Women are affected more than men by the social and economic effects of infectious-disease outbreaks. They bear the brunt of care responsibilities as schools close and family members fall ill 1,2 . They are at greater risk of domestic violence 3 and are disproportionately disadvantaged by reduced access to sexual-and reproductive-health services. Because women are more likely than men to have fewer hours of employed work and be on insecure or zero-hour contracts, they are more affected by job losses in times of economic instability 2 .There has been a "horrifying global surge in domestic violence" since the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns, said United Nations secretary-general António Guterres in early April. Malaysia, for example, reported 57% more calls to domestic-abuse helplines between 18 March and 26 March. Moreover, sexualand reproductive-health clinics are closing worldwide. Some US states have restricted access to abortions 4 .It is all too familiar. During outbreaks of Ebola and Zika viruses in the past few years,The social and economic impacts of COVID-19 fall harder on women than on men. Governments need to gather data and target policy to keep all citizens equally safe, sheltered and secure.

The northward migration of Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) and other moths in early summer was observed with radar in 2001 and 2002 at Langfang, Hebei province, China. Migratory flights typically occurred at heights up to 1.2 km above ground level (AGL), and high density layer concentrations frequently formed at 200-300 m AGL. Adult moths of local populations took off at dusk and ceased flight approximately 0.5 h before sunrise with area density peaking approximately 35 min after dusk. A strong dumb-bell pattern of echoes on the plan position indicator screen, indicating collective orientation of the targets, was evident in 2001, when targets were typically moving toward the northeast and when layering was associated with a temperature inversion and maximum wind speed. By contrast, there was no notable dumb-bell pattern in 2002, when targets were moving toward the northwest. However, orientations calculated from target and wind velocities showed that downwind common orientation also was occurring in 2002 and that the direction varied with the wind direction. The probable sources of the H. armigera observed at Langfang were deduced to be Henan province in 2001 and Shandong province in 2002, and the destination regions were Liaoning and Inner Mongolia.

Gender norms, roles and relations differentially affect women, men, and non-binary individuals' vulnerability to disease. Outbreak response measures also have immediate and long-term gendered effects. However, gender-based analysis of outbreaks and responses is limited by lack of data and little integration of feminist analysis within global health scholarship. Recognising these barriers, this paper applies a gender matrix methodology, grounded in feminist political economy approaches, to evaluate the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and response in four case studies: China, Hong Kong, Canada, and the UK. Through a rapid scoping of documentation of the gendered effects of the outbreak, it applies the matrix framework to analyse findings, identifying common themes across the case studies: financial discrimination, crisis in care, and unequal risks and secondary effects. Results point to transnational structural conditions which put women on the front lines of the pandemic at work and at home while denying them health, economic and personal securityeffects that are exacerbated where racism and other forms of discrimination intersect with gender inequities. Given that women and people living at the intersections of multiple inequities are made additionally vulnerable by pandemic responses, intersectional feminist responses should be prioritised at the beginning of any crises.

Bt cotton has been widely planted in the Yellow River valley of China since 1998. Anci County in Hebei Province and Xiajin County in Shandong Province are two areas where almost 100% of the cotton grown produces Cry1A(c) toxin. These areas were therefore selected for analysis of the frequency of genes coding for resistance to Cry1A(c) in field populations of the bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera Hübner (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). In 2002, adult females were collected using light traps. Females were caged individually and were allowed to lay eggs. At hatch, 25 -35 larvae from each female were screened for growth rate on normal artificial diet, and on diet containing 1.0 µg of Cry1A(c) toxin per ml of diet. This growth rate bioassay was designed to detect non-recessive resistance genes in heterozygous genotypes and to detect recessive resistance genes only when present in a homozygous resistant genotype. The bioassay detected one resistant individual out of 234 screened in Anci and one resistant individual out of 420 in Xiajin. These results suggest that a conservative estimate of the resistance gene frequency is 0.00107 in the Anci population, and 0.00059 in the Xiajin population. Our results indicate that minor resistance genes or less dominant genes for resistance may occur at higher frequencies, especially in the Xiajin population.

Individuals in a given environment contaminated with arsenic have different susceptibilities to disease, which may be related to arsenic metabolism, age, gender, genetics and other factors. This study recruited 850 subjects, including 331 cases and 519 controls, from populations exposed to high levels of arsenic in drinking water in northwest China. Genotypes were determined using a custom-by-design 48-Plex SNPscanTM kit. The results indicated that subjects who carried at least one C allele for GSTO1 rs11191979 polymorphism, at least one A allele for GSTO1 rs2164624, at least one A allele for GSTO1 rs4925, the AG genotype for GSTO2 rs156697, the AG genotype or at least one G allele for GSTO2 rs2297235 or the GG genotype or at least one G allele for PNP rs3790064 had an increased risk of arsenic-related skin lesions. In addition, the haplotype CT between rs4925 and rs11191979 appeared to confer a high risk of arsenic-included skin lesions (OR = 1.377, 95% CI = 1.03–1.84), as did the haplotype GCG among rs156697, rs157077 and rs2297235 (OR = 2.197, 95% CI = 1.08–4.44). The results showed that the variants of GSTO1, GSTO2 and PNP render the susceptible toward developing arsenic-induced skin lesions in individuals exposed to high-dose inorganic arsenic in northwest China.

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