PILLARS OF INDIAN ECONOMY IN COVID-19: COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF FARMING & AGRO BASED INDUSTRY

The country was under lockdown from more than two months due to COVID-19. In this crisis, the farmers have not allowed food security to be endangered. Moreover, they have increased food production despite all the obstacles. Right now, farmers are facing many obvious and climatic problems. Prime Minister of India has said that we have to convert this crisis into opportunity. The solution to farmer’s problems is necessary, to make the country Atmanirbhar Bharat and to take it rapid fast on the path of progress. The outbreak of this epidemic has come at a time when the harvesting of Rabi crops had already started. However, taking necessary steps, Ministry of Agriculture has worked with all agencies of selling and buying agricultural products, units notified by the state governments, farmers and agricultural labourers along with machines used in harvesting and sowing and agro-horticulture exempted from and out of state. In addition, the All India Transport Call Centre was launched to remove bottlenecks in the movement of seeds, pesticides, fertilizers and fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, fish and other perishable agricultural products

Generalisation Gap of Keyword Spotters in a Cross-Speaker Low-Resource Scenario

Models for keyword spotting in continuous recordings can significantly improve the experience of navigating vast libraries of audio recordings. In this paper, we describe the development of such a keyword spotting system detecting regions of interest in Polish call centre conversations. Unfortunately, in spite of recent advancements in automatic speech recognition systems, human-level transcription accuracy reported on English benchmarks does not reflect the performance achievable in low-resource languages, such as Polish. Therefore, in this work, we shift our focus from complete speech-to-text conversion to acoustic similarity matching in the hope of reducing the demand for data annotation. As our primary approach, we evaluate Siamese and prototypical neural networks trained on several datasets of English and Polish recordings. While we obtain usable results in English, our models’ performance remains unsatisfactory when applied to Polish speech, both after mono- and cross-lingual training. This performance gap shows that generalisation with limited training resources is a significant obstacle for actual deployments in low-resource languages. As a potential countermeasure, we implement a detector using audio embeddings generated with a generic pre-trained model provided by Google. It has a much more favourable profile when applied in a cross-lingual setup to detect Polish audio patterns. Nevertheless, despite these promising results, its performance on out-of-distribution data are still far from stellar. It would indicate that, in spite of the richness of internal representations created by more generic models, such speech embeddings are not entirely malleable to cross-language transfer.

Patient satisfaction and behavioural intention in using the home medication delivery service in an ambulatory oncology centre

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has increased usage of medication delivery service (MDS) significantly. MDS improves adherence to medication and clinical outcomes. Objectives To study behavioral change factors that affect adoption of MDS, determine existing patient satisfaction level, and make recommendations to improve MDS adoption. Methods A single-institution, cross-sectional survey was conducted at the outpatient pharmacy of the largest ambulatory cancer centre in Singapore. The survey consisted of sections on demographics, Theory of Planned Behavior constructs and patient satisfaction questions. Descriptive analysis and logistic regression were used. Results A total of 881 patients responded. Respondents were mostly Chinese, female and subsidized patients, with a mean age of 62.4 years old. MDS use is strongly predicted by favourable attitude (OR 3.54, 95%CI 2.64–4.75; p < 0.001) and subjective norm (OR 3.07, 95%CI 2.30–4.09; p < 0.001) towards its use and greater perceived behavioral control (OR 2.48; 95%CI 1.86–3.30; p < 0.001). Being ill or frail has been identified as facilitators, while absence of face-to-face consultation and cost of delivery were barriers to the adoption of MDS. Encouragingly, the satisfaction level of our existing patients was generally high (80.2, SD16.7). Recommendation to improve MDS adoption targets facilitators and barriers identified and aims to further elevate patient satisfaction level. Establishment of a centralised pharmacy for MDS together with a call centre would be essential in the long run. Conclusions MDS is becoming increasingly important, in line with our national strategy. Implementation of suggested short-term and long-term measures will encourage its use.

Long term impact of the WHI studies on information-seeking and decision-making in menopause symptoms management: a longitudinal analysis of questions to a medicines call centre

Background While women are taking a greater role in decisions about menopause symptom management, the legacy of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) studies persist. Despite hormone therapy (HT) being effective in reducing all-cause mortality, many women seeking relief of menopausal symptoms exaggerate HT harms and overstate the perceived benefits or ignore the risks of alternative therapies. We aimed to explore the longitudinal impact of the widely-publicised WHI 2002 study on women’s information-seeking and describe determinants of decision-making about managing menopausal symptoms. Methods In a longitudinal analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, we explored consumer questions about menopause-related medicines received by two Australian medicines call centres (1996–2010) before, during, and after WHI 2002. We analysed calls by age and gender of caller and patient, their relationship, postcode, enquiry type, and motivation to help-seek. We compared calls regarding HT and herbal medicines (HM) with the rest of calls, and thematically analysed question narratives across the three time-periods. Results There were 1,829 menopause-related calls received of over this time-period, with a call surge, primarily from women in their mid-fifties, in the two months after the WHI 2002 publication. Two in three calls were motivated by negative media reports as women sought support for decision-making, primarily reassurance to cease HT. While HT safety concerns persisted for eight years post-publication, the nature of information-seeking changed over time. Callers subsequently sought reassurance to use menopause treatments together with their other medicines; and pursued HT substitutes, including HM, in response to HT product discontinuation. Conclusions Women sought information or reassurance to support a decision, based on dynamic changes in internal (symptom or risk intolerance, attitude towards menopause and treatment preferences) and external factors (perceived source trust and changes in treatment availability). In assessing HT benefit versus risk, women tend to overestimate risk with HT safety concerns persisting over time. Decision-making in managing menopause symptoms is complex and dynamic. Reassurance to reach or justify decisions from a perceived trusted source can support informed decision-making.

Beyond technological determinism: revitalising labour process analyses of technology, capital and labour

Technological determinism is a recurrent feature in debates concerning changes in economy and work and has resurfaced sharply in the discourse around the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. While a number of authors have, in recent years, critiqued the trend, this article is distinctive in arguing that foundational labour process analysis provides the most effective source of an alternative understanding of the relations between political economy, science, technology and work relations. The article refines and reframes this analysis, through an engagement with critical commentary and research, developing the idea of a political materialist approach that can reveal the various influences on, sources of contestation and levels of strategic choices that are open to economic actors. A distinction is made between ‘first order’ choices, often about adoption at aggregate level and ‘second order’ choices mainly concerned with complex issues of deployment. This framework is then applied to the analysis of case studies of the call centre labour process and digital labour platform, functioning as illustrative scenarios. It is argued that the nature of techno-economic systems in the ‘digital era’ open up greater opportunities for contestation.

SARS-CoV-2 sero-prevalence in the workforces of three large workplaces in South Wales: a sero-epidemiological study

BackgroundSero-prevalence studies quantify the proportion of a population that has antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, and can be used to identify the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic at a population level. The aim of the study was to assess the sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the workforce at three workplaces. Methods993 participants were recruited from three workplaces in South Wales: a food factory, a non-food factory and a call centre. Participants completed a questionnaire and received lateral flow point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests. The data were analysed using multivariable logistic regression, both using complete records only and following multiple imputation. ResultsThe sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies ranged from 4% (n=17/402) in the non-food factory to 10% (n=28/281) in the food factory (OR 2.93; 95% CI 1.26 to 6.81). After taking account of confounding factors evidence of a difference remained (cOR comparing food factory to call centre (2.93; 95% CI 1.26 to 6.81) and non-food factory (3.99; 95% CI 1.97 to 8.08) respectively). The SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence also varied between roles within workplaces. People working in office based roles had a 2.23 times greater conditional odds (95% CI 1.02 to 4.87) of being positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies than those working on the factory floor.ConclusionThe sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies varied by workplace and work role. Whilst it is not possible to state whether these differences are due to COVID-19 transmission within the workplaces, it highlights the importance of considering COVID-19 transmission in a range of workplaces and work roles.