• COVID-19
• Publicationsclose
• Other research productsclose
• 2013-2022close
• Article close
• COVID-19 close
• Rural Digital Europe close

Wearable sensing technologies are having a worldwide impact on the creation of novel business opportunities and application services that are benefiting the common citizen. By using these technologies, people have transformed the way they live, interact with each other and their surroundings, their daily routines, and how they monitor their health conditions. We review recent advances in the area of wearable sensing technologies, focusing on aspects such as sensor technologies, communication infrastructures, service infrastructures, security, and privacy. We also review the use of consumer wearables during the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and we discuss open challenges that must be addressed to further improve the efficacy of wearable sensing systems in the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred significant changes in the fields of economic development, social issues, everyday life, etc. Activities that used to depend on face-to-face communication were firstly suspended and then shifted to new forms of communication. This includes the public participation process in urban and spatial planning. Therefore, this study explores the new domain developed in urban and spatial planning with regard to public participation and surmises future realms in the post-pandemic era. On the occasion of the virtual collaboration platform Cyber Agora organized by the ISOCARP (International Society of City and Regional Planners), chosen participants got together virtually to share, discuss, and compare their practical knowledge in public participation before and during COVID-19. In addition, they addressed the potential benefits of shifting from traditional to virtual participation and potential benefits in the post-COVID-19 era. Considering the collected data and understanding them in the light of the available literature, this study concludes that the application of a combined approach (using both traditional and virtual modes of participation) is recommended because it would enable a larger number and higher diversity of participants. The study also elaborates particular modes of virtual participation with the pros and cons of their use in a particular context.

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, questions arose as to whether the pandemic would amplify or pacify tropical deforestation. Early reports warned of increased deforestation rates; however, these studies were limited to a few months in 2020 or to selected regions. To better understand how the pandemic influenced tropical deforestation globally, this study used historical deforestation data (2004-2019) from the Terra-i pantropical land cover change monitoring system to project expected deforestation trends for 2020, which were used to determine whether observed deforestation deviated from expected trajectories after the first COVID-19 cases were reported. Time series analyses were conducted at the regional level for the Americas, Africa and Asia and at the country level for Brazil, Colombia, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. Our results suggest that the pandemic did not alter the course of deforestation trends in some countries (e.g., Brazil, Indonesia), while it did in others (e.g., Peru). We posit the importance of monitoring the long-term effects of the pandemic on deforestation trends as countries prioritize economic recovery in the aftermath of the pandemic.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11676-022-01561-7.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global pandemic, has brought with it changes to the general way of life. Major sectors of the world industry and economy have been affected and the Internet of Things (IoT) management and framework is no exception in this regard. This article provides an up to date survey on how a global pandemic such as COVID-19 has affected the world of IoT technologies. It looks at the contributions that IoT and associated sensor technologies have made towards virus tracing, tracking and spread mitigation. The associated challenges of deployment of sensor hardware in the face of a rapidly spreading pandemic have been looked into as part of this review article. The effects of a global pandemic on the evolution of IoT architectures and management have also been addressed, leading to the likely outcomes on future IoT implementations. In general, this article provides an insight into the advancement of sensor-based E-health towards the management of global pandemics. It also answers the question of how a global virus pandemic has shaped the future of IoT networks.

Abstract In the field of agriculture, there are many individual micro businesses with low investment capacity and awareness of IT utilization, and it is difficult to obtain a return on investment . In recent years, edge computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have attracted a lot of attention in the agricultural industry to cover the labor shortage. Also, safer vegetables are required by peoples due to COVID-19 epidemic and radioactive pollution. In this paper, we propose an agricultural support system called VegeCareAI for agricultural workers. The proposed system supports vegetable classification , plant disease classification and insect pest classification to improve the crops’ productively. The support system can show the growth condition of vegetables. When there are some problems, the VegeCareAI presents information on how to deal with diseases and insect pests. From the results, we found that our proposed VegeCareAI tool has advantage for supporting several crops. For vegetable classification, our training data for 300 epochs predicted six kinds of vegetables correctly. For plant disease classification, for 400 epochs the accuracy is more than 96% accuracy for both potato and corn leaves. For insect pest classification, the accuracy of corn insect pests is more than 73%, but the results of different life cycles showed low classification accuracy , which present a future challenge.

Abstract Agriculture is a continuous process of agricultural production and processing of agricultural land. Accordingly, this type of activity cannot be in a mode of self-isolation. In spite of this, the Pandemic has affected both the economic activity and the financial results. This affected high-value goods, as well as value-added goods. Meat production is a case in point; demand for expensive meats will drop significantly. The result could be an increase in consumption of poultry, as it is a cheap alternative to meat. Restrictive measures taken by the government in connection with the growth of Covid-19 have affected the demand of citizens for insurance services. Many producers of agricultural services have given serious thought to the need to review their insurance policies. This article examines and analyzes the financial mechanisms of agricultural insurance under post-pandemic realities. It is the insurance mechanism that will allow agricultural producers to develop confidently and have a guarantee of minimizing financial losses in case of unforeseen situations.

ABSTRACT Purpose: To make a further evaluation of perioperative outcomes between the robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) and open radical prostatectomy (ORP), we conducted a comparison and trend analysis by using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) from 2009 to 2014. Materials and Methods: Adult prostate cancer patients with radical prostatectomy were abstracted from the NIS. RARP and ORP were identified according to the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification procedure codes. The perioperative outcomes included blood transfusion, intraoperative and postoperative complications, prolonged length of stay (pLOS), and in-hospital mortality. Propensity score matching method and multivariable logistic regression model were performed to adjust for the pre-defined covariates. The annual percent change (APC) was used to detect the change trend of rates for outcomes. Results: A total of 77.054 patients were included in our study. According to the results of propensity score matching analyses, RARP outperformed ORP in blood transfusion (1.96% vs. 9.40%), intraoperative complication (0.73% vs. 1.25%), overall postoperative complications (8.87% vs. 11.97%), and pLOS (13.39% vs. 36.70%). We also found that there was a significant decreasing tendency of incidence in blood transfusion (APC=-9.81), intraoperative complication (APC=-12.84), and miscellaneous surgical complications (APC=-14.09) for the RARP group. The results of multivariable analyses were almost consistent with those of propensity score matching analyses. Conclusions: The RARP approach has lower incidence rates of perioperative complications than the ORP approach, and there is a potential decreasing tendency of complication incidence rates for the RARP.

The communication industry in Colombia has promoted over the last decade a process of transformation and design of new proposals in both traditional media and digital natives, a range of operational strategies to distribute textual, sound, and visual formats through the social networks, adapting the content to the particularities and attributes of each one of them. The irruption of the implementation of the peace accords, the pandemic and citizen nonconformity taken to the streets have served to verify the real dimension of this reconfiguration, as well as its effectiveness in terms of credibility and scope in the face of an unprecedented scenario that has transformed the social and cultural interaction of citizens through technology. This research focuses on the response of Colombian journalistic agents to the demand for information during the period 2019, 2020 and 2021, from a mixed quantitative-descriptive methodology that allows identifying, quantifying, and assessing the relationship between newspapers, radio stations and television channels with the new platforms. The corpus of the study is made up of the publications on social networks of the Colombian media with the greatest circulation according to the Colombian Association for Media Research: two newspapers (El tiempo and El espectador), five radio stations (Caracol radio, W radio, Blu radio, RCN radio and La FM) and the news from the two television networks with the highest audience (Noticias Caracol and Noticias RCN). The results of the study show a reinforcement of the brand of the journalistic company as a reference for information and credibility, however, the current situation has not served to legitimize the role of journalists in social networks and has underlined the fragility of a media ecosystem highly exposed to polarization, manipulation, and mistrust. Resumen La industria de la comunicación en Colombia ha impulsado a lo largo de la última década un proceso de transformación y diseño de nuevas propuestas tanto en medios tradicionales como en nativos digitales, gama de estrategias operativas para distribuir formatos textuales, sonoros y visuales a través de las redes sociales, adaptando los contenidos a las particularidades y atributos de cada una de ellas. La irrupción de la implementación de los acuerdos de paz, la pandemia y el inconformismo ciudadano llevado a las calles han servido para constatar la dimensión real de esa reconfiguración, así como su efectividad en términos de credibilidad y alcance ante un escenario inédito que ha transformado la interacción social y cultural de los ciudadanos a través de la tecnología. Esta investigación centra su atención en la respuesta de los agentes periodísticos colombianos a la demanda de información durante el periodo 2019, 2020 y 2021, desde una metodología mixta cuantitativo-descriptiva que permite identificar, cuantificar y valorar la relación entre periódicos, emisoras de radio y canales de televisión con las nuevas plataformas. El corpus del estudio está compuesto por las publicaciones en redes sociales de los medios colombianos con mayor difusión según la Asociación Colombiana de Investigación de Medios: dos periódicos (El tiempo y El espectador), cinco cadenas de radio (Caracol radio, W radio, Blu radio, RCN radio y La FM) y los informativos de las dos cadenas televisivas de mayor audiencia (Noticias Caracol y Noticias RCN). Los resultados del estudio evidencian un refuerzo de la marca de la empresa periodística como referente de información y credibilidad, no obstante, la coyuntura del momento no ha servido para legitimar el papel de los periodistas en las redes sociales, y ha subrayado la fragilidad de un ecosistema mediático muy expuesto a la polarización, la manipulación y la desconfianza.