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ObjectivesInternet search engine data have been widely used to monitor and predict infectious diseases. Existing studies have found correlations between search data and HIV/AIDS epidemics. We aimed to extend the literature through exploring the feasibility of using search data to monitor and predict the number of newly diagnosed cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhoea in China.MethodsThis paper used vector autoregressive model to combine the number of newly diagnosed cases with Baidu search index to predict monthly newly diagnosed cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhoea in China. The procedures included: (1) keywords selection and filtering; (2) construction of composite search index; (3) modelling with training data from January 2011 to October 2016 and calculating the prediction performance with validation data from November 2016 to October 2017.ResultsThe analysis showed that there was a close correlation between the monthly number of newly diagnosed cases and the composite search index (the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients were 0.777 for HIV/AIDS, 0.590 for syphilis and 0.633 for gonorrhoea, p<0.05 for all). The R2were all more than 85% and the mean absolute percentage errors were less than 11%, showing the good fitting effect and prediction performance of vector autoregressive model in this field.ConclusionsOur study indicated the potential feasibility of using Baidu search data to monitor and predict the number of newly diagnosed cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhoea in China.

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This paper presents the planning of an innovation course for elementary school students. The course is designed and organized by the Beijing Normal University in collaboration with the China Soong Ching Ling Science and Culture Centre for Young People. This course aims to foster children's empathy and creative thinking. There are three core teaching phases: theme exploration, design expression, and prototyping. In addition, the research team applies NeuroDesign techniques (i.e., fNIRS) to quantitatively measure students' development of empathy and innovation to assess the effectiveness of teaching and learning. Educators would refer to this planning for designing other educational courses on fostering creativity.