Lockdown fatigue: The diminishing effects of quarantines on the spread of COVID-19

Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) have been for most countries the key policy instrument utilized to contain the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of these policies on the virus’ transmission and death toll, for a panel of 152 countries, from the start of the pandemic through December 31, 2020. We find that lockdowns tend to significantly reduce the spread of the virus and the number of related deaths. We also show that this benign impact declines over time: after four months of strict lockdown, NPIs have a significantly weaker contribution in terms of their effect in reducing COVID-19 related fatalities. Part of the fading effect of quarantines could be attributed to an increasing non-compliance with mobility restrictions, as reflected in our estimates of a declining effect of lockdowns on measures of actual mobility. However, we additionally find that a reduction in de facto mobility also exhibits a diminishing effect on health outcomes, which suggests that lockdown fatigues may have introduce broader hurdles to containment policies.

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Doppler Effect and Multipath Fading Mitigation

Owing to the envisioned new use-cases, such as immersive virtual reality and high-fidelity mobile hologram, and their potential challenging new requirements for future wireless networks, extensive research has already started on 6G and beyond wireless technologies. Despite the fact that several modern physical layer solutions have been introduced in the past decade, a level of saturation has been reached in terms of the available spectrum and adapted modulation/coding solutions, which accordingly limits the maximum capacity and reliability. Within this respective, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-empowered communication appears as a potential candidate to overcome the inherent drawbacks of legacy wireless systems. The core idea of RIS-assisted communication is the transformation of the random and uncontrollable wireless propagation environment into a reconfigurable communication system entity that plays an active role in conveying information and improving system performance. In this paper, the well-known multipath fading phenomenon is revisited in mobile wireless communication systems, and novel and unique solutions are introduced from the perspective of RISs. The feasibility of eliminating or mitigating the multipath fading effect stemming from the movement of mobile receivers is also investigated by utilizing RISs. It is shown that rapid fluctuations in the received signal strength due to the Doppler effect can be effectively reduced by using real-time tunable RISs. It is also proven that for a hypothetical propagation environment where all reflectors are coated with RISs, the multipath fading effect can be totally eliminated. Furthermore, we show that for more general propagation environments with several interacting objects, even a few real-time tunable RISs can remarkably reduce the Doppler spread and the deep fades in the received signal.

“Modal Preludes and Fugues in C” by Borislava Stronko: Specific Use of Modal Technology

The relevance of the article. The most pressing need today is to turn to modern samples of polyphonic music, which is due, on the one hand, to artistic practice, and on the other, to rethinking traditional polyphonic forms and techniques in the context of a total experiment and a radical renewal of musical techniques. B. Stronko’s “Modal Preludes and Fugues in C” demonstrate a completely new, author’s version of the interpretation of the polyphonic cycle, which is due to the non-traditional combination of modality with polyphonic principles and methods of development. The change in the functionally centralized fret-tonal system to a radically different, modal, type of modal organization caused significant changes at all tiers of the multilevel organization of the fugue, starting from its core — the theme, ending with the principles of composition and shaping. To trace exactly what specific changes that were caused by the use of modal technique in the framework of the fugue and is the central problem of the study and determines its relevance Scientific novelty: for the first time, all the preludes and fugues of the cycle “Modal preludes and fugues in C” were thoroughly analyzed with an emphasis on the study of the “semantic source” of the polyphonic cycle (fugue), its quintessence (theme) in terms of the influence of the principles of modality on the construction of the fugue.The purpose of the article: to identify the features of the use of modal technique and the specificity of its influence on various structural levels of the fugue in the cycle “Modal preludes and fugues in C” by Boryslav Stronkо, as well as to determine the special features of the composer’s polyphonic thinking. The research methodology includes the use of systemic and functional methods. Main results and conclusions. All fugues from the cycle «Modal Preludes and Fugues in C» by B. Stronko represent an open cycle based on the modal principle of organization. The cycle itself is potentially open and represents the composer’s desire to achieve freedom and emphasize the potential for infinity of the process of creating modes. Each pair of preludes and fugues is limited by a scale of a certain design, which made it possible to create compositions with a pronounced individual flavor. At the level of thematicism: compactness of themes and fugues themselves, intonation specificity, depending on the structure of the fret. With further themes, linearity of development prevails, the composer uses the principle of multivariate repetition (isomelia, isorhythmy, interpolation, combinatorics), which has a certain relationship with rehearsal technique and becomes a specific feature of Boryslav Stronko’s polyphonic thinking. Multivariate repetition of the material, despite the actual changes, enhances the fading effect, being in one place and organically combines with the idea of being in the conditions of one specific sound of the chosen fret. Attention is drawn to the technique of replicating rhythmic-intonational structures — it is a quasi-sequential repetition of a motive in one or several voices at the same time, most often it variably changes in all voices, repeating with a horizontal shift or with the simultaneous use of various techniques (isorhythmy, isomelia, combinatorics). The role of ostinato increases significantly, which, together with the above techniques, contributes to the creation of the effect of hidden internal movement while actually staying in one place. It should be noted that all the above principles, which create the effect of a specific sound and work on the idea of constant rotation in a single sound space, turn out to be stable not only for “Modal preludes and fugues in C”, but also for other works of the composer: “Labyrinth Chord”, 4-part symphony for virtual ensemble (2016), “Time Crystals” (or “Metavariations for metapiano”) is an electronic music cycle (2018).

Sensitivity of radio-photoluminescence glass dosimeters to accumulated doses

Background This study investigated the effect of accumulated doses on radio-photoluminescence glass dosimeters (RPLGDs) from measurements involving mega-voltage photons. Methods Forty-five commercially available RPLGDs were irradiated to estimate their dose responses. Photon beams of 6, 10, and 15 MV were irradiated onto the RPLGDs inside a phantom, which were divided into five groups with different doses and energies. Groups 1 and 2 were irradiated at 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 Gy in a sequential manner; Group 3 was irradiated 10 times with a dose of 10 Gy; and Groups 4 and 5 followed the same method as that of Group 3, but with doses of 50 Gy and 100 Gy, respectively. Each device was subjected to a measurement reading procedure each time irradiation. Results For the annealed Group 1, RPLGD exhibited a linearity response with variance within 5%. For the non-annealed Group 2, readings demonstrated hyperlinearity at 6 MV and 10 MV, and linearity at 15 MV. Following the 100 Gy irradiation, the readings for Group 2 were 118.7 ± 1.9%, 112.2 ± 2.7%, and 101.5 ± 2.3% at 6, 10, and 15 MV, respectively. For Groups 3, 4, and 5, the responsiveness of the RPLGDs gradually decreased as the number of repeated irradiations increased. The percentage readings for the 10th beam irradiation with respect to the readings for the primary beam irradiation were 84.6 ± 1.9%, 87.5 ± 2.4%, and 93.0 ± 3.0% at 6 MV, 10 MV, and 15 MV, respectively. Conclusions The non-annealed RPLGD response to dose was hyperlinear for the 6 MV and 10 MV photon beams but not for the 15 MV photon beam. Additionally, the annealed RPLGD exhibited a fading phenomenon when the measurement was repeated several times and demonstrated a relatively large fading effect at low energies than at high energies.

RCSA Protocol with Rayleigh Channel Fading in massive-MIMO system

Introduction: Massive MIMO is a process where cellular BSs a large number of antennas. In this study, we concern about the end-to-end massive-MIMO system under the Rayleigh channel fading effect. Also, it includes both inter-channel interference and intra channel interference in an m-MIMO network system. Method: The major aim is to increase the throughput and network capacity as well as minimizing the channel collision in between the associated pilots. Here, we proposed an RCSA protocol with Rayleigh channel fading effect in the m-MIMO network to create a network like a real-time scenario. Here we have focused on the deployment of urban scenarios with the small timing variation and provided our novel RAP for the UEs, where the UEs want to access the network. To validate the performance of our proposed scheme we are going to compare with the state-of-art technique in the result analysis section. Result: We provide the analysis based upon the two considered scenarios; such as scenario-A considered at intra-channel interference and whereas in scenario-B considered both intra-cell channel interference as well as inter-cell channel interference. Where our RCSA approach is proposed with uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels (URFC) that used to increase the capacity of network and decrease the collision probability. Conclusion: Here, we proposed the RCSA approach and it consist of four major steps such as; system initialization and querying; response queuing; resource contention and channel state analysis and, resource allocation. The system performs in the TDD mode of operation and the resources of time-frequency are divided into the coherent blocks of channel Discussion: In order to compare our RCSA-URFC approach, here we consider the state-of-art technique such as vertex graph-coloring-based pilot assignment (VGCPA) [35] under URFC. In addition we also consider the bias term randomly to make decision on particular UE. It very difficult to guess the strong probability of UE, therefore as per information obtained via