Utilization and effect of telehealth for the treatment of haemangioma before and after COVID

Many patients treated at Stanford for haemangiomas must travel from the rural Central Valley or Central Coast to receive care. Because of COVID-19, there was an increased use of telehealth which shifted the management of haemangiomas. Our study aimed to identify the implications of this change and its impact on access to care for patients who live far away. Using the Stanford Research Repository, we established two cohorts of patients seen at Stanford dermatology clinics with a haemangioma diagnosis: one from 2018 and one from 2022. We took a random sample of 50 patients from each and collected data on haemangioma treatment prescriptions, age at diagnosis, age at dermatology encounters, and distance travelled to clinic. We subdivided the 2022 cohort into in-person visits and telehealth appointments. While no patients utilized telehealth in the 2018 cohort, 69% of patients in the 2022 cohort utilized telehealth for their first Dermatology visit. In the 2022 cohort, 52% of patients utilized telehealth for at least one dermatology appointment. The average age at presentation for the 2018, 2022 in-person, 2022 telehealth groups were 121 , 208 , and 116 days, respectively. Average age at diagnosis was significantly younger for the telehealth cohort compared to the 2022 in-person cohort, and there was an increase in prescriptions for treatment in the telehealth cohort. These results show that increased telehealth utilization as a result of the pandemic has allowed patients to be seen by a dermatologist at an earlier age and receive a prescription for treatment for haemangiomas.

HybridMingler: Towards Mixed-Reality Support for Mingling at Hybrid Conferences

Mingling, the activity of ad-hoc, private, opportunistic conversations ahead of, during, or after breaks, is an important socializing activity for attendees at scheduled events, such as in-person conferences. The Covid-19 pandemic had a dramatic impact on the way conferences are organized, so that most of them now take place in a hybrid mode where people can either attend on-site or remotely. While on-site attendees can resume in-person mingling, hybrid modes make it challenging for remote attendees to mingle with on-site peers. In addressing this problem, we propose a collaborative mixed-reality (MR) concept, including a prototype, called HybridMingler. This is a distributed MR system supporting ambient awareness and allowing both on-site and remote conference attendees to virtually mingle. HybridMingler aims to provide both on-site and remote attendees with a spatial sense of co-location in the very same venue location, thus ultimately improving perceived presence. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Anxiety in families of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic generated a health, social, political, and economic crisis that dramatically reduced the institutional support for families of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs). To understand how these families may have experienced and coped with the pandemic, we created an online questionnaire that reached more than 10,000 families in 78 countries. The current manuscript - framed within the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF-10) model - investigates the impact of specific health conditions and personal or environmental factors on the anxiety of families living in Switzerland during the early months of the pandemic. To assess how differences in anxiety over time were predicted by specific health conditions or personal and environmental factors, two separate multilevel analyses were conducted for parents and their children with NDCs (N = 256). First, results showed that only parents reported an increase in anxiety when the pandemic started. Second, concerns related to loss of institutional support and financial and economic problems were the most anxiety-provoking factors for parents, whereas parents reported that the most anxiety-provoking factor for children was their concern about becoming bored. Many parents may have struggled with economic problems and managed multiple extra roles and tasks in their daily lives because institutional support was no longer available. As reported by their parents, although individuals with NDCs did not show an increase in anxiety, they may have struggled with boredom. This result may represent the inability to engage in satisfactory activities in daily life associated with a partial unawareness of the pandemic and the respective protective measures. Further research should more thoroughly investigate the potential effects of the individual's primary condition, presence and severity of intellectual disability and awareness of the pandemic on the anxiety of individuals with NDCs. Ultimately, we present a series of reflections and practical suggestions that could help guide policymakers in potential future periods of crisis, social estrangement, and distance learning. Copyright © 2023 Di Poi, Dukes, Meuleman, Banta Lavenex, Lavenex, Papon, Tran, Stallmann, Treichel and Samson.

Engagement Estimation using Time-series Facial and Body Features in an Unstable Dataset

The global education sector has been deeply shaken by COVID-19 and forced to shift to an online teaching model. However, the lack of face-to-face communication and interaction in online learning is critical to high-quality teaching and learning. Research on engagement is a crucial part of solving this problem. Because engagement is of time-series data with an ongoing change, research datasets used for engagement analysis need a certain preprocessing method to capture time-series related engagement features. This research proposed a novel deep learning preprocessing method for improving engagement estimation using time-series facial and body information to restore traditional scenes in online learning environments. Such information includes head pose, mouth shape, eye movement, and body distance from the screen. We conducted a preliminary experiment on the DAiSEE dataset for engagement estimation. We applied skipped moving average in data preprocessing to reduce the influence of the extracted noises and oversampled the low engagement level data to balance the engaged/unengaged data. Since engagement is continuous and cannot be captured at a particular instant in time or single images, temporal video classification generally performs better than static classifiers. Therefore, we adopted long short-term memory (LSTM) and Quasi-recurrent neural networks (QRNNs)sequence models to train models and achieved the correct rate of 55.7% (LSTM) and 51.1% (QRNN) using the original key points extracted from OpenPose. Finally, we proposed the optimization structure network achieved the engagement estimation correct rate of 68.5% in proposed LSTM models and 64.2% in QRNN models. The achieved correct rate is 10% higher than the baseline in the DAiSEE dataset. © 30th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2022 - Proceedings.

Towards A Deeper Understanding of the Relationship between Structural Reconfiguration Capacity, Technological and Non-technological innovations, and Firm Performance

Small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, the backbone of the Southeast Asian economy, are struggling to operate and maintain profitable growth in the face of the COVID-19 epidemic. During the recovery process, technological and non-technological innovation is a major factor in enterprise efficiency and profitability. However, it is unclear what drives manufacturing enterprises to innovate in technological and non-technological approaches and how they choose to implement innovation to keep their businesses growing and successful. Therefore, to answer this issue, this research develops and empirically tests a model based on dynamic capabilities and innovative perspectives utilizing World Bank Enterprise Survey data from 789 manufacturing enterprises in Southeast Asian countries. The hierarchical regression model assists create prediction equations to test technological and non-technological innovation as the mediators of structural reconfiguration and innovation investment on firm performance. The results reveal that structural reconfiguration and innovation investment impact technological and non-technological innovation. Additionally, structural addition and investment in formal R&D have a moderated impact on technological innovation. Finally, firm performance may be boosted by organizational innovation. © The Author(s) 2022.

What effect has Covid-19 had on changing household food consumption? A case study of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Four waves of the Covid-19 epidemic have drastically affected consumer behaviors in Vietnam, particularly during the period of social distancing in the second half of 2021. This study was done to investigate changes in household food acquisition and consumption patterns in Ho Chi Minh City. During the most severe wave of Covid-19 in Vietnam, an online poll was used to collect data from 130 customers in Ho Chi Minh City. Before Covid-19 (before January 2021), food was primarily purchased from traditional markets and other direct methods. After Covid-19 occurred (since January 2021), changes in food acquisition methods were found as 52% of respondents went to the grocery stores, traditional markets, and supermarkets less often. Moreover, consumers have changed their online shopping behaviors as 48% bought more food online compared to pre-Covid-19 periods. Since Covid-19, surveyed households consumed less food, specifically fresh produce (44.6%), fast food (60.8%), canned food (37.7%), prepped meals (60.8%), grains (43.1%), and snacks (43.8%). In opposition, more frozen foods (46%) and more meat (47%) were consumed since the pandemic. From the estimated ordinal probit regression, the study found that the determinants that most explain changes in food consumption are age, household size, education, income, affected income, workplace status, and the afraid of food shortage.

Monitoring the well-being of vulnerable transit riders using machine learning based sentiment analysis and social media: Lessons from COVID-19

Using open-source data, we show that despite significant reductions in global public transit during the COVID-19 pandemic, ∼20% of ridership continues during social distancing measures. Current urban transport data collection methods do not account for the distinct behavioural and psychological experiences of the population. Therefore, little is known about the travel experience of vulnerable citizens that continue to rely on public transit and their concerns over risk, safety and other stressors that could negatively affect their health and well-being. We develop a machine learning approach to augment conventional transport data collection methods by curating a population segmented Twitter dataset representing the travel experiences of ∼120,000 transit riders before and during the pandemic in Metro Vancouver, Canada. Results show a heightened increase in negative sentiments, differentiated by age, gender and ethnicity associated with public transit indicating signs of psychological stress among travellers during the first and second waves of COVID-19. Our results provide empirical evidence of existing inequalities and additional risks faced by citizens using public transit during the pandemic, and can help raise awareness of the differential risks faced by travellers. Our data collection methods can help inform more targeted social-distancing measures, public health announcements, and transit monitoring services during times of transport disruptions and closures. © The Author(s) 2022.

[Should we interfere with the interleukin-6 receptor during COVID-19: What do we know?] / Inhibiteurs du récepteur de l'IL-6 dans le traitement de la COVID-19 : que savons-nous ?

COVID-19 is a viral infection with predominant respiratory tropism. In its most severe forms, the initial viral aggression leads to acute respiratory failure due to damage secondary to an exacerbated inflammatory response provoked by the activation of innate, followed by adaptive immunity. The inflammatory response may entail respiratory distress syndrome, if not multivisceral failure and death. IL-6 receptor inhibitors (Tocilizumab and Sarilumab) have been proposed as treatments. Numerous studies have provided new information, which remains heterogeneous and difficult to interpret. This review is aimed at clarifying the potential role of IL-6 receptor inhibitors in severe forms of COVID-19.

Quality Improvement: Efficacy of a Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Hybrid Program During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background and/or Objectives: Our aim is to retrospectively evaluate the efficacy of our cardiopulmonary phase II hybrid program, which was created as an alternative to traditional, in-person phase II programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our hypothesis is that patients who enrolled and completed the hybrid program will demonstrate improvement in cardiopulmonary functional outcomes. Findings from this study will help inform project team members who can maintain or otherwise modify the hybrid program with the support of the PM&R Service Chief. Design(s): Our preliminary analysis included chart review and retrospective comparison of 22 patients' baseline and discharge 6-minute walk tests (6MWT), Duke Activity Status Index (DASI), weight, and exercise time. Pre-and post-rehab data will be compared with paired ttests. Level of significance (alpha) will be set at < 0.05. Additionally, age, sex, referring clinic, and primary/ secondary diagnoses were included for ongoing comparison. Setting(s): Veterans Affairs hospital for in-person appointments and virtual home-based setting for telerehabilitation component. Participant(s): Veterans who enrolled and completed the hybrid program between 9/1/2020-6/31/2021. Intervention(s): Retrospective chart review, interventions not applicable. Main Outcome Measure(s): Pre-and post-rehab functional outcome measures, including the 6-minute walk test and Duke Activity Status Index (DASI), will be compared. Secondary measures include weight change and exercise time following program completion. Result(s): In our preliminary data, 58% of patients demonstrated some level of improvement in the 6MWT. 50% achieved a favorable weight change and 64% showed improvement in the DASI. 100% of patients were able to increase duration of exercise time. A statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) was observed between pre- and post-rehab exercise tolerance time as well as the DASI. Conclusion(s): If further analyses are consistent with these findings, the results will guide future practice. Preliminary data indicate the hybrid program did not lead to statistically significant improvements in 6MWT or weight but did significantly improve exercise time and activity status level.

HCMUS MediaEval 2021: Multi-Model Decision Method Applied on Data Augmentation for COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Classification

Corona Virus and Conspiracies Multimedia Analysis Task is the task in MediaEval 2021 Challenge that concentrates on conspiracy theories that assume some kind of nefarious actions related to COVID-19. Our HCMUS team performs different approaches based on multiple pretrained models and many techniques to deal with 2 subtasks. Based on our experiments, we submit 5 runs for subtask 1 and 1 run for subtask 2. Run 1 and 2 both introduces BERT[5] pretrained model but the difference between them is that we add a sentimental analysis to extract semantic feature before training in the first run. In run 3 and 4, we propose a naive bayes classifier[4] and a LSTM[8] model to diversify our methods. Run 5 ultilize an ensemble of machine learning and deep learning models - multimodal approach for text-based analysis[3]. Finally, in the only run in subtask 2, we conduct a simple naive bayes algorithm to classify those theories. In the final result, our method achieves 0.5987 in task 1, 0.3136 in task 2. Copyright 2021 for this paper by its authors.

Corporate social responsibility disclosure and firm performance: Evidence from Vietnam

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is quite a new concept to business and society in Vietnam. Information on CSR reflects a firm's commitment to ethical behavior in its activities and reputation. However, it is questioned whether the information disclosure has any relationship with firm performance. Employing panel regression of about 200 listed firms on the Vietnam Stock Exchange and space-based measurement of CSR disclosure, the study confirms a positive impact of CSR disclosure on firm performance. Firms use CSR disclosures to indirectly improve their performance. Firms that disclose CSR with greater degree of information experience higher marginal profitability. This finding supports stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, and signaling theory in using CSR disclosure as a tool to improve firms' reputation and transparency, maintain longterm operation, and hence improve financial performance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, firms that engage more in CSR will suffer less from the pandemic than firms that do not. Thus, the study implies a promising CSR picture for corporations in Vietnam. Investors, policy makers and any related authorities can utilize these findings to get more insight into the business through CSR disclosures. © Ngoc Mai Tran, Manh Ha Tran, 2022.

Anti-Asian American Discrimination and COVID-19: Living with Fear

Previous research has demonstrated the deleterious effects of discrimination on health and well-being, as well as how these incidents maintain and/or increase inequalities and disparities for marginalized groups. The COVID-19 pandemic and media scapegoating of Asian Americans have been linked to increases in hate crimes and other discriminatory incidents. As such, it is important to uncover the lived experiences of Asian Americans, in the context of a global crisis, to inform recommendations related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 and 10 prioritizing health and equality (United Nations, 2015). The current study advances existing research by investigating the qualitative impact of postpandemic discrimination experienced by Asian American young adults from immigrant households. Analysis revealed several main themes expressed by participants such as a distinct difference in the lived experience of hostility, xenophobia, racism, and discrimination pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 and the mental and physical health effects of discrimination-related stress, anxiety, and hypervigilance. Analysis also highlighted recommendations from participants for community support and resources. These findings align with emerging evidence demonstrating an increase in quantity and severity of discriminatory experiences among Asian Americans since the pandemic, as well as document the impact of these experiences on a sample of Asian Americans living through this unprecedented international event. Findings may inform interventions, programs, and policies to better serve Asian Americans, as well as directly and indirectly contribute to UN SDG 3 and SDG 10. © 2022 Hogrefe Publishing.

European Association of Urology COVID intermediate prioritisation group is poorly predictive of pathological high-risk among patients with renal tumours

Introduction & Objectives: The purpose of prioritisation is to minimise harm while safeguarding access to health care in times of reduced clinical resources. The EAU Guideline Office Rapid Reaction Group (GORRG) issued priority recommendations for use during the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated if the clinical prioritisation for suspected renal cell carcinoma (RCC) planned for surgery matched final pathological risk. Materials & Methods: From 23 March 2020 at the beginning of the first lock-down in the UK, patients with suspected RCC were prioritised according to GORRG recommendations until 10 October 2020. To increase statistical power, GORRG prioritisation was also retrospectively assigned to pre-lockdown RCC surgical cases, dating back to April 5 2019. Patient and tumour characteristics were assessed, as was priority group according to GORRG, TNM, and postoperative risk according to 2003 Leibovich scores. We assessed concordance between pre-operative GORGG prioritisation group and post-operative risk, and if stratification could be further improved by subgrouping of size. Results: 351 patients with suspected RCC were prioritised and underwent surgery, of which 16 were benign and 335 were RCC after specimen analysis. The intermediate priority group did not match the pathological risk group in 47.7%, with 25.7% and 16.4% of the group being pathological low and high risk, respectively. The low GORRG priority group harboured 14.9% intermediate and 1.06% high risk RCC, and the high GORRG priority group 27.9% intermediate and no low risk RCC respectively. Within the GORRG intermediate group, 34.2% of cT1b tumours were low risk, and 32.3% of cT2a tumours high risk. Analysing at 1 cm increments, 45.1% of 4-5cm tumours were low risk. The area under the receiver operating characteristics curve for priority groups in predicting matched postoperative risk group was 0.60 (95% CI 0.55-0.65). The sankey diagram shows patients categorised according to EAU GORGG guidelines (left) and pathological risk (right).(Figure Presented)Conclusions: The recommended prioritisation system can be error prone and should be prudently applied based on the centre’s needs. Particularly amongst the intermediate group, centres with clinical capacity should not defer intervention of cT2a tumours for longer than absolutely necessary and in severely limited resources may consider intermediate priority tumours <5cm as low priority.