Biosecurity and post-arrival pathways in New Zealand: relating alien organism detections to tourism indicators

Between-country tourism is established as a facilitator of the spread of invasive alien species; however, little attention has been paid to the question of whether tourism contributes to the arrival and subsequent dispersal of exotic organisms within national borders. To assess the strength of evidence that tourism is a driver for the accidental introducing and dispersal of exotic organisms, we sourced three national databases covering the years 2011 to 2017, namely international and domestic hotel guest nights and national population counts, along with records of exotic organism detections collected by the Ministry for Primary Industries, New Zealand’s government agency that oversees biosecurity. We fitted statistical models to assess the strength of the relationship between monthly exotic organism interception rate, guest nights and population, the latter as a baseline. The analysis showed that levels of incursion detection were significantly related to tourism records reflecting the travel of both international and domestic tourists, even when population was taken into account. There was also a significant positive statistical correlation between the levels of detection of exotic organisms and human population. The core take-home message is that a key indicator of within-country human population movement, namely the number of nights duration spent in specific accommodation, is statistically significantly correlated to the contemporaneous detection of exotic pests. We were unable to distinguish between the effects of international as opposed to domestic tourists. We conclude that this study provides evidence of impact of within-country movement upon the internal spread of exotic species, although important caveats need to be considered.

Perceived Trust and Confidence for Cryptocurrency Adoption

This chapter seeks to examine the influence of public perceptions of trust in people and confidence in institutions on cryptocurrency adoption, taking into account the individual-level demographic factors and the regional-level contextual factors. Data is obtained from three large-scale international surveys and national databases and analyzed using R software. The multivariate results demonstrate that individuals' public perceptions of trust and confidence significantly contribute to cryptocurrency adoption. Lower perceived trust in people and higher perceived confidence in civil service and international regulatory bodies increase cryptocurrency adoption, while perceived confidence in political and financial institutions discourages cryptocurrency adoption. Additionally, the univariate results find significant comparisons of gender and perceived trust differences on the predictors of cryptocurrency adoption. This chapter discusses and provides insights on the social impact and future of cryptocurrency adoption, particularly among the upper- and lower-middle-income countries.

Safety of the single-dose Ad26.CoV2.S vaccine among healthcare workers in the phase 3b Sisonke study in South Africa

Background: The Sisonke openlabel phase 3b implementation study aimed to assess the safety and effectiveness of the Janssen Ad26.CoV2.S vaccine among health care workers (HCWs) in South Africa. Here, we present the safety data. Methods: We monitored adverse events (AEs) at vaccination sites, through self reporting triggered by text messages after vaccination, health care provider reports and by active case finding. The frequency and incidence rate of non serious and serious AEs were evaluated from day of first vaccination (17 February 2021) until 28 days after the final vaccination (15 June 2021). COVID 19 breakthrough infections, hospitalisations and deaths were ascertained via linkage of the electronic vaccination register with existing national databases. Findings: Of 477,234 participants, 10,279 (2.2%) reported AEs, of which 139 (1.4%) were serious. Women reported more AEs than men (2.3% vs. 1.6%). AE reports decreased with increasing age (3.2% for 18 to 30, 2.1% for 31 to 45, 1.8% for 46 to 55 and 1.5% in >55 year olds). Participants with previous COVID 19 infection reported slightly more AEs (2.6% vs. 2.1%). The commonest reactogenicity events were headache and body aches, followed by injection site pain and fever, and most occurred within 48 hours of vaccination. Two cases of Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome and four cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome were reported post-vaccination. Serious AEs and AEs of special interest including vascular and nervous system events, immune system disorders and deaths occurred at lower than the expected population rates. Interpretation: The single-dose Ad26.CoV2.S vaccine had an acceptable safety profile supporting the continued use of this vaccine in our setting.

Broadband Market Sizing in Brazil

The objective of this study is to predict the potential broadband market in Brazil. This is done by combining information from two national databases: the 2010 census and the 2015 PNAD (National Household Survey). The 2015 PNAD is used to estimate the probability of the household accessing internet by broadband technology, using a logit regression. The broadband market is predicted using the estimated model with the same covariates found in the 2010 census. The prediction indicated a potential market of 45 million households, an additional of 6 million households in relation to the current situation. The new size of the broadband market is estimated if there is a 10% increase in the average penetration of broadband services in the main metropolitan areas. In this scenario, the new market covers 50.7 million households.

Curation of Digital Archaeological Data in Norway

Archaeological documentation from surveys and excavations in Norway are created by a limited number of actors. Excavations are mainly carried out by the five university museums. NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Research) is responsible for excavations of medieval cities and churches. Maritime museums excavate in lakes, rivers, and below past and present sea level. Archaeological surveys are mainly the responsibility of the counties. Riksantikvaren (Directorate of National Heritage) is responsible for the national Historic Environment Records (HER), Askeladden, which offers the possibility to upload or insert links to reports from archaeological investigations. Riksantikvaren also archives excavation documentation from churches and medieval cities. The Norwegian university museums have, since the 1990s, cooperated on digitising a national repository and making the collections available online. Presently there are also repositories at the maritime museums, Riksantikvaren and the counties. The infrastructure ADED (Archaeological Digital Excavation Documentation) is a repository for detailed excavation documentation, and the BItFROST infrastructure project contributes to better storage and availability of 3D data. Future development will be more complete national databases, and towards closer international cooperation, creating better integration and availability of several repositories.

Intersectionality of Age And Air Pollution On The Use of Medical Care: National Data From Taiwan

This study uses an intersectionality lens to understand the inequality of medical use at the intersection of age and air pollution. Using national databases from Taiwan, the results show that the increase of the level of air pollution and age is related to higher percentage of high medical use. Through stratified analysis, we found that there is no significant difference in medical use among different age groups in low AQI (Air Quality Index) areas, Yet, in areas with increasing amounts of polluted air, the elderly have a significantly higher percentage in frequent medical use. Our results show that the elderly people are more susceptible to air pollution, and suggest that, to protect their health and reduce the use of medical care, not only is there a need to reduce air pollution, but also maintain the annual average AQI level to under the value of 50.

Cutaneous Vascular Neoplasms of Uncertain Biological Behavior

Neoplasms of uncertain biological behavior present physicians with a genuine conundrum in practice. Cutaneous vascular neoplasms within this category are exceedingly rare, possessing significant gaps and uncertainty in many facets of clinical practice. Firstly, lesions were selected for review based on their categorization as indeterminate behavior, indicating the potential for local recurrence and rarely metastasize. After identification of the target lesions, a comprehensive review of the literature using national databases produced several landmark studies and case series regarding these neoplasms. Limiting the review to only cutaneous limited tumors narrowed the pool of studies; however, quite a large sum of papers remained. Examination of each paper yielded beneficial results on diagnosing, effective treatments, follow-up findings, and prognosis for each indeterminate lesion discussed. Overall, the literature search combined the molecular, histologic, immunohistochemical, surgical strategies to develop an up-to-date and comprehensive framework to guide physicians when encountering such lesions. The tumors reviewed include: kaposiform hemangioendothelioma, endovascular papillary angioendothelioma, pseudomyogenic hemangioendothelioma, retiform hemangioendothelioma, epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, and composite hemangioendothelioma.

A global open-source database of flood-protection levees on river deltas (openDELvE)

Flood-protection levees have been built along rivers and coastlines globally. Current datasets, however, are generally confined to territorial boundaries (national datasets) and are not always easily accessible, posing limitations for hydrologic models and assessments of flood hazard. Here we present our work to develop a single, open-source global river delta levee data environment (openDELvE) which aims to bridge a data deficiency by collecting and standardising global flood-protection levee data for river deltas. In openDELvE we have aggregated data from national databases as well as data stored in reports, maps, and satellite imagery. The database identifies the river delta land areas that the levees have been designed to protect, and where additional data is available, we record the extent and design specifications of the levees themselves (e.g., levee height, crest width, construction material) in a harmonised format. openDELvE currently contains 5,089 km of levees on deltas, and 44,733.505 km2 of leveed area in 1,601 polygons. For the 152 deltas included in openDELvE, on average 19 % of their habitable land area is confined by verifiable flood-protection levees. Globally, we estimate that between 5 % and 54 % of all delta land is confined by flood-protection levees. The data is aligned to the recent standards of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reuse of scientific data (FAIR) and is open-source. openDELvE is made public on an interactive platform (www.opendelve.eu), which includes a community-driven revision tool to encourage inclusion of new levee data and continuous improvement and refinement of open-source levee data.