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Purpose: This paper aimed to examine the role of digital financial services on registered micro, small, and medium enterprises in India. This study examined the MSME knowledge, usage, and preferences about several digital financial technologies. Further, the paper discussed the impact of demographic variables on DFS adoption. Methodology: Primary data were gathered for the study. The questionnaire had three parts. The first part covered demographic variables. The second part identified questions related to DFS awareness and the reason for adopting DFS. The last part covered DFS adoption in various financial activities. Findings: DFS awareness in the MSME sector was high but far from the required level. Demonetization and COVID-19 also increased the awareness of DFS in the Indian MSME sector. The DFS adoption was found to be affected by the age and experience of the owner/manager. Also, the educational level of the owner/manager did not always impact the DFS adoption. Practical Implications: Digital financial service providers should increase customer satisfaction and reduce administrative expenses by making their website or application user-friendly to attract MSMEs. Additional government support is essential to enhance DFS awareness among MSMEs. Originality/Value: This study added to the limited existing literature on MSMEs and their knowledge of digital payments. © 2023, Associated Management Consultants Pvt. Ltd.. All rights reserved.
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Prolonged immobilization and bed rest in critically ill patients leads to loss of physical functional ability. Therefore, assessment of physical functional ability during intensive care unit (ICU) stay and at discharge plays a central role in planning early intervention and insti-tuting rehabilitation measures to improve physical function outcomes. Various scales have been developed, modified, and applied to assess functional ability, impairments, and disabilities in ICU patients. The selection of the most appropriate assessment scale depends on the specific patient population, the diagnosis, the phase of rehabilitation and the psychometric properties of the measurement tool. This narrative review aims to describe the various physical function assessment tools applicable to patients in the ICU, to determine the psychometric evidence for reliability and validity, and to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each of these scales in order to enable clinicians to make an informed choice while selecting outcome variables during rehabilitation of patients in the critical care unit. Copyright © 2022 by Begell House, Inc.
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The study aims to determine factors impacting the behaviour of customers towards the adoption of contactless digital payments and their continuous use. In India, contactless digital payments are also on the rise, more so during the ongoing pandemic but the question arises, whether customers will continue its use even when COVID-19 recedes. Primary data was collected from 217 respondents in India, the theoretical model is based on TAM and the data was analysed using SPSS AMOS software. The study indicates that trust has a significant impact on perceived risk, but surprisingly the results from this study are significantly different from the existing literature and shows that trust does not have any positive impact on other constructs. Perceived risk has been shown in the study to have a negative impact on the constructs. Perceived usefulness has been shown to have a positive effect towards continuous intention to use contactless digital payments. Copyright © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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Background: In coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) the need for intervention increases with disease severity and a risk prediction model that incorporates biomarkers would be beneficial for identifying patients for treatment escalation. Aim(s): To investigate biomarkers changes associated with disease severity and outcomes (mortality, thrombosis). Method(s): COVID-19 patients were sampled between April 15 and May 31 2020. Disease severity was assessed by World Health Organization (WHO) ordinal scale. 132 systemic biomarkers were investigated by routine and multiplex assays and statistical analysis performed to characterise the biomarker profile of COVID-19 patients associated with disease severity, duration, survival and thrombosis. Result(s): The study enrolled 150 COVID-19 positive adults and 16 healthy volunteers. The average age was 64 years, 59% were male, 85% had co-morbidities, 33% had a thrombotic event, and 13% died. A cross comparative analysis of biomarkers identified 13 biomarkers common to severity, mortality and thrombosis with significant correlation;including endothelial dysfunction (VWF, tPA, TFPI), hypercatabolism (low albumin, Hb, FXIII) and inflammatory response (IL-8, Osteopontin). Similarly, 14 biomarkers associated with severity and mortality included pro-inflammatory cytokines and their receptors (sTNFRII, STNFRI, sIL2a, IL6, MIP1a), neutrophils (elevated WBC, Neutrophils, TIMP1) and tissue remodelling (SCGF, EG3A). Nine biomarkers common across severity and thrombosis were angiogenesis (VEGF, LYVE1, Follistatin), acute phase response (SAP, AGP) and clot formation (Fibrinogen and PAPs). Conclusion(s): The biomarker profile associated with poorer outcomes indicates an inflammatory response, endothelial cell disruption, hypercoagulability and hypercatabolism. This study has identified several biomarkers that may be useful indicators of disease severity and progression. Further work is needed to determine how these may be used to direct clinical management. (Figure Presented).
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Background: Alveolar fibrin deposition and pulmonary microthrombi are pathophysiological features of COVID-19- induced respiratory failure. Nebulised thrombolysis offers locally targeted therapy with potentially lower bleed risk than systemic administration. Aim(s): To investigate the safety and potential for clinical efficacy of nebulised recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA) for improving oxygenation in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 complicated by mild to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Method(s): Patients hospitalised with severe COVID-19 and a PaO2/ FiO2 (P/F) ratio of <300 (units), requiring invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) or non-invasive respiratory support (NIRS) received 40-60 mg per day of rt-PA, dosed for <=14 days in a phase II, open-label, single-centre pilot study. Efficacy was assessed via improved oxygenation. Safety was assessed by treatment-related serious adverse event bleeding and reduction of fibrinogen to <1.0-1.5 g/L. Result(s): Nine (Cohort 1 [C1];6/9 IMV, 3/9 NIRS) and 26 adults (Cohort 2 [C2];12/26 IMV, 14/26 NIRS) received nebulised rt-PA alongside standard of care. Matched historical controls (HC) (n = 18) were used for comparison in C1. Mean P/F ratio increased in both C1 groups from baseline (BL) to end of study (EOS) (rt-PA;154.4 to 298.8 vs. HC;154.1 to 211.6);a linear mixed effect model confirmed higher P/F ratios in the rt-PA group. Among C2 groups, greater improvements in mean P/F ratio from BL to EOS were seen in the NIRS group (NIRS;125.5 to 239.4 vs. IMV;120.3 to 188.2). Four potentially treatment-related bleeds were reported;no clinically significant fibrinogen reductions were observed. Lower mortality was observed in the C1 rt-PA group (11.1%) vs. the HC group (55.6%) and in the C2 NIRS group (21.4%) vs. the IMV group (41.7%). Conclusion(s): Nebulised rt-PA is well-tolerated, improves oxygenation in patients with COVID-19- related ARDS, and merits a randomised controlled trial to confirm efficacy and potentially identify a subgroup of interest.
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The recent worldwide sanitary pandemic has made it clear that changes in user traffic patterns can create load balancing issues in networks (e.g., new peak hours of usage have been observed, especially in suburban residential areas). Such patterns need to be accommodated, often with reliable service quality. Although several studies have examined the user association and resource allocation (UA-RA) issue, there is still no optimal strategy to address such a problem with low complexity while reducing the time overhead. To this end, we propose Performance-Improved Reduced Search Space Simulated Annealing (PIRS(3)A), an algorithm for solving UA-RA problems in Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets). First, the UA-RA problem is formulated as a multiple 0/1 knapsack problem (MKP) with constraints on the maximum capacity of the base stations (BS) along with the transport block size (TBS) index. Second, the proposed PIRS(3)A is used to solve the formulated MKP. Simulation results show that PIRS(3)A outperforms existing schemes in terms of variability and Quality of Service (QoS), including throughput, packet loss ratio (PLR), delay, and jitter. Simulation results also show that PIRS3 A generates solutions that are very close to the optimal solution compared to the default simulated annealing (DSA) algorithm.
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Cyber-Physical Systems: AI and COVID-19 highlights original research which addresses current data challenges in terms of the development of mathematical models, cyber-physical systems-based tools and techniques, and the design and development of algorithmic solutions, etc. It reviews the technical concepts of gathering, processing and analyzing data from cyber-physical systems (CPS) and reviews tools and techniques that can be used. This book will act as a resource to guide COVID researchers as they move forward with clinical and epidemiological studies on this outbreak, including the technical concepts of gathering, processing and analyzing data from cyber-physical systems (CPS). The major problem in the identification of COVID-19 is detection and diagnosis due to non-availability of medicine. In this situation, only one method, Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) has been widely adopted and used for diagnosis. With the evolution of COVID-19, the global research community has implemented many machine learning and deep learning-based approaches with incremental datasets. However, finding more accurate identification and prediction methods are crucial at this juncture. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Coronavirus pandemic has driven the entire world to crush. It has influenced every single segment of society straightforwardly and in a roundabout way. There is an unexpected break in everything. A monetary downturn, psychological maladjustment, and joblessness are spreading its underlying foundations alongside the spread of COVID-19. To forestall the spread of COVID-19, the Indian government has made different strides. One such measure was the whole country lockdown, which was put in place on March 22, 2020. Despite the fact that the countrywide lockdown was implemented to curtail the spread of infection, numerous issues have risen alongside the lockdown. In this chapter, we compare the impact of COVID-19 on the five worst-hit countries in the world. Further, temporal sentiment analysis of Twitter data to understand the effect of lockdown on public perception in these five countries is presented. Results reveal that sentiments in the United States vary from neutral to negative, whereas, in India and Italy, people have mixed attitudes toward the 2019-nCOV-2 virus crises. Further, the impact of government control policies through various stages of lockdown in India is analyzed, which provides interesting aspects of public emotions. Some of the most trending hashtags such as #WorkFromHome and #MigrantLabour are also analyzed using sentiment analysis techniques. It was observed that most people had positive sentiments about working from home during the lockdown. At the same time, migrant workers’ stories dominated on Twitter. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The mobile money awareness has increased to 33% in 2020 as compared to 18% in 2019, COVID-19 led a large proportion of mobile money users to use more sophisticated financial services such as credit, savings, and insurance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Mobile phones in adopting Financial Technology on registered Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises of India. The study will reveal the respondents' most influential factors for adopting Mobile money/e-wallets in their business. The intention of MSMEs is affected by government support, satisfaction and, peer influence the most. © The Electrochemical Society.
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Purpose This paper attempts to provide significant information on the increased growth of literature of chatbots and virtual assistants. Technological changes are dynamic and keep changing at regular intervals. Therefore, it becomes highly crucial to review the performance of chatbots and virtual assistants. This paper aims to review the literature by eminent researchers in the form of authors, keywords and major contributing organizations. Design/methodology/approach Systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis is used to analyze the growth of literature on chatbots. A sum of articles has been extracted from Scopus database with selected keywords and with certain filters. VOSviewer software is used for analysis of data. A total of 130 documents are extracted from Scopus database from 2017 to 2021 (31st August). Findings This study provides a significant contribution to an existing literature and provides the understanding of research in the area of chatbots and virtual assistants. The authors with maximum number of citations are Yan, Zaho, Bengio, Weizenbaum, Song, Zhou and Maedche with jointly 180 citations. Research is been contributed by different countries where the United States is the country with highest number of documents published. The United States contributes 17% of the total production in the area of chatbots and virtual assistants. The analysis shows that the area is gaining momentum as contribution in this area is been increasing in last few years. Research limitations/implications The study shows that several branches of chatbots are also in mainstream like natural language processing, e-learning, behavioural research, conversational agents, virtual assistants, human-computer interaction, natural language and so on. It provides a wider scope to authors and researchers to gain useful insights. The bibliometric study will provide a broader spectrum in this area. Social implications The developments in technology and also the effect of COVID-19 pandemic is boosting the adoption of technology in different sectors. Deployment of technology will uplift the economy and social infrastructure. Society can avail different services from their comfort area and also in real time. This will help in reducing wastage of resources like people visiting offices for routine jobs which can be easily availed from their workplace. Society may access better services without much human interaction. Originality/value This paper adds significant contribution to the existing literature by analysing the published papers from Scopus database. The study contains new and significant information as this study covers all industries where chatbots and virtual assistants are being applied whereas in previous literature only specific industry has been taken into consideration.
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In many cities, air pollution prevention and control have become a necessity. Industries and excessive automotive traffic in cities pollute the air to unacceptable levels, which have a harmful impact on human health. To defend individuals from health risks, forecasting, predicting and regulating air pollution are critical. There has been substantial research into predicting when inadequate air quality would occur. However, most studies are constrained by a lack of panel data, hence making it impossible to account for the factors, including seasonal behaviour. This paper presents methods of predicting air quality using machine learning techniques and forecasting the air pollution levels to take precautionary measures to minimise air pollution. This paper analyses concentrations of major pollutants in metropolitan areas (PM2.5, PM10, NO2, BTX, O3, CO, SO2, and NH3), contributing to air pollution. This paper also analysed the effect of lockdown due to the pandemic COVID-19 on the AQI at different places at Jaipur. It includes three locations of Jaipur from where the data are gathered;then, the paper will suggest the solutions that can be implemented to achieve the most desirable results, which will lead to lower levels of pollution at a lower cost. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Introduction:COVID-19 usually manifests clinically as pneumonia with predominant imaging findings of an atypical or organizing pneumonia. The standard technique for confirming COVID-19 is molecular testing by RT-PCR however chest imaging by CT scan can show signs of pneumonia in patients with negative RT-PCR and results can be achieved significantly faster, thus offering a potential role in supporting rapid decision making. CT scan has been shown to have more sensitivity than RT-PCR and Chest X-ray. CT Severity scoring also helps in better assessment of severity of disease. Aim:To estimate typical and atypical chest CT findings in COVID-19 RTPCR positive patients for better assessment of the role of chest CT in COVID-19 management. Materials andMethods:100 patients with confirmed COVID-19 were included in study. Findings like ground glass haze (GGO), reticulations, crazy paving appearance, consolidation, subpleural curvilinear line, bronchiectasis, subpleural transparent line, vascular enlargement, mediastinal lymphadenopathy, nodules, pleural effusion, Inverted halo sign, Halo sign and pericardial effusion were documented in them and analysis was done. Results:The typical Chest CT features present in our COVID-19 cases were GGO in 93 patients (93%), reticulations in 71 patients (71%), crazy paving appearance in 59 patients (59%), consolidation in 47 patients (47%), subpleural curvilinear line in 39 patients (39%), bronchiectasis in 37 patients (37%) and subpleural transparent line in 30 patients (30%). Most cases had bilateral (98%), peripheral (57%) and patchy involvement (86%) by GGO and lower lobe predominance (55%) by consolidation. Conclusion:GGO, reticulations, crazy paving and consolidation involving bilateral lung, in a peripheral and patchy distribution with lower lobe predilection are the typical findings on chest CT in COVID-19. Chest CT scan may act as a quick diagnostic tool with high sensitivity taking into consideration that almost all COVID-19 patients demonstrate typical features.
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Background: Increasing evidence suggests that endothelial activation and dysfunction contribute to COVID-19 pathogenesis by altering vessel integrity, promoting pro-coagulative and inflammatory state. Aims: 1. Investigate changes in coagulation, inflammation and endothelium associated with the progression and severity of COVID-19, as well as their correlation to survival and/or occurrence of venous thromboembolic events (VTE). 2. Explore potential new biomarkers to predict COVID-19 severity. Methods: Samples were collected from COVID-19 patients after appropriate consent. Disease severity was assessed with WHO ordinal scale on day of sampling. In addition to routine haematology, biochemistry and coagulation analysis, additional analysis spanning coagulation, endothelium, platelet, inflammatory biomarkers by conventional assays and multiplex immuno-assays were undertaken. Results: Participants included 151 COVID-19 patients aged 18 years and greater, 16 healthy volunteers and 9 non-COVID-19 ICUcontrols. COVID-19 patients were categorised in 7 groups based on severity and time from symptom onset and the data also provides mortality and VTE rates (Table 1). The biomarker profile of hospitalised COVID-19 patients demonstrated an increase in plasma levels of cytokines, inflammatory, soluble endothelial cell markers and markers of coagulation activation when compared to the ambulatory group (Figure 1). Significantly higher levels of inflammatory markers (CRP, WBC, fibrinogen, serum amyloid P, alpha 1 acid glycoprotein) were observed in patients with VTE and in the non-survivors group. Interestingly, the same trend was seen for coagulation (FVIII, VWF) and fibrinolysis markers (D-dimer, TFPI, t-PA) with higher levels in the VTE and non-survivors group. In addition, higher plasma levels of endothelial markers (ICAM-1, angiopoietin, TIE-2, LYVE-1, syndecan) were observed in severe COVID-19 when compared to non-COVID-19 ICU-controls. (Figure Presented) Conclusions: Our study provides evidence of a strong, global inflammatory response in COVID-19 patients. The elevation of circulating markers suggests significant endothelial cell activation/dysfunction and a possible cause for the pro-coagulant phenotype observed in these patients.
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This piece argues that to understand the gendered impact of livelihood loss due to COVID-19, we must examine not only the direct effects on women's earnings but also the indirect effects on intra-household dynamics and vulnerabilities, such as food insecurity, depletion of savings and assets, social isolation, and mobility loss. And these precarities and perils are faced not just by women who have lost paid jobs, but also by women who were unpaid workers on family enterprises which have been crippled. Moreover, women can be affected disproportionately not only by the erosion of their own livelihoods, but also by the loss of male jobs and return migration from cities to villages, leading to occupational crowding, extended domestic work, hunger, and even domestic violence. The success of women-centric groups in states such as Kerala, however, suggests that not all outcomes have been adverse. Drawing on telephone surveys and other emerging evidence on the pandemic in India, this piece examines the direct and indirect effects on women of livelihood losses by both genders, especially in poor households, as well as the lessons offered by women-led group approaches for charting new developmental pathways.
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Background: SARS CoV-2 has globally affected more than 31 hundred thousand population with more than 2 hundred thousand deaths till date, since its inception from Wuhan, China in December 2019. World is still clueless regarding definitive treatment for this highly contagious disease. Till then we have to rely on time tested methods to delay/stop transmission of this viral disease by observing social isolation, hand hygiene and wearing face mask.
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Background: SARS CoV-2 has globally affected more than 31 hundred thousand population with more than 2 hundred thousand deaths till date, since its inception from Wuhan, China in December 2019. World is still clueless regarding definitive treatment for this highly contagious disease. Till then we have to rely on time tested methods to delay/stop transmission of this viral disease by observing social isolation, hand hygiene and wearing face mask. Objective: The main objective of this review paper is to focus on different modes of transmission of this virus, comparison of this virus with previous similar analogy viral diseases like SARS and MERS and different strategies that can be planned or are ongoing to reduce/delay transmission of this virus in community contacts, especially in context to India. Methods: PUBMED, Google Scholar and BioRxiv search was performed with keywords;COVID-19, mode of transmission, infection, India, BCG. Around 538 eligible papers were evaluated from time period of January 1 to 29 April 2020 and results were summarized Results: On analysis of different papers on mode of transmission it was found that this virus is highly contagious and spreads through air droplet, close contact, through fomites and different metallic surfaces and through aerosol in surroundings with high aerosol generating procedures only. Also, it can spread both in asymptomatic and symptomatic phase equally so early testing is essential. Also, it is mutating in different host environments so it is imperative to include different strains in vaccine preparation. Conclusion: Results demonstrate the fact that early screening, social distancing, isolation of symptomatic patients, respiratory etiquette are the main armaments presently to deal with this virus till effective treatment or vaccine becomes available in the near future. Furthermore, we would like to suggest the Indian government to create a National Viral Disease Management Board on lines of National Tuberculosis Elimination program to prevent and control such viral outbreaks in future. © 2020 Singhal et al.