National-scale surveillance of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater

SARS-CoV-2 surveillance is crucial to identify variants with altered epidemiological properties. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) provides an unbiased and complementary approach to sequencing individual cases. Yet, national WBE surveillance programs have not been widely implemented and data analyses remain challenging. We deep-sequenced 2,093 wastewater samples representing 95 municipal catchments, covering >57% of Austria's population, from December 2020 to September 2021. Our Variant Quantification in Sewage pipeline designed for Robustness (VaQuERo) enabled us to deduce variant abundance from complex wastewater samples and delineate the spatiotemporal dynamics of the dominant Alpha and Delta variants as well as regional clusters of other variants of concern. These results were cross validated by epidemiological records of >130,000 individual cases. Finally, we provide a framework to predict emerging variants de novo and infer variant-specific reproduction numbers from wastewater. This study demonstrates the power of national-scale WBE to support public health and promises particular value for countries without dense individual monitoring.

Key Issues for Realizing Open Ecoacoustic Monitoring in Australia

Many organizations are attempting to scale ecoacoustic monitoring for conservation but are hampered at the stages of data management and analysis. We reviewed current ecoacoustic hardware, software, and standards, and conducted workshops with 23 participants across 10 organizations in Australia to learn about their current practices, and to identify key trends and challenges in their use of ecoacoustics data. We found no existing metadata schemas that contain enough ecoacoustics terms for current practice, and no standard approaches to annotation. There was a strong need for free acoustics data storage, discoverable learning resources, and interoperability with other ecological modeling tools. In parallel, there were tensions regarding intellectual property management, and siloed approaches to studying species within organizations across different regions and between organizations doing similar work. This research contributes directly to the development of an open ecoacoustics platform to enable the sharing of data, analyses, and tools for environmental conservation.

Synthesis and Characterization of Feed-Grade Monocalcium Phosphate Ca(H2PO4)2·H2O from Oyster Shell

Oyster shells are considered as a byproduct or solid waste in mariculture or related food processing areas that face a major disposal problem at the landfill in coastal regions for sustainable development. Oyster shell is composed mostly of CaCO3, and it is also considered as a secondary source of calcium for various applications. In this paper, we extracted the calcium carbonate from oyster shell and used it as the source of calcium for the preparation of feed-grade monocalcium phosphate (MCP). The investigation shows that the heavy metal contents in oyster shells as well as in the synthesized MCP are extremely low, and the synthesized product meets the requirements for the European Union (EU) maximum limits applied for feed additives. The XRD, TG, and IR data analyses confirmed that the synthesized product is monocalcium phosphate.

Child Swaddling or Back Wrapping During Street Trading

The study is premised on social responsibility and social epidemiological theories and examined the exposure of back-wrapped babies to health risk during street trading. Data were collected using structured face-to-face interviews and snowballing techniques among 228 Street trading women (with children aged ≤ 11 months), in one local government area of Ogun State, Nigeria. Data analyses involved univariate and multivariate methods. The results show that 58.3% of women interviewed wrapped their babies at their back while trading on the streets, ≥80% were not aware of any campaign against baby back-wrapping, 35% viewed baby back-wrapping as medicinal for the baby, and as traditional practice (59.2%). The multivariate analysis revealed that children wrapped while trading on the street are at higher risk of exposure to illness than those not back wrapped (OR=1.778, p=0.042). The authors suggested media campaign against back-wrapping baby while trading on the street to reduce exposure to diseases, mortalities and possibly achievement of sustainable development goal (SDG-3).

Citizen as Sensors' Commitment in Urban Public Action

Based on a case study in Rennes, the article presents how a group of urban public actors re-uses methods and technology from citizen sciences to raise the urban air quality issue in the public debate. The project gives a group of inhabitants the opportunity to follow air quality training and proceed PM2.5µm measurements. The authors question the impact of the ongoing hybridisation between citizen science and urban public action on participants' commitment. The authors present how the use of PM2.5-sensors during 11 weeks led to a disengagement phenomenon, even if the authors observe a strong participation to workshops. These results come from an interdisciplinary methodology using observations, interviews, and data analyses.

EXAMPLES OF QUANTUM IT IN NEW TECHNOLOGIES OF COMPUTATION

The paper includes definitions of elements of quantum IT referred to classical technologies of computation. It explains the principles of transformation of calculating algorithms to the domain of quantum computations using the optimisation and matrix calculus. Exemplary applications of classical algorithms are presented with possibilities of their realisation in domain of quantum IT. Autor presents some possibilities for using quantum algorithms in new computation technologies concerning quantum cryptography and data analyses with complex computations.

CULTURE AND ACCOUNTABILITY

The purpose of the present paper is to explore the relationship between the level of accountability and political culture. In doing so, we do not simply rely on a conceptualization of (political) culture as religion or religious denominations, but also as civicness, familism, secularism and post¬materialism. The results of our data analyses suggest two broad considerations: first, that culture matters and, second, that some aspects of culture are more important than others. Specifically our data analyses reveal that accountability is more sensitive to civicness, post-materialism, and years of democratic rule than it is to familism or the pervasiveness of Christianity. Finally, our data analyses reveal that these facets of (political) culture have a greater impact on accountability than some institutional factors such as the form of government.