L-Moments and calibration-based variance estimators under double stratified random sampling scheme: Application of Covid-19 pandemic

Extreme events gives rise to outrageous results in terms of population-related parameters and their estimates are usually done using traditional moments. Traditional moments are usually affected by extreme observations. This study aims to propose some new calibration estimators considering the L-Moments scheme for variance, which is one of the most important population parameters. a number of suitable calibration constraints under double stratified random sampling were defined for these estimators. The proposed estimators, which were based on L-Moments, were relatively more robust despite extreme values. The empirical efficiency of the proposed estimators was also assessed through simulation. Covid-19 pandemic data from January 22, 2020 to August 23, 2020 was taken into account in the simulation study. (c) 2023 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.

A brief overview of the issues faced by Harmful Algal Blooms along Johor straits

Urbanization of coastal areas worldwide has increased due to an increase in the global population. The production of sustainable aquaculture is greatly impacted by a surge of this urbanization. In certain countries, particularly for individuals with more limited space in metropolitan areas, such as along Johor's coastal area, aquaculture might well be a good strategy to maintain food availability (continuous production plus high-quality meals). Consequently, the adoption of aquaculture along the Johor's coastal area has lead to Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB). This paper examines the evolution of the aquaculture industry of Malaysian Johor coastal areas in relation to HABs. In addition to HABs, the aforementioned metropolitan regions confront diverse economic and geographical obstacles when attempting to increase their aquaculture production sustainably. Those problems are therefore addressed using a variety of operations as well as surveillance techniques in this brief overview. Lockdowns and border prohibitions caused by the continuous COVID-19 infection have had a global impact. These logistical difficulties in the seafood industry have increased dependency on imported supplies. It is suggested that international decision- making, supervision, and knowledge exchange can successfully solve the challenges urbanized areas have in ensuring sustainable food security through the evolution within the aquaculture sector.

Determinant of stunting in children aged 12-24 months during the COVID-19 pandemic era in Makassar City

Objective: The prevalence of stunting in Sulawesi Selatan after the pandemic has decreased. This is because the COVID-19 pandemic situation has made it difficult to conduct anthropometric measurements owing to a number of regulations enacted by the government to suppress the cases of COVID-19. The Sudiang Public Health Center is one of the biggest contributors to stunting in Makassar City with a prevalence of 11.06 %. This study aimed to assess the degree of risk of Low Body Weight (LBW), pregnancy checkups <4 times, incomplete basic vaccinations, nonexclusive breastfeeding, Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI)/ diarrhea infections, household income, and contaminated water sources on stunting during the pandemic. Methods: This study was an observational study with a control case epidemiology design. The sample was 140 respondents, namely 70 case children (stunting) and 70 control children (non-stunting). The statistical analysis used was the Chi-Square test and multiple logistic regression test. The results were expressed in the ODDS ratio. Results: The results of this study showed that there is a relationship between LBW (OR=4.0, 1.502-10.911, CI=95 %;ρ=0.006), pregnancy checkups <4 times (OR=3.3, 1.319-8.753, CI=95 %;ρ=0.011), non-exclusive breastfeeding (OR=2.4, 1.045-5.645, CI=95 %;ρ=0.039), and ARI/ diarrhea infections (OR=4.3, 1.839-10.222, CI=95 %;ρ=0.001) and stunting in children aged 12-24 months during the COVID-19 pandemic in Makassar City. The history of infectious disease is the most influential variable in the incidence of stunting. Conclusions: It is concluded that the risk of stunting is the highest in LBW children, with pregnancy checkups less than 4 times, non-exclusive breastfeeding, and infectious diseases such as ARI/diarrhea in the last three months. © 2023 Academia Nacional de Medicina. All rights reserved.

Explainable COVID-19 Three Classes Severity Classification Using Chest X-Ray Images

COVID-19 has been raging for almost three years ever since its first outbreak. It is without a doubt that it is a common human goal to end the pandemic and how it was before it started. Many efforts have been made to work toward this goal. In computer vision, works have been done to aid medical professionals into faster and more effective procedures when dealing with the disease. For example, disease diagnosis and severity prediction using chest imaging. At the same time, vision transformer is introduced and quickly stormed its way into one of the best deep learning models ever developed due to its ability to achieve good performance while being resources friendly. In this study, we investigated the performance of ViT on COVID19 severity classification using an open-source CXR images dataset. We applied different augmentation and transformation techniques to the dataset to see ViT's ability to learn the features of the different severity levels of the disease. It is concluded that training ViT using the horizontally flipped images added to the original dataset gives the best overall accuracy of 0.862. To achieve explainability, we have also applied Grad-CAM to the best performing model to make sure it is looking at relevant region of the CXR image upon predicting the class label. © 2022 IEEE.

Trauma and Coping in Battling the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Malaysian Healthcare Workers

Introduction: Prolonged COVID-19 pandemic with high morbidity and mortality may cause traumatic events to Healthcare Workers (HCW), resulting in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Hence, this study aims to determine the prevalence of PTSD symptoms and its association with coping strategies among HCW in managing COVID-19 pandemic at Klang Valley Public Hospitals in Malaysia. Methods: A cross-sectional study with total of 424 eligible respondents were recruited through stratified random sampling. Data was collected from 6th May until 6th June 2021 using a self-administered online questionnaire adopted from MPCL-5 and Brief COPE instruments. IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 26 was used to analyse data. Result: 25% of the respondents demonstrated PTSD symptoms. Respondents who are single (aOR=3.319, 95% CI: 1.912, 5.762, p-value <0.001) and had history of positive COVID-19 (aOR= 2.563, 95% CI:1.058, 6.209, p-value=0.037) were more likely to experience PTSD symptoms. Frequently coping with self-blaming (aOR= 7.804, 95% CI: 3.467, 17.568, p-value < 0.001), behavioural disengagement (aOR= 7.262, 95% CI: 1.973, 26.723, p-value =0.003), humour (aOR= 5.303, 95% CI: 1.754, 16.039, p-value =0.003), venting emotion (aOR= 3.287, 95% CI: 1.521, 7.105, p-value =0.002) and less planning (aOR= 2.006, 95% CI:1.154, 3.487 p-value =0.014) are significant predictors for PTSD symptoms. Conclusion: One in four HCW managing COVID-19 in Klang Valley public hospitals experienced PTSD symptoms. Therefore, urgent interventional program targeting HCW who are single with history of positive COVID-19 is beneficial to prevent PTSD. Maladaptive coping strategies like self-blaming, venting emotion, humour and behavioural disengagement should be replaced with more adaptive coping strategies like planning, self-compassion, self-care and self-reflection. © 2023 Authors. All rights reserved.

IoT-Based Heart Monitoring System Implementation and Analysis

This paper presents an IoT-based heart monitoring system using 8266 NodeMCU. According to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of death, accounting for 15.0% of the 109,164 medically certified deaths in 2019. The coronary heart is a vital organ that pumps oxygen and blood across the body. Meanwhile, if the heart is not getting sufficient oxygen, the patient will experience chest pain, typically on the left side of the body, which can be mistaken for a heart problem. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a patient cannot attend regular treatment at the hospital as it is operating at full capacity. During this phase, the hospital can only focus on the critical and high-risk patient. The proposed heart monitoring system monitors the patient by measuring the heart rate and oxygen level in the comforts of home. Therefore, the patient can provide his current health record for the doctor's evaluation. The idea behind this proposed system is to construct an IOT-based system that automatically monitors the health condition in terms of heartbeat and oxygen detection. The prototype provides data to the Blynk for the patient and the I-Heart web-based application for the medical practitioner. © 2022 IEEE.

Evaluation of Affective Domain for Civil Engineering Design Project Before and During COVID-19: A Case Study in UiTM Johor

The affective domain is one of the three Bloom's Taxonomy domains that deal with emotions, attitudes, and feelings. It includes values, fervour, and motivations. In order to ensure that the Programme Outcomes (POs) established in the Engineering Technology Accreditation Council (ETAC) Manual 2020 for engineering education are met, it is crucial that students be evaluated in this affective domain. This study aims to evaluate the affective domain of the Civil Engineering Design Project course at UiTM Johor before and during the COVID-19 outbreak, which swung the country. The evaluation of the Programme Outcome (PO) for the affective domain mapped to this topic is divided into two primary sections. The first PO is PO8, which addresses understanding and commitment to professional ethics, responsibilities, and norms of technician practice. The second PO, PO10, focuses on communicating effectively on well-defined engineering activities with the engineering community and society, by being able to comprehend the work of others, document their own work, and give and receive clear instructions. The results of these two POs from five semesters before and during COVID-19 were analyzed and discussed to achieve the objective of the study. The result has shown significant changes in the aspect of different mediums of teaching which respond to the face-to-face and online distance learning (ODL) study. The results indicate that the performance in the affective domain of PO8 and PO10 is better before the pandemic compared to performance during the pandemic © 2023, Asian Journal of University Education.All Rights Reserved.

Truncated Rayleigh Odd Weibull Exponential Distribution with Application to COVID-19 Data

A proposed truncated Rayleigh odd Weibull-G family with one ofits sub-models, truncated Rayleigh odd Weibull exponential distribution, are introduced. Several statistical properties along with linear representation, reliability measures, entropies, and reliability stress strength model are presented. The unknown parameters are estimated through the maximum likelihood method. Simulation and real application are used to evaluate the new distribution's flexibility and usefulness. For different compared information criteria, the results clearly show that the proposed distribution has superior output relative to other competitive distributions demonstrating its consistent and flexible performance, as well as representing an optimal statistical model for the distribution of COVID-19 death cases in Iraq. © 2022 IEEE.

WEB-BASED APPLICATION FOR ENHANCING ON-SITE AND REMOTE DATA COLLECTION PROCESS DURING PANDEMIC: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way data collection for research takes place around the world. Such adaptation has forced a turn of research methodologies in conducting research. This study focuses on on-site and remote digital data collection methods that can be adopted during the pandemic. The method of research and data collection often requires a group of researchers to travel to a specific site to meet communities for data collection, which is not permissible during the pandemic. This paper explores the use of web-based application for documentation of the existing natural and built features, and land management system for identification of the rural community's land information. In this paper, the use of a web-based application, namely i-LULACAST, is highlighted. The application was designed and used for data entry and management of the rural community with fewer human resources on-site while still maximizing the number of datasets needed for analysis. The system was built using Codelgniter Application 4.0.4 to develop libraries to link databases and perform operations such as data entry, location, and uploading pictures for particular data. This system has also shown prospects for other purposes, such as census, landscape data entry, and contact tracing for medical purposes. © 2022 by MIP.

Emergence of Post COVID-19 Vaccine Autoimmune Diseases: A Single Center Study.

Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) became a major concern since the announcement that it is a pandemic in early 2020. Vaccine trials were started in November 2020, and completed rapidly due to the urgency to get over the infection. Side effects to vaccines started to be reported. There were minor side effects including site of injection pain and heaviness and constitutional symptoms like fever which are considered minor. One of the rare adverse events is post vaccine new onset autoimmune diseases. Methods: Data were obtained from one center in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia (King Fahd Hospital of University). All patient events reported occurred in the study period March 2021 to February 2022. We identified patients presenting with autoimmune diseases with exclusively new onset presentations. Results: We identified 31 cases of immune-mediated disease: 18 females (58%); 13 males (42%). Only 4 of them (13%) had an autoimmune background before COVID-19 vaccination. The average time between vaccination and new-onset disease symptoms was 7 days. Among all the cases in our study, 7 patients (22.5%) had new-onset vasculitis, 2 cases had IgA vasculitis and 5 cases had ANCA vasculitis, 6 cases had neurological diseases (19.3%), 4 cases (12.9%) had new-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 3 cases (9.6%) presented with new-onset inflammatory arthritis, and one had Sjogren's syndrome (3.2%). Conclusion: Our study is unique as it is the first study to include the largest number (31 patients) of new onsets of confirmed autoimmune diseases related to Covid-19 vaccines.

Impact of COVID-19 infection on rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD) patients

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought challenges especially for people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD). The COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance reported patients with RMD had higher rates of COVID-19 infection and mortality compared with general population. The data regarding the prevalence, clinical characteristics, and outcomes of COVID-19 infection among RMD patients in Malaysia are limited. Objective(s): This study describes the clinical characteristics and outcomes of COVID-19 infection on RMD patients (including factors associated with poor outcomes) at Hospital Tuanku Jaa'far Seremban (HTJS), Malaysia. Method(s): This is a retrospective cross-sectional study. All RMD patients who confirmed COVID-19 infection either with COVID-19 PCR or RTK from 1st January 2021 to 28th February 2022 were identified. Data were collected from patients' clinic notes, hospital admission notes and electronic records. Data on RMD diagnosis, comorbidities, disease activity, medication, vaccination status, clinical staging of COVID-19 infection, outcomes including hospitalization, complications from COVID-19 infection and RMD disease flare within 1 month following COVID-19 infection were analyzed. Result(s): From the 2746 patients with RMD seen from 1st January 2021 to 28th February 2022, 2.8% (n = 77) patients were reported positive for COVID-19 infection. The most common underlying RMD were rheumatoid arthritis 35.1% (n = 27) followed by systemic lupus erythematosus 22.1% (n = 17) and psoriatic arthritis 13% (n = 10). Majority of the patients had mild COVID-19 infection symptoms which categorized into stage 2 (46.8%, n = 36). 53.2% (n = 41) patients were hospitalized, and 2.6% (n = 2) patients died of severe COVID-19 pneumonia. 13% (n = 10) developed complications from COVID-19 infection in which 6 patients complicated with organizing pneumonia, 2 with pulmonary embolism, 1 with cytokine release syndrome and 1 with acute respiratory distress syndrome. 16% (n = 10) patients reported flare of RMD within 1 month post COVID-19 infection in which 6 had arthritis flare, 5 mucocutaneous flare and 1 had renal flare. Hypertension (P = 0.021) and diabetes mellitus (P = 0.005) were associated with higher rate of hospitalization. Patients who received 3 doses of COVID-19 vaccination had lower rate of hospitalization compared with those without vaccination (P = 0.026). Patients with age more than 50 years old were associated with higher rate of complications from COVID-19 infection (P = 0.037) and flare of RMD (P = 0.038). Interestingly, RMD disease activity was not associated with poorer outcome of COVID-19 infection (P > 0.05). Conclusion(s): This single center experience on RMD patients with COVID-19 infection showed co-morbidities, no vaccination, age 50 and above were associated with poorer outcomes which was consistent with previous studies. In contrary, RMD disease activity was not associated with poorer outcomes of COVID-19 infection.

Lung Classification for COVID-19

The year 2020 has seen the world being traumatized with the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 virus had infected more than 100 million people and 2 million deaths worldwide. Many researchers race against time in producing vaccines and also used the latest technology in data analytics and artificial intelligence to help curb the pandemic. Deep features have shown to be an emerging area of research in various fields. Most recent deep works in the lung area focused on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). However, these have a drawback of over-classifying and not reflective of the real-world. Therefore, this article presented a cloud-based lung disease classification system, where medical practitioners can upload their patients' chest X-ray onto the cloud, and the system will classify if the disease is absent (normal) or present (abnormal). To test the disease, the system will then classify the lung infection as COVID-19 and non-COVID. Overall, the proposed system has obtained fairly good accuracy. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Lung Classification for COVID-19

The year 2020 has seen the world being traumatized with the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 virus had infected more than 100 million people and 2 million deaths worldwide. Many researchers race against time in producing vaccines and also used the latest technology in data analytics and artificial intelligence to help curb the pandemic. Deep features have shown to be an emerging area of research in various fields. Most recent deep works in the lung area focused on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). However, these have a drawback of over-classifying and not reflective of the real-world. Therefore, this article presented a cloud-based lung disease classification system, where medical practitioners can upload their patients' chest X-ray onto the cloud, and the system will classify if the disease is absent (normal) or present (abnormal). To test the disease, the system will then classify the lung infection as COVID-19 and non-COVID. Overall, the proposed system has obtained fairly good accuracy. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Student Satisfaction with Online Teaching and Assessment during Covid 19

Aim: To assess the student's satisfaction with online teaching and assessment during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methodology: This cross-sectional squestionnaire based study was performed across six Medical and Dental colleges of Lahore. A questionnaire consisting of thirty questions was distributed through google forms. A total of (N = 460) students responded, and the results were presented in percentage frequency. Result(s): The present study revealed that 46% of the students believed that e-learning tool is not adequatefor basic and clinical sciences.The learning outcomes (35.1%) and objectives (33.8%) were not achieved through e-learning. The majority of the students agreed thatproblem-based learning is an effective way of teaching (37.7%). Online lectures were difficult to understand (35.1%). The students were not satisfied (23.4%) with the online assessment.The technical issues affected the performance of the students. Practical implication: This sudy identified different challenges of online teaching.Online education is a valuable learning tool and the online learning approach has been successfully integrated worldwide with conventional teaching of the curriculum. In order to keep up with the contemporary methods and with the introduction of newer technology and tools it is imperative that our teaching should incorporate e-learning strategies and curricula designed to match it. The policymakers and universities should enable teachers and students with proper training and facilities in this age of technological advancement.. Conclusion(s): Our study revealed that students were not satisfied withonline teaching however, they were indecisive about online assessment methodology. The students believed that lack of infrastructure and inadequate learning tools affected their performance.. Copyright © 2022 Authors. All rights reserved.

Analysis of Prevention of COVID-19 Transmission Measures in People with HIV-AIDS at Jumpandang Baru Public Health Center, Makassar City

Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, people with HIV-AIDS are a population that more likely to be immunosuppressed prequire more attention. People living with HIV-AIDS (PLWHA) are advised to take the same precautions as the general public, including frequent hand washing, coughing etiquette, physical distancing, mask use, and medical attention in the event of symptoms. This study seeks to identify the factors associated with the prevention of COVID-19 transmission among HIV-positive patients at the Jumpandang Baru Public Health Center in Makassar. The research method used was analytic observational with a cross-sectional research design. The total number of participants in this study was 659 HIV-AIDS patients receiving antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. 188 individuals were cosen as the research sample in the working area of the Jumpandang Baru Public Health Center in Makassar City. Simple random sampling was used for the sampling process. The data were analyzed using SPSS, the Chi-square test, and logistic regression. The results showed that the variables associated with COVID-19 prevention measures in PLWHA, were knowledge (p=0.001), attitude (p=0.003), vaccination (p=0.022), and ARV treatment (p=0.038). However, the family social support variable (p=0.038 = 0.162) had no significant relationship. The most related factor is knowledge Exp (B) = 5.613. Those with HIV-AIDS who have positive knowledge are 5.613 times more likely to take precautions against COVID-19 than those with HIV-AIDS who have negative knowledge. The conclusion is that health workers can participate and collaborate in increasing knowledge in the application of health protocols so that people with HIV-AIDS can be protected from COVID-19. © 2022 Academia Nacional de Medicina. All rights reserved.

Public Hearings Principle in The Palestinian Civil Procedure Law and Its Relationship to Public Order Concept in Light of The Covid-19 Pandemic

The importance of the public hearing's principle or public of trial sessions clearly appears through the guarantee it provides to litigants during the hearing of the case before the court. This principle is affirmed in the Palestinian Civil and Commercial Procedures Law No. 2 of 2001 as well as in the Palestinian Basic Law of 2003. Public hearings are one of the fundamental guarantees in the litigation process because they create a kind of popular monitoring of the work of the judiciary, and they also create a sense of reassurance between people and litigants about the fairness and impartiality of the judges. This is what is stipulated by the laws of most countries, but it should be noted in this regard that each rule has an exception, so the general principle is public of trial sessions, but the Palestinian legislator excluded some cases and gave the court freedom to make the session secret in certain cases. These cases relate to maintaining the confidentiality and sanctity of the family as well as preserving public order and morals in society. In addition, recently, hearings have become restricted to the parties to the case and their lawyers due to the (Covid-19) pandemic under the pretext of social distancing, prevention and public safety measures. © 2022 Bangladesh Institute of Legal Development. All Rights Reserved.

Challenges in Applying a Student- Centred Approach to E-Learning for Islamic Education in Primary Schools during the Pandemic Covid- 19: Preliminary Data Analysis

COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world significantly in various sectors and industries, including the educational sector. For example, traditional classroom learning, which is more teacher-centred, is being replaced by e-learning, which takes a student-centred approach. However, this approach is considered distinct from the teaching and learning practice of Islamic Education taught in the classroom before the pandemic. This sudden shift presents a significant challenge to Islamic Education teachers to apply more student-centred e-learning. According to the literature review, several issues arose when Islamic Education e-learning was implemented, such as low student engagement, few active students, little student feedback, and high student dropout rates. Thus, this preliminary study examined the challenges of implementing the student-centred approach to e-learning for Islamic Education in primary schools. This study adopted a qualitative design with an in-depth interview involving Islamic Education teachers in primary schools. The study's findings revealed that the research informants continuously implemented the student-centred approach even when the country was struck by the COVID-19 pandemic, despite facing challenges, especially in student personality development. Moreover, the findings suggest that teachers must better comprehend and implement a more creative student-centred approach in e-learning to align with 21st-century education and fulfil their responsibility for students' future personality development.

Imagineering Anatomy Assessment Amidst COVID-19: Turning Obstacles into Achievements

A well-designed assessment has beneficial impacts on students' learning and competency attainment. Failure in obtaining psychomotor learning competency, lack of understanding of assessment principles among instructors, unoptimized information and technology facilities, and difficulties in ensuring the integrity of online examination are among the threats to validity of online anatomy assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure the validity of anatomy assessment during the pandemic, it is important to adopt several educational principles into the assessment design. We solidify the input discussed in the Malaysian Anatomical Association webinar 2021, on the challenges of anatomy online assessment and proposed six solutions to the challenges, namely adopting the programmatic assessment design, conducting small group in-person high stake examination, modifying assessment policy, utilizing question bank software, upgrading ICT facilities, and offering the ICT training to the students and instructors. It is envisioned that anatomy assessment are future ready are adaptive to change. © 2022 UPM Press. All rights reserved.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on disengagement from advanced diabetes technologies among racial/ethnic groups in the US T1D exchange quality improvement collaborative

Introduction: The use of continuous glucose monitors (CGM) and insulin pumps (PUMP) have been associated with improved outcomes in type 1 diabetes (T1D) care. Therefore, disengaging from these devices represents a risk for worsening health outcomes. Objective(s): We sought to evaluate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on device disengagement rates by race and ethnicity. Method(s): This retrospective cohort study Pre-COVID-19 [n = 15,838] + peri-COVID-19 ([n = 14,799]) used EMR data from 15 sites (i.e., 3 adult and 12 pediatric diabetes centers) within the T1D Exchange Quality Improvement Collaborative. We identified individuals using at least one Advanced Diabetes Technology (ADT [PUMP or CGM]) at their most recent visit. Individuals who continued to use that technology for at least two subsequent visits were classified as engaged. Those who reported not using ADT in two subsequent visits were classified as disengaged. Result(s): Comparing pre-COVID-19 (January 2017-March 2020) to peri-COVID-19 (April 2020-2021) time periods, we observed increases in disengagement among non-Hispanic White (NHW;42% to 45%, p = 0.03) and Hispanic (12% to 19%, p < 0.001) individuals. We found no difference among NH Black (NHB;61% to 62%, p = 0.7) individuals. Conclusion(s): The pandemic has presented self-care challenges for individuals with T1D, including continued use of ADT. NHB individuals exhibited the highest disengagement rates overall, while NHW/Hispanic individuals experienced significant pandemic-related increases in disengagement. Future research should evaluate the relative impact of intrinsic (i.e., patient-level) versus extrinsic (i.e., family-, environment-, and system-level) factors associated with race-/ethnicity- based differences in rate of disengagement.