• Dementia and Neurocognitive Disorders
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.112-113
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• 2023

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.212-222
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• 2021

Multiple waves of COVID-19 highlighted one crucial aspect of this pandemic worldwide that factors affecting the spread of COVID-19 infection are evolving based on various regional and local practices and events. The introduction of vaccines since early 2021 is expected to significantly control and reduce the cases. However, virus mutations and its new variant has challenged these expectations. Several countries, which contained the COVID-19 pandemic successfully in the first wave, failed to repeat the same in the second and third waves. This work focuses on COVID-19 pandemic control and management in Saudi Arabia. This work aims to predict new cases using deep learning using various important factors. The proposed method is called Deep Learning and Dynamic Weighing-based (DLDW) COVID-19 cases prediction method. Special consideration has been given to the evolving factors that are responsible for recent surges in the pandemic. For this purpose, two weights are assigned to data instance which are based on feature importance and dynamic weight-based time. Older data is given fewer weights and vice-versa. Feature selection identifies the factors affecting the rate of new cases evolved over the period. The DLDW method produced 80.39% prediction accuracy, 6.54%, 9.15%, and 7.19% higher than the three other classifiers, Deep learning (DL), Random Forest (RF), and Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM). Further in Saudi Arabia, our study implicitly concluded that lockdowns, vaccination, and self-aware restricted mobility of residents are effective tools in controlling and managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.15 no.sup1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2021

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has put focus on the importance of a healthy immune system for recovery from infection and effective response to vaccination. Several nutrients have been under attention because their nutritional statuses showed associations with the incidence or severity of COVID-19 or because they affect several aspects of immune function. Nutritional status, immune function, and viral infection are closely interrelated. Undernutrition impairs immune function, which can lead to increased susceptibility to viral infection, while viral infection itself can result in changes in nutritional status. Here, we review the roles of vitamins A, C, D, and E, and zinc, iron, and selenium in immune function and viral infection and their relevance to COVID-19.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.257-265
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to vaccinate every year according to the general characteristics of COVID-19, whether to vaccinate every year according to the vaccination experience, whether to vaccinate every year according to knowledge/attitude about vaccination, and negative responses to the vaccinate every year In order to understand the factors affecting the vaccination physician every year by identifying the factors of Statistical analysis is based on general characteristics, variables based on vaccination experience, and knowledge/attitudes related to vaccination. The doctor calculates the frequency and percentage, A square test (-test) was performed, and if the chi-square test was significant but the expected frequency was less than 5 for 25% or more, a ratio difference test was performed with Fisher's exact test. Through multiple logistic regression analysis using variables that were significant in simple analysis, a predictive model for future vaccination and the effect size of each independent variable were estimated. As statistical analysis software, SAS 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA) was used, and because the sample size was not large, the significance level was set at 10%, and when the p-value was less than 0.10, it was interpreted as statistically significant. In the simple logistic regression analysis, the reason why they answered that they would not be vaccinated every year was that they answered 'to prevent infection of family and hospital guests' rather than 'to prevent my infection' as the reason for the vaccination. It was 11.0 times higher and 3.67 times higher in the case of 'for the formation of collective immunity of the local community and the country'. The adverse reactions experienced after the 1st and 2nd vaccination were 8.42 times higher in those who did not experience pain at the injection site than those who did not, 4.00 times higher in those who experienced swelling or redness, and 5.69 times higher in those who experienced joint pain. There was a 5.57 times higher rate of absenteeism annually than those who did not. In addition, the more anxious they felt about vaccination, the more likely they were to not get the vaccine every year by 2.94 times.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.408-421
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• 2021

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has not only affected human health but also diverted the focus of research and derailed the world economy over the past year. Recently, vaccination against COVID-19 has begun, but further studies on effective therapeutic agents are still needed. The severity of COVID-19 is attributable to several factors such as the dysfunctional host immune response manifested by uncontrolled viral replication, type I interferon suppression, and release of impaired cytokines by the infected resident and recruited cells. Due to the evolving pathophysiology and direct involvement of the host immune system in COVID-19, the use of immune-modulating drugs is still challenging. For the use of immune-modulating drugs in severe COVID-19, it is important to balance the fight between the aggravated immune system and suppression of immune defense against the virus that causes secondary infection. In addition, the interplaying events that occur during virus-host interactions, such as activation of the host immune system, immune evasion mechanism of the virus, and manifestation of different stages of COVID-19, are disjunctive and require thorough streamlining. This review provides an update on the immunotherapeutic interventions implemented to combat COVID-19 along with the understanding of molecular aspects of the immune evasion of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which may provide opportunities to develop more effective and promising therapeutics.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.19.1-19.10
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• 2023

Endemic human coronaviruses (HCoVs) have been evidenced to be cross-reactive to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although a correlation exists between the immunological memory to HCoVs and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity, there is little experimental evidence for the effects of HCoV memory on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Here, we investigated the Ag-specific immune response to COVID-19 vaccines in the presence or absence of immunological memory against HCoV spike Ags in a mouse model. Pre-existing immunity against HCoV did not affect the COVID-19 vaccine-mediated humoral response with regard to Ag-specific total IgG and neutralizing Ab levels. The specific T cell response to the COVID-19 vaccine Ag was also unaltered, regardless of pre-exposure to HCoV spike Ags. Taken together, our data suggest that COVID-19 vaccines elicit comparable immunity regardless of immunological memory to spike of endemic HCoVs in a mouse model.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.113-128
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• 2021

In this study, we aimed to understand the public opinion on COVID-19 vaccine. To achieve the goal, we analyzed COVID-19 vaccine-related Twitter posts. 45,413 tweets posted from March 16, 2020 to March 15, 2021 including COVID-19 vaccine names as keywords were collected. The 12 vaccine names used for data collection included 'Pfizer', 'AstraZeneca', 'Modena', 'Jansen', 'NovaVax', 'Sinopharm', 'SinoVac', 'Sputnik V', 'Bharat', 'KhanSino', 'Chumakov', and 'VECTOR' in the order of the number of collected posts. The collected posts were analyzed manually and automatedly through keyword analysis, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling to understand the opinions for the investigated vaccines. According to the results, there were generally more negative posts about vaccines than positive posts. Anxiety about the aftereffects of vaccination and distrust in the efficacy of vaccines were identified as major negative factors for vaccines. On the contrary, the anticipation for the suppression of the spread of coronavirus following vaccination was identified as a positive social factor for vaccines. Different from previous studies that investigated opinions about COVID-19 vaccines through mass media data such as news articles, this study explores opinions of social media users using keyword analysis, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling. In addition, the results of this study can be used by governmental institutions for making policies to promote vaccination reflecting the social atmosphere.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.643-662
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• 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand an individuals' COVID-19 vaccine acceptance intention during the peak of the pandemic by utilizing the coping theory and technology threat avoidance theory (TTAT) as a framework. Specifically, we focused on understanding how inward and outward emotion-focused coping (EFC), such as psychological distancing and emotional support seeking, affect problem-focused behavior (PFC), which is vaccine acceptance. Furthermore, we investigate how the individuals' cognitive appraisal to- ward COVID-19, consisted of perceived threat and perceived avoidability act as an antecedent of EFC. Methods: A PLS-SEM analysis was conducted to find the causal relation between the variables. An online survey was conducted targeting vaccination recipients on April, 2021. Participants were asked about their perception toward the virus, their coping strategy, and vaccine acceptance intention. A total of 186 valid samples were collected and used for the analysis. Furthermore, to analyze the out-of-sample predictive power of the research model and ensure the generalizability of the results, a PLSpredict analysis was conducted. Results: The results of the PLS-SEM analysis show that perceived threat toward COVID-19 significantly affect an individuals' EFC strategy. Furthermore, both types of inward EFC (psychological distancing, wishful thinking) negatively affected vaccine acceptance intention. On the other hand, emotional support seeking, which is a type of outward EFC, positively affected vaccine acceptance. The result of the PLSpredict analysis confirms the generalizability of the PLS-SEM result. Conclusion: The results of our study could be utilized to decrease vaccine hesitancy and prevent global pandemics by accelerating and increasing vaccination. Our study provides several meaningful implications to researchers and practitioners regarding vaccine acceptance and threat coping behavior.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.239-261
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• 2022

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore and compare changes in tourist opinion during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the COVID-19 outbreak has caused changes in all areas of our lives, the conditions related to confinement during a lockdown have led to changes in tourists' habits and behaviors. Design/methodology/approach To analyze opinion changes about tourist attractions, this study performed topic modeling by summarizing topics into five dimensions: management, scenery, price, suggestion, and safety; then, based on the topic modeling results, sentiment analysis and emotion analysis were conducted to explore the change of tourists' opinion during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings According to the results, this study confirmed the pandemic's positive effect on tourists' opinions about attractions after the COVID 19 outbreak. Presumably due to the absence of lines and crowed. Moreover, the dimension 'Safety' started to appear in US tourists' attractions reviews only in the period after the outbreak and during the mass vaccination. These results mean that tourists started to care more about safety due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.49-60
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• 2024

Purpose: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had significant physical and psychological impacts on registered nurses (RNs). This study aimed to identify long COVID symptoms and their associated factors specifically among RNs. Methods: This descriptive correlational study's sample comprised 189 nurses (31.57±5.98 years, 93.7% female) in Korea. Self-reported long COVID symptoms were assessed using the COVID-19 Yorkshire Rehabilitation Scale. Data were collected from December 31, 2022, to January 13, 2023, using the online survey method and were analyzed using independent t-test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson's correlation, and a multiple linear regression analysis with the IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0 program. Results: A total of 179 participants (94.7%) experienced one or more long COVID symptoms. The most prevalent symptoms were weakness (77.8%), fatigue (68.3%), breathlessness (67.7%), cough/throat sensitivity/voice change (50.3%), and sleep problems (50.3%). The factors related to long COVID symptoms were marital status, type of institution, working time, acute COVID-19 symptoms, and vaccination status. The quarantine period (β=.26, p<.001) and the nursing workforce after COVID-19 (β=-.17, p=.018) were significantly associated with long COVID symptoms (Adjusted R² =.33). Conclusion: Providing comprehensive recognition is necessary for the understanding of long COVID symptoms and their associated factors among nurses and could promote a long COVID symptom management education program targeted at nurses. Moreover, it could facilitate effective nursing care and education plans for long COVID patients.