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Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a Swiss university course called “Psychology and Migration” had to move online over the Spring semester 2021. In this course, Psychology and Education students learn about the sociocultural considerations of migration, through a theoretical, personal and artistic exploration of the subjective experience of migration, based on performing arts. As part of the main pedagogical strategies, students are invited to collectively create a short theatre play based on some selected literary texts. Under the conditions imposed by the pandemic, puppetry arts were chosen as a new tool for distance-learning. Collaborating with theatre professionals, the students created a short play, and performed it online using sock puppets, image theatre or object theatre. Using data collected during the course (video recordings of online sessions and students’ diaries), this article explores the critical process of reduction and expansion, and the (potentially) productive tensions that the course creates. It analyses two main appropriation modes for course students: in adaptative appropriation, students aim to reduce these tensions by adapting to the perceived expectations of teachers; in transformative appropriation, students creatively use possibilities offered by the course to conduct a personal exploration, integrating theories with their own experiences and questions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the public health measures implemented in Manitoba and Ontario during waves 1 and 2 of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted allied health professionals working in primary care settings. This study used a case study methodology to develop four cases, two allied health professionals from Manitoba and two allied health professionals of the same professions from Ontario. Two methods of data collection were used, diary entry and interview. Diary entry data was collected between March 2020 and August 2020. Interviews were conducted in December 2020. This study’s approach to data analysis was to use the framework analysis to apply a conceptual framework, specifically the Roy Adaptation Model. The Roy Adaptation Model encompasses four adaptive modes: role function, interdependence, group identity, and physiological. The results section presents how each of these modes were operationalized for each case. The public health measures affected the role function mode more significantly than the other modes. All participants experienced role disruptions with redeployment and role change with the transition to remote and virtual care. The allied health providers in both provinces experienced role reductions with limitations in their ability to practice their primary role. The implemented COVID-19 public health measures led providers to work within their roles in an adapted capacity during the length of the pandemic. The greatest differences between the experiences of providers in Ontario versus Manitoba was the timeline of events and the response of the provincial governments. This study highlights how macro policies influence the day-to-day of healthcare workers.

Introduction : La pandémie a eu des répercussions sur la santé psychologique et la conciliation travail-famille des infirmières, y compris dans les milieux de soins ambulatoires. Les résultats présentés dans cet article font partie d’une étude visant à décrire et contextualiser la santé psychologique et l’évolution des pratiques de suivi infirmier au Québec (Canada) lors de la pandémie de COVID-19.Objectif : Explorer et décrire les facteurs qui ont influencé la santé psychologique et la conciliation travail-famille des infirmières en soins ambulatoires pendant la première vague de la pandémie de COVID-19.Méthodes : Enquête exploratoire avec données mixtes par le biais de la plateforme SurveyMonkey. Les données ont été collectées de juillet 2020 à septembre 2020. La population cible était toutes les infirmières du Québec dont les activités cliniques incluaient le suivi de patients ambulatoires ; 200 infirmières ont participé.Résultats : Les modèles de régression ont indiqué que les symptômes anxieux (scores au GAD-7) et dépressifs (scores au PHQ-9) étaient associés à un plus jeune âge, au fait de vivre seul, aux inquiétudes concernant la transmission de la COVID-19 et au sentiment que son travail n’était pas cohérent avec ses valeurs. La conciliation travail-famille était jugée plus difficile qu’avant la pandémie par 54,5 % des participants. Les facteurs perçus comme l’influençant étaient soit liés aux conditions de travail (p. ex., horaire et temps de travail, télétravail, délestage), aux tâches familiales, ou étaient spécifiques à la pandémie.Discussion et conclusion : Outre l’âge, le sentiment que son travail n’était pas cohérent avec ses valeurs était la seule variable corrélée à la fois avec le GAD-7 et le PHQ-9. Les futures recherches devraient s’intéresser à la relation entre le sentiment de cohérence, la santé psychologique et les conditions de travail favorables à la conciliation travail-famille. Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted nurses’ psychological health and work-family balance, including in ambulatory care settings. The results presented in this article are part of a study aiming to describe and contextualize the psychological health and changes in nurses’ follow-up practices in Quebec (Canada) during the COVID-19 pandemic.Objective: Explore and describe factors that influenced ambulatory care nurses’ psychological health and work-family balance during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: Exploratory mixed data cross-sectional study using the SurveyMonkey platform. We collected data from July 2020 to September 2020. The target population comprised all practicing nurses in Quebec whose clinical activities included the follow-up of ambulatory patients, 200 of whom completed the survey. Results: Multiple linear regression models indicated that anxiety (GAD-7 scores) and depressive symptoms (PHQ-9 scores) were associated with younger age, living alone, worries about transmitting COVID-19, and feeling that one’s work was not coherent with one’s values. Work-family balance was considered more difficult than before the pandemic by 54.5 % of participants. Factors perceived as influencing work-family balance were either related to work conditions (e.g., schedule and time at work, access to work from home, redeployment to another work setting), to family-related responsibilities/tasks or were specific to the pandemic.Discussion and conclusion: Apart from age, the feeling that one’s work was not coherent with their values was the only variable correlated with both GAD-7 and PHQ-9 in multivariate models. Further research should investigate the relationships between sense of coherence, psychological health, and work conditions like schedule flexibility and access to work from home.

The number of IoT devices in healthcare is expected to rise sharply due to significantly increased demand since the COVID-19 pandemic. Deep learning and IoT devices are being employed to monitor body vitals and automate anomaly detection in clinical and non-clinical settings. Most of the current technology requires the transmission of raw data to a remote server, which is not efficient for resource-constrained IoT devices and embedded systems. In this work, we have developed machine learning models to be deployed on Raspberry Pi. We present an evaluation of our TensorFlow Model with various classification classes. We also present the evaluation of the corresponding TensorFlow Lite FlatBuffers to demonstrate their minimal run-time requirements while maintaining acceptable accuracy. Additionally, to address the problem of sensor and data integration when using multiple devices, we propose a unified server on our Edge Node.

Natalie Grant is a freelance series producer primarily working in entertainment and reality television and codirector of Share My Telly Job (SMTJ), an organisation that exists to promote job-sharing and the normalisation of other forms of flexible working in the UK television and film industry, such as condensed hours and part-time work, in order to encourage better equality, diversity and inclusion. In this interview by Helen Kennedy and Jack Newsinger, held via email in December 2021, Grant talks about her experiences as a mother working in television, what led to her becoming a campaigner, and how more flexible kinds of work can promote greater equality and diversity in the television industry workforce.

Social inequities such as poverty and homelessness are intersectional and complex; they are persistent, wicked and their solutions are elusive. Building capacity for innovation in the social sector, i.e., encouraging the adoption of practices and processes designed for radical solutions to social problems, is an increasingly widespread strategy. Because innovation and change in the social sector are driven by knowledge processes, universities as anchor institutions would seem to have a natural role to play in the social impact ecosystem. Campus-community knowledge collaborations and innovation partnerships can be a vector of impact and, if the conditions are right, academic engagement can increase capacity in the social impact ecosystem. We wanted to better understand the needs of social sector organizations (SSO) in relation to their capacity, interests and experience with innovation and, along the way, assess how these needs had been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team collected input through a survey from 180 social service organizations across Canada and analyzed responses for trends, themes, and sentiments. Mitacs

For decades, farming has been recognized as a highly stressful occupation globally. In 2016, a national survey investigating mental health outcomes among farmers in Canada found increased levels of mental distress among this population compared to the general public. Farmers are known to face a unique host of occupational stressors, and the COVID-19 pandemic introduced additional challenges for farmers in Canada. Hence, the second wave of the national, online, cross-sectional survey of mental health outcomes among farmers in Canada was conducted early 2021. The survey results showed increased levels of anxiety, depression, perceived stress, emotional exhaustion, and cynicism among farmers compared to the Canadian public, particularly among farming women. This justified action towards identifying opportunities to reduce stress and increase well-being in this population. A mixed-methods investigation provided a comprehensive understanding of chronic and episodic farming stressors in Canada and identified promising areas for stress-reduction and well-being promotion efforts. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Low-cost diagnostic tools for point-of-care immunoassays, such as the paper-based enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA), have become increasingly important, especially so in the recent COVID-19 pandemic. ELISA is the gold-standard antibody/antigen sensing method. This paper reports an easy-to-fabricate nitrocellulose (NC) paper plate, coupled with a desktop scanner for ELISA, which provides a higher protein immobilization efficiency than the conventional cellulose paper-based ELISA platforms. The experiments were performed using spiked samples for the direct ELISA of rabbit IgG with a limit of detection (LOD) of 1.016 μg/mL, in a measurement range of 10 ng/mL to 1 mg/mL, and for the sandwich ELISA of sperm protein (SP-10) with an LOD of 88.8 ng/mL, in a measurement range of 1 ng/mL to 100 μg/mL. The described fabrication method, based on laser-cutting, is a highly flexible one-step laser micromachining process, which enables the rapid production of low-cost NC paper-based multi-well plates with different sizes for the ELISA measurements.

The past two years of pandemic schooling have pushed many educators into a mental health crisis. Teachers were navigating the stress of educational outcomes, increased safety risks, lack of protection, regular COVID-19 exposures, constant changes in protocols, and providing increased supports for students in their classrooms. A 2020 profile of Canadian mental health services identified that per every 100 000 Canadians, there are 283 total mental health professionals (WHO, 2022). These figures average one mental health professional for every 353 Canadians, leaving mental health services understaffed and often inaccessible. While mental health services struggled to meet the demands of individuals pre-pandemic, the WHO has identified that anxiety and depression have increased 25% across the globe since March 2020 (WHO, 2022, COVID-19). According to the UN Special Rapporteur on mental health (2017), “there can be no health without mental health” (p. 3). The purpose of this research is to review current policies in Winnipeg’s six school divisions, identify formal mental health protections for educators, and propose recommendations for a sustainable future in education. The exploration of the mental health of educators will draw on international and domestic instruments to argue that mental health is undoubtedly a universal human right. This research will conclude with recommendations for stakeholders in education, including: the review of current policies, prioritize early interventions to reduce occupational burnout, increase capacity and availability of resources, increase accessibility to and remove barriers from mental health supports for educators, and make space for educators to process educational opportunities and challenges. It is crucial that every Canadian is afforded the right to security of person, and it is imperative that educators are protected in their classrooms as well. These protections must be mandated in policy and prioritized in school culture to ensure that teachers have the space to fully enjoy them. Schools must commit to nurturing a healthy environment for all within their buildings.

Cloud-based Big Data Analytics (CBDA) is an emerging application of data analytics, and its successful adoption in the higher education sector leads to valuable outcomes that improve teaching, learning, research and policy-making. Yet, accepting and using CBDA as a promising innovation for informed decision-making in this sector is falling behind. Like any innovation, CBDA’s full capabilities can be reached only once the factors that facilitate or hinder its adoption are identified. This research proposes a CBDA adoption framework, based on a thorough literature review of cloud computing adoption by organizations. All technical and non-technical factors that affect the adoption of cloud technologies have been identified and classified according to the T.O.E. theoretical framework, which has been found to be the most suitable framework for this research. The context of Saudi Arabian universities has been chosen to empirically test and validate the proposed model, while solving a practical problem associated with the government’s efforts to shift the higher education sector to the cloud service paradigm. The government aims to cut costs and improve education policy, which has become more demanding during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The results from this study indicate that top management support, a non-technical factor, is the main driver for CBDA adoption among Saudi universities, and that relative advantage is not the main predictor of CBDA adoption, which is contradictory to much of the literature. As a result of these investigations, suggestions were identified for future research, and recommendations were laid out to support decision makers toward successful CBDA adoption. Ministry of Education, KSA