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The root tuber of Pinellia ternata has been used as a traditional therapeutic herbal medicine. It is reported to impart beneficial attributes in recovering COVID-19 patients. To meet an increasing demand of P. ternata, this study is intended to investigate the effects of biochar on the soil hydrological and agronomic properties of two decomposed soils (i.e., completely decomposed granite (CDG) and lateritic soil) for the growth of P. ternata. The plant was grown in instrumented pots with different biochar application rate (0%, 3% and 5%) for a period of three months. Peanut shell biochar inclusion in both soils resulted in reduction of soil hydraulic conductivity and increase in soil water retention capacity. These alterations in hydrological properties were attributed to measured change in total porosity, biochar intra pore and hydrophilic functional groups. The macro-nutrient (i.e., N, P, K, Ca, and Mg) concentration of both soils increased substantially, while the pH and cation exchange capacity levels in the amended soils were altered to facilitate optimum growth of P. ternata. The tuber biomass in biochar amended CDG at all amendment rate increases by up to 70%. In case of lateritic soil, the tuber biomass increased by 23% at only 5% biochar application rate. All treatments satisfied the minimum succinic acid concentration required as per pharmacopoeia standard index. The lower tuber biomass exhibits a higher succinic acid concentration regardless of the soil type used to grow P. ternata. The biochar improved the yield and quality of P. ternata in both soils.
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According to its Founding Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 178/2002), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was tasked to establish a system of networks of organisations operating in the fields within EFSA's remit, with the objective to facilitate a scientific cooperation framework by coordinating activities, exchanging information, developing and implementing joint projects, and exchanging expertise and best practices. The Scientific Network on Risk Assessment in Animal Health and Welfare (AHAW) aims to build a mutual understanding of risk assessment principles in the areas of animal health and welfare, to promote harmonisation of animal health and welfare risk assessment practices and methodologies, and to reduce the duplication of activities by identifying and sharing current and upcoming priorities. The network organises an annual meeting dedicated to animal health‐related issues to discuss and exchange on all topics relevant and interesting to its member organisations. In 2022, this annual meeting took place on 27 and 28 June. Among all topics covered, special attention was paid to avian influenza, African swine fever and SARS‐CoV‐2. One Health surveillance and biosecurity were further highlights in 2022. This report summarises the activities presented by members and observers of the network as well as EFSA's contributions during the meeting.
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The airborne transmission of the COVID-19 virus was considered the main cause of infection. The increasing concern about the virus spread in confined spaces, characterized by high crowding indexes and an often-inadequate air exchange system, pushes the scientific community to the design of many studies aimed at improving indoor air quality. The risk of transmission depends on several factors such as droplet properties, virus characteristics, and indoor airflow patterns. The main transmission route of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to humans is the respiratory route through small (<100 μm) and large droplets. In an indoor environment, the air exchange plays a fundamental role on the dispersion of the droplets. In this study, an integrated approach was developed to evaluate the influence of the ventilation strategy on the dispersion of respiratory droplets emitted inside a coach bus. There are no specific guidelines and standards on the air exchange rate (AER) values to be respected in indoor environments such as coach buses. The aim of this work is to analyse the influence of ventilation strategy on the respiratory droplet concentration and distribution emitted in a coach bus. Ansys FLUENT was used to numerically solve the well-known transient Navier-Stokes equations (URANS equations), the energy equation and using the Lagrangian Discrete Phase Model (DPM) approach to construct the droplet trajectories. The geometry is representative of an intercity bus, a vehicle constructed exclusively for the carriage of seated passengers. The 3D CAD model represented a coach bus with an HVAC system, within which an infected subject was present. The positions of exhaust vents and air-conditioning vents were chosen to ensure complete air circulation throughout the bus. The infected subject emitted droplets with a well-defined size distribution and mass through the mouth. The air exchange is provided in two different ways: general ventilation (from air intakes positioned along the bus windows and top side of central corridor) and personal ventilation (with air intakes for each passenger). For the general ventilation a single AER value was set (0.3 m3 s−1). The first results obtained showed a slight particle dispersion in the computational domain due to the airflow rate entered through the HVAC system, but a still elevated level of particle concentration tended to accumulate on the area near to infected subject. Additional analysis was executed to evaluate the beneficial effects linked to further addition of airflow through personal air-conditioning vents placed above every passenger's head. The results show the importance of the use of the ventilation system inside a coach bus, highlighting how the contribution linked to of the personal air exchange rate can lead to a significant reduction of droplet concentration exposure and consequently a reduction of the risk of infection from airborne diseases.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, most classes in higher education were offered online, and student and staff mobility came to a sudden halt. With its focus on online interaction and collaboration between students from different cultural backgrounds, Virtual Exchange (VE) has presented itself as an excellent opportunity to students and educators to combine the benefits of both digitalization and internationalization. This paper looks at the role of a series of factors in the interdisciplinary VE called 'The new normality,' which took place between BA Social Psychology students at a large public research institution in Eastern Spain and students from different BAs enrolled in Spanish proficiency courses at large public research university in the North of the Netherlands. This project had two main goals: 1) to create an environment for students to share their pandemic experiences across cultures and disciplines;2) to determine to what extent this exchange of ideas contributed to the development of students’ intercultural awareness and competence and communicative competence.
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The recent price crash of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) crude oil futures contract, which occurred on 20 April 2020, has caused history-writing movements of relative prices. For instance, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) experienced a negative price. Explosive heteroskedasticity is also evidenced in associated products, such as the Intercontinental Exchange Brent (BRE) and Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) crude oil futures. Those movements indicate potential non-stationarity in the conditional volatility with an asymmetric influence of negative shocks. To incorporate those features, which cannot be accommodated by the existing generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models, we propose a threshold zero-drift GARCH (TZD-GARCH) model. Our empirical studies of the daily INE returns from March 2018 to April 2020 demonstrate the usefulness of the TZD-GARCH model in understanding the empirical features and in precisely forecasting the volatility of INE. Robust checks based on BRE and WTI over various periods further lead to highly consistent results. Applications of news impact curves and Value-at-Risk (VaR) analyses indicate the usefulness of the proposed TZD-GARCH model in practice. Implications include more effectively hedging risks of crude oil futures for policymakers and market participants, as well as the potential market inefficiency of INE relative to WTI and BRE.
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Virtual exchange (VE) has grown out of telecollaboration, which originated in the language-teaching field, and has now expanded to all areas of knowledge as a collaborative methodology to enhance learning and fostering soft skills and intercultural competences. VE has recently received growing interest from higher education institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the reduction in physical mobility. This article reports a study on the strategies used by non-language specialist professors for facilitating communication in a foreign language in VE within the Brazilian Virtual Exchange (BRaVE). Data collection and analysis involved qualitative research methodology through analyzing participants’ reflections. Implications for the field of applied linguistics point to the need for a theoretical framework for VE as an interdisciplinary field. This would serve the purpose to train professors to design and implement activities that involve foreign language communication.
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This paper examines whether the causal relationship between the health care price index and the real exchange rate index is temporary or permanent. To do this, we first apply the Toda- Yamamoto causality test with a structural break and then continue with frequency domain causality tests based on the Toda-Yamamoto causality test with a structural break. The results of the Toda- Yamamoto causality test with a structural break indicates that there is causality running from the real exchange rate index to the health care price index. Moreover, the frequency domain causality test results based on the Toda-Yamamoto causality test with a structural break provide evidence that the real effective exchange rate causes temporarily (in the short-and medium term) to the health care price index. The effect of the real exchange rate index on the health care price index lasts between 2 months and 8.37 months. These findings imply that there is a significant exchange rate pass-through in health care inflation in the short-and medium term. Thus, the health authorities should take into account these findings when planning health care policies in Turkey, especially health care services heavily dependent on imported materials.
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Purpose: Trust is essential for organizations' cooperative relationships during COVID-19. Authentic leadership and social exchange relationships are required to increase trust during a crisis. However, leader behaviors during COVID-19 have effects on the relationships among authentic leadership, social exchange relationships, and trust in organizations to understand their effects. The moderating effects of leader behaviors during COVID-19 on the relationships among authentic leadership, social exchange relationships, and trust in organizations are investigated. Design/ Methodology/Approach: Hierarchical multiple regression with interaction terms is used to examine interactions of leader behaviors during COVID-19 on the relationships between variables. Moreover, bootstrapping is performed to explore the mediating role of social exchange relationships between authentic leadership and trust in organizations. Findings: The findings indicate that authentic leadership positively affects social exchange relationships and trust, whereas social exchange relationships positively affect trust. Moreover, a social exchange relationship has a mediating effect between authentic leadership and trust. Both leader behaviors are regrading (a) managerial ability with ethics and (b) a positive working relationship based on work from home as moderators, positively influencing authentic leadership, social exchange relationships, and trust. Practical implications: This paper suggests that authentic leadership increases the quality of social exchange relationships and trust. Leader behavior qualities and leader-follower relationships based on social exchange theory are essential for improving trust even after postCOVID-19. Finally, based on the social exchange theory, leader behavior qualities and leaderfollower relationships can motivate positive relationships in organizations. The chief executive officers (CEOs) and the organizational management teams benefit from the outcomes of this paper to comprehend which factors affect relationships and trust changes in organizations.
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Lambert et al describe the services given and received before and during lockdown, and the variations across ages and social categories drawing on data from the Colonel survey. The exchange of services is an integral part of neighborly sociability in France. Giving and receiving are asymmetrical, however, and unequally distributed across the population, as was shown by the first major survey on relations between neighbors in France. Social practices of this kind were not greatly affected by the lockdown, except for the provision of help to older adults and the decrease of help to families, as the Coconel survey reveals. The French are active in the exchange of services, but by no means equal.
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Most analyses of exchange rate volatility in the economic literature are conducted by means of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) or generalized ARCH (GARCH) models. According to Humilton and Susmel such models often predict higher volatility than their actual volatility rates, and their predictive performance is considerably low. Diebold and Lamoureux and Lastapes attributed this to the structural change in the ARCH process. Moreover, Hamilton and Susmel developed the Markov-switching ARCH (MS-ARCH or SWARCH) model to overcome the reliability problem of parameter estimates that do not allow for a regime change. This method presents a nonlinear structure enabling regime changes. Therefore, the MS-ARCH method was preferred in the study. Considering the continuing massive impact of COVID-19 on the global financial system, its influence on exchange rates must also be explored. This question was addressed in the analysis. In this direction, the effect of volatility was estimated with the MS-ARCH model using the return values of USD/TRY exchange rate in the trading days between March 2020 and October 2021, the month March 2020 when the first COVID-19 case appeared in Turkey. Two volatility regimes, namely, low volatility and high volatility, were employed in the study. The findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic, along with various economic and political events in Turkey and the world, affects exchange rate volatility and that these volatility periods are permanent. It also depicts that the USD/TRY return series has high volatility and a strong regime dependency. From these results, it may be concluded that the forecasting of information on exchange rate volatility is important for asset pricing and risk management because exchange rate volatility can increase transaction costs and reduce gains in international trade. The article contributes to the existing body of literature by explaining volatility modeling in the light of the recent daily exchange rate returns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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1. About ICMSOA2021Organized by Yaseen Academy, 2021 The 3rd International Conference on Modeling, Simulation, Optimization and Algorithm (ICMSOA2021) was held during 12-14 November, 2021 at Crowne Plaza Sanya City Center, Sanya, Hainan Province, China. Due to the different restrictions caused by Covid-19 according to particular provinces and cities, some of the participants participated in the physical conference at Sanya, but others had to join the conference online via Tencent Meeting. The Conference looks for significant contributions to all major fields of Computational Modeling, Simulation, Optimization and Algorithm in theoretical and practical aspects. The aim of the conference is to provide a platform to the researchers and practitioners from both academia as well as industry to meet and share cutting-edge development in the field.Organizer: Yaseen Academy is located at Huangjiahu Lake University Town, Wuhan, Hubei, China, focusing on international academic conferences organizing and international academic journals corperation in areas of science and engineering, aiming to provide a high-level and open academic platform for global scholars, researchers and practioners. It has gathered an academic committee composed of more than 200 experts and scholars, and has successfully held many international academic conferences. Facing the vast number of experts and scholars, Yaseen Academic is a team with strong professional quality and professional ethics, it has creating a mature, deep and complete academic exchange platform, not only allowing experts and scholars to show and share their latest academic research results and realizing face-to-face academic exchanges, but also allowing the most cutting-edge scientific information, ideas, and viewpoints to be fully communicated and exchanged, which will benefit all mankind.List of Call for papers, Conference Committee Members, Paper Submission, Programs are available in this pdf.
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An exchange meeting of mammal research for students and young researchers, “Mammal Research Seminar,” was held online in August 2020, although many conferences and seminars were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We reported the merits and demerits of online exchange meetings with the background and details of this meeting. Compared with meeting in person, online meetings have difficulty in interacting with other participants, and there is a high risk of data breach. However, some merits, such as attracting new participants and activating question-and-answer sessions, were observed. Online meetings such as this could increase in future due to restrictions on in person activities, making organizers think about organizing online seminars and the related aspects. We hope that this report will contribute to other group activities.Alternate :抄録 2020年8月，新型コロナウイルスの影響により多くの学会やシンポジウムが中止となる中，我々は学生や若手研究者を対象とした哺乳類に関する研究交流会をオンライン上で開催した．本稿では，開催までの経緯や開催内容の記録を示すとともに，開催を通して見出されたオンライン集会の利点と課題点について報告する．オンライン集会の開催は，対面での開催と比べ情報漏洩の危険性が高く，交流の体制構築に工夫が求められるといった課題が見出された一方で，新規の参加者を取り込みやすい，質疑応答が活発になりやすいといった側面もあることがわかった．本稿で実践の詳細や課題を共有することで，哺乳類学会員の活動の一助となることを望む．
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This study aims to explore the effect of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the Indian energy exchange market (IEX), especially on energy sell, energy buy, and energy price. The data used in this study is multi-regional panel data consisting of 13 regions observed through March to August 2020. To investigate the relationship, a panel cointegration, causality, and a Panel-Based Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PARDL) model is applied within a multivariate framework. The empirical outcomes confirm that a long-run equilibrium relationship is noticeable in the models. Results of the causality test suggest that there exists a unidirectional causality running from COVID-19 to the IEX. Based on the findings of long-run and short-run elasticities of the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator, this study suggests the government and policymakers should provide aids and incentives to the power generating companies and to the investors which generate, sell and purchase energy from the energy exchange market.
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From October 22 to 23, 2021, the 16th National Postgraduates Symposium on Environmental and Occupational Medicine was successfully held in Central South University,sponsored by the Editorial Board of Journal of Environmental and Occupational Medicine and Xiangya School of Public Health of Central South University, and co-organized by School of Public Health of South China University and Shanghai Preventive Medicine Association. Keeping in view the outbreak of COVID-19, the symposium was held in the form of "offline+online". More than 100 teachers and students from more than 30 universities and research institutions across China attended the conference. A total of 114 excellent papers were submitted to this conference.Focusing on the theme of "Research and practice: Healing the schism", young scholars' forum as well as postgraduates' academic exchanges at the main venue and four parallel sessions were launched. This conference not only provided an excellent platform for postgraduate students in the field of environmental and occupational medicine nationwide to share academic trends and exchange academic research, but also expanded the influence of the Journal of Environmental and Occupational Medicine.
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The mission of the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) is to build connections between the people of the US and people from other countries through exchange programs. These have included academic exchanges for youth and teachers, as well as cultural, sports, and professional exchanges. They are actively building and supporting a global network of citizens who understand the wider world, all of whom can be partners in solving global challenges. In 2021, they celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Fulbright Program and its ongoing positive impact on the lives of individuals and on global and local communities. As the past year has made abundantly clear, the planet faces multiple challenges. To address climate change, food insecurity, international migration, and of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, global cooperation has never been more important.
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The aim of this study is to examine the effect of macro-economic variables on the Jakarta composite index in Indonesia, both in the short and long term before Covid19 and the Covid19 period, as well as to examine whether there is a difference before Covid19 and the Covid19 period. Macroeconomic variables include exchange rate (ER), inflation (INF), interest rate (INT) and output growth (IP). This study uses data from the times series for the period 2019.1 to 2020.12 by including dummy variables. The first stage is to test the stationary of the data with the root test unit, and the result is that the data is only stationary in the first and second differences. In addition, the co-integration test between the variables and the results shows a co-integration relationship between the variables so that the model can be analyzed using the Error Correction Model (ECM) to see the short-term balance. The results of the ECM model analysis show that, in the short term, the only macroeconomic variables affecting the Jakarta composite index in Indonesia prior to Covid19 and the Covid19 period are only the exchange rate. In the long run before Covid19, the only ones affecting the Jakarta composite index were the exchange rate, while the eCovid19 period was the rate of exchange and inflation. Other results indicate that there is a difference in the average.
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The road performance, dynamic properties, and environment impact tests on mechanical property and environmental safety of an industrial residue waste subgrade material were evaluated. The effect of calcium carbonate on the mechanical properties and microstructure of red clay was studied by adding precipitated calcium carbonate to red clay at ratios of 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%, and then, shear tests were conducted. In the study of sorptive removal of color dye safranin O (SO) by fibrous clay minerals and zeolites, it was found that the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the minerals played a key role in SO+ removal and the sorbed SO+ cations were limited to the external surfaces of the minerals due to limited channel size of the fibrous minerals.
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Although it is widely recognized that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows have a dominant effect on economic growth of host countries, the determinants of FDI inflows are still unclear. Especially, about the effect of exchange rate on FDI inflow, the results reached by scholars vary across countries or regions. It is of great practical and theoretical significance to explore the influencing effects of exchange rate on FDI inflow and identify the mechanisms that underlie them in close association with regional economic characters so as to help local government implement targeted government policies to achieve sustainable FDI inflow and sustainable economic growth. For this purpose, the influencing effects and the influencing mechanisms of the exchange rate on FDI inflows are investigated for Zhejiang province, China, over 1985–2019 by employing the co-integration tests, vector error correction models, Granger causality tests, and impulse response tests. Empirical results indicate that there are long-term stable and unidirectional causal relationship between the exchange rate and FDI inflow. Continuous appreciation of RMB against USD discourages FDI inflow. The mechanism which underlies the long-term relationship is the wealth effect, rather than the cost effect or the demand effect. By contrast, in the short run, neither the exchange rate nor the three influencing mechanism has a significant impact on FDI inflow. These results suggest policy recommendations for improving FDI by accumulating human capital and improving infrastructure. These findings are also applicable for other countries or regions with similar economic characters.