Telemedicine in the Era of Covid-19: Teleconsultation Architecture Platform

Teleconsultation is a type of medical practice similar to face-to-face consultations, and it allows a health professional to give a consultation remotely through information and communication technologies. In the context of the management of the coronavirus epidemic, the use of teleconsultation practices can facilitate healthcare access and limit the risk of avoidable propagation in medical cabinets. This paper presents the monitoring of international teleconsultation referrals in the era of Covid-19 to facilitate and prevent the suspension of access to care, the most common architecture for teleconsultation, communication technologies and protocols, vital body signals, video transmission, and the conduct of teleconsultation. The aim is to develop a teleconsultation platform to diagnose the patient in real time, transmit data from the remote location to the doctor, and provide a teleconsultation. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

SECURED COMMUNICATION SYSTEM FOR A METALLURGICAL COMPANY

This paper examines the use of videoconferencing systems for production (metallurgical) site management. Such systems help achieve a significant reduction in costs associated with meetings and related business trips. Application of such systems was especially wide-spread during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, none of the existing systems takes into account certain features typical of the corporate network infrastructure. Sophisticated communication systems consisting of various segments, as well as of symmetric and asymmetric channels with multiple parameters, which may vary numerous times, make it more difficult to build efficient VoIP solutions, especially when growing videoconferencing services. As the typical approach to securing confidentiality when transmitting voice and video data across communication networks implies that every sender-receiver route is considered public, it loses the benefits of network topology control in the corporate sector. At the same time, the typical client-server architecture across corporate IP networks demonstrates lower performance when compared with peer-to-peer networking because of lesser use of network infrastructure knowledge. The authors propose a new approach to building secured corporate communication systems, which does not have at its basis the client-server architecture but rather a p2p architecture. The latter enables to take into account the existing corporate network structure (including that of a metallurgical company), unload external and internal communication channels and reduce the computing costs at the host level. © 2023, Ore and Metals Publishing house. All rights reserved.

"We Speak Visually": User-Generated Icons for Better Video-Mediated Mixed-Group Communications Between Deaf and Hearing Participants

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, videoconferencing technology has been widely adopted as a convenient, powerful, and fundamental tool that has simplified many day-to-day tasks. However, video communication is dependent on audible conversation and can be strenuous for those who are Hard of Hearing. Communication methods used by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community differ significantly from those used by the hearing community, and a distinct language gap is evident in workspaces that accommodate workers from both groups. Therefore, we integrated users in both groups to explore ways to alleviate obstacles in mixed-group videoconferencing by implementing user-generated icons. A participatory design methodology was employed to investigate how the users overcome language differences. We observed that individuals utilized icons within video-mediated meetings as a universal language to reinforce comprehension. Herein, we present design implications from these findings, along with recommendations for future icon systems to enhance and support mixed-group conversations. © 2023 ACM.

'Keeping our Faith Alive': Investigating Buddhism Practice during COVID-19 to Inform Design for the Online Community Practice of Faith

Supportive digital technologies for the community practice of Faith remain relatively under-explored in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). We report on interviews with 12 members of a Buddhist community in the UK who self-organized and used video-conferencing tools to remain connected to their faith community during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to understand how they adopted online tools for their practice while shaping new collective experiences. Findings from Reflexive Thematic Analysis were combined with autoethnographic insights from the first author, also a community member. We evidence qualities of the practice that were valued by participants before and during the pandemic, and the limitations of existing tools and screen-based interactions. We contribute empirical insights on mediated religious and spiritual practice, advancing HCI discourses on Techno-Spirituality, Tangible Embodied Interaction, Soma Design and More-than-Human Worlds. We further develop design considerations for enriching spiritual experiences that are meaningful to practitioners in communities of faith. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Comparison of Exclamation Mark Usage as Message Nuances in Digital Chat Communication Between Japanese and Indonesian

Exclamation mark or kantanfu in Japanese, is one of written language elements used to convey expressions. Based on exclamation mark usage, the meaning and nuance of a sentence could differ. Amidst the COVID19 pandemic that limits one's interaction to another, the frequency of digital communication has significantly increased. Digital communication through chats has become an activity that cannot be separated from everyday life. Therefore, it is important to understand exclamation marks correctly. The aim of this study is to avoid misunderstandings that could happen through chats in Japanese. This study will compare the use and interpretation of exclamation marks in Japanese chat between Indonesians and Japanese. Japanese chat messages containing exclamation marks were analyzed using Hymes' SPEAKING theory. This study uses Creswell's convergent mixed methods, with quantitative data of Indonesians' questionnaire survey results, and qualitative data of interviews with Japanese people. Study results show that there are differences in the use and function of exclamation marks between Indonesians and Japanese. © 2022 IEEE.

Facilitating Real-Time, Multidirectional Learning for Clinicians in a Low-Evidence Pandemic Response.

As COVID-19 was declared a health emergency in March 2020, there was immense demand for information about the novel pathogen. This paper examines the clinician-reported impact of Project ECHO COVID-19 Clinical Rounds on clinician learning. Primary sources of study data were Continuing Medical Education (CME) Surveys for each session from the dates of March 24, 2020 to July 30, 2020 and impact surveys conducted in November 2020, which sought to understand participants' overall assessment of sessions. Quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney testing. Qualitative data were analyzed through inductive thematic analysis. Clinicians rated their knowledge after each session as significantly higher than before that session. 75.8% of clinicians reported they would 'definitely' or 'probably' use content gleaned from each attended session and clinicians reported specific clinical and operational changes made as a direct result of sessions. 94.6% of respondents reported that COVID-19 Clinical Rounds helped them provide better care to patients. 89% of respondents indicated they 'strongly agree' that they would join ECHO calls again.COVID-19 Clinical Rounds offers a promising model for the establishment of dynamic peer-to-peer tele-mentoring communities for low or no-notice response where scientifically tested or clinically verified practice evidence is limited.

Voting technology, democracy, and propaganda: Ontological considerations for the 2020 presidential election

The 2020 United States Presidential election was considered one of the most tumultuous political contests in the 21st century. During an international pandemic, travel restrictions and social distancing requirements created uncertainty about whether to vote in person or via absentee-mail-in ballot. The present study sought to investigate how voters experience different technologies in the 2020 United States Presidential election. Selected concepts in media ecology supplemented Fox and Alldred's (2013) framework for new materialist inquiry to explore the technical material characteristics of voting technology and the discursive elements of voter fraud propaganda. By tracing the history of voting technologies and voter fraud propaganda, the analysis argued that the vast array of technologies and experiences of voting in the 2020 election rendered the idea of an archetypal or monolithic voting method insufficient. Therefore, the present study suggests an ontological revision for the ways we conceptualize the relationship between voters, voting technologies, and democracy writ large. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

5G: The Network and it's future

The world is continuously moving at a fast pace and so is the technological advancements in it. It is a rule of the planet that there should be continuous improvements and advancements in all realms for the welfare of the mankind. In the recent times due to the pandemic and the Covid-19 virus, the style of living and completing one's work has changes drastically. The world has become highly virtual in nature. For each work that needs to be completed there are devices all around us and all of us are connected virtually, be it studies, office work, gaming or loads of other errands. There are various components that are crucial to the efficient operation of the virtual world. One important factor among these components is the network that helps us in connecting with one another. The whole system of the virtual world is highly reliable on the speed, bandwidth, and many other factors of the network that the users are using. The mobile network era started with One-G or just the G and currently is moving towards a 5G network. In this paper we will discuss about the 5G network, the technology it uses, the challenges that it is facing and the huge difference that it will bring about in the virtual and technological world. © 2022 IEEE.

Data-driven techniques for human activity sensing in smart environments

The number of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and edge devices has exploded in the last decade, providing new opportunities to sense and enable many applications to transform everyday people's lives. Wide-scale time series data collected through such devices, coupled with advances in learning technologies, can transform how people interact with their environment. However, as we enter the era of ubiquitous computing, there is a growing need for methods that are easy to use, computationally feasible, and require minimal human supervision to sense human activities by analyzing large-scale data. The goal of this research work is to propose data-driven techniques that focus on human activity sensing at different scales.The first part of the thesis focuses on human activity sensing at building scale for smart indoor environments. Towards that end, this work emphasizes general-purpose human activity sensing using ambient sensors for context-aware computing in smart environments. A deep neural network-based technique for sensing human-environment interaction is proposed and experiments explored interpretability for different ambient sensors and their contribution to model performance to avoid data redundancy. Identifying the challenge of distribution shift in long-term activity sensing, the thesis next focuses on time series partitioning for unlabeled IoT sensor streams, which is an important step toward continuous human activity sensing. This work proposes Cadence, a generalized change point detection technique that detects change points through hypothesis testing by learning a data representation specifically with the segmentation objective. Experiments show that it is sample-efficient, unsupervised, and can robustly detect time-series events across different applications while needing only 9-93 seconds for training.The second part of the thesis focuses on human activity sensing at city scale using large-scale spatio-temporal data. A framework is introduced for sensing urban activity and policy compliance during the COVID-19 crisis using vision and language-based sensing from street view images. Understanding the challenges of street view image usage in urban sensing due to its large scale and distribution variance, a data-driven framework is proposed to evaluate the quality of information in urban scale street view images based on quality attributes capturing spatial, temporal, and content information present in the data. Our experiments show that such framework can be useful for ranking, querying, and improving spatio-temporal data quality and usage in urban computing and activity sensing. We believe such techniques can be useful to model our living patterns by analyzing large-scale data and improve the quality of our life through applications such as home automation, energy optimization, and personalized healthcare. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Development of Elbow-Wrist Telerehabilitation System - An Affordable, Available, Accessible, and Acceptable (4As) System

The application of telerehabilitation system has gained popularity and acceptance recently due to the restrictions in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper described the development of an elbow-wrist telerehabilitation system that complement the disrupted routine rehabilitation session. The developed system consists of a wearable exoskeleton system that assist in rehabilitation of the elbow and wrist joints for individuals with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's and Spinal Cord Injuries that affects movements of the upper extremities. The two modes of operation available enables the adoption of the 5G technology in the near future. This system also potentially fulfills the requirement of Accessibility, Availability, Affordability, and Acceptability (4As) of Telerehabilitation System in Malaysia. Overall development cost of the system is approximately MYR 500. The system enable rehabilitation to be performed at home-setting with a cloud-based monitoring system that will provide long-term monitoring for clinician's assessment. The project provides a proof-of-concept of such system in the Malaysian context.Clinical Relevance - This work demonstrated the proof-of concept of a 4A system is applicable in the Malaysian context. © 2022 IEEE.

Flipping the Microwave Engineering Class

Microwave engineering is regaining importance as the world is witnessing the emergence of a new industrial revolution spearheaded by the internet of things and 5G communications and wireless networks. Preparing α-generation microwave engineering students for the future, especially in post-COVID era, represents a considerable challenge to universities worldwide that seldom offer a full autonomous course at the undergraduate level. Engineering curriculum should be revisited in order to incorporate skills suitable for work-based learning with emphasis on developing human-centred ICT competencies. Flipped classrooms are specifically attractive in engineering education to ensure deep comprehension of course material. A flipped microwave-engineering course with focus on amplifier design has therefore been re-designed with course learning outcomes aligned with Bloom's taxonomy and ABET program outcomes. The new learning cycle in the flipped mode, allow reaching the top cognitive pyramid where student exercised decision-making and practiced meta-cognitive knowledge and skills. The stretched flipped classroom represents a paradigm shift in instructional methodology and offers several advantages to the learning process at high cognitive levels as learning occurs in a comfortable pace where students collaborate with instructors in course design, curricula and delivery. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

On the Influence of Microscopic Mobility in Modelling Pedestrian Communication

In the recent past, wireless network simulations involving pedestrians are getting increasing attention within the research community. Examples are crowd networking, pedestrian communication via Sidelink/D2D, wireless contact tracing to fight the Covid-19 pandemic or the evaluation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) for the protection of Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). Since in general the mobile communication depends on the position of the pedestrians, their mobility needs to be modeled. Often simplified mobility models such as the random-waypoint or cellular automata based models are used. However, for ad hoc networks and Inter-Vehicular Communication (IVC), it is well-known that a detailed model for the microscopic mobility has a strong influence – which is why state-of-the-art simulation frameworks for IVC often combine vehicular mobility and network simulators. Therefore, this paper investigates to what extent a detailed modelling of the pedestrian mobility on an operational level influences the results of Pedestrian-to-X Communication (P2X) and its applications. We model P2X scenarios within the open-source coupled simulation environment CrowNet. It enables us to simulate the identical P2X scenario while varying the pedestrian mobility simulator as well as the used model. Two communication scenarios (pedestrian to server via 5G New Radio, pedestrian to pedestrian via PC5 Sidelink) are investigated in different mobility scenarios. Initial results demonstrate that time- and location-dependent factors represented by detailed microscopic mobility models can have a significant influence on the results of wireless communication simulations, indicating a need for more detailed pedestrian mobility models in particular for scenarios with pedestrian crowds. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Research and Application of 5G Edge AI in Medical Industry

With the development of 5G and AI technology, the infectious virus detection framework system based on the combination of 5G MEC and medical sensors can effectively assist in the intelligent detection and control of influenza viruses such as COVID-19. Employing the edge computing and 5G+MEC model, the virus AI model is trained for the collected influenza virus data. Then the virus AI model can be used to evaluate the virus patients on the local edge computing service platform. Therefore, this paper introduces an algorithm and resource allocation, which uses 5G functions (especially, low latency, high bandwidth, wide connectivity, and other functions) to achieve local chest X-ray or CT scan images to detect COVID-19. Meanwhile, this paper also compares the computational efficiency of different algorithms in the 5G edge AI-based infectious virus detection framework, in this way to select the best algorithm and resource allocation. © 2022 IEEE.

Exploiting a Contact Tracing App to Attack Neighboring Devices

The recent pandemic fosters an increasing dependency on various forms of digital communications that support social distancing. To mitigate widespread exposure to COVID, the Louisiana Department of Health's COVID Defense contact tracing application helps users learn about potential exposures to infected individuals. This research investigates the viability of using the Louisiana Department of Health's COVID Defense application symptoms share feature as an attack vector. The primary contribution of this research is an initial assessment of the effective modification and distribution of a packaged JSON file that contains a malicious link. Secondly, it highlights the effectiveness of this attack through email, WIFI direct, and nearby share. © 2023 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Wearable Temperature Sensor and Artificial Intelligence to Reduce Hospital Workload

Patient sensing and data analytics provide information that plays an important role in the patient care process. Patterns identified from data and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can identify risk/abnormal patients' data. Due to automatization this process can reduce workload of medical staff, as the algorithms alert for possible problems. We developed an integrated approach to monitor patients' temperature applied to COVID-19 elderly patients and an ML process to identify abnormal behavior with alerts to physicians. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Deconstructing the digital divide: The geography, demography, and spatial dependence of internet stability in the U.S

Internet access and connectivity has become a crucial issue of public policy across the globe. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as individuals and households transitioned to remote work and learning, usage of and strain on home networks increased dramatically. The ability to interact with the internet is quickly becoming recognized worldwide as a determinant of social, economic, and even physiological well-being. With the continuing increase in usage of telehealth, remote work & learning, and distance collaboration tools, the importance of internet access is underwritten by assumptions regarding the internet's stability of connection. A broadly accepted metric to ascertain two-way video & audio stability is known as latency. Being able to empirically and visually describe the geographic distribution of latency across spatial units is of critical importance to understanding where potential policy interventions or government assistance programs are most needed. Similarly, understanding the spatial landscape of latency reveals inequities between socioeconomic, racial, and regional populations. In order to create the most nuanced, empirically sound predictive models to understand factors that influence latency, local regression techniques must be brought to bear. In this paper, I combine a rigorous exploration of the literature with a variety of empirical tools to solve these challenging issues by examining latency across all census tracts in the United States. Quantitative techniques included in this examination are: traditional univariate, bivariate, and multivariable statistical methods, cartographic transformations, exploratory spatial data analysis, autocorrelation analyses, spatial demographic methods, local regression modeling, geographic interpolation, and kriging. I find that rural census tracts, and tracts with higher poverty rates, particularly those with populations other than non-Hispanic White, experience poorer internet stability. I provide identifiable visualizations for where latency is at its best and worst. I classify and specifically identify typologies of neighborhoods to explicitly show discrete groups of census tracts where policymakers can plan interventions. Finally, I present kriging as a methodological tool to predict previously unknown values of latency in order to better fill in the gaps of coverage areas and stability measurements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Quantitative methods for improving medical decision-making

Innovation in causal inference and implementation of electronic health record systems are rapidly transforming medical care. In this dissertation, we present three examples in which use of methods in causal inference and large electronic health record data address existing challenges in medical decision-making. First, we use principles of causal inference to examine the structure of randomized trials of biomarker targets, which have produced divergent results and controversial clinical guidelines for management of hypertension and other chronic diseases. We discuss four key threats to the validity of trials of this design. Second, we use methods in causal inference for adjustment of time-varying confounding to estimate the effect of time-varying treatment strategies for hypertension. We report the results of a study which used longitudinal electronic health record data from a prospective virtual cohort of veterans. Third, we use individual-level electronic health record data to predict the need for critical care resources during surges in COVID-19 cases, to aid hospital administrators with resource allocation in periods of crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

"Whatsapp, God?" A comparative analysis of intercessory prayer by ICGC members on whatsapp and in-person congregational settings in Accra, Ghana

Intercessory prayer remains an integral part of Ghanaian Christians'social lives. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted regular in-person congregational intercessory prayer meetings in the country of Ghana. Rather than abandoning the practice of intercessory prayer, churches such as the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) used chat messenger apps like WhatsApp to leap over the disrupted activities of in-person congregational meetings. This research employed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach and the Uses and Gratification Theory and Theological Acceptance Model as its theoretical frameworks to ascertain whether ICGC members consider WhatsApp to be more efficacious than in-person congregational settings for intercessory prayer. The results from 330 ICGC members revealed that ICGC members prefer in-person congregational meetings to WhatsApp for intercessory prayer and augment their intercessory prayer experience with WhatsApp based on the context. WhatsApp, in this regard, is an alternative tool and not a replacement for in-person intercessory prayer. The study provides a spiritual motivations perspective to the Uses and Gratification theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

"Expo City Dubai": A Convergence of Smart Touristic and Residential Experience

Advanced technologies are leading to a vital change in city life and turning the urban planning development plans. The new technical development initiatives have evolutionary transform the urban infrastructure by optimizing planning of resources use and through information technology systems. Post COVID-19 raised interesting question that if another pandemic or major threat in the future, would urban areas be sufficiently prepared to respond based on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic? This paper highlights the Expo City Dubai case in light of smart city and smart tourism destination. The emphasis is on dual approach of usage of smart technologies as residential areas and tourist place in term of planning and provision of facilities. This research figure out the planning instruments applied in smart strategies in Expo City by focusing on how sustainability indicators are considered under the smart paradigm. The discussion revealed that Expo City is fulfilling the requirements of being a smart destination by displaying novel technical applications of 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT) and robotics. The final discussion contextualizes by proposing potential areas of synthesis, applications for planning practice, and areas of future research in sustainable urban city planning. © 2022 IEEE.

Exploring the audiovisual effects on sport viewer satisfaction through the lens of the psychological continuum model

As the source of one of the largest revenue streams for professional sport franchises, the viewership of sport broadcasts has plummeted in recent years (Bode, 2018). This declining trend has been further exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic (Crupi, 2021). According to Deloitte's Fan Engagement survey, the average fan satisfaction across sports broadcast programs was only 39 percent (Deloitte, 2019).Research has been devoted to investigating the determinants of sport viewer satisfaction, including various audio and visual conditions of sport broadcasts. However, these works assume that media design effects are equally effective among all viewers and fail to account for potential heterogeneities in people's psychological connection to the mediated sport. To address this gap, the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM;Funk & James, 2001;2006) was introduced as the theoretical foundation for understanding the formation of viewer satisfaction with a focal sport (e.g., college football).The current dissertation examines whether and how the strength of psychological connection to college football overrides the effects of varying audiovisual presentations on viewer satisfaction with a televised college football game. A 2 (presence of commentary: With commentary vs. Without commentary) x 2 (presence of audience: High vs. Low) between-subjects online experiment was administered via Prolific (n = 338). The relationship between psychological connection and viewer satisfaction and the moderation effects of the two selected audiovisual conditions were tested using the ANCOVA. Results showed a significant positive association between psychological connection to college football and viewer satisfaction. However, the manipulated audiovisual conditions did not moderate the aforementioned relationship between psychological connection and viewer satisfaction. The presence of audience had a significant positive effect on viewer satisfaction. In contrast, the presence of commentary exerted no significant effect on viewer satisfaction regardless of people's PCM staging.The findings provide empirical evidence to support the seminal PCM framework that the strength of an individual's psychological connection to the focal sport object was a more deterministic factor that drives the sport media consumption experience than the audiovisual media presentation. For those interested in watching but have not yet formed a strong attitude towards the broadcasted sport object, the viewing experience can be optimized by maximizing the visual presence of a live audience. The null effect of commentary presence and sonic ambiance on viewer satisfaction reinforces the proposition that what is seen might be more influential than what is heard in sport media consumption (Cummins et al., 2019). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)