ABSTRACT
During a global pandemic, mitigating the impact of the disease and coordinating efforts to manage not only the medical but also the logistical and administrative aspects of such an all-encompassing phenomenon are of paramount importance. An extremely important but less publicised issue in this context is laboratory management and safety in analytical laboratories. In times of high capacity utilisation, as is the case during a pandemic or endemic outbreak of disease, other routine processes have to be abbreviated or are cancelled altogether due to lack of planning owing to the rapid emergence of the outbreak. In order to achieve high level of cleanliness in laboratories of all shapes and sizes and with different requirements, a universal solution seems unimaginable. Our experiments show a promising, automated approach of disinfection of various spaces. Within a short timeframe of 1 h – 3 h it is possible to disinfect any desired room to achieve a laboratory grade hygiene status. This was proven by employing biological indicators validated for this procedure. The tested technology reduced the indicator germs by a concentration of the mathematical log 6 reduction. Achieving this high level of cleanliness is possible by assigning a single person to the task for the set-up at the scene. Steering and monitoring of the process can be done remotely. While the machine used in our experiments is not a completely new concept, our experiments in a real-life setting such as laboratories and clinics alike, show that the applied hydrogen peroxide vapour distributed by a specialized fogger, disinfects even hard to reach spots within closed-off spaces. This program can be performed while automated (PCR) machines are running and highly trained personnel can apply their expertise elsewhere. Moreover, while the program is running real-time data is available and the process can be remotely monitored and steered digitally. It is of major concern to ensure maintainability of infrastructure e.g. COVID labs, ambulances, laboratories or veterinary practitioners to ensure treatment of directly and indirectly related health issues within a crisis. We concentrated on evaluating the usability of the disinfection technology presented in real-life settings. © 2022 IDIMT. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19, a disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, affected the whole world in 2020 by its pandemic impact. This virus has a very high capacity for contamination through contact with other infected people. One of the main ways to fight the virus is to reduce the possibility of contact with the infected population by avoiding the crowding of people. Within this context, the virtual means of communication are being channels of information about the pandemic and also the externalization of users' feelings and opinions. Through social networks, people assume the role of content generators and not just consumers. This leaves room for the spread of misinformation, biased news, and rumors that are originated from laymanship, political and commercial interests. This work aims to characterize how fact-checking agencies have reacted in the combat against false information about COVID-19 on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, seeking to broaden the understanding of misinformation propagated over the internet. During the study, we collected fact-checking articles about COVID-19 written by experts from different countries. Through the verified news, we searched social media posts which misinformation began to be spread. After collecting this data, it was verified how long it took the fact-checking agencies to analyze the veracity of the news. In addition, the texts were processed to detect whether the topics being dealt with by the agencies are, in fact, those with the greatest engagement of users within the analyzed social networks, and also the presence of bots on social media. We compared the collection of fact-checking provided by the Poynter Institute and Google's Fact-Checking API, to identify a uniformity between the databases. The results showed that the response time of agencies was around 23 days in the case of misinformation on Twitter and approximately 6 days on Facebook. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
The Inclusive Engineering Consortium (IEC) planned a full-day workshop for its members in March 2020 to test ideas developed within the organization to more fully and productively engage joint PWI-MSI teams in the US education and research enterprise. The IEC is a novel collaboration among nearly 20 MSIs, most of whom participated in an NSF funded multi-year, engineering education project. This new organization was built on the idea that this collaboration can be leveraged and moved to the next level to provide higher capacity building at each of the consortium members. The hypothesis is that there are windows of opportunity open through establishment of research and educational collaborations between its MSI members with PWI research-intensive institutions. This is especially true since its member institutions serve a unique population of minority students. The IEC is developing the infrastructure and programs to facilitate collaborations between faculty, students and staff in its member departments, based on lessons learned from the previous educational program and, more generally, on the Science of Team Science. It is also addressing how best to build a different type of team structure with PWIs, industry, and other external constituencies. For each type of partner, a process is being defined and tools are being addressed. The purpose of the planned workshop activities was to test the collaboration process and tools by actively engaging partner faculty with PWI department heads and other faculty. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the original plan to hold an in-person workshop. There was no choice but to transition to an environment where interactions, engagement, and networking could still be achieved, albeit virtually. Discussion topics were developed for a series of online, mini-workshops, to be held over several months, with contents and aims similar to the original project. The notable exceptions related to the switch to online education experienced by all partners when their campuses closed in the spring and the urgent need to address anti-racism in engineering education. The overall IEC vision is to be a collaboration of Minority Serving Institutions Working as One to Advance the ECE Enterprise. It is organized as a virtual super department with broadly based strengths in education, scholarship and service. Collectively, it can function as the equal of any ECE program, accomplish more and have a greater impact on its students, faculty and staff through access to resources and opportunities not available individually. It is essential that both its partners and representatives of PWIs work together to realize its grand vision of research and educational collaboration of teams from its partners working as equals with faculty, staff and students from PWIs. This workshop series is a major step in testing out ideas developed within the organization to more fully and productively engage joint PWI-MSI teams in the US education and research enterprise;graduate more and better prepared minority engineers;increase efficiency and productivity at MSIs;and develop a sustainable and effective infrastructure to support minority students, faculty and staff at all universities. In time, the group will grow and the model being developed can be replicated and implemented for other disciplines. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
Secure updating and sharing for large amounts of healthcare information (such as medical data on coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19]) in efficient and secure transmission are important but challenging in communication channels amongst hospitals. In particular, in addressing the above challenges, two issues are faced, namely, those related to confidentiality and integrity of their health data and to network failure that may cause concerns about data availability. To the authors' knowledge, no study provides secure updating and sharing solution for large amounts of healthcare information in communication channels amongst hospitals. Therefore, this study proposes and discusses a novel steganography-based blockchain method in the spatial domain as a solution. The novelty of the proposed method is the removal and addition of new particles in the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm. In addition, hash function can hide secret medical COVID-19 data in hospital databases whilst providing confidentiality with high embedding capacity and high image quality. Moreover, stego images with hash data and blockchain technology are used in updating and sharing medical COVID-19 data between hospitals in the network to improve the level of confidentiality and protect the integrity of medical COVID-19 data in grey-scale images, achieve data availability if any connection failure occurs in a single point of the network and eliminate the central point (third party) in the network during transmission. The proposed method is discussed in three stages. Firstly, the pre-hiding stage estimates the embedding capacity of each host image. Secondly, the secret COVID-19 data hiding stage uses PSO algorithm and hash function. Thirdly, the transmission stage transfers the stego images based on blockchain technology and updates all nodes (hospitals) in the network. As proof of concept for the case study, the authors adopted the latest COVID-19 research published in the Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine journal, which presents a rescue framework within hospitals for the storage and transfusion of the best convalescent plasma to the most critical patients with COVID-19 on the basis of biological requirements. The validation and evaluation of the proposed method are discussed.