Engineering in a Crisis: Observing Students' Perceptions of Macroethical Responsibilities during Pandemics and Natural Disasters

When the ethical responsibilities of engineers are discussed in classrooms, the focus is usually on microethics, which concentrates on individual decision-making, rather than macroethics, that addresses broad societal concerns. Pandemics (e.g., COVID-19) and natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, derechos) have presented unique opportunities to observe engineering macroethical responsibilities, because unjust social, economic, and environmental systems have been brought to the forefront amidst the responses (e.g., inequitable transportation access). In this paper, we consider pandemics and natural disasters through the lens of engineering macroethics, aiming to understand students' perceptions about the macroethical responsibilities of engineers. In the fall of 2020, we deployed a survey to undergraduate engineering students at two universities (n=424). Students were asked to discuss what they perceived to be the role of engineering professionals in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters. We used a qualitative content analysis to explore the macroethical responsibilities mentioned in students' responses. Many of these responses include considerations of infrastructure resilience, resource distribution, and community equity. Logit models were used to identify which sociodemographic factors were associated with responses that included macroethical responsibilities, revealing engineering major (specifically, civil engineering), employment status, gender identity, and family size, among others as significant factors. The implications from this study include recommendations on curricular content, and identifying which student sociodemographic groups would especially benefit from macroethical content in coursework. © 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Holistic and integrated systemic policies and practices for decarbonization

A bold, visionary, transforming, systemic, holistic, integrated, caring, inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and resilient paradigm for fast transitions toward a clean energy and decarbonized future is imperative and urgently needed. Business as usual and silo approaches are not viable with the changes that are occurring. These changes are linked and interacting systems of physical, natural, health, social, economic, finance, governance, and institution. The effects and impacts are dire, existential, and pervasive. The 2021 IPCC Report Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers, in clear language stated "it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land”. The scientific communities in the US, Europe, Asia and other regions all subscribe to this situation. Well documented global empirical evidence is also confirming the profound systems and systemic transformations that are occurring. Business, industry, and the general public, in particular youths, worldwide are all increasingly demanding actions – that transcend words of what needs to be done to deeds of how and now. In the US, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, would allocate US 370 billion for combating climate change and clean energy production. The IRA is the largest climate spending package ever. President Biden has called for 100% clean electricity by 2035 and pledged to cut carbon emissions by 50%–52% below 2005 levels by the end of this decade, doubling the previous target. A decarbonized future was endorsed by Leaders at the 2021 G-7 Carbis, UK Summit. There is growing realization that the global climate change crisis requires strengthened and expanded global cooperation with new, innovative and non-bureaucratic mechanisms for collaboration. The 2021 IPCC Report summarized that global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid- century under all emissions' scenarios considered. "Global warming of 1.5 and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.” The UNEP and IEA contends reducing anthropogenic methane emissions will help mitigate climate change and is a cost-effective proposition. The release of methane and micro-organisms from melting of permafrost needs to be better studied and understood., The confluence of increased heat, humidity, fine particulates air pollution, water contaminants and the COVID pandemic, will exacerbate health burdens. This will have serious consequences for human wellbeing, and cascading into national and global security. With climate change, therapeutics and vaccines will not work. The article provides a brief overview of the unprecedented climate related hurricanes, storms, floods and wildfires disasters occurring in all regions of the world. It highlights of some of the key effects, impacts and consequences with current policies and practices with regard to the energy-climate conundrum. There is an imperative to change course toward a decarbonized future. A number of systemic expeditious interventions are delineated. These include actions by all on:. The* fundamental need to change behavior;*afforestation, reforestation, rehabilitation of wetlands, mangroves, wastelands and coral reefs to restore ecosystem functions which would also create significant number of employment and livelihoods' opportunities;*retrofitting existing structures to be more energy efficient, incorporate increasing renewable energy, sustainability and resiliency criteria, – to "build back better” and provide jobs;*the life cycle of food and agriculture practices need to be systemically examined to reduce adverse impacts on climate, Energy, environment and health. There are difficulties and challenges. The commensurate opportunities and benefits of a decarbonized paradigm include clean and safe jobs;healthy quality of life;and a sustained and resilient future for current and future generations. © 2023 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

An analysis of the protecting access to post-COVID-19 telehealth act and its efficacy in health care access amid the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of this study is to examine the barriers and the socio-economic determinants of telehealth services utilization during COVID-19 pandemic. This study measured the association between behavioral health services, medical services, and socio-economic factors such as gender, race, age, income level, education level, and health insurance coverage to determine if there is any relationship between these social economic factors and telehealth access during the COVID-19 pandemic. A descriptive-correlational analysis of secondary data from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) enabled the researcher to determine associations between social economic factors and healthcare access to answer the research questions and create a baseline to enable follow-up analyses. The independent variables were the socio-economic factors of gender, race, age, income level, education level, and health insurance coverage. The dependent variables were access to health care and telehealth services. Health care was divided into medical and behavioral health services. Levesque's conceptual framework of access to health care is used to synthesize characterizing access to health care and to describe the correlational relationship between the use of telehealth and social economic factors. The results of this study suggests that barriers to medical care were low, with as many as 87% of Louisiana residents having uninterrupted access to services and nearly 27% of residents utilizing telehealth services. The results of this study showed that the social economic factors of gender, race, age, income level, education level, and health insurance coverage were associated with access to health care services and use of telehealth. The regression analyses showed that collectively these social economic factors were significantly associated with health care access and telehealth use in Louisiana during the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

COVID-19 Growth Curve Forecasting for India Using Deep Learning Techniques

Due to sudden evolution and spread of COVID-19, the entire community in the globe is at risk. The covid has affected the health and economy and caused loss of life. In India, due to social economic factors, several thousands of people are infected, and India is seen as one of the top countries seriously impacted by the pandemic. Despite of having a modern medical instruments, drugs, and technical technology, it is very difficult to contain the spread of virus and save people from risk. Healthcare system and government personnel need to get an insight of covid outbreaks in the near future to decide on stepping up the healthcare facilities, to take necessary actions and to implement prevention policies to minimize the spread. In order to help the government, this study aims to build model a forecast COVID-19 model to foretell growth curve by predicting number of confirmed cases. Three variant models based on long short-term memory (LSTM) were built on the Indian COVID-19 dataset and are compared using the root mean squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The findings have revealed that the proposed stacked LSTM model outperforms the other proposed LSTM variants and is suitable for forecasting COVID-19 progress in India. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

Clustering of COVID-19 Vaccination Recipients in DKI Jakarta Using the K-Medoids Algorithm

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a serious problem that has attacked various aspects of life such as social, economic, religious, and others. The government has held a COVID-19 vaccination program as an effort to deal with the COVID-19 problem since January 13, 2021. Many problems occurred due to difficulties in dividing the vaccination recipient areas. This is due to the large number of regions with different conditions for each region. One of the efforts to assist the process of processing large vaccination data is data mining techniques and using the clustering method with the K-medoids algorithm. In this study, data on COVID-19 vaccination was grouped in the East Jakarta area using the K-medoids algorithm clustering method. The calculation is carried out using the Euclidean Distance equation and the value of S > 0. The grouped area categories are at the kelurahan level which will then be divided into several clusters. The clustering process was carried out with RapidMiner on 267 kelurahan data on four main attributes, namely the number of targets, the number of vaccine doses 1, the number of vaccine doses 2, and the number of vaccine doses 3. The clustering process was carried out in 6 simulations with variations of k medoids as much as 2 to 7. The results of clustering show the best number of clusters obtained in the simulation is cluster 6 with the smallest Davies Bouldin Index (DBI) value of 0.209. The clusters obtained are clusters 0 to cluster 5. The cluster that is prioritized in giving vaccinations is cluster 2 with 67 items because its members are areas in DKI Jakarta and give a high score in cases of COVID-19 compared to other clusters. © 2022 IEEE.

Mitigating the impact of Covid-19: Social Safety Net from Islamic perspective

PurposeThis study aims to propose priority solutions for mitigating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic through the Social Safety Net (SSN) based on the Islamic objectives. Design/methodology/approachThe analytic network process method is used in this study. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders were used to collect data and supplemented by a literature review to explore comprehensive information. FindingsThe findings indicate different opinions among experts, including regulators, practitioners, associations and academics regarding the most important priority solutions to the impact of Covid-19. However, experts agree that the highest priority solution is the SSN program in the lineage sector, specifically the distribution of the Family Hope Program. A program in the field of protecting the mind is the second priority solution. The program in the field of soul and wealth is the third priority solution. Originality/valueThis study contributes to the development of government policy to deal with the socioeconomic impact of Covid-19 based on the Islamic objectives by mapping the SSN through the five elements of protection, namely, faith, soul, mind, lineage and wealth protection based on priority solution.

Meeting the Covid Challenge–Agility and Resilience of SUITS Local Authorities

The Covid-19 pandemic has created immense social, economic, and political disruption around the world. It has shown the importance of agile, functional and resilient cities. In the fight against Covid-19, public life has been reduced to a minimum, but local authorities (LAs) have had to continue to satisfy existing and emergent citizens' needs and implement, sometimes at very short notice, extreme measures to restrict movement, commerce, education and leisure activities. This poses significant challenges as they have had to not only enforce and communicate government plans but also be proactive and respond to local needs of their cities whilst learning to work in new ways and support the health and well-being of employees. The Covid-19 pandemic has forced organizational change. In many instances, this has accelerated the rate of change, proving that new ways of working are effective and has led to a (temporary) advancement of sustainable transport. This chapter focuses mainly on the experience of SUITS LAs in the final year of the project. © 2023, Transport for West Midlands.

An analysis of the protecting access to post-COVID-19 telehealth act and its efficacy in health care access amid the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of this study is to examine the barriers and the socio-economic determinants of telehealth services utilization during COVID-19 pandemic. This study measured the association between behavioral health services, medical services, and socio-economic factors such as gender, race, age, income level, education level, and health insurance coverage to determine if there is any relationship between these social economic factors and telehealth access during the COVID-19 pandemic. A descriptive-correlational analysis of secondary data from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) enabled the researcher to determine associations between social economic factors and healthcare access to answer the research questions and create a baseline to enable follow-up analyses. The independent variables were the socio-economic factors of gender, race, age, income level, education level, and health insurance coverage. The dependent variables were access to health care and telehealth services. Health care was divided into medical and behavioral health services. Levesque's conceptual framework of access to health care is used to synthesize characterizing access to health care and to describe the correlational relationship between the use of telehealth and social economic factors. The results of this study suggests that barriers to medical care were low, with as many as 87% of Louisiana residents having uninterrupted access to services and nearly 27% of residents utilizing telehealth services. The results of this study showed that the social economic factors of gender, race, age, income level, education level, and health insurance coverage were associated with access to health care services and use of telehealth. The regression analyses showed that collectively these social economic factors were significantly associated with health care access and telehealth use in Louisiana during the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Individual and household risk factors for COVID-19 infection among household members of COVID-19 patients in home-based care in western Uganda, 2020.

Objective: To investigate factors associated with COVID-19 among household members of patients in home-based care (HBC) in western Uganda. Methods: We conducted a case-control and cohort study. Cases were reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 diagnosed 1-30 November 2020 among persons in HBC in Kasese or Kabarole districts. We compared 78 case-households (≥1 secondary case) with 59 control-households (no secondary cases). The cohort included all case-household members. Data were captured by in-person questionnaire. We used bivariate regression to calculate odds and risk ratios. Results: Case-households were larger than control-households (mean 5.8 vs 4.3 members, P<0.0001). Having ≥1 household member per room (adjusted odds ratio (aOR)=4.5, 95% CI 2.0-9.9), symptom development (aOR=2.3, 95% CI 1.1-5.0), or interaction with primary case-patient (aOR=4.6, 95% CI 1.4-14.7) increased odds of case-household status. Households assessed for suitability for HBC reduced odds of case-household status (aOR=0.4, 95% CI=0.2-0.8). Interacting with a primary case-patient increased the risk of individual infection among household members (adjusted risk ratio=1.7, 95% CI 1.1-2.8). Conclusion: Household and individual factors influence secondary infection risk in HBC. Decisions about HBC should be made with these in mind.

Student Authentication and Proctoring System Using AI and the IoT

The alarming spread of COVID-19 has caused significant social, economic, and commercial changes globally and has altered education. It highlighted the significance of an alternative education model that maintains health and safety during pandemics without disrupting learning. With this rapid transition to distance learning, it became fundamental to ensure the reliability of academic results is maintained through an online exam proctoring tool, providing user authentication, and examinees' monitoring, while ensuring maximum student convenience. In this paper, we propose an AI-powered proctoring system that adequately detects and reports academic malpractice and tackles the most significant distance learning deficiency, which is verifying the online learner's identity. The proposed solution is based on a computing unit equipped with an HD camera running computer vision pipelines that uses the student identification details for user authentication. The system aims to eliminate the possibility of running into technical problems while maintaining minimal human intervention. Hence, it offers a reliable, low-cost, user-friendly solution that saves time and resources. © 2022 IEEE.

A functionalized microwave sensor in a microfluidic platform for rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2

The global COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 has claimed >3.5 million lives and resulted in detrimental social-economic impact. If reliable and rapid test systems were available at home or community level such as drive-by stations, the scope and impact of this tragedy could be largely reduced. Although the vaccine roll out has helped control the pandemic, it is important to develop rapid and accurate testing methods for detection of the SARS-CoV-2 which can be tuned to respond to its variants or similar corona viruses in response to potential outbreaks. In this work, we present a novel method for detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus based on an antibody functionalized microwave sensor integrated with a microfluidic platform. © 2021 MicroTAS 2021 - 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences. All rights reserved.

Social Response to COVID-19 SMART Dashboard: Proposal for Case Study

The COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on the world’s healthcare infrastructure as well as its social, economic, and psychological well-being. In particular, Italy’s unexpectedly high COVID-19 case and death rate from March to June, 2020, captured headlines due to its speed and virulence. Many governments are currently implementing measures to help contain and slow down the spread of COVID-19. The Social Response to Covid-19 Smart Dashboard was built by researchers at the Metabolism of Cities Living Lab, Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age at San Diego State University and Politecnico di Milano. This dashboard provides an aggregated view of what people in 10 Italian metropolitan cities (Milan, Venice, Turin, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Bari, Palermo, and Cagliari) tweet during the pandemic by monitoring social media behaviors in the north, center, south, and islands. Moreover, the dashboard is a geo-targeted search tool for Twitter messages to monitor the diffusion of information and social behavior changes which provides an automatic procedure to help researchers to: associate tweets based on geography differences, filter noises such as removing redundant retweets and using machine learning methods to improve precisions, analyze social media data from a spatiotemporal perspective, and visualize social media data in various aspects such as weekly trends, top urls, top retweets, top mentions, and top hashtags. The Social Response to Covid-19 SMART Dashboard provides a useful tool for policy makers, city planners, research organizations, and health officials to monitor real-time societal perceptions using social media. © 2022, The Author(s).

Estimating the Genuine Progress Indicator before and during the COVID pandemic in Australia

In the efforts to ensure the health of the Australian population during the COVID pandemic, social, economic, and environmental aspects of people's life were impacted. In addressing the pandemic risks, a number of governments prioritized people's health and well-being over GDP growth. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is used to account for factors that influence well-being. We used the GPI to assess the pandemic's impact on well-being and we examined our results in relation to the GDP. We estimated the GPI for the first 6 months of 2019 and the same period in 2020, during which the first stages of the COVID pandemic and the first nationwide lockdown in Australia took place. We examined two scenarios, in the first we found that in Q1 the GDP growth (1.4%) was accompanied by a significant GPI growth (5.3%), showing a positive relation to the GDP;but in Q2 the significant drop (-6.3%) in the GDP was not followed by the GPI, instead the GPI growth remained almost steady with even a relatively small increase (0.33%), indicating a negative relation to the GDP growth. Whereas in the second scenario, the GPI growths (7.12%) in Q1 and (-2.60%) Q2 were positively related to the GDP growths (4.6%) in Q1 and (−0.25%) Q2.We discuss the reasons for the divergence between the two indicators and one of the limitations of the GPI as a measure of well-being. Lastly, we discuss the behavioural and policy lessons of the lockdown and their relevance to what is proposed by degrowth economists. © 2022 The Author(s)

Using AI as a support tool for bridging construction informal sector mechanisms to sustainable development requirements

Over 85% of Cameroonians use building informal sector mechanisms which involve a disorganized and varied workforce, types and qualities of materials from various origins with unclear supply networks, supported by a wide range of funding sources. Although previous work enabled us to master these mechanisms, their complexity is accentuated by sustainable development requirements and sanitary measures. Sustainability concept deals with fields to respond to social, economic and environmental challenges but its operationality in building encounters many difficulties due to informal mechanisms complexity. Dealing with this environment recommend taking advantage of Building Information Modeling, especially the assets of artificial intelligence (AI) to get appropriate, rapid, and diversified assistance. In this paper, we propose a concept of intelligent building sites management combining knowledge base, information system capitalizing on previous best practices and achievements to organize several construction sites in real-time with all requirements including those of SD goals and covid-19. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Solid fuel use, socioeconomic indicators and risk of cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality: a prospective cohort study in a rural area of Sichuan, China.

BACKGROUND: Estimates indicate that household air pollution caused by solid fuel burning accounted for about 1.03 million premature mortalities in China in 2016. In the country's rural areas, more than half the population still relies on biomass fuels and coals for cooking and heating. Understanding the health impact of indoor air pollution and socioeconomic indicators is essential for the country to improve its developmental targets. We aimed to describe demographic and socioeconomic characteristics associated with solid fuel users in a rural area in China. We also estimated the risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality in association with solid fuel use and described the relationship between solid fuel use, socioeconomic status and mortality. We also measured the risk of long-term use, and the effect of ameliorative action, on mortality caused by cardiovascular disease and other causes. METHODS: We used the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) site in Pengzhou, Sichuan, China. We followed a cohort of 55 687 people over 2004-13. We calculated the mean and standard deviation among subgroups classified by fuel use types: gas, coal, wood and electricity (central heating additionally for heating). We tested the mediation effect using the stepwise method and Sobel test. We used Cox proportional models to estimate the risk of incidences of cardiovascular disease and mortality with survival days as the time scale, adjusted for age, gender, socioeconomic status, physical measurements, lifestyle, stove ventilation and fuel type used for other purposes. The survival days were defined as the follow-up days from the baseline survey till the date of death or 31 December 2013 if right-censored. We also calculated the absolute mortality rate difference (ARD) between the exposure group and the reference group. RESULTS: The study population had an average age of 51.0, and 61.9% of the individuals were female; 64.8% participants (n = 35 543) cooked regularly and 25.4% participants (n = 13 921) needed winter heating. With clean fuel users as the reference group, participant households that used solid fuel for cooking or heating both had a higher risk of all-cause mortality: hazard ratio (HR) for: cooking, 1.11 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02, 1.26]; heating, 1.34 (95% CI 1.16, 1.54). Solid fuel used for winter heating was associated with a higher risk of mortality caused by cerebrovascular disease: HR 1.64 (95% CI 1.12, 2.40); stroke: HR 1.70 (95% CI 1.13, 2.56); and cardiovascular disease: HR 1.49 (95% CI 1.10, 2.02). Low income and poor education level had a significant correlation with solid fuel used for cooking: odds ratio (OR) for income: 2.27 (95% CI 2.14, 2.41); education: 2.34 (95% CI 2.18, 2.53); and for heating: income: 2.69 (95% CI 2.46, 2.97); education: 2.05 (95% CI 1.88, 2.26), which may be potential mediators bridging the effects of socioeconomic status factors on cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. Solid fuel used for cooking and heating accounted for 42.4% and 81.1% of the effect of poor education and 55.2% and 76.0% of the effect of low income on all-cause mortality, respectively. The risk of all-cause mortality could be ameliorated by stopping regularly cooking and heating using solid fuel or switching from solid fuel to clean fuels: HR for cooking: 0.90 (95% CI 0.84, 0.96); heating: 0.76 (95% CI 0.64, 0.92). CONCLUSIONS: Our study reinforces the evidence of an association between solid fuel use and risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. We also assessed the effect of socioeconomic status as the potential mediator on mortality. As solid fuel use was a major contributor in the effect of socioeconomic status on cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, policies to improve access to clean fuels could reduce morbidity and mortality related to poor education and low income.

Family Planning in Zambia: An Investment Pillar for Economic Development: [version 2;peer review: 2 approved]

Family planning represents a ‘best buy’ in global efforts to achieve sustainable development and attain improvements in sexual and reproductive health. By meeting contraceptive needs of all women, significant public health impact and development gains accrue. At the same time, governments face the complex challenge of allocating finite resources to competing priorities, each of which presents known and unknown challenges and opportunities. Zambia has experienced a slow but steady increase in contraceptive prevalence, with slight decline in total fertility rate (TFR), over the past 20 years. Drawing from the Zambian context, including a review of current policy solutions, we present a case for making investments in voluntary family planning (FP), underpinned by a human rights framework, as a pillar for accelerating development and socio-economic advancement. Through multilevel interventions aimed at averting unintended pregnancies, Zambia – and other low- and middle-income countries – can reduce their age dependency ratios and harness economic growth opportunities awarded by the demographic dividend while improving the health and quality of life of the population.

Smart Culture in Russia Pre-COVID: Development and Online Presence of Cultural Organizations

The pandemic-related restrictions on visiting theaters, museums, libraries, etc., as well as on organization of cultural events, had provided a boost to online forms of culture. The paper considers digitalization of culture and analyzes and assesses the development of “smart culture” within the framework of smart cities. First we aggregate the statistical data on attendance and digitalization of libraries and museums per the 8 Federal Okrugs of Russia in the Pre-COVID period of 2014–2019. We forecast that the growth of offline attendance during the timeframe of the National Project “Culture” will amount to 29%, which is considerably higher than the 15% required by the respective goal of the Project. Our results demonstrate uneven pace of digitalization for different types of cultural organizations and different regions of Russia. For instance, 50% of theaters in Moscow had websites by 2006, whereas the same threshold for the rest of Russia was only achieved around 2012. We expect that aiding people’s involvement with the culture-related ICT can provide social, economic and technical effects. At the same time, our findings might be useful for policy-makers engaged in e-culture and e-government development. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Individual characteristics and demographics associated with mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

Introduction: Many scientific studies provide evidence of mask wearing as an effective strategy to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. However, US citizens do not adhere to this prevention practice universally. Although past studies have shown disparities in mask wearing by age, gender, ethnicity, and location, the literature lacks a work that uses large-scale national survey data to understand the mask-wearing resistors' characteristics and demographics. This study's purpose is to fill this gap. Methods: We obtained this study's data from the COVID-19 Impact Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. This survey aims at generating national and regional statistics by surveying representative regional and national samples in three time periods: April 20-26, 2020, May 4-10, 2020, and June 1-8, 2020. Data for our analysis are from the public-use files of these three waves. We performed logistic regressions to estimate the adjusted risk ratio (ARR) of not wearing masks for several personal characteristics and demographics. Results: Our results suggest that younger (average ARR = 1.66) and lower-income (average ARR = 1.51) adults are more likely not to wear a face mask to prevent the coronavirus spread. On the other hand, unhealthy (average ARR = 0.81), female (average ARR = 0.68), and minority (average ARR = 0.65) adults are less likely not to wear a mask. Furthermore, residents in the Northeast region (average ARR = 0.34) and urban residents (average ARR = 0.54) are less likely not to wear a face mask. Conclusion: Mask-wearing behavior differs by age, income, health status, gender, race, region, and geographical residence in the US. © 2022 Medknow. All rights reserved.

The impact of Covid-19 on the length of stay of the plastic surgery department

The new COVID-19 disease has swept the world in recent months, causing enormous disruption to social, economic and health systems. Given the diversity of international health systems and conditions differ from one location to another. In all cases, however, it was decided to limit the elective surgical practices considered non-urgent. Plastic surgery departments have also seen a change in their normal business. The aim of this study was to investigate how the pandemic changed the activity of the Plastic Surgery Department of the "San Giovanni di Dio and Ruggi d'Aragona"University Hospital in Salerno (Italy). In particular, starting from the hospital discharge forms for the two-year period 2019-2020, Gender, Age, Date of admission, Date of discharge, Diagnostic Related Group (DRG) weight and Hospital admission procedures for patients were extracted. Statistical analysis and logistic regression were used to compare the activity of 2019, used in this study as a reference, with that of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. The analysis showed a statically significant reduction in the Length of Stay (LOS), thus improving appropriateness and achieving a reduction in spending. © 2021 ACM.