The Positive Impact of Lockdown on University Electricity and Water Consumption

This research paper has shed light on the adverse effects of the covid-19 pandemic on our environment, which led us to lockdown at home and work or study remotely. Thus, American University of Ras-al-Khaimah was also closed, forcing all students to attend classes online. As a result of the online study model, the university environment has gradually changed. In actuality, this has impacted the environment significantly. Waste production has been drastically reduced, and electricity and water usage have been reduced significantly. Therefore, this paper focuses on electricity and water consumption, where a comparison study was conducted between electricity consumption in KWHs and water consumption in gallons before and after the pandemic. Furthermore, the fact that there are fewer faculty members and fewer students on campus will reflect a reduction in the amount of waste produced on campus. According to the study, the online study model of education uses less electricity and water, protecting the environment, so it is recommended that it be adopted in the future © 2022 IEEE.

Engineering Students' Engagement in a Hybrid Learning Mode: Comparative Study

After almost two years since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, higher education institutions are adopting transitional strategies towards returning to normal campus life while respecting the health and safety regulations. An example of such strategies is the hybrid teaching model where only half of the students attend their classes physically on campus while the other half attend their classes simultaneously but online, and their attendance alternates every week. A major challenge imposed by this strategy is the complexity of students' engagement as instructors are exposed simultaneously to two different teaching styles. In this paper, the effectiveness of an Audience Response System in terms of boosting the students' engagement in a hybrid learning environment is investigated. The collected data is analyzed at various stages and comparative conclusions are drawn about the Audience Response System's effectiveness over the interaction of online and on-campus students. Furthermore, an anonymous detailed survey is conducted to verify the students' satisfaction level and to link its results with the conclusions obtained from analyzing the data of the Audience Response System. © CDIO 2022.All rights reserved.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT in PATIENTS with CHRONIC RHEUMATIC, SYSTEMIC AUTOIMMUNE, or AUTOINFLAMMATORY DISEASES PRESENTED with COVID-19: The MENTCOVRMD STUDY

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about its psychological effects. Sleep disturbances, anxiety and/or depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress symptoms have been reported in general population. Patients with chronic rheumatism, systemic autoimmune disease or auto-infam-matory disease, due to immunosuppression, are at risk of severe forms of infection. Currently, there is little information on psychological impact of the pandemic on the mental health of these more vulnerable patients. Objectives: To compare psychological assessment between patients with chronic rheumatic, autoimmune and/or autoinfammatory diseases who presented with COVID-19 infection between March and September 2020, frst wave of French pandemic, and patients with same diseases who did not presented with infection to date. Methods: The MentCOVRMD study was a multicenter descriptive study. Cases were patients with chronic rheumatic, autoimmune and/or autoinfammatory diseases from the French RMD cohort who presented COVID-19 infection between March and September 2020. Controls were patients with same diseases who did not develop infection. The study is registered in Clinical Trials under number 2020-A02058-31. For participants, following criteria were collected: demographics (age, gender, smoking status);psychological assessment questionnaires: Insomnia Severity Index (ISI);Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) checklist;Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9) Depression;Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD7) Anxiety;Patient Health Questionnaire-15 (PHQ-15) and Somatic Symptom Disorder (SSD)-12. Results: Between February and December 2021, 60 cases (46 (76.7%) women), median age 52.0 (39.0;63.0) were included, of which 15 (25%) had been hospitalized during infection, and 169 controls (148 (87.6%) women), median age of 52.0 (38.0;63.0). There were more smokers in the group of cases 12 (20%) than controls 14 (9.1%) (p=0.028) as well as more cases on ARA2 treatment (8 (13.3%)) than controls (7 (4.5%)) (p=0.035) with no statistically signifcant difference in others comorbidities or treatments. There was no statistically difference concerning the ISI scores between cases (11.83 ± 7.31) of which 60% had sleep disorders and controls (11.64 ± 6.82) of which 70.4% had sleep disorders. There was no statistically significant difference in PTSD scores of 15.5 (5.0 to 28.0) for cases and 18.0 (8.0 to 35.0) for controls, of which respectively 12 (20%) had values indicating possible PTSD for cases and 50 (29.6%) for controls. There was no statistically significant difference in PHQ-9 scores (5.5 (1.5 to 11.0)) of which 50% had depressive symptoms and controls (6.0 (2.0 to 11.0)) of which 54.5% had symptoms. There was no statistically significant difference in GAD-7 scores (3.5 (0.0 to 8.0)) of which 40% had anxiety symptoms and controls (4.0 (0.0 to 8.0)) of which 43.2% had symptoms. There was no statistically significant difference in PHQ-15 scores (11.4 ± 6.7), 85% of whom reported presence of symptoms, and controls (10.9 ± 6.2), 82.3% of whom reported symptoms. There was no statistically significant difference in SSD scores between cases (17.7 ± 10.9) and controls (18.4 ± 10.9). There was a statistically signifcant difference in reported VAS scores of pain related to infammatory rheumatism in cases with a median of 4.5 (3.0 to 6. 0) compared to controls with a median of 4.0 (1.0 to 6.0) (p=0.011). There was no statistically signifcant difference in any of the psychological assessment scores between the inpatient and outpatient COVID cases. Conclusion: There was no statistically signifcant difference between COVID cases and controls in the evaluation of these psychological parameters. Prevalence of all these variables were high in the whole study population, testifying to the need to manage these psychological aspects for patients with chronic rheumatisms, autoimmune and/or autoinfammatory diseases.

Transfer Learning for Robust Masked Face Recognition

Over the past three years, it has seen many outbreaks of different coronavirus diseases around the world. One of the ways of transmission of COVID 19 is air transport. This transmission occurs when humans breathe in droplets released by an infected person by breathing, speaking, coughing or sneezing. The World Health Organization (WHO) has given orders to wear a face mask in the public places.Despite the impressive results achieved by deep learning methods in face recognition, the performance of these methods deteriorates when wearing a mask. The issue of masked face recognition is attracting more attention.In this work, a simple and effective method is proposed to deal with the recognition of people who wear a mask. We divide the problem into three phases: feature detection, feature extraction and recognition. The first stage of our model with MediaPipe Face Mesh automatically produces a segmentation of the masked area as feature detection and several points for cropping the area of interest. Then, the second stage extracts the features gained using Resnet50. The selected network, based on ResNet-50, is modified so that the third stage performs the classification process with Soft Max as an redaction and activation function.To train our system, we used the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW). From the original facial recognition data set, a masked copy is generated using data augmentation, and the two data sets are combined during the training process. Our model achieved a test accuracy of 98%. © 2022 IEEE.

Enhancement of Student Learning and Interaction in Engineering Programmes Using an Audience Response System

Focusing on engineering students’ needs and their learning progress requires an interactive teaching approach that plays an essential role in active learning, especially in the context of classrooms with heterogeneous academic levels. In this study, an audience response system (ARS) was implemented in three different electrical and mechanical engineering courses of different programmes and levels at the Australian College of Kuwait (ACK), Kuwait City, Kuwait, to investigate its effectiveness in terms of boosting the students’ engagement and learning through continuous formative feedback. The iVote-App system was used as an add-in to PowerPoint at the instructor side and on a personal mobile phone or tablet at the student side. The study started on campus and continued as e-learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Significantly, a high number of students agreed that the ARS has increased their attention, participation and enjoyment in classroom activities. The anonymity of the students’ responses and the continuous feedback that was provided throughout the class were also highly appreciated by the students. © 2021 WIETE

Activités de recours et de recherche d'un service de Médecine Interne : une place pour la télémédecine, au-delà de la pandémie COVID-19 ?

Les services de Médecine Interne mènent une importante activité de recours expert et de recherche, grevée par plusieurs obstacles. L'activité d'avis spécialisés est chronophage, non valorisée, et limitée par l'impossibilité d'échanger simplement les éléments du dossier médical. L'activité de recherche clinique est limitée par la fréquence des visites protocolaires. L'objectif de ce travail est de déterminer si la télémédecine (TLM) peut contribuer à résoudre ces difficultés. Concernant l'activité de recours, nous avons demandé aux médecins de déclarer les avis donnés à l'aide d'un formulaire standardisé, afin de déterminer s'ils validaient les critères de téléconsultation (TLC) ou de télé-expertise (TLE). Concernant l'activité de recherche, nous avons remis aux investigateurs et à 50 patients un questionnaire sur l'acceptabilité de TLC protocolaires. Concernant l'activité de recours, on dénombrait 120 avis (soit 21 h) hebdomadaires, dont 29 % aux patients et 69 % à des médecins. Soixante et un pour cent des avis aux patients validaient les critères de TLC ;18 % des avis aux médecins ceux de TLE. Concernant l'activité de recherche, 70 % des investigateurs considéraient la fréquence des visites comme limitant les inclusions ;près de la moitié des patients serait favorable au recours à des TLC à la place (40 %) ou en plus (56 %) des visites présentielles. En termes de facturation, la TLM représente un revenu potentiel de 300 € hebdomadaires pour le TLE et 616€ hebdomadaires pour le TLC. Si le recours à la TLM comme procédure dégradée au présentiel s'est démocratisé avec la pandémie, les solutions qu'elle apporte aux difficultés rencontrées dans les activités d'avis et de recherche peuvent contribuer à intégrer pleinement son usage dans le suivi standard des patients. Si tel était le cas, on pourrait tout à fait imaginer avec ce budget (47 632 €/an) pouvoir financer un praticien hospitalier supplémentaire à temps partiel. (French) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Revue de Médecine Interne is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)