Task-Technology Fit and ICT Use in Remote Work Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study examines the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in remote work practice during the COVID-19 pandemic by integrating task-technology fit theory and the post-acceptance model of IS continuance into a research framework. In addition, it operationalizes the technological characteristics of TTF (task-technology fit) with the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. The methodology to test the research model takes support from the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method using a sample of 320 employees. The results show that TAM significantly explains TTF. Furthermore, there is a positive impact of ICT use on individual and organizational performance. User satisfaction has the most significant effect on individual performance, organizational performance, and IS continuance intention. The authors provide some managerial implications for addressing the challenges of remote work related to ICT disruptions for the post-COVID-19 period.

Diagnosis of COVID-19 from the X-Ray images using BAT Algorithm with Deep Convolutional Neural Network

The COVID-19 widespread has posed a chief contest to the scientific community around the world. For patients with COVID-19 illness, the international community is working to uncover, implement, or invent new approaches for diagnosis and action. A opposite transcription-polymerase chain reaction is currently a reliable tactic for diagnosing infected people. This is a time- and money-consuming procedure. Consequently, the development of new methods is critical. Using X-ray images of the lungs, this research article developed three stages for detecting and diagnosing COVID-19 patients. The median filtering is used to remove the unwanted noised during pre-processing stage. Then, Otsu thresholding technique is used for segmenting the affected regions, where Spider Monkey Optimization (SMO) is used to select the optimal threshold. Finally, the optimized Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) is used for final classification. The benchmark COVID dataset and balanced COVIDcxr dataset are used to test projected model's performance in this study. Classification of the results shows that the optimized DCNN architecture outperforms the other pre-trained techniques with an accuracy of 95.69% and a specificity of 96.24% and sensitivity of 94.76%. To identify infected lung tissue in images, here SMO-Otsu thresholding technique is used during the segmentation stage and achieved 95.60% of sensitivity and 95.8% of specificity. © 2023 IEEE.

Acceptable nudge strategies to incentivize the use of wearables and physiolytics at work: A Q-methodology examination

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the pressure on organizations to ensure health and safety in the workplace. An increasing number of organizations are considering wearables and physiolytics devices as part of their safe return to work programs so as to comply with governments' accountability rules. As with other technologies with ambivalent use (i.e., simultaneously beneficial and harmful), the introduction of these devices in work settings is met with skepticism. In this context, nudging strategies as a way of using design, information, and other ways to manipulate behaviors (system 1 nudge) and choices (system 2 nudge) has gained traction and is often applied alongside the introduction of ambivalent technologies with the aim to "nudge” their use. While the feasibility of different nudge strategies is often studied from only a managerial perspective, where employees' volitional autonomy and dignity is often treated as secondary, we explore which nudges are acceptable from the perspectives of ordinary workers. Using Q-methodology as a more evolutionary and participatory way to design nudges, we describe five basic strategies that are (to varying degrees) acceptable to them: (a) positive reinforcement and fun, (b) controlling the organizational environment, (c) self-responsibility, (d) collective responsibility, and (e) adapting the individual environment. Our findings show that there is a wide range of viewpoints on what is being considered an acceptable nudge and stress the importance of a transparent, equal dialogue between those who design nudges and potential nudgees. © Association for Information Technology Trust 2023.

A fuzzy sustainable model for COVID-19 medical waste supply chain network

The COVID-19 has placed pandemic modeling at the forefront of the whole world's public policymaking. Nonetheless, forecasting and modeling the COVID-19 medical waste with a detoxification center of the COVID-19 medical wastes remains a challenge. This work presents a Fuzzy Inference System to forecast the COVID-19 medical wastes. Then, people are divided into five categories are divided according to the symptoms of the disease into healthy people, suspicious, suspected of mild COVID-19, and suspicious of intense COVID-19. In this regard, a new fuzzy sustainable model for COVID-19 medical waste supply chain network for location and allocation decisions considering waste management is developed for the first time. The main purpose of this paper is to minimize supply chain costs, the environmental impact of medical waste, and to establish detoxification centers and control the social responsibility centers in the COVID-19 outbreak. To show the performance of the suggested model, sensitivity analysis is performed on important parameters. A real case study in Iran/Tehran is suggested to validate the proposed model. Classifying people into different groups, considering sustainability in COVID 19 medical waste supply chain network and examining new artificial intelligence methods based on TS and GOA algorithms are among the contributions of this paper. Results show that the decision-makers should use an FIS to forecast COVID-19 medical waste and employ a detoxification center of the COVID-19 medical wastes to reduce outbreaks of this pandemic. © 2023, Crown.

Corona Larona: A 2.5D Mobile Game Advocating COVID-19 Safety Protocols and Mitigation Strategies

Governments and health agencies around the world have been at the forefront of managing the COVID-19 pandemic. To control the spread of the outbreak, mandatory safety protocols have been put into effect. Despite the continuous development and strict enforcement of these preventive guidelines, non-compliance with these mandatory safety protocols has been reported. Getting the message to the public is one of the key challenges in convincing people to follow mitigation policies. In this study, we employed the media of video games to advocate for COVID-19 safety protocols. We developed a video game called "Corona Larona"that features microgames with action gameplay playable on a mobile platform. Our video game concentrated on several preventive measures such as physical distancing, hand washing, wearing face masks as well as basic knowledge about the virus using in-game multiple choice questions. To our knowledge, this is the first video game dedicated to the COVID-19 outbreak and the mandatory safety protocols. In a time when many people play video games to survive their current situation, the Corona Larona game is a strategic example of using and maximizing this form of media for a more noble purpose. © 2022 IEEE.

Conspiracy as ARG: media and game essence of QAnon

The results of a comparative analysis of the functional features of the QAnon theory and the conceptual signs of ARG (games in alternative reality) are displayed. The signs of ARG are designated and given as elements of the reference game model, the basis for comparison. The authors found that the QAnon conspiracy theory, the history of its emergence and development features is of a synthetic nature: ARG elements are present in modified form. They transform the roles of developers and participants. The QAnon quest structure was visualized, the gameplay based on experiencing the state of apophenia – a painful search for a connection between random phenomena or events – was described. The similarities of QAnon with religion and at the same time political ideology based on the mechanics of the game were identified, which explains its popularity. The relevance of the topic is due to the steady growth in the number of conspiracy theories and their followers since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic against the backdrop of audience distrust in the media. The authors demonstrate how QAnon, not being essentially a game in an alternative reality, but using game technologies and eschatological narratives about the Great Tribulation and Judgment Day, achieves high efficiency in shaping public opinion. © 2023, RUDN University. All rights reserved.

An Improved Computer Vision based Face Mask Detection and Alerting System

A global healthcare crisis has been declared as a result of the covid-19 nandemic's extensive snread. The coronavirus spreads mostly by the release of droplets from an infected person's irritated nose and throat. The risk of spreading disease is highest in public gathering places. Wearing a facial mask in public is one of the greatest ways, according to the World Health Organization, to avoid getting an infectious disease. This research work proposes an approach to human face mask detection using TensorFlow and OpenCV. Whether or not a character is wearing a mask is indicated by an enclosing field drawn around their head. An alert email will be sent to a person whose face is in the database if they make a call without a mask worn. © 2023 IEEE.

Antibiotic resistance of Klebsiella pneumoniae against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic: experience of the multidisciplinary hospital

Frequency of bacterial co-infections among patients with COVID-19 is not high, and over-prescribing of antibiotics may contribute the selection of resistant strains of enterobacteria and gram-negative non-fermenting bacteria. The aim of the study was to assess the local features of antibiotic resistance of K. pneumoniae and its genetic mechanisms against background of the COVID-19 infection pandemic. Material and methods. There was selected 37 carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae strains isolated in 2016, 2017 and 2020 from hospitalized patients, including 15 strains, isolated from patients with COVID-19 infection. Minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of meropenem and colistin were determined by broth microdilution method. Determination of MICs of eravacycline, ceftazidime/avibactam, meropenem/vaborbactam, imipenem/relebactam was performed using Sensititre diagnostic system on EUMDROXF plates. Susceptibility to 11 combinations of 2 antibiotics was detected by modified method of multiply combination bactericidal testing. For 4 K. pneumoniae strains high-throughput sequencing was performed, followed with the subsequent search for determinants of antibiotic resistance and virulence, assessment of plasmid profiles. Results. All strains were resistant to meropenem (MIC50 32 mg/l, MIC90 128 mg/l) and produced KPC and OXA-48 carbapenemases. Strains isolated in 2016-2017 were susceptible to colistin (MIC <=2 mg/l), in 2020 only 26.7% of the strains retained their susceptibility (MIC50 64 mg/l, MIC90 256 mg/l). Susceptibility to combinations of two antibiotics with colistin included reduced from 84.6-100% in 2016-2017 till 26.6-66.7% in 2020. The strains isolated in 2020 retained their susceptibility to ceftazidime/avibactam (MIC <=1 mg/l). 5 strains resistant to cefiderocol with a MIC 8 mg/l were identified. Strains 2564 and 3125 isolated in 2020 from sputum of patients with COVID-19 infection belonged to different sequence-types (ST12 and ST23) and contained the blaOXA-48 carbapenemase gene, additionally strain 2564 contained the blaKPC-27carbapenemase gene. Resistance to colistin was caused by inactivation of the mgrB genes due to insertion of IS1 and IS5-like transposons. Conclusion. The performed genetic studies demonstrate a diversity of mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in K. pneumoniae leading to the formation of resistance including to antibiotics that haven't been used in Belarus till now.Copyright © 2021 Geotar Media Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

Collection and Analysis of Narratives for a Values Charter of the Italian Society for Hospital Pharmacy

In recent years, the field of Narrative Pharmacy was introduced, which particularly addresses the pharmacist not only to guide a relationship of listening to and caring for the patient but also to strengthen and motivate toward the profession, improve relationships with colleagues, enhance the ability to teamwork, and understand emotions. In this paper, we report the analysis behind the construction of the Value Chart from the personal narratives of members of the Italian Society of Hospital Pharmacy. Each member's subjective professional experiences and their own view of themselves within society were collected through a semi-structured interview. Personal thinking, including experiences, feelings, opinions, desires, and regrets was classified by objective methods, from which main concepts were extracted for the Value Chart. The feedback to the survey, including activities during the Covid-19 pandemic management, is classified according to the analytical methods of Kleinman, Frank, Bury and Launer-Robinson. Regarding sentiment analysis, the emotional and subjective context of the text provides an ideal baseline to validate the result. The analysis was implemented using neural networks trained on dictionaries and natural language (i.e., Tweets). The originality of the work lies in the fact that generally value charters are built on a Society's values. In contrast, in this case, individual contributions were gathered to complement the ethical values on which the society is founded. © 2022 IEEE.

Shocks and IS user behavior: a taxonomy and future research directions

PurposeJarring events, be they global crises such as COVID-19 or technological events such as the Cambridge Analytica data incident, have bullwhip effects on billions of people's daily lives. Such "shocks” vary in their characteristics. While some shocks cause, for example, widespread adoption of information systems (IS) as diverse as Netflix and Teams, others lead users to stop using IS, such as Facebook. To offer insights into the multifaceted ways shocks influence user behavior, this study aims to assess the status quo of shock-related literature in the IS discipline and develop a taxonomy that paves the path for future IS research on shocks.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted a literature review (N = 70) to assess the status quo of shock-related research in the IS discipline. Through a qualitative study based on users who experienced shocks (N = 39), it confirmed the findings of previous literature in an illustrative IS research context. Integrating the findings of the literature review and qualitative study, this study informs a taxonomy of shocks impacting IS use.FindingsThis study identifies different ways that shocks influence user behavior. The taxonomy reveals that IS research could profit from considering environmental, private and work shocks and shedding light on positive shocks. IS research could also benefit from examining the urgency of shocks, as there are indications that this influences how and when individuals react to a specific shock.Originality/valueFindings complement previous rational explanations for user behavior by showing technology use can be influenced by shocks. This study offers a foundation for forward-looking research that connects jarring events to patterns of technology use.

Fishing for Validation: Understanding Promises and Challenges of a Private Social Media Group for COVID-19 Long-Hauler Patients

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected more than 301 million people worldwide so far. Many communities (such as minority communities) suffered disproportionately more difficulties throughout the pandemic. In this paper, we would like to focus on one such community: COVID-19 long-haulers community. Long-hauler community consists of people affected by Coronavirus, but their symptoms do not cure in a couple of weeks;instead, they experience lingering symptoms for months. The concerns of this community were initially ignored by health care providers primarily because of limited information. In this paper, we have analyzed the social media discussion of a private Facebook group dedicated to the long-hauler community. In addition, we interviewed the community members to investigate their motivations for joining the group and how the group has impacted their lives as long-hauler patients. Our analyses revealed the primary discussion topics of this community. It also showed how a minority community could stand by each other using social media groups during a crisis. We concluded the paper with long-term implications of our findings for health care systems, policies, and existing literature on cooperative AI. © 2023 ACM.

The Interplay of Challenge-Hindrance-Appraisal and Self- Efficacy: Technostress and Remote Working Performance

Measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many employees to work from home;a novel situation in which individuals used information systems (IS) more intensively to stay in touch with co-workers. This novel IS use situation affected individuals differently and resulted in both positive and negative outcomes. Recent calls for research advocate for clarification regarding the conceptualisation of appraisal, which explains different individual responses to objectively equal environments. In particular, challenge-hindrance-research does not differentiate between primary and secondary appraisal. Therefore, it remains unclear how individual capability beliefs, such as self-efficacy, affect challenge and hindrance IS use appraisal. We conduct an empirical study with 1,553 German employees to investigate these relationships and the positive and negative outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that challenge and hindrance IS use appraisal, and remote working self-efficacy are interconnected, yet different constructs. We find that self-efficacy is related to challenge IS use appraisal, rather than hindrance IS use appraisal. Further, challenge IS use appraisal is a driver for performance in a remote working environment. We conclude that there are stressful aspects of IS use that are not influenced by an individual's belief in their abilities. Our study emphasises the importance of remote working self-efficacy and IS use appraisal to mitigate techno-distress and increase performance during remote work.

Drawing COVID-19. The Viral Image

The Prime Ministerial Decree of 9 March 2020 has caused the spread of social campaigns (#corona-virus, #iorestoacasa), whose ‘pandemic' effect has influenced the collective imagination more than the COVID-19 virus which, spread all over the world, has changed everyone's life globally. In a hyper-technological era, this microscopic virus has shown that even evolved communities are fragile, questioning many false certainties. The society of the global image has reacted and, as a symbolic language, has responded with countless forms of visual and multimedia communication (magazines covers, cartoons, comics, video clips) to spread new messages on social networks or television channels: to stay home, to renounce social life, to use quarantine to rediscover forgotten activities. This contribution examines the topic from a social and graphic point of view, analyzing contexts and languages such as: the proliferation of photographic images of deserted cities, which have portrayed the same places with different eyes and effects;the manipulation of the iconic and/or rhetorical force of artistic masterpieces or cinematographic titles, reinterpreted according to inspirations due to coronavirus psychosis, or of well-known advertising brands to obtain ironic puns with an equally ‘viral' effect;the redesign of the logos of famous multinationals in the name of the rule of social distancing;the creation of video clips to analyze, through the now usual video call screen, problems and typical behavior of the quarantine. The goal is to confirm how quickly the communication of the visual image on social channels was a favorable condition for learning the rules and behaviors to observe during the pandemic. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Developing a Capacity for Organizational Resilience Through Organizational Culture of Collaborative Networks among Information Workers

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of the traditional physically co-located office, forcing many organizations to work remotely. During COVID-19, many knowledge workers work from home regularly, and as a result, the power distance between remote e-workers and their previously on-site colleagues has disappeared. An in-depth organization-wide case study was conducted to answer our research questions, how does the involuntary working from home requirement due to COVID-19 affect team collaboration and performance? What are the enabling factors to design and implement a hybrid way of working in knowledge organizations? And how does organizational culture influence IT governance performance in global virtual teams in a large organization during volatile and uncertain situations? The main conclusion of this research is that organizational culture does influence the performance outcomes of IT governance. © 2023 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

How to Increase the Efficiency of Social Enterprises in Russia During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

The paper considers the examples of economic activities of social enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is shown that often social enterprises are more effective than common enterprises in their responses to the processes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. A model of interaction between different actors enhancing the efficiency of social enterprises in Russia by means of providing the continuous source of cashfrow is provided. At the macro-level of this model it's necessary to mention such institutions as the Ministry of Finance, because it is engaged in planning and controlling the process of public procurement activities, The Public Relations Committee, as it provides subsidies to nonprofit organizations and social enterprises based on the competition rules and the Public Chamber, as it is engaged in distributing the Presidential Grants to nonprofit organizations and social enterprises. The institutions that provide financial help to social enterprises in the range of 1 to 50 million rubles belong to the meso-level institutions in this model. They consist of the Moscow regional division of the All-Russian Popular Front, the charitable foundation KAF, the fund "Our Future” and the company Unilever. At the micro-level of this model there are two institutions: Impact Hub Moscow and Awesome Foundation. A contact should be set between these organizations to exchange the experience in the area of supporting social entrepreneurs and attracting the micro-grants of Awesome Foundation as the supplementary sources of support for the winners of the competition held by Impact Hub Moscow. This system should be balanced by setting direct contacts between each institution at the respective level so that it could enable these institutions to act effectively at each level of that model. First, we should conclude that these institutions should not act as isolated units. They should be implemented into the system of different actors supporting social enterprises, along with such potential investors as private sector companies and microfinance institutions. Second, these actors should interact in such manner that enables a cooperation between them. Conclusions refer to how these institutions should be arranged to make a system of interconnected units supporting social enterprises at three levels. © 2022, Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All right reserved.

Participatory Actions in Virtual Spaces. The Role of Images in the Construction of Shared Spaces

Participatory actions in public spaces are practices of encounter with the potential to reinforce social ties and foster a renewed sense of belonging to places. They are well-established and widely practiced – both at the national level [1] and internationally [2, 3] – as modes of exploration [4] and participation that are located at the intersection between different disciplinary domains. The particular form of participatory action discussed here ideally takes place on the street, in squares, and on public ground, via interventions that are often temporary in nature and involve the transformation, but even more fundamentally the re-appropriation, of collective space. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, among its numerous repercussions, has also made it difficult if not impossible to carry out such forms of participation in person and on public ground. It has thus become necessary to modify and reformulate the ways in which participatory action is implemented, so as to continue harnessing its communicative power, and to identify new ways of fostering participation, at a time when it is needed more urgently than ever to counteract the risk of isolation. In this paper, we present and discuss forms of participatory action that have recently been transposed into virtual public space and are primarily based on the sharing of images. We investigate the possibilities and valences of such an approach, both in general and at this specific historical moment. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Assessing Trust in Online Collaboration in E-government during the COVID-19 pandemic: An Employee Perspective

Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, firms and institutions have to shift to work from home to prevent the spreading of the pandemic. As a public sector, employees in government institutions also collaborate online during the lockdown. Collaboration online has been identified as a challenge for employees. While our understanding of how employees' perception and trust of the e-government is still limited. To address this research gap, this study intends to investigate the antecedents of employees' trust in e-government during their work process in the new normal. By conducting a qualitative study with 14 in-depth interviews with employees with e-government experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, we extracted several key antecedents of employees' trust in e-government. Based on the qualitative data analysis, a theoretical model of trust antecedents was proposed. Our study provides a deep understanding of the specific antecedents of employees' trust in the e-government context. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Critical success factors and challenges for individual digital study assistants in higher education: A mixed methods analysis.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the availability of online higher education programs and tools has grown rapidly. One example is an individual digital study assistant (IDSA) for students, which provides functionalities to train self-regulation skills, to engage with own educational goals and to offer automated, first-level support to higher education institution (HEI) units and employees. An IDSA further can guide students through HEI and their administration. But, what are the critical success factors (CSF) and challenges for an IDSA? We deduce these using a mixed methods approach with one quantitative student survey, two rounds of interviews with various HEI experts, and a literature review. We classified our results according to the information system (IS) success model of DeLone & McLean (2016). Our results and findings show, e.g., that skilled and reliable HEI personnel, well-organized and useful content, cross-platform usability, ease of use, and students' social factors are essential. Attractive IDSA functionalities are a major challenge because students use many apps, daily. Based on our CSF and challenges, we deduce theoretical and practical recommendations and develop a further research agenda.

Augmented Reality in Education: An Interactive way to Learn

In recent times the world has gone through a situation where the people were forced to be in a lockdown amidst the covid-19 pandemic. Various business fields were affected by this phenomenon, some business units have evolved through this staying at home and carrying the work culture. One of the most affected fields was education where the children were made to attend online classes and read from E-textbooks. People are being educated from various methods including offline classroom lectures, physical textbooks etc. The choice of learning methodology is dependent on an individual's access to various technologies, environment, and a person's surroundings. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that enables the superimposing of artificially made 3D models on top of reality. This paper describes Augmented Reality (AR), how it can be used for interactive education, and help children visualize the concepts for gaining an improved understanding over the educational concepts. © 2022 IEEE.

Revisiting User Satisfaction and Intention to Use: A Cross-Sectional Study of e-Learning during Lockdown

COVID-19 related lockdowns forced students of higher education to receive education entirely online as a replacement for physical attendance in classrooms. This new situation caused students to discover the advantages and disadvantages of e-learning and influenced their satisfaction in using it and intention to use it. Consequently, this study revisits the intention to use and satisfaction-related theories based on pre-COVID conditions. This revisit was necessary because the evidence suggests that students' new situation has changed some determinants related to their satisfaction and intention to use. This situation warranted the simultaneous consideration of many dimensions when measuring user satisfaction and intention to use during the lockdown. This cross-sectional study developed an integrated model to measure students' satisfaction and its impact on intention to use e-learning. Structural equation modeling was used to conduct the empirical analysis. Nine hundred respondents from Malaysia and Saudi Arabia participated in this study. Students from Malaysia and Saudi Arabia showed marginal differences in their perceptions of e-learning. The findings showed changes in students' perceptions toward satisfaction and intention to use e-learning, which might be due to using e-learning exclusively. © 2022 Common Ground Research Networks. All rights reserved.