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This study examines household behavioural responses to the pandemic-induced income shocks regarding their overall spending and spending out of 2020 CARES stimulus payments. Using data from the 2020 Health and Retirement Study COVID-19 project and restricting our sample to older adults (51 years old and above), we show that the negative income shocks experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic put downward pressure on household spending. Results also reveal that, relative to those who did not experience an income shock, stimulus recipients who experienced income losses were more likely to use the stimulus transfer to increase spending, pay off debt, or for other purposes rather than to save.
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The hotel industry has been one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in Portugal in recent years. According to the European Best Destinations website, Portugal has consolidated itself as a destination of excellence. The explanation of the capital structure of firms remains relevant in financial research. However, prior international empirical evidence is not exclusive and is still scarce in the Portuguese hotel sector, which motivated this research. This study aimed to analyse the influence of determinants on the capital structure of 821 Portuguese hotels between 2011 and 2019 (until the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the international tourism sector) and to determine whether strategies were conducted according to trade-off and pecking order theories. This study used an econometric approach based on the static panel data model, with tests recommending the fixed effects model estimated by the least squares dummy variables (LSDV) within. The analysed determinants were return on assets, size, tangibility, growth opportunities, risk and other tax benefits besides debt in order to explain the indebtedness through three alternative measures. The results of this research show that managers sought an optimal combination of equity and debt, which was weighted between tax savings and the cost of financial distress. However, they pursued this objective through the hierarchical sequencing of funding sources in order to minimise the costs of information asymmetry. © 2023 by the authors.
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Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have introduced working from home to avoid the risk of infection. In this study, we conducted questionnaire surveys and analysed the building energy management system (BEMS) in an office building where the number of employees working from home increased after the onset of the pandemic. The influence of working from home on the indoor environment satisfaction and the variability in energy consumption at home and office was determined. The indoor environment satisfaction was significantly higher when working from home than when working at the office. In 2020, the total energy consumption at home and office decreased by 30% in April and increased by 22% in August compared to the previous year. To work from home while saving energy regardless of the season, it is necessary to reduce office energy consumption by decreasing the number of workers present at the office. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.
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When the nation is facing a great downfall of economic activities leading to many disturbances in the daily life of people, savings and investment plan can hold the hands of employees belonging to private sector from financial fall down. The present study exposes the savings and investment preferences of private sector employees due to the effect of COVID-19 pandemic. As information shows that salary reduction and job termination have become common events in private sector due to the present pandemic, it becomes necessary to understand how far the pandemic has influenced their savings and investment. Likert scale and Garret ranking are two statistical tools used in the study to analyse major influencing factors of COVID-19 pandemic and the mostly preferred factor by the private sector employees. The study concludes that this pandemic has a significant influence leading to deregulating existing plans as well as decline in proportion of savings and investments.
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Aim: The COVID-19 epidemic has caused risk and uncertainty. This study answers whether and how psychological distress and digital sports influence willingness to take the vaccine and precautionary savings. Subject and methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study with an online survey sample of 1016 Shanghai residents who live and work there and are aged between 16-60. All of them experienced the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai. We used logistic regressions to examine the relationships between the variables of interest. Results: Three findings were demonstrated. First, psychologically distressed individuals are less inclined to take the vaccine. Second, those engaged in fitness activities via digital media platforms are more willing to get vaccinated. Third, psychologically distressed individuals and digital video-based physical exercisers are more likely to precautionary save. Conclusions: This study contributes to the literature by documenting how people changed their life from the perspective of finance and health during the lockdown and providing practical implications.
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Owning to the outbreak of COVID-19, individuals have to spend more time indoor. It is therefore essential to prepare for a long-term healthy indoor working environment in the transition of post COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is no relevant research so far in investigating such crisis impacts around indoor environmental quality and economic-health issues while home offices are expected becoming common practice soon. Therefore, a case of single-family house in Sweden is specially investigated using IDA ICE. By comparing four predominant ventilation approaches, three operational schedules are proposed, covering different confinement for occupants. Main results show that the demand response ventilation (DRV) generally should sacrifice in remarkable performance in energy saving, and emission reduction to better confront with more challenges in indoor air quality, occupied thermal dissatisfaction fraction and air stagnation under the challenge of COVID-19 pandemic scenario. Altered ventilation strategy should be customized from increased outdoor air supply, various demand-control signal, displacement method towards a heathier homeworking environment. © International Building Performance Simulation Association, 2022
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The pandemic of COVID-19 and its transmission ability raise much attention to ventilation design as indoor-transmission outstrips outdoor-transmission. Impinging jet ventilation (IJV) systems might be promising to ventilate densely occupied large spaces due to their high jet momentum. However, their performances in densely occupied spaces have rarely been explored. This study proposes a modified IJV system and evaluates its performance numerically in a densely occupied classroom mockup. A new assessment formula is also proposed to evaluate the nonuniformity of target species CO2. The infector is assumed as the manikin with the lowest tracer gas concentration in the head region. The main results include: a) Indoor air quality (IAQ) in the classroom is improved significantly compared with a mixing ventilation system, i.e., averaged CO2 in the occupied zone (OZ) is reduced from 1287 ppm to 1078 ppm, the OZ-averaged mean age of air is reduced from 439 s to 177 s; b) The mean infection probability is reduced from 0.047% to 0.027% with an infector, and from 0.035% to 0.024% with another infector; c) Cooling coil load is reduced by around 21.0%; d) Overall evaluation indices meet the requirements for comfortable environments, i.e., the temperature difference between head and ankle is within 3 °C and the OZ-averaged predictive mean vote is in the range of -0.5 - 0.5; e) Thermal comfort level and uniformity are decreased, e.g., overcooling near diffuser at ankle level. Summarily, the target system effectively improves IAQ, reduces exhaled-contaminant concentration in head regions, and saves energy as well.
ABSTRACT
Living during a COVID-19 pandemic has negative effects on a person's psychophysiological state such as high-stress levels, leading to poor health, chronic fatigue and insomnia. As a result, the immunity is reduced, which is particularly dangerous today. One way to solve this problem is the use of health-saving clothing, which has additional features that provide the positive effect on the wearer's body. The developed gloves affect the state of the human autonomic nervous system through biological-active locations in the places of the hand and wrist. An anthropometric study of the biological-active locations of the wrist and hand is performed to construct the glove design. An algorithm for constructing a drawing of the design of the designed product based on four measurements is proposed. The effectiveness of the adaptive gloves is confirmed by studying its effect on the psycho-emotional and psychophysiological state of a person without exposure to the product and after its use by software "Intera-Diacor" and "ROFES", and a questionnaire. The evaluation is performed after wearing gloves for 20-40 minutes. It was found that 83.3 % of the wearers of the health-saving gloves showed positive changes in the body's compensatory forces (stress) and the state of internal emotional fatigue. Thus, the use of health-saving gloves has a positive social, therapeutic (health-saving) and economic effect, as the product has several functions It is an accessory fashion, has hand protection, and, has additional features to positively influence the body of the person wearing it. This allows the future to talk about the use of consumer-friendly and effective ways to correct the men's psychoemotional and psychophysiological states, based on the safer-by-design concept. © 2022 Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. All rights reserved.
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Accelerating growth of online-services expanding into the post-COVID world has strengthened competing for leadership in the key areas and changed the infrastructure of global economy's capitalization. A study of system of economic relations enables better and more comprehensive understanding of the MNC's place and role in the modern global economy. For the third consecutive year technology become a major industry from the point of view of market capitalization. However, from the point of view of an growth in the interest value such areas as healthcare, telecommunications and household services increased by 15% each in comparison with technological industry which growth in 2020 constituted only 6%. The last place among the leading global MNC from the industrial perspective is occupied by the financial area. In the mentioned segment multinational companies have undergone contraction of the market capitalization cost by 3% in total. Nevertheless, MNC among the Top-100 have managed to succeed much more than another companies in the mentioned sector. Changes in the global market in the 21st century have significantly increased the role of MNCs in sustainable infrastructure of the global economy. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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In energy saving operation of buildings, it is important to understand the energy consumption characteristics of university campuses in order to formulate specific energy saving plans. Due to COVID-19 expansion, it is assumed that infection prevention measures such as behavior change of students and ventilation are affecting the energy consumption characteristics. It is necessary to understand the energy consumption characteristics that have changed from the conventional ones. In this study, we analyzed energy consumption data on Meiji university campuses for the three years from 2019 to 2021. we clarify the energy consumption characteristics that have changed due to COVID-19 expansion. © 2023 Architectural Institute of Japan. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The transition to the E-learning format due to the current international epidemiological situation is stressful to all participants of the educational process that has a negative impact on their physical and mental health. This fact is the reason why purposeful formation of a health-creating university educational environment, which includes not only health resource saving, but health resource creating, is crucial. This approach makes it possible to avoid high resource consumption (leading to unavoidable depletion of body resources) which is associated with the risk of social and psychological maladaptation of educational process participants. This paper presents the results of the study including full-time and part-time students' perception of their E-learning experience during the pandemic. The research shows that students whose adaptation to the changing environment (transition to E-learning) was difficult demonstrate the following signs of social and psychological maladaptation: the feeling of social isolation, the educational satisfaction level reduction, the difficulties of self-organization, the health level reduction. It was revealed that the part-time educational environment requires more adaptation resources to cope with the situation of its transformation. The data obtained can be used in creating and managing the pedagogical and psychological support of the educational process of E-learning aimed at the prevention of social and psychological maladaptation. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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New technologies, systems, societal organization and policies for energy saving are urgently needed in the context of accelerated climate change, the Ukraine conflict and the past coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. For instance, concerns about market and policy responses that could lead to new lock-ins, such as investing in liquefied natural gas infrastructure and using all available fossil fuels to compensate for Russian gas supply cuts, may hinder decarbonization efforts. Here we review energy-saving solutions with a focus on the actual energy crisis, green alternatives to fossil fuel heating, energy saving in buildings and transportation, artificial intelligence for sustainable energy, and implications for the environment and society. Green alternatives include biomass boilers and stoves, hybrid heat pumps, geothermal heating, solar thermal systems, solar photovoltaics systems into electric boilers, compressed natural gas and hydrogen. We also detail case studies in Germany which is planning a 100% renewable energy switch by 2050 and developing the storage of compressed air in China, with emphasis on technical and economic aspects. The global energy consumption in 2020 was 30.01% for the industry, 26.18% for transport, and 22.08% for residential sectors. 10-40% of energy consumption can be reduced using renewable energy sources, passive design strategies, smart grid analytics, energy-efficient building systems, and intelligent energy monitoring. Electric vehicles offer the highest cost-per-kilometer reduction of 75% and the lowest energy loss of 33%, yet battery-related issues, cost, and weight are challenging. 5-30% of energy can be saved using automated and networked vehicles. Artificial intelligence shows a huge potential in energy saving by improving weather forecasting and machine maintenance and enabling connectivity across homes, workplaces, and transportation. For instance, 18.97-42.60% of energy consumption can be reduced in buildings through deep neural networking. In the electricity sector, artificial intelligence can automate power generation, distribution, and transmission operations, balance the grid without human intervention, enable lightning-speed trading and arbitrage decisions at scale, and eliminate the need for manual adjustments by end-users.
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An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, "What about the risk to human life?" Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern "What about people's livelihoods and individual freedoms?" A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional government intervention in the free-market economy. We examine these lay beliefs among US residents in four studies and find that economic system justification (ESJ), an ideology that defends the prevailing economic system when under threat, is a reliable psychological predictor beyond political ideology. Specifically, compared to those who scored low on ESJ, people who scored high on ESJ judged China as more justified in downplaying the spread of virus to protect its interest in the global free-market economy, supported in-person over online learning, viewed shelter in place as less desirable, and perceived the opening of the Texas economy as more legitimate. We also find that multiple psychological mechanisms might be at work-resistance to market interventions, perceived legitimacy of opening the economy, perceived seriousness of the health crisis, and violation of human rights. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10551-022-05091-4.
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To support building operations in reaching ultra-low energy targets, this paper proposes a data-informed building energy management (DiBEM) framework to improve energy efficiency systematically and continuously at the operation stage. Specifically, it has two key features including data-informed energy-saving potential identification and data-driven model-based energy savings evaluation. The paper demonstrates the proposed DiBEM with a detailed case study of an office and living laboratory building located in Cambridge, Massachusetts called HouseZero. It focuses on revealing the performance of the energy-efficient interventions from two-years' building performance monitoring data, as well as evaluating energy savings from the interventions based on the data-driven approach. With Year 1 as baseline, several interventions are proposed for Year 2 including improvements to controls and operation settings, encouragement of occupants' behavior for energy savings, and hardware retrofitting. These were deployed to heating/cooling, domestic hot water, lighting, plug and other loads, and photovoltaic (PV) systems. To quantify the impacts of different interventions on energy end uses, several data-driven models are developed. These models utilize linear regression, condition model, and machine learning techniques. Consequently, the heating/cooling energy consumption that was already ultra-low in Year 1 (12.8 kWh/m2) is further reduced to 9.7 kWh/m2 in Year 2, while the indoor thermal environment is well maintained. The domestic hot water energy is reduced from 2.3 kWh/m2 to 1.2 kWh/m2. The lighting energy is only increased from 0.3 kWh/m2 in pandemic operations without occupancy in Year 1 to 0.8 kWh/m2 in partial normal operations in Year 2, while the indoor illuminance level meets occupants' requirements. Combined with other relatively constant loads and the reduction of plug and other loads due to COVID building operation restrictions, the total energy use intensity is thereby reduced from 54.1 kWh/m2 to 42.8 kWh/m2, where 5.4 kWh/m2 of energy reduction for Year 2 is estimated to be contributed by the energy-efficient interventions. PV generation is 36.1 kWh/m2, with an increase of 1.4 kWh/m2 from a new inverter. In summary, this paper demonstrates the use of DiBEM through a detailed case study and long-term monitoring data as evidence to achieve ultra-low energy operations. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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The resource-saving behavior in the recent period is escalating particularly due to the energy and prices crises in all of the European Union (EU). The COVID-19 pandemic not only caused changes in health concerns but also in environmental awareness and behavior. Thus, this paper aims to reveal whether the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the resource-saving behavior, and how this pandemic changed the climate change perception and personal responsibility in the EU countries. Referring to two surveys conducted in all EU countries in 2019 and 2021, the results revealed that the level of climate change perception during this period significantly decreased in all EU. Meanwhile, the level of responsibility placed on the government to solve the climate change problem increased the most. A level of the personal responsibility increased negligibly. Considering resource-saving behaviors, only the lesser usage of disposable items from 2019 to 2021 increased statistically significantly. The results of an analysis of the main determinants of resource-saving behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic period revealed that personal responsibility and the climate change solution's benefit for health positively and significantly determined all the analyzed actions. The climate change perception and climate change solution's benefit for the economy statistically significantly influenced waste reduction, the purchase of efficient appliances, and the usage of pro-environmental transportation mode instead of personal cars. Health benefits instead of the economic benefits statistically significantly contributed to the resource-saving behaviors, except for actions that require more monetary investments. The satisfaction with the COVID-19 pandemic management had an insignificant negative impact on all resource-saving actions. Thus, the tools assigned to manage this pandemic did not motivate people to save natural resources.
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The Magnetic Force Control MFC technology is very useful because of its physical treatment process. Especially the Magnetic Separation MS technology is expected to contribute to SDGs 2030, Circular Economy and Carbon neutral 2050 realization. This paper describes the review of the IFMFC activity from 2010. The IFMFC is organized by three local committees of researchers in Japan, China and Korea. The IFMFC aims to exchange the information of the development results using the MFC technology and to educate the young researchers. The forum has been held in every year around three countries. In 2020 and 2021, the forum was organized by Zoom online due to the COVID-19. The 134 presentations were made up to 2020. The breakdown of these presentations are categorized to the environment remediation52%, material resource37% and fundamental research/technology11%. The Super Conducting Magnet SCM development promotes the MFC technologies. There are some impressive backgrounds as to the brilliant SM technology applications for many different magnetism;SCM development, High Gradient Magnetic Separation HGMS, magnetic seeding method and magneto-Archimedes effect. This paper reviews the IFMFC activity according to those presented presentations.
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Since the coronavirus disease 2019, the extended time indoors makes people more concerned about indoor air quality, while the increased ventilation in seeks of reducing infection probability has increased the energy usage from heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. In this study, to represent the dynamics of indoor temperature and air quality, a coupled grey-box model is developed. The model is identified and validated using a data-driven approach and real-time measured data of a campus office. To manage building energy usage and indoor air quality, a model predictive control strategy is proposed and developed. The simulation study demonstrated 18.92% energy saving while maintaining good indoor air quality at the testing site. Two nationwide simulation studies assessed the overall energy saving potential and the impact on the infection probability of the proposed strategy in different climate zones. The results showed 20%–40% energy saving in general while maintaining a predetermined indoor air quality setpoint. Although the infection risk is increased due to the reduced ventilation rate, it is still less than the suggested threshold (2%) in general. © 2022, Tsinghua University Press.
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The first ever CO2 foam fracturing new technology in Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) history was executed flawlessly in late 2021. Three treatments were executed. Co2 Foam Fracturing proved its significant added value of improving productivity in deep depleted tight carbonate Jurassic reservoirs, enhance flow back, reduce water consumption and carbon emission, and enable early production plus improving operation efficiency and cost saving. The stimulation operation has proven to be a huge success for all multidisciplinary teams involved as preliminary results showed over 50-70% production increase compared to offset wells. The main challenges of acid fracturing stimulation in depleted reservoirs are the need for extended formation cleanup to flow back the injected fluids via prolonging Nitrogen lift that add higher operational costs and intervention operations. Therefore, energetic high foam efficiency frac fluid becomes essential to assist flowback and retrieve pumped frac fluids from reservoir. To tackle these challenges, Carbon Dioxide CO2 is pumped in liquid phase as energetic fluid together with normal frac fluids. Due to CO2 liquid nature, high foam efficiency can be reached (40 – 50%) at much lower friction losses. So, it enables achieving pumping frac at high rates and high foam efficiency. The main benefits of CO2 Foam frac are better fracture cleanup due to expansion of the stored compressed gas in the liquid CO2, fluid loss control that is provided by foam, minimized fracture conductivity damage, and the increase in hydrostatic pressure while pumping that translates to lower surface pressures during injection. The selected pilot well is in depleted deep tight carbonate reservoir area of North Kuwait Jurassic gas fields. The executed acid fracturing operation required close planning starting from Q1-2021. Many challenges faced from logistical issues, lack of infrastructure and CO2 resources for the multi-faceted operation due to COVID-19 pandemic limitations. These challenges were tackled ahead with the integration of technical and operations teams to bridge the knowledge gap and to enable executing the operation safely. The pilot well's net incremental production gain is estimated at 50-70% compared to offset wells, with improved flowback and formation cleanup with less well intervention. The resulting time and cost savings as well as the incremental well productivity and better operation efficiency confirmed high perspectives for the implemented foam acid fracturing approach. Another two CO2 Foam acid fracturing wells were executed with good results too. This paper will demonstrate the value of CO2 foam fracturing in depleted reservoir and KOC experience post first application and its plans to expand CO2 Foam Fracturing application across KOC different fields. © Society of Petroleum Engineers - HFTC 2023. All rights reserved.
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Air conditioning (AC) systems for tropical countries like India account for sixty percent of the total energy needs of a building. With the onset of COVID-19, the increase of fresh air ventilation rate has been recommended by various guidelines for indoor spaces which increase the load on the AC system. The present study attempts to reduce this burden through retrofitting a phase change material (PCM) embedded pin fin heat exchanger into an air-conditioning system. The heat exchanger is designed to cater to the peak load fluctuations for cities in three hot climatic zones of India, viz., Jaisalmer, Kolkata, and Delhi. Dodecanol with a melting temperature of 24 degrees C, is chosen as the appropriate PCM material for these locations. The optimal pin fin diameters are estimated through an entropy generation minimization analysis for the three locations. A heat transfer analysis of the PCM embedded heat exchanger is further presented through an analytical approach to estimate the PCM mass requirement and energy savings potential. The masses of the PCM estimated for Jaisalmer, Kolkata, and Delhi are 11.36 kg, 22.42 kg, and 19.35 kg, respectively for their respective peak load fluctuations of 0.25 kW, 0.28 kW and 0.48 kW. Energy savings of up to 4.7 % for Delhi, 2 % for Kolkata, and 2.75 % for Jaisalmer are identified with the PCM embedded heat exchanger incorporation. The results show the potential of such PCM thermal storage in reducing the peak energy demands of buildings amidst various environmental and health concerns.
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The article discusses the features of health-saving practices of older people who have suffered COVID-19 and live in rural areas. The research focuses on everyday practices and their social projections in the context of the life of older people in such areas. The factors influencing the formation of various health-saving strategies of the olders are described. The most dangerous for all health-saving strategies of the older after COVID-19 are: infrastructural difficulties, problems associated with the development of rural medicine, lacking support, communications in the local community. The researchers focus on the specific experiences of the older people and how they describe in narratives changing practices and requests for medical help or for the help from the local community after the COVID-19. The empirical basis of the study is semi-structured interviews collected in three villages in the south-east of the Republic of Karelia with an infrastructure deficit and infrastructure development problems. The strategies outlined in the study form a kind of continuum from the transition to self-medication practices and the use of self-medication by older people, which differ depending on what kind of help older people resorted to, starting from the help of the local community and ending with medical care available in rural areas © 2022, Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved