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According to recent market research, the vaccines market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 14.7% for the forecast period of 2020-2026 (1), the growth of which has been accelerated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Durability of glass vials at very low temperatures and permeability of plastic vials has complicated the packaging decisions as well." Since the beginning of the pandemic, the bio/pharma industry has been under pressure to produce stable formulations for effective vaccines in accelerated timescales, Blouet asserts. [...]the drive for a COVID-19 vaccine has occurred during a period of increased basic scientific understanding, such as in genomics and structural biology, supporting a new wave of vaccine development and production, she says. According to Phadnis, in addition to single-use technologies, automation for high throughput and robust analytical assays are necessary for rapid turnover during development and manufacturing of vaccines.
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This paper provides a remote access control experiment for students who can't go to the campus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper utilizes the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) using LabView with the Internet of things technology to control the laboratory remotely in real-time. Remote access experiments of a Linear actuator, PID algorithm, Dynamics and Control of Second-order system response, and survey questionnaires were applied and used as an example to show how effective the research study is. The safety of the SCADA system was also considered by using the Virtual Private Network as the primary connection between the student and the server. The remote access laboratory will give a solution to the current problem of the academe for not providing a real-time laboratory equipment experiment. © 2022 IEEE.
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The sudden admission of many patients with similar needs caused by the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic forced health care centers to temporarily transform units to respond to the crisis. This process greatly impacted the daily activities of the hospitals. In this paper, we propose a two-step approach based on process mining and discrete-event simulation for sizing a recovery unit dedicated to COVID-19 patients inside a hospital. A decision aid framework is proposed to help hospital managers make crucial decisions, such as hospitalization cancellation and resource sizing, taking into account all units of the hospital. Three sources of patients are considered: (i) planned admissions, (ii) emergent admissions representing day-to-day activities, and (iii) COVID-19 admissions. Hospitalization pathways have been modeled using process mining based on synthetic medico-administrative data, and a generic model of bed transfers between units is proposed as a basis to evaluate the impact of those moves using discrete-event simulation. A practical case study in collaboration with a local hospital is presented to assess the robustness of the approach. Note to Practitioners—In this paper we develop and test a new decision-aid tool dedicated to bed management, taking into account exceptional hospitalization pathways such as COVID-19 patients. The tool enables the creation of a dedicated COVID-19 intensive care unit with specific management rules that are fine-tuned by considering the characteristics of the pandemic. Health practitioners can automatically use medico-administrative data extracted from the information system of the hospital to feed the model. Two execution modes are proposed: (i) fine-tuning of the staffed beds assignment policies through a design of experiment and (ii) simulation of user-defined scenarios. A practical case study in collaboration with a local hospital is presented. The results show that our model was able to find the strategy to minimize the number of transfers and the number of cancellations while maximizing the number of COVID-19 patients taken into care was to transfer beds to the COVID-19 ICU in batches of 12 and to cancel appointed patients using ICU when the department hit a 90% occupation rate. IEEE
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Amid concerns over airflow-induced transmission of the COVID-19 virus in buildings frequented by large numbers of people, such as offices, the necessity for radiant ceiling heating panels has increased. This is due to the concern that the airflows emitted from the convection heating systems installed near the ceiling or windows for winter heating may be a major cause of COVID-19 transmission. In this study, we aim to evaluate thermal comfort under various indoor and outdoor environmental conditions of a building and present the thermal output conditions of the radiant ceiling heating panel that can replace the convection heating system while ensuring comfort in the perimeter zone and handling the heating load. As a result, we were able to present, in a chart format, the thermal output conditions that can secure thermal comfort by analyzing the indoor airflow distribution depending on the surface temperature of the radiant ceiling heating panel, the interior surface temperature of the window, and the influence of internal heat generation. Moreover, through derived empirical formulas, we were able to determine the heating conditions of the panel that can secure the necessary heat dissipation while minimizing discomfort, such as downdrafts, even for indoor and outdoor conditions that were not evaluated in this study.
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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mandatory changes were required in the field of education, as in many other fields. One of these fields is a teacher training programme, which includes teaching practice. It has become of great importance that pre-service science teachers, who frequently include experiments in their teaching practices in face-to-face education, will carry out this process in online education. This process, experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, prompted pre-service science teachers to find something that could replace the wet labs. One of the solutions in this situation is for them to choose and use appropriate Web 2.0 tools in their online lab teaching practices. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine the Web 2.0 tools used by pre-service chemistry teachers in their online teaching practices in a distance education environment, the purposes of using these tools, and their justifications for preferences to use these tools. This study was conducted with 15 pre-service chemistry teachers. Data were collected via observations, a form filled out by the participants, and semi-structured interviews in this study. According to the results of this study, it was determined that the participants used 17 Web 2.0 tools during their online teaching practices. The findings highlighted that the most used Web 2.0 tools were Perculus+ chat, Google docs, and Quizizz. Moreover, it was determined that the participants used these tools for 21 different purposes such as drawing students' attention, getting hypotheses, and designing experiments. The results also indicated that the participants emphasised the ease of the Web 2.0 tool as a justification for the preference for almost all of the Web 2.0 tools they use, regardless of their purposes for using these tools. It is thought that the results can be used to show how to make online or face-to-face teaching practices in teacher training programmes by using Web 2.0 tools more effective in the future.
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This paper presents the procedure followed to conduct two various experiments as part of the ‘Mechanical Laboratory' course of the Mechanical Engineering department, at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, during the Covid-19 period. Adapting to the personal contact restrictions imposed by the health issue outbreak, a remote experimental method is proposed. In the first experiment, the students had to generate the operational map of a cooling computer fan while on the second one the characteristic parameters of a symmetric airfoil needed to be measured. Multifunctional control panel interfaces were introduced to the students. Through these applications, the student had the opportunity to run the experiments, assess the raw data, monitor all the necessary flow parameters and acquire the important variables. The students had to post-process the results and submit two reports, one for each experiment. This teaching method provided the students with the experience of real research project and guided them to use modern tools to enhance the quality of their future work. This publication focuses on the address of the challenges, arose during the automation of the experiments. The remote experimental sessions indicated some advantages in learning procedure which was also reflected on the assignment grades. The development of the procedure has been successfully implemented and tested over a couple of years while the quarantine measure have been in place. Furthermore, the experience gained will be used to implement modern communication protocols in the experimental set-ups.
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Since its discovery, the COVID-19 virus spread all over the world and caused millions of deaths, this paper focuses on studying the impact of the pandemic on the connected and non-connected automotive production lines. This study is developed on two production lines in an automotive manufacturing factory that assembles 700 cars per day and the study is elaborated following two main steps: firstly, studying the impact of the virus spreading on the OEE "Overall Equipment Effectiveness” of the production lines, which is a quantitative metric used for the evaluation of the line effectiveness based on availability, performance and quality, and secondly analyzing the relationship between these factors and the OEE using the Design of Experiments method © 2023, Suranaree Journal of Science and Technology.All Rights Reserved.
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When the Covid-19 pandemic reached Europe in mid-March 2020, sport was one of the first activities to be impacted. Precautions taken to limit the spread of the virus resulted in professional football matches being played without spectators. This produced the conditions of a natural experiment enabling the empirical testing of related hypotheses. Using numerous observations from the top European leagues, this study analysed the role of spectators in one of the major phenomena of sports literature - the home advantage i.e., the home team's tendency to win more often than the away team. Strong evidence of the existence of a home advantage both in pre-Covid 19 and Covid-19 periods was found. However, the difference between points earned in favour of the home teams was found to decrease in the Covid period. This was found to be statistically significant when using the Difference-in-Difference (DiD) methodology found in many existing studies. However, alternative analyses 1) using each match as a single observation, rather than adding the away teams in as a control group and 2) taking into account the difference between the performances of the competing teams in previous matches, showed the differences in favour of the home teams with and without spectators to be statistically non-significant. Therefore, it is recommended that in future studies of this kind the most realistic and comprehensive measurement model possible needs to be applied if an accurate picture is to be gained. The conclusion of this study is that, although a decrease in the home advantage was observed when games were played without spectators, it was not sufficient to make a significant difference to that advantage.
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How can instructors best foster connections among students when learning is fully remote? This article describes a pedagogical experiment conducted in two large introductory political science courses at a large public university in the 2020–2021 academic year. We randomly assigned groups of students to different sets of instructions on how to study together remotely for an exam. Our strongest finding is that almost any effort by an instructor prompting students to work together helps students to feel more connected to one another;however, students often need to see and hear one another to feel connected. We find this to be tremendously encouraging—relatively easy interventions can result in significant improvements in learning.
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Many countries are implementing distance learning in response to the Covid19 pandemic. Distance learning helped learners continue their studies as schools and universities were closed due to the pandemic. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of Covid-19 lockdown on learners' academic performance. This research focuses on the challenges faced by distance learning learners. The purpose of this study is to identify barriers to distance learning. This study applies the DEMATEL (Decision Making Test and Evaluation Institute) approach to assess the barriers faced by learners in distance learning. The DEMATEL strategy is being used to identify the key factors by identifying the interrelationships between the various factors. A quantitative survey method using a structured questionnaire was carried out. The questionnaire was administered to a cohort of 54 undergraduate engineering students of third semester (2nd year) pursuing Bachelor of Technology (Information Technology) in India. This study found that motivation, social interaction, and resource costs were assessed in causal groups with RiCi scores of 0.332, 0.1774, and 0.113, respectively. Technical concerns and administrative issues are categorized in the effect group with Ri-Ci values of-0.333 and-0.287 respectively and are the most important criteria based on first and second highest Ri+Ci values of 0.646524 and 0.59817, respectively. Our findings reveal that motivation is the most important barrier in remote teaching learning. A sense of self-motivation can be induced by organizing workshops, practical sessions and grooming sessions. The study would benefit academic institutions and learners as it would help them to enrich the remote teaching learning process. © 2022 by the authors.
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The COVID-19 pandemic caused several educational challenges. Conducting laboratory experiments was an uphill task during the pandemic. Here, we developed a low-cost and reliable home-based experimental setup to teach column and thin layer chromatography (TLC) using silica gel granules available at home. Powdered silica gel, prepared by grinding silica gel granules, was used as the stationary phase. Iso-propyl alcohol, purchased from a pharmacy, was diluted with water and used as the mobile phase. A food coloring was chromatographically separated using the designed column. Moreover, TLC plates were prepared using powdered silica gel and a drop of food coloring was separated on TLC plates using the same mobile phase. In the article, we show our experiences by providing methods used to implement this experimental setup. We assume that this experimental setup will be helpful for other universities, research institutes and schools to develop online laboratory curricula to demonstrate basic chromatography techniques required for subjects such as chemistry, biochemistry and biology.
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OBJECTIVES: To pilot an exploration of older adults' future preferences using discrete choice experiments to understand who should provide dental examinations and treatment, where these services should be provided, and participants' willingness to pay and willingness to travel. BACKGROUND: The proportion of older adults in the general population is increasing and is recognised as a pressing public health challenge. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Older people aged 65 years and over were recruited into this study from the UK, Switzerland and Greece. Drawing on earlier stakeholder engagement, a set of choice experiments are developed to explore the future preferences of older people for dental examinations and dental treatment, as they anticipated losing their independence. These were presented to the participants using a range of platforms, because of the COVID pandemic. Data were analysed in STATA using a random-effects logit model. RESULTS: Two hundred and forty-six participants (median age 70 years) completed the pilot study. There was a strong preference across all countries for a dentist to undertake a dental examination (Greece: ß = 0.944, Switzerland: ß = 0.260, UK ß = 0.791), rather than a medical doctor (Greece: ß = -0.556, Switzerland: ß = -0.4690, UK: ß = -0.468). Participants in Switzerland and the UK preferred these examinations to be undertaken in a dental practice (Switzerland: ß = 0.220, UK: ß = 0.580) while participants in Greece preferred the dental examination to be undertaken in their homes (ß = 1.172). Greek participants preferred dental treatment to be undertaken by a specialist (ß = 0.365) in their home (ß = 0.862), while participants from the UK and Switzerland preferred to avoid any dental treatment at home (Switzerland: ß = -0.387; UK: ß = -0.444). Willingness to pay analyses highlighted that participants in Switzerland and the UK were willing to pay more to ensure the continuity of future service provision at a family dental practice (Switzerland: ß = 0.454, UK: ß = 0.695). CONCLUSION: Discrete choice experiments are valuable for exploring older people's preferences for dental service provision in different countries. Future larger studies should be conducted to further explore the potential of this approach, given the pressing need to design services that are fit for purpose for older people. Continuity of dental service provision is considered as important by most older people, as they anticipate losing their dependence.
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PurposeThe interruption of on-campus teaching and learning, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, forced universities around the globe to rethink their pedagogical models and adopt innovative strategies and approaches that enabled continuity of learning. Engineering schools and faculties were faced with the challenge of how to continue to engage students with the practical component of coursework, especially in terms of lab work and experimentation, which are mandatory requirements for degree awards.Design/methodology/approachThis study documents how the Faculty of Engineering in a university in Oman engaged students with the practical component of their course during the pandemic by launching the remote DoIt@Home Lab. The DoIt@Home Lab approach included the design and development of video recorded labs, virtual labs, simulation exercises and DoIt@Home experiments which were provided to students as teaching tools and guides to conducting home experiments remotely.FindingsThis study presents the DoIt@Home Lab approach introduced to Year 2 Chemistry for engineering students. Students' grades improved by 11% over the previous year when the course was delivered face-to-face. Failure rates dropped by 8% while the number of students earning a 3.25 grade point average (GPA) or higher increased by 18%.Originality/valueThe DoIt@Home Lab for engineering courses could enhance students' learning experience and create an effective remote learning environment. While the DoIt@Home Lab was created to supplement on-campus activity in the event of a temporary disruption, it can also be used to supplement regular face-to-face program delivery.
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Laboratory practices, which represent a vital part of electrical engineering education, have especially in the last few years been subjected to numerous challenges. The paper presents a concept of upgrading the laboratory practice curriculum in power electronics by introducing computer simulations. Due to the recognized shortcomings of the previous approach, the curriculum was closely reviewed, compared to the concepts from existing literature, and intensively upgraded by the introduction of the Ansys Simplorer computer program. The intensity of the process upgrade was enhanced by the COVID‐19 pandemic and related lockdowns. The introduced curriculum changes enabled the students to approach individual topics more gradually, reducing the gaps between the behavior of ideal and real power electronics circuits. The results of student feedback, obtained by a web‐based survey and a pre‐exam quiz, demonstrate that students recognize the new approach as being more gradual and beneficial, enabling them to improve their understanding of specific phenomena and to master the topics of power electronics with ease and satisfaction.
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Conducting psychological experiments online has become popular in Japan and is useful for psychological research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies found that well-known psychological phenomena were successfully observed through online experiments. However, using recall tests, including a free recall test or a cued recall test, might be difficult in an online experiment. This is because the suggestion function, which is included in the Input Method Editor (IME), can aid recall when participants type their response. Recently, a plugin for online experiments, which might overcome this problem, was developed. However, it remains unclear if this technique is effective for psychological studies that use recall tests. Therefore, I examined whether false memory and retrieval-induced forgetting were replicated by recall tests in online experiments when the IME was bypassed by using the plugin. The results indicated that false recall and retrieval-induced forgetting were successfully observed. Given my results, online experiments using some types of recall tests can be conducted without the suggestion function. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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The Prediction of Rainfall Extremes Campaign In the Pacific (PRECIP) aims to improve our understanding of extreme rainfall processes in the East Asian summer monsoon. A convection-permitting ensemble-based data assimilation and forecast system (the PSU WRF-EnKF system) was run in real time in the summers of 2020–21 in advance of the 2022 field campaign, assimilating all-sky infrared (IR) radiances from the geostationary Himawari-8 and GOES-16 satellites, and providing 48-h ensemble forecasts every day for weather briefings and discussions. This is the first time that all-sky IR data assimilation has been performed in a real-time forecast system at a convection-permitting resolution for several seasons. Compared with retrospective forecasts that exclude all-sky IR radiances, rainfall predictions are statistically significantly improved out to at least 4–6 h for the real-time forecasts, which is comparable to the time scale of improvements gained from assimilating observations from the dense ground-based Doppler weather radars. The assimilation of all-sky IR radiances also reduced the forecast errors of large-scale environments and helped to maintain a more reasonable ensemble spread compared with the counterpart experiments that did not assimilate all-sky IR radiances. The results indicate strong potential for improving routine short-term quantitative precipitation forecasts using these high-spatiotemporal-resolution satellite observations in the future.Significance StatementDuring the summers of 2020/21, the PSU WRF-EnKF data assimilation and forecast system was run in real time in advance of the 2022 Prediction of Rainfall Extremes Campaign In the Pacific (PRECIP), assimilating all-sky (clear-sky and cloudy) infrared radiances from geostationary satellites into a numerical weather prediction model and providing ensemble forecasts. This study presents the first-of-its-kind systematic evaluation of the impacts of assimilating all-sky infrared radiances on short-term qualitative precipitation forecasts using multiyear, multiregion, real-time ensemble forecasts. Results suggest that rainfall forecasts are improved out to at least 4–6 h with the assimilation of all-sky infrared radiances, comparable to the influence of assimilating radar observations, with benefits in forecasting large-scale environments and representing atmospheric uncertainties as well.
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Misinformation is an important topic in the Information Retrieval (IR) context and has implications for both system-centered and user-centered IR. While it has been established that the performance in discerning misinformation is affected by a person's cognitive load, the variation in cognitive load in judging the veracity of news is less understood. To understand the variation in cognitive load imposed by reading news headlines related to COVID-19 claims, within the context of a fact-checking system, we conducted a within-subject, lab-based, quasi-experiment (N=40) with eye-tracking. Our results suggest that examining true claims imposed a higher cognitive load on participants when news headlines provided incorrect evidence for a claim and were inconsistent with the person's prior beliefs. In contrast, checking false claims imposed a higher cognitive load when the news headlines provided correct evidence for a claim and were consistent with the participants' prior beliefs. However, changing beliefs after examining a claim did not have a significant relationship with cognitive load while reading the news headlines. The results illustrate that reading news headlines related to true and false claims in the fact-checking context impose different levels of cognitive load. Our findings suggest that user engagement with tools for discerning misinformation needs to account for the possible variation in the mental effort involved in different information contexts. © 2023 ACM.
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The time-fractional advection–diffusion reaction equation (TFADRE) is a fundamental mathematical model because of its key role in describing various processes such as oil reservoir simulations, COVID-19 transmission, mass and energy transport, and global weather production. One of the prominent issues with time fractional differential equations is the design of efficient and stable computational schemes for fast and accurate numerical simulations. We construct in this paper, a simple and yet efficient modified fractional explicit group method (MFEGM) for solving the two-dimensional TFADRE with suitable initial and boundary conditions. The proposed method is established using a difference scheme based on L1 discretization in temporal direction and central difference approximations with double spacing in spatial direction. For comparison purposes, the Crank–Nicolson finite difference method (CNFDM) is proposed. The stability and convergence of the presented methods are theoretically proved and numerically affirmed. We illustrate the computational efficiency of the MFEGM by comparing it to the CNFDM for four numerical examples including fractional diffusion and fractional advection–diffusion models. The numerical results show that the MFEGM is capable of reducing iteration count and CPU timing effectively compared to the CNFDM, making it well-suited to time fractional diffusion equations. © 2023, The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Sociedade Brasileira de Matemática Aplicada e Computacional.
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Home-based biology experiments (HBEs) are practical learning activities that allow students to perform safe and relevant experiments at home. Motivated by the need to innovate teaching approaches in science education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this study was conducted to determine the effects of home-based biology experiments (HBEs) on their knowledge gains, self-efficacy, and perceived level of engagement. In addition, students' teachers' and parents' feedback were also investigated. This study employed a quasi-experimental research design using a mixed-method approach involving a pre-test/post-test design in which ten teacher-collaborators and 836 pupils participated. Fifteen-item teacher-made parallel tests and the 38-item perceptions, self-efficacy and engagement questionnaire were distributed via Google Forms. Results revealed that most participants strongly agreed that HBEs were lesson congruent and risk-free, the materials were readily available, and it was fun and challenging (M=3.56, SD=0.77). Moreover, HBEs were found to be effective in improving pupils' knowledge gains (T=119, z=-4.56, p=0.04), self-efficacy (M=3.36, SD=0.71), and perceived level of engagement (M=3.45, SD=0.69). Responses were significantly different when grouped according to grade level, gender, and type of HBEs used. The results of thematic analysis were categorised as "Affordances" and "Constraints". Six subthemes emerged from the Affordances: "Safety", "Feasibility", "Independent Learning", "Learning Material", and "Affordability", while there were four subthemes for "Constraints": "Expenses", "Student Interaction", "Availability", and "Time Management". It can be concluded that home-based biology experiments are effective and relevant teaching strategies to deliver practical learning in the distance learning modality. © 2023,Journal of Turkish Science Education. All Rights Reserved.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly strained online food delivery services (OFDS) globally. This has challenged OFDS businesses to redesign and deploy technologies to meet customer demand. The purpose of this article is to identify the optimal factors contributing to customer experience with OFDS services during a black swan event such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We followed a four-step research design to identify the optimal factors for OFDS. First, we identified the major episodes in the OFDS process. Second, these episodes were evaluated by customers using the sequential incidence technique. Third, we used an orthogonal design to analyze the episodes at different levels based on customer preferences. Finally, we used the Taguchi approach to calculate the signal-to-noise ratios and identify the optimal factors and their preferred levels. We classify the optimal factors into customer-oriented and service-provider-oriented propositions. The option to select the delivery person and delivery conditions was found to be the most optimal customer-oriented attribute. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of the study and suggest major avenues for digital transformations in OFDS for better customer experience. IEEE