COVID-19 was first identified in Wuhan City in December 2019 and spread throughout Hubei Province and other parts of China. After causing significant morbidity and mortality in China, by February 2020, it had spread to numerous other countries, infecting millions of people and causing a large number of deaths across the world. The COVID-19 pandemic put a burden on almost all areas of the world inc

Epidemics and pandemics are associated with a variety of life-threatening conditions and have serious effects on physical as well as mental wellbeing. The Covid-19 pandemic raised the same difficulties for public and private sectors including schools, businesses, healthcare sectors, etc. The disease, which originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019, has ravaged nearly every country in the world.

Background/Objective: Growth and obesity have been associated with increased risk of islet autoimmunity (IA) and progression to type 1 diabetes. We aimed to estimate the effect of energy-yielding macronutrient intake on the development of IA through BMI. Research Design and Methods: Genetically at-risk children (n = 5,084) in Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the USA, who were autoantibody negative at

Mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is a heart valve disease that is often familial, affecting 2%–3% of the general population. MVP with or without mitral regurgitation can be associated with an increased risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death (SCD). Research on familial MVP has specifically focused on genetic factors, which may explain the heritable component of the disease estimated to

In this work, we consider the problem of estimating the directions of arrival of far-field sources impinging on a sensor array using a computationally efficient approach. A novel adaptive grid selection technique is employed to reduce the dimensionality of the used dictionary matrix. The method further makes use of a SPICE-inspired dictionary to adaptively select an appropriate regularization para

BACKGROUND: Early conduct problems and school failure are prominent risk factors for several adverse outcomes in later life. With the potential of reaching many children at early stages of their life, school-based interventions constitute a valuable approach to universal prevention. Good behavior game (GBG) is a promising school-based behavior management program, having shown immediate reductions

This is the ninth yearly article in the Tourette Syndrome Research Highlights series, summarizing selected research reports from 2022 relevant to Tourette syndrome. The authors briefly summarize reports they consider most important or interesting.

We formulate a version of the low-scale Majoron model equipped with an inverse seesaw mechanism featuring lepton-number preserving dimension-6 operators in the scalar potential. Contrary to its dimension-4 counterpart, we find that the model can simultaneously provide light and ultralight Majorons, neutrino masses and their mixing, while featuring strong first-order cosmological phase transitions

The Fokker-Planck Equation (FPE) is a fundamental tool for the investigation of kinematic aspects of a wide range of systems. The Plastino-Plastino Equation (PPE) is the correct generalization describing the kinematic evolution of complex systems consistent with q-statistics. In the present work, we use this particular problem to compare the results obtained with the FPE and the PPE, and discuss t

This work presents an analysis of fractional derivatives and fractal derivatives, discussing their differences and similarities. The fractal derivative is closely connected to Haussdorff’s concepts of fractional dimension geometry. The paper distinguishes between the derivative of a function on a fractal domain and the derivative of a fractal function, where the image is a fractal space. Different

This thesis emanates from the discursive gap between a medical discourse andexperience-driven knowledges in mental health aspects of hormonal contraceptives.The tensions and fractures between a medical discourse focusing on contraceptiveeffectiveness and largely refuting any significant adverse outcomes, and experiencebasednarratives of commonplace detrimental, or at least unwelcome and unpleasant

Planning of neighborhoods that efficiently implement active solar systems (e.g., solar thermal technologies, photovoltaics) and passive solar strategies (e.g., daylight control, sunlight access through optimized buildings' morphology, cool pavements, greeneries) is increasingly important to achieve positive energy and carbon neutrality targets, as well as to create livable urban spaces. In that re

Corrosion results in huge annual costs and a large environmental footprint. The corrosion rate of some alloys can be made negligible by the presence of a spontaneously forming oxide film on the surface, a so-called passive film. Famous examples of alloys exhibiting passivity are stainless steels. However, in some demanding applications, stainless steel does not provide significant corrosion resist

Listening in public diplomacy is a rather new topic in academic discussions. Early public diplomacy scholarship was dominated, and in large degree continues to be dominated, by a focus on crafting messages and influencing. The more recent focus on relationship management and collaborative public diplomacy allowed for discussions about another role for listening. Yet, as some scholars pointed out,

Aim: To determine the prevalence of neurobehavioral symptoms at 6.5 years in children born extremely preterm (EPT,

The common pathogen Group A Streptococcus (GAS, Streptococcus pyogenes) is an extracellular bacterium that is associated with a multitude of infectious syndromes spanning a wide range of severity. The surface-exposed M protein is a major GAS virulence factor that is also target for protective antibody responses. In this study, we use a murine immunization model to investigate aspects of the cellul