The Rapid Shift from Onsite to Online Teaching – Students’ Perceptions

Recent developments in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have had a substantial impact on students, teachers and content delivery modes around the globe. This paper reports the efforts of the University of Tetovo (UT) in North Macedonia (NM) and Banat’s USAMVB University “King Michael I of Romania” to find rapid and efficient means of switching from direct to remote course delivery while maintaining effective communication. Acknowledging that little space was available for training teachers and learners to prepare for such rapid changes, this study examines how students responded. Applying exploratory research methods, the paper offers a preliminary analysis of the difficulties that learners faced in shifting to online presentation. Qualitative data was collected using student interviews and content analysis (Silverman, 2005) was applied to identify themes, biases and meaning. Convenience sampling among enrolled students in the academic year 2020/2021 at both universities identified a non-random sample of 16 students. The findings of the study revealed that participants faced many difficulties in their venture; however, using various strategies, effective planning and organization, they managed to a certain extent to overcome this situation.

Agrotech: Advanced Field Control

Agriculture in most countries is largely dependent on the environmental conditions and climate. Real-time remote monitoring of field conditions allows for early detection of unfavorable conditions developing in the field that is generally a laborious task taken up by the farmers themselves. Additionally, with the rapid shift in climatic conditions and issues pertaining to global warming, the rainfall dependent agricultural yield is promptly affected. In this paper, we present a wireless system using nRF24L01 RF modules to monitor the farm environment conditions and operate the final control element aimed at implementing drip irrigation. The proposed system is designed to be economical and having a capacity for further expansion, allowing the widespread devices across the farm to be controlled. The soil sogginess level is measured by a self-made soil moisture sensor. A ball valve is actuated based on the levels of soil moisture, temperature and humidity checked against a set of predefined levels. The collected data is then pushed onto a cloud platform for future study or use. Keywords: Wireless sensor network, real-time monitoring, nRF24L01 RF module, highly economical and efficient system

Innovative Patient Involvement During Covid-19: Keeping Patients at the Heart of HTA

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown measures in the United Kingdom resulted in significant challenges and created opportunities for innovation to keep patients at the heart of HTA. The introduction of the Coronavirus Act 2020 and the associated public health guidance meant that NICE's conventional HTA methods were no longer feasible. NICE introduced rapid, innovative updates to patient and public involvement (PPI), decision-making meetings, and consultations to harness the expertise of patients and the public to ensure guidance addressed the expected concerns and identified barriers which could impact access. This article describes the PPI support for NICE's rapid shift to virtual meetings and virtual engagement. We utilize the authors' experience and patient and public contributor feedback to understand the experience of participating in a virtual setting and identify four themes: accessibility; inclusivity; transparency; and intrapersonal relationships and committee dynamics. The article also considers how patient representatives participated in, and facilitated, the development of guidance for a hypothetical technology to keep patients and the public at the heart of expedited and novel HTA processes to identify and understand the expected patient concerns and potential barriers for when a technology would be introduced.

infrastructure of life

The infrastructure of the city accompanies a person at all stages of their biography, including death as an integral attribute of life. This section includes three articles, the authors of which appear in our journal for the first time. The articles discuss strong trends that usually escape the attention of architectural theorists. There is a return of communal and other forms of housing where people unrelated to each other live under the same roof. Is it a global trend or a forced measure against economic hardships? A rethink of the rental house, a rapid shift in the balance from home ownership to rental housing – how will this affect the architecture of cities? In the general trend of changing attitudes to death and the process of dying, the subject of hospice architecture until recently was taboo, but now strongly attracts architects’ attention. The articles of our new authors are more of a question-posing and problematic nature, which is exactly in the style of our journal.

Enhancing Safety via Medication Self-Management and Timely Reporting

Medication errors have been a major threat to patient safety. Current research on medication errors is largely dependent on in-hospital reports. With the rapid shift of health care to chronic condition management, there is an urgent need to investigate medication errors in the community. In this paper, we discuss that the model of medication self-management developed for outpatient settings may be used to guide the development of prevention strategies for medication errors beyond hospitals. Further, timely reporting medication errors from patients in the communities may be helpful in mitigating the severity of side effects and reducing preventable safety events.

REDISCOVERING THE DIGITAL SEGMENTATION OF ORGAN DONORS IN MALAYSIA: AN EXPLORATORY REVIEW

Effective insights about market segmentation provide important information for social marketers in formulating a sound marketing plan. This importance could also be observed in the context of the digital segmentation of organ donors in Malaysia. Digital segmentation has become a crucial element in organ donation promotion as fuelled by the rapid shift to the digital world especially social media. In this sense, a sound marketing campaign for organ donation promotion is critically needed due to the low rate of organ donation registrations among Malaysians. Therefore, by focusing on people’s inclination to shift to social media and the importance of organ donation in Malaysia, the current study presents a systematic literature review to examine the potential of digital segmentation regarding organ donation promotion via social media. The current study successfully identified university students as the digital target segment for organ donors in Malaysia. This study also observed a massive opportunity to discover a new market segment due to the rapidly increasing number of digital users and the anticipated higher demand for organ donation in the near future. Additional research could optimise the current study findings to further study the effectiveness of organ donation campaigns. Besides that, stakeholders such as the Ministry of Health Malaysia could benefit from current research findings in formulating a sound organ donation marketing campaign.

Solar Dollars: A Complementary Currency that Incentivizes Renewable Energy

Incentives are the key to addressing climate change and the various other aspects of the current multi-dimensional mega-crisis. This paper proposes the issuance of private community currency vouchers by electric utility companies based on their willingness and ability to provide their customers with energy derived from renewable sources. By monetizing the value of renewable energy in the form of a community currency Solar Dollars help to solve several critical problems at once: They incentivize a more rapid shift to renewable energy, help communities to become more resilient and self-determined, and enable the decentralization of economic and political power.

Whom should we treat with novel agents? Specific indications for specific and challenging populations

A relative wealth of new therapies for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have led to a rapid shift in treatment paradigms for this disease. Understanding whom, when, and how to treat is more complex than ever before. Here we explore whom to treat with these available new therapies, focusing on special patient populations that include older adults, those with relapsed disease, and those with TP53-mutated AML. These high-risk subgroups are some of the most challenging to care for, but novel treatments are providing them with new hope.

An Empirical Study on Motivation to School Teachers in the Maldives during the COVID 19 Pandemic

The COVID 19 pandemic has affected all walks of life; as a result over 100 million children are away from school. The mass university closure and a forced transition to online teaching are to minimize disruptions to the academic year. Many inexperienced online teachers are expected to find the rapid shift from in-person to online teaching hard, and it is a "great experiment" that has to be studied. The study looked into the motivations of Maldivian instructors who were compelled to shift to remote online teaching as a result of the COVID-19. Teachers' self-efficacy refers to their capacity to handle responsibilities and problems in the workplace, and it has an impact on academic achievement. During the COVID-19 epidemic, this study intended to offer an in-depth investigation of the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on self-efficacy in teachers. The author is attempting to adopt more effective strategies to improve teachers' professional identity and job satisfaction in order to increase the efficacy of teachers, ensure the effectiveness of online teaching, and maintain sustainable development during the epidemic by collecting data from Maldivian schools.

RNA Modification and Its Implication in Plant Pathogenic Fungi

Interaction of a pathogen with its host plant requires both flexibility and rapid shift in gene expression programs in response to environmental cues associated with host cells. Recently, a growing volume of data on the diversity and ubiquity of internal RNA modifications has led to the realization that such modifications are highly dynamic and yet evolutionarily conserved system. This hints at these RNA modifications being an additional regulatory layer for genetic information, culminating in epitranscriptome concept. In plant pathogenic fungi, however, the presence and the biological roles of RNA modifications are largely unknown. Here we delineate types of RNA modifications, and provide examples demonstrating roles of such modifications in biology of filamentous fungi including fungal pathogens. We also discuss the possibility that RNA modification systems in fungal pathogens could be a prospective target for new agrochemicals.