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Present study was carried out to investigate the relationship between emotional functioning and family functioning of middle-aged mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, a mixed method approach was used in the second phase of study to explore factors contributing to family conflict and family cohesion. A purposive sample of 100 middle-aged mothers (age ranged between 40-45 years) was approached for this study. The participants were given the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Form (Cooper & Pertrides, 2010) for measuring emotional functioning and Covid-19 Household Environment Scale (Behar-Zusman et al., 2020) for measuring family functioning. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between emotional functioning, family cohesion, and a significant negative correlation between emotional functioning and family conflict. Moreover, it was observed that family functioning of mothers living in nuclear family system was better than those living in joint family system. The qualitative phase of the study revealed that factors related to finances, household work, limited resources, relationship deterioration etc. contributed to family conflict. While factors of increase quality time, emotional responsiveness, communication, and communal problem solving, contributed to family cohesion. The findings provide comprehensive insight into the characteristics of family functioning in the context of Covid-19 pandemic © 2022, Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research.All Rights Reserved.
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Purpose: Underpinned by sensation-seeking theory (SST) and regulatory focus theory (RFT), this paper highlights the crucial role of adventurousness in self-protective behavior and future travel avoidance. Furthermore, this paper investigates safety-seeking tendency as a moderator and travel anxiety post-COVID-19 as a mediator. Design/methodology/approach: Data were gathered from 574 potential visitors to St. Catherine post-COVID-19 and analyzed using Smart-PLS approach. Findings: Adventurousness negatively and significantly affected travel anxiety, while the latter negatively influenced self-protective behavior and positively influenced future travel avoidance. Besides, the findings proved that travel anxiety partially mediated the adventurousness linkage with self-protective behavior and future travel avoidance. Moreover, safety-seeking tendencies dampened travel anxiety's connection with self-protective behavior and future travel avoidance. Practical implications: This paper provides valuable insights into travel research in theory and practice to revive tourist attractions post-COVID-19 in developing countries via an adventure tourism pattern. The study helps figure out how to deal with the pandemic and restore the monument of heavenly religions, St. Catherine—sacred mountain peaks, mosques, churches and many monasteries—in addition to its charming and picturesque nature. Originality/value: The current paper examines a traveler's adventurous nature and post-COVID-19 behavior when visiting St. Catherine and their behaviors related to future avoidance and self-protection. This paper adds the first investigation of travel anxiety and safety-seeking through the lens of SST and RFT theories in the Egyptian tourism context. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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Purpose: There has been substantial research on branding globally. However, there is a dearth of studies empirically investigating branding strategies during the pandemic to mitigate COVID-19 effects on the airline industry. The paper considers three factors which are brand familiarity, brand communication and brand reputation to develop the brand trust of customers and that ultimately influence their brand preferences. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on self-administrative surveys as 450 questionnaires were spread, received 339 responses and a total of 301 questionnaires were selected for data analysis by structural-based modeling after the deletion of outliers and partially filled questionnaires. The data was collected through purposive sampling from Malaysian airports. Findings: The findings confirm the relationship of brand communication, brand familiarity and brand reputation to brand trust and brand preference through mediation and directly except direct relationship of brand familiarity to brand preference. The study is limited to the provided dataset of surveys. The present study couldn't interview respondents which can be done by future studies and also effects of COVID-19 can be examined on related industries or through comparative studies among countries. Originality/value: The present study is the first to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on airline brands and explored the strategies to respond to crises. The study is one of the rare studies that consider branding strategies to the uplift airline industry and mitigate post-pandemic effects from the airline sector. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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The explosive spread of Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19) in late December 2019, requires the health authorities worldwide to enforced stricter standard operating procedures (SOP) for mass gathering events, which eventually caused postponement and cancellation. This has led to a great loss and bankruptcy for most event organizers. As an effort to offer solution to this matter, a professional touch producing "soft landing"such as "Mathematical Modelling of Physical Distancing Policy for Mass Gathering Event Organizer"was proposed. Therefore, a holistic understanding about the issues related to physical distancing in mass gathering event is required. This systematic review paper summarizes current practice of physical distancing among mass gathering event organizers. This study reviewed thirteen articles using two leading databases namely Scopus and Google Scholar. Based on thematic analysis, this review finalized four themes: 1) physical distancing method;2) the importance of physical distancing;3) challenges in physical distancing enforcement and 4) approach to monitor the compliance of physical distancing. © 2022 Author(s).
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Mass gathering has been identified as one of the causes of fast-spreading of COVID-19. Physical distancing practices and large gathering control in Malaysia and all over the world are likely to be continued until the end of the year, even after Movement Control Order (MCO) has been lifted. This has imposed event organizers to redesign their events into virtual events where attendees are to stay at their houses and meet with the host and other attendees virtually. However, certain types of educational events or activities such as practical and hands-on classes are not to be virtually conducted as it by nature carries a competency for the students. This paper evaluates the standard classroom layout by comparing with optimal layout based on circle packing problem (CPP) solution. CPP solution is used to optimize the physical distancing-constrained for the student seat layout as in it happens in real life. The findings can provide an effective exit strategy for Malaysia to deal with this COVID-19 pandemic or other pandemics in the future. © 2022 Author(s).
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COVID-19 has received tremendous attention from scholars worldwide and even being labelled as a black swan event that has disrupted every aspect of human life. Within a short time span of the pandemic, a large volume of research pertaining to COVID-19 has been published in diverse research fields. This paper adopts a bibliometric analysis to systematically evaluate the research development in the application of optimization and simulation methods to address COVID-19 physical distancing policy (OSPhyD) using Bibliometrix R package. A textual query on Scopus database using the combination of four classes of keywords;covid-19, optimization, simulation, and physical distance has returned a total of 299 original research articles and reviews published in English. Appropriate visualizations were generated to describe the collaborations between different authors, countries, and institutions, whilst co-word analysis that uses text mining technique has produced a conceptual cluster via co-occurrence network map to underscore the emerging themes in the current research interest. The main findings pinpoint that: 1) OSPhyD as a scientific research field is an emerging multidisciplinary research topic that is growing progressively and steadily in the fields of medicine, engineering, social sciences, mathematics and decision science, 2) The field has attracted the attention of scholars from all over the world particularly from United States of America, United Kingdom, European countries including authors from Asia, and 3) Three dominant themes or research front emerged from the publications including COVID-19 mainstream, medical education and undergraduate. © 2022 Author(s).
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Objective: To find the association between smartphone usage and text neck syndrome and to assess the frequency of text neck syndrome among young adults during quarantine period of covid-19 pandemic. Methodology: This cross sectional study was conducted on 184 young adults using non-probability convenient sampling technique. The data were collected from different institutes of Lahore. We used Neck disability Index and Nomophobia questionnaire. Results: Out of 184 participants, 64.7% were female and 35.3% were male. Mean age was 21.8478 ± 2 years. 76.6% of the participants had text neck syndrome in the study. There was no disability (0 – 4 scores) in 26.6% young adults, mild disability (5 – 14 score) in 30.4% young adults and moderate disability (15 – 24 scores) in 28.8% young adults with p < 0.001. Conclusion: There was significant positive association between smartphone usage and text neck syndrome. The excessive and prolonged use of smartphones is directly associated with higher neck disability scores. The frequency of text neck syndrome during covid-19 has significantly increased.
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Type 3 intestinal failure (IF) is known to negatively impact bone metabolism contributing to increased prevalence of osteoporosis and associated increases in morbidity and mortality. It has been challenging to appropriately monitor for these pathologies under the restrictions imposed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We performed a retrospective audit assessing compliance with current guidelines1. All type 3 IF patients receiving home parenteral nutrition (HPN) prescribed at a national centre prior to 1st May 2021 were included. Data was collected from hospital electronic recorded, de-identified and collated on an excel spreadsheet that was securely stored on a departmental computer. 270 patients fulfilled inclusion criteria (35.5% male, mean age 54.0 ± 17.5 years). The mean age at HPN initiation was 45.8 ± 18.5 years and the mean number of years on HPN was 8.2 ± 7.2 years. The maximum duration of HPN administration in this cohort was 37 years. DEXA scan results performed within the preceding 5 years were available for 23.0% of patients. Of these scans 96.8% of patients had evidence of reduced bone density (45.2% osteopenic, 51.6% osteoporotic). Comparing DEXA results at diagnosis and in the last 5 years, a majority (54.2%) of patients progressed or remained osteoporotic, with 8.3% showing improvement in bone density and 4.2% of patients having a return to normal bone density. 59.6% of patients had blood tests performed within the preceding 12 months. 54.4% of patients had undergone plasma vitamin D levels measurement. Vitamin D levels were found to be low (<50nmol/L) in 32.7%. 44.4% of patients were receiving vitamin D supplementation of which 86.7% were prescribed oral supplements and 13.3% intramuscular supplements. 31.3% of patients with osteoporosis were on bisphosphonate therapy. These results demonstrate high prevalence of metabolic bone disease amongst type 3 IF patients on HPN. This highlights a potentially modifiable risk of low-trauma fracture which has a very high morbidity and mortality index. Our findings regarding the prevalence and longitudinal changes in bone density are in agreement with the published ESPEN surveys2,3. The results also demonstrate poor compliance with current guidelines. We believe this reflects the challenges of obtaining non-emergent scans and blood test due to COVID-related restrictions as well as our patients’ very understandable fear of exposure should they attend hospital for a face-to-face review. It is also possible that some of these tests were performed locally, due to many patients living far away from our national referral centre, and thus not visible to the audit team. These findings have highlighted the need for greater education and prompted our group to increase our focus on metabolic bone disease during clinic interactions and to create a subsection of our database for tracking DEXA intervals for this patient cohort. References 1. Pironi L, Arends J, Bozzetti F, et al. ESPEN guidelines on chronic intestinal failure in adults. Clin Nutr 2016;35: 247-307. 2. Pironi L, Labate AM, Pertkiewicz M, et al. Prevalence of bone disease in patients on home parenteral nutrition. Clin Nutr 2002;4: 289-296 3. Pironi L, Tjellesen L, De Francesco A, et al. Bone mineral density in patients on home parenteral nutrition: a follow-up study. Clin Nutr. 2004 Dec;23(6):1288-302
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The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the world???s education system, including Malaysia. This disruption has affected approximately 1.6 billion students in more than 200 countries. The closure of educational institutions has caused various changes in people???s lives. This research examines the associations between institutional support, perceptions of usefulness, personal innovation, perceived social pressure, and age with the application of technology among teachers from rural schools in Johor. One hundred ten teachers were involved in this study. The results showed that perceived usefulness, personal innovativeness, and perceived social pressure had influenced technology adoption among the teachers from rural schools.
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The key concept of the Industrial Revolution IR 4.0 has been conceptualized as the new wave of digitalization, robotization, and broader usage of information and communication technology. However, the construction industry is complicated, which has led to its slow industrial evolution. The construction industry still follows traditional labor-intensive industry practices, with high energy consumption, environmental pollution, and low productivity in project delivery. Moreover, the recent cataclysmic COVID 19 pandemic has opened the vision of the construction industry towards IR 4.0 due to the human movement restriction. This paper aims to investigate the adoption of indispensable monitoring technology in the construction industry as effective visual communication of data towards the IR 4.0. This research closes the gap and gives an intensive literature investigation to acquire insights into Construction 4.0 and a case study to showcase the developed monitoring dashboard. Adoption of IR 4.0 technologies will achieve sustainable construction development, lower costs and fast construction with the highest quality. The critical literature review of previous studies with content analysis to demonstrate the recent research in this area. The monitoring dashboard brings the construction performance assessment data to real life and provides key performance indicators required for construction management and support decisions. © 2022 WITPress. All rights reserved.
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Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged supply chains (SCs) around the globe unprecedentedly. This study aims to gain insights on the impacts of the pandemic on SCs and their management under consideration of different regional contexts on a global scale. Design/methodology/approach A Delphi study collects the expertise of global SC academics on the SC vulnerabilities and the measures for responding to disruptions, improving resilience, and restoring operations. Data from three polls are systematically analyzed by content, frequency, and cluster analysis. Findings The study identifies and ranks ten major issues related to SC vulnerabilities and management strategies for specific SC processes and geographical regions. Detected differences among the considered geographical regions point towards particular challenges and call for specific measures to integrate regional contingencies into SC management. In a regional comparison, China and Iran as well as Africa clearly stand out, but also Europe/North America, India/Pakistan, and Brazil show geographical particularities. Research limitations/implications The responses are collected against the COVID-19 pandemic, while the findings show differences among the regions thereby arguing for taking regional contingencies into account in managing SCs. Practical implications SC resilience is a core aim, which was emphasized by the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings provide insights and challenges that managers would have to meet in the different regions covered. Originality/value This paper contributes to existing knowledge on SC risks and SC resilience in context to extreme situations. Given that events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, will become more frequent in the future due to climate change and geopolitical tensions, insights into how to manage SCs under extreme conditions and into regional differences are crucial.
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As construction projects resume worldwide and workers return to the job site, the possibility of transmitting the Covid-19 could be added to the extensive list of risks confronting workers in the construction sites;thus, the workers need to work alone in an assigned activity. Many workers are already working alone in the construction sites, such as utility workers, repair technicians, teleworkers, operators, and drivers. Lone workers in construction are subjected to greater safety risks compared with those working alongside others. Considering the accidents faced by lone workers, it’s less likely that another person would be there to aid them - and if they don’t get treatment quickly enough, serious injuries might prove deadly. Currently, the construction sites depend on physical inspections to the construction sites and manual observation of video streams generated through close circuit television (CCTV). To solve this issue, this research work presents an automated deep learning-based fall detection system of a lone worker to provide information of severe situations and help the workers in their golden time. A diverse dataset of multiple scenarios having workers with the excavator, forklift, ladder, and mobile scaffold is established, and a deep learning algorithm has been trained to validate the concept. The developed system is expected to reduce the efforts being made in manual inspection, enhance the timely access of the due aid from co-workers and supervisors, which is more easily obtainable in non-lone working situations. © 2021 Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction. All rights reserved.
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The occurrence of Covid-19 has caused the existing school learning system to move to online teaching and learning methods. They are carried out to safeguard the continuity of school learning sessions, attempting to avert dropouts. This paper analyzes the relationships between organizational factors, perceived usefulness, personal innovativeness, and peers with technology adoption among teachers in rural schools in Segamat District. A total of 117 teachers were involved in this study. The results showed that perceived usefulness, personal innovativeness, and peers influenced technology adoption among teachers from rural schools.
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Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19), emerged in Wuhan (China) during December 2019, has now grown into a global scale pandemic that is influencing the civilization of the whole world. As of 25th March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) has released 65 situation reports starting from 23rd January 2020 to 26th March 2020 regarding this new disease. The virus has now been identified and named as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS--CoV-2). Total confirmed cases documented across the globe have reached up to 462,684 including 20,834 confirmed deaths from this disease as of 26th March 2020. This study focuses on the essential developments, or response procedures opted by the various countries and presents an elabora-tive account of the various steps taken by the Pakistan government to respond to this dynamic situa-tion. As a third world country, the fall out of these actions can have severe repercussions. This study attempted to highlight some of the peculiar trials Pakistan is facing in these challenging times and discusses the effect of COVID-19 from the perspective of the third world nation. We be-lieve that this study will provide a realistic picture of the current scenario taking place in Pakistan and will assist the government and concerned institutions/agencies in developing better plans for ef-fectively dealing with this COVID-19 virus. © 2021 Bentham Science Publishers.
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Today's conventional teaching and learning methods have changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Online forms are replacing traditional education approaches. Along with the era of advanced technology, many universities are taking this opportunity to develop e-learning platforms to be used by both students and educators. This paper analyses the relationships between student behaviour, technological systems, interactive applications, institutional factors, and instructor characteristics to accept electronic learning among distance learners. A total of 479 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The result indicates that student behaviour, interactive applications, and instructor characteristics are the determinants of electronic learning.
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Background: SARS-CoV2 is a grave illness and few therapeutic agents have yielded benefit or reduced mortality. Administration of convalescent plasma (CP) in viral illnesses in the past, including SARS, before day 14, has been associated with a shorter hospital course. In the present study, we are interested in determining the benefit of administering CP to critically ill patients in the intensive care unit, and the impact on mortality and other clinical markers. Methods: 5 critically ill patients with confirmed SARS-CoV2 infection were observed in the uncontrolled case series study. Mechanically ventilated patients with severe ARDS (PaO2/FiO2 < 100) were eligible to receive CP transfusion. We reviewed daily vital signs, inflammatory markers, PaO2/FiO2 ratio and SOFA scores before and after CP transfusions. SARS-CoV2 PCR viral load testing was completed on day 0 of transfusion and repeated on day 3 and 6. Complications during the hospitalization and 30-day mortality were assessed. Results: All 5 patients were mechanically ventilated at the time of transfusion and between day 7 to 31 of their illness. Following plasma transfusion, body temperature and inflammatory markers remained elevated in four patients (figure 1). SOFA score and PaO2/FiO2 ratios continued to worsen in three and four patients respectively (figure 2). SARS-CoV2 PCR remained positive in 4 patients. 4 of the 5 patients had died at the end of the follow up period. One patient was successfully extubated on day 29 (table 1) and discharged after a long hospital course. Conclusion: In our patient cohort, the administration of CP did not improve laboratory markers or clinical outcomes. Some notable limitations of this study are the small sample size, and that the patients received CP late in their disease course. Further investigation is necessary to draw definitive conclusions about the utility of CP in the treatment of SARS-CoV2. (Table Presented).
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Background: Mechanical ventilation of patients with COVID-19 is associated with high mortality. Understanding risk factors for developing mechanical ventilation may allow for more targeted monitoring and therapeutics that may improve outcomes. Methods: We performed a retrospective case series of all patients admitted within thirty days of a positive Sars CoV-2 test to an integrated health system near Chicago, Illinois between March 12 and May 31, 2020. Covariates evaluated included demographics, symptoms on admission, vital signs, medications, comorbidities, census tract data and social history. Univariable analysis was performed and variables with an alpha of 0.05 or less were included in multivariable regression modeling to identify factors associated with mechanical ventilation. The area under the curve (AUC) was used to assess performance of the model. Results: Of 990 patients admitted with COVID-19 12.6% (125) were mechanically ventilated. The median age was 68 (interquartile range 55-82), 48.4% (479) were female and 49.6% (491) were Caucasian. Independent factors associated with mechanical ventilation included female sex (Adjusted OR [AOR] 0.621, Confidence Interval [CI] 0.427-0.903;p=0.0363), body mass index (BMI) (AOR 1.035, CI 1.011-1.060;p=0.0175), percent of english speaking population within patient's census tract (AOR 0.989, CI 0.979-0.998;p=0.0454), respiratory rate (AOR 1.054, CI 1.027-1.083;p=0.0011), oxygen saturation (AOR 0.922, CI 0.901-0.943;p< 0.0001), cerebrovascular accident (CVA) (AOR 0.176, CI 0.051-0.605;p=0.0207) and hematologic malignancy (AOR 3.668, CI 1.403-9.590;p=0.0261). AUC of the model was 0.8 (0.75-0.84). Conclusion: Risk factors associated with mechanical ventilation included male gender, elevated BMI, census tract with lower percentage of english speakers, increased respiratory rate, low oxygen saturation, hematologic malignancy and not having a CVA. We suspect that history of CVA may have been associated with overall patient debility in which aggressive measures such as intubation were not deemed appropriate. Identifying patients with risk factors associated with mechanical ventilation may allow for early and targeted interventions to improve outcomes. (Table Presented).