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The present study is related to the problem associated with student assessment with online examinations at higher educational institutes (HEIs). With the current COVID-19 outbreak, the majority of educational institutes are conducting online examinations to assess their students, where there would always be a chance that the students go for malpractice. It is difficult to set a question paper for any technical course with great novelty. Under these circumstances, safeguarding academic integrity has become a challenge for HEIs. This study is aimed at improving the quality of questions for online exams to increase the accountability of HEIs by proper evaluation of their students. A detailed procedure with suggestions for setting the questions for technical courses, in the format of assertion and reason, matching, multiple select types, etc., has been discussed with adequate examples. It deals with a strategy for ensuring that all the students are held to the standards that are reflected in their grades. The proposed evaluation method has been implemented on a test batch and presented the results along with a comparison with that of traditional question papers. It is witnessed that there is a simultaneous enhancement of students'learning as an additional benefit of implementing the proposed learning-oriented assessment method. IEEE
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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused increased anxiety among medical students due to the uncertainty of the long-term effects on the future of medical education. There are currently insufficient studies aimed at investigating the changes in the mental health and studying habits of medical students during public health emergencies such as this pandemic, as well as methods that can be incorporated to appropriately manage anxiety effectively. To investigate the psychological impact and associated factors on medical students during the pandemic. This retrospective, cross-sectional study consisted of 291 medical students of the faculty of medical sciences at the university of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus, Trinidad and Tobago. The mental health and study habits of said students were assessed with the use of questionnaires via an online survey platform. Data of our study showed that 56% of the students were experiencing increased stress and anxiety. Students of 82.8% experienced irregular sleeping habits and 76.3% of participants experienced a change in eating habits brought on by the pandemic. Participants of 67.4% studied less than 4 hrs. a day, 61.5% were less productive, 62.2% showed an inability to focus and avoid distractions in their study environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a need for proper supportive strategies to assist students in effectively managing anxiety and depression during public health emergencies such as COVID-19. It is suggested that all universities, colleges and education bodies alike implement a pandemic preparedness course as well as an accessible online support forum.
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Coronavirus-induced disease-19 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, is still a major global health challenge. Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) represent retroviral elements that were integrated into the ancestral human genome. HERVs are important in embryonic development as well as in the manifestation of diseases, including cancer, inflammation, and viral infections. Here, we analyze the expression of several HERVs in SARS-CoV-2-infected cells and observe increased activity of HERV-E, HERV-V, HERV-FRD, HERV-MER34, HERV-W, and HERV-K-HML2. In contrast, the HERV-R envelope is downregulated in cell-based models and PBMCs of COVID-19 patients. Overexpression of HERV-R inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication, suggesting its antiviral activity. Further analyses demonstrate the role of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) in regulating HERV-R antiviral activity. Lastly, our data indicate that the crosstalk between ERK and p38 MAPK controls the synthesis of the HERV-R envelope protein, which in turn modulates SARS-CoV-2 replication. These findings suggest the role of the HERV-R envelope as a prosurvival host factor against SARS-CoV-2 and illustrate a possible advantage of integration and evolutionary maintenance of retroviral elements in the human genome.Copyright © 2023 The Authors.
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The wine industry in China has developed rapidly and occupied an important position in the domestic and foreign wine markets. China is the fifth largest consumer of wine in the world. However, under the impact of COVID-19, the competition to secure a limited market share in the domestic wine market has become increasingly fierce and the previous marketing strategies of the Changyu Wine Company can no longer adapt to the changing consumer environment. In addition, the sales of imported and domestic wine continued the ‘double decline' trend in 2018 and some wine production and operation enterprises encountered difficulties. The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.
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The volume on China: The Bankable State rejects neoliberal consensus and focuses on crucial contributions of the Chinese state in shaping Chinese economy. This book makes crucial theoretical contributions to the study of local political economy of China. This book engages with Chinese state responses to challenges China faces in the processes of reform, transition and development of both commercial and non-commercial banks. This book explores Chinese economic growth and development policy processes and its uniqueness in the wider world economy. The book examines Chinese financial policy praxis and offers an insightful account of its successes for the wider resurgence of alternative political economy of local development. Additionally, this book also showcases state led entrepreneurship in China. The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.
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The objective of this study was to find the association of invasive mechanical ventilation, non-invasive mechanical ventilation (N.I.V) and high flow nasal canula (HFNC) with mortality in COVID 19 pneumonia patients with ARDS. This is an observational cohort study conducted among patients those who were infected with COVID19 infection and received ventilator support. This study was a single centred, conducted among COVID19 patients, who came to a tertiary hospital in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. All patients admitted with COVID19 infection and received mechanical ventilation in between August 2020 to November 2020 was included in this study. As this is an observational cohort study, any intervention not required. Only, data collectors collected all relevant patient data using an android-based data collection platform. 398 patients were found to be eligible for this study. Among them, only 24.47% patients received invasive mechanical ventilation and rest were on N.I.V (62.77%) and HFNC support (12.77%). 26 patients died among the 92 invasively ventilated patients, whereas the mortality rate among N.I.V group of patients (78.7%) was significantly higher. Increased TLC count, C-Reactive, Protein, Urea, Creatinine, Heart rate, Respiratory rate were mostly associated with increased mortality among non-invasively ventilated patients. Early intubation may decrease the risk of mortality in patients infected with severe COVID19 infection. Copyright © 2022 Oriental Scientific Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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Aim and background: Due to the resurgence of COVID cases many doctors, medical students, and nurses from varied backgrounds, many a time novice to COVID management are deployed in turn from time to time at different COVID care centers and hospitals across India, before they are properly trained and skilled for effective management of COVID and post COVID syndromes, as the disease is relatively new, leading to non-uniform management and documentation. COVID being a contagious disease with newer symptomatology and ongoing research outputs suggesting new guidelines from time to time, which sometimes are conflicting in nature for novice healthcare workers. For uniform and appropriate management to reduce morbidity and mortality, it mandates a unique and effective solution towards guided and error-free disease management, authentic high volume data capture for future research and to trace patient to post COVID condition in the community outside the hospital, virtual patient counselling cum relative visit, generation of the daily patient bulletin, simultaneous teleround of multiple units, and sharing patient's data across multiple specialities and investigation areas. Objective: To have all these above-mentioned facilities over one platform, we aim to test run a cloud-based dynamic mobile application based dedicated device, the C O V I D Device (Covid Operation Vital Information Delivery device) across many hospitals in India simultaneously for COVID and post COVID syndrome management and data retrieval for research. Materials and methods: Two institutes, namely IMS and SUM Hospital and ITER have collaborated to design a cloud-based device having recent COVID guidelines on the management of adult COVID patients. The software has been incorporated into a dedicated handheld device (tablet or android mobile phone), the COVID Device in a dynamic way (when new symptomatology surfaces and new research outcomes on management are published). The important modules pertaining to this COVID Device are Web-based application for Registration Desk and Device-based application for Doctor's Module/Care-givers Module and Patient's/Patient's relative's module. Results: In a pilot, we have successfully test run the COVID device on virtual patients and 2 actual patients in a secondary level COVID ICU and HDU to examine the different functionality of the cloud-based application, namely error-free and guided patient management without missing any point, daily patient relative's counselling and virtual patient visiting by relatives, generating daily patient bulletin, simultaneous tele round of multiple units, and sharing patient's data across multiple specialities and investigation areas and tracing patient to the community after discharge to enquire about post COVID condition and retrieval of data across all module and incorporation of new guideline in a dynamic way and checking the facilities for incorporating other modules namely pediatric module. Conclusion: COVID Device (Adult module) is a very effective tool for COVID and post COVID condition management and research. It has the potential to incorporate other modules namely obstetric, pediatric, and neonatal modules. If used across all hospital of India, it will be a real boost to digital health mission and centralized COVID data management and research in India.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in dramatic challenges to healthcare systems worldwide. There has been an increased awareness to protect frontline workers from COVID-19 exposure and its consequences. To assess the prevalence of healthcare professionals in India during the COVID-19, a cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted with healthcare professionals from medical colleges and hospitals from different states across the country. The study comprised 772 healthcare professionals aged >= 18 years. The main outcome measures studied were anxiety, depression, and stress. Among the healthcare professionals, 37.17%, 33.68%, and 23.7% were reported to have anxiety, depression, and stress respectively. The physicians, female, aged population, and professionals sleeping less than 7 hours are more prone to psychological problems. The results of this study predict the high levels of anxiety, depression, and stress among healthcare professionals in different states of India. Increased COVID-19 cases, high pressure, workload, and lack of training are the main reasons for the psychological problems in healthcare professionals. Proper strategies must be followed in healthcare settings to reduce the burden of stress.
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The Covid-19 Tracker App is a mobile application development worn to trace the Covid-19 exposition all over the countries. This program is mainly built to establish the current situation of Covid19 during this pandemic. Covid-19 Tracker App is an Android based application. As everyone are aware the world is facing one of the unconditional outbreaks. The outburst of Covid-19 during this time period is to design and develop Covid-19 Tracker Android App using REST API which will track the Global Stats and gives the probability of total number of active cases, recovered cases and death rates in all countries around the world. The app helps to overcome the overall accuracy and providing the probability of covid cases in India states, districts and cities cases are derived with the help of APIs (Application Program Interface) data provided from the various 3rd party websites. The execution of app takes place in the emulator window which supports Android mobile application devices to run through Android environment. The app is designed only to track the cases that are presently running in India. By this, application plays a major role in providing result. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The testing of X-rays images using existing modules is measured by considering the affected COVID-19 chest X-rays and normal X-rays images of the patient trained under Web app to get the best accuracy percentage based on the epochs size. Whereas, in the other part of the proposed model is used to deploy the previously trained convolutional neural network (CNN) in order to develop the Web application by using various scripting languages as Python backend, basics of HTML to host a Web and Flasks model. To discover the model in a high-level version of deep learning, which uses artificial neural networks as CNN to track the amount of data and to form a vast discovery technique for learning is so-called deep neural networks. In this paper, the state of learning CNN algorithm to have best accurate method which is going to serve a positive result to our model and gives great impact to understand and deliver the supremacy of prediction and noticed that the training loss and validity loss decreases gingerly after every 20 epochs. In turn driving, a good model in overall reports training the neural networks. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify antecedents of adoption and post-adoption switching of online pharmacy applications (OPA) in Indian society. A push-pull-mooring (PPM) model was formulated to evaluate the impact of various constructs upon “consumers’ switching intention” (CSI). Design/methodology/approach: An online questionnaire was sent to 252 users of OPA in India. Hypotheses were generated to examine the push, pull and mooring effects of constructs developed. The relationships between dependent and independent variables were evaluated using structured equation modeling (SEM). Findings: The study explicated the effect of PPM constructs on CSI in the context of OPA adoption. “Perceived usefulness,” “perceived ease of use” and “alternative attractiveness” had a significant “pull” effect on CSI. “Switching cost” had a “mooring” effect on CSI, whereas the degree of “customer involvement in decision-making” was found to have a “push” effect upon CSI. Research limitations/implications: This study theoretically established that the constructs of “perceived usefulness,” “perceived ease of use” and “alternative attractiveness” had significant “pull” effect on “consumers’ switching intention.” The construct of “switching cost” had a “mooring” effect on CSI, whereas the degree of “customer involvement in decision-making” was found to have a “push” effect upon CSI. Practical implications: The study provided valuable insights regarding consumer behavior regarding OPAs. These findings could be applied by managers in framing effective strategies to grow and retain the customer base of OPAs. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was one of the first empirical investigative studies to assess precursors of adoption and post-adoption characteristics of consumer behavior through the PPM model, in the context of Indian OPAs. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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OBJECTIVES: To determine the prevalence and factors associated with depression, anxiety and stress among healthcare workers (HCWs) during COVID-19 pandemic. DESIGN: Cross-sectional online survey. SETTING: HCWs from four major hospitals within the Regional Health Authorities of Trinidad and Tobago. PARTICIPANTS: 395 HCWs aged ≥18 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Depression, anxiety and stress scores. RESULTS: Among the 395 HCWs, 42.28%, 56.2% and 17.97% were found to have depression, anxiety and stress, respectively. In the final stepwise regression model, contact with patients with confirmed COVID-19, p<0.001 (95% CI 3.072 to 6.781) was reported as significant predictors of depression. Further, gender, p<0.001 (95% CI 2.152 to 5.427) and marital status, p<0.001 (95% CI 1.322 to 4.270) of the HCWs were considered to be correlated with anxiety. HCWs who had contact with patients with suspected COVID-19 had lower depression, p<0.001 (95% CI -5.233 to -1.692) and stress, p<0.001 (95% CI -5.364 to -1.591). CONCLUSIONS: This study has depicted the prevalence and evidence of depression, anxiety and stress among HCWs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the study will serve as supportive evidence for the timely implementation of further planning of preventative mental health services by the Ministry of Health, for frontline workers within the public and private health sectors.