ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the recent Covid-19 pandemic changed many aspects of our daily life, such as the constant wearing of face masks as protection from virus transmission risks. Furthermore, it exposed the healthcare system's fragilities, showing the urgent need to design a more inclusive model that takes into account possible future emergencies, together with population's aging and new severe pathologies. In this framework, face masks can be both a physical barrier against viruses and, at the same time, a telemedical diagnostic tool. In this paper, we propose a low-cost, 3D-printed face mask able to protect the wearer from virus transmission, thanks to internal FFP2 filters, and to monitor the air quality (temperature, humidity, CO2) inside the mask. Acquired data are automatically transmitted to a web terminal, thanks to sensors and electronics embedded in the mask. Our preliminary results encourage more efforts in these regards, towards rapid, inexpensive and smart ways to integrate more sensors into the mask's breathing zone in order to use the patient's breath as a fingerprint for various diseases. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.
ABSTRACT
Beginning in December 2019, a new epidemic, called COVID-19 has disrupted our lives. Tt started from the city of Wuhan in China to affect the whole world. This epidemic has changed the health care systems around the world, revealing their shortcomings and bringing attention to effective and efficient management of wards. In this paper, our aim is to investigate how COVID-19 pandemic affecting the Emergency Medicine ward of "San Giovanni di Dio and Ruggi d'Aragona,” also comparing the obtained outcome with respect to the same sample of Cardarelli for unveiling and analyze possible similarities and differences in procedures and suggested possible future directions. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
An aging of the working population is expected. Consequently, age-related impairments of sensory functions (e.g., hearing impairment) will become more prominent. An increase of people with hearing impairment can already be observed today. In the last years, the importance of digitalization has increased constantly. This was further driven by the COVID19-pandemic. Therefore, the question whether mHealth-apps could be able to improve the first start experience of possible new hearing aid users and how such an app should be designed has continuously become more important. Former research showed that participants rated possible hearing app-functions significantly different. The aim of the presented study was to verify these results and to extend it with additional functions. Furthermore, possible future users should assess first paper-based prototypes. Therefore, an exploratory online study was conducted. Overall, the sample consists of 41 participants (29 female;19–58 years old). 18 of them were subjectively at least mild hearing impaired. The results of the study show that participants rated possible functions and the different hearing app-prototypes significantly different. Interestingly, effects of hearing impairment and gender can be shown. Overall, the results can improve the development of a new mHealth-app to support new users of hearing aids. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus pandemic that escalated in 2020 brought changes in all areas of life, putting all sectors of the economy, including households and businesses, on a new footing. Changed working conditions and closures have put many businesses in a difficult situation. Many businesses managed to survive the restrictions at considerable cost, but there were also some entities that did not survive the difficult months following the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic. New ways of working and changed circumstances have rewritten previous management and practical principles and experience. The aim of this paper is to describe the impact of the coronavirus epidemic and the areas most affected by the subsequent crisis, based on the results of a questionnaire survey of 161 enterprises in Hungary. The aim of the study is to identify the areas which are the most vulnerable in the life of SMEs and which should be given the most attention in the next possible future crises. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
A central issue that was recently discussed within the commercial real estate community is how the COVID-19 pandemic, and possible future pandemic events, will affect the operational performance in the long-term. Various additional factors such as confinement restrictions, lockdowns, and the reduced occupancy levels put operators under significant pressure, and force them to look for energy efficient solutions and find the right balance for the financial side while ensuring healthy environment for clients and tenants. In this paper, we present a preliminary analysis and evaluate the impact of the pandemic using real-life data collected from several commercial buildings in Estonia. The results indicate that after two years of the pandemic the situation stabilized, which may support the claim that the right balance was found at least in the current situation. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Human relationships, intimacy and the role of technology within it constantly change, catapulted in 2020 by COVID-19. We take this social rupture as an opportunity to reimagine possible futures for love, friendship, and kinships. Through design futuring and related approaches, we offer five prompts we developed for imagining alternative futures exploring a diverse range of intimacies. Through generating responses to the prompts, we offer alternative intimate futures as well as reflections on how such 'prompts for futuring' can be generative for design research. Our work extends calls for diversifying design futuring, imploring design researchers to consider diverse and inclusive ways of designing for futures, especially for human relationships and intimacy. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 vaccination has led to unrest within societies, and intense public debates are often carried out on social media platforms like Twitter. A better understanding of concerns, issues, and communication on COVID-19 vaccines is a first step to reducing tension within society and improving the negative effects of the pandemic. It can also contribute to addressing the concerns of advocates and opponents, which is essential in the battle against this and possible future pandemics. At the same time, many people report pressure to undergo vaccination in order to continue participating in social and professional life. COVID-19 vaccination has triggered a complex discussion among the public. We use text mining algorithms suitable for big datasets to identify relevant categories of discourse and sentiments from about 250,000 tweets. Our findings highlight (and quantify) expressed shortcomings in vaccination programs related to administration, planning, information, and protective measures. It also hints that rare and severe incidents related to vaccination have a more substantial impact than potential fears related to non-familiar technology such as "mRNA"causing uncertainty. We also provide an extensive discussion setting forth suggestions that might help deal with the current and future pandemic. © 2021 ACM.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the design and implementation of a class for teaching software entrepreneurship. The class focused on teaching students the basics entrepreneurial venture development and how these processes relate, specifically, to a software venture. This paper presents the overall instructional plan of the course and discusses each of the course's components. The implementation of the project component is discussed, in particular, in detail. The design and implementation challenges that were encountered are discussed. This course was run in Spring of 2020 and started as an in-classroom course, later transitioning to an online course due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The outcomes of the course are discussed. Possible future enhancements are considered. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the preliminary results of an ongoing project that analyzes the growing body of scientific research published around the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research, a general-purpose semantic model is used to double annotate a batch of 500 sentences that were manually selected from the CORD-19 corpus. Afterwards, a baseline text-mining pipeline is designed and evaluated via a large batch of 100, 959 sentences. We present a qualitative analysis of the most interesting facts automatically extracted and highlight possible future lines of development. The preliminary results show that general-purpose semantic models are a useful tool for discovering fine-grained knowledge in large corpora of scientific documents. © 2021 Incoma Ltd. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the development of tourism worldwide. This research was developed with the objective of assessing rural tourism and its immediate future in the context of COVID-19 in Cuba. For this purpose, a study of possible futures was carried out, where it was convenient only to arrive at exploratory scenarios based on the probability, importance and date of occurrence of the events, with a panel of five specialists consulted online. The development of the research was based on the results of the situational analysis and summary of the situation, for which both a synchronic and diachronic study was carried out. From this, it was determined that rural tourism in Cuba, as a product, is in the growth stage, having a good image, high demand and excellent market prospects, so that the trend, referential and framing scenarios reflect an optimistic assessment in the face of the possible occurrence of events of a political-legal and management nature, among others. It is valid to point out that it was determined that Cuba has potentialities for the development of rural tourism, however, the available data on its behavior PRE-COVID are almost null and the information on its management is limited, for which reason the managers of the tourism sector and rural spaces are limited in their decision making, even more so in the new context of the pandemic and its immediate future.