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- All Subjects: COVID-19
Vaccines are modern medicine’s best way of combating the majority of viral and bacterial illnesses and contagions to date. Thanks to the introduction of vaccines since the first uses of them in 1796 (Jenner’s smallpox vaccine), they have drastically reduced figures of disease worldwide, turning once lethal and life changing conditions into minor annoyances; Some of these afflictions have even become nonexistent or even extinct in certain parts of the world outside of a controlled laboratory setting. With many advancements and overwhelming evidence proving their efficiency, it is clear that vaccines have become nothing less than a necessity for everyday healthcare in today’s world. <br/>The greatest contributor to the creation and evolution of vaccines throughout the years is by far the progress and work done in the field of molecular and cellular biology. These advancements have become the bedrock of modern vaccination, as shown by the differing types of vaccines and their methodology. The most common varieties of vaccines are include ‘dead’ or inactivated vaccines, one such example being the pertussis strain of vaccines, which have either dead or torn apart cells for the body to easily fight off, allowing the immune system to easily and quickly counter the illness; Additionally, there are also live attenuated vaccines (LAVs) in which a weaker version of the pathogen is introduced to the body to stimulate an immune response, or a recombinant mRNA vaccine where mRNA containing the coding for an antigen is presented for immunological response, the latter being what the current COVID-19 vaccines are based on. This is in part aided by the presence of immunological adjuvants, antigens and substances that the immune system can recognize, target, and remember for future infections. However, for more serious illnesses the body needs a bigger threat to analyze, which leads to live vaccines- instead of dead or individual components of a potential pathogen, a weakened version is created in the lab to allow the body to combat it. The idea behind this is the same, but to a larger degree so a more serious illness such as measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) do not infect us.<br/>However, for the past couple of decades the public’s views on vaccination has greatly varied, with the rise of fear and disinformation leading those to believe that modern medicine is a threat in disguise. The largest of these arguments began in the late 90’s, when Dr. Andrew Wakefield published an article under the Lancet with false information connecting vaccinations to the occurrence of autism in younger children- a theory which has since then been proven incorrect numerous times over. Unfortunately, the rise of hysteria and paranoia in people, along with more misinformation from misleading sources, have strengthened the anti-vaccination cause and has made it into a serious threat to the health of those world-wide.<br/>The aim of this thesis is to provide an accurate and thorough analysis on these three themes- the history of vaccines, their inner workings and machinations in providing immune defenses for the body, and the current controversy of the anti-vaccination movement. Additionally, there will be two other sections going in-depth on two specific areas where vaccination is highly important; The spread and fear of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been around for nearly four decades, so it begs the question: what makes this such a difficult virus, and how can a vaccine be created to combat it? Additionally, in the last year the world has encountered a new virus that has evolved into a global pandemic, SARS-COV 2. This new strain of coronavirus has shown itself to be highly contagious and rapidly mutating, and the race to quickly develop a vaccine to counteract it has been on-going since its first major infections in Wuhan, China. Overall, this thesis will go in-depth in providing the most accurate, up-to-date, and critical information regarding vaccinations today.
The COVID-19 pandemic began in March of 2020 and drastically affected the global human population. Millions of people died due to a SARS-CoV-2 infection while many who survived developed devastating sequelae of the disease. In addition, the closure of schools and businesses led to international economic struggle in the year 2020 as global economies declined. Since the beginning of the pandemic, over 200,000 scientific articles have been published and compiled into a database that grows daily— a rare occurrence within the scientific community. This thesis uses natural language processing tools via Python and VOSviewer software to perform a bibliometric analysis on 205,712 papers published between January of 2020 and February of 2021 pertaining to COVID-19. We first investigate how to analyze these publications most effectively in terms of title versus abstract keyword searches, we further obtain the focus of the current scientific literature via co-occurrence analysis and clustering, and we at last discuss the time evolution of these topics over the course of 14 months.
The mental health of ASU students has been negatively affected by the pandemic. Our research looks to prove that COVID-19 has caused an increase in stress levels while uncovering other relationships to stress. We obtained our data by conducting a survey through Google Forms that was exclusively accessible to ASU students. Stress levels were measured with the use of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). We find that the stress of ASU students from before the pandemic to during rises from 15 to 22 points, a 50% increase (n = 228). We discovered that women are more stressed than men before and during the pandemic. We also discovered that there is no difference between stresses among different races. We notice that there is a parabolic relationship between enrollment time and stress levels with the peak occurring during semesters 2-6. We also conclude that students who attended more than 5 events during the pandemic had lower stress scores, and those who had their videos on for at least 3 events had lower stress scores. Furthermore, students who utilized campus resources to manage their stress had higher stress levels than those who did not.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals including occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) were required to transition to working utilizing an online-service delivery model called telehealth. The use of telehealth for occupational therapy (OT) sessions was limited prior to the pandemic, and this shift required OTPs to provide services in ways many had never experienced. The purpose of this study was to identify how the transition to telehealth impacted OTPs and their ability to provide proper care to the pediatric population via telehealth. The final analytic sample included 32 female OTPs who worked with the pediatric population. Results from qualitative and quantitative analyses showed that OTPs had positive feelings toward using telehealth and that the telehealth modality had a moderate impact on their job performance. The areas that pediatric OTPs want to be addressed included technology and internet issues, lack of parent involvement, decreased quality of care, inaccessibility of materials, decreased attention span and increased distractions, and lack of general knowledge about telehealth among clients, parents, and professionals. Despite these drawbacks, a positive theme emerged that the telehealth model is good for current circumstances. The results show telehealth is a positive experience for OTPs and allows OT to be more accessible to their clients. Implications for increasing education for healthcare professionals, clients, and parents/guardians to make telehealth accessible to clients on a large scale are discussed.
The mental health of ASU students has been negatively affected by the pandemic. Our research looks to prove that COVID-19 has caused an increase in stress levels while uncovering other relationships to stress. We obtained our data by conducting a survey through Google Forms that was exclusively accessible to ASU students. Stress levels were measured with the use of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). We find that the stress of ASU students from before the pandemic to during rises from 15 to 22 points, a 50% increase (n = 228). We discovered that women are more stressed than men before and during the pandemic. We also discovered that there is no difference between stresses among different races. We notice that there is a parabolic relationship between enrollment time and stress levels with the peak occurring during semesters 2-6. We also conclude that students who attended more than 5 events during the pandemic had lower stress scores, and those who had their videos on for at least 3 events had lower stress scores. Furthermore, students who utilized campus resources to manage their stress had higher stress levels than those who did not.
The mental health of ASU students has been negatively affected by the pandemic. Our research looks to prove that COVID-19 has caused an increase in stress levels while uncovering other relationships to stress. We obtained our data by conducting a survey through Google Forms that was exclusively accessible to ASU students. Stress levels were measured with the use of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). We find that the stress of ASU students from before the pandemic to during rises from 15 to 22 points, a 50% increase (n = 228). We discovered that women are more stressed than men before and during the pandemic. We also discovered that there is no difference between stresses among different races. We notice that there is a parabolic relationship between enrollment time and stress levels with the peak occurring during semesters 2-6. We also conclude that students who attended more than 5 events during the pandemic had lower stress scores, and those who had their videos on for at least 3 events had lower stress scores. Furthermore, students who utilized campus resources to manage their stress had higher stress levels than those who did not.
Analysis of COVID-19 Incident Rate Throughout the U.S. Southwest With Respect to Stay-At-Home Orders
Analyzing Incident Rates of COVID-19 Before and After Stay-At-Home Orders Throughout the Southwestern U.S. with Respect to Limited Mobility Models
Flora Vita is a digital platform that connects families to outdoor excursions, programmed activities and local events, encouraging the familial ecosystem to flourish within Arizona's vast environment. We curate unique opportunities that allow families to cultivate internal relationships with one another and form relationships with local like-minded families in pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.
Graduating from college is an important time of life transitions and career development for undergraduates and their future. Future self-identification, the connection between an individual’s current and future self, can negatively predict depression and utilize self-control as a mechanism to achieve later academic goals. Investigating an individual’s future self- identification, depression scores, and behavioral outcomes in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic can help optimize college graduate success in an uncertain world. The present study aimed to (1) determine if earlier future self-identification moderated the changes between later outcomes (e.g., depression, perceived alcohol consumption, and academic and career goals) from pre-COVID-19 to during COVID-19, (2) investigate if psychological resources (e.g., self-control and emotion regulation) had any intermediary effects between earlier future self-identification and later depression and behavioral outcomes during the pandemic, and (3) test for any moderation effects of future self-identification on the relationship between available psychological resources before COVID-19 and during COVID-19. The present research demonstrated that students with greater earlier future self-identification were less likely to change their academic and career goals and were less likely to experience symptoms of depression during the pandemic. Additionally, self-control was demonstrated as an intermediary factor between earlier future self-identification and later academic and career goal changes. These findings may help college graduates develop resilience in other stressful situations.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the pandemic’s effect on the psychosocial and physical quality of life of children with and without classic galactosemia and their parents in the Babble Boot Camp. The Babble Boot Camp within ASU’s Speech and Hearing Genetics Lab provides early intervention speech therapy for children with classic galactosemia (CG), evaluating their speech progress as well as other metrics related to stress and quality of life. In this study, the Quality of Life questionnaire (Varni, 1998) was used to measure how three pandemic stages (pre-pandemic, intense-pandemic, post intense-pandemic) affected the entire participant population, those with CG children compared to typically developing, and each family member (father vs. mother vs. child). These factors were combined within an integrated regression model to see driving factors and correlations within responses. The main results were that the pandemic itself did not have a significant effect, but there was quite a significant impact on psychosocial health when comparing affected vs unaffected groups. Evaluating an integrated regression model with the consideration of all three pandemic phases, the results show that the factor driving group differences over time was the affectation of the participant for psychosocial health and family member for physical health. When looking at just pre-pandemic and intense pandemic phase, both models in their entirety were significant, showing that all predictors (affectation, pandemic phase, and family member) drove health differences. Lastly, the findings of the study show that there were significant correlations between the health scores of fathers, mothers, and children throughout the different stages of the pandemic.