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Summary: The daily practice requires the use of indirect calorimetry to define the energy requirements of intensive care patients. In the time of COVID-19 pandemic, this practice is challenging. The purpose of this methodology paper is to provide practical guidance to health professionals to perform this measurement safely, using various metabolic monitors.

Abstract Electric vehicle development is critical to achieve the sustainable goals, while the hit of COVID-19 strikes the market and brings challenges to the whole industry. China, among one of the earliest regions affected by COVID-19 and takes a great part in the global electric vehicle market, is attracting growing attention on its post-pandemic trends in the electric vehicle industry. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 impacts on China's electric vehicle industry from both the demand side and the supply side. Both challenges and opportunities for China's electric vehicle development are revealed with emerging trend analysis. It is found that the COVID-19 outbreak has reduced electric vehicle sales in the short-term, but may also stimulate future electric vehicle demand especially for large electric cars with better performance. Meanwhile, travel restrictions caused by COVID-19 have interrupted electric vehicle material supplies that relying on imports, accelerating domestic substitute exploitation and inventory improvement for critical parts. Additionally, massive lockdowns for controlling COVID-19 have disrupted productions and operations, which tends to expel small brands out of the competitive market, concentrating China's electric vehicle industry to the leading brands. Finally, the social distancing trend after pandemic is bringing challenges to traditional EV distribution channels with dealers, pushing automakers to develop innovative online selling channels. These impacts are likely to lead to a reformation of China's electric vehicle industry towards a more advanced and reliable future.

Abstract Urban resilience (UR) is a central concept in enabling cities to be prepared for disasters and unexpected events caused by climate change-induced extreme weather conditions. The field is dedicated to developing solutions and models in this regard. In particular, the emergence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has threatened certain industries and has compelled cities to re-evaluate and address resilience. This study aims to provide an overview of the subject by examining the academic and industrial literature on UR, categorizing publications, analyzing major trends, as well as highlighting gaps and providing future research recommendations. In this context, 146 journal articles and 9 industrial reports published up to the end of 2020 were examined. Journal articles have been examined under three headings as literature reviews, conceptual models, and analytical models. The approaches and analytical techniques discussed in the field are also examined in the review. These examinations and classifications constitute the originality of the study. Examination of industrial reports has provided us with the opportunity to understand the practices discussed and suggested by practitioners in this field. The results show that the most commonly arising issue in UR is climate change. Finally, the research gaps and future suggestions are presented.

This paper estimates the impact of the COVID-19 on air travel demand and emissions in Brazil, the largest aviation market in Latin America. Combining detailed flight data and data on combustion emission factors, we estimate the CO

Electricity consumption has been affected due to worldwide lockdown policies against COVID-19. Many countries have pointed out that electricity supply security during the epidemic is critical to ensuring people’s livelihood. Accurate prediction of electricity demand would act a more important role in ensuring energy security for all the countries. Although there have been many studies on electricity forecasting, they did not consider the pandemic, and many works only considered the prediction accuracy and ignored the stability. Driven by the above reasons, it is necessary to develop an electricity consumption prediction model that can be well applied in the pandemic. In this work, a hybrid prediction system is proposed with data processing, modelling, and optimization. An improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise is used for data preprocessing, which overcomes the shortcomings of the original method; a multi-objective optimizer is adopted for ensuring the accuracy and stability; support vector machine is used as the prediction model. Taking daily electricity demand of US as an example, the results prove that the proposed hybrid models are superior to benchmark models in both prediction accuracy and stability. Moreover, selection of input parameters is discussed, and the results indicate that the model considering the daily infections has the highest prediction accuracy and stability, and it is proved that the proposed model has great potential in real-world applications. Highlights • A hybrid model is developed for predicting daily electricity demand during COVID-19. • The accuracy and stability of the new model are higher than those of benchmark models. • The proposed model also performs well in multi-step prediction. • The model that only considers daily infections has the best prediction performance.

One “silver lining” of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the reduction in air pollution that followed lockdowns. Unfortunately, this unintended air pollution decline will likely be short-lived. As regions begin to recover their economies, travel and industrial activity will increase the ambient pollutants quickly offsetting the improvement in air quality. Therefore, it is urgent to clarify the causal impact of reopening an economy on air quality during COVID-19. Based on city-level daily air quality data in China, this paper is the first to empirically analyze the causal effect of reopening the economy in the provincial capital Lanzhou on concentrations of four air pollutants using the synthetic control method. The results show that the reopening caused a significant increase in the concentration of NO2 by as much as 30 μg/m3 (an increase of 75% from the lockdown level) and a significant increase in O3 concentrations by 60μg/m3 (a 60% increase) which peaked on the 6th day after the restart. The reopening also led to significant fluctuations in SO2 and CO concentrations. This study contains useful conclusions by providing timely and reliable causal evidence on the lasting impact of COVID-19 on air quality.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educational mobile games may play a significant role to facilitate students’ learning. Several studies have indicated that these games using mobile phones may improve students’ learning motivation and effectiveness when they are equipped with appropriate learning strategies. However, investigating the impact of learning strategies in students’ utilization of educational mobile games has received little scholarly attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, this research proposed two learning games scenarios to fill this gap. In the first scenario, students were offered an educational mobile game with a learning strategy called ‘scaffolding strategy’; while in the second scenario, the same game was offered without the strategy. To achieve this objective, an experimental design with a research model was developed to examine the role of scaffolding learning strategy in students’ use of educational mobile games. In this experimental study, 43 students from two classes participated in the two learning scenarios. The results indicate that educational mobile gaming with the scaffolding learning strategy significantly influenced students’ utilization of the mobile game. In addition, the adoption of the learning strategy significantly affected students’ perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and behavioural intention to use, compared with the same game without the learning strategy. The results also indicate that the introduction of the scaffolding learning strategy into the educational mobile game will increase students’ learning effectiveness and motivation.

PurposeThe study proposes Material Flow Analysis (MFA) methodology as a tool to measure and qualify food waste in the Italian beef supply chain in each stage of the food supply chain, from farm to fork. In particular, the authors attempt to: (1) measure resources consumption and waste generation toward companies' and policymakers' sustainable evaluations; (2) enhance consumers' education in the field of agri-food resilience and sustainability.Design/methodology/approachMFA is applied to the entire Italian sector of beef consumed as packaged fresh product in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis regards bovine, which represent roughly one-third of the national meat flow. To collect data, bottom-up and top-down mixed approach is applied. Subsequently, MFA results are used to calculate the wastage-related losses in terms of embedded natural resources (e.g. water, energy).FindingsIn 2020, it results that the Italian meat industry slaughtered more than 1.15 Mt of bovine to produce approximately 0.29 Mt of fresh meat, 0.69 Mt of by-products and over 0.015 Mt of food waste at households, while 0.15 Mt of beef meat is destined to catering services and food industry (out-of-boundaries). In terms of hidden natural resources, it emerged that, on average, more than 94bn m3 of water, approximately 101,000 TJ of energy and over 11,500 t of PET and PE trays are required to sustain the entire beef system.Originality/valueThis research is one of the few studies proposing MFA methodology as a tool to measure food waste and hidden associated flows in the agri-food sector. This analysis shows its utility in terms of natural resources (water, energy, materials) and waste quality/quantity evaluation, hidden flows accounting and development of new educational strategies toward food waste minimization and sustainability at household consumption.

Food security and energy transition are among the current major global environmental challenges. Although these issues individually are significant in their own right, they are connected to each other in a nexus with different interrelationships and dependencies. In the quest for non-fossil alternatives for energy, cultivation of bioenergy crops has become an important part of the energy policy in many countries. In this regard, the use of fertile agricultural land for growing crops for energy production rather than for food supply affects the global food security. Recent conflicts and the geopolitical crisis in Europe, leading to increased food, fuel, and fertiliser prices, the existing climate crisis, and the crisis caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have further reinforced the understanding of this nexus, with certain countries mulling limiting biofuel production from agricultural land and others banning food grain exports to safeguard food supply. The idea of growing non-food energy crops on marginal lands in general and closed landfill sites in particular is hence ever more relevant, to avoid land-use concurrence between food needs and energy needs. Landfilling has been the dominant waste management strategy until recently in European countries and is still the dominant mode of waste management in low-income regions like South Asia. This paper provides a review of the economic as well as environmental benefits of growing Ricinus communis L., Jatropha curcas L., and Populus deltoides as energy crops on closed landfill sites in the South Asian context. While as the cultivation of Miscanthus X Giganteus, Silphium perfoliatum L., and Panicum virgatum (Switchgrass) is reviewed in the European context. The cultivation of non-food energy crops like these on closed landfill sites and marginal lands is presented as a potential component of an integrated food-energy policy, with an increased relevance in the current times. In the current times of multiple crises, this measure is of increasing relevance as a part of the overall strategy to achieve resilience and environmental sustainability. Food security and energy transition are among the current major global environmental challenges. Although these issues individually are significant in their own right, they are connected to each other in a nexus with different interrelationships and dependencies. In the quest for non-fossil alternatives for energy, cultivation of bioenergy crops has become an important part of the energy policy in many countries. In this regard, the use of fertile agricultural land for growing crops for energy production rather than for food supply affects the global food security. Recent conflicts and the geopolitical crisis in Europe, leading to increased food, fuel, and fertiliser prices, the existing climate crisis, and the crisis caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have further reinforced the understanding of this nexus, with certain countries mulling limiting biofuel production from agricultural land and others banning food grain exports to safeguard food supply. The idea of growing non-food energy crops on marginal lands in general and closed landfill sites in particular is hence ever more relevant, to avoid land-use concurrence between food needs and energy needs. Landfilling has been the dominant waste management strategy until recently in European countries and is still the dominant mode of waste management in low-income regions like South Asia. This paper provides a review of the economic as well as environmental benefits of growing Ricinus communis L., Jatropha curcas L., and Populus deltoides as energy crops on closed landfill sites in the South Asian context. While as the cultivation of Miscanthus X Giganteus, Silphium perfoliatum L., and Panicum virgatum (Switchgrass) is reviewed in the European context. The cultivation of non-food energy crops like these on closed landfill sites and marginal lands is presented as a potential component of an integrated food-energy policy, with an increased relevance in the current times. In the current times of multiple crises, this measure is of increasing relevance as a part of the overall strategy to achieve resilience and environmental sustainability.

The COVID 19 pandemic was a two-edged sword; it exacerbated the already inefficient agri-food system but, in doing that, made us reflect, rethink possible and sustainable solutions to address SDG's 1, 2, 11, and 5. A lot has been written on the immediate effect of the pandemic on different crops/animals and nodes of the value chain. In this chapter, we look at the negative and positive effect of the pandemic on sustainability in the context of a dynamic agri-food chain focusing on areas of localized input supply and food system sustainability, diversification, and Resilience, and consumer behavior Surveys were carried out in May/June, 2020 to understand the effects of COVID 19 on the agri-food system in Southern, West, Central, and Eastern Africa and strategies to secure sustainable solutions and resulting policy implications. For this chapter, we reflect on the results from 10 countries from Southern and Eastern Africa. Results show that farmers in Eastern Africa had a diverse portfolio of processed livestock products than those in Southern Africa. Secondly, most farmers in Eastern Africa had diverse processed products. Thus, product diversification created resilience capacities for dairy systems. Diversity in access to inputs also increased the resilience and sustainability of supplies during precarious periods. The findings also reveal that sustainable consumer behavior during pandemics goes beyond responsible consumption. Instead, consumers need to rethink and devise consumption models that alleviate the food consumption-related effects of the pandemics and increase the availability and consumption of alternative products with social, economic, health, and environmental impacts.