Counselling and training of nutritional snacks making for immunity increasing during COVID 19 pandemic

Increasing body immunity is very necessary after the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the efforts that can be made to increase the body's immunity is to consume functional foods with immunostimulant activity, such as processed snakehead fish products in the form of nuggets, and "parkusel" juice made from a mixture of bitter melon, dates and celery. The purpose of community service is to provide knowledge and skills to housewives and the community at the Veteran ABRI Housing Complex in Medan Estate, Deli Serdang Regency, in making functional food products in the form of snakehead fish nuggets and Perkusel juice. The community service method used is the counseling method with leafet aids and training in making snakehead fish nuggets and perkusel juice. The results of the activity showed that there was an increase in the knowledge of the community participants in community service activities about nutritious snack products that can increase body immunity by 71% in the good value category.

The assessment and improvement of the value chains and added value of agricultural commodities in the south of Libya: with a special emphasis on women's livelihoods

This report first describes the context of the agriculture sector in Libya and in the south of the country, the impact of the ongoing conflict in the country since 2011 and of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the specific configuration of the sectors in the south of the country. Secondly, it describes the main challenges in the value chains and added value of selected major crops cultivated in the south of Libya, providing an analysis and assessment of the cooperatives and associations in the region with significant involvement and participation of women. The value chains and added value have been evaluated and characterized for four crops (tomatoes, watermelons, mangos and dates). The study found the value chains of the assessed crops to be highly deficient, with almost no proper postharvest handling practices, and there is an almost total lack of added value. Surveys, interviews and studies in the region have identified three types of involvement of women in food and/or agriculture: (1) very few women are members of classical agricultural cooperatives;(2) some women are members of civil society organizations (CSOs) involved in agricultural and/or food activities;and (3) many individual women not associated with groups, associations and cooperatives perform some agricultural and/or food activities.

Meeting a Planetary Launch Window in a Pandemic

L'Ralph is the primary science instrument on the Lucy mission to encounter the Trojan asteroids at the Jupiter L4 and L5 Lagrange points. In December of 2019, the main instrument subassemblies were finishing their build-up and testing. The team was getting ready for integration and testing with comfortable schedule margin to our required delivery date in support of the planetary launch window. When COVID-19 started to spread, the flight hardware ground to a halt but the planets kept moving. The L'Ralph team used a risk-based process to strategically descope activities from the integration and test flow and to negotiate a late delivery to the spacecraft. They changed the entire risk posture, investing in infrastructure to allow more remote test support to protect the team's health and reduce the schedule risk in case of an outbreak. Despite multiple technical hurdles, the team was able to make an on-time delivery to the spacecraft, and Lucy was successfully launched in October 2021. © 2022 IEEE.

IoT based Green Disinfection Chamber

This paper presents a design and implementation of an IoT-based Green Disinfection Chamber to fight against the COVID-19 virus. The primary function of this disinfection chamber is to sanitize the clothes worn by the person who uses this chamber from head to toe in a matter of seconds. In addition, it can read the body temperature of the person using the MLX90614 contactless temperature sensor. Here a 4x3 keypad has been provided to type the NIC number of the person who uses this chamber. The valuable data such as the user's body temperature, date and time he or she used this chamber, and identification details are being saved automatically in a remote cloud server with the help of a Wi-Fi-based ESP8266 (NodeMCU) module. On the chemical storage side, an ultrasonic sensor has been used at the bottom of the chemical tank lid to determine the chemical level and to generate an alarm refill signal if necessary. The rationale and novelty of this innovation are that it does not require any additional person to assist in doing that task separately, reducing the risk of health workers and doctors. Another unique feature is that the entire process is powered by solar energy to minimize environmental pollution and avoid main grid connection being used in any remote location. For this reason, the word "Green"has been used for this project. This innovation uses the latest technology to create a more cost-effective design with eco-friendly and energy-saving features to protect people, which would be ideal for developing countries to cope with pandemic situations, especially in the Sri Lankan context today. © 2021 IEEE.

Letting go of strict deadlines: Increasing flexibility to level the playing field

Some faculty feel that due dates teach professionalism and self-regulation. In line with that intent, professors administer penalties to enforce the value of completing work in a timely manner. However, the shared cultural experience of the COVID-19 pandemic found faculty and students facing a common concern, which demanded greater flexibility. Faculty were readily able to empathize with challenges students were facing at that moment. Thus, the pandemic became a time to reconsider such strict enforcement of various policies, including those surrounding due dates and late work. Certainly, prior to the pandemic, professors may have offered extensions or waived penalties on a case-by-case basis when students provided justification. This approach, while well intentioned, may disproportionately hinder students who have been historically marginalized, as these students may not think to make such requests or may worry about a professor's reaction to such requests. Rather ironically then, students with the most privilege may be more likely to request assistance but are less likely to struggle with an overload of work, family, and school obligations. Women, in particular, are more likely to receive such requests and therefore be disproportionately burdened. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Contagion and portfolio management in times of COVID-19.

This paper aims to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on the interconnectedness between the Chinese stock market and major financial and commodity markets-gold, silver, Bitcoin, WTI, S&P 500, and Euro STOXX 50-and analyze the portfolio design implications. Using daily data from 2018 to 2021, we first apply the wavelet power spectrum (WPS) to visualize volatility shifts. In contrast to previous research, we empirically identify the precise COVID-19 outbreak dates for each market using the Perron (1997) breakpoint test. Finally, we employ the bivariate DCC-GARCH model to analyze the connectedness between markets. The findings reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic caused volatility shifts of different intensities for all of the studied markets. Moreover, each return series exhibits one break date, which is specific to each market and corresponds to a distinct COVID-19-related event. Correlations, hedge ratios, and optimal portfolio weights changed significantly after the COVID-19 outbreak. There is evidence of contagion effects between the Chinese stock market and S&P 500, Euro STOXX 50, gold, and silver. Interestingly, the latter two assets lost their safe haven property with SSE. However, WTI and Bitcoin act as safe havens against SSE risks.