"I'm able to function better when I know there's a beginning and an end time”: Autistic adolescents' experiences of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background and Aims: Survey research indicates that autistic children and young people experienced high levels of anxiety and isolation during lockdowns in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Meanwhile, qualitative studies suggest that there may have been some benefits in the switch to home learning for this population. However, the majority of evidence to date comes from parent reports;the current study aimed to triangulate the perspectives of autistic youth and their parents in order to more fully understand the impact of periods of lockdown on education, relationships, and wellbeing. Methods: Thirteen semistructured interviews were conducted (six with adolescents, seven with parents) to explore the experiences of a group of autistic youth aged 13–14 years (Year 9 of mainstream education in England) during a period of intermittent lockdown. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Two broad themes capturing commonality and diversity in the adolescents' experiences of lockdown were developed. (1) "Different stress, not less stress” encapsulates the finding that, despite the enforced removal from the school environment providing short-term relief, new stressors contributed to consistently high levels of anxiety for the young people throughout lockdown periods. Stressors included managing home-school within the family unit, navigating time without boundaries, and anxiety about the virus. (2) "A shrunken world” reflects the heightened impact of losing access to meaningful social relationships, extracurricular pursuits, and health-promoting activities for autistic youth. Discussion: The early stages of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused serious disruption to education for many children and young people globally,;our findings provide further evidence that the impact was particularly salient for autistic youth in terms of social isolation, lost learning, and heightened anxiety. Implications: These findings underscore the necessity of long-term support for the education, social needs, and mental health of autistic young people in the aftermath of lockdowns in response to COVID-19. © The Author(s) 2023.

Does Frequency or Amount Matter? An Exploratory Analysis the Perceptions of Four Universal Basic Income Proposals

Advocates for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) argue that it would provide citizens with a basic foundation for financial security, boost the economy, alleviate poverty, encourage entrepreneurship, reduce crime, and insulate the employment sector against job losses due to automation. Still, the idea lags in popularity in the United States compared to existing cash policies such as the annual Earned Income Tax Credit and one-time COVID-19 relief packages. We hypothesize that this disparity is related to predicted uses of a UBI in comparison to annual or lump sum cash programs. In this survey of 836 Americans, we explore whether predicted behavioral responses to four randomly assigned hypothetical cash transfer scenarios vary across the domains of amount and frequency. Respondents are more likely to associate monthly payments with work disincentives and lump-sum transfers with debt repayment. Implications for UBI advocates include the need to continue educating the public on the empirical associations between UBI, employment, and expenditures. © 2023 by the authors.

The oil and gas cybersecurity enigma

The digitization of the oil and gas industry creates potentially detrimental opportunities for terrorists, criminals, insiders, and activists to exploit. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely has become the norm, and remote collaboration has been enabled by such Internet-based applications as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and others. Remote employees may be more casual with cybersecurity, which further increases the risk of cyberattacks. Successful cyberattacks against oil and gas assets or operations have the capacity to cripple economies, disrupt power grids, and initiate political or public unrest and chaos. Cybersecurity defense should be as central to our organizational culture as turning on our workplace computer. We discuss the most likely weak points in our systems and possible solutions. © 2022 by The Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

How Principals' Perceived Resource Needs and Job Demands Are Related to Their Dissatisfaction and Intention to Leave Their Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic

School principals are facing greater challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic than they have ever faced, which has implications for whether they can conduct their work productively and remain in their jobs over the long term. This article draws on a unique, nationally representative, longitudinal panel of K-12 public school principals across the United States to examine principals' self-reported resource needs and job demands during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as how those resource needs and demands are related to principals' dissatisfaction and their intention to leave their job. Although principals' reported resource needs (which increased over time) and teacher shortages were consistently related to dissatisfaction and intention to leave, various other job demands were predictors of dissatisfaction but not the intention to leave. These results have several implications for supporting and retaining principals as well as the teachers they serve.

Development and Implementation of an Assessment Model in a Sophomore Electromechanical Systems Design Laboratory for the ETAC-ABET Accreditation

In the field of assessment in higher education, practitioners regularly mention two features as key for success at implementing a sustainable assessment model, i) it has to be faculty-driven, and ii) it has to become part of the curriculum. This paper describes an assessment model incorporating these features. The model was developed and implemented for assessing both the ETAC-ABET Program Criteria for an associate degree in Electromechanical Engineering Technology program and the new ETAC-ABET (2019-2020) student outcome (2), which regards students' ability to design systems, components, or processes for well-defined engineering technology problems appropriate to the discipline. This paper describes the implementation of our assessment model, including a description of the performance indicators used for assessment of criteria mentioned above, the structure of course selected for the assessment, the details of the laboratory experiments and final design project used as assessment tools, a summary of the collected data and a discussion of the assessment results, and the arrangements we made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that our method of incorporating assessment as regular course activities helps achieve the ultimate objective of education, i.e., continuous and constant improvement of students' competencies and learning experiences. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Syrian Refugees' Experiences of Housing Stability during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Barriers to Integration and Just Solutions

Research has shown high levels of housing precarity among government assisted refugees (GARs) connected to difficult housing markets, limited social benefits, and other social and structural barriers to positive settlement (Lumley-Sapanski, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has likely exacerbated this precarity. Research to date demonstrates the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for refugees and low-income households, including both health-related issues and economic challenges, that may exacerbate their ability to obtain affordable, suitable housing (Jones & Grigsby-Toussaint, 2020;Shields & Alrob, 2020). In this context, we examined Syrian government-assisted refugees' experiences during the pandemic, asking: how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Syrian refugees' experiences of housing stability. To examine this issue, we interviewed 38 families in Calgary, London, and Fredericton. Using a qualitative descriptive methodology for analysis and interpretation (Thorne et al., 1997), we found the liminality of settling as a GAR has been compounded by isolation, further economic loss, and new anxieties during the pandemic. Ultimately, for many participants, the pandemic has thwarted their housing stability goals and decreased their likelihood of improving their housing conditions. Based on our findings, we discuss potential policy and practice relevant solutions to the challenges faced by refugees in Canada during the pandemic and likely beyond.

Democracy in crisis

In this article I submit that the pandemic politics of the COVID-19 crisis have unmasked the inadequacies of existing representative democracies. Mixing the experiences and responses of various democracies and thinkers to this crisis, particularly from India and South Africa, I argue that a minimally functioning democracy must do two things at least: ensure the health and well-being of citizens and the equal means competitively to select prudent, empathetic and courageous leaders. For this, I suggest, we need a politics that allows us to express and assess our needs, and determine who is best placed to represent us in responding to these needs, all in non-dominating conditions. To this end, the article also proposes and defends four institutional reforms that would enable a dynamic, anti-oligarchic form of democracy to consistently empower the least powerful and keep elites properly in check. © Creative Commons With Attribution (CC-BY).

Follow the scientists? How beliefs about the practice of science shaped COVID-19 views

"Follow the science" became the mantra for responding to COVID-19 pandemic. However, for the public this also meant "follow the scientists", and this led to uneasiness as some viewed scientists as not credible. We investigate how beliefs about the way scientists develop their findings affect pandemic-related views. Our analysis shows that beliefs about scientists' objectivity predict views regrading coronavirus-related risks, behavioral changes, and policy priorities. While political party identity also predicts views about COVID-19-related concerns, these vary by political leaders whose approaches embraced versus dismissed science-based strategies, highlighting the importance of perceptions of scientists in shaping pandemic-related attitudes and beliefs.

Supporting Canada's COVID-19 resilience and recovery through robust immigration policy and programs

Canada has been seen globally as a leader in immigration and integration policies and programs and as an attractive and welcoming country for immigrants, refugees, temporary foreign workers, and international students. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed some of the strengths of Canada's immigration system, as well as some of the fault lines that have been developing over the last few years. In this article we provide an overview of Canada's immigration system prior to the pandemic, discuss the system's weaknesses and vulnerabilities revealed by the pandemic, and explore a post-COVID-19 immigration vision. Over the next three years, the Government of Canada intends to bring over 1.2 million new permanent residents to Canada. In addition, Canada will continue to accept many international students, refugee claimants, and temporary foreign workers for temporary residence here. The importance of immigration for Canada will continue to grow and be an integral component of the country's post COVID 19 recovery. To succeed, it is essential to take stock, to re-evaluate Canada's immigration and integration policies and programs, and to expand Canada's global leadership in this area. The authors offer insights and over 80 recommendations to reinvigorate and optimize Canada's immigration program over the next decade and beyond.

Xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes in the time of COVID-19

The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nations and individuals has almost certainly led to increased feelings of threat and competition, heightened uncertainty, lack of control, and a rise in authoritarianism. In this paper we use social psychological and sociological theories to explore the anticipated effects on xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes worldwide. Based on our analysis, we discuss recommendations for further research required during the ups and downs of the pandemic, as well as during recovery. We also discuss the need for research to address how to best counteract this expected surge in xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes. As the pandemic persists, it will be important to systematically examine its effects on xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes, and to develop and implement strategies that keep these negative attitudes at bay. © The Author(s) 2021.

Can methods do good? Ethnology and multi-species research as a response to Covid-19

In this conversational essay, three scholars working in the field of human-animal studies discuss the multi-species work that is underway in ethnol­ogy. Examples of different methodological approaches are highlighted;mul­tispecies ethnography, crystallization, feminist dog-writing and écriture feminine. By reflecting on the value of such techniques, the authors contend that a renewed enthusiasm for methodological innovation can pave the way for more rounded accounts of social life, bringing animals and their agencies into clearer focus as companions, workers and beings in their own right. This is regarded as both an intellectual and ethical pursuit, with methods placed at the heart of the endeavour. © Linda Tallberg, Astrid Huopalainen & Lindsay Hamilton