Suchergebnisse

Online petitions are an important avenue for direct political action, yet the dynamics that determine when a petition will be successful are not well understood. Here we analyze the temporal characteristics of online-petition signing behavior in order to identify systematic differences between popular petitions, which receive a high volume of signatures, and unpopular ones. We find that, in line with other temporal characterizations of human activity, the signing process is typically non-Poissonian and non-homogeneous in time. However, this process exhibits anomalously high memory for human activity, possibly indicating that synchronized external influence or contagion play and important role. More interestingly, we find clear differences in the characteristics of the inter-event time distributions depending on the total number of signatures that petitions receive, independently of the total duration of the petitions. Specifically, popular petitions that attract a large volume of signatures exhibit more variance in the distribution of inter-event times than unpopular petitions with only a few signatures, which could be considered an indication that the former are more bursty. However, petitions with large signature volume are less bursty according to measures that consider the time ordering of inter-event times. Our results, therefore, emphasize the importance of accounting for time ordering to characterize human activity. ; ISSN:1932-6203

Abstract
Vaccines are among the most powerful tools to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. They are highly effective against infection and substantially reduce the risk of severe disease, hospitalization, ICU admission, and death. However, their potential for attenuating long-term changes in personal health and health-related wellbeing after a SARS-CoV-2 infection remains a subject of debate. Such effects can be effectively monitored at the individual level by analyzing physiological data collected by consumer-grade wearable sensors. Here, we investigate changes in resting heart rate, daily physical activity, and sleep duration around a SARS-CoV-2 infection stratified by vaccination status. Data were collected over a period of 2 years in the context of the German Corona Data Donation Project with around 190,000 monthly active participants. Compared to their unvaccinated counterparts, we find that vaccinated individuals, on average, experience smaller changes in their vital data that also return to normal levels more quickly. Likewise, extreme changes in vitals during the acute phase of the disease occur less frequently in vaccinated individuals. Our results solidify evidence that vaccines can mitigate long-term detrimental effects of SARS-CoV-2 infections both in terms of duration and magnitude. Furthermore, they demonstrate the value of large-scale, high-resolution wearable sensor data in public health research.

Abstract
As the coronavirus disease 2019 spread globally, emerging variants such as B.1.1.529 quickly became dominant worldwide. Sustained community transmission favors the proliferation of mutated sub-lineages with pandemic potential, due to cross-national mobility flows, which are responsible for consecutive cases surge worldwide. We show that, in the early stages of an emerging variant, integrating data from national genomic surveillance and global human mobility with large-scale epidemic modeling allows to quantify its pandemic potential, providing quantifiable indicators for pro-active policy interventions. We validate our framework on worldwide spreading variants and gain insights about the pandemic potential of BA.5, BA.2.75, and other sub- and lineages. We combine the different sources of information in a simple estimate of the pandemic delay and show that only in combination, the pandemic potentials of the lineages are correctly assessed relative to each other. Compared to a country-level epidemic intelligence, our scalable integrated approach, that is pandemic intelligence, permits to enhance global preparedness to contrast the pandemic of respiratory pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2.

Unsere Gesundheit ist von dem geprägt, wer wir sind, wo wir leben, was wir tun und mit wem wir uns umgeben. In vielen Ländern ist die "medical geography" oder die "health geography" bereits ein etabliertes Fach und auch im deutschsprachigen Raum wächst die Beschäftigung mit den regionalen Gesichtspunkten von Gesundheit, Krankheit sowie Gesundheitsversorgungsleistungen. Die unterschiedlichen Forschungsansätze und die mit ihnen verknüpften Methoden werden in diesem Buch erstmals im deutschsprachigen Raum strukturiert und übersichtlich dargestellt. Hintergründe und Erklärungsansätze von Gesundheit und Raum Räumlich-geografische, sozialwissenschaftliche und medizinische Herangehensweisen mit Blick auf die besondere Interdisziplinarität des Fachs. Angewandte Forschungsbeispiele und Methoden Mobilitätsanalysen, Surveillance-Systeme, Geografische Informationssysteme (GIS), Monitoring von Infektionserkrankungen, Kartografische Visualisierung, Mapping-Tools. Konkrete Anwendungsgebiete der Gesundheitsgeografie Unter anderem Epidemiologie, Gesundheitsversorgung sowie "Global Change and Health".

Die Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina hat eine dritte Ad-hoc-Stellungnahme zur COVID-19-Pandemie veröffentlicht. Das Papier mit dem Titel "Coronavirus-Pandemie – Die Krise nachhaltig überwinden" behandelt die psychologischen, sozialen, rechtlichen, pädagogischen und wirtschaftlichen Aspekte der Pandemie und beschreibt Strategien, die zu einer schrittweisen Rückkehr in die gesellschaftliche Normalität beitragen können. ; The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina has published a third ad-hoc-statement on the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper entitled "Coronavirus Pandemic - Sustainable Ways to Overcome the Crisis" deals with the psychological, social, legal, educational, and economic aspects of the pandemic and describes strategies that may contribute to a gradual return to normality.