State and citizen responsiveness in fighting a pandemic crisis: A systems thinking perspective.

Management scholars have recognized organizational responsiveness among the essential capabilities of social organizations. It becomes essential for a social change to occur during a crisis, where the uncertainty or environmental dynamism is high. However, a social change cannot be successful unless constituent subsystems of a social organization exhibit responsiveness. Using systems theory, we conceptualize 'nation' as a social system and examine its responsiveness towards environmental uncertainly, taking an example of the COVID-19 pandemic. How can state and citizen community responsiveness help fight a pandemic crisis? We test these direct and moderating effects on data representing 14 countries. We perform a hierarchical regression analysis on the restructured, balanced country-wise panel data. Our findings highlight the importance of state and community interaction effects in controlling pandemic growth. Accordingly, we claim that only a collaborative approach by citizen communities with the respective governments will enable handling an uncertain situation.

Fostering uncertainty tolerance in anatomy education: Lessons learned from how humanities, arts and social science (HASS) educators develop learners' uncertainty tolerance.

Uncertainty tolerance, individuals' perceptions/responses to uncertain stimuli, is increasingly recognized as critical to effective healthcare practice. While the Covid-19 pandemic generated collective uncertainty, healthcare-related uncertainty is omnipresent. Correspondingly, there is increasing focus on uncertainty tolerance as a health professional graduate "competency," and a concomitant interest in identifying pedagogy fostering learners' uncertainty tolerance. Despite these calls, practical guidelines for educators are lacking. There is some initial evidence that anatomy education can foster medical students' uncertainty tolerance (e.g., anatomical variation and dissection novelty), however, there remains a knowledge gap regarding robust curriculum-wide uncertainty tolerance teaching strategies. Drawing upon humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) educators' established uncertainty tolerance pedagogies, this study sought to learn from HASS academics' experiences with, and teaching practices related to, uncertainty pedagogy using a qualitative, exploratory study design. Framework analysis was undertaken using an abductive approach, wherein researchers oscillate between inductive and deductive coding (comparing to the uncertainty tolerance conceptual model). During this analysis, the authors analyzed ~386 min of data from purposively sampled HASS academics' (n = 14) discussions to address the following research questions: (1) What teaching practices do HASS academics' perceive as impacting learners' uncertainty tolerance, and (2) How do HASS academics execute these teaching practices? The results extend current understanding of the moderating effects of education on uncertainty tolerance and supports prior findings that the anatomy learning environment is ripe for supporting learner uncertainty tolerance development. This study adds to growing literature on the powerful moderating effect education has on uncertainty tolerance and proposes translation of HASS uncertainty tolerance teaching practices to enhance anatomy education.

Children's Covid-19 writing and drawings and the existential imperative to educate for uncertainty.

The Covid-19 pandemic provokes a pedagogic crisis: education is ill-adapted to accommodate multiple uncertainties in students' lives. We examine how pandemic uncertainty is registered in a global collection of writing and drawing from 4 to 17-years-old, during the 2020 lockdowns. The study engages with Biesta's (2021) philosophical work on 'world-centred education', offering empirical examples from the collection that goes beyond the immediacy of everyday lives. We identify educational implications: acknowledging students' present experiences of the world; a slowing of pedagogical tempo; supporting students to navigate desires and fears; a language for expressing uncertainty; and engaging students in ethical and existential difficulty.

Daily dynamics and mechanisms of anxious symptomatology in the general population: A network study during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To understand the interplay between anxiety symptoms and their maintaining psychological processes in the population, an analysis of longitudinal within-person relationships is required. A sample of 1706 individuals completed daily measures during a 40-day period with strict mitigation protocols. Data of 1368 individuals who completed at least 30 assessments were analyzed with the multilevel vector autoregressive (mlVAR) model. This model estimates a temporal, a contemporaneous, and a between-person network. Uncontrollability of worry, generalized worry, fear of being infected, fear of significant others being infected, and threat monitoring had the highest outstrength within the temporal network, indicating that daily fluctuations in these components were the most predictive of next-day fluctuations in other components. Of specific connections, both fear of self and fear of close others being infected predicted generalized worry and threat monitoring. In turn, generalized worry and threat monitoring engaged in several positive feedback loops with other anxiety symptoms and processes. Also, intolerance of uncertainty was predictive of other components. The findings align with the mechanisms both in the metacognitive therapy (MCT) model and in the intolerance of uncertainty model of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

[Tolerating uncertainty: Towards a competence-based approach]. / Faire de la tolérance à l'incertitude une compétence médicale.

Uncertainty in inherent to every aspects of medical practice. As the concept of uncertainty in healthcare is still to explore, deciphering the determinants and the roots of this uncertainty would benefit from the insights of various disciplines, such as epistemology, sociology, mathematics, or philosophy. The urgent need to improve physician's ability to cope with uncertainty, has been recently highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, the concept of uncertainty tolerance has been proposed, and could serve as a relevant basis for approaching uncertainty, in medical education. Thus, we propose at first to discuss the uncertainty tolerance framework from Hillen et al. Then, from an educational perspective, we outline some avenues regarding how uncertainty tolerance could be thought, in a competence-based approach, and discuss several educational activities, which have proven efficient in promoting uncertainty tolerance among medical practitioners abroad.

Does economic policy uncertainty drive the dynamic spillover among traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies? The role of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper examines the dynamic spillover among traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and investigates whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) impacts this spillover. Based on the TVP-VAR approach, we find evidence of spillover effects among currencies, which increased widely during the pandemic. In addition, results suggest that almost all cryptocurrencies remain as "safe-haven" tools against market uncertainty during the COVID-19 period. Moreover, comparative analysis shows that the total connectedness for cryptocurrencies is lower than for traditional currencies during the crisis. Further analysis using quantile regression suggests that EPU exerts an impact on the total and the net spillovers with different degrees across currencies and this impact is affected by the health crisis. Our findings have important policy implications for policymakers, investors, and international traders.

Are government bonds still safe havens in the context of COVID-19?

This study analyzes whether government bonds can act as safe havens in the context of COVID-19. Using a panel fixed effect model, data were collected for both advanced and emerging market economies from March 11, 2020, to June 30, 2021. Robustness tests were used to add to the credibility of the findings. Our evidence supports that government bonds maintained their safe haven status during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, investors can still use government bonds to hedge financial market risks in the uncertain environment associated with this pandemic. Additionally, the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on government bond yields in emerging economies are larger than in advanced economies. Therefore, policymakers' measures should focus on reducing COVID-19 cases to alleviate panic and diminish economic fluctuations, especially for emerging economies. Regulators can also use short-term interest rates to guide market capital flow to avoid a liquidity crisis, reducing financial stress and market uncertainty. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

How rumors diffuse in the infodemic: Evidence from the healthy online social change in China

Infodemic is defined as 'an overabundance of information-some accurate and some not-that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it' by the World Health Organization. As unverified information, rumors can widely spread in online society, further diffusing infodemic. Existed studies mainly focused on rumor detection and prediction from the statement itself and give the probability that it will evolve into a rumor in the future. However, the detection and prediction from rumors production perspective is lack. This research explores the production mechanism from the uncertainty perspective using the data from Weibo and public rumor data set. Specifically, we identify the public uncertainty through usergenerated content on social media based on systemic functional linguistics theory. Then we empirically verify the promoting effect of uncertainty on rumor production and constructed a model for rumor prediction. The fitting effect of the empirical model with the public uncertainty is significantly better than that with only control variables, indicating that our framework identifies public uncertainty well and uncertainty has a significantly predictive effect on rumors. Our study contributes to the research of rumor prediction and uncertainty identification, providing implications for healthy online social change in the post-epidemic era.

Resilient sustainable investment in digital education technology: A stakeholder-centric decision support model under uncertainty

Investment in education technology (EdTech) is a complex decision problem for universities during the post-Covid era. With the objective to assess the quality and adoptability of education supply chain, a novel analytical evaluation model approach is proposed, based on quality function deployment and combinative distance-based assessment. To deal with uncertainty in the evaluation process, fuzzy theory is integrated into the model. To establish the house of quality matrix, technology-based stakeholders' requirements were identified and classified in four dimensions: economic and financial, technology adoption, sustainability, competencies. Moreover, nine supplier criteria were assumed. Based on expert evaluations, the results suggest that financial credit and supplier collaboration are the most prominent attributes to evaluate suppliers, while environmental commitment is sorted as the least important criterion. The results reveal that the three dominant suppliers, which provide the best response to the identified criteria, are providers of cloud service technology. © 2022

Covid-19 crisis and corporate cash dividend policies: evidence from Chinese listed companies

Drawn on signalling theory, this paper investigates the impact of uncertainty caused by COVID-19 on corporate dividend policy. Using data from Chinese listed companies, the empirical results document a negative relationship between the COVID-19 crisis and corporate cash dividend payments. Moreover, the negative association between COVID-19 and cash dividend is more pronounced in large-scale firms and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These findings imply that, compared with large-scale firms and SOEs, the competitive position of small enterprises and non-SOEs are more fragile and thus more dependent on cash dividends to release positive signals to outsiders, so as to deal with the uncertainty caused by COVID-19. In further analysis, this study also finds that those industries related to transportation and entertainment have a negative effect during the epidemic, and they are more likely to cut dividends to assure additional cash and flexibility. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PROJECT PORTFOLIO SELECTION BASED ON MULTI-PROJECT SYNERGY

To date, the selection of a project portfolio that maximises the decision-making outcome remains essential. However, existing research on project synergy has mainly focused on two projects, while there are multiple projects in some cases. Two kinds of synergies among multiple projects are proposed. First, multiple projects must be selected together, in order to produce synergy. Second, some projects depend on synergy with other projects, leading to a synergetic increase in performance. Furthermore, we present strategic synergy, with benefits, resources, and technology, which is quantified for a procurement project concerning a COVID-19 pandemic recovery plan. A design structure matrix is used to describe the technology diffusion among the projects. Then, strategic alignment is utilised to measure the strategic contribution of projects. Next, a portfolio selection model considering uncertainty is established, based on the strategic utility. Finally, our results indicate that selecting projects considering multi-project synergy is more advantageous. © 2023, Journal of Industrial and Management Optimization. All Rights Reserved.

Stock markets' reaction to COVID-19: the joint impact of uncertainty avoidance culture and government response–evidence from emerging countries

Purpose: The authors examine whether the uncertainty avoidance culture and the stringency of government response play a role in shaping the stock market's response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The authors find that investors' response to the pandemic will not only depend on their instinct of uncertainty aversion but also on their expectation about the effectiveness of the government measures. The uncertainty avoidance culture amplifies the irrational actions of investors. However, harsh government responses will weaken this effect. Harsh government responses also send a negative signal to the market about the extent of the pandemic and the economic damage caused by anti-COVID measures. Governments need to be balanced in imposing anti-COVID measurements to preserve market confidence. Design/methodology/approach: In this article, the authors investigate whether the stock market volatility of emerging countries is simultaneously driven by two factors: the uncertainty-aversion culture of investors in a country and the stringency of the government's response to the pandemic. The authors conduct an empirical study on a sample of 20 emerging countries during the period from January 2020 to March 2021. Findings: The authors find that the national-level uncertainty aversion amplifies the irrational actions of investors during the period of crisis. However, harsh government responses will weaken this effect. The authors' findings show evidence that investors' response to the pandemic will not only depend on their instinct of uncertainty aversion but also on their expectation about the effectiveness of the government measures. Although harsh government responses can stabilize the investors' sentiment in countries with high levels of uncertainty aversion, they also send a negative signal to the market about the extent of the pandemic as well as the economic damage caused by anti-COVID measures. Originality/value: First, the study's results complement evidence from existing studies on the effect of uncertainty avoidance culture in determining stock market responses to COVID-19. Second, an important difference from previous studies, this paper adds to the behavioral finance literature by showing that investors' investment decisions in the face of economic uncertainty are not driven solely by their cultural values but also by their expectation about the effectiveness of the government policy. During a crisis, when the market has neither rational information nor adequate experience to forecast the future, the government must play an important role in stabilizing investors' sentiment and reactions. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Proposed Intuitionistic Fuzzy Entropy Measure Along With Novel Multicriteria Sorting Techniques

Recently, the major environmental change and a pandemic called COVID-19 have heavily impacted the economy, business, and health of each country. Moreover, the climatic changes and COVID-19 are calamities to human life. In other words, these two aspects threaten the existence of humans and the sustenance of the overall development of a country. These two factors particularly influence the tourism sector, so a strategy balancing environmental quality and dealing with the ill effects of COVID-19 is formulated to uplift the economic sectors. Atannasov's intuitionistic fuzzy domain is used to model the environmental quality and COVID-19 due to the involvement of hesitancy and uncertainty. The precise measurement of the imprecision in the information is obtained with the help of entropy measure. The paper analyzes the two aspects using a novel entropy measure based on multiple criteria sorting (MCS). Here, the two MCS problems are solved with the help of two proposed techniques: TOPSIS-GREY-sort and ENTROPY-TOPSIS-GREY-sort. A case study showing the impact of COVID-19 in the Philippines and the environmental quality of Tehran (the capital city of Iran) are considered to validate the functioning of the proposed techniques. We use "A novel sorting method TOPSIS-SORT: an application for Tehran environmental quality evaluation (2016), Ekonomica a management, " and "Current Issues in Tourism 25.2(2022): 168-178, Taylor and Francis " for the comparative analysis.

Integer cum fractional ordered active-adaptive synchronization to control vasospasm in chaotic blood vessels to reduce risk of COVID-19 infections

Chaotic states of abnormal vasospasms in blood vessels make heart patients more prone to severe infections of COVID-19, eventually leading to high fatalities. To understand the inherent dynamics of such abrupt vasospasms, an N-type blood vessel model (NBVM) subjected to uncertainties is derived in this paper and investigated both in integer order (IO) as well as fractional-order (FO) dynamics. Active-adaptive controllers are designed to synchronize the chaotic turbulence responsible for undesirable fluctuations in diameter and pressure variations of the blood vessel. The FO-NBVM reveals insightful rich dynamics and faster adaptive synchronization compared to its IO model. The practical implications of this work will be useful in analysing chaotic dysfunctionalities of the blood vessel such as vasoconstriction, ischaemia, necrosis, etc. and help in developing control strategies and modular responses for COVID-19 triggered heart diseases. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Formative Assessment in Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

The pandemic situation is contributing to the redesign of training models, promoting new scenarios, or readjusting other pedagogical resources already known, which help to deal with the uncertainty and doubts that have arisen. This context raises new requirements and solutions in the approach of the face-to-face, online and mixed model. Adaptation of spaces, compliance with prevention measures, interaction with students, methodologies and especially, an assessment system, which helps to keep track of the subject, so that a more active attitude of the student and their commitment to this process, are of great value. From the reflection on the achievement of objectives, follow-up of the subject, and the auto- and peer-assessment, an experience of formative assessment is presented in two environments, online and face-to-face. Both are supported by a process of self-assessment and peer-assessment, which has allowed students to successfully face the subject of Artistic Expression I, in the Degree in Engineering in Industrial Design and Product Development at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

UTILIZING TRANSIENT MODEL FOR SIMULATING UNCERTAINTY OF NATURAL GAS TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

High pressure fluctuations in gas transmission network is an extensive problem that leads to ineffective planning of gas management. Several studies are required to ensure pipeline integrity and safety limit remain intact. This paper investigates demand uncertainty factor and propose mitigation to solve high pressure fluctuation issue. A hydraulic steady state simulation is carried out using Pipeline Studio that computes time variant pressure output by considering flow, temperature and initial pressure profile for specific boundary and network element set points. Using sensitivity analysis result for gas flow equation and equation of state, the simulation is carried out for transient condition by using Movement Control Order (MCO) scenario due to pandemic COVID 19 as case study. Pressure trends obtained by running simulation on above case study are collected and compared with maximum operation pressure limit in pipelines. Result successfully concludes simulated pressure achieved is 61.87 barg with overall percentage of error by 0.31%. Study encourages future work to integrate simulation of gas and electricity to minimise uncertainty effect of gas demand to future proof the safety and reliability of pipeline system. © School of Engineering, Taylor's University.

How U.S. college athletes manage COVID-19 related uncertainty

Emerging adulthood is a period rife with uncertainty, even prior to COVID-19. Research suggests college athletes may be better adept at managing COVID-related challenges. Thus, we interviewed 16 U.S. college athletes to better understand their experiences related to uncertainty and uncertainty management. We found college athletes, who had to balance both academics and sports, experienced uncertainty related to health, academics, interpersonal relationships, and careers. Using the lens of uncertainty management theory (UMT), we found most college athletes viewed uncertainty negatively, attempting to reduce it via seeking social support and information, establishing schedules, and protecting against COVID. However, others learned to adapt to ambiguity by controlling what they could control and focusing on COVID's positives. By adapting, college athletes were able to build resilience, informing strategies other emerging adults can use not only to navigate a global pandemic, but the unexpected challenges and adversity inherent in emerging adulthood. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Economic Policy Uncertainty, COVID-19, and Tourist Stays in Croatia: Evidence from a Fourier Toda-Yamamoto Modeling Approach

This study extends the literature with respect to economic policy uncertainty measures and tourism flows to Croatia through the use of the Toda and Yamamoto modeling approach with a Fourier approximation to capture structural breaks. The results show that domestic economic policy uncertainty does not have a significant impact on tourist overnight stays. However, an increase in European economic policy uncertainty reduces total and domestic tourist overnight stays. An increase in COVID-19 cases has a negative and significant impact on total, domestic, and foreign tourist overnight stays, and contributes to increases in both Croatian and European economic policy uncertainty. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Revised solution technique for a bi-level location-inventory-routing problem under uncertainty of demand and perishability of products

Bi-level programming is an efficient tool to tackle decentralized decision-making processes in supply chains with upper level (i.e., leader) and lower level (i.e., follower). The leader makes the first decision while the follower makes the second decision. In this research, a bi-level programming formulation for the problem of location-inventory-routing in a two-echelon supply chain, including a number of central warehouses in the first echelon and retailers in the second echelon with perishable products under uncertain demand, is proposed. The total operational costs at both levels are minimized considering capacity constraints. Due to the uncertain nature of the problem, a scenario-based programming is utilized. The economic condition or unforeseen events such as COVID-19 or Russia-Ukraine war can be good examples for uncertainty sources in today's world. The model determines the optimal locations of warehouses, the routes between warehouses and retailers, number of received shipments and the amount of inventory held at each retailer. A revised solution method is designed by using multi-choice goal programming for solving the problem. The given revised method attempts to minimize the deviations of each decision maker's solution from its ideal value assuming that the upper level is satisfied higher than the lower level. Base on some numerical analysis, the proposed solution technique is more sensitive to the upper bounds of the goals rather than the lower bounds. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

A social media-based framework for quantifying temporal changes to wildlife viewing intensity: Quantifying changes to wildlife viewing intensity

Documenting how human pressure on wildlife changes over time is important to minimise potential adverse effects through implementing appropriate management and policy actions;however, obtaining objective measures of these changes and their potential impacts is often logistically challenging, particularly in the natural environment. Here, we developed a modular stochastic model that infers the ratio of actual viewing pressure on wildlife in consecutive time periods (years) using social media, as this medium is widespread and easily accessible. Pressure was calculated from the number of times individual animals appeared in social media in pre-defined time windows, accounting for time-dependent variables that influence them (e.g. number of people with access to social media). Formulas for the confidence intervals of viewing pressure ratios were rigorously developed and validated, and corresponding uncertainty was quantified. We applied the developed framework to calculate changes to wildlife viewing pressure on loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) at Zakynthos island (Greece) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2021) based on 2646 social media entries. Our model ensured temporal comparability across years of social media data grouped in time window sizes, by correcting for the interannual increase of social media use. Optimal sizes for these windows were delineated, reducing uncertainty while maintaining high time-scale resolution. The optimal time window was around 7-days during the peak tourist season when more data were available in all three years, and >15 days during the low season. In contrast, raw social media data exhibited clear bias when quantifying changes to viewing pressure, with unknown uncertainty. The framework developed here allows widely-available social media data to be used objectively when quantifying temporal changes to wildlife viewing pressure. Its modularity allowed viewing pressure to be quantified for all data combined, or subsets of data (different groups, situations or locations), and could be applied to any site supporting wildlife exposed to tourism. © 2022 The Author(s)