Infectious viral load in unvaccinated and vaccinated patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 WT, Delta and Omicron

Background Viral load (VL) is one determinant of secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Emergence of variants of concerns (VOC) Alpha and Delta was ascribed, at least partly, to higher VL. Furthermore, with parts of the population vaccinated, knowledge on VL in vaccine breakthrough infections is crucial. As RNA VL is only a weak proxy for infectiousness, studies on infectious virus presence by cell culture isolation are of importance. Methods We assessed nasopharyngeal swabs of COVID-19 patients for quantitative infectious viral titres (IVT) by focus-forming assay and compared to overall virus isolation success and RNA genome copies. We assessed infectious viral titres during the first 5 symptomatic days in a total of 384 patients: unvaccinated individuals infected with pre-VOC SARS-CoV-2 (n= 118) or Delta (n= 127) and vaccine breakthrough infections with Delta (n= 121) or Omicron (n=18). Findings Correlation between RNA copy number and IVT was low for all groups. No correlation between IVTs and age or sex was seen. We observed higher RNA genome copies in pre-VOC SARS-CoV-2 compared to Delta, but significantly higher IVTs in Delta infected individuals. In vaccinated vs. unvaccinated Delta infected individuals, RNA genome copies were comparable but vaccinated individuals have significantly lower IVTs, and cleared virus faster. Vaccinated individuals with Omicron infection had comparable IVTs to Delta breakthrough infections. Interpretation Quantitative IVTs can give detailed insights into virus shedding kinetics. Vaccination was associated with lower infectious titres and faster clearance for Delta, showing that vaccination would also lower transmission risk. Omicron vaccine breakthrough infections did not show elevated IVTs compared to Delta, suggesting that other mechanisms than increase VL contribute to the high infectiousness of Omicron. Funding This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation 196644, 196383, NRP (National Research Program) 78 Covid-19 Grant 198412, the Fondation Ancrage Bienfaisance du Groupe Pictet and the Fondation Privée des Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève.

The jury is out: a new approach to awarding science prizes

Research evaluation is often understood as something similar to a competition, where an evaluation panel’s task is to award the most excellent researchers. This interpretation is challenging, in as far as excellence it is at best a multi-dimensional concept and at worst an ill-defined term because it assumes that there exists some ground truth as to who the very best researchers are and all that an evaluation panel needs to do is uncover this ground truth. Therefore, instead of focusing on competition, the Swiss National Science Foundation focused on active decision-making and sought inspiration in the deliberation proceedings of a jury trial for the design of a new evaluation procedure of an academic award. The new evaluation procedure is based upon fully anonymised documents consisting of three independent parts (achievements, impact and prominence). Before the actual evaluation meeting, the panel, which includes non-academic experts, pre-evaluates all nominations through a pseudo-randomly structured network, such that every nomination is reviewed by six members of the panel only. Evaluation decisions are based upon anonymous votes, structured discussions in the panel, ranking as opposed to rating of nominees and data-rich figures providing an overview of the positioning of the nominee along various dimensions and the ranking provided by the individual panel members. The proceedings are overseen by an academic chair, focusing on content, and a procedural chair, focusing on the process and compliance. Combined, these elements form a highly-structure deliberation procedure, consisting of individual steps, through which nominations proceed and which each either feed into the next step or into the final verdict. The proposed evaluation process has been successfully applied in the real world in the evaluation of the Swiss Science Prize Marcel Benoist, Switzerland’s most prestigious academic award.

The value of research funding for knowledge creation and dissemination: A study of SNSF Research Grants

This study investigates the effect of competitive project funding on researchers’ publication outputs. Using detailed information on applicants at the Swiss National Science Foundation and their proposal evaluations, we employ a case-control design that accounts for individual heterogeneity of researchers and selection into treatment (e.g. funding). We estimate the impact of the grant award on a set of output indicators measuring the creation of new research results (the number of peer-reviewed articles), its relevance (number of citations and relative citation ratios), as well as its accessibility and dissemination as measured by the publication of preprints and by altmetrics. The results show that the funding program facilitates the publication and dissemination of additional research amounting to about one additional article in each of the three years following the funding. The higher citation metrics and altmetrics by funded researchers suggest that impact goes beyond quantity and that funding fosters dissemination and quality.

Special Challenges in dealing the COVID-19 Pandemic in Swiss Prisons

Within a research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation the implementation of COVID-19 prevention strategies in prisons allover Switzerland were focused. This paper presents an example of the prevention strategy of a closed prison, which faced particular challenges in the implementation of social distancing measures due to its special architecture and limited space.<br>

Special Challenges in dealing the COVID-19 Pandemic in Swiss Prisons

Within a research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation the implementation of COVID-19 prevention strategies in prisons allover Switzerland were focused. This paper presents an example of the prevention strategy of a closed prison, which faced particular challenges in the implementation of social distancing measures due to its special architecture and limited space.<br>

098 Effects of Metameric Display-Light on Alertness, Vigilance and Melatonin

Introduction Light emitted from visual displays can acutely increase alertness, improve cognitive performance and suppress melatonin in the evening. Here we tested the influence of different melanopic irradiance levels emitted by a metameric display setting on alertness, vigilance and salivary melatonin levels. Methods In an ongoing study, 37 healthy, male participants have so far completed a 2-week study protocol. Volunteers were assigned to one of four luminance groups which differed in brightness levels (27 cd/m2 - 280 cd/m2). Illuminance ranged between 7 and 85 lx. Within the four groups each volunteer was exposed to a low melanopic (LM) and a high melanopic condition (HM). The LM and HM differed in melanopic irradiance (ca. 3-fold change), but matched in terms of cone excitation (metamers). Before, during and after the light exposure, volunteers performed a psychomotor vigilance task (PVT). Subjective alertness and melatonin levels were continuously measured in half-hourly intervals throughout scheduled wakefulness in the 17-h in lab study. Results Preliminary analysis yielded an overall alerting response in the HM vs. the LM condition (p&lt;0.05) concomitant with a trend of reduced melatonin levels in HM vs. LM (p=0.08). So far, we could not observe a difference in PVT performance for HM and LM (Reaction time responses between 100 and 500 ms). Since we are still lacking statistical power in the ongoing study, we cannot yet satisfactorily interpret interaction effects between melanopic condition and brightness. Conclusion Our data indicate that rather low brightness levels of high melanopic display light impacts alertness and melatonin levels in the evening. Thus, metameric low melanopic display light may be a promising method to attenuate activating properties of evening light on circadian physiology without affecting visual appearance. Support (if any) This project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

The influence of multimodal textualization in the conversion of semiotic representations in Italian primary school geometry textbooks

Starting from the corpus of the Swiss National Science Foundation (FNS) project Italmatica. Understanding Mathematics at school, between common language and specialized language (Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico), an analysis of some examples taken from geometry textbooks used in the Italian primary school is presented. The analysis is based on the application of two intertwined theoretical frameworks: Duval’s semio-cognitive approach, which addresses problems related to mathematics education, and a linguistic approach to multimodal discourse analysis inspired by Bateman. The analysis shows how certain semiotic resources used as rhetorical devices for paraphrastic reformulation (restatement) can support or hinder the semiotic conversion of representations associated with two different semiotic registers (figural and natural language) in print documents with a strong multimodality component.

Protest Event Dataset for Croatia, Portugal, Serbia and Spain

‘Disobedient Democracy: A Comparative Analysis of Contentious Politics in the European Semi-periphery’ is a research project implemented by the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb, in the period 2016-2021, led by Principal Investigator Danijela Dolenec and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (IZ11Z0_166540 – PROMYS). The overall objective of the project is to explore how protest politics advances democracy by collecting and analyzing data on protest mobilizations in four countries: Portugal, Spain, Croatia and Serbia.‎