ABSTRACT
Background: Since the use of smart phones, laptops etc. has increased recently, their impact on people individual's health is not well established. Smartphone use had been remarkably increased during the COVID-19 lockdown due to different unexplained reasons.It is important and critical to examine and rule out the presence, absence or the magnitude of this impact, especially among young people and adolescents. Relevance: To find out the prevalence of neck pain among adolescents and young adults and its correlation with the duration of screen use. Study Design: A descriptive, cross sectional study. Settings: online platformMethods: This cross-sectional study was conducted using an online google survey form, which was distributed through social media to 300 participants to find out the prevalence of neck pain among younger population and its relationship with screen use. Results: Our study showed that the mean age of the study population having neck pain associated with screen use is 24 year. More of the female than male subjects reported neck pain.The prevalence of pain increased with increase in duration of screen use. Conclusion: The research sample reported that people use of electronic devices showed a close association with neck pain and the more the people spends time using an electronic device the greater is the complaint of neck pain. We found that there is a positive correlation between long time screen use and neck pain.
ABSTRACT
This study seeks to understand and quantify the changes in tropospheric ozone (O3) in lower troposphere (LT), middle troposphere (MT) and upper middle troposphere (UMT) over the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGPs), India during the COVID-19 lockdown 2020 with that of pre-lockdown 2019. The gridded datasets of ozone from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis product, ERA5 in combination with statistical interpolated (IDWs) surface NO2 observations, present a consistent picture and indicate a significant tropospheric ozone enhancement over IGP during COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in May 2020. The Paper also examines the influencing role of meteorological parameters on increasing ozone concentration. Over LT, an increase in O3 concentration (23%) is observed and in MT to UMT an enhancement of about 9–18% in O3 concentration have been seen during May 2020 with respect to May 2019. An investigation on causes of increasing ozone concentration (35–85 ppbv) from MT to UMT during May 2020 reveals that there was significant rise (by 1–6%) in low cloud cover (LCC). Notably, higher LCC increases the backscattering of upward solar radiation from the top of the atmosphere. A positive difference of 5–25 W/m2 in upward solar radiation (USR) is observed across the entire study region. The result suggests that higher LCC significantly contributed to the enhanced USR. Thereby, resulting in higher photolysis rate that lead to an increase in mid tropospheric ozone concentration during May 2020. The results highlight the importance of LCC as an important pathway in ozone formation and aid in scientific understanding of it.