According to the latest research from the European Heart Association (ESC), there is a clear link between sleep time and cardiovascular disease risk, and going to bed too early and going to bed too late is not good for your health.
The study took 88,026 subjects between the ages of 43-79 from the UK Biobank, recorded their sleep with a wristband during the process, and asked the participants about their lifestyle, health, Physical assessment, etc. And after adjusting for age, gender, body mass index, diabetes, blood pressure and other confounding factors, compared with other ordinary people.
Its findings found that sleeping before 10 p.m. was associated with a 24 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease. And going to bed between 11-12 pm was associated with a 12% increased risk of cardiovascular disease. In addition, going to bed at 12 p.m. and later increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 25%. It can be seen that 10-11 pm is “the best time to fall asleep!”
According to a study published in the international medical journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 6 hours of sleep each night is the minimum amount of sleep needed to maintain optimal health in adults. So, if you sleep less than 6 hours a day, the negative emotions and physical symptoms will get worse and the most increase. Continued lack of sleep can create a vicious cycle, and the impact on physical and mental health will be lasting. Therefore, in the case of the cooperation of relevant conditions, try to ensure that you have a rest at 10-11 o’clock in the evening. If there is no way to choose a sleep time, try to ensure a sleep time of 6 hours a day.
Knowing that there is an epidemic, reducing human contact is the most effective way, but people have minimized social activities. The key to why the virus spreads so quickly may be that the risk awareness of relatives and friends is too low. A Spanish study found that people have a false sense of security in relatives and friends, thinking that those closest and safest may actually be at greatest risk.
Previous research has found that people tend to feel safe when they are in a close relationship with someone, which can lead to emotional rather than rational decisions. Confirming this intimacy paradox during the pandemic, researchers in consumer behavior and business psychology at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, conducted five different online experiments with Americans during the pandemic. Each experiment pointed to the same result, that people may be less willing to take public health precautions to protect against COVID-19 when friends are present, or even just remembered. Even when they know that they may be infected by a friend, people’s risk awareness will suddenly decrease, and they think that the chance of reinfection from relatives and friends is less than that from strangers.
The researchers call this the friend shield effect, and the more conservative people are, the more distant they are. The study also found that people not only trust friends more, but also members of the same group, such as supporters of the same team, even strangers.
Limiting interaction with close friends and family is a common protective measure to reduce the risk of spreading the virus. “Anyone can be infected with the coronavirus, friend or foe, acquaintance or stranger, but paradoxically, the more we assume that people like us won’t infect us, the more likely we are to be infected by them,” the researchers said. infect.”
For most people, it may be thought that self-threat only comes from others, when the risk is associated with something positive like friends, the risk no longer seems to be threatening, so most people think that even when the epidemic is at its worst, going with friends is the most favorite. The number of coffee shops is also reasonable, which can explain why people have epidemic prevention awareness, but this self-awareness is not reliable, and it is difficult to rely on personal prevention for virus transmission.
“Friends and family can provide comfort, but it is unreasonable and dangerous to believe that they will protect you from COVID-19,” the researchers said. Worrying about the friend shield effect trend may exacerbate a false sense of security and lead to future contagion expansion. Some national public health guidelines encourage people to limit interactions to close circles of friends, but the researchers hope the study will provide evidence for future public health policy reminding people to be careful even with close friends. The research was published in the journal Experimental Psychology.
Compared with the closure of Shanghai, Taiwan is facing a new wave of epidemic threats. Denmark, which is far away in northern Europe, has relaxed all entry regulations and welcomes foreigners to travel. Denmark’s confidence comes from complete medical data showing that during the Omicron epidemic in the past five months, 70% of Denmark’s population has been infected with the virus. Coupled with the high vaccination rate, the virus does not pose any threat to Denmark. People don’t have to wear masks, and vaccine passports can be lost. On the other hand, return to normal life.
The Danish Institute of Infectious Diseases, based on serum antibody data from 17 to 72 years old, found that from early November to the end of March, 70% of adults were infected with Omicron, which is equivalent to 3 million positive results for a population of 5.8 million. After excluding reinfection, about 50% of the population Tested positive. A third dose of the vaccine provides adequate protection, according to medical data from Danish research institutes.
Immediately after the third dose, the vaccine provided up to 90.2% protection from hospitalization, and the risk of contracting Omicron was reduced by nearly 50%, the report noted. Four months later, it still provides up to 77.3% protection against severe disease. More than two-thirds of Denmark’s vaccines are Pfizer BioNTech, with the rest Moderna. Denmark has nearly 49,000 cases and only 16 people with severe symptoms.
Denmark opened a third dose for people over 40 in December last year and citizens over 18 at the end of January this year, but authorities said they would not allow boosters under 18, citing the belief that young people are less likely to be vaccinated or infected with the coronavirus. High immunity. The vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 was launched in November last year, and the current goal is to finish two doses.
Currently, 80.8% of the population in Denmark receives two doses of the vaccine, and 61.5% of the population is receiving the third dose. As of March this year, Denmark was among the top three countries with the highest third-dose vaccination rate among countries with a population of more than 2 million. The highest is Chile at 75%, followed by Singapore at 67%, and Italy is the same as Denmark.
The Danish government said the number of new daily cases had now dropped sharply as Denmark gained a high level of immunity, aided by a vaccination program, and declared that the new crown pneumonia no longer poses a threat to society. Denmark ended all epidemic prevention restrictions as early as February 1 and was the first EU country to lift all COVID-19 travel restrictions.
At the end of March, the Danish authorities announced that they would no longer take COVID-19 measures for travelers entering third countries. They do not need to show proof of valid vaccination, recovery or testing, and Denmark does not need to wear masks indoors except in medical institutions. Sweden and Norway have also lifted all epidemic prevention restrictions and welcomed foreigners into the country. Iceland also recently lifted all entry requirements.
But the epidemic prevention measures are not cancelled forever. The Danish Minister of Health said, “We assure the citizens of Denmark that we will only implement restrictions when it is really necessary, and we will lift them as soon as possible. This is what is happening now.” He also reminded , No one knows what will happen in the future. If a new variant virus appears, epidemic prevention measures will be restarted in a short time.
The strict closure of Shanghai has made the outside world question why such extreme measures are still needed to deal with the less toxic Omicron, and the fact that the spread of Omicron and its variants has been proved to be uncontrollable. However, foreign media analyzed that China took Hong Kong as a lesson, and the zero-clearing strategy has become mainstream political awareness, and China may not relax control until 2023.
For the past two years, Shanghai has been in a state of singing and dancing, and the Wuhan pneumonia period has not affected Shanghai. It seems that the virus has never crossed Shanghai in the future, but this time it cannot escape the rapidly spreading Omicron mutant strain. Shanghai is now in a state of war. According to Shanghai residents, community residents now rely on outsiders to be responsible for purchasing and cannot leave their homes. Some communities even have problems with material rationing, and they can even eat only one bowl of porridge a day. Large-scale people crowded hospitals for nucleic acid testing, and medical resources were crowded out, causing people who really needed medical assistance to lose their lives.
The sudden outbreak of the epidemic in Shanghai has made the epidemic prevention control messy. Even with the strictest control measures, Shanghai has reported a total of 40,000 cases in March, becoming the new virus center in China. To keep businesses running, the Shanghai government kept port, factory and some office workers living in their workplaces, such as those in the financial industry who were forced to sleep in their offices for weeks.
The economic shock is already on the horizon, with the Caixin Markit monthly index showing that China’s manufacturing activity fell to a two-year low in March amid disruptions to the outbreak and export orders cancelled after Russia invaded Ukraine. One statistic using trucking estimates that China’s lost productivity due to the lockdown is close to $50 billion a month. While the port is still operating normally, a supply chain tracking company said there has been a reduction in seaborne volumes.
The loss caused by the reset policy is too great. Originally, many people expected that the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics would bring a turning point in China’s new crown policy, but now the reset policy has become a mainstream political task, including Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Believing that the threat of BA.2 is still great, the country must adhere to this approach, and Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan also urged Shanghai to take decisive and swift action to contain the epidemic, while emphasizing the need to adhere to a dynamic zero-epidemic policy.
The outside world believes that the epidemic in Hong Kong has made China afraid. Low vaccination rates among the elderly are one of the reasons for the high COVID-19 mortality rate in Hong Kong, and these risk factors are also present in China. Only half of China’s population over the age of 80 has been twice vaccinated, and Chinese health authorities have repeatedly warned that the health system could be overwhelmed if the virus spreads widely among its 1.4 billion people, especially if vaccinations for older people lag behind.
According to QUARTZ, what China is doing now is to find as many infected people as possible, buy time to ensure adequate medical capacity and increase vaccination rates. The former chief economist at UBS said China must make sure there is no Hong Kong situation ahead of the Communist Party Congress this fall.
In addition, the new five-year development plan released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China in January, which describes 2023-2025 as a period of growth for domestic and international travel, is also a signal for China to relax its zero-clearing strategy. The Chinese government is expected to keep restrictions on and off for the rest of 2022, with major changes only in 2023.
With the spread of the new crown epidemic in China, the Kunshan Municipal Government announced that it would extend the closure and control measures to April 8, requiring all personnel not to leave Kunshan unless necessary, and requiring enterprises to implement closed management in an all-round way to effectively prevent the spread of the new crown epidemic, and because Kunshan is a PCB supply chain Therefore, it is estimated that the legal person will impact the operation of some manufacturers.
The Kunshan New Crown Epidemic Joint Prevention and Control Headquarters issued Circular No. 32 on April 5. From 0:00 on April 6 to 24:00 on April 8, prevention and control measures will be further strengthened, mainly including not leaving Kunshan unless it is necessary, and the public will reduce the number of people suffering from For necessary activities, the city remains relatively silent, and enterprises that reduce production take turns to implement closed management in an all-round way.
Xinxing announced that its Kunshan subsidiaries are temporarily suspended, including Kunshan Dingxin, a subsidiary that mainly produces PCB and HDI, and Xinxing Tongtai, a subsidiary that mainly produces soft boards. The production capacity accounts for about 20~25%. According to the current prevention and control measures Calculated from April 2 to 8, the legal person estimates that it will affect April revenue by about 4~6%.
Taiwan Optoelectronics announced that its Kunshan subsidiary will temporarily suspend production. The legal person estimates that the production capacity will account for about 30~40%. According to the current prevention and control measures from April 2 to 8, it is estimated that it will affect the April revenue by about 7~10%.
Nandian announced that the Kunshan plant is under closed-loop management, which does not affect the company’s operations. The legal person estimates that the production capacity accounts for about 40%, mainly producing PCB and BT carrier boards.
Dingying announced that it will implement rotating holidays in line with government policies. The legal person estimates that Kunshan’s production capacity will account for about 60-65%; Taijun has not yet made relevant announcements, and the legal person estimates that the empty board manufacturing capacity in the front section of Kunshan will account for about 40%.
As China’s new crown epidemic continues to be severe, Taiwan’s major PCB manufacturers Xinxing, Nanya Circuit Board, Taiwan Optoelectronics, Wistron, and Pegatron have all announced suspension of work recently, and with the upgrade of Kunshan’s sealing and control, as a printed circuit board PCB supply chain It is estimated that the legal person will impact the PCB supply chain.
The Omicron epidemic has raised the alarm, but because the virus has been vaccinated or the virus may be weaker, the threat to life is not as serious as the previous virus. But that may not be the case. A study in Hong Kong, which is ravaged by the Omicron variant, found that the Omicron variant BA.2 caused more hospitalizations, serious complications and deaths in young children than the previous virus.
The mainstream virus that killed more than 7,000 people in Hong Kong this time was BA.2, most of whom were elderly and unvaccinated. In addition to not being vaccinated, experts believe that the severe epidemic is also related to the previous success of Hong Kong’s epidemic prevention, and most people do not have natural immunity.
A look at the children’s cases makes it clearer that the Omicron variant isn’t actually mild. Researchers from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Princess Margaret Hospital review childhood hospitalizations at different stages of the pandemic, with 1,147 hospitalized cases of Omicron among children aged 0-11 in Hong Kong between 5 and 28 February alone , of which more than 80% are 0-5 years old. The need for pediatric intensive care treatment was even higher by 1.83%, 18 times higher than the previous strain, and only 1 child was admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit in all previous Covid outbreaks in Hong Kong, twice the rate of influenza.
And among the 4 children who died, 3 of them did not have any congenital diseases, and the ages were 11 months, 3 years and 4 years old, compared with the cases from January 2020 to November 2021. There were no child deaths. In terms of symptoms caused, Omicron caused an increased number of seizures in unvaccinated children and was more specific to the upper respiratory tract than previous variants and influenza. The research has been submitted to the journal The Lancet.
But the Hong Kong study differs from the U.S. findings, where a Case Western Reserve University study in JAMA Pediatrics re-examines more than 651,640 people infected in the U.S. between September 2021 and January 2022 Electronic health records of children under the age of 5 found that about 1.8% of children infected with Omicron were hospitalized, compared with 3.3% for Delta.
But U.S. Pediatric Infectious Diseases Dr. Beth Thielen believes that the Hong Kong findings do not apply to the U.S., where a larger portion of the U.S. population may have been infected at some point before Delta or BA.1, and therefore a larger population immunity. Even though the U.S. finds lower rates of severe childhood illness, experts are concerned that some children are at higher risk for multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) and the long-term effects of COVID-19 infection on children’s brains, hearts, immune systems and other organs Still unknown and worrying.
Although the Hong Kong study results may seem scary, Dr. Claudia Hoyen, a pediatric infectious disease expert in the United States, said parents should not panic because the chances of a child dying from Omicron are still very low. The significance of the Hong Kong study is to provide important observations on the raw power of this variant in vulnerable populations and to highlight the urgency of vaccinating children against Covid-19 and the need for more treatments in this age group.
In early February, Pfizer asked the U.S. to authorize ultra-low-dose vaccines for children under 5 years of age. Children 6 months to 4 years old may soon be eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the CDC said on its website, without specifying when.
Faced with a surge in cases of Omicron, many countries have begun rolling out the fourth dose of the vaccine to some populations, including Israel and the United States. Israel began administering the fourth dose of the vaccine to people over 60 in January this year, but recent studies have shown that, The fourth dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine provided protection against the infection for just a few weeks, while it lasted longer in preventing severe disease.
The U.S. has opened up a fourth dose for certain immunocompromised people, and as the pandemic heats up, the FDA last month extended emergency use authorization to allow adults 50 and older four months after the first booster of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. A second booster injection can be given. But the debate over whether the general population needs a fourth dose continues.
A previous Israeli study found that the fourth dose had little effect in preventing infections in young, healthy people, but the effect in older adults was still unknown. Israel has begun administering its fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to Israelis 60 years of age or older on January 2, coinciding with the arrival of the Omicron variant, so data from the Israeli study could make it clearer that the booster dose prevents Omicron in older adults. Effect.
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Israeli scientists tracked the health records of more than 1.25 million vaccinated people aged 60 or older from January 2022 to March 2022, when Omicron was the primary strain. The data found that the rate of confirmed infections in the fourth week following the fourth dose was 2 times lower than that of the three-dose group, and the rate of severe Covid-19 infection was 3.5 times lower than those who received only three doses. And protection against Omicron appeared to be greatest in the fourth week post-vaccination, followed by a rapid decline in protection against confirmed infection, which was the same as the three-dose group by week eight.
However, the protection against severe disease did not appear to diminish in the six weeks after the fourth injection, but the study was not long enough to determine how long the protection lasted. Scientists believe that the protection provided by any vaccine will naturally diminish, but if threatened later, the vaccine will prompt the immune system to produce protective antibodies. “For infection prevention, the fourth dose appears to provide only short-term protection, but when it comes to serious infections, the fourth dose appears to be helpful,” the researchers wrote.
A previous Israeli study found that about 20 percent of health care workers who received the fourth dose of the vaccine were infected with Omicron, while about 25 percent of those who received the third dose were infected with Omicron, showing only a slight improvement in the efficacy of the fourth dose in preventing infection. Most scientists in the U.S. don’t think the general population needs a fourth dose, said Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health professor of international health and director of the Center for Immunization Research, “In my opinion, very few people need a fourth dose. ” The director of the Center for Vaccine Education at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia also believes that “unless there is clear evidence that something has value, don’t offer it.”
Mainly, the evidence for the fourth dose of the vaccine is not enough. Moderna and Pfizer have submitted data on a fourth booster dose to the FDA, and the FDA has convened a meeting of outside vaccine advisors to discuss the future of booster shots, how often they might be needed, and whether a specific version of the vaccine might be more beneficial. With an FDA advisory committee meeting only this week and no vote scheduled, it could take weeks for the FDA to decide whether to approve the fourth-dose applications from Pfizer and Moderna.
Many people feel that it is not easy to make drugs, and at least knowledge of chemistry is required. But what if you ask artificial intelligence to help? And what the AI system “makes” is not drugs but poison.
The paper in Nature Machine Intelligence with Fabio Urbina as the first author mentions that his company, Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, recently released a machine learning model for predicting toxicity. Invited to the Swiss NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) Conservation Institute meeting to discuss the development of tools that cutting-edge chemistry and biotechnology could have an impact on, Collaborations Pharmaceuticals was invited to talk about the potential misuse of AI technologies.
Urbina said the issue didn’t seem to have been thought of before because decades of machine learning models have discovered new druggable molecules, and the use of computers and artificial intelligence is about improving human health, not destroying it. Collaborations Pharmaceuticals decided to explore how to use AI to design toxic molecules, previously designing a commercial de novo molecule generation model called MegaSyn, using machine learning models to predict biological activity and find new therapeutic inhibitors for human disease targets.
Such generative models typically penalize predicted toxicity and reward predicted target activity, then adjust the guidance model to reward both toxicity and biological activity, and train AI using public repositories of molecules. The adjusted underlying generative software is built on readily available open-source software, and in order to narrow down the molecular scope, the generative model is pushed towards compounds such as the nerve agent VX.
VX is a man-made chemical warfare agent of nerve agent (chemical warfare agent: the purpose of war, with severe toxicity, large-scale poisoning or killing enemy humans, animals and plants and other chemical substances), strong toxicity and rapid action, 6~10 mg of VX particles is enough fatal. The new model generated 40,000 molecules within 6 hours of starting the server. Artificial intelligence not only designed VX, but also designed many known chemical warfare agents, and also designed many new molecules that seem to be equally reasonable. According to the predicted value, the new molecules are more toxic than known chemical warfare agents.
The repositories for training AI do not include these nerve agents, but reversing the machine learning model turns a harmless generative model from a useful medical tool into a lethal molecular generator. Models created to avoid toxicity become “double-edged”. The better a researcher can predict toxicity, the more effective a generative model will be at guiding the design of new molecules in a chemical space that is largely composed of lethal molecules.
Collaborations Pharmaceuticals did not evaluate the synthesizability of the model-generated virtual molecules, nor did they explore how to manufacture them, but the process has an off-the-shelf business model and open-source software. While they also didn’t physically synthesize any molecules, there are hundreds of commercial companies around the world that do.
This proves one thing: non-humans can make lethal chemical weapons.
While knowledge of chemistry or toxicology is currently required to generate toxic substances or biological agents that can cause significant harm, the addition of machine learning models greatly reduces the technical threshold and may only require the ability to code and understand the output of the model. Commercial tools, open-source software tools, and public repositories are all available for unsupervised use, and the use of artificial intelligence to generate models of harmful molecules appears to be a “Pandora’s box.” These molecules can be easily removed, but not how they were created.
Clearly, ways must be found to avoid AI misuse. Urbina believes that AI chemical warfare isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but it is a possibility. MegaSyn is a commercial product that can control who can access it, and restrictions may be added in the future. Like the OpenAI “GPT-3” language model, although it can be used at any time, it can also cut off users’ access rights.
Urbina also mentioned that universities should also redouble their efforts to train science students in ethics, which can be extended to other disciplines, especially computer science students, to make them aware of the potential for artificial intelligence abuse. This attempt seems to once again confirm a sentence: technology is innocent, whether it benefits or does evil, depending on the purpose of the user.
Foreign media The Verge reported that Facebook’s News Feed has been pushing “bad” content for the past six months due to a major sorting error. Because of this loophole, dynamic news increases the weight of fake news and violent news.
In October last year, engineers discovered that there was a problem with the push, and at that time, there was a significant increase in fake news in the news feed. Fake information, which was vetted by fact-checkers and should have been suppressed long ago, is spreading. The engineer could not find the root cause, and could only watch the fake information continue to ferment, subsided after a few weeks, and then relapsed. In the end, the engineer found that there was a problem with the sorting, and fixed it on March 11.
Documents show the technical issue dates back to 2019, but it didn’t have a major impact until October 2021. Meta spokesman Joe Osborne said: “We tracked down the root cause and eventually found it to be a bug in the software that was fixed. The bug did not have any meaningful long-term impact on the assessment criteria.”
We hope that through solar energy, the energy transition will be smooth and eventually net zero carbon emissions will be achieved, but if the air pollution is too serious, no matter how many solar panels are installed, the effect will be greatly reduced, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) team pointed out , India has lost 29% of solar energy development potential.
Sagnik Dey, associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, said that the main reason why air pollution reduces solar power generation is mainly because aerosols absorb and scatter light. According to the team’s research, between 2001 and 2018, India’s solar energy potential has dropped by 29% due to air pollution, which is equivalent to an annual loss of 835 million US dollars.
Dey pointed out that aerosols such as dust, particles, mist, and fumigation in the air can significantly reduce the amount of solar radiation, which is also known as the atmospheric attenuation effect. Usually, when large-scale solar development projects are carried out, developers have to With this in mind, some manufacturers do not take into account the “pollution impact” of aerosol deposition on solar panels.
India is currently sprinting solar installations, but according to research center Mercom India, as of March this year, India’s solar installation capacity is only half of the target, only 50GW. He believes that air pollution in South Asia is becoming more and more serious, and the above two problems must be solved in order to improve the profitability of solar energy systems.
According to past studies, in areas with severe air pollution, suspended particles can reduce solar power generation by more than 50% due to dirty solar panels and reduced chance of rainfall. Bhupendra Das, an environmental researcher at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, also pointed out that acid rain can also corrode solar equipment and brackets, driving up maintenance costs.
The team believes that the solution at this stage is to find the optimal tilt angle to install the solar panel. Compared with the horizontal installation module, the dust is less likely to accumulate or get stuck, and it can also be converted into a more expensive sun tracking system; but in the long run, it may be It still has to rely on India’s air pollution prevention and control plan. For example, India launched the National Clean Air Programme in 2019. The goal is to reduce the PM 2.5 concentration by 20% to 30% in 2024 based on 2017.
Otherwise, according to the “2021 Global Air Quality Report” released by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company, the most polluted capital in the world is New Delhi, India. The average PM2.5 concentration ranked first, and 34 other cities in India were also ranked among the most polluted cities in the world.
Jason Tech & Finance News 
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