Choir Singers Without Rehearsals and Concerts? A Questionnaire Study on Perceived Losses From Restricting Choral Singing During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Choir singing is an activity that engages individuals all over the world with a broad demographic representation. Both qualitative and quantitative studies have examined the benefits of the activity but very few have examined the effects when someone loses access to it and stops singing. OBJECTIVES: Examining the governmental and organisational responses precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we asked what happens when a choir singer loses all of their routines associated with regular participation in choir singing. MATERIALS AND METHODS: One national choir organization in Sweden (n = 3163) and one in Norway (n = 1881) were approached with a short survey. This comprised questions relating to the issue "what do you as a choir singer misses the most?" Each participant was asked to rate the importance of a number of elements that pertain to the experience of choir singing. RESULTS: The social aspect of singing emerged as having the strongest weight in terms of perceived loss that is, it was the element that the participants missed the most. Professional singers report that they miss the aesthetic experiences, flow, and all the physical aspects (physical training, voice training, and breathing training) to a greater degree as compared to reports from the amateurs. The importance of aesthetic experiences and physical components appeared to rise with increasing number of years that an individual had engaged with choir singing. CONCLUSION: In the Scandinavian setting, the social aspect has a stronger weight than the other components and this seemed to be more significant in Norway compared to Sweden.

Everywhere but Nowhere: Development Experiences of the International Game Developers in Finland during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Remote Work

The Covid-19 pandemic has influenced people's views on work, and a significant portion of the global game industry converted to remote work during the pandemic. To explore the status of game development in this pivotal moment, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 immigrant/expatriate game developers ("game expats") in Finland analyzing their migration push and pull on societal, industrial, social, and individual factors. The results indicate societal and industrial factors simultaneously influencing game expats' migration intention, but with an increasing influence of game corporation's role on developers' both on-the-job and off-the-job embeddedness due to an absence of (local) community activities during the pandemic. The data also reveals that game developers are valuing the physical workspace for face-to-face interactions, despite the industrial norm of digital tools and seamless transition to remote work. Furthermore, an alarming stratification and hierarchization within the game industry were identified, which game developers self-dividing in-house versus outsourced workforce even if they were both required to work remotely. This paper contributes to game studies on game developers' experiences as an attempt to investigate the local context of game development. It is also one of the first snapshots of game work practices in Finland during the Covid-19 era. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Applying a Collaborative Online International Learning Experience (COIL) during two Undergraduate Environmental Engineering Courses in the US and Mexico

The ability to communicate effectively and to work in multidisciplinary teams with individuals from diverse international backgrounds are some of the student outcomes that need to be met by academic programs seeking accreditation by independent organizations such as ABET. International course collaborations able to fulfill these goals are challenging under regular conditions, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the migration to virtual learning in both Mexico and the United States presented an opportunity to test multinational collaboration during a regular course context. In the Fall 2021, we piloted a month-long collaboration between two engineering courses at Rice University (US) and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico). This collaboration was designed to meet the two student outcomes stated above in the context of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 using COIL. A series of activities were designed to promote student reflection on topics such as the cultural, social, and technical factors related to the design of a rainwater collection system. Examples of these activities include discussion sessions prompting the exchange of ideas by students from both institutions, and mutual evaluation of their rainwater harvesting designs. At the end of the collaboration, the students completed a survey reporting their understanding of the current global water crisis, the challenges to provide sustainable solutions, and their perception of the collaboration. Due to differences in both courses, such as accessibility and quality of internet access, the personal goals of the students and the language barrier, the authors obtained mixed reactions from the students to this collaboration. Most students reported that this experience was positive, provided new knowledge and an opportunity to develop their international collaboration skills;only a few students reported no positive outcomes. Although this first collaboration proved to be satisfactory for both students and instructors, it also provided several learning opportunities, such as forming smaller work groups to allow the students to connect at a more individual level, providing TAs to be present in every discussion room to encourage participation of all students, and emphasizing the need for more cultural awareness, such as the fact that some participants are not having these discussions in their native language. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

Driver Factors, Wildcards and Spatial External Effects of Urban Sprawl in Poland (2016–2022)

The recent years were rich in new and unexpected social and political factors for Poland, such as the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020–2021 and the refugee crisis in 2021–2022. These ‘wildcards’ will definitely have serious consequences for people and cities, directly and through the impact of so-called externalities. The paper identifies trends in the geographical development of urban areas in Poland during the last five years (2016–2021), particularly in terms of residential suburbanization and urban sprawl. The study aims to explore the driver factors that determine the spatial scale of suburbanization and reveal ‘wildcards’ that may indirectly affect this process but are hard to be quantified and embedded into spatial analysis. Both wildcards and externalities of suburbanization seem to be underexplored, and this paper’s goal is to bring progress on this pass. The spatial analysis applying location quotients (LQ) metrics creates the possibility for comparisons of locations with intensified urbanization for different time moments, thus fulfilling a function similar to the standardization of features considering time and space perspectives. The results makes the evidence to progressive suburbanization around the main Polish cities during the years 2016–2021, revealing, at the same time, distinguishing features of spatial development for the period associated with social and political stresses (2021). © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Vaccinated, What Next? An Efficient Contact and Social Distance Tracing Based on Heterogeneous Telco Data

The demand for safety-boosting systems is always increasing, especially to limit the rapid spread of COVID-19. Real-time social distance preserving is an essential application towards containing the pandemic outbreak. Few systems have been proposed which require infrastructure setup and high-end phones. Therefore, they have limited ubiquitous adoption. Cellular technology enjoys widespread availability and their support by commodity cellphones which suggest leveraging it for social distance tracking. However, users sharing the same environment may be connected to different teleco providers of different network configurations. Traditional cellular-based localization systems usually build a separate model for each provider, leading to a drop in social distance performance. In this paper, we propose CellTrace, a deep learning-based social distance preserving system. Specifically, CellTrace finds a cross-provider representation using a deep learning version of Canonical Correlation Analysis. Different providers’data are highly correlated in this representation and used to train a localization model for estimating the social distances. Additionally, CellTrace incorporates different modules that improve the deep model’s generalization against overtraining and noise. We have implemented and evaluated CellTrace in two different environments with a side-by-side comparison with the state-of-the-art cellular localization and contact tracing techniques. The results show that CellTrace can accurately localize users and estimate the contact occurrence, regardless of the connected providers, with a sub-meter median error and 97% accuracy, respectively. In addition, we show that CellTrace has robust performance in various challenging scenarios. Author

Working from Home in the COVID-19 Pandemic - Which Technological and Social Factors Influence the Working Conditions and Job Satisfaction of People with Disabilities?

Objective: The project aims to determine the technological and social factors, which promote or hinder work success and job satisfaction of people with disabilities in home office situations. Methods: A mixed-methods approach (online survey and expert interviews) with 13 participants with disabilities from different fields of university work was chosen. Results: People with disabilities face significantly greater challenges in home office work than people without disabilities;lack of ergonomic equipment, non-accessible technologies, and difficulties in communicating and interacting with colleagues and superiors result in negative impacts on work processes and job satisfaction. Conclusion: The outcomes of the presented research are a first approach to survey and evaluate the conditions and effects of home office work for people with disabilities. Further studies are needed to explore different areas of work and different types of disabilities in greater depth. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Impact of Differences in Physical, Social and Psychological Factors on Nursing Care Expectations

The purpose of this study is to clarify the influence of psychological, social, and physical factors, such as health status, family relationships, living arrangements, economic status, and personality traits, on the expectation of Japanese seniors to receive nursing care. To collect data on these factors, a questionnaire survey was conducted with Japanese men and women who were not in the care home in March 2021. At that time, we also examined the change in the mental state before and after the spread of COVID-19. Based on the results of the survey, the subjects were divided into two groups, those who preferred to be cared for at home and those who preferred to be cared for outside the home, and the responses were compared. As a result of the comparison, there was a significant difference between these two groups only in the responses regarding exercise habits before and after COVID-19. In both the before and after COVID-19, the frequency of sports/exercise per week was higher for those who wanted to be cared for at home. This suggests that the physical factor of the exercise habit influences the expected to care for the elderly at home. However, there was no significant difference in the responses between the two groups regarding other factors. In this study, factors such as health status, family relationships, and financial situation were considered in attitudes towards caregiving. Still, since no significant differences were found, it is necessary to conduct a survey that considers other factors. © 2021 IEEE.

COVID-19 Risk Level Assessment: A Case of Food Sector Employees

This study empirically determines the risk level of food sector employees for the virus COVID-19 infection, specifically those who are under the food sector in the Philippines. This paper utilizes the RIKA Risk Assessment Tool to assess health, behavioral, exposure, and social factors that may contribute to the overall risk score of individuals. The researchers used data from a sample of 55 respondents obtained from a digital survey containing the RIKA Risk Assessment Tool, which was then analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The results of the statistical analysis used presented low to moderate risk levels of being infected with COVID-19 based on the personal assessment of their surroundings and health practices of the food sector employees. Researchers found that workers in the Philippines' food sector are exposed to a variety of risk factors: health, behavioral, exposure, and social policy. The majority have a moderate impact upon the said results;however, adhering to proper hygiene, community standards, and lockdown policies can significantly influence outcomes. © 2022 ACM.

COVID 19 Navigator Taxi Application for Urban Mobility during Pandemic Period

This research paper focuses on increasing the awareness between taxi users and can help to protect themselves in COVID-19 and take precautions. Since 2019 the global pandemic of Covid-19 is spreading at an astonishing rate and causes a negative impact for economic, social, and cultural factors. Government agencies are warning people to reduce the transportation and to maintain social distance. To stop the spread of COVID-19 required to identify persons who are susceptible to infection and need to trace the COVID-19 positive first contacts. Most people are reduced to using public transportations and taxi services due to unidentifiable health conditions in earlier users. The proposed approach can be used to track the taxi drivers and their passengers previous COVID-19 status as well as navigate the safest route by showing the COVID-19 contamination areas. By using this approach users can be aware of earlier users of the taxi service and COVID-19 status of the taxi driver or passenger before taking the trip as well as if they get touch with any COVID-19 patients, can take immediate precautions. This application helps to increase the usage of taxis by making users trust and confidence against COVID-19 infection. By testing with real users our system was able to trace down 45 passengers and 16 drivers within 3 months. © 2022 IEEE.

Infectious Diseases Dynamic Transmissibility with Age Structure and Medical Resources

Tendency forecasting of infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, is urgently required to evaluate outbreak risk and control decisions. Although transmission models based on natural factors like virus propagation, temperature, and human modality are studied carefully, social factors cause high flexibility on dynamic propagation change under actual virus spreading conditions. We propose a time-variant relevance-based infected recovered extreme learning machine to generate a quantitative forecasting model with social factors. Also, embedded distance is used to measure the similarity and realize flexible forecasting based on social impactors. We investigated the age structure and the medical supply under the COVID-19 pandemic with nonidentical open-source data We found that embedded distance with the proposed model is highly consistent with projection accuracy, and the proposed method can achieve higher accuracy than existed methods. Based on the forecasting model, age distribution and medical supply make a difference in COVID-19 transmission. Areas with the middle proportion of the aged population face higher outbreaking risks, and sufficient medical supply control the infection speed efficiently within three weeks. This study provides an efficient projection of dynamic transmission under the social impact on infectious diseases pandemics. © 2021 IEEE

An Inquisitive Prospect on the Shift Toward Online Media, Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Technological Analysis

Online media plays a vital role in defining the future of tomorrow. Almost every field in the present-day is dependent on technology and online media either for procuring better outputs or for the satisfaction of end clients. In this paper, the authors have tried to bring out the various factors that led to the shift of the majority of individuals to online media, briefly discussing its impact on the economy and social factors. It leverages the facts of how the offline media got impacted not only during the days of the novel coronavirus but before as well. It has been plausibly displayed that fake word gets out quicker and more considerably than authentic news utilizing online media. A boost toward the use of E-platforms has predominantly been taken a closer look at in the middle sections of the paper. Further, the exploratory analysis fore- casts the number of online media users by 2031 and presents inquisitive visualizations on the study of various websites during, before, and after the pandemic in the later sections of the paper. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The Influence of Social Factors on Mental Health and Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques to understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental wellbeing. We considered different user groups and locations in the USA to analyze the influence contrasting social factors, such as political stance, had on wellbeing. We measured the mental wellbeing of the social media users through understanding negative sentiment and mental health topic discussion in Twitter posts added by users from the top 10 Democrat and top 10 Republican cities in the USA. To measure the topic discussion, we used a mental health keyword list and developed machine learning models to classify the topic of a tweet. The primary findings include the similarity of the effect the pandemic had on Republican and Democrat cities when considering a timeline of tweets, whilst an increase in 'Anxiety' was discussed across different user groups and cities. Enforcement strategies had an influence on mental wellbeing with results differing for Republican and Democrat cities. An accurate text classifier was developed and used to categorize tweets into different mental health topics. The results showed how medical and unemployed users discussed topics like 'anxiety' and 'depression' more than a control set of users. The best machine learning model was developed using a Decision Tree algorithm which achieved an accuracy of 87% on unseen data. © 2021 IEEE.

Analysis of the Social Factors (PESTEL) of Popular and Solidarity Economy Enterprises Post Covid

The PEST analysis or also called PESTEL (political, economic, sociocultural, technological, ecological and legal) is a strategic planning tool to define a context,also serves to identify external factors in the business environment, currently contributing negatively to the creation or motivations of entrepreneurs in the popular and solidarity economy of Ecuador post covid, which is why, because of its importance the present research aims to identify the factors of the external environment of national companies in the period 2019–2021 that affect the development and performance of the ventures. The methodology used was developed based on secondary source of the central bank of Ecuador, year 2020, with descriptive and analytical level, as well as, a bibliographic documentary search of qualitative and quantitative character. The results obtained helped us to describe each of the factors that are affecting the creation of new entrepreneurship at the country level after the appearance of the pandemic of covid 19, as well as the disadvantages that it has brought to the Ecuadorian popular and solidarity economy. We conclude with the description of the environment of the popular and solidarity economy ventures by considering the elements, analysis of resources and the market that is fundamental for the start-up of a business as long as they are carried out following the basic parameters so that they become frameworks for action ideas. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The Influence of Hedonic and Social Factors on the Use of Mobile Cyclist Applications during COVID19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in various responses to activities from the community, one of which is sports activities. Exercise believes in increasing the body's immunity so that during the COVID-19 pandemic, many people exercise. One of the sports that has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic is cycling, which is happening in Indonesia, especially Jakarta. Cycling activities during the COVID-19 pandemic have increased even though, on the other hand, the government is enforcing rules regarding restrictions on social activities to avoid transmission of the COVID-19 virus. This phenomenon has received a response from the Regional Police Chief and the Governor, confiscating bicycles for cyclists who continue to carry out their activities. Based on this issue, this study explores the social and hedonic factors that influence the intention to use mobile cyclist applications that occurred on cyclists during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research was facilitated by the SPSS application using two techniques: Crosstabulation A study of 440 users of mobile cyclist applications showed an increase in new cyclists, especially women, and the average age was under 30 years. Apart from that, social factors had a significant negative effect of 11.7% and hedonic factors of 98.4%. This research is essential for industry and scientific development in the future. © 2021 IEEE.

The concept of decisions support system to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic consequences based on social and epidemic processes intelligent analysis

The study is aimed at interdisciplinary analysis of social barriers and barriers to overcoming the consequences of epidemics and the development of programs for sociological support of anti-epidemic measures in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to solve the problem of increasing the biosafety of the population as a component of national security through the formation of directions and tools for preparatory work with the public conscience with use of social attitude investigation to ensure the effectiveness of vaccination and minimize the negative non-medical consequences of various measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of comprehensive methodology for analyzing the crisis behavior of the masses with a combination of sociological and mathematical methods has been developed. It is planned to obtain scientifically substantiated information on the social factors of the spread of the virus, the social effects of a sense of hopelessness, social barriers to vaccination and the role of social networks in these processes;a practical task for the project is the development of models of crisis mass behavior and a system of targeted measures for managing the social atmosphere during a prolonged pandemic with uncertain prospects for an exit. It is expected to receive a concept of sociological support for pandemic measures to determine the optimal strategies of media, information and educational and socio-political influence on the state of mass consciousness in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2021 CEUR-WS. All rights reserved.

Modeling the Impact of Social Distancing on the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Low Transmission Setting

According to the World Health Organization and the CDC, social distancing is currently one of the most effective ways to slow the transmission of COVID-19. However, most existing epidemic models do not consider the impact of social distancing on the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we propose a new method to deterministic modeling of the effects of social distancing on the COVID-19 pandemic in a low transmission setting. Our model dynamic is expressed by a single predictive variable that satisfies an integro-differential equation. Once the dynamic variable is calculated, the process of agents from the normal state, infection state to rehabilitation state, or death state can be explored. Besides, an important parameter is added to the model to measure the impact of social distancing on epidemic transmission. We performed qualitative and quantitative experiments on various scenarios, and the results showed that 2 m is a safe social distancing on the COVID-19 pandemic in a low transmission setting. IEEE

Loneliness during a strict lockdown: Trajectories and predictors during the COVID-19 pandemic in 38,217 United Kingdom adults.

RATIONALE: There are increasing worries that lockdowns and 'stay-at-home' orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to a rise in loneliness, which is recognised as a major public health concern. But profiles of loneliness during the pandemic and risk factors remain unclear. OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to examine if and how loneliness levels changed during the strict lockdown and to explore the clustering of loneliness growth trajectories. METHODS: Data from 38,217 UK adults in the UCL COVID -19 Social Study (a panel study collecting data weekly during the pandemic) were analysed during the strict lockdown period in the UK (23/03/2020-10/05/2020). The sample was well-stratified and weighted to population proportions of gender, age, ethnicity, education and geographical location. Growth mixture modelling was used to identify the latent classes of loneliness growth trajectories and their predictors. RESULTS: Analyses revealed four classes, with the baseline loneliness level ranging from low to high. In the first a few weeks of lockdown, loneliness levels increased in the highest loneliness group, decreased in the lowest loneliness group, and stayed relatively constant in the middle two groups. Younger adults (OR = 2.17-6.81), women (OR = 1.59), people with low income (OR = 1.3), the economically inactive (OR = 1.3-2.04) and people with mental health conditions (OR = 5.32) were more likely to be in highest loneliness class relative to the lowest. Further, living with others or in a rural area, and having more close friends or greater social support were protective. CONCLUSIONS: Perceived levels of loneliness under strict lockdown measures due to COVID-19 were relatively stable in the UK, but for many people these levels were high with no signs of improvement. Results suggest that more efforts are needed to address loneliness.