Sustaining economic activities while curbing the number of new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases until effective vaccines or treatments become available is a major public health and policy challenge. In this paper, we use agent-based simulations of a network-based susceptible−exposed−infectious−recovered (SEIR) model to investigate two network intervention strategies for mitigating the spread of transmission while maintaining economic activities. In the simulations, we assume that people engage in group activities in multiple sectors (e.g., going to work, going to a local grocery store), where they interact with others in the same group and potentially become infected. In the first strategy, each group is divided into two subgroups (e.g., a group of customers can only go to the grocery store in the morning, while another separate group of customers can only go in the afternoon). In the second strategy, we balance the number of group members across different groups within the same sector (e.g., every grocery store has the same number of customers). The simulation results show that the dividing groups strategy substantially reduces transmission, and the joint implementation of the two strategies could effectively bring the spread of transmission under control (i.e., effective reproduction number ≈ 1.0).

Clinical evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion regulation due to modulation of activity in neural substrates linked to the regulation of emotions and social preferences. However, less was known about whether mindfulness meditation might alter pro-social behavior. Here we examined whether mindfulness meditation activates human altruism, a component of social cooperation. Using a simple donation game, which is a real-world version of the Dictator's Game, we randomly assigned 326 subjects to a mindfulness meditation online session or control and measured their willingness to donate a portion of their payment for participation as a charitable donation. Subjects who underwent the meditation treatment donated at a 2.61 times higher rate than the control (p = 0.005), after controlling for socio-demographics. We also found a larger treatment effect of meditation among those who did not go to college (p < 0.001) and those who were under 25 years of age (p < 0.001), with both subject groups contributing virtually nothing in the control condition. Our results imply high context modularity of human altruism and the development of intervention approaches including mindfulness meditation to increase social cooperation, especially among subjects with low baseline willingness to contribute.Cooperation is an essential behavior in constructing and maintaining human societies and the past two decades of cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics experiments have improved our understanding of neurophysiological bases of such behavior. Neuroimaging suggests that cooperation is associated with reward-processing brain areas including rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) 1 , which is known to modulate fear processing in amygdala 2 ; as well as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), nucleus accumbens (NACC), and caudate 3-5 . Recent research gives us an even more granular view of the pathways involved, showing that "pay-it-forward" indirect reciprocity (altruism without expectation of returned favor, which underlies large-scale cooperation, specifically based on empathy and other-regarding social preferences rather than reputation) is associated with activation of the anterior insula (AI), which in turn regulates the caudate 6 .Cooperation can be generally defined as individual behavior whereby "one individual pays a cost for others to receive a benefit" 7 . Cooperation can be further modelled as equilibrium of games where subjects still act in their self-interest but their utility function (a function that defines individual preferences of given scenarios) includes social preferences that have been modelled in various ways, such as inequity aversion, a second utility function over others ' well-being, etc 8-10 . In the present study we focus on the act of making a private decision regarding what proportion of payment to keep for oneself and what proportion to make as a charitable donation, which is a form of indirect reciprocity or generalized altruism....

It is known that there has been positive natural selection for hemoglobin S and C in humans despite negative health effects, due to its role in malaria resistance. However, it is not well understood, if there has been natural selection for hemoglobin E (HbE), which is a common variant in Southeast Asia. Therefore, we reviewed previous studies and discussed the potential role of natural selection in the prevalence of HbE. Our review shows that in vitro studies, evolutionary genetics studies and epidemiologic studies largely support an involvement of natural selection in the evolution of HbE and a protective role of HbE against malaria infection. However, the evidence is inconsistent, provided from different regions, and insufficient to perform an aggregated analysis such as a meta-analysis. In addition, few candidate gene, genome-wide association or epistasis studies, which have been made possible with the use of big data in the post-genomic era, have investigated HbE. The biological pathways linking HbE and malaria infection have not yet been fully elucidated. Therefore, further research is necessary before it can be concluded that there was positive natural selection for HbE due to protection against malaria. Lay summary: Our review shows that evidence largely supports an involvement of natural selection in the evolution of HbE and a protective role of HbE against malaria. However, the evidence is not consistent. Further research is necessary before it is concluded.