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The interest of the research community in happiness and its associated issues has been steadily growing over the years, including during the period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has brought about significant changes in various aspects of people's lives. In this study, the objective is to analyze the themes and the most significant trends in papers dedicated to happiness in the context of COVID-19 during the period following the onset of the pandemic. To achieve this, the authors have compiled a dataset of papers sourced from Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science Core Collection database, which were extracted using keywords related to both happiness and COVID-19. This database comprises 1932 articles. The researchers have conducted a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of this dataset, providing insights into the most prolific authors in this field, the most frequently cited documents, and the preferred journals for publishing this research. The authors also explore details related to collaboration networks and author clusters. An n-gram analysis is performed on titles, abstracts, keywords, and keywords plus, offering a deeper understanding of the primary research themes. Furthermore, the contributors present a review of the top 10 most cited papers, which completes the analysis and underscores the research trends related to happiness in the context of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global food waste patterns through unanticipated shifts in composition and quantities. This review explores the impacts of COVID-19 on food waste generation and management approaches in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region during the recovery phase. This paper comprehensively explores food loss and waste in the NENA region. It presents a detailed analysis of pandemic-induced changes in household food waste behaviors, analyses the integration of circular economy principles in recovery strategies and policy implications, and outlines potential avenues for future research in this critical area. The key findings are threefold: First, this study reaffirms that food waste is a critical challenge in NENA, contributing to food insecurity, water scarcity, and environmental issues. Second, the pandemic catalyzed a dichotomy in consumer behaviors—panic buying initially increased waste, while hardship measures later encouraged sustainable waste reduction practices like meal planning and leftover use. Third, adopting a circular economy approach holds potential, yet its implementation remains limited in terms of curbing food waste and promoting sustainability in NENA. Overall, while the pandemic accentuated the urgency of tackling food waste, it also stimulated innovative policy thinking and strategic planning for building more resilient food systems. This paper concludes that leveraging pandemic-driven sustainability mindsets while addressing systemic drivers of waste will be key to mitigating food waste and its impacts moving forward. This paper offers timely insights into the evolving food waste management landscape in NENA, underscoring the need for integrated policies to navigate post-pandemic recovery effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific collaboration has profoundly influenced the sustainability of human science. The pandemic has exposed the fragility of the global health system, forcing various research institutions to cooperate more actively and giving rise to a pressing inquiry regarding its implications on the patterns of scientific institution collaboration. With this in mind, we investigate 2,252,016 scientific papers between 2019 and 2020 to study this issue from an institution cooperation view. Specifically, by proposing a novel weighted cooperation network and utilizing institution cooperation freshness, we investigate different collaboration patterns and strategies when institutions respond to the pandemic. The results show that the crisis generally promotes both fresh and stable cooperation relationships among institutions, and different fields (e.g., STEM and Humanities) demonstrate different collaboration patterns. During the pandemic, institutions with a strong influence have a variety of cooperation strategies, while institutions with a low influence prefer a conservative strategy. Moreover, institutions participating in COVID-19 research are very cautious in choosing partners, which may originate from the risk of cooperation, e.g., the fluctuation of influence, and the causal inference results also verify this conclusion. Overall, our study reveals the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research work, which may pave the way for designing policy when other global crises occur again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing local fiscal pressure and insufficient enterprise environmental protection investment are considerable problems in China. Based on the data of A-share-listed companies in heavily polluting industries in China from 2015 to 2021, this paper uses COVID-19 as an exogenous shock of local fiscal pressure and investigates the impact of local fiscal pressure on enterprise environmental protection investment by the continuous DID method. The study found that local fiscal pressure significantly reduces enterprise environmental protection investment and has a greater impact on non-state-owned enterprises, large enterprises, enterprises located in the "two-control-zone" cities and enterprises located in cities with low fiscal self-sufficiency rates. The mechanism of analysis shows that local governments ease fiscal pressure by "increasing revenue" and "cutting expenditure". The former increases the non-tax burden of enterprises, while the latter reduces enterprise environmental protection subsidies, which leads to a decrease in environmental protection investment. The findings of this paper indicate that it is necessary to focus on solving the local fiscal pressure dilemma to increase green investment and achieve green development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' anxiety and behavioural changes while using different examination methods (paper, PC, and mobile exam platforms (MEPs)) were estimated. The influence of academic majors and gender was also determined by answering the following questions: How do anxiety and behavioural changes vary among students using different exam methods? How do students' anxiety levels vary according to academic majors and gender while using different exam methods? A survey was conducted with 826 students enrolled in eight colleges at King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia. The results revealed less anxiety and fewer harmful behavioural changes among students using MEPs compared with other methods. Furthermore, less anxiety and fewer behavioural changes were observed among health and science majors than humanities and social science majors and among female students than male students while using MEPS. Therefore, MEPs should be gradually adopted by higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia, especially for humanities and social science majors and for male students. Furthermore, researchers and decision-makers should find unique solutions to reduce the positive correlation between anxiety and behavioural changes among health and science majors and female students toward MEPs. This can be achieved by identifying obstacles and introducing modern solutions, such as AI-generated exams, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic literature review of the challenges faced by managers during COVID-19, with a focus on teleworking. The study consists of an analysis of 53 articles published in the period 2020–2023 in journals indexed in the Elsevier's Scopus and Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science databases. The inclusion criteria were: (1) peer-reviewed articles; (2) empirical articles; (3) written in English. Five themes were identified: Leadership Styles, Organizational Support and Communication, Telework Productivity, Challenges Related to Telework, and Leaders' Attitudes Towards Telework. The positive results show that telework can improve work performance with the right equipment, training, and leadership. Telework can also improve sustainability by limiting commuting and providing decent work with greater autonomy and flexibility. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Handling uncertainty is important in decision making, especially for SDGs problems. Robust Optimization (RO) is an applied optimization method that can be employed to handle optimization under uncertain data. With SDGs problems, many uncertain data have been considered in decision making. With RO, the data uncertainties are assumed to lay within a compact, convex continuous set. There are three special sets that can be used to represent the data, i.e., box, ellipsoidal, or polyhedral uncertainty sets. These special sets lead the SDGs problems to a computationally tractable optimization model, such that the global optimal solution is attained. However, literature reviews on the application of RO in SDGs decision-making is sparse, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic period. This paper examines the following topics: (1) the purposes of studies of RO and SDGs during the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) the state-of-the-art in RO-SDGs to determine the research objectives, and (3) the SDGs type of problems that have been modeled using RO. A systematic literature review is conducted in this paper, wherein discussion is based on a PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses) flowchart. To this end, the database reference searching conducted on the Scopus, Science Direct, and SAGE databases, is completed using the help RStudio software. The analysis was carried out on two datasets, assisted by the output visualization using RStudio software with the "bibliometrix" package, and using the 'biblioshiny()' command to create a link to the "shiny web interface". In this paper, the research gap on application of RO to SDGs problems is analyzed in order to identify the research objectives, methods, and specific RO-SDGs problems. As a result, the application of RO to SDGs problems is rare; this finding provides a motivation to conduct a further study of RO and SDGs during the COVID-19 pandemic. An expansion is presented using the key phrase "Operations Research and Optimization Modeling", or "OROM". SDGs in Indonesia may be referenced as an example of the capacity building available through RO/OROM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the research associated with higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, offering an overview of papers published in Sustainability by utilizing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA). The analysis comprised a total of 17 papers, illuminating a number of common features, thematic foci, and prevailing issues as well as recommendations for rethinking higher education delivery in the future. Briefly, the analysis of common features revealed that most of the papers were published in 2021, researchers were mostly affiliated with higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia, data were mostly collected from undergraduate students, and papers were mostly quantitative. Regarding thematic focus, papers were generally related to teaching, learning, and assessment. As for prevailing issues, results highlighted a lack of practical studies in higher education research in the GCC region and a need for extending the conducted research to further context including other countries and populations. Finally, the key recommendations included improvement in the use of information technology and distance learning tools, as well as the design of policies and regulations to ensure more relevant academic intervention and guidelines for utilizing the tools and technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how changes in hours spent at home during the COVID-19 pandemic (February 2020–February 2022) affected the volume of municipal waste generated by households. Applying autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) to a time series model created to measure the volume of combustible waste, recyclable plastic, plastic bottles, glasses and cans, and used paper, this study finds that an increase in the number of hours spent at home elevated the amount of combustible waste, recyclable plastic bottles, and glass bottles and cans generated. The increase in the volume of waste during the pandemic tended to be related to increased demand for delivery and take-out containers, and the increase in combustible waste was likely caused by a surge in the use of unrecyclable plastic containers. Thus, the results of the study suggest the importance of enhancing the use of recyclable containers and the need for support to develop ways to spread the use of such containers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is a trending topic in many disciplines but has a particular focus when it is studied in family businesses (FBs) due to their unique behavior in decision-making. Moreover, there is a gap in research on how these family businesses overcome economic crises by applying innovation. The main purpose of this paper is to provide empirical insight regarding this gap in an understudied sector, such as the Jewelry retail sector. This research was conducted in five cases, taken as examples of what these companies did, in terms of innovation, to overcome the COVID-19 crisis situation. This was considered sufficient, given the homogeneous structure of the sector and the exploratory nature of the research. The results revealed that different strategies caused them to obtain different results and clearly showed that FBs that used innovation during the crisis had better financial results. This paper contributes to the understanding of how FBs overcome economic crises by applying innovation. The implications for this type of business are also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tourism industry has grappled with the challenges posed by the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) since the start of 2020, experiencing a complete lockdown that profoundly affected travel activities. This viral outbreak had a critical impact on both the financial and non-financial aspects of life, including the intellectual capital (IC) of the tourism and hospitality sectors. However, there is a scarcity of studies addressing this issue within the context of tourism-related businesses. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the changes in the overall IC and its components before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on understanding the transformation of IC in the tourism industry of Thailand, a country that is highly dependent on tourism. The study involved 37 tourism-related companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). Organizational data from financial and annual reports published between 2019 and 2020 were collected for analysis. The assessment of value added intellectual capital (VAICTM) was employed to evaluate the performance of the overall IC and its components during the pandemic. The results, based on the testing of four hypotheses, indicated that most hypotheses were accepted, signifying a substantial transformation in the overall IC performance of tourism-related companies during the pandemic crisis. This transformation was observed in the IC components of physical and human capitals. However, the structural capital was the only IC component that did not experience a significant impact from COVID-19. To comprehend the reasons and effects of the IC transformations during the pandemic, this study delved into the relevant literature. Additionally, the paper includes implications to support firms in preparing for future challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small islands are often disproportionately impacted by external shocks, and the manner in which they build resilience is increasingly important in the face of climate change and health crises, thus impacting the attainment of their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper discusses the results of a systematic literature review (PRISMA protocol) that set out to examine which resilience-building measures are adopted by small islands to overcome the incidence of two shocks happening simultaneously: climate change and COVID-19. This is in line with the objectives set by SDG 13 (targets 13.1/13.3) and SDG 3 (targets 3.8/3.d). While 16,369 studies fulfilled the criterion of jointly assessing pandemic, health and climate, only 662 of these mentioned small islands. Moreover, 42 studies fulfilled additional screening criteria. Within these studies, we examined whether a planetary health approach, which recognises the links between environment and health systems, was adopted. The results show that in small islands, and for such shocks in tandem, a planetary health approach is scarcely considered. However, specific actions to strengthen resilience were documented to have been effective when facing climate and health crises, which we categorised as: (i) the management of short-term risks; (ii) community actions; (iii) local government support; and (iv) long-term strategic planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Montreal implemented pro-cycling measures and enhanced its cycling infrastructure, notably by the introduction of the Réseau Express Vélo (REV), an extensive network of separated high-capacity bike lanes inaugurated in 2020. This paper delves into the pandemic's impact on Montreal's cycling network, with specific focus on the Berri/Lajeunesse/Saint-Denis REV route, evaluating its influence on the recovery of adjacent bike lanes and its effectiveness in attracting new cyclists. Using data from sensors installed along Montreal's bike lanes between 2018 and 2023, our analysis reveals an initial average 28% decline in cycling volumes at the onset of the pandemic. However, from 2021 onwards, disparities began to emerge. While sensors on adjacent parallel bike routes to REV recorded further declines in ridership, those elsewhere in the city showed signs of cycling recovery, suggesting a shift in the cycling patterns towards the REV. Distinguishing between cyclists displaced from other parallel bike lanes and those representing a pent-up demand, our study indicates that the displaced cyclists accounted for 64% of the REV's ridership at the southernmost sensors and only 7% at the northernmost sensors in 2023. These findings have significant policy implications, as cyclists comprised within the pent-up demand category correspond to those having transitioned from not using bike lanes to utilizing safer cycling infrastructure and account for the net growth in the cycling mode share directly attributable to the REV. Both of these observations are pivotal in fostering a shift away from cars and steering Montreal towards achieving its cycling mode share goal of 15% by 2027. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unexpected outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has harmed the shipping industry, especially the cruise sector. During this period, the cruise crew, as a neglected subject, experienced great work, life and psychological pressures. However, many states, including China, do not pay enough attention to the legal protection of their rights. The legal literature on this issue is insufficient, and this paper attempts to fill the gap. This paper aims to give a legal suggestion for how to protect the legal rights of cruise crews in ways that are both responsible and effective in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. To achieve the goal, this paper adopts legal research methods to analyze the application of international conventions and Chinese laws and regulations. The paper discusses the legal limitations on the rights' protection of cruise crews in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the research results are legal considerations and suggestions for the protection of the cruise crew. In addition to taking reasonable measures to reduce the impact of the epidemic on cruise crews, the legitimate rights and interests of all cruise crew individuals should be realized as much as possible under existing international conventions and domestic laws. It is important for states to further improve crew and labour legislation and strengthen international cooperation to deal with the impact of the global pandemics on the cruise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to empirically analyze the difference in the closure rate of the commercial district according to the industry structure of the commercial district. Theoretically, the larger the number of stores in a commercial district, the greater the positive externality caused by the agglomeration economies in consumption, namely, the external economies of scale. However, the agglomeration economies could occur from comparison shopping or one-stop shopping, depending on the business structure of the commercial district. According to the empirical results of the regression analysis of all 1164 commercial districts in Korea, the more specialized a commercial district is by stores in a specific industry, the lower the closure rate of that commercial district. This means that the agglomeration economies in consumption are driven by comparison shopping rather than by one-stop shopping and implies that it is necessary to introduce incentives that allow stores in the same industry to cluster together in terms of policy. Meanwhile, if the closure is limited to a specific industry, it will cause an endogeneity problem since it affects the industry structure of the commercial district. Considering this, as a result of additional estimation by 2SLS and GMM using instrumental variables, the error in estimation due to the endogeneity problem was not large, confirming that COVID-19 corresponds to an overall external shock that is not limited to a specific industry. In addition, this paper presents diagnostic indicators for commercial districts to measure the impact of COVID-19. Through this, it will be possible to alleviate conflicts between social classes over compensation or subsidies for sanctions for quarantine. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to use all commercial districts in Korea for a research in evaluating the impact of COVID-19, and empirical results on agglomeration economies focusing on the consumption side are limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature on the effects of adverse economic conditions on gender differences in the labour market by assessing how COVID-19, a global trigger for a critical adverse condition, impacted gender differences in the labour market in a country with pronounced discrimination and inequality in the labour market. In fact, the paper investigates how the personal characteristics of women and men affected their likelihood of losing jobs during and before COVID-19 in South Africa. Using the database of the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) and NIDS wave 5 dataset and based on logit regression, the paper finds that personal characteristics such as tertiary education had a negative effect on job losses among females. Moreover, the results show that, compared to male workers, female workers were the most affected by the pandemic due to the lockdown regulation that affected many households' behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic development, as one of the three pillars of sustainability, can be enhanced by utilizing open-source software. The impact of the pandemic on software development and whether or not it managed to sustain the velocity and volume it previously had has already piqued the interest of the research community. From measuring the activity of developers to conducting surveys on the perceived productivity, the research was mostly focused on 2020. This paper focuses on how the pandemic impacted public development on GitHub by analyzing the changes in trends during the 2020–2022 period (COVID-19 period) compared with 2017–2019 (pre-COVID-19 period). While the majority of events have continued with relatively the same trend, having minor increases or decreases, there have been a few that stood out. Several events related to the community activity on GitHub experienced decreases in their trends (ForkEvent's trend decreased 0.09 ×, IssuesEvent 0.01 ×, etc.), while events related to discussions have experienced a positive trend (mainly CommitCommentEvent, with a trend increase of 34×, but also IssueCommentEvent, which remained stable despite the 0.01 × decrease of IssuesEvent), but only CommitCommentEvent and PushEvent (which experienced a 2.52 × increase in its trend) exhibited non-stationary behavior in the ADF test. In general, events related to individual development have sustained or increased their trends, while events related to community activity (i.e., forking) or contributions to documentation have somewhat decreased. We believe this shows that although there have been minor reductions in the casual and community contributions on GitHub, the majority of events continued with the same trend or even with some increases, which shows that GitHub developers persevered in the face of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in and modifications of the role of information and communication technologies in the digitalization of service provision. This paper aims to identify and summarize these changes in business operations, in the context of strategic management in the restaurant industry, triggered by COVID-19. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 key experts in the restaurant industry (CEOs of chain restaurants), this paper clarifies and concretizes the rapidly transforming problem of identifying the main changes in the restaurant market during the pandemic. These depend on a restaurant's adaptation level to the challenges that arose, using three dimensions (consumer demand, corporate strategy optimization, and the use of the company's innovative potential). The analysis shows that chain restaurants, which have sufficient resources to solve the problem of staff turnover, develop technological solutions, and build a brand and customer loyalty, were more resistant to problems arising from the spread of the coronavirus infection than other companies in the catering industry. The presence of serious problems associated with consumer demand and the optimization of the format of the offered dishes and service had a significant impact on the relationship between the impact of the spread of the coronavirus infection and the inability to adapt to the new reality of doing business. The findings reveal that companies need to expand their digital capabilities and adapt their management strategy to the post-pandemic conditions to adapt to the post-COVID-19 period. This paper serves as a framework for understanding the role of digital transformation in sustainable business development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After three years of COVID-19 lockdown and restrictions, mobility seems to have returned to normality. However, the pandemic has left changes in the mobility patterns of the Madrid Region produced by new trends emerging from COVID-19. This paper analyzes these changes, focusing on the impacts on public transport use, the effects of telematic activities and the influence of home relocation. The basis of the analysis is a survey conducted from November to December 2022, with more than 15,000 valid responses. The results show that public transport lost 6% of trips. These trips have different transfer rates depending on their geographic location. In the City Center, the majority transferred to active modes. However, the car attracted most of these trips in the Metropolitan Ring. These changes in mobility patterns are partly a consequence of the increase in telematic activities. Teleworking has increased by more than 20% in the Madrid Region and has caused changes in trips per week and trip purpose. In addition, teleworking has caused 18% of home relocations to peripheral zones of the region. This paper investigates through statistical analysis which sociodemographic and spatial factors explain the differences in mobility impacts throughout the zones of the Madrid Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensity and impact of emergencies on communities and societies are on the rise. They call for better preparedness, responses, and coping strategies by all those who are involved, especially citizens and the government. This paper introduces the concept of emergency-oriented civic engagement (EOCE), which includes citizens' attitudes and behaviors aimed at influencing the community and government during emergencies. A theoretical framework and model that explore these complex relationships are presented. The paper first explains the differences between emergency-oriented civic engagement and civic engagement during peaceful times. Next, an exploration of a set of variables such as interpersonal trust, feelings of threat, the cost–benefit ratio, and trust in government that may influence emergency-oriented civic engagement is introduced. Finally, the model is illustrated in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that underscored the importance of solidarity and wellbeing among citizens during emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of COVID-19-related research in business economics. The current status of research on economic management in COVID-19 is shown through descriptive statistics. The corresponding knowledge maps are obtained based on keyword clustering analysis, and research topics of interest to Chinese and foreign readers are identified. This paper finds that the impact of COVID-19 on business economics is mainly manifested in six major themes, namely COVID-19 and crisis management, COVID-19 and supply chain, COVID-19 and digitalization, COVID-19 and economic development, COVID-19 and organizational management, and COVID-19 and sustainable development. Based on these research foundations, this paper proposes a research framework for economic management under the influence of COVID-19. It describes the current research status, research directions, and future topics of six key research themes from macro, meso, and micro perspectives, to provide a knowledge base for research and practice in the field of economic management in the post-pandemic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource misallocation is one of the important manifestations of agricultural supply-side distortion and an important causal factor that hinders food production increase and affects food security. Did the COVID-19 pandemic intensify China's food production misallocation? The extent and consequences require quantitative assessment and scenario analysis. In this paper, we use a combination of input-output model and computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, and further incorporate the most important input factor in agriculture—intermediate inputs—into the model. At the same time, simulation of the pandemic impact from the demand and supply sides, respectively, and scenario analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's food production. The results of the study show that: first, compared with the baseline level before the epidemic, the overall TFP growth of China's food industry chain decreased, and the TFP growth rate of the food distribution sector decreased most significantly. Second, there are significant factor misallocation distortions of capital, labor, and intermediate inputs. Third, in the short term, the period of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a decline in the vitality of the national labor market, but the return of non-farm employed labor in rural areas instead reduced the degree of labor misallocation in the food sector. Fourth, the demand side has a greater impact on China's food production, among which the consumer demand has a particularly strong impact on the resource allocation of food production, and the short-term shock will mainly have a more obvious impact on the allocation of labor factors and the allocation of intermediate input factors in the food industry chain. Accordingly, this paper proposes that in order to guarantee China's food security and adapt to the short-term characteristics of the era when the COVID-19 pandemic is rampant, China should make efforts in four areas: rational allocation of food production resources and factors, solid construction of the whole food industry chain, stable guarantee of the food market system and transfer to enhance social expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the major challenges generated in education, thousands of scientific papers have been published, contributing to the establishment of a distinct research line in the field. This study provides a bibliometric overview of the educational publications linked to COVID-19 indexed by the Web of Science Core Collection for the years 2020 and 2021. The findings show a growing interest of researchers in education in this area. The proportion of articles among the types of documents proved to be dominant. Journals dedicated to chemistry and medical education stood out for the high number of pandemic-related papers. Higher education has been an intensively explored area during the pandemic. The USA and its universities were the most productive in publishing studies on COVID-19 in education. Our study indicated research themes that have been explored by the researchers, such as online learning in different educational settings, curriculum and instructional approaches in the online learning setting, and the psychological consequences of COVID-19 on the educational actors. The implications of the pandemic on potential research avenues for education research were also emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there have been hundreds of millions of confirmed cases in the world, and people can strongly perceive the risk of infection with the virus in their daily lives, which has seriously affected people's life and travel, thus hindering the development of all sectors of society, especially the transportation sector. Taking China as an example, since the outbreak of the pandemic, China's overall public transportation passenger volume has decreased by about 37%, seriously affecting the normal running of the public transit. Therefore, the ways of ensuring the normal running of the public transport system during the pandemic has become the focus of this paper. In order to solve this problem, this paper constructed a SEM model based on pandemic risk perception, analyzed the impact of public transit pandemic prevention strategies (TPS) on risk perception (RP) and travel mode use according to the personal trip survey data in Harbin, China during the pandemic. The results showed that people's risk perception had a significant negative impact on car usage and transit usage. In other words, people's risk perception of virus infection had a great impact on travel, especially on the use of public transit. The transit pandemic prevention strategy had a significant negative impact on risk perception, and had a significant positive impact on people's use of transit. This showed that in the current pandemic outbreak period, the transit pandemic prevention strategy proposed by the Harbin authorities cannot effectively reduce transit usage, and can provide proven and effective transit pandemic prevention strategies. This provided an important support for ensuring the normal running of the public transit system and guiding the sustainable development of public transit during the outbreak of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 crisis has created serious and complex challenges for the hospitality industry. A body of literature has identified crisis management practices in the hotel industry at different phases of the crisis. However, the existing literature mainly includes research on large and leading hotels, and knowledge of crisis management practices for small and medium-sized (SME) hotels, particularly at the recovery stage of the crisis, is limited. This paper explores the post-COVID recovery strategies of 386 SME hotels in the upper northern part of Thailand. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypothesis. The results indicate that customer relations (CR)-related and service provision (SV)-related strategies significantly affect SME hotel recovery. Meanwhile, cost-saving (CS) and revenue management (RM) strategies do not have a direct effect but are associated with CR and SV in facilitating SME hotel recovery. This paper provides useful information to assist SME hotel owners and managers in managing how to recover from the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the dynamic inoperability input–output model (DIIM) to analyze the economic impact of COVID-19 in Shanghai in the first quarter of 2022. Based on the input–output model, the DIIM model introduces the sector elasticity coefficient, assesses the economic loss of the system and the influence of disturbances on other sectors through sectoral dependence, and simulates the inoperability and economic loss changes through time series. A multi-evaluation examination of the results reveals that the degree of inoperability of sub-sectors is inconsistent with the ranking of economic losses and that it is hard to quantify the impact of each sector directly. Different from the traditional DIIM model that only considers the negative part of the disaster, the innovation of this paper is that the negative value of the inoperability degree is used to measure the indirect positive growth of sectors under the impact of the Shanghai pandemic shock. At the same time, policymakers need to consider multi-objective optimization when making risk management decisions. This study uses surrogate worth trade-off to construct a multi-objective risk management framework to expand the DIIM model to enable policymakers to quantify the trade-off between economic benefit and investment costs when making risk management decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the continuous spread of the COVID-19 epidemic has impacted the supply chain of enterprises. Mitigating the supply chain's vulnerability has great significance for the survival and development of enterprises. Optimizing the business environment and building a digital government will help improve the external environment for enterprise development. However, its impact on the vulnerability of the enterprise supply chain has yet to be studied. Taking the impact of COVID-19 as an example, this paper uses the survey data of nearly 40,000 enterprises of the National Federation of Industry and Commerce in 2020 and "10,000 private enterprises evaluating the business environment", to conduct systematic empirical research and fill the research gap in this area. The study indicates that the business environment and digital government can significantly mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the supply chain. This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that the business environment and digital government can prompt the government to introduce effective mitigation measures promptly, better guarantee production factors and logistics, and thus improve the vulnerability of the enterprise supply chain. This study deepens our understanding of the economic outcome of the business environment and digital government and also sheds new light on supply chain management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 epidemic has created highly unprocessed emotions that trigger stress, anxiety, or panic attacks. These attacks exhibit physical symptoms that may easily lead to misdiagnosis. Deep-learning (DL)-based classification approaches for emotion detection based on electroencephalography (EEG) signals are computationally costly. Nowadays, limiting memory potency, considerable training, and hyperparameter optimization are always needed for DL models. As a result, they are inappropriate for real-time applications, which require large computational resources to detect anxiety and stress through EEG signals. However, a two-dimensional residual separable convolution network (RCN) architecture can considerably enhance the efficiency of parameter use and calculation time. The primary aim of this study was to detect emotions in undergraduate students who had recently experienced COVID-19 by analyzing EEG signals. A novel separable convolution model that combines residual connection (RCN-L) and light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) techniques was developed. To evaluate the performance, this paper used different statistical metrics. The RCN-L achieved an accuracy (ACC) of 0.9263, a sensitivity (SE) of 0.9246, a specificity (SP) of 0.9282, an F1-score of 0.9264, and an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.9263 when compared to other approaches. In the proposed RCN-L system, the network avoids the tedious detection and classification process for post-COVID-19 emotions while still achieving impressive network training performance and a significant reduction in learnable parameters. This paper also concludes that the emotions of students are highly impacted by COVID-19 scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategy of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality" and the COVID-19 pandemic have become dual challenges for the high-quality development of livestock husbandry. This paper takes the carbon emissions in China's livestock husbandry as the research object and uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 2 coefficient to measure the total carbon emissions and carbon intensity of the industry in 2008–2019. Taking the above two elements as explained variables respectively and using the two-way fixed effects model (FE-TW) that controls time and space effects, this paper specifically examines the effects of various factors in the supply side of livestock husbandry on the explained variables, and further examines the role of technology structure and scale structure. According to our measurement, total carbon emissions showed an inverted U-shaped change and carbon intensity declines in an M-shaped curve during the study period. Both total carbon emissions and carbon intensity are composed mainly of CH4 that is primarily generated by grass-fed livestock industries with spatial distribution patterns of "hill" and "cliff", respectively, while the spatial expression of these two factors is related to the distribution of grain areas. As the test on supply side factors shows, the carbon emissions of livestock husbandry are apparently affected by its land structure, breeding structure, technical level and scale level, but the impact of the level of human capital and mechanization is not as significant as that of technological structure and scale structure. Combining the empirical results and the special background of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper aims to provide more targeted suggestions for livestock husbandry development and carbon reduction during the COVID-19 pandemic period. It also aims to offer a reference for the promotion of green and high-quality development of livestock husbandry and the completion of the task of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality". This study will help policy makers to clarify the goal of reducing carbon emissions in animal husbandry and optimize and improve the corresponding industrial and technological policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the start of the pandemic, organisations have recognised the importance of resilience strategies and they have been trying to enhance them for future crises. COVID-19 has profoundly affected the way that organisations operate and react to recent events. The lessons from this pandemic for future adverse events are yet to be understood. This study aims to identify the most prominent issues and gaps in the literature regarding organisational resilience in the context of COVID-19. To achieve this, this paper is conducting a bibliometric literature review of 185 articles discussing organisational resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2019 to the beginning of 2022. This paper identifies six main topic clusters: (1) entrepreneurial, tourism, and emergency responses; (2) world environment, disruptions, and organisations; (3) employees and mediation; (4) firms and opportunities; (5) capabilities and digitalisation; and (6) leadership during uncertain times. The main contribution of this study is an up-to-date identification of research concerning organisational resilience in times of crisis, particularly research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. As COVID-19 is a unique crisis, this pandemic, as well as the timely results of this paper, stand out. In light of this, I believe one can develop innovative, fundamental new directions for resilience literature in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to characterize the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic for farms and resilience activities performed by farmers in response to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of building rural area resilience. Research was carried out in all 87 urban–rural communes in Poland and focused on special determinants of rural resilience such as connections between small cities and rural areas, as well as the location of the territorial unit (peripheral versus non-peripheral). The purpose of the survey was to poll local government representatives on the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic for farms and identify resilience activities performed by farmers in response to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Empirical research was performed from September to October 2021. The results emphasize the significance of the diversification of farms and networks for strategies for coping with the COVID-19 crisis. The research revealed processes wherein farms adapted, even if to a small extent, to crisis conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges, at the same time stimulating innovative responses in communities and businesses in rural areas. This study also confirms the role of ITC solutions in the process of adaptation to the crisis and implies a need to strengthen local links between the rural area and the city, especially those relevant to peripheral areas. Local government authorities play a crucial role in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent COVID-19 pandemic effectively concretized the vitality of health expenditure and the economic-growth nexus, and the threat of new pandemics make re-examining this relationship a necessity. Consequently, this paper focuses on this nexus for developed OECD countries, paying particular attention to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of stock indices as proxy variables for health expenditure and economic growth enabled the examination of this nexus by using high-frequency data and financial econometric techniques, specifically via rolling correlation and bivariate GARCH analyses. The data span 1170 observations between 15 May 2018 and 11 November 2022. Since the research period overlaps with the outbreak of Ukraine–Russia war, additional insights are obtained regarding the effects of the war as well. It was found that an increase in health expenditure leads to a delayed increase in economic growth even in the short term, and this relationship mainly develops during crises such as epidemics, wars, supply chain breakdowns, etc., for developed OECD countries. Given the aging population of developed countries, which will probably deteriorate the health status of those countries in the near future, the increasing political tensions around the globe and the considerations of a global recession highlight the importance and the inevitability of investments in health capital for developed countries as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of emerging technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain and their wide application in education, digital education has received widespread attention in the international education field. The outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019 further catalyzed the digitalization process in various industries, including education, and forced the education system to carry out digital reform and innovation. Digital education transformation has become a new hotspot of great interest in countries around the world and a major direction for education reform practices. Therefore, to better understand the status of global digital education research, this study uses CiteSpace (6.1.R2) visual analysis software to visualize and quantitatively analyze the literature on digital education research in the social science citation index (SSCI). First, the basic information of digital education was analyzed in terms of annual publication volume, authors, countries, and research institutions. Secondly, the main fields, basic contents, and research hotspots of digital education research were analyzed by keyword co-occurrence analysis mapping and keyword time zone mapping. Finally, the research frontiers and development trends of digital education between 2000 and 6 September 2022 were analyzed by cocitation clustering and citations. The results show that, based on the changes in annual publication volume, we can divide the development pulse of the digital education research field into three stages: the budding stage (2000–2006), the slow development stage (2007–2017), and the rapid development stage (6 September 2018–2022); there are 26 core authors in this field of research, among which Selwyn N has the highest number of publications; the USA, England, Spain, Australia, and Germany have the highest number of publications; Open Univ is the institution with the most publications; digital education's research hotspots are mainly focused on interdisciplinary field practice research and adaptive education research based on big data support. The research frontiers are mainly related to five areas: interdisciplinary development, educational equity, digital education practice, digital education evaluation, and digital education governance. This paper systematically analyzes the latest developments in global digital education research, and objectively predicts that human–computer interdisciplinary teaching models and smart education may become a future development trend of digital education. The findings of this study are useful to readers for understanding the full picture of digital education research so that researchers can conduct more in-depth and targeted research to promote better development of digital education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 epidemic and the measures adopted to contain it have had a significant impact on energy patterns throughout the world. The pandemic and movement restrictions led to unpredictable fluctuations in power systems demand and the fuel price for a delayed period. Monkeypox, another viral disease, appeared during the post-COVID period. It is assumed that the outbreak of monkeypox is unlikely due to the implication of preventive measures experienced from COVID-19. At the same time, the probability of an epidemic cannot be blindly overlooked. This paper aims to examine and analyze historical data to look at how much petroleum fuel was used for generating power and how the price of petroleum fuel changed over seven years, from January 2016 to August 2022. This period covers the time before the COVID-19 pandemic, during the pandemic, and after the pandemic. Several time-series forecasting models, including all four benchmark methods (Mean, Naive, Drift, and Snaive), Seasonal and Trend decomposition using Loess (STL), Exponential Smoothing (ETS), and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) methods have been applied for both fuel consumption and price prediction. The best forecasting method for fuel price and consumption has been identified among these methods. The best forecasting method for fuel consumption observed is ETS based on the RMSE value, which is 799.59, and the ARIMA method for fuel price, with RMSE 4.67. The paper also utilizes the ARIMAX model by incorporating multiple exogenous variables, such as monthly mean temperature, mean fuel price, and mileage of vehicles traveling during a certain period of pandemic lock-down. It will assist in capturing the non-smooth and stochastic pattern of fuel consumption and price due to the pandemic by separating the seasonal influence and, thus, provide a prediction of the consumption pattern in the event of any future pandemic. The novelty of the article will assist in exploring the potential energy demand in terms of cost and consumption of fuel during any pandemic period, considering the associated abnormalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, city centres and their retail spaces have undergone significant changes and have struggled to remain economically viable. The COVID-19 pandemic and the public health response to the crisis have exacerbated this situation and posed a serious challenge to the already economically struggling city centres. Recommendations for how city centres should respond to the current crisis are urgently needed, but despite this, few studies have focused on the impact of COVID-19 on retailing in city centres. This paper conducts a systematic review to provide a better understanding of how retail in city centres has been affected by the pandemic. It also offers insights to support better decision making about the future of retailing in city centres and provides recommendations for ensuring a sustainable future for city centres. The review, conducted between the 20th of November 2021 and the 20th of January 2022, shows that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health response have intensified some considerable changes in customer preferences and the role of city centres. As a result of these changes, more retailers have adopted multichannel retailing and repositioning strategies. This paper concludes that in order to create vibrant and sustainable city centres post-pandemic, decision makers should support the repurposing of vacant and underperforming retail spaces, promote an experience economy, and create episodic retail spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the COVID-19 era, people face situations that they have never experienced before, which alerted the importance of the ESG. Investors also consider ESG indexes as an essential factor for their investments, and some research yielded that the return on sustainable funds is more significant than on non-sustainable ones. Nevertheless, a deficiency in research exists about analyzing ESG through artificial intelligence algorithms due to adversity in collecting ESG-related datasets. Therefore, this paper suggests integrated AI approaches to the ESG datasets with the five different experiments. We also focus on analyzing the governance and social datasets through NLP algorithms and propose a straightforward method for predicting a specific firm's ESG rankings. Results were evaluated through accuracy score, RMSE, and MAE, and every experiment conducted relevant scores that achieved our aim. From the results, it could be concluded that this paper successfully analyzes ESG data with various algorithms. Unlike previous related research, this paper also emphasizes the importance of the adversarial attacks on the ESG datasets and suggests methods to detect them effectively. Furthermore, this paper proposes a simple way to predict ESG rankings, which would be helpful for small businesses. Even though it is our limitation that we only use restricted datasets, our research proposes the possibility of applying the AI algorithms to the ESG datasets in an integrated approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making decisions and building strategies to enhance the supply chain are currently essential if companies want to keep up with modern advances and compete in both the local and global markets. However, the coronavirus pandemic heightened the necessity for decision making and the adoption of strategies for supply chain improvement and transformation to effectively deal with crises and ongoing change. This paper introduces a framework for recovery strategies to characterize the correlation at various stages among the key concerns of the supply chain because of COVID-19, recovery decisions, the areas of development, the strategic recovery plan, and the objectives of the recovery strategies to restore the supply chain (SC). This study used a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify possible areas for supply chain improvement and rank viable solutions. A combined fuzzy ANP–fuzzy TOPSIS method is proposed to prioritize and rank the areas of improvement. The results indicate that digitization and the utilization of emerging technology play critical roles in supply-chain recovery from disruptions and different current and future SC changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic was first reported on 31 December 2019, in Wuhan. Since then, the rapid spread of the virus has directly impacted various aspects of people's lives, including culture, society, education, and the economy. The environment has also been affected, as the disposal of thousands of tons of single-use personal protective equipment has resulted in a significant increase in waste. The challenge was to create environmentally friendly materials for personal protective equipment. One of the alternatives to polypropylene materials is a biodegradable nonwoven produced using spun-bonded technology. The article discusses various physical and mechanical parameters, the biodegradation process, and the distribution of molar masses during the weeks of nonwoven biodegradation. Additionally, the paper presents the results of in vitro cytotoxicity tests conducted on the material. Biodegradable materials are a viable solution to the challenges posed by a circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper delves into the multifaceted relationships between psychological resilience, organizational trust, life satisfaction, and organizational resilience within the context of tourism firms in Egypt. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and its profound effects on the tourism industry, the study aims to unravel the intricate interplay of individual and organizational factors that contribute to the adaptive capacity and well-being of employees. The research employs a quantitative methodology, engaging full-time sales and marketing employees from five-star hotels and class A travel agents (660) as key participants, employing SmartPLS-SEM vs4 to analyze the collected data. Through a nuanced examination of their experiences post-pandemic, the study investigates how psychological resilience, defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity, influences both life satisfaction and organizational resilience. Additionally, the impact of organizational trust, characterized by the confidence and faith employees place in their organization, on life satisfaction and organizational resilience is explored. Preliminary findings suggest a positive association between psychological resilience and both life satisfaction and organizational resilience. Employees exhibiting higher levels of psychological resilience tend to not only experience greater life satisfaction but also contribute significantly to their organization's resilience. Furthermore, organizational trust emerges as a critical factor, positively influencing life satisfaction and organizational resilience. The study contributes valuable insights to the evolving landscape of tourism management and lays the foundation for future research endeavors in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2021 resulted in a substantial increase in e-commerce purchases, with the consequent growth of logistics services. Thus, this paper is aimed at studying the effects of the pandemic on the operational processes of logistics service providers. To this end, a survey questionnaire was developed and administered to a sample of identified respondents. The collected data were quantitatively analyzed via the Kruskal–Wallis test. The outcomes point out that logistics operators faced an increase in the distances traveled to carry out pick-up and delivery activities, and larger companies added more light vehicles to their fleets, proving that the company size was a relevant aspect of ensuring a quick response to the pandemic. These results show an increased business-to-consumer market share that is leading to a redesign toward more sustainable operational strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, wineries have incorporated social media into their marketing strategies to promote their products and services. They offer wineries the opportunity to interact with their customers in real time, allowing them to share their experiences, preferences, and feelings, and create a sense of community. The objective of this paper is to investigate digital presence and consumer engagement and reactions in social media used by the Greek winery industry, using a three-step methodology. The study focuses specifically on Facebook and Instagram and compares data for the period between 2019 and 2022, including the COVID-19 outbreak, collected from the profiles of 311 Greek wineries using a social media analytics tool. The contribution of this work lies in demonstrating the change in consumers' engagement and reactions witnessed on wineries' profiles. The outcomes indicate consistently limited interactions on these profiles, reflecting low levels of consumer engagement and overall reactions across social media platforms. These findings underscore the necessity for additional research into wineries' marketing strategies and the motivations driving user engagement. The proposed methodology can be used as a social media brand engagement approach that aids brands in attracting audience attention and fostering active participation in various business sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an urgent need to move to online teaching and develop innovative teaching techniques to ensure that student learning outcomes (SOs) were fulfilled. This paper tries to answer the important question of whether an established teaching strategy through a multi-course project-based learning (MPL) approach, along with online assessment techniques, helps in the effective achievement of SOs in a senior-level electrical engineering (EE) course. The authors have developed a course project for attaining the objectives of a senior and a capstone course, where students are registered at the same time. In addition, the course conducts assessments online. The paper reports the effect of the two approaches on the attainment of the SOs of the two courses, along with testing the programming and problem-solving abilities of the students. It is known that the MPL approach enhances the critical thinking capacity of students, which is also a major outcome of Sustainable Development Education (ESD). It was ensured that the project that was used to test the fulfillment of a series of SOs were concentrated on soft engineering and project management skills. The difficulty of adopting the MPL method for the senior-level courses is in the scheduling of the course materials to help the student advance to the final project while also aligning the project towards fulfilling the learning outcomes of the individual course. The study also provides the students with feedback on online assessment techniques incorporated within the MPL. Besides this, the effect of the innovative teaching approaches was compared with the same senior course taught using conventional methods in an earlier semester. Based on the feedback from teachers and students from a previously conducted case study, it was concluded that the MPL approach had supported the student learning. The results of the statistical analysis (Chi-square, two-tailed T statistics and hypothesis testing using a z-test) show that an MPL approach and online assessment improved the attainment of the SOs despite the constraints posed by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened human lives and caused an unprecedented impact on the global economy, notably on the global food system. COVID-19 itself and its policy response have severely affected food prices. This paper analyzes the short-term and long-term impacts of COVID-19 cases and policy responses (government response index (GRI), economic support index (ESI), stringency index (SI)) on food prices (Chinese cabbage price (CP), pork price (PP), flour price (FP), rice price (RP)) in China's major food producing areas and major food selling areas through the autoregressive distribution lag error correction (ARDL-ECM) method and graphical analysis. as the purpose is to provide evidence for food security policy regulation to stabilize food prices and improve the food system's ability to withstand similar emergencies in the future. This study finds that the short-term impact of COVID-19 policy responses on food prices is larger, while the long-term impact is smaller. The impacts of COVID-19 itself and COVID-19 policy responses on food prices vary by food type and food production and consumption region. For food type, the Chinese cabbage price was most affected by the COVID-19 policy response, followed by pork, and the staple food prices (flour price and rice price) were least affected. For regions, the Chinese cabbage price in food producing areas was more influenced by COVID-19 and the pork price in food selling areas was more influenced by COVID-19. For the single indexes, GRI and SI had uneven effects on different food prices. However, ESI had a significant positive impact on the Chinese cabbage price (CP) and pork price(PP), except in Guangdong and Hubei. Staple food prices were almost unaffected by COVID-19 confirmed cases and policy responses. Then, taking the Chinese cabbage price in Beijing, Shandong, and Hubei as an example, we find that "dynamic clearance" influenced the Chinese cabbage price in the short term, and Chinese cabbage price increased largely in the first stage. Finally, the reasons behind the research results of this paper are analyzed, and scientific suggestions are put forward for the implementation of food supply policies to ensure food price stability and food security in the face of similar pandemics in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has struck educational experience systems around the globe. This paper investigates and evaluates the student participants' perceptions who joined the international exchange seminar on global citizenship and peace held at a University in Hiroshima, Japan. Approximately seventy students and faculty members from nine to ten different universities from around the globe joined this summer program in August 2021 (online) and 2022 (face-to-face). This study is a mixed-method study. The first part consists of a quantitative analysis of BEVI data obtained from the students in the seminar before COVID-19 and after. The research concludes that there are no changes in the effects of what students learn. The second part consists of qualitative data. The data shows the perceptions of students of online teaching versus hybrid teaching. It compares the differences in participants' perceptions reported in students' feedback on the programs during and post-COVID-19. Our results confirm prominent differences exist in the students' perceptions of their learning experience during the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods. The findings indicate based on lessons learned post-pandemic, universities need to strive and define the meaning and purpose of international seminars, which enable students to experience a high level of intercultural social interaction online and face-to-face. As the world becomes more interconnected, virtual environments, such as the ones presented within the International Seminar in Hiroshima, Japan, are vital to facilitating intercultural teaching environments and the implications within this paper indicate that these virtual mediums can promote inclusion, leading to a more sustainable world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preparation of sustainability reports, which a negligible number of organisations had been doing until recently, will soon be the new reality for many more organisations. This research aims to present changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in the ecosystem of sustainability reporting pronouncements, especially those used by organisations. In our research, we compare important information about two different periods and the content demands in reporting on sustainability. Changes in the ecosystem are fundamental and unique. Based on the analysis of events and documents, the current research shows the changes in the ecosystem and the future dynamics in the ecosystem, including the principle standard setters (i.e., International Sustainability Standards Board and European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, EFRAG). The research shows that although the changes occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, they did not significantly impact the ecosystem's development or slow down or stop their development. The COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the speed or dynamics of changes. In the last few years, EFRAG and the European Union established their position and gained a significant influence in sustainability reporting, with EFRAG at the forefront. The European Sustainability Reporting Standards will be mandatory for organisations doing business in the European Union. At the same time, we do not expect that the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards will be directly endorsed for use in the European Union. The paper presents a new perspective on examining sustainability via developing organisations' reporting demands within the framework of the uncertain environment caused by COVID-19. In this context, our research also contributes to the literature. The study also has a potential practical impact on organisations and management since it illuminates a wide range of selected sustainability viewpoints and their reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted all aspects of people's lives, including pedagogy and instruction at universities, where its impact was felt globally, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is no exception. This paper discusses and compares the academic results during the conventional mode of learning (spring semester of 2019) and during the online mode of learning (spring semester of 2020), which was throughout the pandemic period. Specifically, the study considers two Saudi groups of fifty students who were enrolled in the Department of Health Information Management and Technology at the University of Hafr Al-batin in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia. The students' accumulative marks in six first-year courses in two semesters were analyzed and compared by calculating the passing/failure percentages, descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, variance, maximum, minimum, and range), and the p-value of an inferential t-test. Additionally, the students filled out a six-category survey about their experiences and level of satisfaction with online learning compared to the regular learning mode. It was concluded that more students passed with higher grades in the year 2020 in five theoretical courses. Differently, it was deduced that practical courses such as computer applications had similar passing averages in the two years; the course required students to submit continuous assignments and projects in a fixed time period. Additionally, the participants revealed in their filled online survey that they preferred many features of the remote learning mode and the online assessment methodology. They inclined toward online learning for its flexibility and effectiveness, even though they confessed to having less interaction and focus during online sessions. Thus, the results imply to authorities in the Ministry of Higher Education to carefully and gradually embed online teaching for selected subjects with exam validation measures such as time strict limits, question banks, randomizations, and other security features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global higher education landscape is significantly impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the majority of the universities now follow an online or hybrid mode of delivery. This presents substantial challenges for universities, particularly to conduct examinations, as traditionally most exams were conducted physically on campus. During the first wave of the pandemic, many universities had no option and were forced to move online in a very short period of time, causing universities also to conduct exams online without transforming pedagogy and the structure/s of closed-book exams. Inevitably, in non-proctored and unregulated examinations, this allowed room for students to collaborate and share material during online exams without being noticed by an invigilator as in the case of physical exams. Online exams, also leave room for students to find information online which made preventing plagiarism a significant challenge. This paper investigates the practices used in both closed-book and open-book exams and identifies the challenges associated with the transition to online exams. It also identifies potential ways forward for future online exams, while minimizing opportunities for students to collaborate, plagiarise and use online material. The findings of this study reveal that online examinations affect teachers and students differently: while teachers have mixed feelings about online exams, students are anxious about their grades and the technical hassle they experience in online exams. While viva has emerged as a popular form of alternative assessment, students still feel the need of returning to physical exams. None of the teachers who participated in this study discussed a psychosocial approach to education and exams in this pandemic. We conclude this study on the note that there is a need for the collaboration of social scientists, psychologists, psychosocial specialists, educationists, and humanities scholars/humanists for better educational policy and pedagogical practices during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The supply chain and its management are the hidden engines that drive the economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated an unprecedented sustained challenge to supply chain management around the world, which has highlighted the importance of research on the effects of COVID-19 on supply chain management. Most of the scholarly articles were mainly focused on content analysis to discuss aspects of the research related to COVID-19 and supply chain management. The literature reviews with the bibliometric method involving supply chain management in the COVID-19 context are still scarce. In this paper, we undertook a bibliometric analysis of the research on COVID-19 and supply chain management, finding a total of 257 papers published in 2020 and 2021 to determine the thematic direction of the related flourish of research. The analysis used a combination of bibliographic and network analysis to capture the direction the research has been taking. The study identified the most highly productive authors, prominent journals, and geographic centers of publications about this phenomenon. It also examined networks related to co-authorship, countries of collaboration, co-citations and highly cited authors, and co-wording. The examination identified four thematic clusters, comprised of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chains, the improvement of supply chain resilience for viability, technology and innovation for supply chain sustainability, and supply chain risk management in response to COVID-19. These findings support the need for further investigation into supply chain management, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chains, and, more broadly, supply chain resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 11 March 2020, the phrase "COVID-19" had officially entered everyday life across most of the word. Each level of education suddenly faced new changes and new challenges. Emergency remote teaching became widespread, and new methodologies to deliver classes and courses were adopted by educational institutions. In this paper, we focus on the impact of the remote learning experience of engineering students enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano. The subjects were recruited from all engineering courses from the first to the fifth year and were asked to complete a multidimensional survey. The survey featured 66 items regarding the participants' perceptions of the challenges of emergency remote teaching compared with pre-COVID-19 in-person teaching. The questionnaire addressed six dimensions: the organization of emergency remote teaching, subjective well-being, metacognition, self-efficacy, identity, and socio-demographic information. In this paper, we describe the entire survey and discuss a preliminary analysis. Using Cronbach's alpha test, a confirmatory factor analysis, and the t-test, we performed a more in-depth analysis concerning the outcomes of metacognition and self-efficacy. The data analysis suggested a small, unexpected change in the metacognition strategies. The students, in some regards, improved their learning strategies. Some other answers underlined their appreciation of the courses' organization and the lack of relationships with their peers and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines people's motives for urban gardening during the pandemic waves of 2020 and 2021. Interest in this practice has often ebbed and flowed in response to changing socioeconomic conditions and depended on positive effects in terms of social integration, community and individual health, urban regeneration, and food security. While several studies have documented these effects well with reference to the pre-pandemic period, few have detailed their existence—and eventually variations—during the lockdowns. These periods have probably reignited interest in this practice. Unlike other recreational activities, urban gardening was not restricted by regional and national governments because they considered this practice to be beneficial for food provisioning. To explore the motivations behind this newfound interest, this paper illustrates the results of a literature review on the articles published on this topic in the period from early 2020 to mid-2022. Findings reveal that the most widespread motivations are those related to personal and community wellbeing as well as food supply security and include the opportunity to spend time having fun outside the home. In addition, community resilience is a motivation that had not been detected in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]