Barriers to vaccination for coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)control:experience from the United States

To date,the United States(U.S.)has been the most heavily impacted country by the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19).By November 30,2020,when this paper was written,13.5 million cases were reported in the U.S.with over 268000 deaths.Historically,vaccines have been one of the most effective and efficient technical tools for controlling a communicable disease.While the development of these vaccines has certainly been a challenge,it could be more challenging to achieve robust vaccine uptake because of many barriers.In this review,we focused on two types of barriers documented from long-term experience in the U.S.:structural and attitudinal.Structural barriers are systemic issues that impact one's ability to access a service,and they include time,transportation,cost,and clinic or outlet location;while attitudinal barriers are beliefs or perceptions that impact the willingness of at-risk individuals to seek out and/or accept a service.In the context of vaccination they include beliefs about the communicable disease,beliefs about vaccines,fear,and trust in healthcare and governmental agencies.Of the attitudinal barriers,public trust is a barrier that is of particular importance.In addition to affecting reception of vaccines,it may exacerbate disparities and reduce the likelihood of success of a vaccination program.Recommendations are made to overcome attitudinal barriers to help improve the effectiveness of vaccination programs for COVID-19 control in the U.S.,such as building public support through bipartisan endorsements and leveraging social media platforms to promote vaccination.

A bionic controllable strain membrane for cell stretching at air–liquid interface inspired by papercutting

Lung diseases associated with alveoli,such as acute respiratory distress syndrome,have posed a long-term threat to human health.However,an in vitro model capable of simulating different deformations of the alveoli and a suitable material for mimicking basement membrane are currently lacking.Here,we present an innovative biomimetic controllable strain membrane(BCSM)at an air–liquid interface(ALI)to reconstruct alveolar respiration.The BCSM consists of a high-precision three-dimensional printing melt-electrowritten polycaprolactone(PCL)mesh,coated with a hydrogel substrate—to simulate the important functions(such as stiffness,porosity,wettability,and ALI)of alveolar microenvironments,and seeded pulmonary epithelial cells and vascular endothelial cells on either side,respectively.Inspired by papercutting,the BCSM was fabricated in the plane while it operated in three dimensions.A series of the topological structure of the BCSM was designed to control various local-area strain,mimicking alveolar varied deformation.Lopinavir/ritonavir could reduce Lamin A expression under over-stretch condition,which might be effective in preventing ventilator-induced lung injury.The biomimetic lung-unit model with BCSM has broader application prospects in alveoli-related research in the future,such as in drug toxicology and metabolism.

Barrier Structure Design for Fattening Pigs in Large-scale Pig House with Fermentation Bed

[Objective] The large-scale single-column fattening pig house with fermen- tation bed could hold 1 500 heads of fattening pigs. Since the number of pigs in piggery is too large, the management is difficult. The behavior of feeding, drinking, movement, sleeping, fighting of pigs is difficult to handle. The pigs cannot be man- aged well, resulting in the enhanced weakness of piglets, enhanced illness of weak pigs and missing treatment of ill pigs. The management for the pig populations is not satisfactory, and thus, it is needed to improve timely. [Method] The barriers for the fattening pigs in the large-scale pig house with fermentation bed were designed. The single management for single fattening pig was proposed. The large-scale fat- tening pig house was divided into 8 regions. Among them, 4 regions were located in both sides of the fermentation bed. Their main function was to separate ill, weak, small and bad pigs. In addition, the main column was divided into 4 gradual barri- ers. They were used to separate different-size fattening pigs. In view of manage- ment, the different-type pigs were managed dividedly with the gradual barriers. The equally-sized pigs were concentrated into one column. The ill, weak, small and bad pigs were isolated into barriers. Thus, the dynamic management was adopted. Until the fattening pigs grew up to 75 kg and their health was stable, the barriers among the columns were canceled to mix the pigs again and guarantee the pigs more gymnastic space. [Result] This design would improve the disease resistance of ill pigs, health status of weak pigs and management level of pig populations. This study would also provide a basis for the healthy running of large-scale fattening pig house with fermentation bed. [Conclusion] The pig-raising model with fermentation bed would improve the environment of pig house and the welfare of pigs. In addi- tion, the performance of pigs and quality of pork were also improved. The fermen- tation bed had an obvious advantage in safety and economics, and it had a broad application prospect.

Microstructure studies of air-plasma-spray-deposited CoNiCrAlY coatings before and after thermal cyclic loading for high-temperature application

In the present study, bond-coats for thermal barrier coatings were deposited via air plasma spraying（APS） techniques onto Inconel 800 and Hastelloy C-276 alloy substrates. Scanning electron microscopy（SEM）, transmission electron microscopy（TEM）, X-ray diffraction（XRD）, and atomic force microscopy（AFM） were used to investigate the phases and microstructure of the as-sprayed, APS-deposited Co Ni Cr Al Y bond-coatings. The aim of this work was to study the suitability of the bond-coat materials for high temperature applications. Confirmation of nanoscale grains of the γ/γ′-phase was obtained by TEM, high-resolution TEM, and AFM. We concluded that these changes result from the plastic deformation of the bond-coat during the deposition, resulting in Co Ni Cr Al Y bond-coatings with excellent thermal cyclic resistance suitable for use in high-temperature applications. Cyclic oxidative stability was observed to also depend on the underlying metallic alloy substrate.