People In Close Proximity Research Articles

Remote Multi-Person Heart Rate Monitoring with Smart Speakers: Overcoming Separation Constraint.

Heart rate is a key vital sign that can be used to understand an individual's health condition. Recently, remote sensing techniques, especially acoustic-based sensing, have received increasing attention for their ability to non-invasively detect heart rate via commercial mobile devices such as smartphones and smart speakers. However, due to signal interference, existing methods have primarily focused on monitoring a single user and required a large separation between them when monitoring multiple people. These limitations hinder many common use cases such as couples sharing the same bed or two or more people located in close proximity. In this paper, we present an approach that can minimize interference and thereby enable simultaneous heart rate monitoring of multiple individuals in close proximity using a commonly available smart speaker prototype. Our user study, conducted under various real-life scenarios, demonstrates the system's accuracy in sensing two users' heart rates when they are seated next to each other with a median error of 0.66 beats per minute (bpm). Moreover, the system can successfully monitor up to four people in close proximity.

Human Colonization and Infection by Staphylococcus pseudintermedius: An Emerging and Underestimated Zoonotic Pathogen.

S. pseudintermedius is a known resident of the skin and mucous membranes and a constituent of the normal microbiota of dogs. It has also been recognized as an opportunistic and zoonotic pathogen that is able to colonize humans and cause severe diseases, especially in immunocompromised hosts. Most importantly, methicillin-resistant S. pseudintermedius (MRSP), which is intrinsically multidrug-resistant, has emerged with serious public health consequences. The epidemiological situation is further exacerbated with reports of its zoonotic transmission and human infections which have been mostly attributed to the increasing frequency of dog ownership and close contact between dogs and humans. Evidence on the zoonotic transmission of MRSP from pet dogs to humans (such as dog owners, small-animal veterinarians, and other people in close proximity to dogs) is limited, especially due to the misidentification of S. pseudintermedius as S. aureus. Despite this fact, reports on the increasing emergence and spread of MRSP in humans have been increasing steadily over the years since its first documented report in 2006 in Belgium. The emergence of MRSP strains has further compromised treatment outcomes in both veterinary and human medicine as these strains are resistant to beta-lactam antimicrobials usually prescribed as first line treatment. Frustratingly, the limited awareness and surveillance of the zoonotic transmission of S. pseudintermedius have underestimated their extent of transmission, prevalence, epidemiology, and public health significance. In order to fill this gap of information, this review focused on detailed reports on zoonotic transmission, human colonization, and infections by S. pseudintermedius, their pathogenic features, antimicrobial resistance profiles, epidemiology, risk factors, and treatment. In writing this review, we searched Web of Science, PubMed, and SCOPUS databases using the keyword "Staphylococcus pseudintermedius AND humans". A phylogenetic tree to determine the genetic relatedness/diversity of publicly available genomes of S. pseudintermedius was also constructed.

Reduced Social Distancing and Face Mask Wearing at Massive Soccer-Related Gatherings Did Not Affect Daily COVID-19 Infections in Argentina

AIMS. To determine the contribution of social distancing and face mask wearing in the prevention of COVID-19 infections in Argentina. METHODS. Attendance to the funeral of ex-soccer star Diego Maradona was estimated by the area occupied by the mourners and their density. The people congregated to celebrate the America's Cup victory was deduced mainly from TV ratings. The proportion of individuals wearing or not face masks was calculated from photographs taken at both events. The COVID-19 epidemiological data used was released by the Argentinean Ministry of Health from March 3rd 2020 to August 31st 2021. RESULTS. We estimated that Maradona's funeral was attended by approximately 250,000 mourners. On the other hand, approximately 5.084.000 followed by television the America’s cup final in Buenos Aires alone. Extrapolating to the whole country suggests that over 4 million individuals congregated in person to celebrate the victory. The percentage of individuals not wearing face masks at the funeral was 54.0% ± 5.2 % and at the soccer victory celebrations 84.5 % ± 6.9 %, both estimates with a confidence of 99%. Daily COVID-19 infections in Buenos Aires remained at less than 5,000 per day during 30 days before- as well as during 24 days following-the funeral. New infections in Argentina remained less than 21,000 during 10 days before as well as 30 days following the soccer cup celebrations. CONCLUSIONS. Considering that SARS-CoV-2 median incubation is 5.1 days, the time periods following Maradona’s funeral and the America Soccer Cup celebrations provided ample time for COVID-19 to flare up if significant contagion would have proliferated amongst the crowds. The lack of an increase in COVID-19 infections after two independent and large gatherings with people in close proximity and limited wearing of face masks, contradicts any beneficial effect of social distancing and of mask wearing during the pandemic. These findings seem particularly important when considering that social distancing and mask wearing limited attendance to public events, negatively impacted commerce, burdening restaurants and many other businesses; and overall taxed society unnecessarily, according to the data presented here. (A summary of some of these findings were presented at the European Society of Medicine Annual Meeting. August 04, 2022. Entitled: Unexpected effect of sunlight, the environment, and public health measures in the progression of COVID-19) https://esmed.org/video-detail/?id=86 )

High genetic diversity and zoonotic potential of Staphylococcus aureus strains recovered from bovine intramammary infections in Colombians dairy herds

Genotyping of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from mastitis has become a fundamental tool to understand its complex epidemiology and to evaluate spillover events. The aim of this study was to describe the frequency of genotypes of the S. aureus strains isolated from intramammary infections by spa typing technique, and to evaluate the association between genotypes and the ability to form biofilm under in vitro conditions. Sixty-six strains of S. aureus recovered from bovines intramammary infections on 56 dairy herds located in 14 municipalities of the department of Antioquia were characterized. The majority of strains (65/66) were isolated from milk samples collected from dairy cows with subclinical intramammary infections. Nineteen different spa types were found in this study, t521 (19.70%), t267 (15.15%), and t605 (12.12%) being the most frequent. The strains from the t605 spa type showed the highest biofilm production. The high frequency of spa types with zoonotic potential found in this study, identified cattle as an important reservoir of theses clones for people in close proximity, such as milkers and consumers of unpasteurized dairy products.

Design and Implementation of a Local Area Network Based Multimedia Messaging Application

Communication these days has taken a huge turn to depend extremely on the internet. Software such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and the general social media receive about a billion active users. This demonstrates how most communication has relied on the internet. However, this approach does not serve well under some conditions. Firstly, places without internet access suffer greatly from multimedia messaging. They are either unable to initiate a conversation at all or suffer a relatively slower user experience even when they message people in close proximity. Furthermore, the cost incurred in messaging people over these platforms with people nearby could be avoided should the communication be over a local area network rather than depending on the services of an Internet Service Provider. This project investigates the design and implementation of an efficient communication system for devices near each other that relies on any local area network that a particular device is connected to. Such targeted networks include mobile Wi-Fi and cable connections. This work designed and implemented a Local Area Network based Messaging Platform, capable of working on all local networks regardless of being cable or wireless. The system is extensible, allowing for a node to re-broadcast the network onto other networks it might be connected to and works without internet access, allowing the sending and sharing of text and media files.

System for Detecting Social Distance During COVID-19 using YOLOv3 and OpenCV

A virus called COVID-19 spreads between people in close proximity via minute droplets created through talking, sneezing, coughing, and most commonly by inhalation. Many people have died as a result of the pandemic’s severe respiratory infection, which is still present today. You can reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19 by avoiding physical contact with others. This study suggests a real-time AI framework for people detection, monitoring social distance violations, and categorising people’s social distances based on live video feeds. In this study, YOLOv3 was suggested for object detection. Its straightforward neural network architecture makes it appropriate for embedded devices that are reasonably priced. Comparing the suggested model to other real-time detection methods, it is a better choice. Additionally, with the aid of OpenCV, an open-source toolkit for computer vision, machine learning, and image processing. The major purpose of the image processing feature is to enhance the image quality so that the AI detection system would accurately recognise human movement. Computer vision is used to analyse photos and videos.The final iteration of the prototype algorithm has been put to use in low-cost CCTV Cameras made up of fixed cameras that are placed in any public area where large crowds used to congregate. The suggested method is appropriate for a surveillance system in sustainable smart cities for people detection, social distance classification, and tracking social dis- tance violations. This will make it easier for the government to understand how people who are socially isolated are doing.

Complex Resilience and entropic Risks in Urban Megaprojects

This paper explores issues of urban resilience and risk and presents some key conceptual and analytical elements to apply the notion of entropic risk to the analysis of urban megaprojects. The paper claims that the concept of risk needs to be understood together with that of resilience, and thus the paper starts by defining both urban resilience and risk. Entropic risks are defined as the disruptive and disorderly impacts of megaprojects in urban areas. The project management literature has been concerned with risks affecting megaprojects and has neglected the many kinds of risks and negative outcomes produced by them. This is due to their modeling of megaprojects as closed systems and to their focus on providing insights to contribute to megaproject performance improvement. The purpose of the paper is to shift attention from risks affecting megaprojects to risks produced by them for a better understanding of the damage produced by megaprojects.Urban systems and megaprojects are defined as complex adaptive innovation ecosystems, or networks of people in close proximity exchanging information and opinions, creating new knowledge and interacting, in actor-networks, with matter as well as other forms of human and non-human life. Megaprojects can be characterized as complex systems (organizationally and scale-wise) embedded in complex urban, political and socio-economic systems.

Vaping Exacerbates Coronavirus-Related Pulmonary Infection in a Murine Model.

Though the current preponderance of evidence indicates the toxicity associated with the smoking of tobacco products through conventional means, less is known about the role of “vaping” in respiratory disease. “Vaping” is described as the use of electronic cigarettes (E-Cigarettes or E-Cigs), which has only more recently been available to the public (∼10 years) but has quickly emerged as a popular means of tobacco consumption worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a global pandemic in March 2020. SARS-CoV-2 can easily be transmitted between people in close proximity through direct contact or respiratory droplets to develop coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19). Symptoms of COVID-19 range from a mild flu-like illness with high fever to severe respiratory distress syndrome and death. The risk factors for increased disease severity remain unclear. Herein, we utilize a murine-tropic coronavirus (beta coronavirus) MHV-A59 along with a mouse model and measures of pathology (lung weight/dry ratios and histopathology) and inflammation (ELISAs and cytokine array panels) to examine whether vaping may exacerbate the pulmonary disease severity of coronavirus disease. While vaping alone did result in some noted pathology, mice exposed with intranasal vaped e-liquid suffered more severe mortality due to pulmonary inflammation than controls when exposed to coronavirus infection. Our data suggest a role for vaping in increased coronavirus pulmonary disease in a mouse model. Furthermore, our data indicate that disease exacerbation may involve calcium (Ca2+) dysregulation, identifying a potential therapeutic intervention.

Joking about Jihad: Comedy and Terror in the Arab World

Joking about Jihad: Comedy and Terror in the Arab World

Bat-Borne Coronaviruses in Jordan and Saudi Arabia: A Threat to Public Health?

Emerging infectious diseases are of great concern to public health, as highlighted by the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Such diseases are of particular danger during mass gathering and mass influx events, as large crowds of people in close proximity to each other creates optimal opportunities for disease transmission. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are two countries that have witnessed mass gatherings due to the arrival of Syrian refugees and the annual Hajj season. The mass migration of people not only brings exotic diseases to these regions but also brings new diseases back to their own countries, e.g., the outbreak of MERS in South Korea. Many emerging pathogens originate in bats, and more than 30 bat species have been identified in these two countries. Some of those bat species are known to carry viruses that cause deadly diseases in other parts of the world, such as the rabies virus and coronaviruses. However, little is known about bats and the pathogens they carry in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Here, the importance of enhanced surveillance of bat-borne infections in Jordan and Saudi Arabia is emphasized, promoting the awareness of bat-borne diseases among the general public and building up infrastructure and capability to fill the gaps in public health preparedness to prevent future pandemics.

Editorial] COVID‑19: Post‑lockdown guidelines.

Since March, 2020, in response to the COVID‑19 pandemic, many countries have been on lockdown (at different levels of severity), restricting many activities and businesses that involve gatherings of large numbers of people in close proximity. Currently (early June, 2020), countries across the globe are in different stages of easing lockdown restrictions. Public policies for behaviors and actions during this transition period vary widely across countries and within country jurisdictions. The present editorial will address potential policies that could minimize resurgence of the present pandemic (the 'second‑wave') and reduce the likelihood and severity of similar future pandemics.

Satellite factors influencing the impact of recreational activities on wildlife

Satellite factors influencing the impact of recreational activities on wildlife

When two elephants fight, it is the grass that is trampled: A practical theological elucidation of the predatory attitude of hate speech

This study addresses a topic that is often neglected by faith communities, like the proverbial expression ‘an elephant in the room’, namely, hate speech. A community of believers could easily be guilty of practices of hate speech by keeping themselves silent or not being mindful in the way they talk about people. What is more is that the saying ‘when two elephants fight, it is the grass that is trampled’ represents something of the dynamics around this issue in reminding people of the harmful consequences of hate speech for people in close proximity to people who are guilty of hate speech. This article argues that a greater awareness of the intrinsic aspects involved in hate speech is needed before one could even mention the issue of combating it. The predatory attitude that underlies hate speech is examined from a practical theological vantage point. The functioning of attitudes, inner speech, attributes and silence are elucidated. The research question therefore asks whether the silence of faith communities on the predatory nature of hate speech in the public sphere contributes to the fact that people are unaware of their own attributional biases. These biases consequently gather momentum and are voiced as hate speech. This research offers analytical perspectives from the viewpoint of ethics, social psychology and communication sciences to indicate the value of speaking truth in love. Perspectives on the concept of boldness, speaking truth in love and the attitude of like-mindedness with Christ are also offered. After this hermeneutical consideration, the article concludes with practical theological perspectives on how hate speech could be addressed.

CooperSense: A Cooperative and Selective Picture Forwarding Framework Based on Tree Fusion

Mobile crowd photographing has become a major crowd sensing paradigm, which allows people to use cameras on smart devices for local sensing. In MCP, pictures taken by different people in close proximity or time period can be highly similar and different MCP tasks have diverse constraints or needs to deal with such duplicate data. In order to save the network cost and improve the transmitting efficiency, pictures will be preselected by mobile clients and then uploaded to the server in an opportunistic manner. In this paper, CooperSense, a multitask MCP framework for cooperative and selective picture forwarding, was designed. Based on the sensing context of pictures and task constraints, CooperSense structures sequenced pictures into a hierarchical context tree. When two participants encounter, their mobile clients will just exchange their context trees and at the same time automatically accomplish forwarding high-quality pictures to each other via a tree fusion mechanism. Via virtual or real pruning and grafting, mobile clients learn which picture should be sent to the encounter and which one should be abandoned. Our experimental results indicate that the transmission and storage cost of CooperSense are much lower comparing with the traditional Epidemic Routing (ER) method, while their efficiency is almost the same.

Influence of Contact Definitions in Assessment of the Relative Importance of Social Settings in Disease Transmission Risk

BackgroundRealistic models of disease transmission incorporating complex population heterogeneities require input from quantitative population mixing studies. We use contact diaries to assess the relative importance of social settings in respiratory pathogen spread using three measures of person contact hours (PCH) as proxies for transmission risk with an aim to inform bipartite network models of respiratory pathogen transmission.Methods and FindingsOur survey examines the contact behaviour for a convenience sample of 65 adults, with each encounter classified as occurring in a work, retail, home, social, travel or “other” setting. The diary design allows for extraction of PCH-interaction (cumulative time in face-face conversational or touch interaction with contacts) – analogous to the contact measure used in several existing surveys – as well as PCH-setting (product of time spent in setting and number of people present) and PCH-reach (product of time spent in setting and number of people in close proximity). Heterogeneities in day-dependent distribution of risk across settings are analysed using partitioning and cluster analyses and compared between days and contact measures. Although home is typically the highest-risk setting when PCH measures isolate two-way interactions, its relative importance compared to social and work settings may reduce when adopting a more inclusive contact measure that considers the number and duration of potential exposure events.ConclusionsHeterogeneities in location-dependent contact behaviour as measured by contact diary studies depend on the adopted contact definition. We find that contact measures isolating face-face conversational or touch interactions suggest that contact in the home dominates, whereas more inclusive contact measures indicate that home and work settings may be of higher importance. In the absence of definitive knowledge of the contact required to facilitate transmission of various respiratory pathogens, it is important for surveys to consider alternative contact measures.

Value creation in virtual communities: the case of a healthcare web site

PurposeWith the advent of the internet café, chat sessions, instant messengers, special interest e‐groups and now blogs, people do not need to be physically close together to exchange their ideas. The participants can have shared experiences that are instantaneous and pretty much of the same nature that is usually realized by the traditional collection of special interest people in close proximity. The members of these virtual communities share their knowledge, cooperate with each other to solve problems, and feel responsibility for each other. Internet based technologies have been the great enablers of virtual communities. In the high‐involvement healthcare sector, patients are increasingly seeking online advice and information by participating in virtual communities. The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of consumer value creation in virtual communities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper first adopts Cothrel's framework for the creation of value in virtual communities followed by an application of Kozinets' segmentation model of online consumers to explore the process of consumer value creation by a healthcare virtual community. “Netnography” was used as the research technique for this study. Netnography is an ethnographic research method adapted to the online environment. Discourse analysis is applied to interpret the huge volume of online postings.FindingsThe paper identifies four segments of virtual community users – tourists, minglers, devotees, and insiders, and studies their online activities and discussion topics to demonstrate their differential roles as members of healthcare virtual communities.Originality/valueMost of the earlier works that are focused on virtual communities have been conducted at the conceptual level. In this paper a priori user segments in healthcare virtual communities are empirically profiled. Based on the findings, managerial implications for healthcare virtual communities are formulated.

핵에너지 태도의 사회 그룹별 특성과 변수

This study was conducted to find and explain characteristics of diverse social groups' attitudes toward nuclear power plant. 7 hypotheses were constructed and statistically tested. In order to test 7 hypotheses, both Nuclear Energy Attitude Scale and Environmental Attitude Scale were distributed and field surveyed on 839 respondents representing a diverse range of subject groups. The results showed that 6 hypotheses were statistically accepted while 1 hypothesis statistically rejected. Contrary to the first hypothesis, this test found that people in close proximity to the nuclear power plant had more positive attitudes toward nuclear power than those living in distance from the nuclear power plant. Males had more positive nuclear energy attitudes than females. Academic backgrounds were not related to nuclear energy attitudes. Environmental attitudes showed negative relationship with nuclear energy attitudes. While anti-nuclear citizen action groups had the most negative attitudes, nuclear power plant workers had the most positive attitudes among responding groups. Finally, university students majoring in nuclear engineering had more positive attitudes than those of religious studies.

Unconscious Transmissions Between Patient and Pregnant Analyst

When two people in close proximity both experience processes of heightened perceptiveness, the likelihood of unconscious communication increases. In analysis, coconstructed emotional configurations of transference–countertransference further contribute to the interplay. The analyst's pregnancy offers a window on bilateral processes of unconscious communication, often obscured in psychoanalytic theorizing. The unconscious dialogue has three constituents: a) effects of the analyst's pregnancy on the patient (her liminality, disclosure of sexuality, two-in-one numinosity, and archaic, life-bearing, death-dealing powers); b) effects of pregnancy in the therapist herself (heightened intuition, slippage, and introspective preoccupation with “procreative mysteries,” anxieties of formation, containment-preservation, transformation and separation). c) the impact of patients on the pregnant analyst (her susceptibility to, and defensive def lection of, intrusive projections into her inner world). Focusing on generic anxieties broadens the discussion beyond synchronization of the intra/interpsychic dynamics of a particular two some.

Machines that understand speech

The ability to use language to formulate abstract concepts and to communicate these concepts to another human being must rank as one of the most significant aspects of intelligent behaviour that a human being can demonstrate. Speaking is the technique that has evolved to enable this communication to take place quickly and efficiently between two people in close proximity to one another. Consequently machines that understand speech are usually considered to be intelligent. The designers of the early machines for recognizing speech treated it as a set of patterns that could be processed by conventional pattern classification techniques. This work has led to the design of commercially available machines that respond to a limited range of isolated words in controlled conditions. More recent attempts at designing speech understanding machines have been based upon the linguistic nature of speech and employ linguistic and semantic modelling to aid recognition. Whilst the performance of these systems is vastly superior to the pattern classification type of machine, it is still very limited when compared with the speech understanding capabilities of a human being. This paper reviews the problems and current state of the art in machine understanding of speech.