Innovative Approaches to Managing Scale

Enrollments in computer science courses and majors are at or exceeding capacity at the college level. This context drives local innovations that may benefit individuals across the SIGCSE community. The panelists will share how, in the context of booming enrollments and COVID, they strive to protect faculty time, engage students in larger classes, take advantage of scale, improve student-TA interactions, motivate faculty to teach larger classes, and better monitor students in large classes. During the panel Q&A, attendees will be invited to share additional strategies live on Course.Care, which will then be disseminated through CSTeachingTips.org.

The COVID Retirement Boom and Personal Finance: How can we save and protect?

Granting periodic income payments to retirees, the Social Security system is undoubtedly an essential part of American retirement financing. Indeed, 90% of American retirees receive Social Security and 57% of its beneficiaries depend on it as the major source of income. While Social Security is indispensable to American retirement financing, retirees ought not to be unduly dependent on it, as current demographic changes imperil the institution's regulation. Over the last decade, the United States retirement population increase rate has been 33.79%, approximately seven times that of the labor force population. This pattern jeopardizes the Social Security system by raising its cost disproportionately to its income. Thus, if such a demographic trend continues, the Social Security System will no longer be able to provide retirees with income. Confronting the possibility of systemic failure of the Social Security system, I will argue in this paper that retirees must take responsibility for their own finances and voluntarily produce income through investing in two asset classes - REITs and bond ladders. My research will discuss two advisable investment plans: REITs and bond ladders. Each method will be evaluated on its safety, periodicity of income, and consistency in the income quantity. Furthermore, for each method, I will examine its upsides and downsides. This research discusses the transfer of financial responsibility from the Social Security system to individual retirees. It proposes retirement plans that the members of our community can practice to produce income. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Technium Social Sciences Journal is the property of Technium Press Constanta and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Local Housing Market Sentiments and Returns: Evidence from China

This paper examines the impacts of local housing sentiments on the housing price dynamics of China. With a massive second-hand transaction dataset, we construct monthly local housing sentiment indices for 18 major cities in China from January 2016 to October 2020. We create three sentiment proxies representing the local housing market liquidity and speculative behaviors from the transaction dataset and then use partial least squares (PLS) to extract a recursive look-ahead-bias-free local housing sentiment index for each city considered. The local housing sentiments are shown to have robust predictive powers for future housing returns with a salient short-run underreaction and long-run overreaction pattern. Further analysis shows that local housing sentiment impacts are asymmetric, and housing returns in cities with relatively inelastic housing supply are more sensitive to local housing sentiments. We also document a significant feedback effect between housing returns and market sentiments, indicating the existence of a pricing-sentiment spiral which could potentially enhance the ongoing market fever of Chinese housing markets. The main estimation results are robust to alternative sentiment extraction methods and alternative sentiment proxies, and consistent for the sample period before COVID-19.

Smart Entry System Following COVID-19 Protocols

COVID-19 is an ongoing global pandemic and is continuing to be a fast-spreading virus all over the world. It transmits when people breathe in air contaminated by droplets and small airborne particles containing the virus. The risk becomes highest when people are nearby, but they can be over longer distances, while indoors. It is necessary to isolate such infected persons in public places with large gatherings. In addition to screening them, individual protection measures can also be taken.Two primary requirements that fulfil the entry to the public are by scanning of temperature to prevent person suspected and also to ensure one has masked face properly to permit entry. At the moment, all places use this system. But they are manual and depend on the person inspecting temperature and mask. There are few automated processes, but they do not have automatic entry control. Thus, there are risks of false entry of people inside the public place.In this paper, an integrated approach in mask detection and temperature scanning, indicated visually by LED and LCD Display, and further control entry with the operation of boom barrier has been presented. The information is also recorded to identify each entry. Open CV is used to detect masks and obtain better accuracy. An infrared temperature sensor and a proper guide to scan the temperature are used. Each step of the process is implemented on one Raspberry PI-based board. The system is suitably packaged and demonstrated. © 2022 IEEE.

Innovative Approaches to Managing Scale

Enrollments in computer science courses and majors are at or exceeding capacity at the college level. This context drives local innovations that may benefit individuals across the SIGCSE community. The panelists will share how, in the context of booming enrollments and COVID, they strive to protect faculty time, engage students in larger classes, take advantage of scale, improve student-TA interactions, motivate faculty to teach larger classes, and better monitor students in large classes. During the panel Q&A, attendees will be invited to share additional strategies live on Course.Care, which will then be disseminated through CSTeachingTips.org. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and multiple community lockdowns on total live birth rates and preterm births in Melbourne, Australia.

We evaluated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Melbourne's multiple community lockdowns (between 2020-21) on total live birth rates and preterm births in a large health network. Analysis revealed a decrease in total live birth rates following easing of initial lockdowns, and a sharp increase in births at one stage in between lockdowns. The proportion and number of preterm births (<37 weeks gestation) decreased at the start of initial lockdowns with the strongest decrease after the end of the second lockdown period. Births <34 weeks gestation also decreased during lockdowns, but no significant change was identified for births <28 weeks gestation.

Scenario-based fertility projections incorporating impacts of COVID-19

This paper examines the recent declines in period fertility in the constituent countries of the UK during the past decade and speculates mechanisms through which the COVID-19 pandemic could influence childbearing in the UK. The effects are likely to differ by age and presence of children. Considering potential forces acting on individuals at different ages and family sizes, we expect that the COVID-19 pandemic will depress fertility, particularly among younger people. Because fertility at all ages was declining before the onset of the pandemic, this could mean a further decline in period fertility to historically low UK levels. We put forward a number of scenarios to examine the possible impact of the pandemic on numbers of live births. Our projections show that for three scenarios out of four, fertility is expected to decline over the next 3?years, leading to significantly fewer births annually compared with the pre-pandemic period.