The impact of COVID-19 on logistics and coping strategies: A literature review

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges to the continuous development of logistics and has received increasing attention from all sectors of society. This paper systematically reviews 85 related papers;sets the framework of literature analysis on the basis of five fields of logistics: life, e-commerce, healthcare, air transportation, and emergency;systematically composes and analyzes the scope and content of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on logistics in different fields;and comprehensively shows the current status of research on the impact of COVID-19 on the continuous development of logistics. On this basis, we combed out the diverse measures of government, enterprises, and related institutions for the logistics problems that have emerged, and put forward some prospects for future research in this field in terms of multi-period strategies, multi-factor evaluation, degree of impacts, and quantification of effects. The work in this paper has some reference value and significance for mitigating or eliminating the negative impact of COVID-19 on the continuous development process of logistics in multiple fields, rationalizing the epidemic response measures and expanding and deepening the research on this topic. © 2023 The Authors. Regional Science Policy & Practice © 2023 Regional Science Association International.

A Temporal-Context-Aware Approach for Individual Human Mobility Inference Based on Sparse Trajectory Data

Inferring individual human mobility at a given time is not only beneficial for personalized location-based services, but also crucial for trajectory tracking of the confirmed cases in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, individual generated trajectory data using mobile Apps is characterized by implicit feedback, which means only a few individual-location interactions can be observed. Existing studies based on such sparse trajectory data are not sufficient to infer individual's missing mobility in his/her historical trajectory and further predict individual's future mobility given a specific time. To address this concern, in this paper, we propose a temporal-context-aware approach that incorporates multiple factors to model the time sensitive individual-location interactions in a bottom-up way. Based on the idea of feature fusion, the driving effect of heterogeneous information such as time, space, category and sentiment on individual's mobile behavior is gradually strengthened, so that the temporal context when a check-in occurs can be accurately depicted. We leverage Bayesian Personalized Ranking (BPR) to optimize the model, where a novel negative sampling method is employed to alleviate data sparseness. Based on three real-world datasets, we evaluate the proposed approach with regard to two different tasks, namely, missing mobility inference and future mobility prediction at a given time. The empirical results encouragingly demonstrate that our approach outperforms multiple baselines in terms of two evaluation metrics, i.e., accuracy and average percentile rank. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Predicting the antecedents of discontinuous usage intention of mobile government social media during public health emergencies

Mobile government social media (GSM) plays a crucial role in facilitating government–citizen crisis communication and pandemic-related information delivery during public health emergencies. However, the lack of interaction and supervision, as well as deviations from the government's crisis communication position, can lead to some mobile GSM accounts gradually becoming "zombie” and "empty shell” accounts, resulting in high discontinuance rates. To investigate the underlying mechanism of mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies, this study utilized hybrid structural equation modeling with an artificial neural network approach to estimate linear and non-linear relations. Data were collected from 748 Chinese mobile GSM users during the COVID-19 pandemic from August to September 2021. The findings revealed that perceived risks and barriers, information overload, information irrelevance, and social media fatigue significantly affected mobile GSM users' discontinuous usage intentions during public health emergencies, while perceived internet censorship and information equivocality did not. The hybrid method predicted mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies with an accuracy of 87.9%. This study provides a holistic understanding of the antecedents of mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies. Practical insights were presented for mobile GSM managers to avoid user churn during public health emergencies. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Logistics System Risk Analysis Using FMEA-AHP Methodology: During and after the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic broke out, and the global logistics industry suffered severe losses, therefore, the FMEA-AHP (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis-Analytic Hierarchy Process) method is proposed to analyze the failure reasons of the logistics system in the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we have made an improvement on the basis of the traditional FMEA method: The AHP is integrated into the FMEA algorithm (referred to as RPWN (risk priority weighted number) in this article). In this algorithm, the AHP is to determine the weights of risk indicators. Meanwhile, in this article, we also consider about the new logistics failures, such as the failure modes and failure reasons of the logistics system under the COVID-19 pandemic. 12 failures have been identified, and corresponding preventive and corrective measures have been suggested to cut off the path of failure propagation and reduce the impact of failures. © 2022 ACM.

Temporal evolution and spatial pattern of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States

It is the cornerstone of precise and scientific prevention and control to understand the temporal evolution and spatial pattern of the COVID-19 epidemic. Based on the county-level COVID-19 case of the United States from January 22, 2020 to October 8, 2021, we explored and analyzed the epidemic by using time series analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis and gravity center trajectory analysis. The results show that: (1) the epidemic in the United States experienced four stages of low incidence, growth, peak and rebound with June 15, September 30 and October 1, 2020 as the cut-off points. (2) The global Moran index experienced a process of 'increase-decrease-increase-stability', with the maximum value exceeding 0.6, indicating that the epidemic has obvious spatial aggregation;the epidemic is dominated by high-high clusters (over 150 counties) and low-low clusters (over 500 counties), presenting a pattern of 'three cores and multiple islands' and 'north-south belt'. (3) In 60% of states, the trajectory of the epidemic center of gravity is near-linear type. The epidemic hotspots in these states were relatively stable over time. In more than half of the states, the curve of the moving distance of the epidemic center of gravity is exponential. These states experienced a very rapid epidemic. This study is expected to provide a reference for evaluating the effectiveness of epidemic prevention measures and determining targeted epidemic prevention measures, as well as accumulate experience for future research on the spread of different infectious diseases in different regions. © 2022 IEEE.

Spatio-Temporal Variations of the COVID-19 Epidemic in Mexico

Mexico is one of the countries worst affected by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Analyzing the spatiotemporal spread processes of the COVID-19 epidemic in Mexico is of great significance in terms of preventing its further transmission. This study obtained COVID-19 cases and deaths at the municipality level in Mexico from February 28, 2020, to February 27, 2022, and adopted Hoover index, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and epidemic center calculation to reveal the spatio-temporal pattern of the pandemic nationwide. The results showed that the COVID-19 outbreak in Mexico experienced an initial low-level transmission and four concentrated outbreaks. In terms of spatial transmission pattern, COVID-19 cases showed clear spatial clustering characteristics (Moran's I: 0.48), and large cities with more social interactions (such as Mexico City, Guadalajara, etc.) were most affected. In terms of the directional characteristics of the COVID-19 impact, the epidemiological center constantly shifted in the northeast-southwest direction due to the changing severity of the epidemic in the northwestern coast and the central part of Mexico during the initial outbreak phase. Accordingly, the centers of the three subsequent outbreaks moved to the southeast, northwest, and southeast. The COVID-19 epidemic spread very rapidly in Mexico, especially in the second phase. In the four concentrated outbreaks, the time for the distribution of cases to form a relatively stable spatial pattern was 99 days, 15 days, 95 days, and 42 days, respectively. But the difference of transmission rate at the state level is significant. The state with earlier outbreaks, such as Mexico City, spreads faster. This study revealed the characteristics and laws of the spread of infectious diseases at the national scale, and provided a reference for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic and future emerging infectious diseases. © 2022 IEEE.

Spatio-temporal variations of night-time lights at early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States

The COVID-19 epidemic swept the world and continued to spread. Without effective medical treatments and vaccine during the early stage of the pandemic, local governments in various countries had to lock down cities and adopt non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as the stay-at-home order, social distancing, and so on. NPIs against the COVID-19 epidemic have significantly changed socioeconomic activities in cities. However, characteristics and patterns of urban socio-economic activities under this influence are still unclear. Benefiting from the development of earth observation technologies, such large-scale changes in socioeconomic activities are enough to be captured by satellites through remotely sensed night-time lights (NTL). In this study, we selected 20 major cities in the United States including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to analyze spatio-temporal variations of NTL caused by the lockdown of cities. The first round of COVID-19 epidemic occurred in the United States in mid-March 2020. Since March 2020, American cities have successively issued stay-at-home orders, but there are differences in the time and strictness of policy implementation. Large cities have a higher population density and a higher intensity of social activities, so they are more susceptible to infectious diseases. The diversity of lockdown dates and strictness of lockdowns in cities in the United States are conducive to investigating the spatio-temporal variations of NTL. We acquired monthly averaged NPP VIIRS products of February, March and April, 2020, which are from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Platform (NPP). We further analyzed the spatial pattern, distance decay and disparities in land use types of changes in NTL. Results show that NTL generally dimmed by 5-8% in U.S. cities caused by the lockdown of cities. There are 6 cities where the luminous brightness has dropped by more than 10%: Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. Among them, Minneapolis has the largest decrease in luminous brightness, with a decrease of about 40% in March. The spatial change of NTL shows obvious "core-periphery" pattern that the reduction of NTL declines with the distance from the city center. This is mainly because the central area of the city is a concentrated commercial area. After the closure of the city, commercial activities have dropped significantly, resulting in an obvious reduction in NTL around city centers. The reduction of NTL varies among diverse urban land use types. In New York, NTL decreased the most on land for residence and aviation facilities by 12% and 11%, respectively. In Chicago, NTL generally decreased by 20% in all types of urban land, and NTL recovered after one month of the lockdown of cities in other urban land except sports facilities land. This study only analyzes the spatio-temporal changes of NTL. In the future, it can be combined with multi-source data to explain the driving force of NTL changes. Nighttime light remote sensing effectively reflects urban socio-economic dynamics with an important application in monitoring and assessing socio-economic impacts of emergencies. © 2022 National Remote Sensing Bulletin. All rights reserved.

Anxiety sensitivity mediates relations between anxiety and problematic smartphone use severity in Chinese adolescents early in the COVID-19 pandemic

Risk factors for problematic smartphone use (PSU) have rapidly become an important area of research due to the prevalence of smartphones and functional impairment associated with PSU. Our aim was to examine anxiety sensitivity (AS) as a mediating variable between both depression and anxiety with PSU severity. Participants (N = 4,752) from junior and senior high schools in Tianjin, China completed a web-based survey with measures of depression, anxiety, AS, and PSU. Inferential analyses revealed significant differences between males and females on PSU severity (η=.02). Results of structural equation modeling indicated good model fit (CFI=.956;TLI=.954;RMSEA = .05), and that anxiety was positively associated with AS when adjusting for depression (β = .951, S.E. = .043);and AS was significantly associated with greater PSU severity, adjusting for age and sex (β = .474, S.E. = .013). Additionally, AS mediated relations between anxiety and PSU severity (β = .451, S.E. = .024). Current findings are consistent with theoretical models of problematic internet use (I-PACE) and previous research linking AS to other kinds of behavioral addictions (e.g., smoking, alcohol use).

A case report of moderate COVID-19 with an extremely long-term viral shedding period

Background: COVID-19 is caused by infection with a new form of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). The WHO raised the COVID-19 alert to the highest level. The virus is a highly contagious via human-to-human transmission. The median duration of viral shedding is 20.0 days. We report a long duration of viral shedding that was 32.0 days from illness onset in a patient with moderate COVID-19 admitted to Qianjiang Central Hospital. Case report: A 37-year-old patient sought medical advice while suffering from fever, dry cough, fatigue, dizziness, runny nose and diarrhoea. Five days before the visit, he had a history of travel from affected geographic areas. The patient had a positive RT-PCR test, and chest CT images showed multiple nodules and mixed ground-glass opacification with consolidation in bilaterally in the lungs. Laboratory findings showed that the lymphocyte and CD4+ counts were below the normal range. The patient was given antiviral treatment, including arbidol, lopinavir, IFN-α, and traditional Chinese medicine, and other necessary supportive care. All clinical symptoms and CT imaging manifestation ab-normalities resolved during the course of therapy. Conclusion: Although the positive RT-PCR tests were verified in consecutive upper respiratory specimens, the patient’s clinical symptoms, CT imaging findings, CD4+ lymphocyte counts, and IgG antibody levels had obviously improved. Positive tests may be detecting pieces of inactive viruses, which would not be transmissible in individual cases.

Interaural time difference based spatial release from masking with asymmetric hearing over a video conference app

Due to the difficulty of conducting offline laboratory experiments during the coronavirus outbreak, remote experiments such as experiments over video conference apps have become an important method to collect data for hearing researchers. For remote testing using headphone presentations, compared to monaural (i.e., unilateral or diotic) audio stimuli, dichotic stimuli (i.e., sounds with differences between left and right ears) are used in relatively less studies. In this study, a binaural hearing task of spatial release from masking (SRM) was tested in laboratory and over a video conference app, i.e., Tencent Meeting. In the experiment, the effects of interaural time difference (ITD) on SRM were compared between symmetric and asymmetric hearing which were realized by using a fixed interaural level difference (ILD) of 0 dB and -15 dB respectively. Results showed that 1) SRM was observed in the remote test but it was >4 dB smaller than the laboratory test;2) asymmetric hearing would lead to a ~2 dB significant decrease in the amount of masking release in both laboratory and remote conditions. The results indicate that binaural hearing could be measured remotely using the stereo sharing mode of video conference apps, but the effects of binaural cues especially ITDs may be degraded to some extent. © 2022 IEEE.

INTERNET STREAMING AUDIO BASED SPEECH RECEPTION THRESHOLD MEASUREMENT IN COCHLEAR IMPLANT USERS

Traditional face-to-face subjective listening test has become a challenge due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We developed a remote assessment system with Tencent Meeting, a video conferencing application, to address this issue. This paper presents our work on evaluating the reliability of the remote assessment system. Two speech reception threshold (SRT) experiments were conducted to study the effects of noise suppression and maxima selection number on cochlear implant (CI) hearing. Both experiments were conducted locally and remotely, the correlations between the respective results were analyzed. Results showed that remote tests replicated the differences among testing conditions observed in local tests, but the absolute SRT values for individual conditions varied significantly between the two modes. The variations could be attributed to multiple reasons, such as online data transmission issues, audio playback devices, environmental conditions, and the training of participants. In conclusion, the relative variation of SRTs for CIs can be measured reliably, but the absolute SRT values should be carefully compared and explained according to objective and subjective experimental conditions. © 2022 IEEE

Impacts of COVID-19 on construction project management: a life cycle perspective

Purpose: The impacts of COVID-19 on construction projects have attracted much attention in the construction management research community. Nevertheless, a systematic review of these studies is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the impacts of COVID-19 on the different stages of a project life-cycle, and comprehensively sort out the epidemic response measures adopted by project participants. In addition, the study also attempts to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by project management practitioners under the context of COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach: This study comprehensively demonstrates the systematic review process of COVID-19 related research in the construction industry, systematically summarizes the research status of the impact of COVID-19 on construction projects, and defines the strategies to deal with COVID-19 in project management;and through the visualization research, determines the current key research topics and future research trends. Findings: This study identifies 11 construction activities in the project management life cycle that are affected by COVID-19 and finds that the COVID-19 epidemic has the greatest impact on construction workers, construction standards, construction contracts and construction performance. The study further summarizes the six main epidemic countermeasures and mitigation measures taken within the construction industry following the arrival of the epidemic. In addition, the results of this study identify opportunities and future trends in intelligent construction technology, rapid manufacturing engineering and project management in the construction industry in the post-epidemic era through literature results, which also provide ideas for related research. Practical implications: COVID-19 has brought severe challenges to society. It is of great significance for the future sustainable development of the construction industry to identify the impact of COVID-19 on all phases of the project and to promote the development of coping strategies by project stakeholders. Originality/value: First of all, there is little study comprehensively reviewing the impacts of COVID-19 on the different stages of construction projects and the strategies to deal with the negative impacts. In addition, from a life cycle perspective, the used articles in this study were grouped into different categories based on project stages. This promotes an integrated and comprehensive understanding of historical studies. Moreover, on the basis of a comprehensive review, this paper puts forward future research directions to promote the sustainable development of the construction sector. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Time and frequency connectedness and portfolio diversification between cryptocurrencies and renewable energy stock markets during COVID-19

The assessment of the time and frequency connectedness between cryptocurrencies and renewable energy stock markets is of key interest for portfolio diversification. In this paper, we utilize weekly data from 07 August 2015 to 26 March 2021 to document the dynamics and portfolio diversification from a fresh cryptocurrencies-renewable energy perspective. Our time-frequency domain spillovers results reveal that renewable energy stocks are the main spillover contributors in the connectedness system and the short-run spillovers dominate their long-run counterparts. Furthermore, investors can gain more profits through short-run transactions in our portfolio design and we can optimize portfolios by investing a large portion in cryptocurrencies. A fascinating fact is that the COVID-19 pandemic can reverse the effectiveness of our hedging strategy. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.

[Analysis of online education for public health and preventive medicine].

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), universities have carried out online education for public health and preventive medicine courses under the policy of "Suspending Classes Without Stopping Learning" launched by the Chinese government. The Public Health and Preventive Medicine Committee of the Ministry of Education Steering Committee for Medical Education investigated the online teaching activities in the member universities. This study presents the survey results, discusses the existing problems, and proposes suggestions for further reforms on mixed teaching activities.

[Detection and evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid contamination in corona virus disease 19 ward surroundings and the surface of medical staff's protective equipment]

OBJECTIVE: To determine the environmental contamination degree of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) wards, to offer gui-dance for the infection control and to improve safety practices for medical staff, by sampling and detecting SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid from the air of hospital wards, the high-frequency contact surfaces in the contaminated area and the surfaces of medical staff's protective equipment in a COVID-19 designated hospital in Wuhan, China. METHODS: From March 11 to March 19, 2020, we collected air samples from the clean area, the buffer room and the contaminated area respectively in the COVID-19 wards using a portable bioaerosol concentrator WA-15. And sterile premoistened swabs were used to sample the high-frequency contacted surfaces in the contaminated area and the surfaces of medical staff's protective equipment including outermost gloves, tracheotomy operator's positive pressure respiratory protective hood and isolation clothing. The SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid of the samples were detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR. During the isolation medical observation period, those medical staff who worked in the COVID-19 wards were detected for SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid with oropharyngeal swabs, IgM and IgG antibody in the sera, and chest CT scans to confirm the infection status of COVID-19. RESULTS: No SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid was detected in the tested samples, including the 90 air samples from the COVID-19 wards including clean area, buffer room and contaminated area, the 38 high-frequency contact surfaces samples of the contaminated area and 16 surface samples of medical staff's protective equipment including outermost gloves and isolation clothing. Moreover, detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid by oropharyngeal swabs and IgM, IgG antibodies in the sera of all the health-care workers who participated in the treatment for COVID-19 were all negative. Besides, no chest CT scan images of medical staff exhibited COVID-19 lung presentations. CONCLUSION: Good ventilation conditions, strict disinfection of environmental facilities in hospital wards, guidance for correct habits in patients, and strict hand hygiene during medical staff are important to reduce the formation of viral aerosols, cut down the aerosol load, and avoid cross-infection in isolation wards. In the face of infectious diseases that were not fully mastered but ma-naged as class A, it is safe for medical personnel to be equipped at a high level.