The integration of digital twin and serious game framework for new normal virtual urban exploration and social interaction

COVID-19 has disconnected humanity, reduced social interaction in physical urban areas, and led to the new normal, which describes the anticipated changes in human life and professionals due to the impact of the pandemic. In addition, as part of digital transformation, the post-pandemic New Normal includes accelerating digital solutions and new standards for virtual urban exploration and planning. This study applies the concept of digital twin and serious game design and uses Minecraft, a game-based platform that inspires creative, inclusive learning through play, for virtual urban exploration and the development of social interaction among participants. Dadaocheng, a historical area of Taipei city, is then studied as a case study with the Geoboxers application to develop the prototype for a co-creation experiment in Minecraft. The prototype development and the results of the experiment are then used in the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method to evaluate a set of influential criteria proposed in this study through pairwise comparisons by expert panelists. The results of the AHP analysis reveal users' simultaneous preferences for urban planning and social interaction with urban characteristics (22.14%), urban exploration (12.29%), and 3D models (11.97%). Subsequently, the research results showed a need to promote the integration of digital twins and serious game applications as digital tools for urban exploration and social interaction, increasing post-pandemic virtual urban planning and applying new urban design techniques. This study also contributes to the acceleration of digital transformation in urban planning and management. © 2023 The Authors

The SARS-CoV-2 variants and their impacts

Since the first detection of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus remains a public health concern. Several public health measures have been implemented in an effort to curb the infections. However, the effectiveness of these strategies was threatened with the emergence of numerous SARS-CoV-2 variants in all parts of the globe, due to the persistent mutations as part of the viral evolution. Mutations that usually occur in its spike glycoprotein, allow SARS-CoV-2 to possess advantageous characteristics for its survivability and persistence. This has led to poor performance of diagnostic kits which have caused non-specific and insensitive detection of these variants, resulting in undetermined infection. The variants also have caused the increased severity of COVID-19, involving hospitalisation rates, ICU admissions, and deaths. Many have reported the vaccine-breakthrough infections and reduced effectiveness of vaccination, which is supposed to provide an effective degree of protection against COVID-19 infections. Due to these issues, this review summarises the impacts related to SARS-CoV-2 variants emergence towards the performance of diagnostic kits, transmissibility of the virus, severity of disease, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

The SARS-CoV-2 Variants and their Impacts

Since the first detection of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus remains a public health concern. Several public health measures have been implemented in an effort to curb the infections. However, the effectiveness of these strategies was threatened with the emergence of numerous SARS-CoV-2 variants in all parts of the globe, due to the persistent mutations as part of the viral evolution. Mutations that usually occur in its spike glycoprotein, allow SARS-CoV-2 to possess advantageous characteristics for its survivability and persistence. This has led to poor performance of diagnostic kits which have caused non-specific and insensitive detection of these variants, resulting in undetermined infection. The variants also have caused the increased severity of COVID-19, involving hospitalisation rates, ICU admissions, and deaths. Many have reported the vaccine-breakthrough infections and reduced effectiveness of vaccination, which is supposed to provide an effective degree of protection against COVID-19 infections. Due to these issues, this review summarises the impacts related to SARS-CoV-2 variants emergence towards the performance of diagnostic kits, transmissibility of the virus, severity of disease, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Copyright © The Author(s) 2022.

On the improvement of family services in public health events：a qualitative case study based on COVID-19 responses

Objective To understand the status of family services and residents’demands for services in Shanghai in order to construct and improve the key elements of family services in public health events. Methods We used a combining method of individual in-depth interviews and focused group interviews. The informants were domestic and foreign experts in public health, health services, education, safety, etc., community workers and residents. The interview questions were as follow：problems in family services, residents’demands and suggestions for family services, etc. Results We found 7 major family services problems in Shanghai’s response to public health events：The boundary of authorities and responsibilities were not clearly defined between the upper and lower departments. The team construction of public health professions at the community level was flawed. There were miscommunications between upper and lower medical institutions during the epidemic outbreaks. Residents were not aware of the available family services provided by their communities. Unnoticed insanitary spots still existed in public spaces, and the maintenance of residential emergence equipment needs to be strengthened. The public opinion guidance required further strengthening, and the elderly people lack an effective medium for information acquisition. The emergency plan of closed management to solve practical problems after Shanghai’s COVID lockdown was insufficient. The residents’demands included the following 6 aspects：comprehensive family services, supply and guarantee of basic living materials and special materials, professionals providing family services as a means of support, emergency medical services, receiving psychological intervention and understanding knowledge of mental health, security of food and food supply chain security. Conclusion ‘Government led’‘cross-border cooperation’‘clear executive body’and ‘based on the needs of residents’were key factors. Therefore, we suggest family services are included in the normalizing construction of government. © 2022 Fudan University. All rights reserved.

Nigella sativa (Black Seed) as a natural remedy against viruses

The currently available antiviral agents are associated with serious adverse effects, coupled with the increasing rate of viral resistance to the existing antiviral drugs. Hence, the search for alternative natural remedies is gaining momentum across the globe. Nigella sativa Linnen, also called black seed, is a medicinal plant that is gaining worldwide recognition and has been extensively investigated. The present work is aimed to review the existing literature on the antiviral efficacy of Nigella sativa extracts (oil and bioactive compounds). The findings reveal that numerous articles have been published on Nigella sativa and its beneficial effects against different kinds of diseases. However, the antiviral efficacy of Nigella sativa is yet to be given the proper research attention it deserves.

Improving Emotional Intelligence in the New Normal Using Metaverse Applications for Digital Native

This research provides a study on analyzing emotional intelligence in the New Normal using Metaverse application for digital native generation. Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has created new behavior and characterized human life to be more aware of the new digital applications. Significantly, research results show that the digital native generation, whose internet environment was typical from their birth, is optimistic in New Normal life amid COVID 19. In 2021, Metaverse set off a new generation of online interactive user behavior concepts. According to some research, the developing concept of Metaverse fits precisely in line with the future living of the digital native generation. However, some psychological side consequences should be revealed concurrently with the positive impact conceived. People's emotional intelligence argues for reduction due to the dissatisfaction of rapid adaptation to the New Normal condition. Thus, this research demonstrates an analysis to mitigate the psychological side effects of emotional intelligence when people are bound to the New Normal life. The improvement of the Web-based Extended Reality (WebXR), a critical development field of Metaverse, is proposed together to assist the immersive experience demands in addressing the problem-solution methods. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

IfWe Build It,Who Will Come? Comparing Sociodemographic Characteristics of Bike Share Subscribers, Cyclists, and Residents of New York City

Bike share programs are becoming increasingly popular across U.S. cities. However, their impact on persistent disparities in cycling by gender, race, and socioeconomic status remains understudied. We examined whether subscribers of Citi Bike, New York City’s (NYC) largest bike share program, reflect the sociodemographic profile of NYC cyclists. Using NYC Community Health Survey data, we described adult NYC residents of neighborhoods with ≥ 1 Citi Bike stations who rode a bicycle at least once a month. Citi Bike members were also described using first-time subscriber survey data. We compared the sociodemographic characteristics of these groups via a z-score with pooled variance. Approximately 2.2 million residents lived in 15 NYC neighborhoods with ≥1 Citi Bike station, and 449,000 (20.5%) reported cycling at least once a month in the past 12 months. Among first-time Citi Bike subscribers, 23,223 (11.5%) completed the survey. Compared with NYC cyclists, Citi Bike subscribers were more likely to be women, aged 24 to 45, White, college graduates, and from a household with an income > 400% than the poverty level. Compared with the general population, cyclists were more likely to be White, male, and from a household with an income > 400% than the poverty level. Race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (not gender) disparities were larger among Citi Bike subscribers than NYC cyclists. With the emergence of cycling as an alternative transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the extension of bike share programs, this highlights the need for ongoing, systematic monitoring of bike share user socioeconomic characteristics to evaluate equitable use and access. © National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2021.

Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Related Discrimination and Mental Health in Five U.S. Southern Cities

Evidence is mounting that stigma and discrimination related to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) disproportionately impact racial/ethnic minority groups, and that these experiences can worsen mental health. The present study sought to examine multiple types of COVID-related discrimination and their associations with mental health outcomes among racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. South, a region characterized by high levels of racial polarization and increasingly large numbers of undocumented immigrants. We used the cross-sectional, population-based COVID-19 Southern Cities Study (5/26/20-6/6/20) of n = 1,688 adults in Atlanta-GA, Austin-TX, Dallas-TX, Houston-TX, and New Orleans-LA. Three adapted scales (Everyday Discrimination, Major Discrimination, Heightened Vigilance) assessed self-reported COVID-related discrimination. Mental health outcomes included psychological distress, sleep troubles, physical reactions, and self-rated worsened mental health. Bivariable comparisons and adjusted logistic regression models were conducted. The study found that major discrimination was more common (p < .001) among Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black than non-Hispanic Asian and non-Hispanic White respondents. All racial/ethnic minority groups experienced more everyday discrimination (p = .004) and heightened vigilance due to anticipated discrimination (p < .001) than non-Hispanic White respondents. All discrimination types were associated with all mental health outcomes (Odds Ratio;OR range: 1.63-2.61) except everyday and major discrimination with sleep troubles. Results showing greater COVID-related discrimination for racial/ethnic minority groups confirm that these discrimination experiences are not solely about the infectious disease itself, but also entrenched with persistent racism. Responses to COVID-related discrimination should also consider long-lasting impacts on mental health for racial/ethnic minority groups even after the immediate pandemic ends.

SUPER-RESOLUTION AND INFECTION EDGE DETECTION CO-GUIDED LEARNING FOR COVID-19 CT SEGMENTATION

In this paper, we propose a novel super-resolution and infection edge detection co-guided learning network for COVID-19 CT segmentation (CogSeg). Our CogSeg is a coherent framework consisting of two branches. Specifically, we use image super-resolution (SR) as an auxiliary task, which assist segmentation to recover high-resolution representations. Moreover, we propose an infection edge detection guided region mutual information (RMI) loss, which uses the edge detection results of segmentation to explicitly maintain the high order consistency between segmentation prediction and ground truth around infection edge pixels. Our CogSeg network can effectively maintain high-resolution representation and leverages edge details to improve the segmentation performance. When evaluated on two publicly available COVID-19 CT datasets, our CogSeg improves 10.63 and 13.02 points than the established baseline method (i.e. U-Net) w.t.r mIoU. Moreover, our CogSeg achieves more appealing results both quantitatively and qualitatively than the state-of-the-art methods.

Exploring the awareness of health and life promotion from the differences in the lifestyles of young people before and during the epidemic

During the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, many countries took strict measures of prevention, including city lockdowns, production, school shutdowns, and home quarantine, to prevent further spread of the pandemic. Relevant actions have affected people's daily routines and life patterns, even changed the original lifestyle. Especially for youngsters, their diversified lifestyle is significantly impacted. Related studies show that abnormal changes in daily life patterns or bad habits change the lifestyle and lead to the emergence of a sub-health state. Therefore, the primary purposes of this study are 1. to investigate the differences in lifestyle among young generation before and during the epidemic;2. to further analyze the changes and the factors that may affect their health. in order to increase people's interest in the research and enhance the participation of young generation, this study introduces the method of "Life Stripe Project" established by Japanese designers. Based on this model, the questionnaire of daily life patterns was derived online, where data of daily life activities of college students in Taiwan and mainland China were collected through an online survey. At the same time, six factors of health-promoting lifestyle theory have been introduced to analyze the factors affecting the lifestyle change before and during the epidemic, and to find out the reasons resulting in the sub-health state, to guide the young generation to deal with the possible continuation of the epidemic situation. Proper adjustment and plans for their daily life activities will help to enhance their awareness of health-promoting life in the future. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons

Serious game design for playful exploratory urban simulation

The year 2020 has stricken humanities with the ferocious COVID-19. During this period, regulation and restriction are active to mitigate the spread while simultaneously causing massive behavioral change globally. While the post-pandemic situation has created new habits, rules, and limitations to restrict traveling, it also offers opportunities to introduce the citizens an interactive technology solution to explore their urban space and neighborhood effortlessly and risk-free. This paper proposes the use of Minecraft, a sandbox game, and its gameplay to design an interactive serious game-based platform for collaborative urban exploration in a playful, immersive approach. The prototype within this paper applies the digital twin concept and its principles for the realistic re-creation of a virtual Dihua Street of Dadaocheng, an old town and a tourist hotspot in Taipei, Taiwan. In a serious-game environment that is both a playground and a working platform, users can cooperate with others, create dynamic user-generated content. As they explore while sharing their knowledge and experience in the virtual open space, users are also engaged in serious urban planning tasks. This paper’s main objective is to present the preliminary data of top priority users’ satisfaction with game elements or features to develop a serious game-based urban exploration platform while demonstrating the proof-of-concept of the urban digital twin. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons

Capitalizing on Opportunities during the Covid-19 Pandemic Business Transitions among Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs in France

This article analyses business transitions among Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs in France during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a historical overview of the development of ethnic Chinese businesses over the last century and an empirical study carried out in five different industrial sectors (import and export, retail, catering, hotel, and tobacco) of the French economy, we examine what challenges these entrepreneurs have faced during the pandemic, what strategies they have adopted in response to these challenges, and what has enabled them to shift business patterns and commercial practices in this unprecedented situation. Our findings show that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurship in France, from offline operations to digital business. However, the pandemic may not be the direct cause of this business transition;rather, it has created unique conditions which facilitate the transition. Before the pandemic, some Chinese entrepreneurs had already made or partially made the transition to "integrating online and offline businesses," "hiring beyond Chinese ethnic networks," and "paying attention to the local country's policy directions," which helped them greatly reduce the negative impacts of the pandemic. During the pandemic, two unprecedented business opportunities were opened up: "fostering local production" and "seeking low-risk sectors," which some Chinese entrepreneurs have proactively pursued since April/May 2020. These may be the new trends for Chinese entrepreneurs in France in the future. Theoretically, our study suggests that business transitions among Chinese entrepreneurs in France need to be examined beyond the framework of pure economic rationality, taking into consideration the intersection of new dynamics of Chinese migration into host country and the cross-cultural, cross-institutional, cross-thinking, and cross-border social engagement of the entrepreneurs themselves before, during, and after the pandemic.

Conceptual Design of Working from Home Based on Behavior Change in New Normal

Nowadays, working from home has been the ideal working condition for people. Especially with the covid-19 pandemic, most of the office workers are forced to switch to work from home within a short period of time. This is no longer a temporary change but will be a huge change affecting our lives now and in the future. This research is based on human-centered design, at the very first part we do a widely-interview with people who work in different industries, the problems are not only mental health but also come from user’s inner worlds, so we narrow down to make a deeper interview to our target user, digital nomads, the one who derives income remotely and online, rather than from commuting to an office. After it, we made the persona and user journey to find out the touchpoint, to define our problem more specifically, there’re three main points (1) it is flexible but too fragmented at home, (2) inefficient working schedule, and (3) loss of connection to working partners. In addition, behavior change takes a big part here, which means when we find the right mode of working at home and persist on the basis of having a considerable level of satisfaction, it will become the new normal in the future. We come out with a conceptual application combining with smart home technology named Groovy, aims to let the user (1) reduce decision making time, the application will tell you what time is best for what to do, (2) observe and suggest better schedules for you, based on your working habits, and (3) reduce the feeling of loneliness. And next, we made the interface prototype and use Kano model for the evaluation to understand the services we provide are in which features. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.