Topics in Antivax and Provax Discourse: Yearlong Synoptic Study of COVID-19 Vaccine Tweets.

BACKGROUND: Developing an understanding of the public discourse on COVID-19 vaccination on social media is important not only for addressing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic but also for future pathogen outbreaks. There are various research efforts in this domain, although, a need still exists for a comprehensive topic-wise analysis of tweets in favor of and against COVID-19 vaccines. OBJECTIVE: This study characterizes the discussion points in favor of and against COVID-19 vaccines posted on Twitter during the first year of the pandemic. The aim of this study was primarily to contrast the views expressed by both camps, their respective activity patterns, and their correlation with vaccine-related events. A further aim was to gauge the genuineness of the concerns expressed in antivax tweets. METHODS: We examined a Twitter data set containing 75 million English tweets discussing the COVID-19 vaccination from March 2020 to March 2021. We trained a stance detection algorithm using natural language processing techniques to classify tweets as antivax or provax and examined the main topics of discourse using topic modeling techniques. RESULTS: Provax tweets (37 million) far outnumbered antivax tweets (10 million) and focused mostly on vaccine development, whereas antivax tweets covered a wide range of topics, including opposition to vaccine mandate and concerns about safety. Although some antivax tweets included genuine concerns, there was a large amount of falsehood. Both stances discussed many of the same topics from opposite viewpoints. Memes and jokes were among the most retweeted messages. Most tweets from both stances (9,007,481/10,566,679, 85.24% antivax and 24,463,708/37,044,507, 66.03% provax tweets) came from dual-stance users who posted both provax and antivax tweets during the observation period. CONCLUSIONS: This study is a comprehensive account of COVID-19 vaccine discourse in the English language on Twitter from March 2020 to March 2021. The broad range of discussion points covered almost the entire conversation, and their temporal dynamics revealed a significant correlation with COVID-19 vaccine-related events. We did not find any evidence of polarization and prevalence of antivax discourse over Twitter. However, targeted countering of falsehoods is important because only a small fraction of antivax discourse touched on a genuine issue. Future research should examine the role of memes and humor in driving web-based social media activity.

Conserved and divergent chaperoning effects of Hsp60/10 chaperonins on protein folding landscapes.

The GroEL/ES chaperonin cavity surface charge properties, especially the negative charges, play an important role in its capacity to assist intracavity protein folding. Remarkably, the larger fraction of GroEL/ES negative charges are not conserved among different bacterial species, resulting in a large variation in negative-charge density in the GroEL/ES cavity across prokaryotes. Intriguingly, eukaryotic GroEL/ES homologs have the lowest negative-charge density in the chaperonin cavity. This prompted us to investigate if GroEL's chaperoning mechanism changed during evolution. Using a model in vivo GroEL/ES substrate, we show that the ability of GroEL/ES to buffer entropic traps in the folding pathway of its substrate was partially dependent upon the negative-charge density inside its cavity. While this activity of GroEL/ES was found to be essential for Escherichia coli, it has been perfected in some organisms and diminished in others. However, irrespective of their charges, all the tested homologs retained their ability to regulate polypeptide chain collapse and remove enthalpic traps from folding pathways. The ability of these GroEL/ES homologs to buffer mutational variations in a model substrate correlated with their negative-charge density. Thus, Hsp60/10 chaperonins in different organisms may have changed to accommodate a different spectrum of mutations on their substrates.

Distinct metabolic states of a cell guide alternate fates of mutational buffering through altered proteostasis.

Metabolic changes alter the cellular milieu; can this also change intracellular protein folding? Since proteostasis can modulate mutational buffering, if change in metabolism has the ability to change protein folding, arguably, it should also alter mutational buffering. Here we find that altered cellular metabolic states in E. coli buffer distinct mutations on model proteins. Buffered-mutants have folding problems in vivo and are differently chaperoned in different metabolic states. Notably, this assistance is dependent upon the metabolites and not on the increase in canonical chaperone machineries. Being able to reconstitute the folding assistance afforded by metabolites in vitro, we propose that changes in metabolite concentrations have the potential to alter protein folding capacity. Collectively, we unravel that the metabolite pools are bona fide members of proteostasis and aid in mutational buffering. Given the plasticity in cellular metabolism, we posit that metabolic alterations may play an important role in cellular proteostasis.

Wireless multihop backhauls for rural areas: A preliminary study.

Rural areas have very low revenue potential. The major issue in providing low-cost broadband to rural areas is to provide reliable backhaul connections that spread over tens or even hundreds of miles, connecting villages to the nearest service provider. Along with aerial networks of Google and Facebook, there has been a considerable amount of research toward long-distance terrestrial WiFi links. As a comparison, WiFi routers are easier to be deployed and maintained by non-technical people from the local communities, whereas the aerial networks require professional support to operate. Moreover, they are still in the experimentation phase. However, the long distance WiFi links require high-gain directional antennas and very expensive tall towers for high data rates. On the other hand, multihop paths with stronger links may provide better data rates without the need of tall towers. In this paper, we evaluated the concept of using such multihop WiFi links for long backhaul connections. Our simulation results show that these networks can possibly be a cost-effective and practical solution for rural connectivity. These initial results can serve as a first step to understand the comprehensive feasibility of using multihop WiFi networks for backhaul connections in rural area.

Accreditation standards for medical imaging services.

The rapid changes in the healthcare system, with revolutionary advancements in imaging, along with the lack of any existing imaging standards in our country, have raised the need for an accreditation structure. The Quality Council of India (QCI) has therefore introduced standards for medical imaging services, focusing on the control of services, personnel, imaging processes and procedures, facility and environment, equipment, and documentation, as well as risk control and safety. This article deals briefly with the standards structured by the QCI for accreditation of imaging services.