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<span lang="EN-US">The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has led to many infected worldwide and has become a global crisis. COVID-19 manifests in the form of shortness of breath, coughing and fever. More people are getting infected and healthcare systems worldwide are overwhelmed as healthcare workers become exhausted and infected. Thus, remote monitoring for COVID-19 patients is required. An internet of things (IoT) based real-time health monitoring system for COVID-19 patients was proposed. It features monitoring of five physiological parameters, namely electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR), oxygen saturation (SpO2) and body temperature. These vitals are processed by the main controller and transmitted to the cloud for storage. Healthcare professionals can read real-time patient vitals on the web-based dashboard which is equipped with an alert service. The proposed system was able to transmit and display all parameters in real-time accurately without any packet loss or transmission errors. The accuracy of body temperature readings, RR, SpO2 and HR, is up to 99.7%, 100%, 97.97% and 98.34%, respectively. Alerts were successfully sent when the parameters reached unsafe levels. With the proposed system, healthcare professionals can remotely monitor COVID-19 patients with greater ease, lessen their exposure to the pathogen, and improve patient monitoring.</span>

Previous research that compared the restorative effects of natural settings with poor-quality urban settings may have exaggerated the restorative benefits of greenspace. Few studies have been conducted to examine the restorative benefits of green streets and other types of park landscapes on attention and emotion. In addition, it is not clear how negative psychological symptoms (e.g., stress, depression) affect natural’s restorative benefits, especially as the current COVID-19 pandemic has added to people’s psychological burden. In this study, 125 participants were randomly assigned to view one of five videos (green street, lawn, plaza, forest, waterside) for a break after completing an emotion and attention fatigue induction task. Attention function and emotion were measured using the backward digit span test and the Self-Assessment Manikin scale. Stress and depressive symptoms experienced over the last month were measured using the Perceived Stress Scale(PSS-10) and the Patient Health Questionnaire(PHQ-9). Our results indicate that the four park settings showed significant attention function recovery and valence improvement compared to the green streets, while subjects’ arousal changed only over time. Hardscapes (plazas) could provide the same attentional and emotional restorative benefits as natural landscapes (forests, watersides, lawns). In addition, we also found that the mood-improving benefits of natural environments may decrease with increasing depressive symptoms, although chronic stress symptoms did not show the same trend.

Some policies implemented during the pandemic extended the time that students spend on electronic devices, increasing the risk of physical and eye strain. However, the role of different environments on eye strain recovery has not been determined. We recruited 20 undergraduate students (10 males and 10 females) from a university in eastern China and explored the restoration effects of their eye strain in different types of spaces (wayside greenspace, a playground, a square, and woodland) on campus through scale measurements. The results showed that the eye strain of the students accumulated by 15 min of e-learning was significantly relieved after 10 min of greenspace exposure compared to the indoor environment, and the recovery effect varied depending on the type of landscape. The effect of eye strain relief was found to be positively correlated with temperature, wind speed, visible sky ratio, canopy density, tree density, and solar radiation intensity, while it was negatively correlated with relative humidity. These findings enrich the research on the restoration benefits of greenspaces and provide a basis for predicting the effect of different environments on the relief of eye strain.

AbstractAs 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.

Background: Pandemic fears during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have caused hairdressers, beauty salons and distributors, as well as the producers of professional haircare and colouring products, to come together to adapt the value chain of professional services. Aesthetic beauty and physical image have gained personal and economic value amongst all age groups and genders, making the South African hairdressing industry a key player as a socio-economic contributor.Objectives: The main objective of this study was to identify which factors influence digitalisation in the hairdressing industry, and to explain the impact on key stakeholders within the products and services value chain.Method: The methodological approach taken in this study is a mixed methodology, categorised in two phases: phase 1 presented a quantitative approach and phase 2 presented a qualitative approach based on the dynamic nature of the professional hairdressing industry. One hundred responses were collected via an online survey and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Thereafter, six virtual online interviews were conducted with purposively selected industry participants. The data were then triangulated to infer recommendations for the hairdressing industry.Results: The findings, which were triangulated, showed that digitalisation has influenced and transformed businesses and the way in which they interact and transact with consumers. Furthermore, digitalisation has created a convenient and enhanced consumer experience in terms of how consumers interact and transact with businesses.Conclusion: This research provides a unique perspective on how digitalisation has influenced and transformed the professional haircare industry. The study also identified what influence digitalisation has had on key stakeholders in the professional products and services value chain.

Introducción: la variabilidad del comportamiento clínico del COVID-19 puede ser uno de los determinantes que limitan la toma de decisiones terapéuticas. Se busca clasificar a pacientes latinoamericanos hospitalizados mediante la herramienta FEN-COVID para la identificación de fenotipos clínicos y determinar su asociación con mortalidad e ingreso a la unidad de cuidado intensivo (UCI). Métodos: estudio observacional de cohorte retrospectivo, que incluyó adultos hospitalizados en dos centros de tercer nivel de atención con COVID-19 confirmado entre septiembre 2020 y marzo 2021. A cada paciente seleccionado se asignó un fenotipo aplicando la calculadora FEN-COVID. Se llevó a cabo un análisis multivariado para documentar las asociaciones entre el fenotipo, las complicaciones hospitalarias y los desenlaces clínicos. Resultados: se identificaron 126 pacientes hospitalizados por COVID-19, edad promedio de 58 años, 45 mujeres (35.7%), 23% diabéticos, 45% hipertensos y 20% obesos. 108 (85.7%) fueron del fenotipo B y 18 (14.2%) fenotipo C. Aunque en este último los desenlaces fueron peores (requerimiento de UCI 77.8% vs 45.4% y mortalidad 66% vs 22%, OR 1.408, IC95% 3.191-5.243, p <0.007), esta asociación no se mantuvo en el análisis multivariado con OR 1.110 (IC95% 0.780 - 1.581, p de 0.555) Conclusión: los fenotipos identificados a partir de FEN-COVID parecen discriminar un subgrupo de pacientes que ostenta el peor comportamiento clínico, aunque no tuvo representación del fenotipo más leve. El análisis bivariado documentó asociación con la muerte o ingreso a UCI que no se mantuvo en el modelo multivariado.

We propose, design, and evaluate PIVOT, a privacy-enhancing and effective contact tracing solution that aims to strike a balance between utility and privacy: one that does not collect sensitive information yet allowing effective tracing and notifying the close contacts of diagnosed users. PIVOT requires a considerably low degree of trust in the entities involved compared to centralised alternatives while retaining the necessary utility. To protect users’ privacy, it uses local proximity tracing based on broadcasting and recording constantly changing anonymous public keys via short-range communication. These public keys are used to establish a shared secret key between two people in close contact. The three keys (i.e., the two public keys and the established shared key) are then used to generate two unique per-user-per-contact hashes: one for infection registration and one for exposure score query. These hashes are never revealed to the public. To improve utility, user exposure score computation is performed centrally, which provides health authorities with minimal, yet insightful and actionable data. Data minimisation is achieved by the use of per-user-per-contact hashes and by enforcing role separation: the health authority act as a mixing node, while the matching between reported and queried hashes is outsourced to a third entity, an independent matching service. This separation ensures that out-of-scope information, such as users’ social interactions, is hidden from the health authorities, whereas the matching service does not learn users’ sensitive information. To sustain our claims, we conduct a practical evaluation that encompasses anonymity guarantees and energy requirements.

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, food systems have been affected by supply-chain disruptions, shifting employment trends, and increasing prices that change organization and business operations, increase food insecurity, and influence the broader economy. Much of the early scholarship regarding pandemic trends pointed to root causes in the corporate food regime and called for seeing the crisis as an opportunity for transformational change. Relying on surveys and in-depth interviews with food system stakeholders, this paper describes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food businesses and organizations in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. We examined the challenges created during the pandemic and related responses by stakeholders. Our research found that the pandemic’s impacts have been mixed. Most stakeholders identified both barriers and opportunities, reporting great upheaval and disruption but also new opportunities for innovation and collaboration. We argue that, while many positive innovations and quick responses were generated, ongoing challenges are indicative of widespread food system vulnerabilities created by a corporate food regime that produces thin margins while limiting the ability of stakeholders to pursue transformational change. Much of the existing literature considers the pandemic’s effects on individual producers and eaters, as well as large-scale structural shifts, yet less attention has been paid to the responses of food system organizations and businesses. This research contributes to food systems literature through its focus on food system actors to better understand how the food system is changing during the pandemic.