Site-Specific and Country-of-Origin Labeling for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

There is increasing concern about the quality of pharmaceuticals, especially generics made in Asia. Popular books and news reports have the public questioning the quality of pharmaceuticals. Recalls and import bans shake confidence in medications, particularly for active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished dosage forms made outside the United States. The Food and Drug Administration uses geography to allocate resources for manufacturing surveillance. Site of manufacturing labeling, including the country, could be linked to the facility’s quality score to assess the risk of poor quality. Clinicians should advocate for legal and regulatory changes to increase the transparency of pharmaceutical manufacturing of products.

SymptomID: A Framework for Rapid Symptom Identification in Pandemics Using News Reports

The ability to quickly learn fundamentals about a new infectious disease, such as how it is transmitted, the incubation period, and related symptoms, is crucial in any novel pandemic. For instance, rapid identification of symptoms can enable interventions for dampening the spread of the disease. Traditionally, symptoms are learned from research publications associated with clinical studies. However, clinical studies are often slow and time intensive, and hence delays can have dire consequences in a rapidly spreading pandemic like we have seen with COVID-19. In this article, we introduce SymptomID, a modular artificial intelligence–based framework for rapid identification of symptoms associated with novel pandemics using publicly available news reports. SymptomID is built using the state-of-the-art natural language processing model (Bidirectional Encoder Representations for Transformers) to extract symptoms from publicly available news reports and cluster-related symptoms together to remove redundancy. Our proposed framework requires minimal training data, because it builds on a pre-trained language model. In this study, we present a case study of SymptomID using news articles about the current COVID-19 pandemic. Our COVID-19 symptom extraction module, trained on 225 articles, achieves an F1 score of over 0.8. SymptomID can correctly identify well-established symptoms (e.g., “fever” and “cough”) and less-prevalent symptoms (e.g., “rashes,” “hair loss,” “brain fog”) associated with the novel coronavirus. We believe this framework can be extended and easily adapted in future pandemics to quickly learn relevant insights that are fundamental for understanding and combating a new infectious disease.

The Commuting Behavior Evolution in Suburban Express Line after Operation: Based on Multi-Source Space-Time Big Data

Virtual Reality news (VR news) provides news reports relying on virtual reality technology, creating a strong sense of immersion and presence. It is a new format of news and a new application for immersive media. Previous researches studies on VR news mainly focus on the range of topics and the media effect, and point out the advantages and disadvantages of them. However, the content of VR news is usually neglected. This research aims to conduct a content analysis on the VR news from CCTV.com by applying the framing theory. The coding scheme is designed based on Zang Guoren’s three-level structures theory, analyzing 220 pieces of news in total. According to the objective data obtained through the analysis, the conclusion is drawn on significant features about VR news, including theme, source, tendency, narrative structure, multimodal presentation, and framework. This research has theoretical significance for it applies the framework theory to analyze the VR news, and also provides inspiration for the production of VR news and the media industry.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) during Covid-19 Pandemic: The Implementation from Unicorn Companies

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global problem. COVID-19 affects how companies handle employees, customers, and, therefore, the community. Unicorn companies have an essential role in overcoming the pandemic, and they are partnered with the Indonesian government to assist the government in fighting Covid-19. Unicorn companies use the CSR program in helping the community to face the pandemic and the new normal era. This paper aims to explain the response of Indonesian unicorn companies in handling the pandemic through CSR and explain why CSR is useful and necessary in facing the new normal era. The approach was taken in this paper was to survey the literature such as previous studies, annual reports, and news reports on the CSR program from Indonesian unicorn companies during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially CSR for vital stakeholders such as employees, customers, communities, and societies. Employees, consumers, and communities are the foremost significantly suffering from Covid-19. Indonesia's unicorn companies specialize in CSR in several sectors like basic needs, healthcare support, and education. CSR in the community is carried out by Tokopedia with the Nakamate program, while Go-Jek carries out CSR for consumers by providing in-app telemedicine. Besides that, Gojek also assists its driver-partners with financial assistance. On the other hand, other unicorns such as Traveloka, OVO, Bukalapak carry out CSR by donating money, medical equipment, and basic needs to communities affected by the pandemic. This study only adopted a descriptive qualitative research design; consequently, the data obtained were somewhat limited. Further, research can use the interview method with stakeholders to get a more in-depth review. To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is one of the few studies to propose research on the CSR of unicorn companies in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic, obtained from qualitative data collected during the pandemic.

Short Note: Rape A Consequence of Covid-19 Quarantine on Children and The Elderly: A Call for Action

The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) led to a shift in the social structure of global cities leading to self-isolation and social/physical distancing to curb the spread of the virus. While these two are stand as good policy, they are greeted by domestic violence and rape as the most prevalent consequences. The researchers examined the impact of lockdown on domestic violence in Nigeria based on frequency of news reports using content analysis of two online news reports and discovered a high prevalence of rape on children (0 - 17 years) and elderly (60 years and above). Hence it is suggested that the government should always be prepared for emergencies. Also, future polices should consider the interest of the most vulnerable in the society by providing safety measures.

The impact of COVID-19 on the transportation and logistics industry

In this present age of globalization, the logistics and transportation industry has become an integral part of most businesses/firms as it is aimed at ensuring the effective movement of people, distribution of goods and services from one location to another on time. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the logistics and transportation sectors. The qualitative research approach was adopted using analysis and synthesis of scientific literature, data from news reports, organizational sites, and a case study of data contents. The paper presented the analysis of negative and positive effects of COVID-19 on the logistics and transportation industry. The study also discusses possible strategies and further steps for improvement of the logistics and transportation sector, including the automation and introduction of other technologies, a sustainable and flexible transportation system, cooperation of logistics and transportation business. Findings regarding the positive implications of COVID-19 show noticeable advancements in the logistics and transportation sector, such as the rise of e-commerce businesses with efficient delivery options, and the development of 3rd party logistics services as more companies outsource supply chain operations. The study revealed the importance of strategic planning with a joint effort from the research centers, public sector, private sector, and educational institutions as one of the proposed solutions for the logistics and transportation industry.

Reconciling COVID-19 pandemic budget deficits through furloughs and salary reductions

Theoretical basis The primary topics, in this case, align well with social processes relative to communication and decision-making, and with individual processes relative to fairness in the workplace. Research methodology The case was developed from secondary sources. The secondary sources included news reports, and university sources (i.e. e-mails, announcements, reports, town hall meetings). This descriptive case has been classroom tested in an undergraduate organizational behavior course. Case overview/synopsis On September 10, 2020, the president of Bowie State University, Dr Aminta H. Breaux, announced that the university needed to “take a number of steps, including a temporary salary reduction plan, to close the FY21 funding gap and position the university for continued budget challenges” (Exhibit 1) triggered by the economic impact of COVID-19 on the state of Maryland. Some of the faculty members’ reactions to this announcement included shock and disappointment. Reflecting on what led to the state appropriation reductions, why would faculty members be shocked by President Breaux’s announcement of temporary salary reductions? Did President Breaux make the right decision, and was it communicated appropriately? Complexity academic level This descriptive case is most appropriate for undergraduate level organizational behavior courses.

An Analysis of Reports by The Illustrated London News (ILN) and The Graphic against Social Activities in Malaya in the 19th Century

Unlike in the West, the emergence of visual printing and printing press in Malaya was comparatively lagged behind. Publication and printing reached the Malayan shore through the Straits Settlements after the first publication was brought in and introduced by A. B. Bone in 1806. Since then, various visual reports regarding Malaya made their way into the well-known newspapers in Britain, The Illustrated London News (ILN) and The Graphic. Social activities in Malaya became part of the main visual report in these newspapers. Nonetheless, it was found that these newspapers were not objective in reporting the news on social activities in Malaya. In lieu of this, the current research attempted to find out the extent of the action of ILN and The Graphic in manipulating visual news report about the social activities in Malaya in the 19th century. In addition, this research also aimed to find out how far the ideas and thoughts of both newspapers in describing the news reports related to social activities in Malaya in the 19th century. This research focuses on the 19th century, within the specified period, of which the two respective presses released many visual news reports regarding social activities in Malaya. The qualitative method and visual approach were chosen as the research itself was conducted in London, especially at the National Art Library, situated in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In Malaysia, materials and resources were obtained from the Malaysian National Archive, National Museum, National Library, and libraries at higher learning institutions.

Networked Collective Action and the Impeachment of President Park

This chapter offers a detailed analysis of online and offline interactions and information exchanges that took place in organizing candlelight vigils in 2016–2017 that contributed to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Interactions between agents and affordances resulted in the nation’s first removal of a president through impeachment processes. Key agents—in particular, journalists, social media influencers, citizens, activists, news organizations, and civic organizations—interacted to produce, share, and amplify cognitive and affective content resulting in massive citizen participation in candlelight vigils for 20 consecutive weeks. It provides an in-depth analysis of these and related issues based on interviews with journalists, activists, citizens, government officials, and technology company representatives and experts. The interview data are triangulated using analyses of news reports and social media posts.

Shortcomings in Public Health Authorities’ Videos on COVID-19: Limited Reach and a Creative Gap

Video communication has played a key role in relaying important and complex information on the COVID-19 pandemic to the general public. The aim of the present study is to compare Norwegian health authorities’ and WHO’s use of video communication during the COVID-19 pandemic to the most viewed COVID-19 videos on YouTube, in order to identify how videos created by health authorities measure up to contemporary video content, both creatively and in reaching video consumers. Through structured search on YouTube we found that Norwegian health authorities have published 26 videos, and the WHO 29 videos on the platform. Press briefings, live videos, news reports, and videos recreated/translated into other languages than English or Norwegian, were not included. A content analysis comparing the 55 videos by the health authorities to the 27 most viewed videos on COVID-19 on YouTube demonstrates poor reach of health authorities’ videos in terms of views and it elucidates a clear creative gap. While the videos created by various YouTube creators communicate using a wide range of creative presentation means (such as professional presenters, contextual backgrounds, advanced graphic animations, and humour), videos created by the health authorities are significantly more homogenous in style often using field experts or public figures, plain backgrounds or PowerPoint style animations. We suggest that further studies into various creative presentation means and their influence on reach, recall, and on different groups of the population, are carried out in the future to evaluate specific factors of this creative gap.