Impact of Pandemic Outbreak and Targeted Required Reserve Ratio Cut Policy on Stock Return Rate: Evidence from China

This study analyzed the impact of COVID-19 outbreak and targeted required reserve ratio cut policy on stock returns of Chinese listed companies. This paper uses the data of 3,449 A-share listed companies from February 3, 2020 to December 31, 2020 for research, the empirical results showed that stock prices of private enterprises with stronger debt-paying ability and looser financing constraints, and state-owned enterprises with less supply chain credit risks performed better, in the central and western regions, enterprises with stronger solvency and looser financing constraints have better stock price performance during the early stages of pandemic. After the implementation of the targeted RRR cut policy, the stock prices of enterprises with poor solvency, private enterprises, and enterprises in central and western regions with strong financing constraints, state-owned enterprises, and enterprises in eastern region with high credit risks all showed significant reversals, and the stock prices reflected the effect of the targeted RRR cut policy in the short and medium term. Over time, the pandemic has been controlled, and the resumption of work and production has freed most enterprises from financial difficulties. However, due to sporadic outbreaks, large private enterprises and eastern enterprises with strong risk resistance and loose financing constraints enjoy better stock price performance. This study is helpful for enterprises to understand the value of financial flexibility and solvency and provides a reference for enterprises to make financial decisions: how to balance the benefits and costs of solvency. © Tian Wang, Fang Fang and Linhao Zheng, 2023.

A Comparative Analysis of IoT Protocols for Resource Constraint Devices and Networks

Communication standards and protocols are detrimental to the success of any Internet of Things (IoT) system or application. Selecting a communication standard and a suitable middleware or messaging protocol for IoT connectivity is challenging due to the heterogeneous resource-constrained IoT devices and their messaging requirements. Recently, several messaging/middleware protocols in the IoT field were developed and adopted in the industry. However, to date, there is no specific messaging protocol that can support all messaging use cases and fulfil the overall requirements of IoT systems. Therefore, it is critical to understand the application layer messaging and communication protocols of IoT systems to identify the most appropriate protocol that could fit and be applied in various contexts. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the MQTT, CoAP, and AMQP messaging protocols including their security. © 2022 ACM.

Mucormycosis Metabolic Network Modeling: A Constraint-Based Approach

Mucormycosis is an uncommon illness caused by the fungus Mucorales. India was concerned about mucormycosis and COVID-19 in 2020. To minimize morbidity and occurrence, prevent, and treat mucormycosis, analysis is required. Combining systems biology and bioinformatics-based mucormycosis research, this study simulates the Genome-scale metabolic model (GSSM) of a Rhizopus oryzae strain for the comprehension of the organism's metabolic mechanism. Several key metabolic pathways for a mucormycosis-causing fungus strain were identified in research publications and targeted for inclusion in a model of a metabolic network. Based on the Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) approach, an integrated model of these pathways at the scale of the genome's metabolism was developed and appropriate constraints were applied to the numerous reactions involved in Rhizopus oryzae's metabolism using the COBRA package in MATLAB. Hence, unique evidence of pharmacological targets and biomarkers that may function as diagnostic, early analytic, and therapeutic agents in mucormycosis was discovered. Our study investigates the role of key metabolites in the model by applying constraints and altering fluxes, which provides valuable candidates for drug development. . © 2023 IEEE.

The dual nature of constraints on foreign worker participation in sports and physical activity in South Korea during COVID-19.

This study provides a different understanding of the constraints imposed by the pandemic and the official and unofficial restrictions that accompanied it. It is an empirical effort demonstrating that the pandemic's effects are not purely negative, but rather, also helped to produce positive and productive practices that draw upon both the inhibiting and enabling features of the constraints it triggered. Engaging with "productive power" in Foucault by considering constraints as practices that both inhibit and enable, the empirical goal of this paper is to explore how pandemic-related constraints on sports and physical activity prohibit foreign worker participation in sports and physical activity. It also examines how the constraints encourage them to pursue an active life in new and unique ways. To achieve this goal, the paper examines the South Korean context, particularly unskilled foreign workers with E-9 visas for non-professional employment in the fishing, farming, and manufacturing industries and their involvement in sports and physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings address three "inhibitors" that specifically prevented foreign workers from getting actively involved, then demonstrate that explicit restrictions on sports and physical activity can be transformed into four "enablers" that encouraged foreign workers to participate. The conclusion offers critical reflections on Foucault's "ethical subject," followed by the limitations and implications of the study.

A new uncertain multi-objective programming model with chance-entropy constraint for advertising promotion.

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced people to stay at home to prevent the spread of the virus. In this case, social media platforms have become the main communication venue for people. Online sales platforms have also become the main field for people's daily consumption. So, how to make full use of social media to carry out online advertising promotion, and then achieve better marketing, is one of the core issues that the marketing industry must pay attention to and solve. Therefore, this study takes the advertiser as the decision-maker, maximizes the number of full playing, likes, comments and forwarding, and minimizes the cost of advertising promotion as the decision-making goals, and Key Opinion Leader (KOL) selection as the decision vector. Based on this, a multi-objective uncertain programming model of advertising promotion is constructed. Among them, the chance-entropy constraint is proposed by combining the entropy constraint and the chance constraint. In addition, the multi-objective uncertain programming model is transformed into a clear single-objective model through mathematical derivation and linear weighting of the model. Finally, the practicability and effectiveness of the model are verified by numerical simulation, and decision-making suggestions for advertising promotion are put forward.

Optimal capacity sharing for global genomic surveillance.

Recent technological advances and substantial cost reductions have made the genomic surveillance of pathogens during pandemics feasible. Our paper focuses on full genome sequencing as a tool that can serve two goals: the estimation of variant prevalences, and the identification of new variants. Assuming that capacity constraints limit the number of samples that can be sequenced, we solve for the optimal distribution of these capacities among countries. Our results show that if the principal goal of sequencing is prevalence estimation, then the optimal capacity distribution is less than proportional to the weights (e.g., sizes) of countries. If, however, the main aim of sequencing is the detection of new variants, capacities should be allocated to countries or regions that have the most infections. Applying our results to the sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in 2021, we provide a comparison between the observed and a suggested optimal capacity distribution worldwide and in the EU. We believe that following such quantifiable guidance will increase the efficiency of genomic surveillance for pandemics.

Technical Innovation in Critical Care in a World of Constraints: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 crisis was characterized by a massive need for respiratory support, which has unfortunately not been met globally. This situation mimicked those which gave rise to critical care in the past. Since the polio epidemic in the 50's, the technological evolution of respiratory support has enabled health professionals to save the lives of critically-ill patients worldwide every year. However, much of the current innovation work has turned around developing sophisticated, complex, and high-cost standards and approaches whose resilience is still questionable upon facing constrained environments or contexts, as seen in resuscitation work outside intensive care units, during pandemics, or in low-income countries. Ventilatory support is an essential life-saving tool for patients with respiratory distress. It requires an oxygen source combined to a ventilatory assistance device, an adequate monitoring system, and properly trained caregivers to operate it. Each of these elements can be subject to critical constraints, which we can no longer ignore. The innovation process should incorporate them as a prima materia, whilst focusing on the core need of the field using the concept of frugal innovation. Having a universal access to oxygen and respiratory support, irrespective of the context and constraints, necessitates: i) developing cost-effective, energy-efficient, and maintenance-free oxygen generation devices; ii) improving the design of non-invasive respiratory devices (for example, with oxygen saving properties); iii) conceiving fully frugal ventilators and universal monitoring systems; iv) broadening ventilation expertise by developing end-user training programs in ventilator assistance. The frugal innovation approach may give rise to a more resilient and inclusive critical care system. This paradigm shift is essential for the current and future challenges.

Designing the home healthcare supply chain during a health crisis

During the COVID-19 pandemic, sectoral contributors to home healthcare supply chain (HHCSC) corporations highlighted the role of home care services. Pharmacies are located where patients are allocated to them, and nurses are routed and scheduled according to their patients' needs. It is the first study to propose an integrated location-allocation-routing model, which includes all preliminaries necessary to make these decisions. We implement the LP-metric and epsilon-constraint methods to solve this model, and then we discuss the results of these methods. A comparison is also made regarding the objective function values and the time taken to solve the problem. The average, mean ideal distance (MID) (3.74;3.19), the rate of achievement of two objectives simultaneously (RAS) (1.71;3.56), and computational time (CPU time) (1.92;24.92) for two ɛ-constraint and LP-Metric methods is calculated. The superior technique is finally selected by utilizing the TOPSIS. To solve the study's mathematical model, the LP-metric method is worth implementing. Based on these results, the suggested model for HHCSC companies, and employees' performance, is efficient during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How policy failure and power relations drive COVID-19 pandemic waves

Elementary control theory and epidemic spread models illustrate the deadly impacts delay in recognizing pandemic threat and failure of institutional cognition in facing that threat can have on the institutions of public health. While short delays may cause some oscillation that rapidly dies out, sufficiently large time gaps trigger multiple infection waves of increasing severity, much like the onset of a power network blackout or of uncontrollable vehicle fishtailing. Similar-and synergistic-oscillations are found to be triggered by sufficiently low rates of institutional cognition. This approach begins to lift the cultural constraints inherent to host-pathogen population dynamics models of infectious disease in social systems sculpted by the synergisms of geography, power relations, and path-dependent historical trajectory. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

Fuzzy Contrast Set Based Deep Attention Network for Lexical Analysis and Mental Health Treatment

Internet-delivered psychological treatments (IDPT) consider mental problems based on Internet interaction. With such increased interaction because of the COVID-19 pandemic, more online tools have been widely used to provide evidence-based mental health services. This increase helps cover more population by using fewer resources for mental health treatments. Adaptivity and customization for the remedy routine can help solve mental health issues quickly. In this research, we propose a fuzzy contrast-based model that uses an attention network for positional weighted words and classifies mental patient authored text into distinct symptoms. After that, the trained embedding is used to label mental data. Then the attention network expands its lexicons to adapt to the usage of transfer learning techniques. The proposed model uses similarity and contrast sets to classify the weighted attention words. The fuzzy model then uses the sets to classify the mental health data into distinct classes. Our method is compared with non-embedding and traditional techniques to demonstrate the proposed model. From the experiments, the feature vector can achieve a high ROC curve of 0.82 with problems associated with nine symptoms.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice at HICSS-55

Since its inception six years ago, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice minitrack of the Hawaiian International Conference on System Science (HICSS) has focused on the intersection of knowledge management and system science with innovation and entrepreneurship. Whereas the context of traditional knowledge management research is established organizations, this minitrack features the works of researchers who apply system science methods to knowledge management in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship, which is distinguished by uncertainty and resource constraints. The minitrack, part of the HICSS Knowledge Innovation and Entrepreneurial Systems track, continues to attract quality manuscripts relevant to the researcher, instructor, and practitioner, despite this being the second year that the coronavirus pandemic has forced the conference format to be virtual. This year's eight minitrack papers investigate environments for innovation including accelerators, incubators, and makerspaces, the digitalization of innovation, and sustainability. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Stock price reactions to corporate cash holdings in mitigating predictable and unpredictable negative shocks

This paper explores how cash mitigates predictable and unpredictable adverse cash flow shocks to firms using the financial data of Japanese firms. We find that (i) cash had a positive impact on stock prices, and the impact was thoroughly reflected in stock prices before a predictable shock, (ii) after an unpredicted shock, the value of cash for the financially constrained firms is larger than that for the unconstrained firms, and (iii) the value of cash is similar between the two shocks for the unconstrained firms whereas the value is larger when the unpredicted shock occurs than when the predicted shock occurs for the constrained firms. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Financial Constraints with the Outbreak of COVID-19 and the Equity Guarantee Swap

In order to further alleviate the financing constraints on SMEs and to reduce financing costs incurred following the outbreak of COVID-19, this article introduces an innovative financial arrangement called equity for guarantee swaps (EGS), which are based on widely used credit guarantee schemes (CGS). EGS can reduce information asymmetry and increase credit to SMEs, so that they can obtain more favorable financing conditions and alleviate liquidity difficulties. This helps to reverse the adverse impact of the pandemic. More importantly, from an academic perspective EGS demonstrate Pareto improvement over CGS.

Telehealth: Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond: The Sickle Cell Unit Experience.

Introduction: To examine the use of telehealth for delivery of health care in persons with sickle cell disease in a resource-constrained country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This study was a retrospective review of patient encounters at the Sickle Cell Unit (SCU), Jamaica during a 3-year period, March 10, 2019 to March 9, 2022 and a comparison of endpoints between 1 year before and 2 years during the pandemic. Primary endpoints of registration numbers, day-care admissions, and study visits were obtained from logbooks and the electronic medical records. Additional endpoints included well visits, hydroxyurea (HU) visits, and bone pain crisis. Results: Patients registered at the clinic on 17,295 occasions, with 7,820 in the pre-pandemic year decreasing by 43.8% and 35% in the 2 subsequent pandemic years. Overall, study visits increased by 4.9% and 1.3% in the pandemic years. They increased in adults by 13.1% and 8.9% but fell by 3.2% and 6.2% in children. Fewer people were seen in the pandemic years, with children showing a 20.7% decline in numbers. Tele-visits accounted for 31.4% of all study visits during the pandemic years and increased by 23.6% between the pandemic years. There were more well-visits and HU visits, but fewer pain visits and day-care admissions in the pandemic years. Conclusions: The SCU maintained health care delivery for a high-risk population during the pandemic, with tele-visits mitigating the short-fall from in-person visits. Tele-visits may be more acceptable to adults with a chronic illness and may be a suitable alternative for delivering health care.

External challenges to the economic expansion of emerging markets in the post-COVID 19 and post-COP26 era: A balance-of-payments constrained growth (BPCG) perspective

The purpose of this study is to assess, from a Balance of Payment Constraint Growth (BPCG) theoretical perspective, current key challenges of developing countries that spring from two broad exogenous factors. These factors are: i) global shocks that affect the world economy, and ii) major economic policy changes in developed countries. The BPCG perspective helps to identify to what extent these challenges are rooted in the developing countries' vulnerabilities and structural weaknesses linked to their role in international trade and capital markets. To discuss the current uncertain global environment potential implications for developing economies – growing inflation, hawkish monetary policy, cross-border flows redistribution, as well as the geopolitical redefinition of international trade and global value chains, among others - the present work builds a BPCG model for the post-COVID era and applies it to evaluate challenges to growth in six countries: Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Mexico, and Turkey.

INDISCIPLINA FISCAL Y MECANISMOS EXTRAORDINARIOS DE LIQUIDEZ

La crisis de la COVID-19 ha derivado en una protección añadida a la que venía ejerciendo la Administración central a través de los mecanismos extraordinarios de liquidez (MEL). Esto revela una restricción presupuestaria blanda que difícilmente se podrá mantener en el futuro. En este trabajo, además de un seguimiento de los MEL, se hace un repaso de su uso por parte de las comunidades autónomas, al tiempo que se comprueba que la (in)disciplina fiscal de los Gobiernos regionales procede de canales involuntarios. Este resultado revela la necesidad de concretar un nuevo sistema de financiación autonómica, junto con unas reglas fiscales simples, flexibles y creíbles.Alternate :The crisis resulting from Covid-19 has led to additional protection to that provided by the central government through the extraordinary liquidity mechanisms (MEL). This reveals a soft budget constraint that is unlikely to be maintained in the future. In this paper, in addition to monitoring the MEL, we review their use by the autonomous communities, while at the same time finding that the fiscal (in)discipline of the regional governments is explained by involuntary channels. This result reveals the need to specify a new system of regional financing, together with simple, flexible, and credible fiscal rules.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2022-course notes: "become a guardian of al wasl": Developing productions for the world s largest real-Time interactive projection experience

At the time of writing (2021-22), "Become a Guardian of Al Wasl"represented the world's largest interactive experience. Designing, producing and deploying an immersive interactive experience at the monumental scale of the Al Wasl Plaza 360° projection surface necessitated the research, prototyping and testing of proposed solutions, including systems architecture, to meet the scope and specifications of the project. Four problem spaces emerged during development;real-Time rendering, projection-mapping, redundancy, and content synchronisation. In addition, budget constraints, Covid-19, and remote deployment motivated the exploration of other innovative solutions. As there is limited research on the design and development of interactive dome experiences, this paper will present the challenges encountered in developing productions for the world's largest dome display system and in building the underlying real-Time display and support systems. © 2022 Owner/Author.

'Exploring the Effect of Mirror Therapy versus Constraint Induced Movement Therapy in an Older Adult Post Stroke Population'

Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of community therapy services in Ireland. The need for the provision of upper limb rehabilitation for stroke survivors remained. A new method of service provision was developed and evaluated. Aim- To deliver an upper limb rehabilitation programme to older adults post stroke through virtual means and to compare the stroke interventions of mirror therapy (MT) and constraint induced movement therapy (CIMT). Method(s): 21 participants recruited. The investigator recorded 36 upper limb rehabilitation sessions (12 MT, 12 CIMT and 12 control) which were sent electronically to participants- 6 week therapy programme. Participants were assessed pre and post intervention using the DASH, OSA-SF, JAMAR Hand Function Test, 9 Hole Peg Test and Dynamometer. Statistical significance for CIMT group in grip strength and minimal fine motor skills improvement. MT showed significance in both fine and gross motor skills, grip and pinch strength and overall participants self-perceptions of function. Result(s): 21 participants completed upper limb rehabilitation programmes in their own homes successfully. The MT group showed greater significance than CIMT when completed through virtual means. Telehealth may be a means of service delivery going forward and MT has proven effective as virtual intervention. Conclusion(s): Further evaluation of this intervention through virtual means is needed. Implications for practice- The incorporation of telehealth into upper limb stroke rehabilitation practice can alleviate waiting lists through allowing multiple patients access to interventions at once and also can provide a stroke service in a timely manner.

Going solo during the pandemic: a generational segmentation of solo female travellers

This paper is driven both by a growing appetite for solo female travel;as well as a knowledge gap in the market and literature. The aim is to identify generational differences in women's solo travel motivations, characterize the generational differences in their preferred destination attributes, and ascertain any generational differences in their perceived inhibiting factors to travelling solo post the COVID-19 pandemic. By using the push–pull framework theory as the overarching framework, a survey was administered and 1576 responses from experienced solo female travellers were analysed. The findings revealed the different generations of solo female travellers and their distinctive travel needs (push factor/motivation, pull factor/destination preference, and inhibiting factors/risk & constraint) during the COVID pandemic. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Can cryptocurrency solve the problem of financial constraint in corporates? A literature review and theoretical perspective

Purpose: This paper aims to attempt to examine some of the unique features of cryptocurrency and the reasons for its growing market acceptability. Given the expanding size of cryptocurrency markets, the present study strives to identify whether it can be used as an alternative financial asset in place of traditional financial assets to meet firms' financial constraints. It also provides issues for future research in the area of cryptocurrency markets. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analysed 94 research papers from databases such as ScienceDirect, Proquest, EBSCO, Emerald Insight and Web of Science. Articles connected to cryptocurrency, financial assets and corporate financial constraints research were explored. VOSviewer software has been used to visualise the specified body of literature and identify eight clusters in previous literature using keyword and analysis. Findings: Studies reveal that cryptocurrency markets are independent of traditional financial markets and cryptocurrency returns have less correlation with traditional financial asset classes. This can be an advantage to firms, especially during times of crisis when traditional financial assets are impacted by significantly lower returns, while cryptocurrencies can serve as an alternative. Realtime data reveals that during the pandemic, cryptocurrencies had the maximum growth in returns which also happened to be a time when firms faced severe cash constraints. While accepting cryptocurrency as a means of exchange is still under review by regulatory authorities, it can be considered an alternative asset for investment purposes. Firms can take advantage of it to overcome financial constraints and thus reap the gains from holding crypto assets for precautionary reasons. Originality/value: The present study investigates using cryptocurrency as an alternative financial asset to solve the financial constraint problem in corporates. The issues regarding volatility, cyber securities, gold returns, long-term and short-term returns have been some of the most prominent studies in the area of cryptocurrency. The present study uses eight theme-based clusters to identify the role of cryptocurrency as an alternative investment class and examines evidence-based research regarding the financial returns from holding cryptocurrency over certain traditional asset classes such as gold, currency or stocks. In recent years, it has been found that investors' growing interest in holding cryptocurrency as part of their financial portfolio has led to the substantial appreciation of cryptocurrency prices. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the study will be a novel attempt to identify the role of cryptocurrency as an antidote to the companies' financial constraints and liquidity issues. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.