Although seasonal variation has a known influence on the transmission of several respiratory viral infections, its role in SARS-CoV-2 transmission remains unclear. While there is a sizable and growing literature on environmental drivers of COVID-19 transmission, recent reviews have highlighted conflicting and inconclusive findings. This indeterminacy partly owes to the fact that seasonal variation relates to viral transmission by a complicated web of causal pathways, including many interacting biological and behavioural factors. Since analyses of specific factors cannot determine the aggregate strength of seasonal forcing, we sidestep the challenge of disentangling various possible causal paths in favor of a holistic approach. We model seasonality as a sinusoidal variation in transmission and infer a single Bayesian estimate of the overall seasonal effect. By extending two state-of-the-art models of non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) effects and their datasets covering 143 regions in temperate Europe, we are able to adjust our estimates for the role of both NPIs and mobility patterns in reducing transmission. We find strong seasonal patterns, consistent with a reduction in the time-varying reproduction number R(t) (the expected number of new infections generated by an infectious individual at time t) of 42.1% (95% CI: 24.7%-53.4%) from the peak of winter to the peak of summer. These results imply that the seasonality of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is comparable in magnitude to the most effective individual NPIs but less than the combined effect of multiple interventions.
- MeSH
- Bayes Theorem MeSH
- COVID-19 * epidemiology MeSH
- Humans MeSH
- Climate MeSH
- Seasons MeSH
- SARS-CoV-2 * MeSH
- Check Tag
- Humans MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
The validity of infant mortality data is essential in assessing health care quality and in the setting of preventive measures. This study explores different diagnostic procedures used to determine the cause of death across forensic settings and thus the issue of the reduced validity of data. All records from three forensic medical departments that conducted autopsies on children aged 12 months or younger (n = 204) who died during the years 2007-2016 in Moravia were included. Differences in diagnostic procedures were found to be statistically significant. Each department works with a different set of risk factors and places different emphasis on different types of examination. The most significant differences could be observed in sudden infant death syndrome and suffocation diagnosis frequency. The validity of statistical data on the causes of infant mortality is thus significantly reduced. Therefore, the possibilities of public health and social policy interventions toward preventing sudden and unexpected infant death are extraordinarily complicated by this lack of data validity.
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
The diverse forms of today's dominant vascular plant flora are generated by the sustained proliferative activity of sporophyte meristems at plants' shoot and root tips, a trait known as indeterminacy [1]. Bryophyte sister lineages to the vascular plants lack such indeterminate meristems and have an overall sporophyte form comprising a single small axis that ceases growth in the formation of a reproductive sporangium [1]. Genetic mechanisms regulating indeterminacy are well characterized in flowering plants, involving a feedback loop between class I KNOX genes and cytokinin [2, 3], and class I KNOX expression is a conserved feature of vascular plant meristems [4]. The transition from determinate growth to indeterminacy during evolution was a pre-requisite to vascular plant diversification, but mechanisms enabling the innovation of indeterminacy are unknown [5]. Here, we show that class I KNOX gene activity is necessary and sufficient for axis extension from an intercalary region of determinate moss shoots. As in Arabidopsis, class I KNOX activity can promote cytokinin biosynthesis by an ISOPENTENYL TRANSFERASE gene, PpIPT3. PpIPT3 promotes axis extension, and PpIPT3 and exogenously applied cytokinin can partially compensate for loss of class I KNOX function. By outgroup comparison, the results suggest that a pre-existing KNOX-cytokinin regulatory module was recruited into vascular plant shoot meristems during evolution to promote indeterminacy, thereby enabling the radiation of vascular plant shoot forms.
... , 163, 166, i88n indeterminacy of, 118, 128, 160 and indirect speech acts, 270, 273-4 kinds of, 126-7 ... ... felicity, infelicity incidental vs. defining characteristics, no, 150-1 ; see also connotation indeterminacy ... ... , i6on indeterminacy of, 118, 160 interaction theory, 148-51 and language change, 165-6 and models, 147 ...
Cambridge textbooks of linguistics
15th ed. xvi, 420 s.
[1st ed.] xiv, 253 s.
- MeSH
- Philosophy MeSH
- Conspectus
- Věda. Všeobecnosti. Základy vědy a kultury. Vědecká práce
- NML Fields
- humanitní vědy a umění
