The COVID States Project #63: The decision to not get vaccinated, from the perspective of the unvaccinated

This report examines the decision to not get vaccinated (yet) from the perspective of the unvaccinated. That is, obviously, no one is avoiding vaccination because they do not value their health or the health of others. So: what are the primary reasons for the choice to not get vaccinated (yet), from the perspective of those not getting vaccinated? In order to get at this critical issue, for the two waves of our survey conducted April through July, we included closed and open ended survey questions. We focus on 6 categories of answers that people might provide:Life constraints – For example, unable to get to a location to get vaccinated; employment circumstances do not permit taking time off to get the shot(s), or to accommodate side effects.Perception of benefit – Perception that COVID does not pose a major risk to them.Perception of risk – Affirmative beliefs that the vaccine poses a health risk.Uncertainty regarding the risks the vaccine poses – In particular, because of the newness of the vaccines, faster-than-usual development times, and/or lack of testing.Lack of trust in institutions – That the various institutions attesting to the safety of the vaccines are not to be trusted.Fear of needles – That the respondent’s fear of needles is deterring them from getting vaccinated.

3D SKETCHES IN VIRTUAL REALITY AND THEIR EFFECT ON DEVELOPMENT TIMES

In the product development process, digital support continues to advance. Some work steps during product development are still carried out without assistance. Sketch creation is one of these. Therefore, the content created here is rarely documented due to the effort required for digital transformation. An alternative can be sketching in virtual reality. This article explores whether 3D sketching in VR enables faster sketching and can offer the basic features of hand-drawn sketches. To verify this, a tool for 3D sketching was developed. 27 test subjects were asked to solve one out of two different design tasks using this tool. The experiments were evaluated using video coding to identify the subjects actions. The created solutions have been analyzed about quality. The study showed initial indications that sketching in VR generally enables faster processing while maintaining the same solution quality.

Why do We Use the Concepts of Adult Anesthesia Pharmacology in Developing Brains? Will It Have an Impact on Outcomes? Challenges in Neuromonitoring and Pharmacology in Pediatric Anesthesia

Background: Pediatric sedation and anesthesia techniques have plenty of difficulties and challenges. Data on the pharmacologic, electroencephalographic, and neurologic response to anesthesia at different brain development times are only partially known. New data in neuroscience, pharmacology, and intraoperative neuromonitoring will impact changing concepts and clinical practice. In this article, we develop a conversation to guide the debate and search for a view more attuned to the updated knowledge in neurodevelopment, electroencephalography, and clinical pharmacology for the anesthesiologic practice in the pediatric population.

Pre-market development times for innovative vaccines – to what extent are the COVID-19 vaccines outliers?

One reason expressed in surveys of people reporting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is how rapidly these vaccines have reached the market. To estimate the length of time the COVID-19 vaccine spent in research and development as compared to other novel vaccines, we apply previously-established methods for estimating medical product development times, using the earliest associated patent filings cited by the manufacturer as the marker of when commercial development activity began. Applying these methods to a cohort of recently approved innovative vaccines and comparing them to the development time of the first-approved COVID-19 vaccine (BioNTech/Pfizer), we found patent filings for the technology in this COVID-19 vaccine occurred 10.0 years prior to regulatory authorization. Furthermore, the development timelines for innovative vaccines have been shortening since the 1980s and the COVID-19 vaccine comfortably fits within this pattern. Vaccine development timelines have now even drawn to parity with many of the most commonly-used drugs.

A Dynamic Energy Budget Approach for the Prediction of Development Times and Variability in Spodoptera frugiperda Rearing

A major challenge in insect rearing is the need to provide certain life cycle stages at a given time for the initiation of experimental trials. The timing of delivery, organism quality, and variability directly affect the outcome of such trials. Development times and intraspecific variability are directly linked to the availability of food and to the ambient temperature. Varying temperature regimes is an approach to adapt development times to fulfill experimental needs without impairment of larval quality. However, current practices of temperature setting may lead to increased variability in terms of development times and the frequency of particular life stages at a given point in time. In this study, we analyzed how resource availability and ambient temperature may affect the larval development of the economically important noctuid species Spodoptera frugiperda by means of dynamic energy budget modeling. More specifically, we analyzed how rearing practices such as raising of temperatures may affect the variability in larval development. Overall, the presented modeling approach provides a support system for decisions that must be made for the timely delivery of larvae and reduction of variability.

The Effects of Temperature and Host Stage on Development Rate of Parasitoids of Giant Whitefly Aleurodicus dugesii (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae)

The effects of rearing temperature and host stage parasitized on the development of three parasitoid species; Encarsia noyesi Hayat (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), Idioporus affinis LaSalle & Polaszek (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), and Entedononecremnus krauteri Zolnerowich & Rose (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) were investigated. These parasitoids are part of the biological control program for the giant whitefly Aleurodicus dugesii Cockerell (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) in the United States. Temperature and host-dependent development was assessed for each species using the nonlinear Brière-1 model and simple linear regression to obtain critical thermal parameters. All three parasitoids successfully developed at constant temperatures ranging from 15°C to 30°C, which was narrower to their predicted thermal limits due to thermal constraints of A. dugesii. There were significant effects of both temperature and A. dugesii nymphal stage parasitized on immature parasitoid development times. All three parasitoid species’ development time decreased as nymphal stage age increased. Thermal tolerance limits and development times varied by parasitoid species. The results of these findings in the context of biological control potential are discussed.