Ticking time bomb: implications of the COVID-19 lockdown on e-waste management in developing countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the course of events globally since the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in late 2019 giving further credence to the long-standing belief that the world is indeed a global village. There have been different responses by countries to the raging pandemic including the imposition of lockdowns, quarantine and isolation. The imposition of lockdowns, whether full or partial, has not been without major consequences, which has led to information, communication and technological (ICT)-based measures to minimise the effect of the lockdown and as an alternative to physical interactions. The use of ICT devices to bridge the gaps created by the lockdown on schools, businesses and other sectors has led to the increased use of electronic devices. The challenge of electronic waste (e-waste) management in developing countries has been around for a while and the increased use of electronic devices is likely to compound the challenge during and post COVID-19. Whilst the development of ICT-based options as viable alternatives to face-to-face interactions may not be a negative development, this article argues that the existing frameworks are inadequate to manage the resultant increase in e-waste in most developing countries and that there is need now more than ever before for developing countries to exercise caution in embracing these ICT-based options without putting in place measures to ensure that there is increased capacity to manage and dispose of the e-waste created.

BEsafe - Validating URLs and Domains with the aid of Indicator of Compromise

The advancement of information technology has stimulated the conversion of physical interactions to online activities, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, users' awareness and cyber hygiene need to be emphasized when they are involved in the cyber world. A browser extension named 'BEsafe' is developed to validate the websites and promote a safe browsing environment. It prevents users from falling prey to network-based attacks and raises their security awareness. To ensure users' privacy, the permissions needed for BEsafe are listed on the permission tab. Moreover, BEsafe will not be working on Incognito mode by default to promise that the private mode leaves no tracks. However, the user can still enable the extension to be functioning on Incognito mode by navigating to the Extension Details and turning on the relevant toggle. © 2023 IEEE.

Telepresence Robots and Controlling Techniques in Healthcare System

In this era of post-COVID-19, humans are psychologically restricted to interact less with other humans. According to the world health organization (WHO), there are many scenarios where human interactions cause severe multiplication of viruses from human to human and spread worldwide. Most healthcare systems shifted to isolation during the pandemic and a very restricted work environment. Investigations were done to overcome the remedy, and the researcher developed different techniques and recommended solutions. Telepresence robot was the solution achieved by all industries to continue their operations but with almost zero physical interaction with other humans. It played a vital role in this perspective to help humans to perform daily routine tasks. Healthcare workers can use telepresence robots to interact with patients who visit the healthcare center for initial diagnosis for better healthcare system performance without direct interaction. The presented paper aims to compare different telepresence robots and their different controlling techniques to perform the needful in the respective scenario of healthcare environments. This paper comprehensively analyzes and reviews the applications of presented techniques to control different telepresence robots. However, our feature-wise analysis also points to specific technical, appropriate, and ethical challenges that remain to be solved. The proposed investigation summarizes the need for further multifaceted research on the design and impact of a telepresence robot for healthcare centers, building on new perceptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2023 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.

Breaking The Chain Of Transmission Of Covid-19 By Social Distancing

INTRODUCTION: While the virus's intermediate point of origin and spread to humans is unknown, it has been shown that it is capable of rapid human-to-human transmission. The virus was primarily transmitted from person to person by physical interaction. Coughing, sneezing, and laughing cause droplets. Fever, chills, cough, sore throat, breathing difficulties, myalgia or fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea are common signs of COVID-19 infection. Cardiovascular damage, respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and even death may occur in severe situations. AIM: Breaking the chain of transmission of COVID-19 by Social Distancing MATERIAL AND METHOD: A primary research study has been done using an online questionnaire created using Google form. An observation study design has been used. The respondents were sent a survey of three questions including consent forms to participants in survey, using mail ID's and social media platforms. The material required for the review was taken from the databases of PubMed, Web of science, the from the website of World Health Organization, International diabetes federation and the patients data of SMHRC and DMMC Wanadongari Nagpur. CONCLUSION: Social distancing, Isolation, awareness, to break the chain of COVID-19, as we see them, have been of great impact to prevent the rate of transmission and the risk of new infection, but we can't deny their mental health impact as well, as they bring with them fear, panic, uncertainty and challenges about the present and the future scenario. People are getting inactive, facing the fear of getting infected, worrying about the economic lose, getting uncertain about their future plans and many more. Social distancing not only prevents the breaking the chain of transmission of COVID-19. © The Electrochemical Society

Measuring the Changes in Physical Activity of Students: Before and During COVID-19 Pandemic

Despite experiencing the pandemic for more than a year, it is undeniable that most people are still in shock and are still in the process of adapting. As every aspect transitioned to a new normal, positive and negative changes towards every individual have occurred. One of which is the changes in physical activities. As the COVID-19 protocols and safety measures restrict physical interactions, people are obligated to avoid outdoor activities. With that, occurrence with the decline of physical activities is evident. To address this issue, this study focused on assessing and measuring the changes in physical activity of undergraduate students in Mapua University before and during the pandemic. The respondents were tasked to comply with a 16-question survey questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization (WHO). The researchers disseminated the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ) to obtain the needed data. Upon applying descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (paired-sample t-test), results showed an extensive change in students' physical activities. Results showed that from having a total of 97 students who met the WHO recommendations before the pandemic, 54 students were recorded to have met the recommendations during the pandemic. This shows how the phenomena affected physical activities. Before the pandemic, most of the respondents tended to meet the MET minute per week;however, data showed a contradicting result during the pandemic. On the other hand, based on the paired-sample t-test results, dimensions work, and travel and sedentary behavior showed significant differences in students' physical activities before and during the pandemic. © 2022 ACM.

Labor Market Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused several disruptions in almost all day-to-day matters around the world. In order to keep things under control, ever since the beginning authorities around the world imposed restrictions in relation to physical activities and therefore, organizations were forced to rethink the way they carry out professional activities. Thus, the majority of areas that were based on the physical interaction between people were severely impacted by these sets of measures. Unfortunately, a negative impact that the pandemic state has had over the fields that were based on physical work is that economic pressure has forced some of the entities to completely suspend their activity, leading to high rates of unemployment around the world, which also led to consistent financial efforts sustained by the government. Therefore, in order to come to relevant conclusions, we analyzed several datasets that offer insights over all aspects of the labor market around the world mainly before and during the pandemic period. We also computed a correlation matrix based on economic sectors to compare the effects in the labor market for various industries. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

A Bag-of-Features (BoF) Based Novel Framework for the Detection of COVID-19

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a hazardous virus. Initially, detected in China and spread worldwide, causing several deaths. Over time, there have been several variants of COVID-19, we have grouped all of them into two major categories. The categories are known to be variants of concern and variants of interest. Talking about the first of these two, it is very dangerous, and we need a system that can not only detect the disease but also classify it without physical interaction with a patient suffering from COVID-19. This paper proposes a Bag-of-Features (BoF) based deep learning framework that can detect as well as classify COVID-19 and all of its variants as well. Initially, the spatial features are extracted with deep convolutional models, while hand-crafted features have been extracted from several hand-crafted descriptors. Both spatial and hand-crafted features are combined to make a feature vector. This feature vector feeds the classifier to classify different variants in respective categories. The experimental results show that the proposed methodology outperforms all the existing methods. © 2021 IEEE.

Workshops in TEI: Development, Evaluation, Exploration, and Implementation: Development, Evaluation, Exploration, and Implementation

Workshops are frequently used in human-computer interaction research, in a diverse range of research projects. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made this research activity difficult to conduct since they often involve group work, physical interaction with tangibles and/or bodily activity. Motivated by this, the authors conducted a review of papers from the International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI) to develop a better understanding of workshops as a research method in TEI. The meta-review led to the development of a preliminary classification for workshops in research. Four categories of workshops were identified: Design development, Evaluation, Exploration, and Implementation. This work is intended to spark discussion and further research around the value and the challenges of conducting research workshops. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Forced association of SARS-CoV-2 proteins with the yeast proteome perturb vesicle trafficking.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of the highly infectious coronavirus disease COVID-19. Extensive research has been performed in recent months to better understand how SARS-CoV-2 infects and manipulates its host to identify potential drug targets and support patient recovery from COVID-19. However, the function of many SARS-CoV-2 proteins remains uncharacterised. Here we used the Synthetic Physical Interactions (SPI) method to recruit SARS-CoV-2 proteins to most of the budding yeast proteome to identify conserved pathways which are affected by SARS-CoV-2 proteins. The set of yeast proteins that result in growth defects when associated with the viral proteins have homologous functions that overlap those identified in studies performed in mammalian cells. Specifically, we were able to show that recruiting the SARS-CoV-2 NSP1 protein to HOPS, a vesicle-docking complex, is sufficient to perturb membrane trafficking in yeast consistent with the hijacking of the endoplasmic-reticulum-Golgi intermediate compartment trafficking pathway during viral infection of mammalian cells. These data demonstrate that the yeast SPI method is a rapid way to identify potential functions of ectopic viral proteins.

Using pedestrian simulation modeling for a logistics world

Logistics and operations consulting has traditionally adopted discrete-event simulation software, such as Simio and Arena, to visualize dynamic processes and complex systems across a wide range of environments. Without the effort of extensive programming however, these tools lack the ability to separate objects and people interacting with each other and occupying the same space. This lack of separation is a problem for logistics and operations consulting, where dynamics between different activities and physical interactions between people are key. Especially within the context of COVID-19, incorporating social distancing behaviors into our built environments is of growing importance. In this regard, pedestrian simulation software offers an alternative solution to modeling logistics and operations processes, behavioral interactions, and spatial considerations. As logistics consultants, we work with architects to iterate building designs and ensure that sufficient space is provided for back-of-house operations, staff circulation, and vehicle movements. Pedestrian simulation knowledge and tools respond to these challenges by combining dynamic agents and fixed spaces together into one platform, adding physical barriers that impact queues and waiting areas, and incorporating the ability to realistically model and customize distinct behavior types, such as abled and disabled persons. In modeling the most realistic versions of our projects' environments, we can also identify opportunities to improve equity and resilience within the design. The goal of this study is to use specific case studies that utilized the software MassMotion and demonstrate how pedestrian simulation modeling has improved the outcome of logistics consulting projects in a changing world. © 2021 IISE Annual Conference and Expo 2021. All rights reserved.