a useful source of secondary information on the journal, as were printed indexes in their day, with the advantage that it can be updated almost simultaneously with the publication of new issues. The data obtained will be used to carry out other analyses of the evolution of the journal, the topics of interest to the profession, and its stakeholders. Resumen Se presenta el proceso de realización de una cartografía, una visualización interactiva, a partir de los datos bibliográficos de los contenidos de la revista científica Profesional de la Información en sus casi 30 años de vida. La cartografía se puede consultar en el sitio web de la revista EPI: https://profesionaldelainformacion.com/cartografia/EPI_GLOBAL/index.html. Su objetivo es servir como índice navegable para la localización rápida de información de interés para los lectores, así como un mapa visual que resalta las características de la red de conocimiento que esos datos forman a través de la interconexión de relaciones entre sus nodos. Este dispositivo ha sido realizado a partir de la extracción de datos de la web de la propia revista mediante programas de web scraping, y el software libre Gephi para la visualización de las redes. Un visor de gráficos permite el acceso y su manipulación a través de la web. La navegación por la red de datos bibliográficos se facilita mediante distintas estrategias: (1) la diferenciación por colores de cada categoría de nodo (autor, palabra clave, número y artículo); (2) las herramientas de búsqueda del visor: un buscador de etiquetas de nodo, una barra para acercar y alejar la red, una lupa y un botón para ocultar la red de relaciones; y (3) la posibilidad de mostrar distintas gráficas enlazadas. La selección de un nodo abre un espacio lateral donde se muestran todos los atributos que dan información sobre ese nodo y permite abrir en una ventana nueva toda la que está enlazada con una página exterior. La información sobre los autores se obtiene del Directorio de Expertos en el Tratamiento de la Información (EXIT). Se constituye así en una fuente de información secundaria sobre la revista de innegable utilidad, como lo fueron en su día los índices impresos, con la ventaja de que su actualización puede realizarse de forma casi simultánea a la publicación de nuevos números. Los datos obtenidos servirán para la realización de otros análisis de la evolución de la revista, de las temáticas de interés de la profesión y sus actores.

A model of circular economy in the relationship with sustainable development, recycling, and life cycle: Bibliometric analysis

This paper is carried out by conducting systematic mapping that focuses on the circular economy (CE) theme using bibliometric analysis. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive view of circular economy research that is based on bibliometric data from 2017 to 2021. The data is collected from Scopus using VOSviewer software. Network visualization and density visualization are used in this study. The findings conclude that: (1) the publication trend of the circular economy continues to increase; and (2) the author with the most link is Mangla, S.K. with 15 links, and the author with the most research related to a circular economy is Liu, Y. with 16 papers/research. It is also found that there are 3 big themes that are close to a circular economy, namely sustainable development, recycling, and life cycle. This indicates that the opportunity to examine circular economy while associating it with variables outside of sustainable development, recycling, and the life cycle is still very large. The countries that have conducted the most research on circular economy is (1) United Kingdom (218 papers); (2) Italy (161 papers); and (3) China (161 papers).

GreeningDB: A Database of Host–Pathogen Protein–Protein Interactions and Annotation Features of the Bacteria Causing Huanglongbing HLB Disease

The Citrus genus comprises some of the most important and commonly cultivated fruit plants. Within the last decade, citrus greening disease (also known as huanglongbing or HLB) has emerged as the biggest threat for the citrus industry. This disease does not have a cure yet and, thus, many efforts have been made to find a solution to this devastating condition. There are challenges in the generation of high-yield resistant cultivars, in part due to the limited and sparse knowledge about the mechanisms that are used by the Liberibacter bacteria to proliferate the infection in Citrus plants. Here, we present GreeningDB, a database implemented to provide the annotation of Liberibacter proteomes, as well as the host–pathogen comparactomics tool, a novel platform to compare the predicted interactomes of two HLB host–pathogen systems. GreeningDB is built to deliver a user-friendly interface, including network visualization and links to other resources. We hope that by providing these characteristics, GreeningDB can become a central resource to retrieve HLB-related protein annotations, and thus, aid the community that is pursuing the development of molecular-based strategies to mitigate this disease’s impact. The database is freely available at http://bioinfo.usu.edu/GreeningDB/.

Simulating and visualizing infection spread dynamics with temporal networks

Temporal networks comprehend a widely adopted structure to model interactions involving a domain's instances over time. In the context of infection spread, it could be used to model face-to-face contacts among susceptible and infected individuals. By considering network visualization strategies, one can easily identify who infected whom and when, the epidemics outbreak, and other relevant behaviors. As a consequence, decision making related to the spread speed and magnitude becomes faster and more reliable. This paper presents a visual analytics approach for the simulation and analysis of infection spread dynamics that considers different infection probabilities and different levels of social distancing. We performed our experiments using two real-world social networks that represent school environments and our findings support the need for a high social distancing compliance allied to the adoption of protective measures such as the use of face masks.

Un análisis bibliométrico sobre el uso y la adopción de la educación en línea en la enseñanza superior

This bibliometric analysis identifies and presents the articles that have given shape to the current research trends on the adoption and use of e-learning in higher education using structural equation modeling. Metadata for scholarly work was obtained from The Lens database, and network visualization was produced with VOSviewer. This study includes 414 articles published between 2006 and 2021. The results consider four thematic clusters, a list of the 10 most cited articles, a word cloud for fields of study, and two network visualization maps (citation and keywords). As the first bibliometric paper that addresses articles using structural equation modeling techniques, the main contribution of this paper is to quantitatively synthesize the large quantity of bibliometric metadata obtained and present the state, structure, and trends in the study of the adoption and use of e-learning in higher education. Specifically, this paper will introduce the most influential authors and papers, key themes, current and future areas of research. In conclusion, this paper should serve as a resource for future research, as well as, to be an example of how to carry out a basic bibliometric analysis.