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ObjectivesDespite the epidemiological importance of social vulnerabilities in compliance with preventive measures, little is known about the disproportional nature of preventive behaviors in crisis-affected populations. We examined adherence to COVID-19 preventive behaviors, focusing on social distancing measures in the conflict-affected regions in eastern Ukraine.MethodsFrom a multisectoral needs assessment conducted in 2020 using a household interview of a stratified simple random sample, we included 1,617 rural and urban households located in the government-controlled area. We performed multivariable binary logistic regression analysis with latent class analysis (LCA) to identify unmeasured patterns of classification of preventive measures using data from a cross-sectional survey.ResultsThe conflict-affected populations showed difficulty in complying with COVID-19 preventive measures due to losses of housing, partners, and access to food resources due to conflicts. Among the various preventive measures, wearing a face mask (88.1%) and washing hands more regularly (71.4%) were the most frequently reported. Compliance with social distancing was significantly lower in those who experienced the direct impacts of conflicts indicated by damaged accommodation or being widowed. Three different groups who showed distinctive patterns of employing COVID-19 preventive measures were identified via the LCA model, which were “highly complying group”, “moderately complying group”, and “face masks only group”. The group membership was associated with a respondent’s poverty status.ConclusionThe findings show the difficulty in compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures among conflict-affected populations indicating secondary impacts of the conflicts on preventive health behaviors. To mitigate the health impacts of conflicts, immediate attention is needed to address barriers to COVID-19 preventive measures among conflict-affected populations in Ukraine. This study suggests the need for public health strategies to improve preventive health behaviors in conflict-affected populations under pandemics or large-scale outbreaks.

Additional file 1: Supplementary Table 1. Hazard ratios of the covariates adjusted in the analysis on risk of herpes zoster in rheumatoid arthritis patients during first bDMARD or tsDMARD use. Supplementary Table 2. Risk of herpes zoster on rheumatoid arthritis patients started bDMARD or tsDMARD from 2017 during first bDMARD or tsDMARD use. Supplementary Table 3. Risk of incident herpes zoster on rheumatoid arthritis patients without history of herpes zoster during first bDMARD or tsDMARD use. Supplementary Figure 1. Study design. Supplementary Figure 2. Kaplan-Meier estimation on risk of herpes zoster among RA patients according to the first-line bDMARDs or tsDMARD. Supplementary Table 4. Characteristics of the patients with and without herpes zoster. Supplementary Table 5. Characteristics of the patients with and without very early herpes zoster.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Transcription factors not involved in IL-6 induced Cyr61 protein synthesis. RA-FLSs transfected with either small interfering RNA (NR4A1 or ATF3) or siNC (control) (20 pmol/L) stimulated by IL-6 (20 ng/mL) for 2 h. Data are representative of at least three independent experiments. Fig. S2. Expression of IL-6 enhanced by Cyr61 secretion. The mRNA level of IL-6 stimulated by Cyr61 protein (100 ng/mL) for 2 h as determined via real time polymerase chain reaction. Values are means (± standard deviation) of at least three independent experiments. **p

For the gradient computation across the time domain in Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) training, two different approaches have been independently studied. The first is to compute the gradients with respect to the change in spike activation (activation-based methods), and the second is to compute the gradients with respect to the change in spike timing (timing-based methods). In this work, we present a comparative study of the two methods and propose a new supervised learning method that combines them. The proposed method utilizes each individual spike more effectively by shifting spike timings as in the timing-based methods as well as generating and removing spikes as in the activation-based methods. Experimental results showed that the proposed method achieves higher performance in terms of both accuracy and efficiency than the previous approaches., Comment: To be published in NeurIPS 2020

A general method for determining the dynamic strain response of an infinite beam to impact force is presented. The method consists of formulating and solving the dynamic problem in the Laplace transform domain and obtaining the strain response by numerical inversion of the transformed solution. Also, an inverse method for estimating the impact force on an infinite beam is investigated. Once the strain is known, it is shown how the impact force can be reconstructed.