Wearing face masks is recommended as part of personal protective equipment and as a public health measure to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Their use, however, is deeply connected to social and cultural practices and has acquired a variety of personal and social meanings. This article aims to identify the diversity of sociocultural, ethical, and political meanings attributed to face masks, how they might impact public health policies, and how they should be considered in health communication. In May 2020, we involved 29 experts of an interdisciplinary research network on health and society to provide their testimonies on the use of face masks in 20 European and 2 Asian countries (China and South Korea). They reflected on regulations in the corresponding jurisdictions as well as the personal and social aspects of face mask wearing. We analyzed those testimonies thematically, employing the method of qualitative descriptive analysis. The analysis framed the four dimensions of the societal and personal practices of wearing (or not wearing) face masks: individual perceptions of infection risk, personal interpretations of responsibility and solidarity, cultural traditions and religious imprinting, and the need of expressing self-identity. Our study points to the importance for an in-depth understanding of the cultural and sociopolitical considerations around the personal and social meaning of mask wearing in different contexts as a necessary prerequisite for the assessment of the effectiveness of face masks as a public health measure. Improving the personal and collective understanding of citizens' behaviors and attitudes appears essential for designing more effective health communications about COVID-19 pandemic or other global crises in the future.   To wear a face mask or not to wear a face mask?   Nowadays, this question has been analogous   to the famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet:   “To be or not to be, that is the question.”   This is a bit allegorical,   but certainly not far from the current circumstances   where a deadly virus is spreading amongst us... Vanja Kopilaš, Croatia.

Equilibrium (pH-metric) and spectroscopic (1H,13C, and 119Sn NMR and 119Sn Mössbauer) studies were performed to characterize the interaction of the dimethyltin(IV) cation with glycine, glycyl-glycine (Gly-Gly), imidazole-4-acetic acid, histamine, histidine, glycyl-histamine, glycyl-histidine (Gly-His), and β-alanyl-histidine (carnosine). For histamine and glycyl-histamine (having only nitrogen donor atoms) no complex formation was detected. The hydrolyzed species of the dimethyltin(IV) cation are always dominant over the complexes formed with the other ligands, except with Gly-Gly and Gly-His. For these two ligands, {COO-,N-,NH2} coordinated complexes are dominant in the neutral pH range with a trigonal bipyramidal structure, providing the first example that alkyltin(IV) cations are able to promote the deprotonation of the peptide-nitrogen in aqueous solutions, at unexpectedly low pH. In this process the carboxylate is the anchoring group (assisting by chelate formation), in contrast with any other metal ions which are known to coordinate to amide nitrogen. The metal coordination of the imidazole ring, which is suggested as binding site toward alkyltin(IV) cation in several proteins, was not observed for Gly-His under the conditions used; it is probably the case for the other ligands, too.

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