ABSTRACT
The analysis reported in this paper uses Google Mobility Reports to understand subnational trends in population spatial immobility/mobility in the United Kingdom during 2020 and 2021. Using multilevel modelling, it analyses how spatial mobility changed through time in response to the strictness of government lockdown and the annual seasonal cycle of public holidays, and between places in terms of their population composition as measured by the shares of the highly-educationally qualified and the self-employed. The results show that there are no consistent differences between the nations of the United Kingdom;that time spent at home increased with the severity of lockdown;that the share of highly qualified was also a good predictor of staying at home;and that there were major effects from public holidays. The analysis did not explain all the variation between places and dates;it is suggested that this is because of randomisation of the data by Google and unmodelled factors such as tiered restrictions. © 2023 The Authors. Population, Space and Place published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
ABSTRACT
"This issue poses the question, ""Where do we go from here?"" Agricultural and extension educators are well equipped to grow, reimagine, and improve our work. First, we go to our foundational training and educational background and apply those key principles in a new contextual setting. (1) Although we never left the country, we built a virtual study abroad using Kolb's model (1984) of experiential learning to incorporate all four phases into our VHIE teaching and learning process. (2) Creating the SPS Policy Framework for Africa introduced our team to the Continental SPS Committee, which provided credibility to conduct two virtual 4-day participatory workshops to initiate the strategic plans for food safety and plant health. (3) When we addressed the impact of COVID-19 in Africa, we employed the most fundamental, important, and effective educational attribute, caring. (4) Conference attendance improved during the pandemic. However, agricultural and extension educators don't view virtual meetings as a replacement for in-person meetings. (5) Students who have intercultural competence are in high demand. Lewin's Theory of Planned Change explains the virtual student exchange rapid growth phenomena. The increase in students of color and low SES within intercultural competency programs is a welcome benefit. The problems that COVID-19 brought upon the globe challenged our educational, extension, and outreach systems. I observed that agricultural and extension educators utilized their foundational delivery background and talents to adjust quickly to the contextual COVID-19 pandemic world. We grew, reimagined, and improved our delivery and outreach because that is who we are."
ABSTRACT
Some of the recent developments in data science for worldwide disease control have involved research of large-scale feasibility and usefulness of digital contact tracing, user location tracking, and proximity detection on users' mobile devices or wearables. A centralized solution relying on collecting and storing user traces and location information on a central server can provide more accurate and timely actions than a decentralized solution in combating viral outbreaks, such as COVID-19. However, centralized solutions are more prone to privacy breaches and privacy attacks by malevolent third parties than decentralized solutions, storing the information in a distributed manner among wireless networks. Thus, it is of timely relevance to identify and summarize the existing privacy-preserving solutions, focusing on decentralized methods, and analyzing them in the context of mobile device-based localization and tracking, contact tracing, and proximity detection. Wearables and other mobile Internet of Things devices are of particular interest in our study, as not only privacy, but also energy-efficiency, targets are becoming more and more critical to the end-users. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of user location-tracking, proximity-detection, and digital contact-tracing solutions in the literature from the past two decades, analyses their advantages and drawbacks concerning centralized and decentralized solutions, and presents the authors' thoughts on future research directions in this timely research field.