scholarly journals COVID-19 Vaccination in Developing Nations: Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 429-436
Author(s):  
Abu Baker Sheikh ◽  
Suman Pal ◽  
Nismat Javed ◽  
Rahul Shekhar
Keyword(s):  
Developing Nations ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Risk Level ◽  
Individual Risk ◽  
Cold Temperatures ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Specialized Equipment ◽  
To Come ◽  
Reliable Power Supply

Vaccines offer a hope toward ending the global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV2. Mass vaccination of the global population offers hope to curb the spread. Developing nations, however, face monumental challenges in procurement, allocation, distribution and uptake of vaccines. Inequities in vaccine supply are already evident with resource-rich nations having secured a large chunk of the available vaccine doses for 2021. Once supplies are made available, vaccines will have to be distributed and administered to entire populations—with considerations for individual risk level, remote geography, cultural and socio-economic factors. This would require logistical and trained personnel support that can be hard to come by for resource-poor nations. Several vaccines also require ultra-cold temperatures for storage and transport and therefore the need for specialized equipment and reliable power supply which may also not be readily available. Lastly, attention will need to be paid to ensuring adequate uptake of vaccines since vaccine hesitancy has already been reported for COVID vaccines. However, existing strengths of local and regional communities can be leveraged to provide innovative solutions and mitigate some of the challenges. Regional and international cooperation can also play a big role in ensuring equity in vaccine access and vaccination.

scholarly journals Are We Ready for the Arrival of the New COVID-19 Vaccinations? Great Promises and Unknown Challenges Still to Come

Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Davide Gori ◽  
Chiara Reno ◽  
Daniel Remondini ◽  
Francesco Durazzi ◽  
Maria Pia Fantini
Keyword(s):  
Herd Immunity ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
Vaccination Campaigns ◽  
The Eu

While the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic continues to strike and collect its death toll throughout the globe, as of 31 January 2021, the vaccine candidates worldwide were 292, of which 70 were in clinical testing. Several vaccines have been approved worldwide, and in particular, three have been so far authorized for use in the EU. Vaccination can be, in fact, an efficient way to mitigate the devastating effect of the pandemic and offer protection to some vulnerable strata of the population (i.e., the elderly) and reduce the social and economic burden of the current crisis. Regardless, a question is still open: after vaccination availability for the public, will vaccination campaigns be effective in reaching all the strata and a sufficient number of people in order to guarantee herd immunity? In other words: after we have it, will we be able to use it? Following the trends in vaccine hesitancy in recent years, there is a growing distrust of COVID-19 vaccinations. In addition, the online context and competition between pro- and anti-vaxxers show a trend in which anti-vaccination movements tend to capture the attention of those who are hesitant. Describing this context and analyzing its possible causes, what interventions or strategies could be effective to reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy? Will social media trend analysis be helpful in trying to solve this complex issue? Are there perspectives for an efficient implementation of COVID-19 vaccination coverage as well as for all the other vaccinations?

An index for back pain risk assessment in nursery activities

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 281-290
Author(s):  
Silvia Taloni ◽  
Giovanni Carlo Cassavia ◽  
Giuseppe Luca Ciavarro ◽  
Giuseppe Andreoni ◽  
Giorgio Cesare Santambrogio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Back Pain ◽  
Biomechanical Model ◽  
Risk Level ◽  
Individual Risk ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Good Correspondence ◽  
Gold Standard Method ◽  
Trunk Inclination ◽  
Leg Flexion ◽  
The One

Back pain is one of the most significant socioeconomic problem in industrialized countries. Its origin is multifactorial, including physical, psychosocial and individual risk factors. Among the working population, nursery teachers are highly exposed to back pain diseases, but not many studies have dealt with this problem. So a suitable quantitative index is proposed, based on an unobtrusive video-analysis of established motor-tasks. In particular five nursery teachers were asked to perform lifting and lowering movements placing their feet at two different distances from a weight (a toy pet loaded with 8 kg, simulating a child) with different strategies (flexed, partially flexed and extended legs). The index is based on the idea that a greater trunk inclination angle determines increased loads on the lumbar spine, and so an augmented probability of spinal disorders. To validate our protocol, the same data were analyzed through a 3D biomechanical model (gold standard method), which computes the loads on L3-L4 intervertebral disc. Data show a good correspondence between the risk level suggested by the index and the one indicated by the mechanical loads: the antero-posterior shearing forces and the values of index coherently increase with the reduction of leg flexion.

MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES FOR MANAGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH THE TOURIST BRAND

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todor Dyankov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Research Study ◽  
Customer Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Successful Completion ◽  
Successful Development ◽  
Human Contact ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Customer Trust

The generl goal of this research study is to rethink the marketing opportunities to manage the customer experience with the tourism brand based on some world-renowned marketing innovations in tourism. The ongoing global pandemic crisis poses challenges to the future successful development of tourism and in particular tourism brands. The revival of the tourist brand is based on the inevitable process of total digitalization of business and market processes on one hand, but on the other hand the living human contact with the brand is becoming more and more demanding. Overcoming travel fears is in alignment with the restoration of the customer trust in the tourist brand. The transformation of tourism brand is still to come and the key to a successful completion is the new way of managing the customer experience.

scholarly journals Coming up for Air: On Reading in a Global Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Aparna Tarc
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Teaching Of Reading ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Public Sphere

The thought of breath grips the world as climate change, racial injustice and a global pandemic converge to suck oxygen, the lifeforce, out of the earth. The visibility of breath, its critical significance to existence, I argue, is made evident by poets. To speak of breath is to lodge ourselves between birth and death and requires sustained, meditative, attentive study to an everyday yet taken for granted practice. Like breathing, reading is also a practice that many took for granted until the pandemic. My paper will engage the affective and/or poetic dimensions of reading left out of theories of literacy that render it instrumental and divorced from the life of the reader (Freire, 1978). I will suggest that scholars of literacy, in every language, begin to engage a poetics of literacy as attending to the existential significance of language in carrying our personhood and lives. I will also argue that our diminishing capacities to read imaginatively and creatively have led to the rise of populist ideologies that infect public discourse and an increasingly anti-intellectual and depressed social sphere. Despite this decline in the practice and teaching of reading, it is reported that more than any other activity, reading sustained the lives of individuals and communities’ during a global pandemic. Teachers and scholars might take advantage of the renewed interested in reading to redeliver poetry and literary language to the public sphere to teach affective reading. Poetry harkens back to ancient practices of reading inherent in all traditions of reading. It enacts a pedagogy of breath, I argue, one that observes its significance in our capacity to exist through the exchange of air in words, an exchange of vital textual meanings we have taken for granted as we continue to infect our social and political world and earth with social hatred, toxins, and death. In this paper I engage fragments of poetry by poets of our time (last century onward) that teaches us to breathe and relearn the divine and primal stance that reading poetry attends to and demands. More than any other form, “poetry,” Ada Limon claims, “has breath built into it”. As such, reading poetry helps us to breathe when the world bears down and makes it hard for us to come up for air.

“Don't We Take Care of Our Veterans?” The Critical Need for Veteran's Health Services Infertility Services for Veterans: Policies, Challenges, and Opportunities

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (05/06) ◽  
pp. 227-231
Author(s):  
Lee Woodruff ◽  
Gilbert L. Mottla
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Veterans Health ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
After Effects ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Veteran’S Health ◽  
To Come ◽  
Global War

AbstractSince October 2001, more than 2.7 million men and women of the armed forces have been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or in support of the “Global War on Terrorism.” Like previous wars, our nation will feel the after-effects of those deployments for a generation to come, as the wounds of war do not just affect the veteran, but impact their family and friends once they return to the home front. But unlike previous wars, less than 1% of our population serves their country in an all-volunteer military. This small percentage of Americans who volunteer to serve us and protect our freedoms (no matter what you might think about the politics surrounding wars) is increasingly removed from the rest of the population who choose other careers and options. Therefore, most of us are uneducated and unconnected to the often isolating experiences and frustrations of our veterans when they return to the home front and try to retake the stage of their former lives. In this discussion, we share the compelling stories of military members and veterans who struggle with infertility. We describe the need for policy and expansion of services for infertility care in the Department of Defense and Veterans Health Administration, and the challenges and opportunities that exist.

scholarly journals Challenges and Opportunities from Targeting Inflammatory Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Narrative Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 4021
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Lariccia ◽  
Simona Magi ◽  
Tiziano Serfilippi ◽  
Marwa Toujani ◽  
Santo Gratteri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Inflammatory Responses ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Clinical Care ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Inflammatory Processes ◽  
Inflammatory Drugs ◽  
Anti Inflammatory ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic that continues to sweep across the world, posing an urgent need for effective therapies and prevention of the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome related to coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). A major hypothesis that is currently guiding research and clinical care posits that an excessive and uncontrolled surge of pro-inflammatory cytokines (the so-called “cytokine storm”) drives morbidity and mortality in the most severe cases. In the overall efforts made to develop effective and safe therapies (including vaccines) for COVID-19, clinicians are thus repurposing ready-to-use drugs with direct or indirect anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory activities. Speculatively, there are many opportunities and challenges in targeting immune/inflammatory processes in the evolving settings of COVID-19 disease because of the need to safely balance the fight against virus and aggressive inflammation versus the suppression of host immune defenses and the risk of additional harms in already compromised patients. To this end, many studies are globally underway to weigh the pros and cons of tailoring drugs used for inflammatory-driven conditions to COVID-19 patient care, and the next step will be to summarize the growing clinical trial experience into clean clinical practice. Based on the current evidence, anti-inflammatory drugs should be considered as complementary approaches to anti-viral drugs that need to be timely introduced in the management of COVID-19 according to disease severity. While drugs that target SARS-CoV-2 entry or replication are expected to confer the greatest benefits at the early stage of the infection, anti-inflammatory drugs would be more effective in limiting the inflammatory processes that drive the worsening of the disease.

Carbon and Oxygen Isotope Fractionation of Pressurized CO2 as a Function of Temperature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey Jacksier ◽  
Rick Socki
Keyword(s):  
Phase Transition ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Elevated Temperatures ◽  
Isotopic Fractionation ◽  
Oxygen Isotope Fractionation ◽  
Cold Temperatures ◽  
Carbon And Oxygen Isotope ◽  
To Come ◽  
Gas Expansion ◽  
Liquid Vapor

<p>During liquid-vapor phase transition, CO<sub>2</sub> can undergo isotopic fractionation in both C and O.  This phase transition can occur during routine cylinder handling, such as gas expansion or while subjecting the cylinder to cold temperatures without allowing the cylinders to come to thermal equilibrium prior to use. </p><p>This work examines the isotope changes for both C and O in a series of controlled experiments on dual phase (liquid-vapor) and single-phase (vapor only) carbon dioxide contained in pressurized gas cylinders at sub-freezing, ambient and elevated temperatures.  The isotopic values were measured during the temperature equilibration from either cold or elevated temperatures to room temperature.  Isotopic values were observed to vary when the gas was at sub-freezing temperatures but not from elevated temperatures.  Stable isotope practitioners, who rely on pressurized carbon dioxide as a working IRMS laboratory reference gas, will find this work useful.</p>

scholarly journals The state of psychogeriatrics in Europe: challenges and opportunities in six European countries

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 1243-1246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lia Fernandes ◽  
Raimundo Mateos ◽  
Knut Engedal ◽  
Armin von Gunten ◽  
Max L. Stek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
World Health Organization ◽  
Elderly Population ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
World Health ◽  
Know How ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
To Come ◽  
New Policies ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
National Governments

With the increase in aging all over the world, and the elderly population nearly tripling from 524 million (8% of the world's population) in 2010 to 1.5 billion (16% of the world's population) in 2050, we will face new challenges and opportunities in providing healthcare. In 2050, it is estimated that Europe will see an increase of 70% in elderly population aged over 65 years, and 170% in those aged over 80 years (World Health Organization (WHO), 2011). It is vital to respond to the needs of this emerging population and the consequent rise in chronic diseases, especially dementia and mental health disorders, which will overload the healthcare system, as well as raise health and social costs, and demand new policies from national governments (World Health Organization, 2012). We urgently need to know how to organize healthcare for elderly people in the years to come.

scholarly journals Preface

2021 ◽  
Vol 2085 (1) ◽  
pp. 011001
Keyword(s):  
Committee Member ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Structural Materials ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Industrial Manufacturing ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
To Come ◽  
Virtual Conference ◽  
Information Interchange ◽  
Oral Presentations

Due to the outbreak of the global pandemic (COVID-19), 2021 International Conference on Industrial Manufacturing and Structural Materials (IMSM 2021) was held virtually online on September 17-19, 2021. The decision to hold the virtual conference was made in compliance with many restrictions and regulations that were imposed by countries around the globe. Such restrictions were made to minimize the risk of people contracting or spreading the COVID-19 through physical contact. There were 50 individuals who attended this online conference, represented many countries including China, Algeria, Malaysia, and Russia. IMSM 2021 is to bring together innovative academics and industrial experts in the field of Industrial Manufacturing and Structural Materials to a common forum. The primary goal of the conference is to promote research and developmental activities industrial manufacturing and structural materials and another goal is to promote scientific information interchange between researchers, developers, engineers, students, and practitioners working all around the world. During the conference, the conference model was divided into three sessions, including oral presentations, keynote speeches, and online Q&A discussion. In the first part, some scholars, whose submissions were selected as the excellent papers, were given about 5-10 minutes to perform their oral presentations one by one. Then in the second part, keynote speakers were each allocated 30-45 minutes to hold their speeches. In the second part, we invited two professors as our keynote speakers. Prof. Feng Wen, from Hainan University, China. His primarily developing wide interests in research on Micro/Nano-scaled thin films and surface modification of materials. And then we had Prof. Kamal Z. ZAMLI, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia. Their insightful speeches had triggered heated discussion in the third session of the conference. Every participant praised this conference for disseminating useful and insightful knowledge. The proceedings are a compilation of the accepted papers and represent an interesting outcome of the conference. Topics include but are not limited to the following areas: Industrial Manufacturing Technology, Structural Materials and other related topics. All the papers have been through rigorous review and process to meet the requirements of International publication standard. We would like to acknowledge all of those who supported IMSM 2021. The help and contribution of each individual and institution was instrumental in the success of the conference. In particular, we would like to thank the organizing committee for its valuable inputs in shaping the conference program and reviewing the submitted papers. We sincerely hope that the IMSM 2021 turned out to be a forum for excellent discussions that enabled new ideas to come about, promoting collaborative research. We are sure that the proceedings will serve as an important research source of references and knowledge, which will lead to not only scientific and engineering findings but also new products and technologies. The Committee of IMSM 2021 List of Committee member are available in this pdf.

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