Virtual Safety Assistant: An Efficient Tool for Ensuring Safety During Covid-19 Pandemic

Using intelligent virtual assistants for controlling employee population in workspaces is a research area that remains unexplored. This paper presents a novel application of virtual humans to enforce Covid-19 safety measures in a corporate workplace. For this purpose, we develop a virtual assistant platform, Chloe, equipped with automatic temperature sensing, facial recognition, and dedicated chatbots to act as an initial filter for ensuring public health. Whilst providing an engaging user interaction experience, Chloe minimizes human to human contact, thus reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Chloe restricts the employee population within the office to government-approved safety norms. We experimented with Chloe as a virtual safety assistant in a company, where she interacted and screened the employees for Covid-19 symptoms. Participants filled an online survey to quantify Chloe’s performance in terms of interactivity, system latency, engagement, and accuracy, for which we received positive feedback. We performed statistical analysis on the survey results that reveal positive results and show effectiveness of Chloe in such applications. We detail system architecture, results and limitations. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Gesture - Controlled Contactless Switch With OLED Display

To avoid the chance of getting covid-19, it's vital not to touch surfaces as well as switches, door knobs and keys that are often employed by people. Hand movements in our world are the foremost well-liked non vocal ways in which of communication that are of agreeable significance. Gesture recognition is associated in Nursing interaction with human computers, normally used for functions of education, medicine and recreation. So, we came upon a contactless switch that works with hand gestures. Today with expanded mechanical progressions, switches also require refreshing with current technology. So, a non-contactless switch that works with sensors is the next step. Our keen contactless switch incorporates a sensor that is equipped for recognizing hand developments and interprets them into orders for controlling lights fans and different home machines. We are using Arduino IDE where we can create a setup function in which we can initialize the sensor and set the pin mode output or the light and fan control. © 2022 IEEE.

COVID-19 Pandemic is an Eye-Opener for Academicians to Use the Technology in the Teaching–Learning Process

Few things exist in life from the beginning but you don't realize until they become a habit. Education is also one of those things which cannot be exempted from this. The lockdown forced most of the academicians to take some determining decisions and new interests to revamp the teaching?learning process. The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of technology in teaching?learning process before and after a pandemic. This analysis is done by statistical tests using paired t-test and z-test by collecting data from students and teachers. Results show that this pandemic is an eye-opener for academicians to use the technology in teaching?learning process.

Covid-19 in hiv-infected solid organ transplant recipients: A case series

Purpose: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with increased mortality and morbidity in immunosuppressed patients. Data on management and outcomes in HIV-infected solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients is lacking. Methods: Single center, retrospective case series of HIV-infected SOT recipients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 by nasopharyngeal reverse transcriptasepolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) between April to November 2020. All patients had anti-retroviral therapy (ART) induced HIV viral load suppression at diagnosis. Results: Six consecutive patients were identified (Table.1). Four patients required hospitalization;2 were managed outpatient. Four were symptomatic with fever (75%), cough (50%), dyspnea (50%) and diarrhea (25%). An increase in inflammatory markers was seen in all patients, however only 4 (66%) required supplemental oxygen. Median time of follow up was 75 (range, 14-205) days. On diagnosis, first mycophenolate mofetil was discontinued or dose decreased by half. Calcineurin inhibitors and prednisone were continued. In addition, investigational therapies hydroxychloroquine, tocilizumab, remdesivir, dexamethasone were used in 3 (50%), 1 (17%), 1 (17%), 1 (17%), respectively (Table 2). All patients were on protease inhibitor sparing ART. A decrease in CD4 count from baseline was seen at the time of diagnosis which recovered over time. Overall, 5 (83%) survived, 1 (17%) died, 1 (17%) kidney transplant recipient had biopsy-proven acute T-cell mediated rejection 9 days after diagnosis with subsequent graft loss. Secondary infections were diagnosed with positive blood or respiratory cultures in 3 (50%). Death reported was due to septic shock from a secondary infection. Three patients had a negative SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR at a median of 25 (range, 20-56) days from diagnosis. Conclusions: We report good outcomes in this unique, high risk cohort of HIVinfected SOT recipients. Balancing a decrease in immunosuppression and monitoring graft function to avoid graft loss is extremely important. Further studies are needed to determine the cumulative effect of HIV infection and organ transplant status on the severity of COVID-19.

A survey of student perception and feedback during the COVID-19 lockdown

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate students' thought processes during this extended COVID-19 lockdown and to ascertain their views about online education, their main current apprehensions and worries, their stress levels, and their view of an eventual post-COVID-19 return to college. Methods: An online survey was conducted on 300 plus students of the PSG College of Pharmacy, India. The survey was split gender-wise and across senior-junior years. Results: Three out of the four groups showed an overall desire to return to college and resume normal operations with reasonable social distancing norms. All the student groups surveyed were extremely keen on resuming practical labs but showed mixed feelings towards resuming traditional examination methods. All the groups showed stress and uncertainty regarding the lockdown. Conclusion: A reasonable picture could be obtained from student feedback and thoughts pertaining to during and after the COVID-19 lockdown. These preliminary findings may help educators formulate appropriate policies to address students' issues.

Phytomolecules having flavone and napthofuran nucleus exhibited better binding G-score against protease and SPIKE protein of novel corona virus COVID-19 (preprint)

The present study aims to screen the different phytoconstituents and drugs for potential treatment of the corona virus COVID-19 and for specificity through virtual screening. The plant molecules selected were based upon traditional knowledge and are prescribed in the Indian system of medicine for infectious/ respiratory conditions. The three target proteins selected for the study are 3CLpro, PLpro, and SPIKE. These proteins have defined pathological roles in disease transmission. The virtual screening was carried out in these proteins using the GLIDE Schrödinger Maestro software version 11.9.011. The efficacy was assessed by the calculated G-score of the ligand interaction with the amino acid side chains of the ligand binding domain. Molecules such as saponarin, mangiferin, and hesperidin exhibited better G-score with 3CLpro and PLpro. Similarly, diphyllin and tuberculatin exhibited better G-score for SPIKE protein. The reference anti malarial drug hydroxychloroquine showed better interactions with 3CLpro and PLpro. Similarly, protease inhibitors and antiviral drugs have shown interaction with 3CLpro specific protease protein. Interestingly, SPIKE protein ligands, diphyllin and tuberculatin from Justicia adhatoda (vasaka), were found to be unique and did not show affinity to protease inhibitor. It can be concluded, that the molecules having flavone scaffolds show better binding affinity with protease proteins 3CLpro and PLpro. SPIKE protein scaffold is different and showed better binding affinity with molecules having naptho-furan ring. The traditionally used plant phytoconstituents did not exhibit good binding affinity; however, we believe that a combination of these herbs might induce human immune system against microbial infection.