Mindfulness and COVID-19-Related Stress: Staying Present During Uncertain Times.

Objectives: The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic is recognized as a mass traumatic event in which COVID-19-related stress (CS) can indicate other trauma- and/or stressor-related disorder. The facets of mindfulness (observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreacting) have been linked to reductions in stress-related symptoms and thus may protect against CS. We extended previous research by evaluating mindfulness facets as resilience skills negatively related to CS. Method: Undergraduate students (n = 495) completed an online battery of questionnaires. A subsample of students endorsing clinically elevated CS (n = 165) was also evaluated. We utilized hierarchical regression to account statistically for the mindfulness facets in addition to indicators of psychological distress (e.g., negative affect, neuroticism, dissociation) and social desirability. We performed analyses twice, once in the overall sample, and once in the high CS subsample. Results: Less observing and greater nonjudging related to reduced CS while other study variables were controlled for in the overall sample. In contrast, acting with awareness and nonjudging negatively related to CS in the subsample, but were not related to CS when we accounted for psychological-distress variables that positively related to CS in the analysis. Conclusions: Although variables indicative of psychological distress robustly contribute to CS, observing, acting with awareness, and nonjudging may be mindfulness skills that can be targeted to buffer clinically significant CS. Preregistration: This study was not pre-registered.

Identifying Park Spatial Characteristics That Encourage Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity among Park Visitors

The general consensus is that physical activity can prevent and manage lifestyle-induced chronic diseases, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) has been included in several guidelines of WHO as an indicative intensity standard. Numerous studies have confirmed that improving the spatial quality of urban parks can be very helpful in supporting physical activities, and that the quality of parks is significantly related to the intensity of physical activities. However, few studies have explored the spatial characteristics of activating physical activities. Using a modified System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC), this study examines the relationship between spatial characteristics and MVPA through a binary logistic regression model. The results reveal that: firstly, inconsistent with other similar studies, the most observed group in the park is the adults rather than the seniors, and the proportion of the females (51%) is higher;secondly, the distribution of MVPA in different groups shows that the seniors have less interaction with other groups, and they have a significant spatial attachment. Thirdly, in functionality, large lawn and jogging trails have been proved to be the most effective features to promote the occurrence of MVPA;among the activity, except for the significant correlation between equipped and MVPA, other attributes can be proved to encourage MVPA as well as those in comfort. In conclusion, our results can contribute to the planning and design of the urban park as well as the further management and allocation of the space and facilities under the vision of promoting public health. © 2023 by the authors.

Effects of the Pandemic on Observing the Global Ocean

The years since 2000 have been a golden age in in situ ocean observing with the proliferation and organization of autonomous platforms such as surface drogued buoys and subsurface Argo profiling floats augmenting ship-based observations. Global time series of mean sea surface temperature and ocean heat content are routinely calculated based on data from these platforms, enhancing our understanding of the ocean's role in Earth's climate system. Individual measurements of meteorological, sea surface, and subsurface variables directly improve our understanding of the Earth system, weather forecasting, and climate projections. They also provide the data necessary for validating and calibrating satellite observations. Maintaining this ocean observing system has been a technological, logistical, and funding challenge. The global COVID-19 pandemic, which took hold in 2020, added strain to the maintenance of the observing system. A survey of the contributing components of the observing system illustrates the impacts of the pandemic from January 2020 through December 2021. The pandemic did not reduce the short-term geographic coverage (days to months) capabilities mainly due to the continuation of autonomous platform observations. In contrast, the pandemic caused critical loss to longer-term (years to decades) observations, greatly impairing the monitoring of such crucial variables as ocean carbon and the state of the deep ocean. So, while the observing system has held under the stress of the pandemic, work must be done to restore the interrupted replenishment of the autonomous components and plan for more resilient methods to support components of the system that rely on cruise-based measurements. © 2023 American Meteorological Society.

Transformation of geological sciences and geological engineering field methods course to remote delivery using manual, virtual, and blended tools in fall 2020

Geological (Engineering) Field Methods (GEOE/L 221) is a core course for two programs at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where students learn foundational knowledge, skills, and methods to conduct fieldwork that is used to investigate geological and geological engineering aspects of the Earth. Typically, this fall-term course involves weekly field trips in the Kingston area to visit a variety of rock outcrops to learn and practice methods of field navigation, observation, and measurement. Remote delivery of this course in fall 2020 due to COVID-19, without in-person field trips, required a significant transformation, which included creating field and demonstration instructional videos, using 3D digital photogrammetry models of rock samples and outcrops, developing independent outdoor activities for pace and compass navigation, manual sketching, and graphical measurements on paper, and utilizing a culminating immersive 3D video-game-style geological field mapping exercise. This paper examines these new course elements, how well the course learning objectives were achieved in a remote setting, and the successes and limitations of remote delivery. Although many new virtual elements enhance the course, and some have been incorporated into subsequent in-person offerings, a return to in-person teaching for geological sciences and geological engineering field methods courses is strongly recommended.

Broadening Access to Remote Observing at W. M. Keck Observatory

The remote observing system at W. M. Keck Observatory has been in place for more than 20 years, but prior to 2020, it had focused on providing observing access only to observers physically located at a prescribed set of formal sites, typically dedicated rooms located at member universities in the Keck partnership. The Novel Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 forced a rapid and drastic change in the philosophy and design of the Keck remote observing system. These changes were made in two phases. The first phase could be characterized as triage or emergency response, while the second phase focused on longer term issues such as security, staff support, and maintainability of the system.

Determinants of observing health protocols related to preventing COVID-19 in adult women: A qualitative study in Iran.

Background: The best way to prevent COVID-19 is to observe health protocols. Therefore, identifying the reasons of following these protocols in order to plan and make intervention seems necessary. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the determinants of observing health protocols related to prevention of COVID-19 among the Iranian adult women with a qualitative approach. Method: In this qualitative study, the conventional content analysis approach was used. saturation was obtained after face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 38 women from Kermanshah who were selected through purposeful sampling and snowball sampling. Guba and Lincoln criteria were used for the strength of the research and Graneheim and Lundman method was used for its analysis. Results: After analyzing the interviews, 5 categories, 12 subcategories and 110 initial codes were obtained. Categories and sub-categories were: 1- Individual factors (personality traits, health literacy about COVID-19); 2- Perceived risk having underlying disease in oneself and family, history of getting COVID-19 and death in close relatives; 3- Fear of the destructive consequences of the disease (concern about the economic consequences of getting the disease, concern about the treatment process); 4- Social and cultural factors (social monitoring, religious insight, ability to properly manage social interactions, impressionability from important others); 5- Environmental factors (supportive living environment, access to health and anti-infective materials). Conclusion: Increasing the adherence of adult women to health instructions related to COVID-19 requires interventions at different levels of individual, environmental and social, and without accurate knowledge of the customs and culture of a society effective interventions cannot be established.

Paired ski-touring and tandem-ethnography: An investigative account of a fortuitous methodology

Two joint ethnographic investigations into the same practice, ski touring in the Alps, invited two researchers to meet and carry out an investigation in tandem. This article aims to follow the reflexive account of this investigation in order to recreate the context and the methodological issues. By comparing ethnographic descriptions resulting from the subjective experiences of the situations shared by the investigators, a series of asymmetries and convergences in each person's feelings and observations will be brought to light. Moreover, carrying out this contrastive analysis of the field experiences required the implementation of an ad-hoc methodological device. The present essay therefore looks back at its development and application in order to highlight the heuristic scope of a method based on a cross-fertilization of ethnographic perspectives. Finally, it will show how, by being confronted with their own framings, each investigator gained a valuable reflexivity to pursue their research.

Trilateral Water Quality Monitoring from Space during Covid-19

In order to control the spread of the pandemic of Corona-Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), lockdowns of various durations and intensities have been established in many countries over the world all through the year 2020. The trilateral dashboard jointly implemented by NASA, JAXA and ESA aims at exploiting remote-sensing data to evaluate the impact of these restrictions, and subsequent recovery phases on many different environmental, agriculture and economic indicators. More specifically, this paper presents the indicators implemented to monitor the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on Water Quality, together with preliminary analysis results over a few Areas of Interest. © 2021 IEEE.

COVID-19 IMPACT MONITORING FOR CLIMATE ENVIRONMENT (GREENHOUSE GASES)

To track atmospheric CO2 changes resulting from the lockdowns, observations collected by the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite and Japan's Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) in 2020 were compared to results collected in previous years. The OCO-2 results were used to search for changes on regional scales over the globe. Targeted observations from GOSAT were used to track changes in large urban areas, such as Beijing and Tokyo. Both types of observations yielded key insights into the CO2 changes accompanying the economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns. ESA, NASA and JAXA developed the dashboard jointly to monitor the climate impacts of COVID-19. © 2021 IEEE

Teaching Parasitology Lab Remotely Using Livestreaming

Teaching biology laboratories remotely presents unique problems and challenges for instructors. Microscopic examination of specimens, as is common in parasitology labs, is especially difficult given the limited quantity of teaching specimens and the need for each student to have access to a microscope at their remote location. Observing images of parasites on the internet coupled with written exercises, while useful, is unrepresentative of real-world laboratory or field conditions. To provide a more realistic microscopy-centered synchronous experience for our parasitology class during the coronavirus pandemic, we used a smartphone mounted on a student microscope to livestream examination of parasite specimens to remote students via the Webex meeting app. This allowed two instructors, working from separate locations, to present and narrate the view of the specimens through the microscope in real time to the remotely located class. While less than ideal, livestreaming microscopic views of parasite specimens together with simultaneous instructor narration provided a reasonable remote substitute for a hands-on parasitology lab experience.

Allostatic load in the context of disasters.

Environmental disasters, pandemics, and other major traumatic events such as the Covid-19 pandemic or war contribute to psychosocial stress which manifests in a wide range of mental and physical consequences. The increasing frequency and severity of such events suggest that the adverse effects of toxic stress are likely to become more widespread and pervasive in the future. The allostatic load (AL) model has important elements that lend themselves well for identifying adverse health effects of disasters. Here we examine several articulations of AL from the standpoint of using AL to gauge short- and long-term health effects of disasters and to provide predictive capacity that would enable mitigation or prevention of some disaster-related health consequences. We developed a transdisciplinary framework combining indices of psychosocial AL and physiological AL to produce a robust estimate of overall AL in people affected by disasters and other traumatic events. In conclusion, we urge researchers to consider the potential of using AL as a component in a proposed disaster-oriented human health observing system.

Special Issue “Rethinking the Subjective Wellbeing for a New Workplace Scenario”

In 2018, Charalampous and colleagues reviewed e-working research and found that e-workers can benefit from a better work–life balance;however, adverse effects exist and are related to social and professional isolation or technostress, among others [16]. [...]different factors, such as the preferences and personality of the employee, influence the impact of e-working on wellbeing. [...]corporate social responsibility requires an exercise of transparency about the working conditions and the promotion of decent work because business plays a critical role in this promotion [19]. [...]a new challenge is to find practical and reliable measurements of subjective wellbeing in CSR reports. [...]this Special Issue focuses on both those changes motivated by the health, economic, and social consequence of the worldwide pandemic and other factors that relate to the health and meaning of the work. [...]these authors observe that the greatest benefit offered by remote work lies in an increase in flexibility, autonomy and the work–life balance, as well as in a better individual performance, although it is lost in the social dimension of employment that face-to-face work has.

TRI-AGENCY COOPERATION TO IDENTIFY THE IMPACT OF COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought difficulties to daily lives and caused various changes in socio-economic activities and the social environment. Since the satellite-based Earth observation allows us to monitor the Earth's surface globally and periodically with various physical parameters, as space agencies, it is our responsibility to monitor the changes of the Earth from space, share the observation results with the public, and record them for future generations. Aiming to fulfill this obligation, JAXA has cooperated with NASA and ESA to develop the Earth Observing Dashboard, which provides information on the changes of the Earth environment before/after COVID-19 pandemic. This paper discusses the overview of the three agency's cooperation on COVID-19 dashboard. © 2021 IEEE

Assessing Urban Vulnerability to Flooding: A Framework to Measure Resilience Using Remote Sensing Approaches

Assessing and measuring urban vulnerability resilience is a challenging task if the right type of information is not readily available. In this context, remote sensing and Earth Observation (EO) approaches can help to monitor damages and local conditions before and after extreme weather events, such as flooding. Recently, the increasing availability of Google Street View (GSV) coverage offers additional potential ways to assess the vulnerability and resilience to such events. GSV is available at no cost, is easy to use, and is available for an increasing number of locations. This exploratory research focuses on the use of GSV and EO data to assess exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation to flooding in urban areas in the cities of Belem and Rio Branco in the Amazon region of Brazil. We present a Visual Indicator Framework for Resilience (VIFOR) to measure 45 indicators for these characteristics in 1 km2 sample areas in poor and richer districts in the two cities. The aim was to assess critically the extent to which GSV-derived information could be reliable in measuring the proposed indicators and how this new methodology could be used to measure vulnerability and resilience where official census data and statistics are not readily available. Our results show that variation in vulnerability and resilience between the rich and poor areas in both cities could be demonstrated through calibration of the chosen indicators using GSV-derived data, suggesting that this is a useful, complementary and cost-effective addition to census data and/or recent high resolution EO data. Furthermore, the GSV-linked approach used here may assist users who lack the technical skills to process raw EO data into usable information. The ready availability of insights on the vulnerability and resilience of diverse urban areas by straightforward remote sensing methods such as those developed here with GSV can provide valuable evidence for decisions on critical infrastructure investments in areas with low capacity to cope with flooding.

No evidence for global decrease in CO2 concentration during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic.

Numerous studies have reported that CO2 emissions have decreased because of global lockdown during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, previous estimates of the global CO2 concentration before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic are limited because they are based on energy consumption statistics or local specific in-situ observations. The aim of the study was to explore objective evidence for various previous studies that have claimed the global CO2 concentration decreased during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are two ways to measure the global CO2 concentration: from the top-down using satellites and the bottom-up using ground stations. We implemented the time-series analysis by comparing the before and after the inflection point (first wave of COVID-19) with the long-term CO2 concentration data obtained from World Meteorological Organization Global Atmosphere Watch (WMO GAW) and Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT). Measurements from the GOSAT and GAW global monitoring stations show that the CO2 concentrations in Europe, China, and the USA have continuously risen in March and April 2020 compared with the same months in 2019. These data confirm that the global lockdown during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic did not change the vertical CO2 profile at the global level from the ground surface to the upper layer of the atmosphere. The results of this study provide an important foundation for the international community to explore policy directions to mitigate climate change in the upcoming post-COVID-19 period.

The U.S. Needs a National Human Health Observing System.

The COVID-19 pandemic and increasing frequency and severity of environmental disasters reveal an urgent need for a robust health observing/surveillance system. With the possible exception of Brazil, we know of no such comprehensive health observing capacity. The US should create a national system of linked regionally-based health monitoring systems similar to those for weather, ocean conditions, and climate. Like those for weather, the health observing system should operate continuously, collecting mental, physical, and community health data before, during, and after events. The system should include existing cross-sectional health data surveys, along with significant new investment in regional longitudinal cohort studies. The recently described framework for a Gulf of Mexico Community Health Observing System is suggested as a potential model for development of a nation-wide system.

For Your Eyes Only: A Field Experiment on Nudging Hygienic Behavior.

These days many gyms and fitness centers are closed to reduce transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in society. The gym is an environment rich in microorganisms, and careful hygiene is a necessity to keep infections at bay. Exercise centers strive for better hygiene compliance among their members. This effort has become essential in light of the current pandemic. Several experimental studies show that others' physical presence, or the "illusion" of being watched, may alter behavior. This article reports on a natural field experiment testing one specific social nudge intended to increase gym members' hygienic behavior. The study was conducted before the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. A picture of "observing eyes" was attached to paper dispensers and cleanser spray bottles at two different gyms in Norway. A reversal design, also called an ABA design, with and without the nudge's presence, was used to investigate the impact on gym members' hygienic behavior. A follow-up study was conducted in one of the centers to investigate whether the nudge stimuli would function over time. The study included 254 individual choice situations during nine observation sessions conducted over 9 weeks. The results from both centers provide evidence of a strong effect of the nudge. However, the effect decreased during the follow-up study. These findings support previous research indicating that human behavior is influenced by the presence of implicit observation cues - in this case - observing eyes. However, insights into the long-term effect of implicit observation cues are still needed since the salience of the stimuli faded over time.

Framework for a Community Health Observing System for the Gulf of Mexico Region: Preparing for Future Disasters.

The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region is prone to disasters, including recurrent oil spills, hurricanes, floods, industrial accidents, harmful algal blooms, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. The GoM and other regions of the U.S. lack sufficient baseline health information to identify, attribute, mitigate, and facilitate prevention of major health effects of disasters. Developing capacity to assess adverse human health consequences of future disasters requires establishment of a comprehensive, sustained community health observing system, similar to the extensive and well-established environmental observing systems. We propose a system that combines six levels of health data domains, beginning with three existing, national surveys and studies plus three new nested, longitudinal cohort studies. The latter are the unique and most important parts of the system and are focused on the coastal regions of the five GoM States. A statistically representative sample of participants is proposed for the new cohort studies, stratified to ensure proportional inclusion of urban and rural populations and with additional recruitment as necessary to enroll participants from particularly vulnerable or under-represented groups. Secondary data sources such as syndromic surveillance systems, electronic health records, national community surveys, environmental exposure databases, social media, and remote sensing will inform and augment the collection of primary data. Primary data sources will include participant-provided information via questionnaires, clinical measures of mental and physical health, acquisition of biological specimens, and wearable health monitoring devices. A suite of biomarkers may be derived from biological specimens for use in health assessments, including calculation of allostatic load, a measure of cumulative stress. The framework also addresses data management and sharing, participant retention, and system governance. The observing system is designed to continue indefinitely to ensure that essential pre-, during-, and post-disaster health data are collected and maintained. It could also provide a model/vehicle for effective health observation related to infectious disease pandemics such as COVID-19. To our knowledge, there is no comprehensive, disaster-focused health observing system such as the one proposed here currently in existence or planned elsewhere. Significant strengths of the GoM Community Health Observing System (CHOS) are its longitudinal cohorts and ability to adapt rapidly as needs arise and new technologies develop.