ABSTRACT
As the workplace continuously reinvents itself due to advances in technology, changes in society, and unexpected events like COVID-19, both employers and employees are employing idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) to allow for flexibility for both sides. This chapter addresses i-deals from a human resources (HR) perspective, by focusing on three critical themes. First, we discuss how organizations effectively institutionalize i-deals, and how such i-deals impact human resource philosophy and practices, given that HR departments often lead the effort to institutionalize such deals through individualized and fair HR practices. Next, we explore how supervisors can make sure that i-deals are fair and effective. Following this, we discuss where i-deals fit in the international human resource management (IHRM) context. A total of fourteen future research directions are identified with particular emphasis on practical HR perspectives. Finally, this chapter constructs a bridge between the two disciplines through drawing upon established literatures from i-deals and IHRM, to extending our current knowledge through both theoretical and practical lenses. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
ABSTRACT
In the post-pandemic era, two issues including the currency competition between BTC and the US dollar and the competition between the commodity and monetary medium functions of BTC are critical. By applying the Markov switching model, the cyclical nature of the numbers of additional confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths are verified on daily basis. So, these two factors are assumed to follow the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process. Then, we estimate parameters to establish the structural characteristics of post-pandemic era and the start of post-pandemic era. In order to clarify these two issues, we use vector autoregression for testing the related macrocosmic and financial variables and BTC. Systematic evidences are provided regarding the relationships among BTC, related macrocosmic, related financial variables, related COVID-19 variables. Our findings provide a useful insight into currency competition and commodity competition on the basis of the impulse response of BTC to US dollar fluctuation and the impulse response of BTC to expected inflation and volatility in the post-pandemic era. These findings indicate increased currency competition between Bitcoin and the US dollar in the post-pandemic era. Therefore, currency competition should be more valued than Commodity Competition in the post-pandemic era. This provides a useful guideline for Bitcoin's management. © 2023, Online Academic Press. All rights reserved.
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Purpose This study focused on parents' health anxiety by proxy about their children when they started learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic, to explore the impact of academic stress by parent-proxy on parents' learning support services with the mediating role of health anxiety by parent-proxy and the moderating role of parental educational level. Design/methodology/approach In total, 8,940 primary school students' parents participated in the study. Bootstrapping was performed to test the constructed model. Findings (1) Academic stress by parent-proxy positively predicted health anxiety by parent-proxy. (2) Health anxiety by parent-proxy significantly positively predicted learning support services. (3) Academic stress by parent-proxy also significantly positively predicted learning support services. (4) Academic stress by parent-proxy positively predicted parents' learning support services through the mediating effect of health anxiety by parent-proxy. (5) Parental educational level moderated the relationship between academic stress by parent-proxy, health anxiety by parent-proxy, and learning support services. Academics and parents will benefit from the conclusions of this study in both theory and practice. Originality/value During the COVID-19 pandemic, offline learning has been replaced with online learning, which has brought with it many physical and mental health problems, including additional academic stress. Most studies on learning support services have focused on offline learning. However, this study explored the relationships between academic stress by parent-proxy, health anxiety by parent-proxy, learning support services, and parental educational level in the context of online learning. Results show that it is necessary to pay attention to academic stress and health to provide children with appropriate learning support services.
ABSTRACT
Clinical problem or need: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) has become a daily routine for most healthcare providers. However, wearing it is not only a troublesome thing but also time-consuming, which may affect the quality of patient care. In certain emergent scenarios (e.g. out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) or respiratory failure), every second counts. We believed in that "Suit. Pro.";the new version of the traditional PPE will benefit the workflow in managing life-threatened patients and make them comfortable of wearing PPE during the pandemic. The concept of innovation and how it works: The "Suit. Pro." solves the problems while putting your lower extremities in the PPE, which is the rate-determining step in wearing PPE. We made three main adjustments: Widen the leg opening of PPE;Widen the opening of the shoe cover and use a cord lock and a cord to tighten it up instead of an elastic band;Shorten the pants to about 15cm below the knee and lengthen the shoe cover to about 5cm below the knee to make an adequate overlap without redundant length. These adjustments speed up the wearing process and will not compromise the effectiveness of protection. Feasibility and usability: We have performed multiple simulation studies (Film 1) to test the efficacy of the "Suit. Pro." Due to its user-friendly design, our colleagues can wear it smoothly and fast even if they have never used it before. You can wear the "Suit. Pro." running without loosening the shoe cover. Moreover, some colleagues wearing bigger shoes put "Suit. Pro." on easily without losing balance or making their shoes stuck in the pants. The "Suit. Pro." is so easy to wear and not only speeds up the wearing process but makes the whole wearing process more pleasant. Scalability and sustainability: The "Suit. Pro." definitely can be mass-produced by companies because it was redesigned with easily accessible materials. It took us an extra USD2 to remake one suit. There is no concern about sustainability because PPE is disposable.
ABSTRACT
The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and other major viral infectious diseases have become a significant threat to people's life and economic/social development. In recent years, with the development of nanotechnology, nanomaterial-based antiviral agents have been extensively studied. However, the clinical applications of antiviral nanomaterials are still limited. Herein, the recent advances in nanomaterial-based antiviral strategies, mainly including antiviral nanodrugs, drug nanocarriers, and nanovaccines, are summarized. The clinical challenges and prospects of nanomaterial-based antiviral strategies are also discussed.
ABSTRACT
In the context of the COVID-19 outbreak in a global scenario, mandatory mask-wearing and temperature control can effectively prevent its spread and realize self-protection. Therefore, real-time face-mask wearing and temperature measurement technology is of greater importance against the background of infectious disease prevention and control. The present study adopted MobileNet as the backbone of the single-stage RetinaFace framework for real-time face detection and mask-wearing detection. Moreover, the focal loss function of alpha dynamic value was adopted to avoid the class imbalance problem and improve the classification accuracy in the training stage. Regarding face temperature measurement technology, non-contact and uncooled temperature-sensitive elements were used for temperature measurement, but it was easily affected by environmental variables. Therefore, an SVR model was employed for temperature calibration with the constant temperature blackbody as reference. The alignment errors for the accuracy of face detection, mask wearing detection and temperature correction were 89.58%, 97.84% and 4.85%, respectively. The parameter quantity of the face mask wearing detection model reached 0.42 M, while the computation quantity arrived at 2.039 GFLOPs. The detection model proposed in this study combines real-time mask-wearing detection with face temperature measurement, which can help to quickly measure the body temperature and detect whether one wears face masks properly in the context of COVID-19, so as to reduce the risk of epidemic spread. (C) 2022 Society for Imaging Science and Technology.
ABSTRACT
Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacts parents, people with health risks like diabetes, and those with fewer financial resources. Minorities face particularly negative outcomes of the pandemic, and racial tensions after George Floyd's murder may have worsened effects. We examined group differences by race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (SES) in depressive symptoms and protective factors in parents of children with T1D in summer 2020. Methods: Participants were n=100 parents (98% mothers) of youth with T1D (60% female, M age=6.7±1.6 yrs, M T1D duration = 2.9±.5 yrs), who completed a behavioral RCT ≥6 months prior. In July/July 2020, parents selfreported on awareness of how to obtain housing/financial/food resources (Protective Factor Survey Concrete Support [PFS-CS] subscale) and depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiological Studies -Depression [CESD]). Race/ethnicity (66% non-Hispanic white, 12% non-Hispanic Black, 11% Hispanic, 11% other) and health insurance (33% public, 67% private) were reported at RCT enrollment. We ran ANOVAs and Pearson correlations to compare CES-D and PFS-CS by demographic groups. Results: PFS-CS scores differed significantly by race/ethnicity and insurance status, both p<.01. Hispanic (M=1.6±0.5) and non-Hispanic Black (M=1.6±0.6) parents had higher CS than non-Hispanic white parents (M = 1.3±0.3). Those with public insurance (M = 1.6±0.5) had higher CS than those with private insurance (M = 1.3±0.3). Higher CS correlated with lower CES-D, r = -.26, p = .05. CES-D did not differ across groups. Conclusion: Racially/ethnically diverse and lower SES parents of children with T1D reported more knowledge about how to access useful resources. This may have buffered against elevated mood symptoms during cooccurring major societal and public health stressors in 2020. Highlighting sources of support and resilience may be a useful strategy in strength-based interventions for parents of children with T1D.