ABSTRACT
Gold (Au) nanoclusters (NCs) are novel materials with low cytotoxicity and high chemical stability. These properties are in high demand during the bioimaging. Moreover, the optical properties of gold clusters allow to use them as colorimetric and luminescent bionanosensors. Pterins are low molecular weight organic compounds, which are used in medicine as biomarkers of phenylketonuria, vitiligo, inflammation and immune system activation, cancer, COVID-19, etc. We have investigated the possibility of gold nanosensors usage to detect pterin (Ptr). Ptr-Aunq structures (n = 1–6;q = 0–2) Gibbs energy of complexation (Eb) have been obtained using density functional theory. The highest Eb was determined for the complexes of Au62+ and Au32+ in acidic and alkaline aqueous solution, respectively. The detection of pterin with gold clusters seems to be prospective using both colorimetric and fluorescent detection because of the intense S0→S1 transition in the absorption spectrum of the Au5+ complex. Raman detection of pterin should be performed at alkaline pH because of the dramatic changes in the spectrum of Ptr−1 upon the addition of Au clusters. We believe that these tunable changes of the pterin spectra due to Au clusters and nanoparticles attachment could be exploited in further studies on nanosensor design. © 2023
ABSTRACT
Healthcare is a limited resource that is constantly in high demand because everyone requires it. When demand exceeds supply, resources become relatively scarce, making the overall resource allocation in healthcare even more difficult, as we have seen at the time of COVID-19. Effective resource allocation faces obstacles such as a lack of trained human resources, inefficient resource use, a lack of focus on improvement, and inefficient resource reallocation. This paper will outline a study of the numerous approaches to resource allocation in healthcare, outlining the methods employed, the outcomes, and benefits and drawbacks of each approach. In order to address any kind of emergency situation that may arise in the future, it was our goal to pinpoint the research gap between the work that had already been done and the solution to this problem through the survey analysis. In order to boost hospital resource management, the paper identifies a variety of potential solutions which can be categorized further into subcategories which can be seen through different perspectives and a range of approaches that can be implemented during COVID-19 or in any other emergency condition. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In addition to the massive home office, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought an enormous increase in the popularity of outdoor activities. This was also reflected in the very high demand for bicycles and accessories for cyclists, which led to the groundswell effect and an increase in fan interaction and engagement within the social media profiles of bicycle manufacturers. The research design in the present paper contains a consistent and synergistically balanced share of qualitative and quantitative methods. Within the theoretical background, methods of analysis of sources from leading authors are used, especially from articles based on leading scientific journals and proceedings. The practical part uses quantitative methods in the form of data collection through the tools Zoomsphere and Socialblade. The selection of assessed business entities consisted of a ranking of profitability and evaluation according to the leading portal designed for the segment of cyclists. The findings point to the content structure of profiles on social media in the segment of bicycle manufacturers. They also point to the content structure of the best contributions on these social media and to the recommendations in the form of categories for the bicycle manufacturers segment. The authors also define the best types of posts for future content in that segment. Domestic and global businesses in this segment require knowledge of the laws on social media in the form of user behavior and the groundswell effect. The limits of the findings are in the selection of business entities, which were selected on the basis of profitability and evaluation according to the leading cycling portal, also within the limits of social media analysis and management tools. Despite the above facts, the added value exceeds the limits within the author's contribution. The originality of the paper is based mainly on the fact that the selected segment from the point of view of the groundswell effect is unexplored. It is important to examine this segment, especially due to the high demand for products in this segment and the relentless interest in the form of user interactions. © The Authors, (2022). All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission may be made without written permission from the individual authors.
ABSTRACT
Traditionally the furniture market in Brazil is owned by family businesses and of national origin, with few exceptions. Based on this premise and the high demand promoted, especially in the Covid-19 pandemic, the market has adapted to the growing demand for residential furniture. Therefore, a conceptual restructuring needs to be carried out due to the great variability of products in the same factory, driven by the target audience, which goes beyond the traditional concepts of factory standardization and enables a new way of thinking according to the demand for products offered by catalog and/or bespoke. In addition, as they are family businesses, there is an inherent risk of closing activities due to the lack of family motivation of the following generations linked to the lack of knowledge to update manufacturing processes. This article concludes that the variability of products offered in each factory is a high option. New concepts must be adopted from handcrafted to manual transition. And, with positional and functional factory configurations, ensuring high efficiency and quality concerning the degree of difficulty, associated with the characteristics of furniture dealerships. To get success, the companies must be directed towards the sustainable production chain to the companies involved. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Due to the recent and ongoing pandemic - COVID-19 - there was an urgency to determine a method to delay the continuously rapid development of the new virus. As a result, Ultraviolet-C (UVC) light, also known as Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation (UVGI), has been in higher demand because of its known ability to disinfect quickly and effectively. However, because of its short wavelength/higher energy, either 222nm or 254nm, material degradation is usually much more accelerated than Ultraviolet-A (UVA) or Ultraviolet-B (UVB). At this moment, this study only observed color change when exposing polystyrene to UVC light, and it is believed that this is one of the first studies, if not the first, conducted with this material. Polystyrene was selected because of its availability, abundance of relevant research (ie. UVA/UVB exposure results), and its use in weathering standards. Additionally, since there are no standards specifically about UVC exposure, this preliminary research may provide some direction. © 2022 Society of Plastics Engineers. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
As SARS-COV-2 or COVID-19 (COVID) increasingly spread across the world, nurses in the United States increasingly became at risk for contagion, as well as experiencing higher levels of anxiety and concerns related to safety in the workplace. The rise of COVID and the underlying desire to secure protections for healthcare workers created a higher demand for technology and online workspaces where clinicians can provide sustainable care for patients while also reinforcing the need for staff safety. To streamline the patient discharge process, increase patient safety, comprehension, and satisfaction, while simultaneously preventing undesirable readmission rates, a Virtual Nurse application, via remote monitoring and video capabilities, is expected to take over indirect patient tasks such as patient education, discharge instructions, pain monitoring, telemonitoring, communication with the primary nurse and others. By automation, the Virtual Nurse will alleviate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, thus, freeing up nurses to focus on direct patient care tasks and human-to-human quality interaction. This study strives to investigate the feasibility of the implementation of a Virtual Nurse role in the patient discharge process performed at a large healthcare system. This study will start by presenting a brief literature review focused on the technologies currently being employed in healthcare settings around the U.S. Our study aims to present the methodologies utilized in data acquisition and analysis, as well as population sample characteristics. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Traditionally the furniture market in Brazil is owned by family businesses and of national origin, with few exceptions. Based on this premise and the high demand promoted, especially in the Covid-19 pandemic, the market has adapted to the growing demand for residential furniture. Therefore, a conceptual restructuring needs to be carried out due to the great variability of products in the same factory, driven by the target audience, which goes beyond the traditional concepts of factory standardization and enables a new way of thinking according to the demand for products offered by catalog and/or bespoke. In addition, as they are family businesses, there is an inherent risk of closing activities due to the lack of family motivation of the following generations linked to the lack of knowledge to update manufacturing processes. This article concludes that the variability of products offered in each factory is a high option. New concepts must be adopted from handcrafted to manual transition. And, with positional and functional factory configurations, ensuring high efficiency and quality concerning the degree of difficulty, associated with the characteristics of furniture dealerships. To get success, the companies must be directed towards the sustainable production chain to the companies involved. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The high demand for Covid-19 vaccines due to the pandemic increases the need for vaccine transportation and storage worldwide, and a cold chain is often required for many vaccines. The existing cold chains are confronting some obstacles today but are facing many great opportunities at the same time with the emerging new technologies. This paper aims to address the trend of modern cold chain management of vaccine logistics through a literature review on the topic of Covid-19 vaccine transportation and storage. Empirical studies are needed in future research. The transportation and storage of the Covid-19 vaccines are important for the overall vaccine administrations and can save large amounts of money and lives when improved. Failures of the cold chain can lead to great economic loss and damage of the vaccine potency;therefore, it is essential to study the characteristics of the current cold chain and how related innovations influence its development. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The present study answers the question of how prepared the world was in school distance education. The situation of primary and secondary education is deepened around experiences in distance education focused on students, in the period that includes the decade between 2010 and 2019. Designs and modalities of distance education, types of interaction, recurring themes, and impact of reported experiences were analyzed. The results reveal a low preparation in distance school education, compared to the high demand for online education that has arisen since the COVID-19 pandemic. The blended learning design appears as the most used modality, while the type of asynchronous interaction was the most frequent before the pandemic. In addition, differences are recognized in the impacts reported in the analyzed literature, which allows establishing a type of impact that includes distance education as its independent variable, and another that considers it as a more contextual element while studying the relationships between other variables. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 health crisis, hospitals around the world needed to stock up on resources to satisfy the high demand from patients. Peru was one of the countries most affected by the pandemic due to its fragile health system that led it to be the country with the highest mortality rate in the world with 554 deaths per million inhabitants. For this reason, it was imperative to implement measures to mitigate the state of emergency, such as the allocation of health resources to hospitals in all regions of the country. This research aimed to measure the efficiency of the Peruvian regions in the management of hospital resources against COVID-19 at the end of the year 2020. The two stage DEA model, the Data Envelopment Analysis in the first stage was used to estimate the efficiency and the Logit regression model in the second stage to find the incidence of internal and external factors. To this end, the variables number of doctors, number of nurses, oxygen, number of medications, number of COVID tests, number of positive cases, ICU beds available as inputs, and as outputs the mortality rate and recovery rate were selected;then, 8 models were formulated that grouped these variables sequentially to estimate efficiency. Results indicated that 53.33% of the regions were inefficient in all the proposed models, only Amazonas and Huancavelica regions were efficient in 2020, when comparing the average efficiency of each model, it was possible to distinguish that the internal variables of the number of nurses and oxygen causes a significant change in efficiency. Logit regression concluded that the number of nurses and the total population are significant influencing variables, while the external variable GDP per capita had a negative effect on the efficiency scores. Important findings show a notable deficiency in the use of human resources and poor management of investment in health resources to face the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 outbreak tremendously increased the online purchase behaviour of consumers in most parts of the globe, induced higher demand for the delivery staff, and eventually resulted in a stricter working condition and shortage of delivery staff. Seldom research focuses on this emerging delivery workers' woes. This research embarks on a case study to appraise delivery workers' effectiveness, obstacles, and scenarios as unfolded and encountered during the COVID-19 period. The study analyses the factors that influence the delivery works in various sectors' workplace settings and makes recommendations for the logistics sector's digital transformation, particularly for firms that manage courier services, distribution centres, and e-commerce websites. The Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is utilised to create a proposal to assist the companies in avoiding similar future risks, particularly from parcel delivery staff. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is in high demand across all industries these days. Through the years, AI has made significant progress and has revolutionized the landscape of healthcare, lifestyle, learning, and other everyday interactions by providing amazing solutions to every area and every firm. The need for vaccination against the SARS-CoV-2 virus is of the utmost importance as the virus is highly contagious. In the following, we try to discuss the various methods through which AI can bring about a change in the process of vaccinating the world population and how it can enhance the whole vaccination ecosystem © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Undoubtedly, the Covid-19 outbreak has significantly increased the opportunity for online shopping, creating higher demand for internet banking. Noticeably customer expectations on digitisation of banking have been accelerated by the pro-longed pandemic. Thus, with the increasing popularity of internet banking during the COVID19 pandemic, the researchers are motivated to examine the factors influencing the intention to use internet banking in Indonesia. A total of 387 responses were collected using the Google form and then analysed using SmartPLS 3.3. Application. Using the purposive sampling technique, the questionnaires were distributed from November 4, 2021, to November 29, 2021, via social networks such as Discord, Instagram and Line. The underpinning theory of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is applied in this study. The result shows that 3 hypotheses were rejected. Namely, personal innovativeness to intention to use, the subjective norm to intention to use internet banking, and perceived risk to intention to use internet banking. While the rest, such as perceived usefulness to intention to use;subjective norm to perceived usefulness;perceived ease of use to intention to use;trust to intention to use;and attitude to intention to use were accepted as they directly or indirectly have a positive effect on the usage intention of internet banking in Indonesia. The findings of this research may contribute some new insights for Indonesian e-commerce operators, practitioners, e-vendors and various companies that may have an intention to extend or transform their businesses into an online model © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The majority of language domains require prudent use of terminology to ensure clarity and adequacy of information conveyed. While the correct use of terminology for some languages and domains can be achieved by adapting general-purpose MT systems on large volumes of in-domain parallel data, such quantities of domain-specific data are seldom available for less-resourced languages and niche domains. Furthermore, as exemplified by COVID-19 recently, no domain-specific parallel data is readily available for emerging domains. However, the gravity of this recent calamity created a high demand for reliable translation of critical information regarding pandemic and infection prevention. This work is part of WMT2021 Shared Task: Machine Translation using Terminologies, where we describe Tilde MT systems that are capable of dynamic terminology integration at the time of translation. Our systems achieve up to 94% COVID-19 term use accuracy on the test set of the EN-FR language pair without having access to any form of in-domain information during system training. We conclude our work with a broader discussion considering the Shared Task itself and terminology translation in MT. © 2021 Association for Computational Linguistics
ABSTRACT
Technology brought several advancements to the Educational area in the past few years, including digital resources such as Open Educational Resources (OER). However, higher demand associated with the lack of platforms that facilitate the search and sharing of these resources is an impeditive factor, often causing the devaluation and loss of these materials. This article presents ReaCloud, a digital repository designed to index OERs, improve the usability of adding OERs, and aligned with Brazilian standards for k-12 education. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Hosting weddings, graduation dinners, teacher appreciation banquets, family banquets and other activities at hotels are very popular in mainland China, the income of banquets and weddings has been considered as a major revenue generator for the hotels. With the high demand for weddings, Yixing Hotel opened three new banquet halls in 2018 and started to use outsourcing employees to assist in serving wedding banquets. This study collected the history data of hotel internal employee surveys and wedding customer surveys to identify the impact of wedding banquet labor outsourcing on customers and internal employees in terms of happiness and satisfaction. The primary data was conducted monthly from October 2018 to March 2021 through SINOTRUST, a consulting company. From February to April of 2020 were not considered in the analysis because these three months had no wedding banquet due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, a total amount of 26 cases were sorted out in the sample. To test the hypotheses, this study used the classic linear regression model and empirical model and conducted the factor analysis and the regression analysis. The results of this study identified that outsourcing activities affected the happiness and satisfaction of wedding banquet customers;the outsourcing activity has a negative effect on internal employees' happiness and job satisfaction through three dimensions-colleague relationships, job security, and reasonableness of work assignments. Through the case study, the managerial implications and theoretical implications are provided to Yixing and similar-Type hotels regarding the aforementioned dimensions. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has influenced business operations all around the world, with the adoption of technology to sustain business operations and improve survival being on the rise across various sectors. This review was conducted to explore existing literature to uncover the effects that COVID-19 has had on Internet of Things (IoT) technology adoption, innovation, or research. The review was conducted through a search of literature sources detailing the impacts, the IoT technologies and solutions used as a result of the pandemic, and the various technologies and solutions that were invented before the pandemic but found higher demands because of the pandemic. The review reveals that COVID-19 has increased the adoption of IoT technology by more companies across diverse fields including healthcare, smart homes, smart offices, retail, airports, manufacturing, and hospitality. It also reveals that most businesses had plans for the gradual adoption of the IoT technologies that were already in existence before the pandemic but were pushed to procure and implement them as necessity arose. The review finally reveals that there are more IoT research and development efforts as a result of the pandemic. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The dramatic change in various spheres of daily life caused by the COVID-19 virus epidemic has had many ambiguous effects on the Latvian fisheries sector. As part of a national research program project reCOVery-LV to study the virus’s effect on the supply chain, LLU researchers concluded that Latvian fish processing demonstrates a multidirectional effect. The interpretation of statistics and the interviews conducted confirmed the hypothesis that the virus has had negative and positive effects within one sector of the economy. This industry heterogeneity places high demands on support criteria, making them more targeted for successful risk management. The research aims to analyze the fishery sector and identify the COVID-19 pandemic effect on Latvia’s fish sector. As part of the study, all stages of the fish food chain were studied, risks were identified, their relative relevance was determined, and measures were proposed to neutralize these risks. This article summarizes the results of the study, prioritizes the implementation of countermeasures that reduce risks and are recommended by the results of the risk assessment, and complement the results of the study, identifies measures aimed at the long-term and sustainable development of the industry, based on the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2021, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Early identification of patients with COVID-19 is essential to enable adequate treatment and to reduce the burden on the health system. The gold standard for COVID-19 detection is the use of RT-PCR tests. However, due to the high demand for tests, these can take days or even weeks in some regions of Brazil. Thus, an alternative for detecting COVID-19 is the analysis of Digital Chest X-rays (XR). Changes due to COVID-19 can be detected in XR, even in asymptomatic patients. In this context, models based on deep learning have great potential to be used as support systems for diagnosis or as screening tools. In this paper, we propose the evaluation of convolutional neural networks to identify pneumonia due to COVID-19 in XR. The proposed methodology consists of a preprocessing step of the XR, data augmentation, and classification by the convolutional architectures DenseNet121, InceptionResNetV2, InceptionV3, MovileNetV2, ResNet50, and VGG16 pre-trained with the ImageNet dataset. The obtained results for our methodology demonstrate that the VGG16 architecture presented a superior performance in the classification of XR, with an Accuracy of 85.11 %, Sensitivity of 85.25 %, Specificity of 85.16 %, F1-score of 85.03 %, and an AUC of 0.9758. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The use of water is a very important economic and environmental factor in all industrial sectors since the improvement in its use offers an optimization of this resource. The waste of water usually causes damages firstly to the environment by the supply sources, then to the industries by its high demand and to the hydrosanitary sources that the houses have. The valves have some control that allows a more comfortable use of this resource in sinks that provides some savings. Currently, there are valves that usually replace the traditional ones due to their automatic and/or mechanical operation, which allows for innovation and savings of this resource. In this sense, this research is oriented to the design of a mechanical pedal valve that allows a more comfortable and controlled control, thus granting the operator control in an immediate way, without wasting the fluid in the middle of the washing and avoiding a manual contact that in a certain way dissipates the risk of contagion of diseases such as Covid-19 by direct manipulation. An analytical methodology supported by computer aided drafting programs such as Ansys Fluent and SolidWorks was used. Finally, it was determined that, for the dynamic and static studies, the designed valve complies with the Colombian technical standard and the static design factors. © 2021 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.