Inclusive organizational behaviour – the dynamic rules of building new workplaces

Purpose: This study aims to reflect on the future of work dimensions through the new concept of inclusive organizational behaviour (IOB) and its practices. Design/methodology/approach: This work is a reflective concept development paper that focuses on new dimensions of organizational behaviour (OB) exploring IOB practices in the new workplace which can broaden the concept of OB that fits into the future of work. Findings: The IOB practices will adapt and help in adapting to the new work dynamics that can create more humane and stimulating workplaces, thereby benefiting society at large. Individual positive psychological traits, team dynamics and a fusion of digital corporate culture with a human-centric approach and sustainability are highlighted in the redefined IOB, expanding the concept of OB from the three levels of analysis (individual, group and the entire organization's behaviour) in the new normal post-COVID situation. Research limitations/implications: Limited research studies are being conducted to investigate the future of work dynamics in the new standard post-COVID environment, which is dominated by digitization. The lack of literature and the changing situations that impact OB are the limitations. Practical implications: Corporate houses, policymakers and leaders who understand the workplace dynamics in the post-COVID scenario can effectively leverage the insights from this work and may chalk out a road map for future work through IOB practices. Originality/value: This research extends knowledge pertaining to IOB practices and the changing dynamics that need to be followed in the future OB practices. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Yoga Recommendation System for the Mental Well-Being of Students using Machine Learning

Many expectations placed on students by society have made stress a part of their academic lives. Youth are susceptible to the issues brought on by academic stress since they are going through a phase of transitions in both aspects i.e personal and social. Academic stress has been shown to lower academic achievement and lower motivation toward academics. Therefore, it becomes crucial to develop appropriate and effective intervention options. In recent times, due to COVID, the utilization of online health blogs and sites recommending health, exercise, and yoga has been significantly increased. The blog will provide solution to a problem and then provide precautions to common people but they lack the dynamics to suggest yoga that can be done any person or a personalized yoga by considering their health condition and not a static article. This research work intends to develop an AI model to predict the possible practices a student can do to alleviate their problem by considering their BPM, blood pressure (both systole and diastole), sleep time and some questions related to stress. The proposed stress prediction model has achieved an accuracy of 94.4% and the yoga pose recommendation system has achieved an accuracy of 97.3%. © 2022 IEEE.

Trend of knowledge and attitude toward COVID-19 during 1st & 2nd wave of pandemic in pulmonary tuberculosis patients

Background: COVID-19 pandemic had led to varied psychological distress among Pulmonary Tuberculosis (PTB) patients. An early assessment of knowledge and attitude of the patient towards COVID-19 can aid us in their psychological counselling and healthy well-being during the ongoing treatment. Aims and objectives: To assess the knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19 of Pulmonary Tuberculosis patients during the pandemic. Method(s): This cross-sectional, hospital-based study included 361 PTB patients. A semi-structured pre-defined questionnaires (designed by D. Roy et al.,) using a non-probability snowball sampling technique was done to evaluate knowledge and attitude related to COVID-19 in PTB patients. Result(s): Among the 361 of the Pulmonary Tuberculosis patients, 69% (n=250) had Drug Resistance PTB (DR-TB). Younger age group, 18 to 30 years constituted majority of the study subjects i.e.,61% (n=220). With the help of Likert scaling the trend of knowledge and attitude of COVID-19 in PTB patients were analysed. In our study most of the patients was well versed about COVID-19 pandemic and showed peak of favourable response during the 1st wave (from May 2020- July 2020) and in the initiation of 2nd wave (from March 2021-April 2021). Among DR-TB patients 51% (n=126) had satisfactory knowledge about COVID-19 pandemic. About 52%(n=130) of DR-TB patients had optimistic attitude toward COVID-19. Conclusion(s): As PTB, itself is a devastating disease, proper management & psychosocial support of such patients should be one of the prime issues. It can also assist us to formulate mitigation protocol in our near future.

Nanotheranostics to target antibiotic-resistant bacteria: Strategies and applications

Various health agencies, such as the European Medical Agency (EMA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and World Health Organization (WHO), timely cited the upsurge of antibiotic resistance as a severe threat to the public health and global economy. Importantly, there is a rise in nosocomial infections among covid-19 patients and in-hospitalized patients with the delineating disorder. Most of nosocomial infections are related to the bacteria residing in biofilm, which are commonly formed on material surfaces. In biofilms, microcolonies of various bacteria live in syntropy;therefore, their infections require a higher antibiotic dosage or cocktail of broad-spectrum antibiotics, aggravating the severity of antibiotic resistance. Notably, the lack of intrinsic antibacterial properties in commercial-grade materials desires to develop newer functionalized materials to prevent biofilm formation on their surfaces. To devise newer strategies, materials prepared at the nanoscale demonstrated reasonable antibacterial properties or enhanced the activity of antimicrobial agents (that are encapsulated/chemically functionalized onto the material surface). In this manuscript, we compiled such nanosized materials, specifying their role in targeting specific strains of bacteria. We also enlisted the examples of nanomaterials, nanodevice, nanomachines, nano-camouflaging, and nano-antibiotics for bactericidal activity and their possible clinical implications.Copyright © 2023 The Author(s)

Psychological underpinning of panic buying during pandemic (COVID-19)

This letter discusses the psychological underpinning of panic buying during the COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemics and pandemics are the impending public health challenges whereby fear and panic are integral human responses historically. Panic behavior during disaster and calamities is an expected response they threaten the ability to cope and destroy the existing equilibrium. Many a time, people develop much-unexplained behavior which differs from country to country, culture to culture. Panic buying / increased buying behavior has been observed during public health emergencies since the ancient period. However, the exact psychological explanation responsible for it has not sought systematically. A perception of scarcity is strongly linked with the panic buying behavior and hoarding behaviors increases if the scarcity develops for the immediate necessaries. It also creates a feeling of insecurity which in turn activates another mechanism to collect things. Fear of scarcity and losing control over the environment, insecurity, social learning, exacerbation of anxiety, the basic primitive response of humans are the core factor responsible for the panic buying phenomenon. Further observational, as well as qualitative studies, are warranted to explore the psychological perspective of panic buying behavior during the crisis moments which in turn would help to find out preventive measures during the future moments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Floating Structure Integrity Management Program (FSIMP) Towards Digitalization

The objective of the paper is to demonstrate digitalization of Floating Structures Integrity Management Program (FSIMP) and its application for the structural integrity of floating structure assets. The framework of FSIMP is being developed by adopting Risk Based Inspection (RBI) methodology and complemented with technical know-how and industry best-practices. Implementing the methodology provides strategic planning for maintenance by reducing the anticipated risk. Hence, ensuring uninterrupted service of the floating structure assets throughout the service life. This paper presents a systematic approach for digitalization of the integrity management program for a nominated floating structure asset. The methodology offers a procedure to acquire necessary data management gathering, risk assessment, and RBI survey plan to maintain the structural integrity in the centralized web-based platform of FSIMP. RBI process is adopted into the FSIMP to investigate all deterioration and failure mechanisms. These structures will be identified by qualitative and quantitative risk assessment methods. The implementation of FSIMP offers a wide range of capabilities in structural integrity management such as integrating all floating structure fleet assets in a single dashboard of web-based platform, clear line of sight for reliable structural integrity, and an holistic overview across all levels of management. FSIMP with RBI methodology evaluates all data gathering to optimize inspection resources based on the risk assessment through an optimum combination of inspection methods and frequencies. The whole process is aligned to the requirements from Classification to ensure reliability for continuous operations. It also observes the essential need of digitalization for FSIMP during the time of post-COVID19 pandemic and the ever-expanding offshore oil, gas and energy frontiers that demand the adoption of new and advanced technologies, especially in the field of digitalization. It is shown that FSIMP has great potential as a digitalization tool and system to integrate with the RBI risk assessment that aligns to the requirements from Classification. It is strategically to maximize the effectiveness and improved efficiency for inspection and monitoring plan. The paper provides information on the solution of digitalization to the Floating Structures Integrity Management Program (FSIMP) in ensuring that the integrity of floating structure asset during the service life is intact for continuous operation and a holistic overview for all the assigned fleet assets in a centralized dashboard web-based platform. In addition to that, RBI is as added benefit to the FSIMP with its structure methodology of data evaluation and risk assessment in order to objectively optimizing inspection and maintenance resources. Copyright © 2023, International Petroleum Technology Conference.

Effect of Covid-19 Pandemic on Levels of Empathy among Dental Students in Bhubaneswar- a Cross-Sectional Study

Objective: The purpose of this research was to examine how the Coronavirus epidemic has affected the compassion of dentistry students in Bhubaneswar. Materials and Equipment: In this study, undergraduate dental students in Bhubaneswar served as the research subjects for a cross-sectional analysis. Following informed permission, dental school students from two time periods (one before and one after the occurrence of Coronavirus in India) were given the authorized and pretested Toronto Sympathy Poll (TEQ) (Bhubaneswar). A five-point scale was used to indicate members' levels of comprehension. Using a one-way analysis of variance, we compared students' TEQ scores during their four years of dentistry school (investigation of difference). The results of the meetings were analyzed using Tukey's post hoc test. The Chi-square test was used to analyze data collected before and during the recent Coronavirus epidemic (importance level, p 0.05). Only 270 of the 300 dentistry students enrolled in the focus before Coronavirus reached its conclusion;the remaining 260 enrolled thereafter. Comparing results from the same group before and after exposure to the Coronavirus revealed striking discrepancies in the compassion ratings. More than eighty-five percent of individuals answered the survey. As a result of this study's findings, it is concluded that undergraduate dental students' mean empathy ratings increased after COVID-19, indicating a discernibly greater degree of empathy at that time. Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.

An extensive study on Indian power sector affected by Covid-19 global pandemic

Corona Virus had a very undeterminable effect on the whole human race. The most important factor in today's age of artificial intelligence and the internet of things is energy, without which a successful generation's future cannot be imagined. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy sector had battled to stay afloat. The major weapon against the virus was a countrywide shutdown, which was a wise measure, but it also disrupted the economy's routine. According to Global energy review 2020, the countries observing complete lockdown experienced an average 25% decline in the energy demand per week, and the countries observing partial lockdown observed an average 18% decline. The challenges that the Indian power industry faced during the outbreak are examined in this article, and also a suggestion for developing countries to make their energy sectors more resilient to a once-in-a-generation calamity. The study reveals the factors which affect the working of a power sector of both renewable and non-renewable energy sectors which are climatic conditions, operational efficiency, capacity factor, load factor. As a result, we will look at how the crisis affected the factors and how the engineers dealt with the issues. © 2022 Author(s).

Identification of Coronavirus & Pneumonia from Chest x-ray Scans using Deep Multilayered CNN

Recently, COVID-19 disease carried out by the SARS-CoV-2 virus appeared as a pandemic across the world. The traditional diagnostic techniques are facing a hard time detecting the virus efficiently at an early stage. In this context, chest x-ray scans can be useful for diagnostic prediction. Therefore, in this paper, a deep multi-layered convolution neural network has been proposed to analyze the chest x-ray scans effectively for detecting COVID-19 and pneumonia accurately. The proposed approach has been applied on multiple benchmark datasets and the experimental results define the effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2021 IEEE.

Predicting the antecedents of consumers' intention toward purchase of mutual funds: A hybrid PLS-SEM-neural network approach

The current study intends to identify the behavioural antecedents of investors' attitude and investment intention toward mutual funds using a robust SEM-ANN approach. It focuses on novel factors in the purview of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing digitalization and social media usage. The research outcome indicates that attitude (ATB), awareness (AW) and investment decision involvement (IDI) have a significant positive relation with investment intention (BI). In contrast, perceived barrier (PBR) negatively relates to investment intention. Herd behaviour (HB) and social media influence (SMI) do not influence investment intention toward mutual funds. Moreover, all the tested predictors share direct relation with the attitude toward mutual fund investment, barring perceived risk (PR), which has an inverse relationship. As per the outcome of ANN sensitivity analysis, attitude is the most crucial determinant of investment intention. It is followed by awareness (AW), perceived barriers (PBR) and investment decision involvement (IDI). Among the significant determinants of attitude, self-efficacy (SE) is the most important determinant, followed by perceived usefulness (PU), perceived emergency (PEMER), subjective norms (SN) and perceived risk (PR). © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Effect of COVID-19 driven lockdown on social contact pattern in Puducherry, India: A longitudinal study.

Objective: This study was undertaken to assess the change in social contact and transmission dynamics among adults in the Puducherry district during the different phases of country-wide lockdown. Methods: Adults aged 18-69 years in Puducherry were assessed for frequency and duration of contacts in the following time points: prior to lockdown (March 2020), during lockdown, immediate post-lockdown (April, June 2020), and seven months post-lockdown (February 2021). Adjusted incidence rate ratios (aIRR) were obtained using a generalized estimating equation. We also assessed the exponential trajectory of the time-varying reproduction number (Rt) during and after lockdown. Results: Compared to pre-lockdown phase, frequency of social contacts during 1st week, 4th week of lockdown, and immediate post-lockdown were reduced by 89% (aIRR = 0.11; 95% CI: 0.09-0.13), 40% (aIRR = 0.60; 95% CI: 0.52-0.69) and 91% (aIRR = 0.09; 95% CI: 0.07-0.10) respectively. However, the decline was not statistically significant at seven months post-lockdown. Correspondingly, we observed an initial spike in Rt during the lockdown phase followed by a gradual decline during the immediate post-lockdown phase. However, seven months post-lockdown, Rt has increased again. Conclusion: The study showed high compliance to the lockdown measures in Puducherry during the lockdown and immediate post-lockdown periods. However, as the lockdown measures were relaxed, the contact rate returned to the pre-lockdown state.

RAPALOGS DOWNMODULATE INTRINSIC IMMUNITY and PROMOTE CELL ENTRY of SARS-CoV-2

Background: SARS-CoV-2 infection in immunocompromised individuals has been associated with prolonged virus shedding and the development of novel viral variants. Rapamycin and rapamycin analogs (rapalogs, including everolimus, temsirolimus, and ridaforolimus) are FDA-approved for use as mTOR inhibitors in multiple clinical settings, including cancer and autoimmunity, but a common side effect of these drugs is immunosuppression and increased susceptibility to infection. Immune impairment caused by rapalog use is traditionally attributed to their impacts on T cell signaling and cytokine production. Methods: We used replication-competent SARS-CoV-2 and HIV pseudotyped with betacoronavirus Spike proteins to assess how rapalog pretreatment of cells ex vivo and rodent animals in vivo impacts susceptibility to Spike-mediated infection. Results: We show that exposure to rapalogs increases cellular susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection by antagonizing components of the constitutive and interferon-induced cell-intrinsic immune response. Pre-treatment of cells (including human lung epithelial cells and primary human small airway epithelial cells) with rapalogs promoted the early stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection by facilitating Spike-mediated virus entry. Rapalogs also boosted infection mediated by Spike from SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV in addition to hemagglutinin of influenza A virus and glycoprotein from vesicular stomatitis virus, suggesting that rapalogs downmodulate antiviral defenses that pose a common barrier to these viral fusion proteins. By identifying one rapalog (ridaforolimus) that lacks this function, we demonstrate that the extent to which rapalogs promote virus entry is linked to their capacity to trigger the lysosomal degradation of IFITM2 and IFITM3, intrinsic inhibitors of virus-cell membrane fusion. Mechanistically, rapalogs that promote virus entry inhibit the mTOR-mediated phosphorylation of TFEB, a transcription factor controlling lysosome biogenesis and lysosomal degradation pathways such as autophagy. In contrast, TFEB phosphorylation by mTOR was not inhibited by ridaforolimus. In the hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, injection of rapamycin four hours prior to virus exposure resulted in elevated virus titers in lungs, accelerated weight loss, and decreased survival. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that preexisting use of certain rapalogs may elevate host susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease by activating a lysosome-mediated suppression of intrinsic immunity.

ABO blood grouping and COVID-19: a hospital-based study in Eastern India

Background: Blood group has been stated to be one of the risk factors associated with viral diseases like dengue, hepatitis virus, Norwalk virus and even the coronavirus associated with 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak. In addition, anti-A antibodies in experimental models have been shown to inhibit the interaction between coronavirus and angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) receptor of the host target cell, the major receptor involved in viral pathogenesis. Thus, several workers propose an association between ABO blood type and coronavirus disease- 2019 (COVID-19) disease in many previous studies. The present study was undertaken in the Eastern part of India in line with these authors to study the association of ABO blood group of patients with COVID susceptibility and severity. Methods: This is a retrospective study over a period of 6 months from June 2020 to November 2020 where patients who underwent quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) test for SARS-COV2 and having a recorded patient blood group type were considered. The qRT-PCR positive admitted cases were considered as cases, and qRT-PCR negative cases were considered as controls. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel format and analyzed by statistical method to obtain association. Results: Consecutively obtained 5000 qRT-PCR positive patients (cases) and 11,700 (controls) were included in the present study. The mean age of cases was higher (54.24 vs. 34. 67) than the controls. Among the cases, the highest number (2379;47.6%) of samples belonged to A blood group followed by B (1278;25.6%) while among the control group O blood group had the highest prevalence (4215;36%). Blood group A had a higher odd of testing positive (Odds ratio-2.552;CI 2.381–2.734;p < 0.0001) than all other blood groups. A blood group is also associated with higher risk of ICU admission (Odds ratio- 1.699;95% CI 1.515–1.905) and 65.3% of this group is also associated with high viral load which gives an indication of higher disease severity. Conclusion: Blood group A is associated with an increased susceptibility to COVID 19 infection than other blood groups. Cases of this blood group are also associated with more critical care needs and a higher viral load on testing.

Identification of potential antivirals against 3CLpro enzyme for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2: A multi-step virtual screening study.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak is posing a serious public health threat worldwide in the form of COVD-19. Herein, we have performed two-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (2D-QSAR) and three-dimensional pharmacophore modelling analysis employing inhibitors of 3-chymotrypsin-like protease (3CLpro), the leading protease that is crucial for the replication of SARS-CoV-2. The investigation aims to identify the important structural features responsible for the enzyme inhibition and the search for novel 3CLpro enzyme inhibitors as effective therapeutics for treating SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, we carried out molecular docking studies using the most and least active compounds in the dataset, aiming to validate the contributions of various features as appeared in the QSAR models. Later, the stringently validated 2D-QSAR model was used to estimate the 3CLpro inhibitory activity of compounds from five chemical databases. Compounds with the significant predicted activity were then subjected to pharmacophore-based virtual screening to screen the top-rated compounds, which were then further subjected to molecular docking analysis, absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion - toxicity (ADMET) profiling, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The multi-step virtual screening analyses suggested that compounds CASAntiV-865453-58-3, CASAntiV-865453-40-3, and CASAntiV-2043031-84-9 could be used as effective therapeutic agents for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2.

An Audio Signal-based COVID-19 Detection Methodology using Modified DenseNet121

The inability to test at scale has become humanity's Achilles' heel in the ongoing war against the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, various intelligent diagnostic approaches have been proposed in the literature to fight against this pandemic situation. However, in this paper, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered automatic screening solution has been proposed for rapid and accurate diagnosis of COVID-19. The proposed system analyzes the audio signals of human being using modified DenseNet121 to detect COVID-19 cases accurately. The proposed methodology has been applied on a publicly available benchmark dataset known as Coswara [1]. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed system in terms of blind test accuracy. © 2021 IEEE.

Diagnosis of COVID-19 and Pneumonia using Depthwise Separable Convolutional Neural Network

COVID-19 disease is a consequence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus that came to light as an epidemic over the planet. The long-established diagnostic systems are confronting difficulties in identifying the virus expeditiously in the initial stages. In these circumstances, chest X-ray scans can be beneficial for the identification of COVID-19 as well as pneumonia. On that account, in this research, a deep convolution neural network having depthwise separable convolutions has been put forward to look over the chest X-ray scans for identifying COVID-19 and pneumonia precisely. The propounded model with only 0.18 million parameters has been employed on various standard datasets and performs significantly faster than other state-of-the-art models and the exploratory results explain the potency of the propounded approach. © 2021 IEEE.

Adverse Events Following COVID-19 Vaccination among the Beneficiaries of Sikkim Manipal University: A Cross Sectional Study

Background: Covid-19, an infection caused by SARS-CoV2 has claimed millions of lives since late 2019 with no curative measures. In India, 4 vaccines have been approved for use i.e. Serum Institute’s Covishield, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, GRIEM’s Sputnik V and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. Aims: This study aims to find the adverse events following Covishield vaccination among the beneficiaries of Sikkim Manipal University, Sikkim. Materi al &Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among the beneficiaries of Sikkim Manipal University to find out the adverse events following the first dose of vaccination. The data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire when the beneficiaries came for their second dose of vaccination. Microsoft Excel and SPSS version 27 was used for statistical analysis. Results: Out of 716 study participants majority i.e. 79.5% of the study participants developed adverse events following their first dose with maximum (73.8%) complaining of pain at the site of infection followed by fever (65.2%). Conclusions: Vaccines may prevent diseases, but it also brings about adverse effects, be it minor or major. Hence, many studies are required to study their full-fledged side effects and the means to overcome them. © 2021, Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine. All rights reserved.

Diagnosis of COVID-19 Pneumonia from Chest X-ray Scans using Modified MobileNet Architecture

COVID-19 disease has been laid out across the world recently as a global pandemic. Generally, rapid antigen tests have been performed to detect this dangerous disease at an early stage. Due to the increased number of false classification rate caused by rapid antigen tests, real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) tests have been used as a conventional pathogenic testing tool. However, the efficacy of rRT-PCR tests have been affected by the several mutations in SARS-CoV-2 virus. Therefore, in this paper, a modified MobileNet-based intelligent methodology using chest X-ray (CXR) scans has been put forward to diagnose the COVID-19 disease precisely and early. The propounded method has been applied on benchmark chest X-ray dataset exploratory results establish the usefulness of the propounded approach. © 2021 IEEE.