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    An analysis of the psychological implications of covid-19 pandemic on undergraduate students and efforts on mitigation
    (Springer, 2022-02) Rao, Shreyas Suresh
    The whole world is combating the COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected mankind in enormous ways. To limit its pervasive expansion, many measures were taken up by the Indian government, as a result of which colleges were closed, and education was imparted through the online mode. The pandemic has induced psychological strain in the minds of students. The present study analyses the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on engineering undergraduates in south India, who are in the age group of 19 to 22. A survey from 365 students was analyzed during the second wave of COVID-19. Data revealed that although there is an overall increased awareness about the outbreak, there is a considerable inclination towards depression, anxiety, and stress in students. Amongst the participants, 116 (31.78%) screened positive for depression, 79 (21.64%) for anxiety, and 53 (14.52%) for stress. Besides, 46 (12.60%) participants had comorbid conditions, with moderate, severe, or extremely severe levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. The Center of Excellence in AI&ML at the study center implemented a multilingual chatbot to provide mental health support during the pandemic and deployed the bot in Facebook and Web modes.
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    Merits and Limitations of Mathematical Modeling and Computational Simulations in Mitigation of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comprehensive Review
    (Springer, 2021-08) Bhattacharyya, Suvanjan
    Mathematical models have assisted in describing the transmission and propagation dynamics of various viral diseases like MERS, measles, SARS, and Influenza; while the advanced computational technique is utilized in the epidemiology of viral diseases to examine and estimate the influences of interventions and vaccinations. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the COVID-19 as a global pandemic and the rate of morbidity and mortality triggers unprecedented public health crises throughout the world. The mathematical models can assist in improving the interventions, key transmission parameters, public health agencies, and countermeasures to mitigate this pandemic. Besides, the mathematical models were also used to examine the characteristics of epidemiological and the understanding of the complex transmission mechanism. Our literature study found that there were still some challenges in mathematical modeling for the case of ecology, genetics, microbiology, and pathology pose; also, some aspects like political and societal issues and cultural and ethical standards are hard to be characterized. Here, the recent mathematical models about COVID-19 and their prominent features, applications, limitations, and future perspective are discussed and reviewed. This review can assist in further improvement of mathematical models that will consider the current challenges of viral diseases.
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    Identification and Analysis of Health Parameters for the Development of a Mobile App and Sensor Based Wearable Health Band
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023) Digalwar, Abhijeet Kumar
    During Covid-19 pandemic, the World has experienced a crisis at a scale that was never witnessed before in history. The entire ecosystem all over the globe has been changed after the pandemic. The life style of each and every community of people changed drastically. Therefore, the health awareness has been increased due to the situations realized by the people during pandemic. With this in view, the current research makes an attempt to explore various challenges faced by the people in the community during and post Covid and comes up with the study of identification and analysis of health parameters for the design and development of an integrated mobile app and sensor based wearable device. In addition to biological health parameters, we also surveyed and analyzed the mental stress and anxiety issues among the people. To accomplish this objective, we conducted an online survey among 500 to 600 Indian population to understand the health-related issues of people of different ages. The data collected from the survey is analyzed and based on the analysis, health parameters are identified for building a mobile app integrated with a health cum safety band. The findings of our study show that there is an immense need for the design and development of an interactive mobile app and sensor based wearable device which will help the people to overcome their health-related problems.
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    Challenges and Opportunities in Online Learning Amid COVID-19: A Study on Hearing–Speech Impaired Students of Jammu and Kashmir
    (Sage, 2022-03) Chouhan, Gajendra Singh
    The pandemic is a distressing time for academia. The past 24 months have caused a deeper rift between learning and teaching. Online classes have become necessary overnight, but the transition was not smooth and productive. Moreover, educating students with speech and hearing disabilities online is not similar to those who can hear and speak. The present study explores the challenges of online classes, the struggles of the student–teacher community, and the limitations of technology to make virtual education possible for the hearing–speech impaired students in Jammu and Kashmir. The study also captures some of the possibilities of effective deliverance. Finally, it suggests imperative changes to make online learning accessible, inclusive and meaningful for the hearing–speech impaired community that depends on facial expressions, lip-sync and sign language to learn and communicate. This article encapsulates how accessible and effective online learning is among the hearing–speech impaired students in the region.
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    COVID-19 and the Challenges of Virtual Mode of Education in India–University Practice Connect
    (Azim Premji University, 2020) Padhi, Balakrushna
    The COVID-19 outbreak that led to the closure of schools has had an unprecedented effect on children’s education and wellbeing. It is important to note that interrupting education services can have serious, long-term consequences for economies and societies, such as an increase in inequality, poorer health and nutrition outcomes, and reduced social cohesion. Therefore, the need to promote and safeguard every child’s right to education as set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) should be given the utmost priority.
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    Pandemic Beyond Lockdown in India
    (Orissa Economic Association, 2020) Padhi, Balakrushna
    The aim of this study is two-fold. First, it evaluates the scorecard of the COVID-19 pandemic in India and its major states during the last four phases of nationwide lockdowns and unlocks. Second, it examines the changing structure of the health status under this pandemic in terms of increasing COVID-19 cases. To this end, we have employed the prevalence rate, recovery rate, case fatality rate, doubling rate, and sample test multiple as methodologies using the daily data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (India) and WHO. The analysis reveals that there is a huge variation in the prevalence rate, fatality rate, testing rate, and doubling rates across the states in India. From the end of the fourth lockdown (May 31, 2020) to the end of the fourth unlock (unlock 4.0–September 30, 2020), the prevalence rate has increased from 538 per million to 19185 per million during this period. The average case fatality rate in India was 2.2 per cent at the beginning of the first lockdown and increased to 3 per cent during the fourth lockdown. However, owing to the phase-wise unlocks, case fatality rate has reversed to 1.6 per cent till the end of unlock 4.0. On average, most of the states moved to a slower doubling rate of COVID-19 cases during the unlock periods. This study emphasises the need for rapid identification, to find isolation, quick test, and treat cases of COVID-19, including providing optimal care for its severity in patients, especially the elderly, to ensure these recent declining trends continue.
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    Trajectories of Migrant’s Mobility amid Covid-19 Pandemic in Odisha
    (NILERED, 2022-08) Padhi, Balakrushna
    The unforeseen lockdowns across Indian states due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the labour forces involving millions of migrant workers, particularly engaged in the informal economy. The situation became complex when with ease in lockdown, migrant workers started returning to their source states. Odisha, an eastern state of India, witnessed a similar challenging situation when it had to receive thousands of desperate and distressed migrant workers who returned home amid the pandemic. The situation however revealed the inadequate knowledge about the migrant workers, despite their contribution to the state’s economy with remittances and skills. The situation also tested our personal knowledge about migrant workers, with disappointment and ineptitude, both professionally and academically. The existing studies rarely acknowledge the complex lived realities of the migrants in their own voices. After conducting in-depth interviews with returnee migrant workers amid COVID-19 situation, this study, while limited in its generalizability, illustrates the multifaceted complexities of migration situation through a grounded perspective from migrants themselves.
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    What changed in the cyber-security after COVID-19?
    (Elsevier, 2022-09) Kumar, Rajesh
    This paper examines the transition in the cyber-security discipline induced by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Using the classical information retrieval techniques, a more than twenty thousand documents are analyzed for the cyber content. In particular, we build the topic models using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) unsupervised machine learning algorithm. The literature corpus is build through a uniform keyword search process made on the scholarly and the non-scholarly platforms filtered through the years 2010-2021. To qualitatively know the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on cyber-security, and perform a trend analysis of key themes, we organize the entire corpus into various (combination of) categories based on time period and whether the literature has undergone peer review process. Based on the weighted distribution of keywords in the aggregated corpus, we identify the key themes. While in the pre-COVID-19 period, the topics of cyber-threats to technology, privacy policy, blockchain remain popular, in the post-COVID-19 period, focus has shifted to challenges directly or indirectly brought by the pandemic. In particular, we observe post-COVID-19 cyber-security themes of privacy in healthcare, cyber insurance, cyber risks in supply chain gaining recognition. Few cyber-topics such as of malware, control system security remain important in perpetuity. We believe our work represents the evolving nature of the cyber-security discipline and reaffirms the need to tailor appropriate interventions by noting the key trends.