Continuity despite crises: Germany's euro policy in the light of the pandemic, war and inflation

After a decade of reforming and stabilising the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), it has been put to a triple test: the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the return of inflation have posed serious challenges to the eurozone that call for policy responses. Against the background of recent advances in European integration theory, we assess whether and how these challenges have led to a change in the EMU policy of the eurozone's most powerful member, Germany. We conceptualise three ideal-typical policy options for Germany to deal with EMU's challenges and we search for traces of policy learning from past eurozone crisis management. On the basis of semi-structured interviews with German political elites, we cannot identify any significant change in Germany's EMU policy. We conclude that the unwavering continuity of Germany's euro policy makes further substantial integration in EMU unlikely. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of European Public Policy is the property of Routledge 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.)

EU or Euro Area Crisis? Studying Differentiated Integration as an Idea Structuring Elite Perceptions of the Sovereign Debt and the COVID-19 crisis

After the sovereign debt crisis, scholars concluded that euro area member states (EAMS) and non-EAMS embarked on diverging paths of integration. Yet, their united response countering the economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis contradicts the path-dependency argument. This article takes an ideational approach. It demonstrates that the different crisis outcomes regarding differentiated integration (DI) in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) coincide with variations of how DI influenced elite crisis perceptions as an idea. While policymakers perceived the sovereign debt crisis as a currency area crisis with threats and spillovers applying to EAMS, they interpreted the COVID-19 crisis as a health emergency threatening all EU member states. These differences in elite crisis perceptions facilitated different outcomes regarding DI despite unchanged economic and fiscal circumstances among EAMS and non-EAMS. The findings challenge deterministic assumptions on the self-reinforcing nature of DI in EMU and establish DI as an idea structuring elite perceptions. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of European Integration is the property of Routledge 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.)

Project transition to the digital Middle Ages via COVID-19 pattern

The analysis of current trends in the implementation of effective socio-economic solutions and their development under the influence of COVID-19 is made. The prospects of using innovative and telecommunication technologies, robotics, big data processing methods and knowledge management methods in the formation and management of global economic clusters were noted. The clustering of delivery robots under pandemic conditions by methods of machine learning was carried out. The peculiarities of COVID-19 assessment as the main formative factor influencing socio-economic decision-making on a global scale are disclosed. The necessity and possible consequences of adopting and implementing new decisions designed to minimize the negative effects of COVID-19 on Russian and global economies are discussed. It is noted that the design and development of innovations in the system of management and transfer of knowledge is an indispensable condition for the successful development of future socio-economic relations. On the basis of the obtained results conclusions are made about the background of the applied solutions, about the vector of their direction and makes it clear what should be paid special attention to when assessing the current situation in society and determine which solutions are most effective and how the social order should be transformed to successfully withstand the new challenges. © 2023 SPIE.

EVALUATING THE ETHICAL AND SOCIETAL IMPACTS OF MODELLING PANDEMIC CRISES: EXPERIENCES FROM A WORKSHOP

This paper describes a hybrid (virtual and online) workshop held as part of the EU STAMINA project that aimed to engage project partners to explore ethics and simulation modelling in the context of pandemic preparedness and response. The purpose of the workshop was to consider how the model's design and use in specific pandemic decision-making contexts could have broader implications for issues like transparency, explainability, representativeness, bias, trust, equality, and social injustices. Its outputs will be used as evidence to produce a series of measures that could help mitigate ethical harms and support the greater possible benefit from the use of the models. These include recommendations for policy, data-gathering, training, potential protocols to support end-user engagement, as well as guidelines for designing and using simulation models for pandemic decision-making. This paper presents the methodological approaches taken when designing the workshop, practical concerns raised, initial insights gained, and considers future steps. © SW 2023.All rights reserved

IMPLICATIONS OF POTENTIAL NEW REGULATORY MEASURES TO ADDRESS AVIATION EMISSIONS

This work is an analysis of the implications of the potential new regulatory policies being recently proposed in the European Union, in particular the mandatory blending of SAF (on top of the already existing CORSIA or ETS), to address aviation emissions from a technical, operational and economic perspective. As a continuation of previous work from the Department of Aerospace Systems, Air Transport and Airports from the ETSIAE (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), the air traffic structure of the European Union in 2019 has been analysed based on publicly available data from EUROCONTROL and EUROSTAT. The output has been used as the reference scenario for the implementation of the mandatory blending of SAF, expected to take over at the beginning of 2025, since it is expected that by then, air traffic will reach the pre-COVID levels. The results show that all the policy options considered so far have uneven impact among the different stakeholders and that before deciding going forward with any of the presented options, extra work needs to be done to overcome the different challenges that would potentially arise. © 2022 ICAS. All Rights Reserved.

Towards Lifting the Trade-off between Accuracy and Adversarial Robustness of Deep Neural Networks with Application on COVID 19 CT Image Classification and Medical Image Segmentation

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to adversarial noises. Adversarial training is a general strategy to improve DNN robustness. But training a DNN model with adversarial noises may result in a much lower accuracy on clean data, which is termed the trade-off between accuracy and adversarial robustness. Towards lifting this trade-off, we propose an adversarial training method that generates optimal adversarial training samples. We evaluate our methods on PathMNIST and COVID-19 CT image classification tasks, where the DNN model is ResNet-18, and Heart MRI and Prostate MRI image segmentation tasks, where the DNN model is nnUnet. All these four datasets are publicly available. The experiment results show that our method has the best robustness against adversarial noises and has the least accuracy degradation compared to the other defense methods. © 2023 SPIE.

China's Perceptions of Russia during the Ukraine Conflict

The ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine since February 2022 has presented significant challenges to China's foreign and security policies, as well as its economic and technological ties with the West. Initially, China refrained from criticizing Russia's military actions and adopted a "neutral" or "independent" stance in response to Western criticism. However, China was taken aback by the protracted nature of the conflict and Russia's inability to successfully conclude its military operation. This raised concerns within China, considering its own situation of potentially reunifying with Taiwan through military means if necessary. While there are distinctions between the situations in Ukraine and Taiwan, the initial speculation of China conducting military operations against Taiwan has gradually diminished, although military pressure on Taiwan remains. The conflict in Ukraine has also caused internal divisions within China and has had an impact on its relations with the West, which are crucial for China's rise on the global stage. This article aims to examine China's interests and positions regarding the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, the implications for its relations with Russia, and the opportunities and challenges that China faces in the current situation. The article employs an inductive approach, analyzing China's predicaments at four levels: perceptions within the decision-making bodies of the Communist Party, the foreign ministry, think-tanks, and the media community. It argues that in conjunction with China's economic contraction resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian military operation has prompted China to seriously contemplate how to safeguard its national interests, particularly with regard to Taiwan and its strategic objectives of attaining a prominent global position. These considerations carry medium to long-term implications for the evolving regional and global orders. In conclusion, the article briefly discusses the implications of these developments on India, shedding light on the broader regional dynamics influenced by China's response to the Ukrainian conflict. © 2023, MGIMO Universty Press. All rights reserved.

Development and Current Situation of Forest Use by Camping Sites in Japan

After the Second World War, camping and camping sites in forests have developed and increased significantly from the 1980 s to 1990 s in Japan, relying on the laws and institutions established from the 1950 s to 1970 s across multiple administrative sectors, obtaining social approval as a legitimatized outdoor activity and forest use. Since the 2000s, the management of these camping sites has deteriorated mainly owing to economic recession, which caused the movement of camping site renewal by the private sector. This movement directed the diversification of forest use by camping sites in recent years. Camping facilities have been developed in many ways to meet the needs of campers, including organized group camps that promote education and experience in forests, solo camps, glamping, and workcations under the spread of the COVID-19 that demand relaxing or productive environment, and leisure camps that require enrichment of outdoor activities. As a result of this diversification, possibilities for effective utilization of forests and regional revitalization through the management of camping sites have been observed. Many camping sites have utilized forest lands, standing trees, and forest spaces to develop facilities and services, and there are cases where firewood production for campers has promoted the reorganization and development of local forestry and securing of personnel for forest management. In addition to securing local employment brought by reorganization, local revitalization in rural and mountainous areas has been promoted through the linkage of the needs of campers to positive economic effects, increase of the visitors who deeply connected to local people, and comprehensive and sustainable use of resources in local societies. © 2023 Nihon Ringakkai. All rights reserved.

Impact of Social Media Like WhatsApp for Education Domain

The pandemic situation is affected in various ways in the education domain. The sudden transformation from offline to online teaching-learning process made students and teachers use different tools like WhatsApp for communication. The reason for this consideration is to investigate the impacts of WhatsApp utilized for instruction and decide the suppositions of understudies towards the method. The study is designed, keeping in mind the current COVID-19 situation and how it affected the education system turning it into online mode. On different questionnaires, regression and heatmap analysis is performed. The investigation showed that both learning situations have diverse impacts on the victory of understudies while supporting the conventional environment by utilizing WhatsApp is more successful for the increment of victory. The assessment moreover showed that students had superior pleasant reviews closer to the usage of WhatsApp in their courses. They requested the same workout in their one-of-a-kind courses as well. They expressed that picking up information can moreover take out unwittingly and the messages with pics were more prominent and viable for their picking up information. Be that as it may, some college understudies have communicated harming audits approximately the timing of a few posts and the repetitive posts within the bunch. At long last, it is supported that the utilization of WhatsApp within the preparing framework is to be energized as a steady innovation. . © 2023 IEEE.

Kinetic Energy Recovery from a Landing Aircraft: Energy Analysis, Environmental and Economic Prospects

The Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change has sounded its alarm through its special report on the impact of global warming of 1.5oC and called for a strengthened global response to the threat of climate change. Despite that the COVID-19 pandemic has left a devastating effect on the aviation industry, this is forecasted to bounce back and recover within a few years. It is therefore important now to revisit opportunities for a better balance between social, environmental and economic impact of the sector. The European Union has been leading the way in limiting the environmental impacts of aviation. Despite that most of the R&D effort has been focused on the airborne phase, the European Union is legislating so that all aircraft movements on the ground are set to be emission-free by 2050. The paper focuses on engineless aircraft taxiing with the aim to reduce emissions on the ground. We demonstrate that upon landing, an aircraft has enough kinetic energy, which if recovered could power a 5-minute engineless taxiing process. When scaled to a large fleet such as low-cost carriers, this emissions problem can be turned on its head and becomes an opportunity for fuel savings and a reduction in emissions on the ground. The paper also demonstrates that the cost to retrofit such technology can be recovered in a short timeframe and therefore there is an economic incentive to the airline. © 2022 ICAS. All Rights Reserved.

Mobilizing Social Media Data: Reflections of a Researcher Mediating between Data and Organization

This paper examines the practices involved in mobilizing social media data from their site of production to the institutional context of non-profit organizations. We report on nine months of fieldwork with a transnational and intergovernmental organization using social media data to understand the role of grassroots initiatives in Mexico, in the unique context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show how different stakeholders negotiate the definition of problems to be addressed with social media data, the collective creation of ground-truth, and the limitations involved in the process of extracting value from data. The meanings of social media data are not defined in advance;instead, they are contingent on the practices and needs of the organization that seeks to extract insights from the analysis. We conclude with a list of reflections and questions for researchers who mediate in the mobilization of social media data into non-profit organizations to inform humanitarian action. © 2023 ACM.

Do socioeconomic inequalities increase the spread of COVID-19 in Turkey?

This paper clarifies the medical and socio-economic factors affecting the prevalence of COVID-19 by using clinical and survey data in a binary probit model. Socio-economic factors are associated with risk of infection and can increase exposure to and mortality from COVID-19. Inequalities in socio-economic variables affect the prevalence to different degrees. Disparities in education and poverty are more important than being employed or being a smoker for the spread of COVID-19, we find evidence that confirms the hypothesis.

Examining the Growth of Online Entrepreneurship Effects on Family Income in Jordan during the Corona Virus

According to the significant impacts of social media and the internet on all facets of our lives in general and the business world in particular, many business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking to expand their clientele or start their own ventures have moved to the virtual world, particularly when they want to advance their careers. For the reasons mentioned above, this article aims to ascertain how social media networks impact business operations, with a focus on how they affect entrepreneurship growth. Facebook and Instagram are the two most useful social media platforms. The findings indicate that Facebook and Instagram have a significant impact on increasing entrepreneurship and household income in Jordan. © 2023 IEEE.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Economic Growth: An Analytical Study

The COVID-19 pandemic originated in China and quickly spread to practically every country on the planet. Because there is no cure for the virus, countries are taking steps to prevent it from spreading. Many sectors, particularly the service sector, have seen significant reductions in activities, if not a full halt, due to these policies aimed at restricting human interaction. As a result, I will statistically assess the pandemic that has a significant impact on economic growth rates in both developing as well as developed countries. Without a doubt, the economy's consequences will be determined by how long the pandemic lasts and when it returns to normal economic activity. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global economic growth are assessed in this paper. © 2022 IEEE.

Impacts of the Strength and Conformity of Social Norms on Well-Being: A Mixed-Method Study Among Hybrid Workers in Japan

Previous studies have suggested that organizational social norms can positively affect employee well-being. However, such social norms have not been well developed during the post-COVID-19 transition to hybrid work, which combines office and remote work, and it is unclear how employees' perceptions of social norms for hybrid work affect their well-being. In this study, we investigated the impact of social norms for hybrid work on the well-being of hybrid workers living in Japan through a mixed-method approach consisting of an online survey (n = 212) and semi-structured interviews (n = 20). The results indicate that hybrid workers who feel subject to strong social norms have lower well-being. Conversely, those who are more willing to conform to social norms have higher well-being. Given our findings, we discuss implications for the design of systems to help hybrid workers conform to organizational social norms and to improve their well-being. © 2023 ACM.

Design to Improve Social Presence among University Students in Asynchronous Online Learning Environment

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, online lectures are becoming more common in higher education. Specifically, asynchronous online classes have become increasingly popular because of their flexibility. Asynchronous online courses, however, may negatively impact students' academic performance and social development due to the diminished sense of social presence. To explore ways to enhance social presence among students in asynchronous online classes, this paper used a co-design methodology that involved 12 undergraduate students as primary stakeholders. As a result, we developed a design framework for designing in-class interaction to promote social presence in asynchronous online lectures. This framework consists of four high-level elements and sub-categories: interaction topic (direct or peripheral topics related to learning), interaction size (small or entire group), interaction mode (anonymity, synchronicity, instructor involvement), and interaction motivator (lightweightness and entertainment). Our design framework may serve as a guide to future technology for improving asynchronous online classes. © 2023 Owner/Author.

HiBGT: High-Performance Bayesian Group Testing for COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated disease surveillance using group testing. Novel Bayesian methods using lattice models were proposed, which offer substantial improvements in group testing efficiency by precisely quantifying uncertainty in diagnoses, acknowledging varying individual risk and dilution effects, and guiding optimally convergent sequential pooled test selections. Computationally, however, Bayesian group testing poses considerable challenges as computational complexity grows exponentially with sample size. HPC and big data stacks are needed for assessing computational and statistical performance across fluctuating prevalence levels at large scales. Here, we study how to design and optimize critical computational components of Bayesian group testing, including lattice model representation, test selection algorithms, and statistical analysis schemes, under the context of parallel computing. To realize this, we propose a high-performance Bayesian group testing framework named HiBGT, based on Apache Spark, which systematically explores the design space of Bayesian group testing and provides comprehensive heuristics on how to achieve high-performance, highly scalable Bayesian group testing. We show that HiBGT can perform large-scale test selections (> 250 state iterations) and accelerate statistical analyzes up to 15.9x (up to 363x with little trade-offs) through a varied selection of sophisticated parallel computing techniques while achieving near linear scalability using up to 924 CPU cores. © 2022 IEEE.

Reflecting on Hybrid Events: Learning from a Year of Hybrid Experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a sudden shift to virtual work and events, with the last two years enabling an appropriated and rather simulated togetherness - the hybrid mode. As we return to in-person events, it is important to reflect on not only what we learned about technologies and social justice, but about the types of events we desire, and how to re-design them accordingly. This SIG aims to reflect on hybrid events and their execution: scaling them across sectors, communities, and industries;considering trade-offs when choosing technologies;studying best practices and defining measures of "success"for hybrid events;and finally, identifying and charting the wider social, ethical, and legal implications of hybrid formats. This SIG will consolidate these topics by inviting participants to collaboratively reflect on previous hybrid experiences and what can be learned from them. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Social Media Acceptance and e-Learning Post-Covid-19: New factors determine the extension of TAM

The key objective of our study involves devising a conceptual model for estimation of social media acceptance by students for effectively accomplishing their educational and academic goals. Factors e.g., perceived social capital, social influence, and perceived mobility that associated with student acceptance of social media were investigated, and integrated into the TAM model using the PLS-SEM. Data were collected through online survey (461 students) at UAE universities. The findings revealed that mentioned factors positively affected students' intention to use social media during their learning process. Respondents' behavioral intention were also linked to both the core and external constructs of the TAM. Important practical insights on technology acceptance in education were provided. © 2022 IEEE.

The Impact of Digitalization of the Economy on the Cooperation of Economic Entities in the Post-pandemic Period

According to the authors, the digital transformation of the global economic system, which has affected all areas of business and sectors of the economy, has led to the formation of a new business model aimed at creating a single financial and economic space without borders, contributing to new forms of obtaining added value and "digital dividends” by combining various technologies (for example, cloud technologies, sensors, big data, 3D printing), as well as the development of markets for goods and services, labor reserves and capital through transformations at all social levels. The authors believe that all of the above opens up expanded opportunities for organizing and doing business and allows increasing the potential for creating radically new products, services and innovative business models focused on sustainable business development in the new conditions of digitization of the economic system. In this regard, the paper explores key approaches to the definition of the term "digital transformation of business.” The trends of business digitalization and, accordingly, the factors that are inhibitors and drivers of the development of a new business model of cooperation and cooperation of modern organizations were identified. In the process of analysis, the authors determined the vector of development of business models in the context of the digital transformation of the global economic system. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.