BITS Faculty Publications
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Item Integrating blockchain capabilities in an omnichannel healthcare system: a dual theoretical perspective(Wiley, 2023-07) Sharma, Sangeeta; Nigam, AchintThe COVID-19 pandemic opened a market for omnichannel healthcare. While some patients trusted the hybrid mode of consultancy, others lacked trust in the online mode of consultancy. The purpose of the study is to understand the extent to which blockchain can influence the swift trust of stakeholders and the usage intention of omnichannel healthcare systems (OHS). We used a quantitative approach by surveying 250 patients that rendered services from OHS by drawing upon the lens of organizational information processing theory (OIPT) and swift trust theory (STT). We test the hypotheses using the PLS-SEM technique. The results show blockchain technology can significantly affect the adoption of omnichannel healthcare by reinforcing swift trust in OHS and its continued usage.Item Towards a Definition of Performance During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study of Ramlila in India(University of Hawai'i Press, 2023) PrateekThis article demonstrates how Covid-19 transformed the performance aesthetics of ancient theatre traditions in India. I draw primarily on the October 17, 2020 performance of the Ramlila, the folk staging of Ramayana, produced by the Shri Ram Dharmik Leela Committee, Tri Nagar, one of the most popular theatre troupes in North Delhi. In the first part of the article, I explore the metatheatricality of the production by analyzing its camera-centric aesthetic while demonstrating how the performance divested gods of their power. In the second part, I investigate how the performance’s paratextual thematic bestowed power on humans. Broadly, I show that the Covid-era performance of Ramlila marks a break from some of the traditional conventions of performance aesthetics in India.Item COVID-19 pandemic sentiment and stock market behavior: evidence from an emerging market(Emerald, 2021-11) Debata, ByomakeshThis study uses nonlinear causality and wavelet coherence techniques to analyze the sentiment-returns nexus. The analysis is conducted on the full sample period from January to December 2020 and further extended to two subperiods from January to June and July to December to investigate whether the associations between sentiment and market returns persist even several months after the outbreakItem Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Investor Attention in Global Stock Markets: An Empirical Assessment(Sage, 2022-12) Debata, ByomakeshUsing the data from 50 global stock markets, this article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on investor attention. Using Google search volume as a proxy for country-specific and worldwide investor attention, this article provides initial evidence on the relationship between the spread of the pandemic and investor attention. Our results suggest that the increasing number of daily deaths and confirmed cases significantly negatively impact investor attention. Results are robust to the country characteristics like the nature of the financial system, financial stability and investor attention risk pricing nature. Our results indicate a positive and significant impact of government responses for restoring investor attention in the market.Item Achieving Ambient Intelligence in Addressing the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Fog Computing-Driven IoT(IGI Global, 2022) Gupta, ShashankIn this chapter, the authors present a comprehensive review on how the fog computing-based IoT can be utilized for the outbreak prevention and its existing control systems. The authors have also explained how numerous edge computing devices (e.g., sensors/actuators, RFID systems, webcams, drones, etc.) are playing a key role in controlling this disease using IoT protocols like 6LoWPAN. In addition, the authors also emphasize IoT security attacks and vulnerabilities which are prevalent in the existing infrastructure setup of smart cities. The key aspects of emerging uses of IoT (such as smart retail store automation, smart transportation, smart waste management, etc.) are described that played a key role in controlling this epidemic in the existing infrastructure of sustainable smart cities. Finally, some future research directions are also discussed that highlight the steps in mitigating the effect of this pandemic using fog-enabled IoT and AI techniques.Item D-insta: A Decentralized Image Sharing Platform(Springer, 2023-03) Bhatia, Ashutosh; Tiwari, KamleshDue to the covid-19 pandemic, people have moved toward digitization and using digital technologies in their daily life. For instance, photographers and artists use social media platforms or stock photo websites to showcase their art to people to get recognition and credit. Since social media platforms attract people more than stock photo websites, we consider incorporating the stock photo website features into the social media platforms. Currently, such platforms are running in a centralized fashion where their proprietary algorithms mask most of the content to which some users and advertisement posts are given more priority. Due to the centralization, such hidden algorithms create trust issues among the users along with other issues such as single point of failure, identity theft, etc. This causes genuine artists and photographers to lose their interest and motivation. Providing due credit to the authors and deserved recognition are significant concerns for photographers who share images on stock photo websites or social media platforms. In this paper, we propose a decentralized image-sharing platform/application utilizing blockchain and a distributed file storage system to address all these issues. The proposed platform leverages Ethereum-based smart contracts to maintain trust as deployed smart contracts are immutable, and the logic written in them is publicly available. We leverage a distributed file storage system to solve the blockchain scalability issue in terms of storage.Item Role of Pharmacists during and Post COVID-19 Pandemic-An Indian Perspective(IJOPP, 2022-04) Shrivastava, RichaThe multiple outbreaks of COVID-19 have led to a public health crisis, affecting millions across the globe. The healthcare fraternity is shouldering a huge responsibility and is working tirelessly to curb the spread of the disease. These unprecedented times demand that the usual roles of pharmacists be modified. Pharmacists have to rise up to the challenges and strategize accordingly. Many nations are trying to tackle the repercussions of the second wave of COVID-19 and the latest third wave by OMICRON variant, which has punctured the healthcare system and led to question the resource management and governance failures that have affected thousands of lives. It is difficult to bring the situation under control in several places, predominantly middle and lowincome countries. Thus, to succeed in providing all the healthcare services, changes pertaining to operations, supply management, safety precautions, spreading awareness, vaccination drives, etc., must be incorporated by healthcare workers, especially the pharmacists, to create a maximum positive change. This article highlights the roles and responsibilities of the pharmacists that they can fulfil during and post this pandemic. It also reviews the nature of their functioning, the roles that they can adapt, and identifies places wherein their roles can be expanded or modified in accordance with the countryspecific guidelines.Item Systematic Down-Selection of Repurposed Drug Candidates for COVID-19(MDPI, 2022) Murugesan, SankaranarayananSARS-CoV-2 is the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic which has claimed more than 6.5 million lives worldwide, devastating the economy and overwhelming healthcare systems globally. The development of new drug molecules and vaccines has played a critical role in managing the pandemic; however, new variants of concern still pose a significant threat as the current vaccines cannot prevent all infections. This situation calls for the collaboration of biomedical scientists and healthcare workers across the world. Repurposing approved drugs is an effective way of fast-tracking new treatments for recently emerged diseases. To this end, we have assembled and curated a database consisting of 7817 compounds from the Compounds Australia Open Drug collection. We developed a set of eight filters based on indicators of efficacy and safety that were applied sequentially to down-select drugs that showed promise for drug repurposing efforts against SARS-CoV-2. Considerable effort was made to evaluate approximately 14,000 assay data points for SARS-CoV-2 FDA/TGA-approved drugs and provide an average activity score for 3539 compounds. The filtering process identified 12 FDA-approved molecules with established safety profiles that have plausible mechanisms for treating COVID-19 disease. The methodology developed in our study provides a template for prioritising drug candidates that can be repurposed for the safe, efficacious, and cost-effective treatment of COVID-19, long COVID, or any other future disease. We present our database in an easy-to-use interactive interface (CoviRx that was also developed to enable the scientific community to access to the data of over 7000 potential drugs and to implement alternative prioritisation and down-selection strategies.Item Teaching, Technology and Pandemic: Experiences of a Teacher(SSRN, 2022-02) Joshi, SandeepThe teaching-learning process has undergone substantial changes since the onset of the pandemic due to a shift in the established mode of knowledge-sharing in educational institutions. In this paper, we present an overview of the changes that have happened in the knowledge dissemination process, with a focus on India, with respect to engineering education. We present results from a targeted survey of the students from different engineering disciplines and their experience of online education. The findings highlight the student’s point of view about the online education system. Further, we discuss the impact of using technology which is the backbone of this shift in the learning model. Furthermore, the paper discusses the digital divide, another consequence of the new development of next-generation telecommunication technologies, which is an important consideration in fulfilling this shift in education.Item Characteristics of 2020 stock market crash: The COVID-19 induced extreme event(AIP, 2021-04) Bal, Debi PrasadA sudden fall of stock prices happens during a pandemic due to the panic sell-off by the investors. Such a sell-off may continue for more than a day, leading to a significant crash in the stock price or, more specifically, an extreme event (EE). In this paper, Hilbert–Huang transformation and a structural break analysis (SBA) have been applied to identify and characterize an EE in the stock market due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hilbert spectrum shows a maximum energy concentration at the time of an EE, and hence, it is useful to identify such an event. The EE’s significant energy concentration is more than four times the standard deviation above the mean energy of the normal fluctuation of stock prices. A statistical significance test for the intrinsic mode functions is applied, and the test found that the signal is not noisy. The degree of nonstationarity test shows that the indices and stock prices are nonstationary. We identify the time of influence of the EE on the stock price by using SBA. Furthermore, we have identified the time scale (τ) of the shock and recovery of the stock price during the EE using the intrinsic mode function obtained from the empirical mode decomposition technique. The quality stocks with V-shape recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic have definite τ of shock and recovery, whereas the stressed stocks with L-shape recovery have no definite τ. The identification of τ of shock and recovery during an EE will help investors to differentiate between quality and stressed stocks. These studies will help investors to make appropriate investment decisions