Online Symptoms Self-Assessment During Covid-19 Pandemic: an Analysis of a Covid-19 Portal Responses from Canada.

Background: Covid-19 case was first identified in Canada on January 25, 2020, on a Toronto resident who had travelled to Wuhan China, and not long after, the WHO declared the viral infection a pandemic. Ontario health West created an online self-assessment portal that allowed individuals in the health region and adjourning areas to report any covid related symptoms.Method: Record level data obtained the Ontario Health West self-assessment portal were analyzed. Descriptive statistics using charts and graphs were used to characterize the distribution of responses to the portal. In-depth analysis using correlation, lead-lag analysis, and trend comparison with actual Public Health Canada covid-19 cases for the region were also conducted.Results: A total of 34,144 distinct responses were recorded on the portal between April 10 and July 29, 2020, with 1,250 (3.7%) responding positively to one of the emergency symptoms questions. Trend analysis showed a peak portal response in May 2020 with a smaller rise subsequently in July 2020, coinciding with actual covid-19 peak in the region. The five most reported symptoms on the portal were sore throat (17.2%), headache (12.9%), fatigue (12.3%), digestive problems (12.2%) and cough (9.1%). For four sub-regions, trend of self-report on the portal positively lagged actual public health covid-19 cases, while for one sub-region, the trend positively led the actual public health covid-19 cases for the area.Conclusion: We found correlation between online covid-19 self- assessment data and the confirmed covid-19 cases in the Southwestern region of Ontario. Trends in the covid-19 associated emergency symptoms reported on the portal also tracked confirmed covid-19 cases in the community. Peak response to the portal coincided with the peak volume of confirmed cases in Ontario during the first wave of covid-19 pandemic in Canada, suggesting some consistency between the experiences of portal users and patterns of COVID-19 illness in the community. The portal was a useful tool at the person-level because it provided guidance to individuals about how to access appropriate health services according to the symptoms that they reported and connected them with primary care, reducing unnecessary visit to health facilities for covid-19 related care.

Helical SiNW design with dual-peak response for broadband scatting in translucent solar cells

Nanowires are widely used in the optics, optoelectronics, photocatalysis and photovoltaic because of its special optical properties. However, the narrow response spectrum of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) reduces the advantages of...

Magnetoencephalography Studies of the Envelope Following Response During Amplitude-Modulated Sweeps: Diminished Phase Synchrony in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Prevailing theories of the neural basis of at least a subset of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) include an imbalance of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission. These circuitry imbalances are commonly probed in adults using auditory steady-state responses (ASSR, driven at 40 Hz) to elicit coherent electrophysiological responses (EEG/MEG) from intact circuitry. Challenges to the ASSR methodology occur during development, where the optimal ASSR driving frequency may be unknown. An alternative approach (more agnostic to driving frequency) is the amplitude-modulated (AM) sweep in which the amplitude of a tone (with carrier frequency 500 Hz) is modulated as a sweep from 10 to 100 Hz over the course of ∼15 s. Phase synchrony of evoked responses, measured via intra-trial coherence, is recorded (by EEG or MEG) as a function of frequency. We applied such AM sweep stimuli bilaterally to 40 typically developing and 80 children with ASD, aged 6–18 years. Diagnoses were confirmed by DSM-5 criteria as well as autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS) observational assessment. Stimuli were presented binaurally during MEG recording and consisted of 20 AM swept stimuli (500 Hz carrier; sweep 10–100 Hz up and down) with a duration of ∼30 s each. Peak intra-trial coherence values and peak response frequencies of source modeled responses (auditory cortex) were examined. First, the phase synchrony or inter-trial coherence (ITC) of the ASSR is diminished in ASD; second, hemispheric bias in the ASSR, observed in typical development (TD), is maintained in ASD, and third, that the frequency at which the peak response is obtained varies on an individual basis, in part dependent on age, and with altered developmental trajectories in ASD vs. TD. Finally, there appears an association between auditory steady-state phase synchrony (taken as a proxy of neuronal circuitry integrity) and clinical assessment of language ability/impairment. We concluded that (1) the AM sweep stimulus provides a mechanism for probing ASSR in an unbiased fashion, during developmental maturation of peak response frequency, (2) peak frequencies vary, in part due to developmental age, and importantly, (3) ITC at this peak frequency is diminished in ASD, with the degree of ITC disturbance related to clinically assessed language impairment.

What the Climber Saw: Strauss's Alpensinfonie and the Romantic Tradition of Nature Representation

Initially criticized for its naïve representation of landscape features, Strauss's Alpensinfonie (1915) has in recent years been reinterpreted by scholars as a deliberate challenge to metaphysics, a late outgrowth of the composer's fascination with Nietzsche. As a consequence, the relationship between Strauss's tone poem and earlier artworks remains underexplored. Strauss in fact relied heavily on long-established tropes of representing mountain scenes, and when this work is situated against a backdrop of similarly themed Romantic paintings, literature, travelogues and musical compositions, many points of resemblance emerge. In this article, I focus on how human responses to mountains are portrayed within artworks. Romantic-era reactions were by no means univocal: mountains elicited overtly religious exhalations, atheistic refutations of all supernatural connections, pantheistic nature-worship, and also artworks which engaged with nature purely in an immanent fashion. Strauss uses a range of strategies to distinguish the climber from the changing scenery he traverses. The ascent in the first half of Eine Alpensinfonie focuses on a virtuoso rendition of landscape in sound, interleaved with suggestions as to the emotional reactions of the protagonist. This immanent perspective on nature would accord well with Strauss's declared atheism. In the climber's response to the sublime experience of the peak, however, I argue that there are marked similarities to the pantheistic divinization of nature such as was espoused by the likes of Goethe, whom Strauss admired enormously. And while Strauss's was an avowedly godless perspective, I will argue in the final section of the article that he casts the climber's post-peak response to the sublime encounter in a parareligious light that again has romantic precedents. There are intimations of romantic transcendence in the latter part of the work, even if these evaporate as the tone poem, and the entire nineteenth-century German instrumental tradition it concludes, fades away into silence.

Online Symptoms Self-Assessment During Covid-19 Pandemic: An Analysis of a Covid-19 Portal Responses from Canada.

BackgroundCovid-19 case was first identified in Canada on January 25, 2020, on a Toronto resident who had travelled to Wuhan China, and not long after, the WHO declared the viral infection a pandemic. Ontario health West created an online self-assessment portal that allowed individuals in the health region and adjourning areas to report any covid related symptoms.MethodRecord level data obtained the Ontario Health West self-assessment portal were analyzed. Descriptive statistics using charts and graphs were used to characterize the distribution of responses to the portal. In-depth analysis using correlation, lead-lag analysis, and trend comparison with actual Public Health Canada covid-19 cases for the region were also conducted.ResultsA total of 34,144 distinct responses were recorded on the portal between April 10 and July 29, 2020, with 1,250 (3.7%) responding positively to one of the emergency symptoms questions. Trend analysis showed a peak portal response in May 2020 with a smaller rise subsequently in July 2020, coinciding with actual covid-19 peak in the region. The five most reported symptoms on the portal were sore throat (17.2%), headache (12.9%), fatigue (12.3%), digestive problems (12.2%) and cough (9.1%). For four sub-regions, trend of self-report on the portal positively lagged actual public health covid-19 cases, while for one sub-region, the trend positively led the actual public health covid-19 cases for the area.ConclusionWe found correlation between online covid-19 self- assessment data and the confirmed covid-19 cases in the Southwestern region of Ontario. Trends in the covid-19 associated emergency symptoms reported on the portal also tracked confirmed covid-19 cases in the community. Peak response to the portal coincided with the peak volume of confirmed cases in Ontario during the first wave of covid-19 pandemic in Canada7, suggesting some consistency between the experiences of portal users and patterns of COVID-19 illness in the community. The portal was a useful tool at the person-level because it provided guidance to individuals about how to access appropriate health services according to the symptoms that they reported and connected them with primary care, reducing unnecessary visit to health facilities for covid-19 related care.

Complete Experimental Investigation for Short Polypropylene Fiber Reinforced Cement Mortars

In this study we investigate the addition of short polypropylene (PP) fibers in cement mortars for a wide volume percentage range. These fibers are dispersed easily in fresh mortar and create a dense network, whereas have as result the cracking reduction during dry shrinkage and the improvement of post peak response. A modified superplasticizer by lignosulfonate polymers basis was used, that keeps at low level the water to cement ratio and thus resulting to an improved mortar’s workability. Compressive strength, three-point flexural strength, drying shrinkage of hardened mortar, flow table test and air content of fresh mortar were studied in a range of volume percentages. The experimental response according to volume percentage was approximated by suitably attached theoretical models. The comparison of the obtained experimental values was done with unreinforced specimens as reference samples. From results elaboration it is concluded that the addition of PP fibers in cementitious mortars improves mortars post-peak response but weaken their compressive and flexural strengths and worsen their workability.

Study on Vibration Response of Layered Media under the Impact Load

To study the vibration response of the layered medium under impact loading, single-layer concrete slabs, multilayer concrete slabs, and multilayer concrete slabs with a cemented filling layer were used as the working media to simulate the layered medium. A large number of impact loading tests were carried out by using a simple drop hammer device designed by us. The experimental results indicate that, under the impact load, the vibration response of the surface of the medium decreases with the increase in the distance to the impact source, showing the law of fast attenuation near field and slow attenuation far field, and the vibration energy moves to the low-frequency component; the vibration response increases with the increase in the impact energy, and the difference in the vibration response caused by the impact energy decreases as the distance increases; the vibration response is negatively correlated with the thickness of the dielectric layer, and the divergence of vibration response caused by impact energy decreases with the increase in the thickness of the dielectric layer. Due to the existence of the free surface and bedding, the vibration response of the layered medium surface increases with the increase in the number of layers and the vibration velocity response increases with the increase in the distance to the impact source when it is close to the free surface and far from the vibration source. For the filling of the cemented layer, the vibration response of the layered concrete slab becomes more complex under impact loading, showing obvious disorder. At the same time, this paper also used the dimensional analysis method to establish the calculation model of the peak response of vibration velocity of layered media under the impact load, which provided an idea for determining the peak response of vibration velocity of the layered media.

Selection of random vibration theory procedures for the NGA-East project and ground-motion modeling

Traditional ground-motion models (GMMs) are used to compute pseudo-spectral acceleration (PSA) from future earthquakes and are generally developed by regression of PSA using a physics-based functional form. PSA is a relatively simple metric that correlates well with the response of several engineering systems and is a metric commonly used in engineering evaluations; however, characteristics of the PSA calculation make application of scaling factors dependent on the frequency content of the input motion, complicating the development and adaptability of GMMs. By comparison, Fourier amplitude spectrum (FAS) represents ground-motion amplitudes that are completely independent from the amplitudes at other frequencies, making them an attractive alternative for GMM development. Random vibration theory (RVT) predicts the peak response of motion in the time domain based on the FAS and a duration, and thus can be used to relate FAS to PSA. Using RVT to compute the expected peak response in the time domain for given FAS therefore presents a significant advantage that is gaining traction in the GMM field. This article provides recommended RVT procedures relevant to GMM development, which were developed for the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA)-East project. In addition, an orientation-independent FAS metric—called the effective amplitude spectrum (EAS)—is developed for use in conjunction with RVT to preserve the mean power of the corresponding two horizontal components considered in traditional PSA-based modeling (i.e., RotD50). The EAS uses a standardized smoothing approach to provide a practical representation of the FAS for ground-motion modeling, while minimizing the impact on the four RVT properties ( zeroth moment, [Formula: see text]; bandwidth parameter, [Formula: see text]; frequency of zero crossings, [Formula: see text]; and frequency of extrema, [Formula: see text]). Although the recommendations were originally developed for NGA-East, they and the methodology they are based on can be adapted to become portable to other GMM and engineering problems requiring the computation of PSA from FAS.

Antibody titers decline 3-month post-vaccination with BNT612b2

Introduction: Several studies reported on the humoral response in subjects having received theBNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. However, data on the kinetics of antibodies 3 months postvaccinationare currently lacking and are important to drive the future vaccination strategy.Methods: The CRO-VAX HCP study is an ongoing multicenter, prospective and interventional studydesigned to assess the antibody response in a population of healthcare professionals who had receivedtwo doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Two-hundred individuals underwent a blooddrawn within 2 days before the first vaccine dose. One-hundred and forty-two persons (71%) werecategorized as seronegative at baseline while 58 (29%) were seropositive. Samples were then collectedafter 14, 28, 42, 56, and 90 days. Antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid and the receptorbinding domain of the S1 subunit of the spike protein were measured in all individuals at different timepoints.Results: Using a one-compartment kinetics model, the time to maximum concentration was estimatedat 36 ± 3 days after the first dose and the estimated half-life of antibodies was 55 days (95% CI: 37-107days) in seronegative participants. In seropositive participants, the time to maximum concentrationwas estimated at 24 ± 4 days and the estimated half-life was 80 days (95% CI: 46-303 days). Theantibody response was higher in seropositive compared to seronegative participants.Conclusion: In both seropositive and seronegative subjects, a significant antibody decline wasobserved at 3 months compared to the peak response. Nevertheless, the humoral response remainedrobust in all participants.