Exposure Factors Associated With SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence During the First Eight Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Netherlands: A Cross-sectional Study

BackgroundThe availability of valid SARS-CoV-2 serological tests overcome the problem of underestimated cumulative COVID-19 cases during the first months of the pandemic in The Netherlands. This enabled us to study a wide variety of demographic, behavioural and social exposure factors associated with seropositivity during the first eight months of the pandemic in Limburg, The Netherlands. MethodsSARS-CoV-2 point-seroprevalence was determined cross-sectionally to indicate previous infection in a convenience sample of 10,000 inhabitants of the study province. Possible exposure factors were mapped by means of an extensive questionnaire. Associated exposure factors were determined using uni- and multivariable logistic regression models.ResultsSeropositivity was established in 19.5% (n=1,948) of the 10,001 participants (on average 49 years old (SD=15; range 18-90 years), majority women (n=5,829; 58.3%). Exposure factors associated with seropositivity included current education, working in healthcare and not working from home, and being a member of three or four associations or clubs. Specifically for February-March 2020, visiting an après-ski bar during winter sports in Austria, travelling to Spain, celebrating carnival, and participating in a singing activity or ball sport were associated with seropositivity. ConclusionsOur results confirm that relevant COVID-19 exposure factors generally reflected circumstances where social distancing was impossible, and the number and duration of contacts was high, in particular for indoor activities.

Imagination and evolution of taste

Taste is a complex biological, cultural and even psychological phenomenon. We can trace both significant differences and significant similarities in taste quite easily, if we observe human communities in different regions, countries and continents. For example, it is no surprise that most of us share a passion for sweet taste and might dislike bitter or sour. At different ages, people appreciate a variety of foods and drinks and preferences usually change due to physical and social exposure to a given diet. One thing that remains clear is that our taste constantly evolves, notwithstanding whether we discuss taste as a personal system of preferences or if we analyze it as a social convention of favoured sensory experiences. The evolution of taste is a multidirectional process and its roots can be traced back to biology, geography, cultural and social studies, religion, etc. However, in the current paper we will focus on a less examined perspective which seems to offer a fruitful research direction. How does thinking and creativity influence the evolution of taste? How important is our imagination in the taste formation process? Are we able to create an unprecedented dish or we are obliged to follow certain rules and predispositions in our creative culinary experiments? In order to answer these questions, we will start by looking at imagination itself. We will trace this idea back to Aristotle and Kant to define the essence of this controversial philosophical concept and to specify its function in reasoning. Then we will analyze certain aspects of creativity in taste, in order to observe the evolution of certain culinary tendencies. Last but not least we will focus on the influence of social media and the digital communication. Does digital living today improve the culinary imagination or not? Is the culinary evolution in the XXI century triggered by the social media and ease of access to information online?

Penggunaan Virtual Reality Exposure terhadap Simtom Fobia Sosial pada Mahasiswa Saat Melakukan Public Speaking

Fobia sosial atau kecemasan sosial merupakan rasa takut yang berlebihan pada situasi sosial. Rasa takut ini terkadang menimbulkan permasalahan dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui perubahan tingkat fobia sosial dan respons fisiologis yang terjadi pada mahasiswa saat diberikan paparan/eksposur berupa social exposure lingkungan virtual. Hipotesis pada penelitian ini adalah terdapat pengaruh signifikan virtual reality exposure terhadap perubahan respons fisiologis dan tingkat fobia sosial pada mahasiswa pada kelompok yang diberi perlakuan. Metode penelitian menggunakan desain eksperimen pretest-posttest control design dengan rancangan penelitian berupa mixed design. Terdapat 41 partisipan yang memenuhi kriteria penelitian. Partisipan dibagi ke dalam kelompok eksperimen (n= 21) dan kelompok kontrol (n= 20). Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan terdiri dari skala Social Anxiety Disorder Dimensional (SAD-D) dan Self-Statements During Public Speaking (SSPS) serta Biofeedback Procomp5 Infiniti. Analisis data menggunakan teknik mixed ANOVA. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa terjadi peningkatan simtom fobia sosial pada kelompok eksperimen secara tidak signifikan dan terjadi penurunan secara signifikan pada kelompok kontrol (p < 0,05). Implikasi dari penelitian ini diharapkan dapat memberikan informasi kepada penelitian selanjutnya dalam memberikan perlakuan pada partisipan yang mengalami kecemasan sosial dengan metode eksposur lingkungan virtual.

Social experience dependent plasticity of mouse song selectivity without that of song components

Syllable sequences in male mouse ultrasonic-vocalizations (USVs), songs, contain structure - quantified through predictability, like birdsong and aspects of speech. Apparent USV innateness and lack of learnability, discount mouse USVs for modelling speech-like social communication and its deficits. Informative contextual natural sequences (SN) were theoretically extracted and they were preferred by female mice. Primary auditory cortex (A1) supragranular neurons show differential selectivity to the same syllables in SN and random sequences (SR). Excitatory neurons (EXNs) in females showed increases in selectivity to whole SNs over SRs based on extent of social exposure with male, but syllable selectivity remained unchanged. Thus mouse A1 single neurons adaptively represent entire order of acoustic units without altering selectivity of individual units, fundamental to speech perception. Additionally, observed plasticity was replicated with silencing of somatostatin positive neurons, which had plastic effects opposite to EXNs, thus pointing out possible pathways involved in perception of sound sequences.

Trends in social exposure to SARS–Cov–2 in France. Evidence from the national socio-epidemiological cohort – EPICOV

Background: We aimed to study whether social patterns of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 infection changed in France throughout the year 2020, in light to the easing of social contact restrictions. Methods: A population-based cohort of individuals aged 15 years or over was randomly selected from the national tax register to collect socio-economic data, migration history, and living conditions in May and November 2020. Home self-sampling on dried blood was proposed to a 10% random subsample in May and to all in November. A positive anti-SARS-CoV-2 ELISA IgG result against the virus spike protein (ELISA-S) was the primary outcome. The design, including sampling and post-stratification weights, was taken into account in univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: Of the 134,391 participants in May, 107,759 completed the second questionnaire in November, and respectively 12,114 and 63,524 were tested. The national ELISA-S seroprevalence was 4.5% [95%CI: 4.0%-5.1%] in May and 6.2% [5.9%-6.6%] in November. It increased markedly in 18-24-year-old population from 4.8% to 10.0%, and among second-generation immigrants from outside Europe from 5.9% to 14.4%. This group remained strongly associated with seropositivity in November, after controlling for any contextual or individual variables, with an adjusted OR of 2.1 [1.7-2.7], compared to the majority population. In both periods, seroprevalence remained higher in healthcare professions than in other occupations. Conclusion: The risk of Covid-19 infection increased among young people and second-generation migrants between the first and second epidemic waves, in a context of less strict social restrictions, which seems to have reinforced territorialized socialization among peers.

Variability of social interactions in new versus established relationships in female degus

When a behaving system explores a new environment or stimulus it varies its behavior to ensure proper sampling. As contingencies are learned, behavioral variance can give-way to routines and stereotypies. This phenomenon is common across a range of learning systems, but has not been well studied in the social domain in which the stimulus an agent investigates, another individual, is reactive to the agent’s behaviors. We examined the effects of social novelty on interaction variability in laboratory-reared, female degus, known to readily express affiliative behaviors with initially unfamiliar, unrelated individuals. Degus were presented with a series of 20 minute, dyadic “reunion” sessions across days, interleaving exposures to familiar and unfamiliar same-sex conspecifics. We found that dyads could be distinguished from one-another by their interactive behaviors, suggesting dyad-specific social relationships. Following the first session, stranger dyads were unexpectedly easier to differentiate than cagemates due to a combination of higher diversity of behavior between dyads and, in some cases, lower variability within dyads. Some evidence could be found for higher variability in stranger interactions within the first two exposures, though within-session variability increased in cagemates across reunions, ultimately exceeding levels in strangers. We also observed that while strangers interacted more than cagemates, this could be traced to only 30% of the animals and the higher interaction levels did not attenuate over sessions or after co-housing the animals. No strong differences were observed in the temporal structure of social behavior between the two groups. Results reveal that new relationships in adult, female degus are more diverse but not more variable compared with established relationships, particularly after the first social exposure. Given known tendencies of female degus to form and maintain new relationships, these findings are consistent with the notion that higher interaction variability may be maladaptive to building social coordination and trust.

Mining Users Rely on E-Commerce

In recent years, photo-based social media has become one of the most common social media platforms. Understanding user preferences in user-generated images and making suggestions has become a major necessity due to the large number of images uploaded daily. Several types of hybrids have been suggested to improve the performance of the recommendations by combining different types of third-party information (e.g., image representation, interaction) with user object history. Previous research, however, has failed to incorporate complex factors that affect user preferences into the corresponding framework due to various image features created by users on social media. In addition, many of these hybrid models have used pre-defined weights to combine different types of data, resulting in less favorable performance. To this end, we present a consistent model for capturing public imagery in this paper. We define three key elements (i.e., upload history, social exposure, and proprietary information) that affect each user's preferences, where each item summarizes the content aspect from complex interactions between users and images, in addition to the basic matrix interest model matrix factorization proposal. After that, we create a consecutive natural attention network that demonstrates a consistent relationship between hidden user interests and known key elements (elements at each level and feature level). A sequential attention network will learn to pay attention to more or less content using embedding from higher learning models designed for each type of data. Finally, the availability of extensive tests on real-world information indicates that our proposed model is superior.

COVID-19 mitigation by digital contact tracing and contact prevention (app-based social exposure warnings)

A plethora of measures are being combined in the attempt to reduce SARS-CoV-2 spread. Due to its sustainability, contact tracing is one of the most frequently applied interventions worldwide, albeit with mixed results. We evaluate the performance of digital contact tracing for different infection detection rates and response time delays. We also introduce and analyze a novel strategy we call contact prevention, which emits high exposure warnings to smartphone users according to Bluetooth-based contact counting. We model the effect of both strategies on transmission dynamics in SERIA, an agent-based simulation platform that implements population-dependent statistical distributions. Results show that contact prevention remains effective in scenarios with high diagnostic/response time delays and low infection detection rates, which greatly impair the effect of traditional contact tracing strategies. Contact prevention could play a significant role in pandemic mitigation, especially in developing countries where diagnostic and tracing capabilities are inadequate. Contact prevention could thus sustainably reduce the propagation of respiratory viruses while relying on available technology, respecting data privacy, and most importantly, promoting community-based awareness and social responsibility. Depending on infection detection and app adoption rates, applying a combination of digital contact tracing and contact prevention could reduce pandemic-related mortality by 20–56%.

Teaching Young Children to Make Bids to Play to Peers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Peer-mediated intervention (PMI) within the inclusive early childhood setting increases social exposure between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing peers. However, PMI research to date has provided limited data on the adherence of strategies taught to typically developing peers during training. The present study examined the extent to which a packaged intervention consisting of video modeling (VM) was an effective tool to promote bids to play by typically developing peers to children with ASD during unstructured indoor and outdoor play. A multiple probe across participants design demonstrated that all three typically developing peers learned to invite children with ASD to play after observing video models and children with ASD increased independent responses to initiations with least-to-most prompting from an adult.