Development of Boxing Glove Type Sensation Device for Exercise Induction and Continuation

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by a virus called RARS-CoV-2 spread worldwide. As the result, the number of people who are lack exercise has increased. In addition, there are few systems to evaluate exercise movements and facilitate physical exercise at home. In this study, we developed a boxing glove type sensation device an acceleration sensor was installed in a boxing glove to evaluate the power of a punch, and the device has the function of glitz to the punches by producing sound, vibration, and light according to the type and power of the punching motion. An evaluation experiment was conducted to confirm that this device could induce exercise and promote health by having fun. A comparison was made between a normal boxing glove and the boxing glove type sensation device. As the results, we could confirm that, the number of strong punches with high acceleration and the total number of punches increased in the sensation device. In addition, the heart rate after exercise increased significantly compared to before and after exercise. The results also showed an increase in mood elevation and positive emotions. © 2022 IEEE.

Travel motivation during COVID-19: a case from Nepal

The tourism industry is one of the most affected industries by the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding travel motivation is necessary for the tourism movement, even in the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this quantitative study aimed to explore travel motivation and its determinants. We collected 181 samples through a web-based questionnaire survey of the Nepali people in January and February 2021. The data were analyzed using a probit regression model through two different travel companion perspectives, i.e., traveling with friends and traveling with family members. We found that travel motivation, attributes, travel purpose, and transport mode preferences differed in companion groups. Specifically, those who want to travel with friends are government employees, 20-29 years of age, set health and wellness purposes, choose the bike for transportation, are less willing to visit homestay and agritourism, and want to travel for around one week. Those who plan to travel with family members use the coach to travel, choose rural destinations, including villages, and spend around two weeks. Based on these findings, we suggest that the Nepalese tourism destination and public transport companies make tourism packages targeting the groups. Since both groups showed interest in visiting rural destinations, we can say that tourism in rural destinations may revive earlier than urban tourism after the pandemic. However, a low-risk travel environment should be ensured for traveling to attract more tourists during and the post-disaster.

Poor Health Behaviors among Housebound Japanese Community-Dwelling Older Adults Due to Prolonged Self-Restraint during the First COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey.

BACKGROUND: Prolonged self-restraining behaviors induced by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic's containment measures can limit various positive health behaviors. OBJECTIVE: We examined the decline in going-out and certain other positive health behaviors and investigated the relationship between excessive decreases in going-out frequency and declining engagement in positive health behaviors among community-dwelling older adults during the self-restraint period. DESIGN: This study employed a cross-sectional survey design. SETTING: This study was conducted in Nishi Tokyo City, Tokyo, Japan. PARTICIPANTS: The participants were 294 respondents (150 women) aged 50 years and older who lived in public housing that were permitted to be surveyed during the self-restraint period. MEASUREMENTS: Their pre-pandemic going-out frequency around February 2020 and going-out frequency during the self-restraint period starting in April 2020 were reported. We mainly assessed the existence of home health behaviors (i.e., exercise, in-person and phone conversations, and healthy diet). A self-report questionnaire was used to obtain data. RESULTS: Going-out frequency decreased in 41.2% of the 294 respondents owing to the government's request for self-restraint. In total, 13 individuals had been going out less than one time per week (housebound) before the request. Of the 281 people who were not housebound before the government's self-restraint request, 13.9% were newly housebound. Newly housebound individuals were 5.3 times less likely to exercise, had 2.1 times fewer social contacts, and 2.6 times less balanced or healthy diets than those who maintained their frequency of going out. CONCLUSIONS: Prolonged self-restraint due to the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to housebound status and poor health behaviors. Public health intervention is needed to prevent excessive self-restraint, along with new measures integrating information and communication technologies to enable older adults to live active lives.

Visualization of the Social Atmosphere Using Comments on News Sites

When an emergency such as an infectious disease or natural disaster occurs, a negative atmosphere will usually spread throughout society—increasing people’s dissatisfaction and anxiety. Because of this, it is rather difficult to thoroughly investigate the actual situation. However, people can post sentimental comments on news sites, allowing for their attitudes either for or against the topics to be better observed. This study extracts the positive, negative, and neutral comments by using sentiment analysis. Then, the social atmosphere is visualized by calculating the approval rating of the comments. This methodology is demonstrated in articles regarding COVID-19. The large volume of comments about two topics, Go To campaigns and PCR tests, were analyzed by using ML-Ask to classify the comments into three categories: negative, positive, and neutral. The results indicate that the social atmosphere about the Go To campaigns tended to be negative. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Social Detachment Influenced Muscle Mass and Strength during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japanese Community-Dwelling Older Women.

Social detachment due to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused a decline in physical activity, leading to sarcopenia and frailty in older adults. This study aimed to compare muscle mass, strength, and function values in older women before and after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Furthermore, changes in muscle measures across women who experienced different levels of impact on their social participation due to the COVID-19 pandemic were examined. Muscle mass (total, trunk, and appendicular muscle), grip strength, oral motor skills, social interactions (social network and participation), and social support were assessed in 46 Japanese community-dwelling older women (mean, 77.5 y; range 66-93 y) before and after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trunk muscle mass significantly decreased after the first wave of the pandemic. When comparing changed values between the enhanced/maintained and reduced group during the pandemic, significant group difference was observed in trunk muscular mass, grip strength, and oral motor skills. Intriguingly, those who enhanced social participation had a positive change of grip strength values, showing that social participation might influence muscle function during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Detection of SARS-CoV-2 on conjunctiva by rRT-PCR in patients with severe form of COVID-19

Purpose : Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has already been detected in ocular samples. However, the role of the eye in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still unclear. We investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in conjunctival swabs from patients with confirmed severe form of COVID-19 searching for differences in the presentation and assay positivity. Methods : This cross-sectional study included 50 conjunctival swab samples (one eye per patient) collected from 50 patients with confirmed COVID-19 in Hospital das Clínicas HCFMUSP, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Samples were collected within 24 hours from the naso/oropharyngeal swab. Inclusion criteria was severe/critical disease and indication for hospitalization according to the Institutional Guideline, which was the presence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Conjunctival swab was collected from the inferior fornix, without anesthesia, using a nylon flocked swab. Real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) was performed with primers and probes described in CDC protocol. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee and informed consent was obtained prior to procedures. Results : Twenty-four patients were male and twenty-six were female. Median age was 57.38 years (SD 15.23). Mean duration of symptoms before ocular sampling was 7.6 days (SD 3.52). Naso/oropharyngeal swab RT-PCR (within 24 hours from the conjunctival swab) was positive in 34 (68%) patients, negative in 14 (28%) and inconclusive in 2 (4%) patients. All the patients with negative or inconclusive RT-PCR had COVID-19 diagnosis confirmed by another naso/oropharyngeal swab or serology. Five (10%) conjunctival swabs resulted in positive rRT-PCR analysis and two (4%) had inconclusive results. Among the positive patients, 2 patients had a negative naso/oropharyngeal swab and 1 patient had an inconclusive result. None of the patients had ocular symptoms. Conclusions : The positivity rate of conjunctival swab for SARS-CoV-2 was higher when compared to previous studies and similar to those that evaluated moderate to severe forms of COVID-19, and was not associated with ocular symptoms. This suggests that a greater viral load may be present in the tear film of patients with severe form of COVID-19 and may not be associated with conjunctivitis. Special concern should be taken to healthcare workers.

What is this sound in decibel? - We tried to determine students' comprehension of sound levels, online ver - We t

To examine the appropriate information disclosure method of noise as the final goal, we firstly set the goal to grasp the degree of understanding of the dB values of the sound sources among people other than acoustic experts. In this paper, first, in order to measure the degree of understanding of the dB in university students without expert knowledge, we developed a loudness chart kit and evaluated the understanding of loudness in the classes. As a result, they commonly regarded the sound volumes of the rocket and the take-off of the airplanes as first or second loudest, but the subjective ranks of other sound sources were completely different among them. Some of the students who seem to have no knowledge at all about the sound source answered unreality values entirely. Furthermore, since the university class was brought online due to the influence of the new coronavirus, we developed an online version of this teaching material. In the future, we will measure the changes in the evaluated dBs after learning the dB values. Then, we also accumulate more data about the differences of the understanding degree in dB values among the individual characteristics including their university, nationality, and whether they are environmental officials, to discuss the diagnostic criteria of the volume of the sound. Moreover, we will discuss how to learn a sense of loudness and dB. This reports on the online version of the teaching materials developed as university class are now online due to the impact of the novel coronavirus. © 2020 17th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age, CELDA 2020. All rights reserved.

International price volatility transmission and structural change: a market connectivity analysis in the beef sector

Despite the abundance of literature on agricultural price transmissions and unexpectedly disrupted value chains from infectious disease outbreaks such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy and COVID-19, the importance of research on price connectivity in the international beef markets has largely been ignored. To assess agricultural price transmission issues, error correction-type models (ECMs) have been predominantly employed. These models, however, suffer a deficiency in that the method is incapable of depicting time-variant linkages between prices. This article examines the connections between global and local prices, as well as price volatility in the beef sector. Our analysis uses a generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model with the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) specification that enables us to identify market connection intensity dynamics. We pay assiduous attention to structural changes in the overall research processes to enhance the reliability of estimation. For the first time in meat or grain price transmission research, our autoregressive models have been developed with structural break dummy variables for DCC. The principal findings are that (1) local retail prices for Azerbaijan, Georgia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the UK showed a structural change in mean or variance, all of which were identified after the global food crisis from 2007–2009, (2) international prices unidirectionally Granger-cause regional prices in Georgia, Tajikistan and the United States in both mean and volatility (accordingly, no country exhibited price or price-volatility transmission from regional to international markets), and (3) volatility liaisons between global and local beef markets are generally weak, but price volatility exhibited closer synchronisation around the 2008 global food crisis, which created structural changes during the period. This finding implies that national governments should shield domestic from global markets by implementing trade restrictions such as quotas or taxes in a global emergency. © 2020, The Author(s).