A machine learning analysis of the relationship of demographics and social gathering attendance from 41 countries during pandemic

Knowing who to target with certain messages is the prerequisite of efficient public health campaigns during pandemics. Using the COVID-19 pandemic situation, we explored which facets of the society—defined by age, gender, income, and education levels—are the most likely to visit social gatherings and aggravate the spread of a disease. Analyzing the reported behavior of 87,169 individuals from 41 countries, we found that in the majority of the countries, the proportion of social gathering-goers was higher in male than female, younger than older, lower-educated than higher educated, and low-income than high-income subgroups of the populations. However, the data showed noteworthy heterogeneity between the countries warranting against generalizing from one country to another. The analysis also revealed that relative to other demographic factors, income was the strongest predictor of avoidance of social gatherings followed by age, education, and gender. Although the observed strength of these associations was relatively small, we argue that incorporating demographic-based segmentation into public health campaigns can increase the efficiency of campaigns with an important caveat: the exploration of these associations needs to be done on a country level before using the information to target populations in behavior change interventions.

Designing Post COVID-19 Buildings: Approaches for Achieving Healthy Buildings

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the accessibility, social gathering, lifestyle, and working environment to be changed to reduce the infection. Coronavirus spreads between people in several different ways. Small liquid particles (aerosols, respiratory droplets) from an infected person are transmitted through air and surfaces that are in contact with humans. Reducing transmission through modified heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and building design are potential solutions. A comprehensive review of the engineering control preventive measures to mitigate COVID-19 spread, healthy building design, and material was carried out. The current state-of-the-art engineering control preventive measures presented include ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI), bipolar ionization, vertical gardening, and indoor plants. They have potential to improve the indoor air quality. In addition, this article presents building design with materials (e.g., copper alloys, anti-microbial paintings) and smart technologies (e.g., automation, voice control, and artificial intelligence-based facial recognition) to mitigate the infections of communicable diseases.

ERA BARU DALAM RITUAL KEAGAMAAN: STUDI ZIARAH KUBUR DI MASA PANDEMI COVID-19

Religious rituals during the COVID-19 pandemic are indeed different from previous times. Nowadays, it is required to use a series of conditions in running it. In various regions in carrying out many worship activities, cultural rites, religion must be limited by several provisions. In celebration, not all will attend the assembly or mosque. As for this article, the author uses a phenomenological approach methodology to map current phenomena on the surface that are different from religious activities before the outbreak of Covid-19. The result of this study is that pilgrimage to the grave has become a rite in Islamic society when approaching major holidays, making pilgrimages always a social gathering and ritual that must be carried out even though there is a pandemic. However, with this pandemic, many public cemeteries have been closed and many appeals not to come to the graves during the pandemic, especially during major holidays in Islam. So it can be concluded that the religious ritual of pilgrimage to the grave, which has taken root in the community and becomes a ritual that must be carried out when approaching a certain day, cannot be limited even with the Covid-19 pandemic. Abstrak Ritual keagamaan di masa pandemi covid-19 ini memang berbeda dengan masa-masa sebelumnya. Masa hari ini dituntut untuk menggunakan serangkaian persyaratan dalam melaksanakannya. Di berbagai daerah dalam melaksanakan banyak kegiatan peribadatan, ritus budaya, agama harus dibatasi dengan beberapa ketentuan. Dalam perayaannya, memang tidak semua akan hadir dalam sebuah majelis atau masjid. Adapun pada artikel ini penulis menggunakan metodologi pendekatan fenomenologi untuk memetakan sebuah kejadian fenomena yang hari ini timbul dipermukaan yang ada sebuah perbedaan dengan kegiatan keagamaan di kala sebelum mewabahnya covid-19. Hasil daripada kajian ini ialah ziarah kubur yang sudah menjadi ritus dalam masyarakat Islam ketika menjelang hari-hari besar, menjadikan ziarah akan selalu menjadi pertemuan dan ritual keagamaan yang tetap harus dikerjakan meski pandemi. Namun, dengan adanya pandemi ini, tempat pemakaman umum banyak yang ditutup dan banyak himbauan untuk tidak datang ke makam di masa-masa pandemi, terutama ketika hari-hari besar dalam Islam. Sehingga dapat disimpulkan bahwa ritual keagamaan ziarah kubur yang sudah mengakar dalam masyarakat dan menjadi ritual yang wajib dikerjakan ketika menjelang hari tertentu, tidak bisa dibatasi meskipun dengan adanya pandemi Covid-19 ini.

Epidemiological Characteristics of COVID-19 Resurgence in Areas Initially Under Control

Objectives: To investigate the epidemiological characteristics and infection routes of new cases in order to provide information for preventing COVID-19 resurgence in areas initially under control.Methods: The information of new symptomatic and asymptomatic patients in Chinese mainland was collected. The location distribution, epidemic course, infection routes and patients' characteristics of outbreaks were described and analyzed.Results: There were 43 new outbreaks with 3,795 symptomatic patients in Chinese mainland from March 21, 2020 to June 13, 2021. These outbreaks mainly occurred in central, border and coastal port cities. The main infection route of first generation indigenous patients was contact with imported cases and contaminated goods or environments. The infection routes of secondary generation patients mainly included family transmission, indoor social gathering infection, nosocomial infection and other infection routes. Family transmission was the most common infection route, and indoor social gathering was the most important reason for the large-scale outbreaks.Conclusions: Strengthen the management of imported patients and staff in high-risk posts was the key point to avoid the first generation indigenous patients. Adequate family isolation, prompt management policies for indoor public place and monitor of population at risk of infection were key strategies for preventing COVID-19 resurgence in areas initially under control.

Ensemble learning based classifier to predict depression caused due to pandemic

Pandemic caused due to Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) affected each and every person life throughout the world. First wave of COVID-19 followed by second wave made situation more panic. Government declared Lockdown imposed strict prohibition on social gathering, unnecessary outing, travelling, and education. During home quarantine, people shared opinion, expressed views, feelings on social media. Home isolation and quarantine affected mental health of people which may lead to depression. Hence in this research article depression is predicted by implementing Neural Network based model. At first level this model implements text classification of COVID-19 based Tweets. Neural network model accuracy is 86.85%. In next level, using same tweet dataset as input, Ensemble learning based model is constructed. This model uses one of the boosting techniques known as Adaboost. Model is executed by varying Train-test-validation ratio. It is observed that accuracy of the model is improved. The model showed accuracy of 99.33 % successfully in every execution. Obtained results are compared with previous work in same area.

Disclaimer from the Conference Organizer

The 3rd International Conference on Natural Resources and Technology (The 3rd ICONART) held on 24 - 25 August 2021 virtually. Due to the increasing cases of Covid-19 in Indonesia and other countries which pose a significant impact on our social gathering, work culture and travel restrictions, the committee has agreed on conducting this current conference virtually for the second time for mutual safety. We have already managed that this conference held annually so if this event held next year, it will be consistent in time line. The 1st Iconart has been held in 2019, 2nd Iconart in 2020, 3rd Iconart in 2021, 4, 5, 6 will be held annually for the following year. Virtual Conference Dates was held on August 24-25, 2021. The Location of the organizers was in Hotel Grandhika, Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia as room control. List of Committee is available in this pdf.

Online Social Gathering Service Firm Strategy

This research is written on the background of how the strategy to market online social gathering services is behind the rise of online social gathering scams. With the postpositivist paradigm of a qualitative approach to case study design, it has been found that the marketing strategy for online social gathering services will survive if it is supported by the products offered, causing reactions and consumer interest to be noticed, owned, used or consumed so as to satisfy consumer wants and needs. The products offered by the owner to consumers also vary. The price offered by the owner of this online social gathering is in accordance with the get that consumers want to get, so that consumers choose the get the social gathering slot according to their wishes, the use of online media is more effective to reach wider consumers and offer their products. The owner of this online social gathering benefits in the form of having a relationship with many people and also benefits from holding an online social gathering, the most important finding of this research is to include the mandate in running an online social gathering service business.

The seasonality of three childhood infections in a pre-industrial society without schools

Background: The burden of many infectious diseases varies seasonally and a better understanding of the drivers of infectious disease seasonality would help to improve public health interventions. For directly transmitted highly-immunizing childhood infections, the leading hypothesis is that seasonality is strongly driven by social gatherings imposed by schools, with maxima and minima during school terms and holidays respectively. However, we currently have a poor understanding of the seasonality of childhood infections in societies without schools and whether these are driven by human social gatherings. Here, we used unique nationwide data consisting of >40 epidemics over 100 years in 18th and 19th century Finland, an agricultural pre-health care society without schools, to (i) quantify the seasonality of three easily identifiable childhood infections, smallpox, pertussis and measles and (ii) test the extent to which seasonality of these diseases is driven by seasonal social gatherings. Methods: We quantified the seasonality of transmission using time series Suscpetibel-Infected-Recovery models, wavelet analyses and general additive mixed models.Results: We found that all three infections were seasonal and the seasonality patterns differed from those in industrialized societies with schools. Smallpox and measles showed high transmission in the first half of the year, but we could not associate this with seasonal human gatherings events. For pertussis, however, transmission was higher during social gathering events such as New Year and Easter.Conclusions: Our results show that the seasonality of childhood infections is more variable than previously described in other populations and indicate a pathogen-specific role of human social aggregation in driving the infectious disease dynamics.Funding: Academy of Finland (278751, 292368), Nordforsk (104910), the Ehrnrooth Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the University of Turku Foundation and the Doctoral Programme in Biology, Geography and Geology, University of Turku.

An Update of Third Place Theory

Responding to a perceived decline in social capital in America, sociologists Oldenburg and Brissett offer the third place as a solution. While traditionally defined as social gathering places in the physical environment, recent studies have demonstrated that virtual environments may also serve as third places. This study analyzes the social media website Facebook to identify current socializing patterns. The goals of the present study are twofold: 1) to examine the characteristics of third places in virtual contexts as evidenced in existing literature and 2) to identify new third place characteristics that illustrate the evolution of third place characteristics using Facebook as a model. Findings provide support for updating third place characteristics in order to encompass both virtual and physical environments. Results reinforce the idea that present-day socializing trends better represent a different paradigm than existing theories and provide definitions for new evolving third place characteristics.

Residents’ Insights on Their Local Food Environment and Dietary Behaviors: A Cross-City Comparison Using Photovoice in Spain

Perceptions of local food environments and the ability of citizens to engage in participatory research may vary, even if participants share similar cultural and socioeconomic contexts. In this study, we aimed to describe participants’ narratives about their local food environment in two cities in Spain. We used the participatory methodology of Photovoice to engage participants in Madrid (n = 24) and Bilbao (n = 17) who took and discussed photographs about their local food environment (Madrid; n = 163 and Bilbao; n = 70). Common themes emerged across both cities (food insecurity, poverty, use of public spaces for eating and social gathering, cultural diversity and overconsumption of unhealthy foods); however, in Bilbao citizens perceived that there was sufficient availability of healthy foods despite that living in impoverished communities. Photovoice was a useful tool to engage participating citizens to improve their local food environments in both cities. This new approach allowed for a photovoice cross-city comparison that could be useful to fully understand the complexity and diversity of residents’ perceptions regardless of their place of residence.