Search

COVID-19 is a major source of fear, stress, and anxiety as well as a major factor impacting the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. The present study builds on the recently developed "Fear of COVID-19 Scale" (Ahorsu et al., In International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 10.1007/s11469-020-00270-8, 2020). The sample comprised of 850 participants, male and female young adults from Russia and Belarus. The majority of survey participants are university students and graduates. Females, students, and others from Russia report higher levels of COVID-19-related fear than those from Belarus. Respondents from Russia and Belarus report less fear than people from Iran who were surveyed earlier. The scale used for the present survey evidenced a good Cronbach's Alpha measure of internal consistency or reliability (0.809). Clearly, further research is needed across locations and over time about the nature and extent of fear caused by COVID 19. Overall, the FCV-19S appears to be a valuable and brief instrument that may provide useful information for intervention and policy purposes to migrate fear and problem behavior linked to infectious disease outbreaks.

The security of most existing cryptosystems relies on the (unproven) difficulty in solving a computational problem, e.g., factoring large integers or computing discrete logarithms in certain groups (cf. e.g.,[11]). This notion of security is called computational complexity security, as it is based on the assumption that an adversary has restricted computational power and lacks “efficient algorithms.„ However, this assumption is being weakened with the development of efficient algorithms as well as the increase in computational power of modern computers (e.g., quantum computer).

Many of the risks associated with securing wireless systems stem from challenges associated with operating in a mobile environment, such as the lack of a guaranteed infrastructure or the ease with which entities can eavesdrop on communications. Traditional network security mechanisms rely upon cryptographic keys to support confidentiality and authentication services. However, in a dynamic mobile wireless environment, with peer-to-peer associations being formed on-the-fly between mobile entities, it is difficult to ensure availability of a certificate authority or a key management center. Since such scenarios are likely to become more prevalent, it is necessary to have alternatives for establishing keys between wireless peers without resorting to a fixed infrastructure.