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This paper analyses how a state produces new internal borders. It selected 1668 newspaper articles on the COVID-19 internal bordering case in Slovakia to answer this question. These articles were then analysed using the thematic trajectory analysis (TTA) through the conceptual prism of structurationism. The results suggest states apply methods during the production of internal borders similar to those used during the (re-)production of an international border. In particular, it shows the application of a military-testing nexus and economic tools to ensure compliance with the new border. Results also revealed that such a border is heavily dependent on popular support for the government and open to re-negotiations by relevant societal groups. From the border production perspective, this study offers a preliminary step into the area of internal borders imposed on a generally homogenous population, especially regarding the borders produced under COVID-19 conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there are many factors at play when it comes to understanding the rise in gig work, the general changing nature of work has facilitated the increase in gig work by making it appealing and accessible to everyone. In addition to solving the definitional ambiguity surrounding gig work, Watson and colleagues also set out to identify different types, or profiles, of gig workers and found that little attention has been given to some of these gig worker profiles. Riddle Me This: What Does the COVID-19 Crisis, Helping Behavior, Temporality, Work Interruptions, and the Gig Economy Have in Common?. [Extracted from the article]

The application of big data, radiomics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms in radiology requires access to large data sets containing personal health information. Because machine learning projects often require collaboration between different sites or data transfer to a third party, precautions are required to safeguard patient privacy. Safety measures are required to prevent inadvertent access to and transfer of identifiable information. The Canadian Association of Radiologists (CAR) is the national voice of radiology committed to promoting the highest standards in patient-centered imaging, lifelong learning, and research. The CAR has created an AI Ethical and Legal standing committee with the mandate to guide the medical imaging community in terms of best practices in data management, access to health care data, de-identification, and accountability practices. Part 2 of this article will inform CAR members on the practical aspects of medical imaging de-identification, strengths and limitations of de-identification approaches, list of de-identification software and tools available, and perspectives on future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly evolving with the number of cases exponentially rising. The research scientific community has reacted promptly as evidenced by an outstanding number of COVID-19 related publications. As the number of scientific publications rapidly rises, there is a need to dissect the factors that lead to highly impactful publications. To that end, the present paper summarizes the characteristics of the top 50 cited COVID-19-related publications that emerged early during the pandemic. Methods: A systematic search of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar was performed, using keywords related to COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-19. Two independent authors reviewed all the search results, screening for the top 50 cited COVID-19-related articles. Inclusion criteria comprised any publication on COVID-19 or the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Data extracted included the type of study, journal, number of citations, number of authors, country of publication, and study content. Results: As of May 29th, the top 50 cited articles were cited 63849 times during the last 4 months. On average, 14 authors contributed to each publication. Over half of the identified articles were published in only 3 journals. Furthermore, 42% and 26% of the identified articles were retrospective case series and correspondence/viewpoints, respectively, while only 1 article was a randomized controlled trial. In terms of content, almost half (48%) of the identified publications reported clinical/radiological findings while only 7 out of the 50 articles investigated potential treatments. Conclusion: By highlighting the characteristics of the top 50 cited COVID-19-related articles, the authors hope to disseminate information that could assist researchers to identify the important topics, study characteristics, and gaps in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inequalities facing vulnerable populations: those living in economically precarious situations and lacking adequate health care. In addition, frontline workers deemed essential to meet our basic needs have faced enormous personal risk to keep earning their paychecks and the economy running. Immigrant communities face an intersection of all three vulnerabilities (e.g., economic precarity, health care barriers, essential workforce), making themone of the most vulnerable populations in the United States. We conducted 26 interviews via Zoomwith immigrant service providers in Pennsylvania andNewYork, including lawyers, caseworkers, religious leaders, advocates, doctors, and educators in order to gain a better understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on immigrant communities. These interviews affirmed that immigrants are concentrated in essential industries, which increases their exposure to the virus. In addition, they lack access to social safety nets when trying to access health care or facing job/income loss. Last, COVID-19 did not adequately slow the detention and deportation machine in the United States, which led to increased transmission of the virus among not only detainees but also others in the detention system, surrounding communities, and the countries towhich peoplewere deported, countries that often lacked an adequate infrastructure for dealing with the pandemic. Based on our interviews, we have a series of specific policy recommendations to diminish the vulnerability of immigrants and create social safety nets that will include them and protect them when the market fails to do so. Immigrants of all types have made indispensable contributions to the US economy during the pandemic and before it. First, Congress and states should pass legislation to provide COVID-19 relief payments to all essential workers, regardless of their status, as compensation for putting their lives on the line to keep the economy running. Second, as a public health imperative, federal and state governments should expand coverage of Medicaid and Children'sHealth Insurance Programs (CHIP) to include immigrant essential workers and their children, regardless of their status. Third, DHS should not refer essential workers to removal proceedings, and immigration courts should terminate all removal proceedings for essential workers without criminal records. When it comes to issues of health care affordability and access, Congress must continue to revise the Affordable Healthcare Act to expand coverage for those who do not qualify for Medicaid but earn too little to afford insurance on their own. Finally, there must be a review and rigorous enforcement of workplace health and safety standards, particularly when it comes to farming, meatpacking, food production, and food service industries. Our final recommendations are specific to DHS and two of the primary agencies they oversee: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol. First, there needs to be a review of ICE policies and practices, leading to a shift in policy that keeps mixed-status families intact and minor children out of detention centers and that streamlines and expands the asylum process. Second, both Congress and the administration must create additional paths to legal status where none now exist, including for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and for children who have arrived since June 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID‐19 pandemic has revealed how unprepared operations and supply chain professionals are for "abnormal" conditions. Understanding how the production and operations management field can affect the trajectory and especially the remediation of pandemics is a critical, but understudied, area of research from descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive perspectives. Fourteen research articles in this special issue have attempted to fill this gap with rigor. We first summarize these articles in six categories, (1) public policies and government interventions, (2) hospital capacity, (3) propagation of pandemics, (4) humanitarian operations, (5) private partnerships, and (6) vaccine production, by drawing out the themes addressed. As we look ahead at pandemics yet to come, we note there is still much research needed and conclude by discussing emergent interest in promising themes for studying pre‐pandemic, during pandemic, and post‐pandemic operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic researchers have long relied upon observation as a powerful means to learn about social relations. This paper discusses research observation that was conducted as a part of an institutional ethnography (IE) investigating how people use the language and ideas of neurodiversity across different settings. While our research protocol initially called for ethnographic observation to take place at in-person events in Southern Ontario, our approach needed to be re-formulated with the switch to online events during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the shift to online-only spaces, a total of 52 sessions at 7 online events related to neurodiversity or autism were observed by a team of 5 researchers: these events were no longer geographically restricted but were officially "hosted" by institutions in Canada, the US, and the UK. This paper reflects upon the challenges and opportunities we encountered as we conducted observations in digital spaces, including our experiences of navigating the "chat" feature. We discuss the need to analyze the format as well as the content of online events, and present findings on how neurodiversity appeared in these social spaces. Finally, we consider the implications of this research for people who are conducting ethnographic observation in an increasingly online world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic remains a significant threat, emphasizing the critical importance of mask-wearing to reduce infection risks. However, existing methods for mask detection encounter challenges such as identifying small targets and achieving high accuracy. In this paper, we present an enhanced YOLOv7 model tailored for mask-wearing detection. we employing a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to augment the original dataset, introducing the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) mechanism into the YOLOv7 model to enhance its small target detection capabilities, and replacing the model's activation function with Parametric Rectified Linear Unit (FReLU) to improve overall performance. Experimental validation on a dataset showcases an average precision of 97.8% and a real-time inference speed of 64 frames per second (fps), meeting the real-time mask-wearing detection requirements effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Digital Twins (DTs), virtual copies of physical entities, are a promising tool to help manage and predict outbreaks of Covid-19. By providing a detailed model of each patient, DTs can be used to determine what method of care will be most effective for that individual. The improvement in patient experience and care delivery will help to reduce demand on healthcare services and to improve hospital management. OBJECIVES: The aim of this study is to address 2 research questions: (1) How effective are DTs in predicting and managing infectious diseases such as Covid-19? and (2) What are the prospects and challenges associated with the use of DTs in healthcare? METHODS: The review was structured according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) framework. Titles and abstracts of references in PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar were searched using selected keywords (relating to digital twins, healthcare and Covid-19). The papers were screened in accordance with the inclusion and exclusion criteria so that all papers published in English relating to the use of digital twins in healthcare were included. A narrative synthesis was used to analyse the included papers. Results: Eighteen papers met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. None of the included papers examined the use of DTs in the context of Covid-19, or infectious disease outbreaks in general. Academic research about the applications, opportunities and challenges of DT technology in healthcare in general was found to be in early stages. CONCLUSIONS: The review identifies a need for further research into the use of DTs in healthcare, particularly in the context of infectious disease outbreaks. Based on frameworks identified during the review, this paper presents a preliminary conceptual framework for the use of DTs for hospital management during the Covid-19 outbreak to address this research gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has produced an unprecedented amount of scientific research, with over 100,000 articles on the SARS-COV2 virus or the associated pandemic published within the first year. To effectively disseminate such a large volume of research, some academic journal publishers altered their review criteria, and many articles were made available before undergoing a traditional review process. However, with this rapid influx of information, multiple COVID-19 articles have been retracted or withdrawn. Some researchers have expressed concern that these retractions call into question the validity of an expedited review process and the overall quality of the larger body of COVID-19 research. We examined 68 removed articles and determined that many of the articles were removed for unknown reasons (n = 22) or as duplications (n = 12); 24 papers were retracted for more significant reasons (data integrity, plagiarism, reporting or analysis, and IRB or privacy issues). The majority of removed papers were from the USA (n = 23) and China (n = 19). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the COVID-19 pandemic halting all in-person research in March 2020, many researchers adopted virtual methods to continue their work amid this global crisis. As the pandemic persisted and the safety of participants and researchers remained a priority, virtual research grew in popularity for qualitative researchers. This in turn led to methodological insights on the application and advantages of conducting qualitative research using virtual methods. Virtual methods have been found to enhance participant comfort, facilitate open discussion of sensitive topics, alleviate fatigue in participants and researchers, and result in more engaging and focused interviews. While the body of evidence supporting virtual methods of data collection for nursing and other healthcare disciplines continues to grow, its application in the long-term care (LTC) setting remains underreported. In this paper, we discuss the virtual methods that we developed and implemented to successfully conduct a virtual qualitative single case study in a Canadian LTC home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Considerations from existing literature on virtual methods are discussed in parallel with strategies we implemented to successfully conduct a virtual study in LTC. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on methodological insights into conducting virtual qualitative research in LTC. We provide evidence-based strategies for the virtual recruitment of study sites, study participants including residents, team members and families, and virtual data collection methods. These recommendations offer insights to overcome challenges and maximize the advantages of virtual methods, to enhance the quality and rigour of virtual qualitative research conducted within LTC settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic on society raised the question of how best to gauge society's psychological adaptation to continually evolving global disruptor events, such as Covid-19. This paper aims to illustrate the use of different approaches to monitor society's psychological response to Covid-19, in order to argue for a more comprehensive, multi-model, approach. The results from different approaches are presented in two studies employing measures of mental disorders and mental distress, respectively, using South African samples for demonstration. The first study presents findings from repeat administration of measures of common mental disorders (major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders) across three consecutive years, while the second study presents findings from mood response profiles (measured with the Brunel Mood Scale) collected across five time points during the Covid-19 pandemic. Both studies showed that the Covid-19 pandemic was temporally associated with adverse mental health outcomes across the mental health continuum, and that mental health profiles were associated with both time since onset of Covid-19 and subsequent wave occurrence. Elevated prevalence of common mental disorders, as well as fluctuating patterns of mood response profiles, are discussed against the context of Covid-19. The paper concludes that a multi-modal approach, for instance measuring specific mental disorders as well as more general mental distress, is crucial to comprehensively understand society's psychological adaptation to major disruptor events, and guide health sector responses. The paper serves as a reminder to continue to observe mental health more inclusively to appropriately respond to the psychological needs of communities. Plain Language Summary: Measuring mental health across Covid-19 waves The impact of Covid-19 on mental health raised the question of how can we best measure how society adapts, psychologically, to major events that disrupt life. This article looked at two specific ways to measure and monitor society's psychological response to Covid-19. The first study looked at the prevalence of mental disorders, and the second looked at levels of mental distress. Both studies used South African samples to demonstrate this. The first study presented data from a repeat administration of scales that identify depressive and anxiety disorders, completed across three consecutive years. The second study presented findings from mood response profiles (measured with the Brunel Mood Scale) collected across five time points during the Covid-19 pandemic. The results showed that the pandemic was associated with adverse mental health outcomes—across the mental health continuum—and that mental health profiles were associated with both time since the start of Covid-19 and fluctuated with the subsequent waves across the pandemic time-line. This article demonstrated the importance of using a multi-modal approach to fully understand society's psychological response to major life disruptions. It also acted as reminder to monitor mental health continuously to be able to respond to the psychological needs of communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative researchers experience a myriad of emotions during fieldwork. Yet, a reluctance to display and openly discuss emotions in relation to research practice means little insight on how these can inform the research process exists. In this paper, we explore the researcher's emotions in an organizational ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three emotional triggers (uncertain field access, disrupted research practices, and researcher exposure) and discuss the researcher's embodied experiences and reflexive responses. We present four ways in which the researcher's emotions can be used as a resource for embodied reflexivity: (i) deepening field engagement through a focus on collective experiences, (ii) using the researcher's agency to refocus data collection and enhance creativity, (iii) merging inward and outward focus to reframe the research project, and (iv) visualizing emotions throughout the research process to avoid mind-body dualisms. This paper joins recent discussions on qualitative methods and reflexivity and answers calls for making the researcher's field presence visible in qualitative research. We contribute by delineating ways in which emotions, as a resource for embodied reflexivity, can inform qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many research projects were forced to adapt their design and conduct interviews online. This paper discusses the benefits and challenges of using online focus groups with participants representing different generations and cultural and social backgrounds. Based on the researchers' experiences and field notes from a three-country comparative project, aiming at analysing the extent to which previous experience of state surveillance impacted attitudes to commercial monitoring and tracking of online behaviour among two generational cohorts, the paper identifies seven aspects where the move from offline to online interviewing interfered with the original research design. The paper suggests that most of these interferences resulted in a need to adjust the methodology to better fit the online setting. We reflect critically upon the issues of technological preconditions and digital skills, recruitment, group size, degrees of previous acquaintance, the role of the interviewer, participants' household status and media environment, and ethical considerations concerning privacy and data management. Based on these methodological insights, we conclude that future online focus group research would benefit from using smaller groups and adjusted moderation, flexibility in interviewing tools and channels, and new, online-specific ethical considerations when planning, executing, and analysing interviews. The paper advocates the complementarity between in-person and online focus groups as two modalities of data collection and argues for the normalization of hybrid methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Adolescent girls face numerous challenges which hinder their ability to manage menstruation in a healthy and dignified manner. Objectives: To examine the menstrual hygiene practices of adolescent girls schooling in rural Anambra communities. Study design: Cross-sectional descriptive study. Method: Participants were selected using multistage stratified random sampling technique and interviewed using self-administered semi-structured questionnaire. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22.0. Results: Mean age of all, pre-menarche and post-menarche girls were 14.7 ± 1.84, 12.8 ± 1.09 and 15.1 ± 1.73 years, respectively. About 46% of the pre-menarche girls had not received any information on menstruation. Common sources of initial menstruation information were mother (87.3%), school (52.2%) and peers (20.0%). Among the 1091 (85.0% (1091/1283)) post-menarche girls, last menstrual period, last menstrual period duration and cycle length could not be recalled by 53.9%, 34.4% and 39.3%, respectively. Majority (98.3%) who could recall last menstrual period had a cycle length of ⩽30 days and the mean duration of menses was 4.4 ± 0.84 days. Disposable sanitary pad was mostly (60%) cited as recommended product, but cloth/rags (40.6%) or tissue paper (32. 3%) were predominantly used. Majority (88.6%) took their bath ⩾twice/day, 50.9% changed sanitary product ⩽twice/day while 72.5% exhibited poor hand washing. Sanitary products were mostly discarded by burning (45.4%). Fifty-one percent could not change in school predominantly due to lack of functional toilets/changing rooms (84.2%) while 72.5% of those who changed did so in bushes or unused spaces. Challenges faced during menstruation include restriction from holy places (38.9%), waist pain (74.9%), blood stains (36.1%) and lack of money to buy pad (27.0%). Factors significantly associated with using commercial pads were age (p = 0.047), class (p = 0.006), mother's educational status (p < 0.001), social class (p < 0.001), ability to recall last menstrual period date (p = 0.029) or duration (p = 0.001). Conclusion: Menstrual hygiene management was unsatisfactory among studied adolescents. Continuous education of adolescent girls on menstrual hygiene management and advocacy for adequate menstrual hygiene management support are imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, primary care nurses were often redeployed to areas outside of primary care to mitigate staffing shortages. Despite this, there is a scarcity of literature describing their perceptions of and experiences with redeployment during the pandemic. Objectives: This paper aims to: 1) describe the perspectives of primary care nurses with respect to redeployment, 2) discuss the opportunities/challenges associated with redeployment of primary care nurses, and 3) examine the nature (e.g., settings, activities) of redeployment by primary care nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with primary care nurses (i.e., Nurse Practitioners, Registered Nurses, and Licensed/Registered Practical Nurses), from four regions in Canada. These include the Interior, Island, and Vancouver Coastal Health regions in British Columbia; Ontario Health West region in Ontario; the province of Nova Scotia; and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Data related to redeployment were analyzed thematically. Results: Three overarching themes related to redeployment during the COVID-19 pandemic were identified: (1) Call to redeployment, (2) Redeployment as an opportunity/challenge, and (3) Scope of practice during redeployment. Primary care nurses across all regulatory designations reported variation in the process of redeployment within their jurisdiction (e.g., communication, policies/legislation), different opportunities and challenges that resulted from redeployment (e.g., scheduling flexibility, workload implications), and scope of practice implications (e.g., perceived threat to nursing license). The majority of nurses discussed experiences with redeployment being voluntary in nature, rather than mandated. Conclusions: Redeployment is a useful workforce strategy during public health emergencies; however, it requires a structured process and a decision-making approach that explicitly involves healthcare providers affected by redeployment. Primary care nurses ought only to be redeployed after other options are considered and arrangements made for the care of patients in their original practice area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how bank funding diversity and lending affect bank performance, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. We employ the Generalized Method of Moments to analyze unbalanced panels of commercial banks in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The empirical results show that a percentage increase in bank funding diversity and bank lending in the sample negatively affects profitability. In contrast, the results are mixed in each country due to different market microstructures. While holding diversified funding strengthens bank profitability during the pandemic, increasing lending activities dampers the bank's performance. Finally, this research has important implications for bank managers and regulators to develop sustainable banking performance in emerging markets, especially during pandemics. Plain Language Summary: This paper investigates how bank funding diversity and lending affect bank performance, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. We employ the Generalized Method of Moments to analyze unbalanced panels of commercial banks in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The empirical results show that a percentage increase in bank funding diversity and bank lending in the sample negatively affects profitability. In contrast, the results are mixed in each country due to different market microstructures. While holding diversified funding strengthens bank profitability during the pandemic, increasing lending activities dampers the bank's performance. Finally, this research has important implications for bank managers and regulators to develop sustainable banking performance in emerging markets, especially during pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the COVID-19, it is very significant to explore the dynamic fluctuation of China's export growth to the international market and examine the causes of this fluctuation in a multi-dimensional way. The dynamic fluctuation level is measured in the short and medium-long cycle respectively based on monthly data. Factor decomposition of the dynamic fluctuation is made from the growth effect, the structure effect and the competitiveness effect by the improved CMS model, which results show that the growth effect has decreased first and then increased; The structure effects include market structure effects and commodity structure effects, and the former effect basically fluctuates around the X-axis while there is a negative commodity structure effect; There are different specific competitiveness effects on 21 categories of goods. China should rely on the RCEP agreement to strengthen and stabilize trade cooperation other countries, and strengthen its core position in the industry chain and value chain in the Asia Pacific region. The current paper creatively introduce the trade expansion margin including the ternary margin and product structure into the CMS model, explaining the internal relationship between the trade expansion margin analysis at the product- market level and the CMS analysis at the overall level; meanwhile, this paper analyses the dynamic fluctuation structure of China's export growth to Japan and South Korea through a CMS factor decomposition from the perspective of technological structure and factor ladder, and studies the source and dynamic distribution evolution of this growth pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine how a shock in the oil industry affects firms' debt funding obligations using credit default swaps in different segments of the oil industry's value chain. In particular, it focuses on two types of shocks suffered by upstream, integrated and downstream firms in the industry, namely (1) endogenous shocks resulting from oil-market shocks, and (2) exogenous shocks resulting from the recent financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. Using a wide data set ranging from 2007 to 2020, this paper measures the dynamic relationships between the CDS spreads of oil-related firms, US dollar exchange rates, and crude oil prices at different sectors of the oil-industry value chain, namely, upstream, integrated and downstream. Overall results show that the upstream firms have suffered the largest impacts during the COVID-19 crisis, when experiencing shocks from USD rates or oil prices. Integrated firms have suffered the second-largest effects, however, and interestingly, no significant impacts from shocks are observed on CDS spreads for downstream firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current COVID-19 pandemic situation has stimulated an unplanned clinical research paradigm which is evident from the surge of clinical trial registrations and the increasing number of COVID-related publications. We aimed to explore the standards for research conduction, publications and retraction of articles related to COVID-19 pharmacotherapy research during the pandemic. We analysed data from the contemporary literatures on studies reporting pharmacological agents for COVID-19 using MEDLINE, PubMed, WHO database and Google Scholar between January 01, 2020 and March 20, 2021. The initial search revealed a total of 61,801 articles. Based on the inclusion criteria, a total of 124 studies related to various pharmacological agents were included in the final analysis. Most of the studies were reported from the United States (n = 30, 24%). Of the 124 studies, 50 (40%) were randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Immunomodulatory drugs-related (n = 17, 34%) and COVID-19 vaccine-related studies (n = 14, 28%) were the main topics in the relevant RCTs. The median days for dissemination of findings in journals were 114 days (IQR 61–189). A comparative analysis revealed that RCTs were disseminated earlier (median 79 days; IQR 52–131) when compared to observational studies (median = 144 days; IQR 69–206) (p = 0.003). Six papers were retracted from high impact journals; in which the average period till publication was 33 days. Retraction of papers occurred within 10–48 days. Expedited reviews, research approval and early publications of COVID-19 related pharmaceutical studies could have an impact on the quality of publications. However, the huge number of publications in short time creates confusion for readers during the early phases of the pandemic. Retraction of papers is alarming but ensures research integrity and correctness of scientific information. These abbreviated processes could affect patient care and public awareness. It is imperative to follow rapid but rigours ethical standards for research approval and peer-review process for publications during health pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The COVID-19 (C19) pandemic shocked primary care systems around the world. Those systems responded by supporting patients in the community, and acute care facilities in crisis. In Canada, the Patient Medical Home (PMH) is a widely adopted care model that aims to operationalize the tenets and principles of Primary Health Care (PHC) as developed since the Alma-Ata Declaration. This paper describes how personnel working in and with Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in Alberta, Canada deployed the PMH model and its underlying PHC principles to frame and respond to the C19 shock. Methods: Using purposive and snowball sampling techniques, we interviewed 57 participants who worked in public health and primary care, including community-based family physicians. We used interpretive description to analyze the interviews. Results: PCN staff and physicians described how the PMH model was foundational to normal operations, and how C19 responses were framed by the patient-centric, team-delivered, and continuous care principles the model shares with PHC. Specifically, participants described ensuring access to care, addressing the social determinants of health, being patient centered, and redeploying and expanding PHC teams to accomplish these goals. Discussion: Delivering PHC through the PMH allowed physicians and allied health staff to deliver patient-centered, team-based, holistic bio-medical services to Albertans. In tailoring services to meet the specific social and health needs of the populations served by each PCN, healthcare providers were able to ensure relevant support remained available and accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explored the determinants of well-being, quality of relationships (QOR), and loneliness among people of Botswana before and during the novel COVID-19 pandemic. It also examined whether there were significant differences between participants' well-being, loneliness, and QOR before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Factors associated with the well-being, loneliness, and QOR of the Botswana population before and during the COVID-19 pandemic were also explored. A cross-sectional design was used to collect information on the three variables before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using online platforms. Convenience sampling was used to recruit participants (N = 422) using the WHO-5, Three-Item Loneliness Scale, and the Relationship Quality Index (RQI). Data were analyzed using bivariate and multivariate mixed-effects linear models. Age, relationship status, concern about own and family health, difficulty switching on and off media reporting on COVID, change in lifestyle, participation in sports, and resting were significantly associated with well-being (p\.001) and loneliness (p\.05). Sleep was associated with QOR. There were significant differences in the well-being, QOR, and loneliness scores before COVID-19 conditions and during COVID-19 conditions. Stakeholders should take cognizance of the impact of predictor variables on well-being and loneliness to mitigate the impact of current and future pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has had an irreversible impact on the global economy and industries, particularly in the healthcare sector. The rush to respond to the pandemic, particularly in terms of getting treatment and vaccines and technology to market, has created a huge opportunity for undisclosed corruption and misconduct in the research and development and procurement processes. Effectively responding to current and future global health corruption threats is critical if the world is to provide health care to all. Due to a lack of research in preventive corruption measures in the healthcare industry, this paper aims to provide an overview of anti-corruption efforts among healthcare companies listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia. The disclosure index is made up of 47 items derived from a review of previous literature and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Act. The content analysis research method is used to analyze information from 13 companies listed in 2020's anti-corruption policies and procedures published on their website, board charter, whistleblowing policy, code of ethics and conduct, annual report, sustainability report, and corporate governance report. According to the findings, Malaysia's healthcare industry has demonstrated a strong commitment to fighting corruption, with 76.9% of companies scoring higher than average on the disclosure index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how tourists develop adaptive perceptions in response to pandemic situations and how these perceptions influence their international travel decision-making toward a COVID-19-shaken destination in the new normal era. The survey was administered to Chinese potential international tourists and 608 questionnaires were utilized in data analysis. The results revealed the indirect effect of COVID-19 risk perception on travel intention first through cognitive image and then through affective image. Cognitive and affective images were identified as mediators of these interrelationships. The findings also showed that COVID-19 displayed varying effects on tourists with different past travel experiences. By unveiling factors influencing individuals' travel decision-making in the new normal era, this study provides a theoretical basis for understanding the psychological and behavioral effects caused by a pandemic; delineating the underlying mechanism of the COVID-19 risk perception effect on international travel decision-making; expanding the research on destination image by clarifying the mediating roles of cognitive and affective images and their relation; providing timely and insightful implications for post-pandemic tourism recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social value created by organizations has been in the spotlight during periods of rapid social change, such as COVID-19. However, the existing literature has been limited by the inability to demonstrate the cumulative effects of social value over time, which has led to academic and practical limitations. Drawing on stakeholder theory, socially responsible customer behavior, and institutional theory, the author collected data from 208 social enterprises in South Korea over 3 years, from 2017 to 2019, and tested hypotheses using latent growth modeling. This analytical technique, which uses structural equation modeling, estimates the latent growth rate of each data measure by year and analyzes the causal relationship between the growth rate of each variable. The results show that higher levels of social entrepreneurship are associated with higher growth rates of total employment and vulnerable worker employment, followed by higher growth rates of financial performance. The implications of this paper are as follows. First, this study reports that social entrepreneurship can help social enterprises develop sustainably by increasing financial performance. Second, this study overcomes the methodological limitations of the existing literature by reporting the relationship between growth rates. Third, this study reports that social enterprises can help solve employment problems for vulnerable populations, who are often the first to be affected by the economic crisis. Fourth, this study contributes to resolving the conflicting and contradictory perspectives of practitioners and academics on the relationship between social and economic value. Fifth, it offers suggestions for the future direction of the academic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comprehensively examines how school leaders in Kazakhstan managed schools during the COVID-19 school closures. An online survey was conducted with 1,298 school leaders, representing 17.5% of all Kazakhstani schools. Anchored in the concept of crisis leadership, the instrument measured school leaders' views regarding teachers' digital competence, their support toward teachers in digital pedagogy, as well as their practices in communicating with parents and teacher autonomy and monitoring. The results of bivariate tests indicate that a significant proportion of schools offered teachers online professional development opportunities to improve their digital instruction, with school location and size influencing the level of training in digital pedagogy received by teachers. Notably, school leaders' confidence in their teachers' ability to teach effectively online increased significantly after receiving training in digital pedagogy. School leaders also maintained regular communication with parents, but this increased their workload, particularly for women and urban school leaders. Most school leaders allowed teachers to choose online platforms and revise curriculum content, while also monitoring teachers' attendance and observing online lessons. These practices varied based on the school's medium of instruction. This study significantly contributes to crisis leadership by examining practices during school closures in addressing teachers' digital competence, communication challenges, and teacher autonomy, with insights on variations by school type, location, and leaders' gender. The study's findings have significant implications for post-pandemic school leadership, emphasizing equity in professional development opportunities for teachers, effective communication with stakeholders, and striking the right balance between teacher autonomy and monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As society evolves, moving forward into the realms of Industry 5.0, it is imperative to develop a robust collaborative talent management model that can endure external crises such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the antiquity of collaborative practices--traceable back to early human societies--both practitioners and academics have frequently focused primarily on exploring the catalysts for collaboration, often neglecting to provide a holistic conceptualization of effective human collaboration. In alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, this paper endeavors to critically review and delineate the evolution of talent management and collaborative intelligence literature. Employing a systematic review methodology, this study aims to formulate a novel framework for collaborative talent management, drawing upon the principles of a collaborative intelligence mindset, and to suggest avenues for future research in this domain. The findings propose the employment of collaborative intelligence through a mindset perspective as a means to bridge the literature gaps identified in areas such as interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration, digitalization and artificial intelligence, collaborative leadership styles, and performance measurement within the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, anti-Asian racism re-emerged during the coronavirus pandemic in Germany and elsewhere, manifesting in media narratives, and evoking different forms of violence and exclusion, especially in public space. Racialisation as an everyday process creates "counter-frames" by racialised groups. They are constructed in relation to institutionalised interpellation as "the other." Building on Feagin's concept of "white framing" and "counter-framing" and Löw's concept of space, this paper discusses the effects of racialisation, coping and anti-racist resistance strategies as developed by the Asian diaspora. Social change regarding racism will be analysed through Foroutan's concept of "postmigrant society." We based this study on a convenience sample of people with Asian heritage which we conducted in 2020 in Germany. In addition, we included a diary study for which a subset has been sampled. We argue that the pandemic influenced the formation of counter-frames against anti-Asian racism in the specific context of Berlin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for management scholars to address large-scale and complex societal problems and strive for greater practical and policy impact. A brief overview of the most-cited work on COVID-19 reveals that, compared with their counterparts in other disciplines, leading management journals and professional associations lagged in providing a platform for high-impact research on COVID-19. To help management research play a more active role in responding to similar global challenges in the future, we propose an integrative framework that emphasizes a phenomenon's impact, the conditions that the phenomenon creates at multiple levels, and the responses of actors to such conditions, as well as the dynamic relationships and interactions among these actors. By shifting attention to phenomena and their overall impact, this framework can help scholars better position their work to address large-scale and complex problems and also to assess research for its contribution to generate impact beyond academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the self-study methods used by pilots while grounded and their perception of competence decline and confidence upon their return to flying. Background: Previously, long absences from flying were managed on a case-by-case basis. Thousands of pilots returning to flying as the pandemic eases have burdened airline training systems. Limited research has been conducted on the decline in skills of airline pilots while operationally absent from the cockpit. Few studies have considered this topic in the context of a pandemic. Method: A questionnaire study was conducted with 234 airline pilots who were grounded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Uncertainty regarding sudden and indefinite periods of grounding made it challenging to maintain motivation to self-study. This matter was aggravated by the additional financial and personal stress caused by the state of the airline industry and the outcomes of the pandemic. The participants anticipated a decline in manual flying skills as the worst outcome after being absent from the flight deck. However, these pilots proved quick to recover these skills when they resumed flying. It took significantly more time for pilots to regain proficiency in applying knowledge, procedures and compliance with regulations, situation awareness and workload management. Conclusion: The study proposes recommendations for pilots and airlines to harness essential self-study practices in competency areas identified to have significantly declined. Application: The outcome of this paper guides airlines, pilots and regulators in better understanding how grounded pilots observe skill decline in a broader range of competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online communication in our work and private lives has increased significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative research has evolved with this trend with many studies adopting online methods. It is therefore timely to assess the use and utility of online focus groups compared to face-to-face focus groups. Traditional Pearl Growing Methodology was used to identify eligible papers. Data were extracted on data collection methods, recruitment and sampling strategies, analytical approaches to comparing data sets, the depth of data produced, participant interactions and the required resources. A total of 26 papers were included in the review. Along with face-to-face focus groups (n = 26) 16 studies conducted synchronous, eight asynchronous and two both online focus group methods. Most studies (n = 22) used the same recruitment method for both face-to-face and online focus groups. A variety of approaches to compare data sets were used in studies. Of the studies reporting on depth of data (n = 19), nine found that face-to-face groups produced the most in-depth data, four online groups and six equivalent data. Participant interaction was reported to be greater during face-to-face groups in 10 studies; three reported online groups produced greater interaction and six equivalent interaction. Detailed resource use comparisons were not presented in any of the studies. This review demonstrates that to date there is not a clear consensus as to whether face-to-face or online focus groups hold specific advantages in terms of the data produced and the resources required. Given these findings it may be appropriate for researchers to consider using online focus groups where time and resources are constrained, or where these are more practicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, using the event study approach for the Bucharest Stock Exchange, by which Bucharest Stock Indices and listed firms grouped by sectors were analyzed. The paper uses three important event days, 20 January 2020, 11 March 2020, and 15 March 2020. The findings demonstrate that initially investors were not concerned about the pandemic, showing that they did not realize the extent of globalization and transmission of events on financial markets. Both after 11 March and after 15 March 2020, stock indices have declined, investors becoming worried about the prospects of their dividends and the stock liquidity. The most affected sectors were those related to metallurgical industry, IT&C. After the lockdown, there was a reversal for some sectors like pharmaceutical and biotechnology, electricity production, transportation and distribution, and IT&C. Understanding the intensity and direction of the link between some sectors and indices may influence investment strategies and help in hedging, especially in times of pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses providing (or not) information about coronavirus during the pandemics of COVID-19 in minority languages in Russia. It explores different minority languages, indigenous, and migrant, in the announcements and doctor-patient communications. The study is based on the observation of the linguistic landscape in 4 Russian cities (N=150) and on materials from semi-structured interviews. According to the data, Russian has been the preferred language for communicating official information about COVID-19. Doctor-patient communication in the multilingual regions was also predominantly in Russian, but there is a tendency to use another, minority native language in communication with mid-level medical staff and with all other actors in the rural area. The paper discusses creation of a more trusting relationship between a doctor and a patient by using the native language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a UK-based group of female postgraduate researchers, the authors explored their experiences during COVID-19 pandemic through multivocal inquiry via a feminist collaborative autoethnographic project. In this paper, we use the Listening Guide as a tool to revisit and (re)analyse data from the aforementioned project, displaying findings in the form of voice poems. In utilising the Listening Guide, we discovered that listening is less of an exercise and more an art form. While the structured approach of the LG helped to enhance our understandings of wider individual experiences of disability and womanhood, identities that all authors inhabit, we were surprised to find that despite our established mutual trust and superficially similar experiences, we were unable to find emotional resonance through data that wasn't our own voice. We also found that the traditional stepped process of the LG that incorporates four listens to the data left our interpretations feeling flat. Through reflexivity and the novel collaborative approach we undertook in this analysis, we identified and implemented an augmentation of the Listening Guide process. In this paper, we propose an additional fifth listen, focusing on emotion, to facilitate a more holistic analysis of voice data. We explore how the fifth listen assisted the (re)construction of individual and collective identities, helping us to reshape our understandings. Finally, we elucidate the positives and pitfalls we experienced in the Listening Guide as a data analysis tool, recommending to other researchers the adoption of an iterative, flexible and reflexive approach in using it during collaborative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the many indirect consequences of the COVID pandemic for the research sector may be the impact upon consumers' willingness to share data. One relates to building sufficient trust with research participants to be facilitate data collection, and the second is building trust with the users of research. Special issue call for papers: market research & insight: past, present and future I'm pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue I "Market Research & Insight: Past, Present and Future" i to be published in 2021. [Extracted from the article]

First, an examination of international media's coverage of China's efforts to stem the virus from spread tells us a lot about the image of China during this period. After more than 18 years of further political, economic and social changes, especially with social media playing a more active role in China, is China's media landscape changed, and if so, in what ways? The coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak was prolonged in time, leading to multiple stories by multiple media on multiple platforms. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: During Japan's initial pandemic prevention and control period, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT) issued several notifications to ensure students' continuous learning according to the "leave no one behind" philosophy. This study focused on the comprehensive measures comprising top-level arrangements to implement the "suspending classes without stopping learning" initiative. Design/Approach/Methods: The study reviewed MEXT's guide on ensuring learning for Japanese primary and secondary school students during the pandemic. Findings: The pandemic has accelerated the development of the information and communications technology educational environment and the implementation of the Global and Innovation Gateway for All (GIGA) schools initiative. These developments laid the foundation for the evolution of diverse pedagogical models and feasible methods for promoting equity. The home schooling experience during the pandemic provided a natural base for students to practice and foster survivability. Originality/Value: This paper provides scholars with an understanding of the opportunities and challenges encountered in educational innovation in Japan. It provides insights into the future direction of pedagogical development, capability development, and effective educational arrangements for extraordinary circumstances to facilitate educational development from a broader perspective, particularly under the new normal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homework as an essential component of the academic process supports teaching and learning by consolidating what the students learn in class and promoting their study skills and self-paced work capacities. While homework characteristics and its efficacy are reported to be interrelated, there is a lacuna in the research on the effectiveness of homework policy in learning outcomes in online classes, particularly under adverse conditions. As a result, the current study investigated the effects of homework policy (leniency vs. strictness) on EFL learners literacy (reading and writing) development, focusing on their academic self-regulation (ASR) level in a distance learning course amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were gathered from 36 K-10 students organized into homework packet and homework leniency groups. Their literacy skills and ASR were assessed before and after the study. Due to schools closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, both groups participated in distance learning courses delivered via the national mobile-based LMS. The results of the two-way Analysis of Variance primarily revealed a significant development in the reading and writing skills of the homework-packet group. Despite the marginal difference between the reading performance of high and low self-regulated participants of both homework conditions at the end of the study, a significant difference in the development of the writing skills of high self-regulated participants of the homework-packet condition was observed. The critical role of homework strictness in online courses and promoting learners' self-regulation skills to benefit from the assigned homework, particularly in teaching writing, is underscored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVES: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a destabilizing experience for medical students and resident doctors and troubles their training in the hospital setting. This narrative review aims to identify the effect of health crises on the academic and personal lives of medical trainees and to develop solutions to support them. METHODS: EducationSource, MedLine and PsychInfo were consulted on June 30th and December 16th, 2020 to identify the articles explaining the effect of SARS-CoV-1 (2002), A/H1N1 (2009) or SARS-CoV-2 (ongoing) on medical learners. Exclusion criteria included policy papers, letters to the editor or articles detailing the impact on undergraduate medical curricula, on nonmedical trainees, on the residency application process, or the physical impact of the disease. The quality of the selected papers was appraised using CASP for qualitative studies and NHLBI-NIH for cross-sectional studies. RESULTS: Ninety-four manuscripts were initially generated and 229, secondarily, of which respectively 14 and 16 were included in the final analysis according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and reviewed qualitatively. It was found that the learners consider their education compromised by exam delays, the suspension of academic activities, and elective surgeries. Anxiety associated with this academic disruption developed. Burnout is exacerbated by the heightened workload. The main difference between the two searches was the long-term effect of COVID-19, including the opportunity for didactic innovation, the worry regarding professional identity formation and the development of mental health issues. The proposed solutions varied from continuous access to mental health resources to the follow-up of learners' well-being. CONCLUSION: It would be interesting to assess the impact of medical trainees' specialty and country's development on their experience with COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged healthcare providers to adapt their models of care and leverage technology to continue to provide necessary care while reducing the likelihood of exposure. One setting that faced a unique set of challenges and opportunities was free and charitable clinics. In response to the emerging pandemic, The North Carolina Association for Free and Charitable Clinics (NCAFCC) offered their 66 member clinics access to a telehealth platform, free of charge. Objective: This paper explores the varied perspectives of leaders in the NCAFCC member clinics regarding the implementation of telehealth services to facilitate continuity of care for patients during the height of the pandemic. Design: This qualitative study is part of a broader research effort to understand and contextualize the experience of implementing and using telehealth services by North Carolina free and charitable clinics during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team conducted 13 key informant interviews and employed thematic analysis and grounded theory to explore critical themes and construct a model based on the CFIR to describe the use of telehealth in free and charitable clinics. Results: Twelve clinic managers and executive directors from free and charitable clinics across the state participated in the key informant interviews providing their unique perspective on the experience of implementing telehealth services in a free and charitable clinic environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. When examined within the lens of the consolidated framework for implementation research (CFIR), 3 key themes emerged from the key informant interviews: mission driven patient centered care, resilience and resourcefulness, and immediate implementation. Conclusions: This study aligns with existing literature regarding telehealth implementation across other safety net provider settings and highlights the key implementation factors, organizational elements, provider perspectives, and patient needs that must collectively be considered when implementing new technologies, especially in a low-resource, high need healthcare setting. The study showcases the implementation climate, resourcefulness, and mission driven approach that allowed many NCAFCC clinics to respond to an emergent situation by adopting and implementing a telehealth platform in a period of 2 weeks or less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship has been claimed to matter and deserve priority because it has been linked to some of the most compelling economic and social issues of our time. This paper suggests that entrepreneurship is also inextricably linked to a fundamental value common among the western developed economies, democracy. Three distinct contexts are examined to link democracy to entrepreneurship, two historical and one contemporary. The first is National Socialism in Germany, which emerged by suppressing both entrepreneurship and democracy. The second is the rise of the Trusts, or dominant large corporations and concomitant decline of small business in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, both measurement and perception suggest a decline in democracy as well as entrepreneurship in the contemporary era. These concerns are only exacerbated in the current Covid-19 crisis. The paper concludes that an important policy mandate for entrepreneurship may be to ensure the independent, decentralized and autonomous decision-making serving as a cornerstone of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home became the new normal for many professionals. While this was beneficial in managing the rapidly spreading virus, it had varying impacts on the mental health of those previously not accustomed to remote work. This paper provides a critical reflection of the researcher's experience of conducting interviews with survivors of trauma while working from home. The research aimed to understand the experiences of significant others supporting patients with severe burn injury in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). As an experienced ICU nurse, the researcher has well developed personal coping strategies for dealing with complex trauma and in working with significant others of patients with severe burn injury in hospital settings. Due to the pandemic, data collection moved from face-to-face in the hospital, as originally intended, to phone or videoconference interviews. 17 participants were recruited, with all participants given the option of videoconference (n = 3) or telephone interviews (n = 14). Interviews had an average length of 55 minutes. This paper discusses the strategies adopted to cope with the sharing of significant others' experiences of trauma while in the home environment. Careful consideration was needed for the researcher, the participants and those within the homes of both researcher and participant, in terms of psychological safety, ethical considerations and rapport building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher education has gathered interest globally and nationally among teachers, educators, researchers and policy makers. Madalinska-Michalak, O 'Doherty and Assunção Flores (2018) observe that regional/ national, social, economic, political and historical factors impact upon teacher education and 'it is also impacted by global problems and tendencies' (pp. 567). This paper builds on these debates and examines the effects of global discourses of teacher education in the national contexts of developed and developing countries, for example, Guyana, Japan, South Africa, United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK). This includes consideration of teacher education and training before and during the current global Covid-19 pandemic (UNESCO, 2020). The paper concludes that teacher education continues to be under scrutiny due to global and national expectations, the demand of and how they are positioned in preparing teachers for the 21st century. Notwithstanding, as globalisation becomes more integrated in societies globally teacher education curricula not only has to retain its emphasis on standards, but equally its agility to ensure that the needs of all learners are met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth in fully online mathematics education has been steady for decades. This is where essentially all interactions associated with the teaching and learning process are mediated via the online medium. Initially spurred on by technological innovation and a variety of socio-cultural forces, growth has more recently rapidly accelerated due to pandemic restrictions. Many suggest we are on the precipice of profound transformation in mathematics education, the outlines of which remain unknown. In leveraging online education possibilities and advancing online mathematics education, this paper considers aesthetic experiences associated with learning mathematics fully online. First, three assumptions are made to highlight the importance of these experiences. Second, three challenges are identified regarding the current state of fully online mathematics education. Finally, specific instructional design and online teaching strategies are outlined that potentiate experiences of wonder and beauty often associated with mathematical discovery. As its central theme, the paper seeks to answer how we may take advantage of this technology in delivering quality mathematics education without allowing it to diminish our human essence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue of Global Media and China responds in part to Stuart Hall's famous 1996 invocation, 'Who needs identity?' – to study 'specific enunciative strategies' utilized within 'specific modalities of power' so as to consider identity discourses of the present and of the future. This issue draws upon empirical observations presented and debated at the 2019 Chinese Internet Research Conference held in Singapore in May 2019, as well as theoretical contributions in identity politics and social media, the chosen site or 'modality of power'. This editorial and critical essay reflects upon, complemented and supported by the papers in this issue, the critical and conceptual frameworks that are emerging to critique the global and local complexities, diversity and dynamics resulting from the deeper integration of social media into the everyday lives of Chinese Internet users. It presents an overview of the 2019 Chinese Internet Research Conference proceedings in terms of how social media is used to wrap personal politics into a widening range of identity groupings around gender, class, citizens, pop culture and religion in ways that signal the future of newer forms of identity politics among Internet users in China. Since social media posts and exchanges, while geographically sourced and situated, often transcend their boundaries, the arguments presented here goes beyond China and are global. The shareability of identity mediated by individual, state and public discourses on social and 'anti-social' media during the COVID-19 pandemic within China, Singapore and Australia leads to novel ways of understanding identity politics in globalizing China and strategic uses of Chinese identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: A greater understanding of Over the Counter (OTC) and Prescription Only Medication (POM) misuse amongst adults accessing substance misuse services (SMS) during COVID-19 is required to identify how SMS can better meet the needs of the people who require treatment. AIM: To use a questionnaire to explore OTC/POM misuse during COVID-19 in adults accessing community SMS in England. METHODS: In 2020 to 2021 anonymous self-administered online/paper questionnaires which collated quantitative and qualitative data were completed. They were piloted for suitability and ethical approval was obtained. Thematic analysis was conducted for qualitative data and chi-square tests used to assess the relationship between quantitative variables. RESULTS: Participants were Caucasian (94.6% British), majority male (58.9%), aged 18 to 61 years. Most were prescribed medication for problematic substance use, with a 92.5% self-reported adherence rate. The misuse of benzodiazepines (22.2%) codeine products (30.8%) and pregabalin (14.5%) predominated and 37.5% misused 2 or more medicines. Administration was usually oral and concomitant use of other substances was common: alcohol 44.6% (52% daily), tobacco/vaping 73.2% and illicit substances 58.9%. There were statistically significant associations identified, including between changes during COVID-19 to OTC/POM misuse and illicit use. Only 56 questionnaires were included in the analysis: we believe this low number was because of infection control measures, limited footfall in services, pressures on staff limiting their capacity to distribute the paper questionnaires and reliance upon telephone consultations limiting online distribution. Increasing OTC/POM misuse and obtaining illicit supplies were reported when access to usual supplies were restricted; however, changes to doses/dispensing arrangement liberalisation in response to COVID-19 were positively viewed. CONCLUSION: OTC/POM misuse, including polypharmacy and concomitant use of other substances occurred during COVID-19: SMS need to be vigilant for these issues and mitigate the associated risks for example with harm reduction interventions. Further qualitative research is required to explore the issues identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted major challenges in governance and inequalities particularly among those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups. This paper focuses on the BAME community and explores this through a governance lens, with particular reference to the representation and functioning of boards involved in healthcare and building a transparent culture. To illustrate this, the paper utilises a series of structured reflective questions with model answers termed Right Question, Right Answer and links to the Centre for Quality in Governance (CQG) Maturity Matrix. This article highlights the need to improve diversity and accountability of health and care organisations to their staff and local population. For governance to be effective, it must be aligned and comply with healthcare system regulations to ensure improvement of legislative acts and standards. The paper aims to inform government policy by moving from rhetoric, or merely describing challenges, to action and change by increasing accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has posed serious threats and challenges to global supply chain management (GSCM). To survive the crisis, it is critical to rethink the proper setting of global supply chains and reform many related operational strategies. We hence attempt to reform the GSCM from both supply and demand sides considering different pandemic stages (i.e., pre, during, and post‐pandemic stages). In this research paper, we combine a careful literature review with real‐world case studies to examine the impacts and specific challenges brought by the pandemic to global supply chains. We first classify the related literature from the demand and supply sides. Based on the insights obtained, we search publicly available information and report real practices of GSCM under COVID‐19 in nine top global enterprises. To achieve responsiveness, resilience, and restoration (3Rs), we then propose the "GREAT‐3Rs" framework, which shows the critical issues and measures for reforming GSCM under the three pandemic stages. In particular, the "GREAT" part of the framework includes five critical domains, namely, "government proactive policies and measures," "redesigning global supply chains," "economic and financing strategies under risk," "adjustment of operations," and "technology adoption," to help global enterprises to survive the pandemic; "3Rs" are the outputs that can be achieved after using the "GREAT" strategies under the three pandemic stages. Finally, we establish a future research agenda from five aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted access to and use of maternal, newborn, and child health services. Due to lockdowns and travel restrictions implemented during the first wave of the pandemic, the provision of essential maternal health services such as family planning was critically affected. Unlike most healthcare, contraception-related services are impractical for virtual care provision as women need to attend the clinic in person. Therefore, most women across the world might have been left with an unmet need for contraception during the lockdown period. Interruptions in contraception services have led to an increased number of unintended pregnancies. With the emergence of several pocket studies, it is essential to pool the available evidence reporting the effects of COVID-19 on contraception to inform maternal health policy and practice. Objective: The aims of this review are (1) to determine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to contraceptives among sexually active women and (2) to identify the magnitude of unintended pregnancy linked to interruptions of contraceptives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The protocol for this systematic review was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021267077). Electronic databases such as MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar will be searched for articles using appropriate key terms. The identified articles will be assessed against the eligibility criteria. Two reviewers (A.B. and T.B.) will independently screen titles and abstracts of all retrieved articles followed by a full-text review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist. The quality of the papers will be assessed by using the Risk of Bias Assessment tool for Non-Randomized Studies. Quantitative findings will be pooled using a random-effects model meta-analysis, while qualitative findings will be presented using a narrative synthesis. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not required. The findings will be disseminated through conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications. Discussion: This systematic review will present current data needed to design evidence-based programmes for improving access to contraception and preventing unintended pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic and future emergencies. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42021267077. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper seeks to explore a newly proposed model to assist public educational systems with properly integrating digital technology into their currently practiced teaching and learning processes. Digital learning has been adopted for the past two decades under various forms of internet-based learning, such as online learning, e-learning, blended learning, and hybrid learning. However, those practices and initiatives have encountered many obstacles that crippled educational communities in many parts of the world and prevented them from successfully and sustainably integrating digital learning into their systems. Unfortunately, the crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak has clearly revealed the need for immediate action to find effective methods to ensure the quality implementation of digital learning in K-12 education. Consequently, this paper benefits both individuals and governments with successful and sustainable solutions for K-12 education. This proposed digital education shifting (DES) model was constructed based on several learning theories, mainly the cognitive load theory, constructive learning theory, and connectivism theory. To achieve its objectives, this paper adopts a descriptive method by constructing an open-ended questionnaire to collect experts' opinions and suggestions on DES. The results revealed high agreement among experts on DES effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]