Foreword

As part of our mission to advance global efforts towards sustainability, UNU-IAS has been contributing to the sustainable use of biodiversity at all levels, through research, policy engagement, and capacity building initiatives. We have focused in particular on promoting resource-management approaches and positive human– nature interactions in various geographically distinct socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS). Integrated approaches for SEPLS management have the potential to solve various local and regional problems while contributing towards achieving global goals for sustainable development and biodiversity. In fact, many case studies show how SEPLS management has helped to improve the quality of life and the environment with multiple benefits, making SEPLS one of the best options for facilitating transformative change. Recently, actions towards such change have been considered promising strategies to deal with myriad challenges of the environment and sustainable development and thus have become an important part of today's global agenda. In particular, transformative change is urgently needed as the focus shifts towards building back better from the COVID-19 pandemic. UNU-IAS is strengthening our role in this effort, working on elements of transformative change in the context of SEPLS. © UNU-IAS 2021. This book is an open access publication.

Relationship between misinformation spreading behaviour and true/false judgments and literacy: an empirical analysis of COVID-19 vaccine and political misinformation in Japan

Purpose: In recent years, the social impact of misinformation has intensified. The purpose of this study is to clarify the mechanism by which misinformation spreads in society. Design/methodology/approach: Testing the following two hypotheses by a logit model analysis of survey data using actual fact-checked COVID-19 vaccine and political misinformation: people who believe that some misinformation is true are more likely to spread it than those who do not believe in its truthfulness;people with lower media and information literacy are more likely to spread misinformation than people with higher media and information literacy. Findings: The two hypotheses are supported, and the trend was generally robust regardless of the method, whether the means of diffusion was social media or direct conversation. Social implications: The authors derived the following four implications from the results: governments need to further promote media information literacy education;platform service providers should consider mechanisms to facilitate the spread and display of posts by people who are aware of misinformation;fact-checking should be further promoted;people should acquire information based on the assumption that people who believe in some misinformation tend to spread it more. Originality/value: First, it quantitatively clarifies the relationship between misinformation, true/false judgements and dissemination behaviour. Second, it quantitatively clarifies the relationship between literacy and misinformation dissemination behaviour. Third, it conducts a comprehensive analysis of diffusion behaviours, including those outside of social media. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

CASE REPORT: A RARE CASE OF ALVEOLAR HEMORRHAGE AFTER COVID-19 VACCINATION IN A PATIENT WITH RENAL-LIMITED ANTINEUTROPHIL CYTOPLASMIC ANTIBODYASSOCIATED VASCULITIS

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination campaign has progressed worldwide. Rare but severe adverse events of COVID-19 vaccination such as anaphylaxis and myocarditis have begun to be noticed. Of note, several cases of new-onset antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis (AAV) after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination have been reported. In contrast, relapse of AAV in remission has not been recognized enough as an adverse outcome of COVID-19 vaccination. We report, to the best of our knowledge, a first case of renal-limited AAV in remission using every 6-month rituximab administration that relapsed with pulmonary hemorrhage, but not glomerulonephritis, following the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Notably, the patient received the COVID-19 vaccine more than 6 months after the last dose of rituximab according to the recommendations. Ironically, his CD19 positive B cell counts were found to be increased after admission, indicating that our case might have been prone to relapse after COVID-19 vaccination. Although our case cannot establish causality between AAV relapse and COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, a clinical vigilance for relapse of AAV especially in patients undergoing rituximab maintenance therapy following COVID-19 vaccination should be maintained. Furthermore, the elapsed time between rituximab administration and COVID-19 mRNA vaccination should be carefully adjusted based on AAV disease-activity (Nishioka et al. Front Med 2022. in press).

Online Competition of Small Electric Vehicle as an Exercise in Design Education - pico-EV Eco Challenge

To develop sustainable societies, it is necessary to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Therefore, widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs) is the need. Many subjects such as mathematics-and physics-based-mechanics of machine taught at the universities are useful to meet this problem. However, to design EVs, the ability to unify such knowledge along with the fabrication cost, time management, and teamwork management is necessary. We think that EV competition is a useful exercise in design education that helps develop this ability. Considering the energy problem, we proposed an official competition for small EVs, named 'pico-EV Eco Challenge', as an exercise in engineering design education. In this competition, a small one-person EV using only small rechargeable batteries (7.2 V, 1000 mAh in total) is fabricated and the fabricated EVs run a 60 m circuit. The competition in the years 2021 and 2022 was held on online due to COVID19 pandemic. In this paper, the competition criteria, the flow and the analyses of EVs on 2021 competition are described. © 2022 ICROS.

How was the coronavirus vaccine accepted on Twitter? A computational analysis using big data in Japan

Purpose: This study aims to reveal how the COVID-19 vaccine was accepted in the Japanese Twitter-sphere. This study explores how the topics related to the vaccine promotion project changed on Twitter and how the topics that were likely to spread changed during the vaccine promotion project. Design/methodology/approach: The computational social science methodology was adopted. This study collected all tweets containing the word "vaccine” using the Twitter API from March to October 2021 and conducted the following analysis: analyzing frequent words and identifying topics likely to spread through the cosine similarity and Tobit model. Findings: First, vaccine hesitancy–related words were frequently mentioned during the vaccine introduction and dissemination periods and had diffusing power only during the former period. Second, vaccine administration–related words were frequently mentioned and diffused through April to May and had diffusing power throughout the period. The background to these findings is that the sentiment of longing for vaccines outweighed that of hesitancy toward vaccines during this period. Originality/value: This study finds that the timing of the rise in vaccine hesitation sentiment and the timing of the start of vaccine supply were misaligned. This is one of the reasons that Japan, which originally exhibited strong vaccine hesitancy, did not face vaccine hesitancy in the COVID-19 vaccine promotion project. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Effects of corrections on COVID-19-related misinformation: cross-media empirical analyses in Japan

This study compared the characteristics of individuals who change their perceptions when they receive corrective information about COVID-19-related misinformation from different types of media. Whether people would change their perceptions through mass media information and whether through social media information were set as dependent variables. Indicators of 'need for orientation' and different types of literacy were set as explanatory variables. The results of logit model analyses indicate that people who are more interested in COVID-19 are more likely to change their perceptions if they receive corrective information from mass media outlets. People with relatively low levels of information literacy tend to change their perceptions in response to corrective information from social media. This finding suggests that individuals who change their perceptions based on social-media-derived corrective information cannot necessarily discriminate the truth or falsity of the information provided. Copyright © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Masked Face Detection System Using Convolutional Neural Networks

The global health epidemic caused by the breakout of a coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19) has had a significant impact on the way we view our environment and live our daily lives. People should wear masks and maintain social distance as a precaution. As a result, detecting face masks has become a critical responsibility in assisting the global community. This report describes a simplified method for accomplishing this goal by utilising TensorFlow, Keras, OpenCV, Convolutional Neural Networks, and some basic Machine Learning packages. If a person is discovered without a face mask, an alert warning is issued, and the person's face is captured. In addition, the value of mask and unmask faces are saved in the cloud for future use. Using this deep learning enables the system to be faster and more precise to detect the faces, and as a result, the accuracy of mask and unmask faces detection is higher than 90%. As all the facilities and premises open and the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise across the country, everyone must adhere to the safety precautions until the outbreak is over. As a result, this module assists in recognising people wearing masks when entering premises. © 2022 IEEE.

An End-to-End Security Framework for Smart Healthcare Information Sharing against Botnet-based Cyber-Attacks

Medical industry is entering the era of digital transformation through the introduction of emerging technologies resulting in the digitization of healthcare service provisioning. However, the underlying infrastructure once compromised, can lead to information stealth and destruction of the healthcare devices based on the control instructions provided by the attacker. In this regard, we propose an end-to-end framework for secure information sharing in smart healthcare applications against botnet-based cyber-attacks. We focus on different levels of protection involving storage and transmission of healthcare information. Moreover, we implement some of the related aspects of the proposed approach on Access Control Policy Testing (ACPT) tool to demonstrate its feasibility, and discuss state-of-the-art in the domain. © 2021 IEEE.