Digitalization of Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) Process of Accreditation of Nutritionist and Dietetics

With the recent global COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, accreditation delays have become inevitable in lieu of the strict travel restrictions. The usual accreditation inspection process conducted face-To-face was affected. Organizations are shifting to a reliance on technology to adapt to the national emergency. The study aims to bridge the gap by digitalization Professional Regulation Commission's (PRC) monitoring and accreditation system to conduct a virtual inspection and monitoring. With all of these said, the specific objectives of the researchers and developers are to develop an efficient digitized system that captures the original one. In developing the proposed accreditation and monitoring system and document management system (website) for PRC, the group will adapt and take inspiration from the Agile Development Lifecycle methodology, which will help the modification and other functionality of the system by using the iterative style in the development of the system. The proposed digital monitoring system undergoes a cross-browser test, and performance test, i.e., Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM). These tests show that the proposed system passed the compatibility for commonly used browsers like Chrome, Edge, Mozilla, and many more. The Final Test in Performance Testing showed that the system RTM functions had passed all final testing. © 2023 IEEE.

Traceability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission through quasispecies analysis.

During COVID-19 pandemic, consensus genomic sequences were used for rapidly monitor the spread of the virus worldwide. However, less attention was paid to intrahost genetic diversity. In fact, in the infected host, SARS-CoV-2 consists in an ensemble of replicating and closely related viral variants so-called quasispecies. Here we show that intrahost single nucleotide variants (iSNVs) represent a target for contact tracing analysis. Our data indicate that in the acute phase of infection, in highly likely transmission links, the number of viral particles transmitted from one host to another (bottleneck size) is large enough to propagate iSNVs among individuals. Furthermore, we demonstrate that, during SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks when the consensus sequences are identical, it is possible to reconstruct the transmission chains by genomic investigations of iSNVs. Specifically, we found that it is possible to identify transmission chains by limiting the analysis of iSNVs to only three well-conserved genes, namely nsp2, ORF3, and ORF7.

Toward an Intelligent Blockchain IoT-Enabled Fish Supply Chain: A Review and Conceptual Framework.

The fish industry experiences substantial illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) activities within traditional supply chain systems. Blockchain technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to transform the fish supply chain (SC) by incorporating distributed ledger technology (DLT) to build trustworthy, transparent, decentralized traceability systems that promote secure data sharing and employ IUU prevention and detection methods. We have reviewed current research efforts directed toward incorporating Blockchain in fish SC systems. We have discussed traceability in both traditional and smart SC systems that make use of Blockchain and IoT technologies. We demonstrated the key design considerations in terms of traceability in addition to a quality model to consider when designing smart Blockchain-based SC systems. In addition, we proposed an Intelligent Blockchain IoT-enabled fish SC framework that uses DLT for the trackability and traceability of fish products throughout harvesting, processing, packaging, shipping, and distribution to final delivery. More precisely, the proposed framework should be able to provide valuable and timely information that can be used to track and trace the fish product and verify its authenticity throughout the chain. Unlike other work, we have investigated the benefits of integrating machine learning (ML) into Blockchain IoT-enabled SC systems, focusing the discussion on the role of ML in fish quality, freshness assessment and fraud detection.

Clinical characteristics of the host DNA-removed metagenomic next-generation sequencing technology for detecting SARS-CoV-2, revealing host local immune signaling and assisting genomic epidemiology.

Background: Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) technology has been central in detecting infectious diseases and helping to simultaneously reveal the complex interplay between invaders and their hosts immune response characteristics. However, it needs to be rigorously assessed for clinical utility. The present study is the first to evaluate the clinical characteristics of the host DNA-removed mNGS technology for detecting SARS-CoV-2, revealing host local immune signaling and assisting genomic epidemiology. Methods: 46 swab specimens collected from COVID-19 patients were assayed by two approved commercial RT-qPCR kits and mNGS. The evolutionary tree of SARS-CoV-2 was plotted using FigTree directly from one sample. The workflow of removing the host and retaining the host was compared to investigate the influence of host DNA removal on the performances of mNGS. Functional enrichment analysis of DEGs and xCell score were used to explore the characteristics of host local immune signaling. Results: The detection rate of mNGS achieved 92.9% (26/28) for 28 samples with a Ct value ≤ 35 and 81.1% (30/37) for all 46 samples. The genome coverage of SARS-CoV-2 could reach up to 98.9% when the Ct value is about 20 in swab samples. Removing the host could enhance the sensitivity of mNGS for detecting SARS-CoV-2 from the swab sample but does not affect the species abundance of microbes RNA. Improving the sequencing depth did not show a positive effect on improving the detection sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2. Cell type enrichment scores found multiple immune cell types were differentially expressed between patients with high and low viral load. Conclusions: The host DNA-removed mNGS has great potential utility and superior performance on comprehensive identification of SARS-CoV-2 and rapid traceability, revealing the microbiome's transcriptional profiles and host immune responses.

Blockchain and COVID-19 pandemic: applications and challenges.

The year 2020 has witnessed the emergence of coronavirus (COVID-19) that has rapidly spread and adversely affected the global economy, health, and human lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the limitations of existing healthcare systems regarding their inadequacy to timely and efficiently handle public health emergencies. A large portion of today's healthcare systems are centralized and fall short in providing necessary information security and privacy, data immutability, transparency, and traceability features to detect fraud related to COVID-19 vaccination certification, and anti-body testing. Blockchain technology can assist in combating the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring safe and reliable medical supplies, accurate identification of virus hot spots, and establishing data provenance to verify the genuineness of personal protective equipment. This paper discusses the potential blockchain applications for the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents the high-level design of three blockchain-based systems to enable governments and medical professionals to efficiently handle health emergencies caused by COVID-19. It discusses the important ongoing blockchain-based research projects, use cases, and case studies to demonstrate the adoption of blockchain technology for COVID-19. Finally, it identifies and discusses future research challenges, along with their key causes and guidelines.

Supply chain traceability and counterfeit detection of COVID-19 vaccines using novel blockchain-based Vacledger system.

We propose a novel framework, Vacledger, for supply chain traceability and counterfeit detection of COVID-19 vaccines using a blockchain network. It includes four smart contracts on a private-permissioned blockchain network for supply chain traceability and counterfeit detection of COVID-19 vaccine, more specifically to (i) handle the rules and regulations of vaccine importing countries and provide authorization for cross the borders (regulatory compliance and border authorization smart contract), (ii) register new and imported vaccines in the Vacledger system (vaccine registration smart contract), (iii) find the number of stocks that have arrived in the Vacledger system (stock accumulation smart contract), and (iv) identify the exact location of the stock (location tracing update smart contract). Our results show that the proposed system keeps track of all activities, events, transactions, and all other past transactions, permanently stored in an immutable Vacledger connected to decentralized peer-to-peer file systems. We observe no algorithm complexity differences between the proposed Vacledger system and existing supply chain frameworks based on different blockchain types. In addition, based on four use cases, we estimate our model's overall gasoline cost (transaction or gas price). The Vacledger system empowers distribution companies to manage their supply chain operations effectively and securely using an in-network, permissioned distributed network. This study employs the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain (the healthcare industry) to demonstrate how the proposed Vacledger system operates. Despite this, our proposed approach might be implemented in other supply chain industries, such as the food industry, energy trading, and commodity transactions.

Innovation to limit seafood fraud post-COVID-19.

Seafood is an important source of protein and micronutrients, but fishery stocks are increasingly under pressure from both legitimate and illegitimate fishing practices. Sustainable management of our oceans is a global responsibility, aligning with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life Below Water. In a post-COVID-19 world, there is an opportunity to build back better, where locally sourced food via transparent supply chains are ever-more important. This article summarises emerging research of two innovative case studies in detecting and validating seafood provenance; and using alternative supply chains to minimise the opportunity for seafood fraud in a post-COVID-19 world.

A Traceable Spectral Radiation Model of Radiation Thermometry

Featured ApplicationRadiation thermometry of real objects under real conditions.Despite great technical capabilities, the theory of non-contact temperature measurement is usually not fully applicable to the use of measuring instruments in practice. While black body calibrations and black body radiation thermometry (BBRT) are in practice well established and easy to accomplish, this calibration protocol is never fully applicable to measurements of real objects under real conditions. Currently, the best approximation to real-world radiation thermometry is grey body radiation thermometry (GBRT), which is supported by most measuring instruments to date. Nevertheless, the metrological requirements necessitate traceability;therefore, real body radiation thermometry (RBRT) method is required for temperature measurements of real bodies. This article documents the current state of temperature calculation algorithms for radiation thermometers and the creation of a traceable model for radiation thermometry of real bodies that uses an inverse model of the system of measurement to compensate for the loss of data caused by spectral integration, which occurs when thermal radiation is absorbed on the active surface of the sensor. To solve this problem, a hybrid model is proposed in which the spectral input parameters are converted to scalar inputs of a traditional scalar inverse model for GBRT. The method for calculating effective parameters, which corresponds to a system of measurement, is proposed and verified with the theoretical simulation model of non-contact thermometry. The sum of effective instrumental parameters is presented for different temperatures to show that the rule of GBRT, according to which the sum of instrumental emissivity and instrumental reflectivity is equal to 1, does not apply to RBRT. Using the derived models of radiation thermometry, the uncertainty of radiation thermometry due to the uncertainty of spectral emissivity was analysed by simulated worst-case measurements through temperature ranges of various radiation thermometers. This newly developed model for RBRT with known uncertainty of measurement enables traceable measurements using radiation thermometry under any conditions.

A cold chain logistics traceability system framework based on the identification and resolution system for Industrial Internet

With the global outbreak of COVID-19, hundreds of pneumonias caused by cold chain products occurred worldwide, which seriously threatened the safety of people's lives and properties. To effectively prevent product quality problems caused by cold chain logistics, it is urgent to establish a cold chain logistics traceability system with interoperability of heterogeneous systems, to record, share and track the temperature, location, time, and other specific information. The traditional cold chain logistics traceability systems have many problems, such as broken cold chains, untrustworthy data, and data tampering and sharing, which hinder the coordination and interaction efficiency of cold chain logistics traceability data. This paper creatively proposes a cold chain logistics traceability system framework based on the identification and resolution system for the Industrial Internet. It establishes a general cold chain logistics traceability identification data model. The system framework and data model can effectively solve the difficulties of multi-code identification and multi-source heterogeneous system interaction, to improve the efficiency of cold chain logistics traceability, and ensure the quality of cold chain logistics products. © 2022 ACM.

Wireless LAN Operation and Behavioral Inferences from Usage Analysis

The majority of network connections on campus is shifting from wired to wireless. Understanding and analyzing the usage of wireless LANs can lead us beyond mere network management to the analysis of users' behavior on campus and the discovery of new insights. In 2022, campus activity has returned to levels seen before the pandemic, but the effects of the COVID-19 disaster remain. Compared to pre-pandemic years, the use of wireless LANs on campus has increased significantly due to high smartphone ownership rates and the promotion of distance learning reliant on personally owned devices (BYOD). The use of multiple devices per person has also increased, creating new issues such as congestion and IP allocation problems. To accurately understand and improve these situations, we are collecting and analyzing connection information of our wireless LAN systems. Interestingly, our analysis of wireless LAN use provides information beyond the mere discovery of technical problems. From the results, we were able to identify ways we might improve the operation of the wireless LAN, as well as information to make inferences about the time spent by students on campus, their flow lines, and their behavior patterns. In this paper, we will report on the current status of the operation of the wireless LAN at Fukuoka University and the behavioral information inferred from our analysis of wireless LAN usage. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Ultraviolet sterilization information provision system of baggage carts and arriving baggage for airports

In this study, we develop a system to provide information on the sterilization of baggage carts and arriving passenger baggage to airport (Hereafter referred as arrival baggage) by using ultraviolet (UV) sterilization and information communication technology as border quarantine measures at airports. This system sterilizes arrival baggage and baggage carts by UV irradiation, and allows passengers to easily view the sterilization information recognized by radio frequency indentation technology. This is to provide safety and security not only to passengers, but also to staff, who may come into direct contact with the arrival baggage, of airport, airline, customs, and so on. In addition, the passengers can be provided with baggage tracking information, such as the current location and estimated delivering time of the baggage. This makes it possible to keep social distancing at baggage claims as an infection prevention. Furthermore, we verify the feasibility of the developed system and identify the issues to be addressed for its practical application through a demonstration of proof of concept at Central Japan International Airport. © 2022 International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences

Effectiveness of food traceability system: Chinese consumer food purchase intention during the pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, food safety scandals were common issues. This situation resulted in the rapid development of food traceability systems (FTS), which create transparency in tracking food products from manufacturing to consumption. So, this study empirically tests the elements of FTS by integrating the information system success model (ISSM) of DeLone and McLane on Chinese consumers' intention to purchase food using an FTS during a pandemic outbreak. Also, this study shows the significant mediating effect of perceived value, perceived safety, and perceived health benefits between the quality perspective of ISSM and purchase intention (PUI) as the dependent variable. This study provides insights for the further development of food traceability technologies. Copyright © 2023 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Establishment of national standard for anti-SARS-Cov-2 neutralizing antibody in China: The first National Standard calibration traceability to the WHO International Standard.

Neutralizing antibody (NtAb) levels are key indicators in the development and evaluation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines. Establishing a unified and reliable WHO International Standard (IS) for NtAb is crucial for the calibration and harmonization of NtAb detection assays. National and other WHO secondary standards are key links in the transfer of IS to working standards but are often overlooked. The Chinese National Standard (NS) and WHO IS were developed by China and WHO in September and December 2020, respectively, the application of which prompted and coordinated sero-detection of vaccine and therapy globally. Currently, a second-generation Chinese NS is urgently required owing to the depletion of stocks and need for calibration to the WHO IS. The Chinese National Institutes for Food and Drug Control (NIFDC) developed two candidate NSs (samples 33 and 66-99) traced to the IS according to the WHO manual for the establishment of national secondary standards through a collaborative study of nine experienced labs. Either NS candidate can reduce the systematic error among different laboratories and the difference between the live virus neutralization (Neut) and pseudovirus neutralization (PsN) methods, ensuring the accuracy and comparability of NtAb test results among multiple labs and methods, especially for samples 66-99. At present, samples 66-99 have been approved as the second-generation NS, which is the first NS calibrated tracing to the IS with 580 (460-740) International Units (IU)/mL and 580 (520-640) IU/mL by Neut and PsN, respectively. The use of standards improves the reliability and comparability of NtAb detection, ensuring the continuity of the use of the IS unitage, which effectively promotes the development and application of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in China.

A Blockchain-Based Life-Cycle Environmental Management Framework for Hospitals in the COVID-19 Context.

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emergency, many hospitals were built or renovated around the world to meet the challenges posed by the rising number of infected cases. Environmental management in the hospital life cycle is vital in preventing nosocomial infection and includes many infection control procedures. In certain urgent situations, a hospital must be completed quickly, and work process approval and supervision must therefore be accelerated. Thus, many works cannot be checked in detail. This results in a lack of work liability control and increases the difficulty of ensuring the fulfillment of key infection prevention measures. This study investigates how blockchain technology can transform the work quality inspection workflow to assist in nosocomial infection control under a fast delivery requirement. A blockchain-based life-cycle environmental management framework is proposed to track the fulfillment of crucial infection control measures in the design, construction, and operation stages of hospitals. The proposed framework allows for work quality checking after the work is completed, when some work cannot be checked on time. Illustrative use cases are selected to demonstrate the capabilities of the developed solution. This study provides new insights into applying blockchain technology to address the challenge of environmental management brought by rapid delivery requirements.

Blockchain apply to the supply chain of essential medicines for the treatment of Covid-19 in Colombia.

Introduction: The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, called COVID-19, in Colombia as well as in a great part of the world, has been declared as a public health emergency of international concern, affecting different aspects of the daily life, being one of the most important the access and distribution of necessary medicine, not only for the known deceases but also for the mitigation of COVID 19. Objective: the distribution of medicines should maintain stability in the supply chain of essential medicines, thus ensuring high quality medicines that could help in the treatment to fight the virus. Methodology: through this work a detailed analysis of the variable and critical points in the supply chain of essential medicines to mitigate COVID-19 is developed. Results: A new architecture based on the Blockchain Hyperledger is presented. It will help to solve those critical points found, through the secure trace of the medicine supply chain. In Colombia, by using this architecture all actors take responsibilities in the distribution chain, ensuring a high level of transparency in the distribution process. Discussion: by verifying the proper functioning of the model, the main difficulty when using Hyperledger is the lack of suppliers with experience; besides, there are not enough standardization or regulations of Blockchain. Conclusion: It is proved that Blockchain is an optimal technology to ensure essential medicine supply chain for the COVID 19 treatment in Colombia.

Smart Contract to Traceability of Food Social Selling

Traditionally, food sustainability has been considered solely in the stage of agricultural production. However, globalization, the expansion of the food production industry, and the emergence of supermarket chains that control the retail food market require specific significant changes in supply chains in the food sector and, therefore, we need to address the economic, social, and environmental impacts of these events. On the other hand, social selling has increased rapidly in recent years, with a further boom, following current events related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This explosion of social sales, where there are usually no control and regulation entities, can bring problems associated with mishandling items. In this paper, we expose how Blockchain technology supports the traceability of social sales by validating the data provided by the chain participants such as digital health passports, production and transport data in the sale process;the proposed solution generates recommendations on productmanagement considering the agreements previously made by the network actors. To evaluate the proposed smart contracts, we useHyperledger Caliper, obtaining an average throughput of 12.6 transactions per second and an average latency of 0.3 s for the asset update process. We also use a study case to evaluate the proposed project platform's selling-transport stage using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. © 2023 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.

Blockchain Technology in Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Management

The coronavirus pandemic caused global health and economic disruption of an unknown scale. Several issues with the pharmaceutical supply chain such as the counterfeiting of drugs came to light in these dire times. While continual efforts are being applied in order to effectively treat and annihilate the coronavirus, so are the efforts of supply chains to prepare for patient care in case of a recurrence. The requirement of superior quality medicines has sky rocketed, subsequently, so has the influx of counterfeited drugs. The security of the pharmaceutical supply chain is unquestionably necessary due to the large scale increase in demand for drugs. Tampering of the supply chain is not easily detectable when unethical practices are suspected currently. A radical and innovative method that contains the potential to overcome the challenges of securing the pharmaceutical supply chain is the blockchain technology. So, our proposed solution amalgamates blockchain technology into the drug supply chain to make it tamper-proof. This study proposes a system that harnesses blockchain's properties to ensure supply of safe and traceable pharmaceuticals from end to end. The smart contracts designed have been deployed on a local blockchain using Ganache. Results of our experimentation indicate with certainty that not only is this solution feasible but it is more secure than the present day scenario of the pharmaceutical supply chain. © 2022 IEEE.

Editorial for the Metrologia Focus Issue on Length Metrology

This Focus Issue of Metrologia was instigated by the Consultative Committee for Length's Working Group on Strategic Planning when it met online in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Submission of articles started closely thereafter and was closed in September 2022. Covering a wide range of topics, the issue shows that despite the Coronavirus pandemic disrupting laboratory work, length metrology researchers have continued to deliver cutting edge research. The revised definition of the metre and its Mise en Pratique, both published in 2019, have stimulated further research and opened additional opportunities for developing length metrology capabilities. Articles related to the new Mise en Pratique are included in the issue, together with a range of articles demonstrating the breadth and ingenuity of current leading edge research in length metrology. A final paper indicates how metrology, with length used as an example, may be enhanced by a transition to a digital framework for realising the SI.

AQRS: Anti-quantum ring signature scheme for secure epidemic control with blockchain.

Epidemics, such as Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), have serious consequences globally, of which the most effective way to control the infection is contact tracing. Nowadays, research related to privacy-preserving epidemic infection control has been conducted, nevertheless, current researchers do not regard the authenticity of records and infection facts as well as poor traceability. Moreover, with the emergence of quantum computing, there is a bottleneck in upholding privacy, security and efficiency. Our paper proposes a privacy-preserving epidemic infection control scheme through lattice-based linkable ring signature in blockchain, called AQRS. Firstly, our scheme adopts a blockchain with three ledgers to store information in a distributed manner, which offers transparency and immunity from the Single Point of Failure (SPoF) and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Moreover, we design a lattice-based linkable ring signature scheme to secure privacy-preserving of epidemic infection control. Significantly, we are the first to introduce the lattice-based linkable ring signature into privacy preserving in epidemic control scenario. Security analysis indicates that our scheme ensures unconditional users anonymity, record unforgeability, signature linkability, link non-slanderability and contact traceability. Finally, the comprehensive performance evaluation demonstrates that our scheme has an efficient time-consuming, storage consumption and system communication overhead and is practical for epidemic and future pandemic privacy-preserving.

Smart Contract to Traceability of Food Social Selling

Traditionally, food sustainability has been considered solely in the stage of agricultural production. However, globalization, the expansion of the food production industry, and the emergence of supermarket chains that control the retail food market require specific significant changes in supply chains in the food sector and, therefore, we need to address the economic, social, and environmental impacts of these events. On the other hand, social selling has increased rapidly in recent years, with a further boom, following current events related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This explosion of social sales, where there are usually no control and regulation entities, can bring problems associated with mishandling items. In this paper, we expose how Blockchain technology supports the traceability of social sales by validating the data provided by the chain participants such as digital health passports, production and transport data in the sale process;the proposed solution generates recommendations on productmanagement considering the agreements previously made by the network actors. To evaluate the proposed smart contracts, we useHyperledger Caliper, obtaining an average throughput of 12.6 transactions per second and an average latency of 0.3 s for the asset update process. We also use a study case to evaluate the proposed project platform's selling-transport stage using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. © 2023 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.