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Objective To understand the impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic and mass emergency vaccination on parents' perception and experience of immunization. Methods From May 6, 2021 to June 20, 202l, an online questionnaire survey was conducted among 4 171 parents of children using the mobile APP of vaccination service in Guangzhou. Results Of all the respondents, 1 911 of them (45.8%) agreed with the suspension of routine immunization measures during the COVID-19 epidemic, and 1 508 respondents (36.2%) would actively postpone child immunization even if the vaccination clinic was not stopped during the COVID-19 epidemic. 2 959 (70.9%), 2 558 (61. 3%) and 2 399 (57. 5%)respondents were satisfied with the protective measures, on-site order and service quality a ter the resumption of vaccination, respectively. 3 437 respondents (82. 4%) indicated that the COVID-19 epidemic had enhanced their attention to vaccination. A total of 1 415 (33.9%) parents of children said that the discontinuation of vaccination clinics weakened their attention to the timeliness of vaccination, and 1 380 (33.1%) parents agreed that "the postponement of vaccination will not affect the vaccination effect”. Compare to parents with higher education (university or above), parents with young children, parents with secondary education (below university), and parents with older children who were older in age themselves were relatively satisfied with the various protective measures taken by vaccination units during the period of suspension of vaccination clinics and the resumption of vaccination. They believed that the field order and the quality of vaccination service were improved. They were more sensitive to the COVID-19 epidemic and tend to actively delay vaccination. They pay more attention to the importance and timeliness of vaccination, and were vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19 epidemic and medical suspension. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the control measures after the resumption of vaccination, 1 882 (45. 1%) children missed routine vaccination. The top three reasons were that the outpatient clinic only had the appointment number but could not make an appointment, the outpatient clinic reduced the daily dose of vaccination, and the outpatient discontinuation. Conclusion The satisfaction of parents of children in Guangzhou with the prevention and control measures of vaccination clinics during the COVID-19 epidemic and after the resumption of vaccination is above the medium level. The COVID-19 epidemic and the suspension of vaccination clinics have a two-way impact on the immunization concept and behavior of parents of children in Guangzhou, and some parents increase their attention to immunization. A small number of parents weakened their emphasis on the timeliness of vaccination, suggesting that vaccination units need to arrange staff and vaccination time reasonably, relieve the pressure on vaccination caused by the backlog of COVID-19 epidemic, carry out targeted positive publicity and guidance, and spread the correct knowledge of vaccination, so as to eliminate the doubts of children's parents. © 2023, Editorial Department of Medical Pest Control. All rights reserved.
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Background/Aims Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is the most common vasculitis in adults aged over 50 years old with the highest incidence among persons aged 70- 79. It is more commonly seen in female patients. Most cases have been reported in whites of Northern European descent. A broad range of symptoms can be reported including headache, jaw or tongue claudication, visual disturbances, PMR and other systemic features including weight loss, fever and sweats. In recent years new evidence has emerged regarding the investigation and treatment of GCA. This audit is to review the demographics, symptoms and investigations of patients who presented to the Rheumatology Department in SEHSCT with features concerning for possible GCA. Methods Retrospective collection of data from January 2020 to July 2021 using the regional Electronic Care Record NI with reference to presentations, investigation results, clinic records and follow-up letters. Results 70 patients were included (24 males and 46 females). Mean age was 72 years old. Table 1 shows the percentages of clinical symptoms reported. All patients investigated had an ESR (mean 57.8) and CRP (mean 54.1) checked. 43 patients had ANCA checked with 3 positive results. 40 patients underwent CT brain with 2 abnormalities reported unrelated to GCA. TA ultrasound was performed on one occasion with a positive result demonstrating ''halo'' sign recorded. 6 patients underwent CTPET with 3 diagnoses of LVV and 1 of PMR. 70 TAB performed with 12 positive results and 4 'suggestive' of GCA. Conclusion Our cohort of patients demonstrated demographics similar to the current global geographic trends in GCA. There are a broad range of clinical symptoms that can present in GCA, none of which are entirely specific or pathognomonic. Clinical diagnosis is based on clinical symptoms, signs and laboratory tests, each of which are imperfect markers for GCA. Our audit demonstrated that the use of additional confirmatory diagnostic tests including temporal artery ultrasound and CTPET was being under-utilized in the SEHSCT. Use of these tests may improve the diagnostic yield in this challenging condition. As a result of this audit, a quality improvement project to provide a rapid access GCA pathway is being designed. (Table Presented).
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Recently, accurate segmentation of COVID-19 infection from computed tomography (CT) scans is critical for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. However, infection segmentation is a challenging task due to various textures, sizes and locations of infections, low contrast, and blurred boundaries. To address these problems, we propose a novel Multi-scale Wavelet Guidance Network (MWG-Net) for COVID-19 lung infection by integrating the multi-scale information of wavelet domain into the encoder and decoder of the convolutional neural network (CNN). In particular, we propose the Wavelet Guidance Module (WGM) and Wavelet &Edge Guidance Module (WEGM). Among them, the WGM guides the encoder to extract infection details through the multi-scale spatial and frequency features in the wavelet domain, while the WEGM guides the decoder to recover infection details through the multi-scale wavelet representations and multi-scale infection edge information. Besides, a Progressive Fusion Module (PFM) is further developed to aggregate and explore multi-scale features of the encoder and decoder. Notably, we establish a COVID-19 segmentation dataset (named COVID-Seg-100) containing 5800+ annotated slices for performance evaluation. Furthermore, we conduct extensive experiments to compare our method with other state-of-the-art approaches on our COVID-19-Seg-100 and two publicly available datasets, i.e., MosMedData and COVID-SemiSeg. The results show that our MWG-Net outperforms state-of-the-art methods on different datasets and can achieve more accurate and promising COVID-19 lung infection segmentation. IEEE
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Objective To improve the diagnosis and treatment level for tuberculous meningitis (TBM) under the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic. Methods The diagnosis and treatment course of a female patient under the COVID-19 epidemic was analyzed for high fever, vomiting for 23 days, headache, talk nonsense for 10 days, inability to stand, and double vision lasting 5 days. The patient was successively misdiagnosed to suffer from viral pneumonia and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) in other hospitals. The patient had a history of transit at Hankou railway station (wearing a mask without departing the station throughout the process) under the COVID-19 epidemic. The patient had a history of leukopenia and long-term medical therapy. The patient was diagnosed as TBM by applying the diagnostic scheme for the 2019 China Central Nervous System Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines after physical examination, cerebrospinal fluid test, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plain scan and enhanced examination. The analysis on reasons for extramural hospital misdiagnosis showed it was related to the lack of careful physical examination and lack of scientific analysis of laboratory test results. Results The intracranial pressure reduction, anti-tuberculosis treatment, adrenal cortex hormone treatment and symptomatic treatment were immediately administered according to the 2019 China Central Nervous System Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines. Intensive anti-tuberculosis treatment (4 months) was implemented firstly and followed by the anti-tuberculosis treatment (12 months) during the consolidation phase, clinically enabling the patient to be cured. Conclusion Careful inquiry of medical history, careful physical examination, timely cerebrospinal fluid examination and MRI examination and scientific analysis on clinical data are critical to confirmation of TBM. Standard anti-tuberculosis treatment, rational use of adrenal cortex hormones and lowering intracranial pressure are critical factors for curing. © 2023, Editorial Department of Medical Pest Control. All rights reserved.
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Objective To improve the diagnosis and treatment level for tuberculous meningitis (TBM) under the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic. Methods The diagnosis and treatment course of a female patient under the COVID-19 epidemic was analyzed for high fever, vomiting for 23 days, headache, talk nonsense for 10 days, inability to stand, and double vision lasting 5 days. The patient was successively misdiagnosed to suffer from viral pneumonia and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) in other hospitals. The patient had a history of transit at Hankou railway station (wearing a mask without departing the station throughout the process) under the COVID-19 epidemic. The patient had a history of leukopenia and long-term medical therapy. The patient was diagnosed as TBM by applying the diagnostic scheme for the 2019 China Central Nervous System Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines after physical examination, cerebrospinal fluid test, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plain scan and enhanced examination. The analysis on reasons for extramural hospital misdiagnosis showed it was related to the lack of careful physical examination and lack of scientific analysis of laboratory test results. Results The intracranial pressure reduction, anti-tuberculosis treatment, adrenal cortex hormone treatment and symptomatic treatment were immediately administered according to the 2019 China Central Nervous System Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines. Intensive anti-tuberculosis treatment (4 months) was implemented firstly and followed by the anti-tuberculosis treatment (12 months) during the consolidation phase, clinically enabling the patient to be cured. Conclusion Careful inquiry of medical history, careful physical examination, timely cerebrospinal fluid examination and MRI examination and scientific analysis on clinical data are critical to confirmation of TBM. Standard anti-tuberculosis treatment, rational use of adrenal cortex hormones and lowering intracranial pressure are critical factors for curing. © 2023, Editorial Department of Medical Pest Control. All rights reserved.
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Many universities resort to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a challenging endeavour, especially in Biology courses that require lab access. Mock grant application roleplay is one alternative to lab-based activities. Although using mock grant applications as an assessment tool is not new, there have been few studies on students' opinions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that it has been used in place of lab-based exercises and in conjunction with virtual lab modules. Students are engaged in three aspects: (i) targeted literature review, (ii) research proposal writing and (iii) 5-min project pitching. The design of this module is flexible, and other lab-based courses can adopt it. This module encourages undergraduate students to explore the lab techniques and concisely present their research proposals. Compared to the previous semester before COVID-19, the number of students that achieved the "Distinction” grade or higher increased by 6.3%, whilst the failures decreased by 3.2%. A similar trend was observed in 2021, the second year this activity was carried out. A survey amongst students who took this unit reported that student satisfaction with this unit has improved by 11.1%. This improvement could be attributed to this mock grant activity because the format and difficulty level of the student assessments had remained constant. Furthermore, qualitative analysis conducted via focus group interviews indicated that students agreed that the mock grant proposal assessment was useful in preparing them for future careers and was relevant to the course learning outcomes. Several participants pointed to the assessment's potential usefulness for careers in research. In conclusion, this roleplay module can fulfil the learning objectives of this course whilst providing an authentic research experience without lab-based activities. Copyright © 2023 Tan and Lim.
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The Editor retracts this article (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00541) following an investigation by the National University of Singapore. This investigation found that some of the published content had been used without proper permission or attribution. Additionally, Figure 5 has been duplicated from an online newsletter The Conversation (accessed January 12, 2023) without proper attribution. Based on the extent of these concerns, the article is being retracted. The original article was published on July 21, 2020 and retracted on February 14, 2023. © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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Global travel and trade have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Border closures have impacted both leisure and business travel. The socioeconomic costs of border closure are particularly severe for individuals living and working across state lines, for which previously unhindered passage has been curtailed, and daily commute across borders is now virtually impossible. Here, we examine how the periodic screening of daily cross-border commuters across territories with relatively low COVID-19 incidence will impact the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 across borders using agent-based simulation. We find that periodic testing at practical frequencies of once every 7, 14 or 21 days would reduce the number of infected individuals crossing the border. The unique transmission characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 suggest that periodic testing of populations with low incidence is of limited use in reducing cross-border transmission and is not as cost-effective as other mitigation measures for preventing transmission. © 2022 IEEE.
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A proper ventilation strategy in an isolation ward could promote better indoor air quality for the occupants. This could also reduce the risk of immunocompromised patients contracting healthcare-associated infections (HAI) or airborne diseases such as COVID-19, tuberculosis, and measles among others. This study aims to propose and examine appropriate ventilation strategies in a single-patient isolation ward that can reduce particle settlement in patients. A simplified CFD model of the isolation ward was developed and well-validated against established data. An RNG k-ε model and discrete phase model (DPM) were used to simulate airflow and particle transportation. The study examined the airflow and particle dispersion under a baseline case and four proposed ventilation strategies. Results showed that the baseline case study, which used the ceiling-mounted air curtain was insufficient to prevent the particles from dispersing into the vicinity of the patient. Likewise, the dilution effect under the baseline case and case 4 (wall-mounted air supply diffuser) were relatively weak due to the low air change rate (ACH) of 4/hr and 9/hr respectively. The ventilation strategy in case 4 has a negligible effect on reducing the particles (14%) settling on the patient although the ACH in case 4 was 2-times the baseline case. The present finding ascertains that utilising the combination of ceiling-mounted air diffuser and air curtain jet (case 3) results in zero particle settlement on both patient's and the patient's bed. It also reduced 57% of particles in the vicinity of the medical staff's breathing zone compared to the baseline case. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
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Under the constraint of carbon emission, measuring and analyzing the spatial-temporal evolution characteristics of urban land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is the inherent requirement of its ecological protection and sustainable development. In this paper, we calculated the urban land use efficiency of 107 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2006 to 2020 by using the SBM-Undesirable model with unexpected output, and analyzed its temporal evolution trend and spatial correlation relationship by using kernel density and spatial autocorrelation method. The results showed that: except in 2020, the urban land use efficiency was generally low due to the COVID-19 epidemic, and the urban land use efficiency in other years was mostly concentrated in the middle levels, and showed a trend of slow fluctuation and rise year by year. The difference of urban land use efficiency level between regions increased, and the dispersion degree in upstream, midstream and downstream increased with each passing year. Urban land use efficiency spatial imbalance was significant, and the urban land use efficiency level of large and medium-sized cities was generally lower than that of cities with low economic development level. The spatial correlation was weak, and the global spatial autocorrelation was basically insignificant, while the local spatial agglomeration areas were mainly distributed in the upstream and downstream regions, with a small distribution range and weak spatial interaction. The distribution areas of the standard deviation ellipse were gradually flattened, and the center of gravity as a whole shift significantly to the southwest. The research results are helpful to understand the development history and future trend of urban land use efficiency in various regions, and propose that cities should consider the impact of public crisis events in advance, reasonably control the scale of land expansion, and lead coordinated development and other reasonable suggestions when formulating land use policies. Copyright © 2023 Yang, Pu, Jiang, Gong, Tan, Wang and He.
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In recent decades, new technologies have reshaped people's working environment. Both organizations and individuals have benefited a lot from these new technologies. However, everything is two-sided, which means the development of various new technologies in the work scene, such as smartphones, has had a series of negative effects on employees' job performance and their physical and mental health. Researchers generally regard smartphone addiction in the work scene as a behavioral addiction in a specific environment. The formation of employees' smartphone addiction is affected by many factors, in which psychological factors belonging to endogenous factors and working environment factors belonging to exogenous factors are significant. Besides, in the past three years, the outbreak and popularity of COVID-19 accelerates formation of employees' smartphone addiction. The influence of smartphones addiction on employees had advantages and disadvantages while it is generally believed that the disadvantages, which have numerous negative effects on employees' physical and psychological health, personal life, family and job performance, outweigh the advantages. The mechanism of psychological smartphone addiction can be explained by job demand - resource theory and boundary theory. In the future, we still need to pay attention to the influencing mechanism of smartphone addiction and employees' job performance and figure out the key influencing factors, so as to amplify the advantages of using smartphones in the work scene and make smartphone serve to the target of improving job performance.
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Institutes of higher learning (IHL's) face unprecedented, restricted movement challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper describes how the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Singapore Polytechnic undertook the re-design of teaching and learning practices and remote e-proctoring of assessments, in such an environment. The pandemic accelerated the switch to blended flipped learning, with all face-to-face lectures, replaced with asynchronous e-learning contents. A structured school-wide approach for teaching and learning to help both staff and students to adapt to the new learning environment was implemented. For Academic Year 2020/21, the School mounted large-scale e-proctored remote online assessments, with carefully considered measures to preserve academic integrity and rigour, to satisfy various stakeholders' needs. Semester 1 saw more than 100 staff, 2400 full-time and part-time students, and over 100 modules involved. In Semester 2, more than 400 full-time students and 31 modules were involved. Communication and training of the staff were carried out to prepare for the new way of assessment, and also to guide them to help their students for this. The use of a student response system (SRS) for diagnosing student learning of the asynchronous learning contents in-class was introduced. Survey findings show positive results generally, and these included real-time performance data analysis and immediate feedback, checking understanding, and appropriate learning interventions. Similarly, survey findings on the online assessments to engage students in their learning and progress are also shared. A comparison of the overall academic performance of students, pre-pandemic, against those conducted under the remote e-proctored conditions in the changed learning environment, suggests minimal impact. This paper concludes that SEEE's school-wide strategy supports the learning engagement of the students in the new teaching and learning practices, with the total switch to flipped learning for the diploma engineering courses it offers. © CDIO 2022.All rights reserved.
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Background: MELD and Child-Pugh scores have traditionally been used as prognostic indicators in patients with cirrhosis. Albumin infusions in outpatients have been associated with improved outcomes, but not in transplant waitlisted patients or inpatients. This aim of this study was to assess whether low serum albumin (sAlb) on admission alone is a poor prognostic indicator among cirrhotic inpatients from a new multi-national cohort. Method(s): The CLEARED study is a global study that enrolled consecutive non-electively admitted inpatients without organ transplant or COVID-19 from 6 continents. Admission demographics, medical history, laboratory data, inpatient course, death/hospice transfer and mortality at 30 days post-discharge were recorded. Patients were divided into 3 groups: sAlb <28gm/L(A), sAlb >=28 but <35gm/L (B), and sAlb>=35gm/L (C) were compared. Multi-variable logistic regression was performed using inpatient mortality and overall 30-day mortality as outcomes. Result(s): 2429 patients were enrolled from 21 countries worldwide. The distribution was A:49%, B:39%, C:12%. Gp A patients were significantly younger (54yrs vs. 57yrs vs 58yrs p<0.0001) but with similar gender distribution, and higher MELD-Na score of 25 vs. 20 vs. 17 (p<0.0001). Gp A patients were more likely to have alcohol as etiology of cirrhosis (49% vs. 45% vs 38%, p=0.004), and were more likely to have either infection (27% vs. 18% vs. 13%, p<0.0001), HE (39% vs. 33% vs. 23%, p=0.005) or fluid related issues as a reason for admission (p<0.0001). More patients in Gp A received albumin infusion during their hospital stay (120gm vs. 100gm vs. 100gm p=0.0004), mostly for the indications of AKI (47% vs. 49% vs. 47%, p=0.79) and performance of large volume paracentesis (44% vs. 42% vs. 41%, p=0.80), followed by bacterial peritonitis indication (22% vs. 17% vs. 11%, p=0.01). Group A patients had longer hospital stays (9 days vs. 8 days vs. 7 days (p<0.001), but similar ICU transfer (23% vs. 22% vs. 20%, p=0.55). group A patients were more likely to die while inpatients (19% vs. 11% vs. 5%, p<0.0001), or by 30 days post-discharge (29% vs. 20% vs. 9%, p<0.0001). Table shows the admission variables associated with a poor outcome. Conclusion(s): Hypoalbuminemia is extremely common among admitted cirrhotic patients, with sAlb of <28gm/L occurring in almost half. Together with MELD-Na score and infection at admission, a low sAlb is associated with a poor outcome in these patients. Future studies will need to validate these findings and to assess whether albumin infusions will improve the outcome of these patients. (Figure Presented).
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Background: Although cirrhosis is a major cause of mortality worldwide, there could be disparities in outcomes. This needs a global consortium to study disparities in inpatient cirrhosis care Aim: Define the impact of location in prediction of outcomes in inpts with cirrhosis. Method(s): CLEARED prospectively enrolled non-electively admitted cirrhosis pts without COVID from all continents. To ensure equity, we allowed only 50 pts/site. Admission details, cirrhosis history, inpatient & 30-day course were recorded. World bank classification of low/low middle income (LMI), upper middle (UMI) & High income (HI) were used. Cirrhosis details, inpatient & 30-day outcomes were compared between groups. Multi-variable regression was performed using inpatient & 30-day mortality as outcomes. Result(s): 2758 pts from 21 countries from all continents, including Africa & Australia, were included.727 were L/LMI, 1050 UMI & 981 pts were from HICs. More men & younger pts were in LMI. Cirrhosis details: More pts in HI gp had 6M hospitalizations & infections, HE & ascites while prior variceal bleeding was higher in LMI . Prior HCC & transplant listings were lower in LMI but similar in UMI/HI. Alcohol & NASH was highest in HI. Viral hepatitis & cryptogenic were highest in UMI.Admissions: Admission MELD was highest in LMI. LMI pts were admitted more for GI Bleed, HE, & DILI, while anasarca & HBV flares were higher in UMI. Higher SBP (36% vs 24% vs 21% p<0.0001) & lowest skin/soft-tissue infections were in LMI (5% vs 5% vs 10% p=0.008);rest were similar. Nosocomial infections, driven by UTI were highest in LMI & HI pts (15% vs 14% vs 11% UMI, p=0.03). Admission diuretics, PPIs, Lactulose & statins were highest & antivirals lower in HI. SBP prophylaxis & rifaximin were highest in LMI pts. Outcome(s): More LMI pts needed ICU & had more organ failures (Fig B). Discharge MELD was highest in LMI. In-hospital mortality was highest & transplant lowest in LMI. This extended to 30-day mortality & transplant in LMI patients vs HI pts.Regression: In-hospital mortality was linked with age, infections, MELD & being in a LMI/UMI vs HIC while being on a transplant list, diabetes, & SBP prophylaxis were protective (Fig C). 30-day mortality predicted by age, ascites, HCC, discharge MELD, organ failures, LMI/UMI vs HIC but rifaximin was protective(Fig D). In-hospital transplant was higher with high MELD, admission rifaximin & listed pts &lower in LMI (OR 0.26) & UMI (OR 0.22) & age. 30-day transplant was higher in those with hyponatremia, ascites & HRS, on the list & on rifaximin and lower in LMI (OR 0.24) & UMI (OR 0.59) vs HI. Conclusion(s): In a global study of inpatients with cirrhosis, there were major differences in outcomes. Not being in a high-income country significantly increased the risk of inpatient and 30-day mortality independent of demographics, medications, in-hospital course, and cirrhosis severity likely due to disparities in access to transplant, which should be accounted for in global models. (Figure Presented).
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The outbreak has spread all over the world, and the risk of medical work remains high. Traditional epidemic prevention methods have the risk of cross-infection. In order to reduce the contact rate of COVID-19 and strengthen the intelligence of epidemic prevention, this paper proposes an ASR-based mobile platform control system design for epidemic prevention. The system consists of an ASR control module, an epidemic prevention and disinfecting module, and a platform moving module. The system processes voice commands into text messages through ASR and transmits them in JSON format. The data is parsed by lexical analysis, keyword extraction and command parsing to complete the command parsing. The atomic instructions that can be recognized by the machine are solved by Iclingo and sent to the platform mobile module and the epidemic prevention and disinfection module, and the disinfection is completed at the designated place. Unity3D simulation experiments show that, compared with traditional Chinese speech recognition, the system responds faster under standard commands and has high recognition accuracy under language habit. And the operation is stable and the control is accurate, which can meet the task of epidemic prevention and disinfection in medical care places and reduce the infection rate of germs. © 2022 IEEE.
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With the urgent demand for ultralow-temperature refrigerators worldwide, the operation reliability and stability of the refrigeration system becomes greatly crucial. In this study, a -80 oC ultralow-temperature cascade refrigeration system (CRS) is developed. From aspects of global warming potential (GWP) and ozone depletion potential (ODP), the environmentally friendly refrigerants R290 and R170 are utilized in the high-temperature cycle and low-temperature cycle of CRS. The experimental measurement is conducted in a Type-laboratory with a dry bulb temperature of 25.0 °C and a wet bulb temperature of 20.2 °C. The pull-down and stable operation performance of the CRS freezer are experimentally investigated. Both the inlet and outlet temperature and pressure of two compressors are monitored, and the operation characteristic of the CRS is analyzed. With some temperature test points arranged in the freezer, the temperature drop and temperature fluctuation variation of air are assessed. The operation power consumption of the CRS is also measured during the whole process. It shows that the −80 °C temperature can be generated and realized by the developed ultralow-temperature freezer. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd
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The COVID-19 pandemic led to all institutions of education having to transition to fully online learning almost immediately. However, research showed that online learning still lacked adequate interactions with students. This is even more problematic when students are online learning on their own, when adequate online scaffolding activities are absent. This study investigated the impact of chatbots as a scaffolding agent to assist student learning during their independent online learning times. A total of 62 Diploma level students participated in this mixed method research study and presented with a multimedia-based AI chatbot named MERLIN. Data was collected on their attitudes towards using it. Results showed that students were motivated to learn more using MERLIN, improved their learning, and wanted more chatbots in their other courses. These findings have important implications for using AI chatbots as a scaffolding and instructional tool in 21st-century learning environments. © 2022, International Journal of Technology. All Rights Reserved.
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OBJECTIVE: Teleconsultation has gained traction in the past decade. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated its uptake worldwide. Clinic visits for thyroid disorders includemany routine tasks that may be carried out remotely, and seldom involve intervention procedures. Our study aims to understand clinicians' and patients' perception of teleconsultation for thyroid disorders, in consideration of the barriers and facilitators to sustainable adoption beyond the pandemic. METHOD(S): This is a cross-sectional survey study. Clinicians at a tertiary hospital completed a survey on the suitability of teleconsultation for specific clinic tasks, and an adapted Technological Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaire scored on a 7-point scale. Patients with thyroid disorders completed the Telemedicine Perception Questionnaire (TMPQ) scored on a 5-point scale. RESULT(S): Thirty-four clinicians (attending specialists:50%;fellows and junior doctors:50%) completed the questionnaire. Review of thyroid ultrasound results (73.5%) and blood tests results (61.8%) were tasks deemed most suitable for teleconsultation. 85.3% of clinicians felt that bad news should not be conveyed remotely. There were no significant differences in the responses between senior and junior clinician groups. Clinicians had a moderately positive attitude towards teleconsultation (mean(M) = 5.01 +/- 1.16) and perceived video platforms as easy to use (M= 4.97+/- 0.88). They were ambivalent about the usefulness of teleconsultation (M= 4.55+/- 1.05) and whether they were time-efficient (M= 4.06+/- 1.37). They were equivocal about their intention to use teleconsultation (M= 4.79+/- 1.28). Fifty patients (mean age = 58(+/-13.3) years) with thyroid disorders completed the survey. Patients felt teleconsultation should complement in-person care instead of substituting it completely (M= 3.72+/- 0.73). Patients perceived teleconsultations to be timesaving for both clinicians (M= 3.88+/- 1.16) and themselves (M= 3.86+/- 0.78). Patients also thought teleconsultations reduced costs for hospitals (M= 3.62+/- 0.83). CONCLUSION(S): Clinicians and patients shared a general positive attitude towards teleconsultation. They agreed that teleconsultation is suitable for some clinic tasks, but cannot completely replace inperson care. Patients felt that teleconsultations saved time for both clinicians and themselves, but this view was not shared by clinicians. Further studies should explore the time efficiency and cost effectiveness of teleconsultation for thyroid disorders. This can inform on sustainable adoption of teleconsultation as an alternative mode of service delivery.