THE PRINCIPLE OF IMMEDIACY IN PORTUGUESE CIVIL PROCEDURE IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC: THE USE OF VIDEOCONFERENCING HEARINGS IN JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS

The article aims to investigate how the use of videoconferencing hearings in Portuguese judicial proceedings, established by Law 1-A/2020 of March 19th, affected the principle of immediacy. To achieve it goals, this paper will analyze the meaning and definition of the mentioned principle. In addition to that, it will be highlighted the conduction of the hearings during the pandemic scenario. Last but not least, it will be evaluated whether or not there has been an effective violation of the principle. © 2022, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. All rights reserved.

Covid-19 Automatic Test through Human Breathing

A classifier using a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network to identify human beings infected with Covid-19 is proposed in this work. This classifier has significant advantages over current testing methods: it is fast, contactless, and requires few monetary resources. The data considered for this study was extracted from the Coswara dataset using 140 individuals (70 healthy and 70 infected with Covid-19). This dataset contains respiratory signals, such as people counting numbers, coughing, or breathing. The classifier uses non-linear time sequence features extracted from the signals after a preprocessing stage. The classifier was able to discriminate whether a human is infected with Covid-19 with an accuracy of 92.1%, specificity of 85.7%, and sensitivity of 98.6% using 5-fold Cross-Validation. Based on the results obtained, the classifier can be used as an alternative for the Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests. © 2021 IEEE.

An assessment of trade policies related to covid-19

Amidst the COVID-19 crisis, international trade was particularly important to guarantee the supply of medical and other goods. This article analyses COVID-19 trade-related policies found in the World Trade Organization (WTO) system from February to October 2020. We used the Database of WTO members’ notifications on COVID-19, including information on 198 notifications. It allows us to observe the trend of notifications, countries and products most affected, types of measures, and the adherence to the WTO’s guidelines. Our findings show two waves of notifications. In the first wave, countries acted unilaterally with little regard to multilateral tools. However, in the second wave, characterized by the predominance of trade-facilitating measures, a trend towards multilateral actions is observed through the establishment of “declarations”. Personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies were the most affected products, but agricultural and food products have also been heavily affected. © 2021 Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.