Open Access Kent State (OAKS)

According to the UNICEF, children between 0–14 years represent ~26% of the total global population (~45% in Africa; 22% in USA, of which 90% attend school; ranging from 85–100% across countries). With high case-fatality ratios between 4.5–7.5% (Germany/Iran/USA/Brazil/Canada) and 11.9–16.4% (Spain/Italy/UK/France/Belgium), there is a critical need to empower citizens, especially children (often asymptomatic carriers), with education strategies to control COVID-19. Especially, there is need to support facemask citizen science and experiential education among children and families as the globe exits from the current lockdown, and teachers and students desire and seek for safe strategies to return to densely-attended schools. COVID-19 is a pandemic respiratory disease that disseminates as infectious respiratory or saliva droplets are released into the environment as people talk, sneeze, and cough. Currently the most publicized methods to prevent local transmission of COVID-19 and promote “droplet safety” in hospitals and communities include hand washing, social distancing, and stay-at-home strategies. In contrast to established benefits for medical masks in hospitals, the benefits of wearing masks or face covers/coverings (hereafter, “facemask”) in the community have been inconsistently debated by the media, creating confusion, and misinformation. Furthermore, high-profile political leaders in countries heavily affected by the pandemic have given misleading signs regarding containment measures associated with COVID-19 increasingly polarizing local communities around arguments on the value of facemasks in promoting public health, which is critically important to incentivize during the emergence of citizens from their lockdowns and during the phase of reopening local economies.

First publication and copyright by Frontiers Media.

Objective: This study analyzes the conceptual structure of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. We present a thematic mapping of concepts and a narrative exposition of the clusters of themes and relevant terminologies that explains the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has rattled the world in the past five months. We evaluate the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and two previous coronavirus outbreaks, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. Finally, we point to areas for future epidemiological studies to help in containing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Materials and Method: We use network analysis, data mining, and visual analytics to synthesize the keywords, themes, and terminologies in the scientific literature on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, and related concepts and terms. The data used in this study come from 346 scientific publications on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 between 2019 and April 2020, selected through a systematic review process. The selected documents come from the Web of Science.

Results: The study offers the first comprehensive exposition of the conceptual structure and theoretical evaluation of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, and in-depth narrative of themes and clusters of related terminologies through the scholarship of integration. The study points to areas for future clinical trials and epidemiology studies as the effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Conclusion: This paper achieved three outcomes; the conceptual structure of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, a narrative exposition of the cluster of themes and terminologies with analysis of the relationship with SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, and highlight crucial areas for future studies.

COVID-19 pandemic caused by novel coronavirus is continuously spreading until now all over the world. The impact of COVID-19 has been fallen on almost all sectors of development. The healthcare system is going through a crisis. Many precautionary measures have been taken to reduce the spread of this disease where wearing a mask is one of them. In this paper, we propose a system that restrict the growth of COVID-19 by finding out people who are not wearing any facial mask in a smart city network where all the public places are monitored with Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras. While a person without a mask is detected, the corresponding authority is informed through the city network. A deep learning architecture is trained on a dataset that consists of images of people with and without masks collected from various sources. The trained architecture achieved 98.7% accuracy on distinguishing people with and without a facial mask for previously unseen test data. It is hoped that our study would be a useful tool to reduce the spread of this communicable disease for many countries in the world.

Dates of grant: September 1, 2020 - August 31, 2021

Award amount: $172,372.27

Funder: U.S. Department of Education

Research grant: The public receives daily updates about the number of people locally, nationally, and globally who are infected with, and die from, COVID-19. Whole number bias may cause people to disregard COVID-19 as a small threat and fail to heed preventative measures. The purpose of this study is to test whether a brief educational intervention diminishes whole number bias when reasoning about COVID-19 statistics. https://ies.ed.gov/funding/grantsearch/details.asp?ID=4518

Principal Investigator: Clarissa Thompson

Co-Principal Investigators: Karin Coifman, Jennifer Taber

Background: The use of the Internet and web-based platforms to obtain public health information and manage health-related issues has become widespread in this digital age. The practice is so pervasive that the first reaction to obtaining health information is to 'google it.' As SARS-CoV-2 broke out in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and quickly spread worldwide, people flocked to the Internet to learn about the novel coronavirus and the disease, COVID-19. Lagged response by governments and public health agencies to prioritize the Internet and the World Wide Web to disseminate information about the coronavirus outbreak and building trust gave room for others to quickly populate the social media, online blogs, news outlets, and websites with misinformation and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in people's deviant behaviors towards public health safety measures. Objective: To determine what people learned about the COVID-19 pandemic through "web search;" examine any association between what people learned about COVID-19 and behavior towards the public health guidelines; and analyze the impact of misinformation and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic on people's behavior towards public health measures. Methods: This paper undertakes an infodemiology study using the Google trends worldwide search index covering the first six months after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak (January 1st, to June 30th, 2020) when the public scrambled for information about the pandemic. Data analysis employed statistical trends, correlation and regression, principal component analysis, and predictive models. Results:(i). The principal components analysis identifies two latent variables comprising past coronavirus epidemics (pastCoVepidemics) and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (presCoVpandemic). Both principal components (PCs) were utilized significantly to learn about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 and explained 88.78% variability. (ii). Three (3) PCs fuelled misinformation about COVID-19 [Misinformation("Biological Weapon," "VirusHoax," "CommonCold," "COVID-19Hoax," "ChinaVirus"); ConspTheory1("@5G"); ConspTheory1("IngestBleach")]. These PCs explained 84.85% of the variability, (iii). Two (2) PCs identified two components of public health measures [PubHealthMes1("Social Distancing," "WashHand," "Isolation," "Quarantine."); PubHealthMes2("WearMask"), which explained 84.7% of the variability. (iv). Based on the PCA results, log-linear, and predictive models [ConspTheory1(@5G)] is identified as a predictor of people's behavior towards public health measures (PubHealthMes2). Although (r=0.83), (r=-0.11) for Misinformation(COVID-19Hoax, VirusHoax, CommonCold, and more) and ConspTheory2 (Ingestbleach), respectively, with PubHealthMes1(social dist, handwash, isolation, and more), both were not statistically significant with (p=0.267), (p=0.13), respectively. Conclusions: Several studies focus on the impacts of social media and related platforms on spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. This study provides the first empirical evidence to the mainly anecdotal discourse on the use of web search to learn about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

The present cross-sectional study examined the actor-partner interdependence effect of fear of COVID-19 among Iranian pregnant women and their husbands and its association with their mental health and preventive behaviours during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A total of 290 pregnant women and their husbands (N = 580) were randomly selected from a list of pregnant women in the Iranian Integrated Health System and were invited to respond to psychometric scales assessing fear of COVID-19, depression, anxiety, suicidal intention, mental quality of life, and COVID-19 preventive behaviours. The findings demonstrated significant dyadic relationships between husbands and their pregnant wives' fear of COVID-19, mental health, and preventive behaviours. Pregnant wives’ actor effect of fear of COVID-19 was significantly associated with depression, suicidal intention, mental quality of life, and COVID-19 preventive behaviours but not anxiety. Moreover, a husband actor effect of fear of COVID-19 was significantly associated with depression, anxiety, suicidal intention, mental quality of life, and COVID-19 preventive behaviours. Additionally, there were significant partner effects observed for both the pregnant wives and their husbands concerning all outcomes. The present study used a cross-sectional design and so is unable to determine the mechanism or causal ordering of the effects. Also, the data are mainly based on self-reported measures which have some limitations due to its potential for social desirability and recall biases. Based on the findings, couples may benefit from psychoeducation that focuses on the effect of mental health problems on pregnant women and the foetus.

Objectives: The aim of this project was to test the efficacy of a brief and novel online ambulatory intervention aimed at supporting psychological health and well-being for medical personnel and first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: Interested participants, n=28, actively employed as medical personnel, support staff and emergency responders, in the Midwestern USA in May-June of 2020, provided informed consent and were randomised to complete either low-dose or high-dose intervention, one time daily for 1 week via smartphone application. Each daily intervention included expressive writing, adaptive emotion regulation activity and (one vs two) positive emotion-generation activities, lasting 3-6 min a day. Ratings of negative and positive emotion were provided before and after each activity daily. Analyses tested compliance, acceptability, as well as efficacy at increasing positive emotion and decreasing negative emotion with each use and across time.
Results: The results indicated a 13% increase in positive emotion, t(25)=2.01, p=0.056; and decrease in negative emotion by 44%, t(25)=-4.00, p=0.001 across both doses. However, there was a clear advantage for individuals in the high-dose condition as daily boosts in positive emotion were significantly greater (an additional 9.4%) B=0.47, p=0.018. Overall, compliance was good. Acceptability ratings were good for those who completed the follow-up assessment.
Conclusion: Front-line personnel, including medical staff and emergency responders, are experiencing unprecedented psychological stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. This investigation suggests both feasibility and efficacy for a brief, daily, ambulatory intervention which could provide essential psychological support to individuals at risk in the workplace.

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19), an ongoing pandemic, is threatening the whole population all over the world including the nations having high or low resource health infrastructure. The number of infection as well as death cases are increasing day by day, and outperforming all the records of previously found infectious diseases. This pandemic is imposing specific pressures on the medical system almost the whole globe. The respiration problem is the main complication that a COVID-19 infected patient faced generally. It is a matter of hope that the recent deployment of small-scale technologies like 3D printer, microcontroller, ventilator, Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) are mostly used to resolve the problem associated with medical equipment's for breathing. This paper aims to overview the existing technologies which are frequently used to support the infected patients for respiration. We described the most recent developed breathing aid devices such as oxygen therapy devices, ventilator, and CPAP throughout the review. A comparative analysis among the developed devices with necessary challenges and possible future directions are also outlined for the proper selection of affordable technologies. It is expected that this paper would be of great help to the experts who would like to contribute in this area.

Dates of grant: November 1, 2020 - October 31, 2021

Award amount: $5,000

Funder: CoBank

Other Sponsored Activity: Funds to help Campus Kitchen increase its efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, including cultivation of a group of current student leaders who will lead the on-campus food pantry efforts, recovering food from grocers/donors and delivering it to populations across the county, and hot meal programming including the purchase of carryout containers for pre-packaged hot meal delivery.

Principal Investigator: Amanda Woodyard

Dates of grant: July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021

Award amount: $2,000

Funder: Portage Foundation

Other Sponsored Activity: Campus Kitchen at Kent State University is providing food vouchers to Kentway residents who feel comfortable shopping at the Farmer’s Market, has established an on-site food pantry, and continues to host an on-site meal delivery program to help fight food insecurity among Kentway residents during the pandemic.

Principal Investigator: Amanda Woodyard

Dates of grant: March 1, 2020 - December 30, 2020

Award amount: $13,988,397

Funder: U.S. Treasury

CARES Act: Funding under the CARES Act - Coronavirus Relief Fund - Ohio Department of Higher Education to help offset costs incurred by Kent State University as a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Principal Investigator: Jeannie Reifsnyder

Dates of grant: March 1, 2020 - December 30, 2020

Award amount: $356,397

Funder: U.S. Treasury

CARES Act: CARES funding to provide enhanced mental health services to Kent State University students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Principal Investigator: Jeannie Reifsnyder

Dates of grant: March 1, 2020 - December 30, 2020

Award amount: $7,384,293

Funder: U.S. Treasury

CARES Act: Funding under the CARES Act - Coronavirus Relief Fund - Ohio Department of Higher Education to help offset costs incurred by Kent State University as a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Principal Investigator: Jeannie Reifsnyder

Dates of grant: March 1, 2020 - December 31, 2020

Award amount: $775,000

Funder: U.S. Treasury

CARES Act: Funding under the CARES Act - Coronavirus Relief Fund - Ohio Department of Higher Education to help offset costs incurred by Kent State University as a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Principal Investigator: Jeannie Reifsnyder

Dates of grant: August 1, 2020 - December 30, 2020

Award amount: $92,200

Funder: U.S. Treasury

Research grant: Funding to process and analyze weekly samples from wastewater treatment plants in Northeast Ohio to determine the presence of the COVID-19 virus.

Principal Investigator: Xiaozhen Mou

Dates of grant: April 27, 2020 - June 30, 2020

Award amount: $75,000

Funder: Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Other Sponsored Activity: Supplemental funds for WKSU under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Principal Investigator: Wendy Turner

Dates of grant: November 3, 2020 - December 31, 2020

Award amount: $25,000

Funder: U.S. Treasury

CARES Act: The goals of this grant are to increase mental health literacy, promote mental health resources, and encourage self-care through the distribution of printed materials, community advertisements, and a social media campaign.

Principal Investigator: Kimberly Laurene

Co-Principal Investigator: D Keene

Dates of grant: December 29, 2020 - December 28, 2021

Award amount: $18,103

Funder: U.S. Department of Education

CARES Act grant: Institutional portion of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act for the Ashtabula Campus.

Principal Investigator: Brenda Burke

Dates of grant: December 29, 2020 - December 28, 2021

Award amount: $4,850

Funder: U.S. Department of Education

CARES Act grant: Institutional portion of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act for the East Liverpool Campus.

Principal Investigator: Brenda Burke

Dates of grant: December 29, 2020 - December 28, 2021

Award amount: $21,727

Funder: U.S. Department of Education

CARES Act grant: Institutional portion of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act for the Trumbull Campus.

Principal Investigator: Brenda Burke

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, universities across the country abruptly closed campuses and transitioned to remote learning. The effects of these unprecedented closures are unknown. The current study examined reported alcohol consumption during the week prior to and after campus closure at a public university in Northeast Ohio. Analysis of data from 1,958 students, who endorsed using alcohol in the past 30 days, demonstrates that alcohol consumption (amount and frequency) increased as time progressed. Those with more symptoms of depression and anxiety reported greater increases in alcohol consumption (assessed via retrospective timeline follow-back) compared to students with fewer symptoms. Furthermore, students with greater perceived social support reported less alcohol consumption. Together, these findings highlight the need for universities to offer services and programs to students that will minimize risk factors and maximize protective factors in order to reduce or prevent alcohol abuse during the coronavirus pandemic.

Dates of grant: September 1, 2020 - October 31, 2020

Award amount: $21,812

Funder: Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services

Other Sponsored Activity: Funds to provide assistance in covering the cost of COVID-19 classroom dividers, cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment (PPE), temporary sinks, thermometers, and other expenses for childcare centers that are reopening during the pandemic.

Principal Investigator: Pamela Hutchins

Dates of grant: September 1, 2020 - October 31, 2020

Award amount: $6,375

Funder: Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services

Other Sponsored Activity: Funds to provide assistance in covering the cost of COVID-19 classroom dividers, cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment (PPE), temporary sinks, thermometers, and other expenses for childcare centers that are reopening during the pandemic.

Principal Investigator: Pamela Hutchins

The COVID-19 pandemic forced unprecedented changes upon journalists in the United States as they attempted to cover the story while adhering to the same stay-at-home orders as the rest of the public. This study used organizational support theory to investigate the stress associated with the logistics of coverage early in the pandemic and how perceived organizational support played a role in either alleviating or adding to that stress. In total, 222 journalists responded to a survey sent out during the first few weeks of the stay-at-home orders issued across the United States. Results revealed varying degrees of logistical support provided by news organizations with nearly one quarter receiving no supplies, technology, or extra training at all. Greater perceived organizational support was associated with lower levels of stress and higher levels of work commitment. Female journalists and those who were younger and less experienced felt significantly more stress associated with pandemic coverage.

With the first reports on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the scientific community working in the field of type III IFNs (IFN-λ) realized that this class of IFNs could play an important role in this and other emerging viral infections. In this Viewpoint, we present our opinion on the benefits and potential limitations of using IFN-λ to prevent, limit, and treat these dangerous viral infections.

COVID-19 has brought global attention to the critical role of water in managing infectious outbreaks. Although Sub-Saharan Africa could become a COVID-19 hotspot, some are optimistic that given the right strategies and interventions the region can contain the pandemic. One such interventions is Ghana's directive to provide free water to domestic users for six months to ensure that water insecure households do not compromise appropriate hygiene and sanitation during COVID-19. We highlight in this commentary how the complex geographies of water provision in the region could undermine the overall benefits of such initiatives, especially to poor and water insecure households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dates of grant: April 1, 2020 - September 30, 2021

Award amount: $178,400.00

Funder: Subaward Small Business Administration / U.S. Small Business Administration

Other Sponsored Activity: Supplemental funds for the Small Business Development Center at KSU's College of Aeronautics and Engineering to provide information, advising, and training services to businesses affected by COVID-19 in areas such as reopening strategies, accessing and applying for financial resources, and understanding and mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on small businesses.

Principal Investigator: William Southards

Dates of grant: April 1, 2020 - September 30, 2021

Award amount: $77,000

Funder: Subaward Small Business Administration / U.S. Small Business Administration

Other Sponsored Activity: Supplemental funds for the Small Business Development Center at KSU's College of Aeronautics and Engineering to provide information, advising, and training services to businesses affected by COVID-19 in areas such as reopening strategies, accessing and applying for financial resources, and understanding and mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on small businesses.

Principal Investigator: William Southards

In this perspective, we discuss the importance of developing a vaccine to help curb transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The question remains: Once a safe and effective vaccine is developed, will the public be willing to get it? We present information from one of the first tracking polls to assess public attitudes and perceptions toward a possible coronavirus disease 2019 vaccine that suggests public hesitancy over a potential vaccine, concern regarding accelerating clinical trials, and unease over the vaccine approval process. Public health experts, government officials, advocates, and others in the scientific community should respect the signals of hesitancy and communicate sensitivity, applying lessons not only to how we message, but also in how we build this urgently needed vaccine if we are to have successful uptake once available.

Dates of grant: August 1, 2020 - September 30, 2020

Award amount: $7,662

Funder: Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services

Other Sponsored Activity: Funds to provide assistance in covering the cost of COVID-19 classroom dividers, cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment (PPE), temporary sinks, thermometers, and other expenses for childcare centers that are reopening during the pandemic.

Principal Investigator: Pamela Hutchins

The global COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted normal face-to-face classes across institutions. This has significantly impacted methods courses where preservice teachers (PSTs) practice pedagogy in the field (e.g., in the PreK-12 classroom). In this paper, we describe efforts to adapt an assignment originally situated in a face-to-face school placement into a virtual version. By utilizing multi-perspective 360 video, preliminary results suggest virtual field experiences can provide PSTs with similar experiences for observation-based assignments. Acknowledging that immersive virtual experiences are not a complete replacement for face-to-face fieldbased experiences, we suggest virtual field assignments can be a useful supplement or a viable alternative during a time of the pandemic.

Accepted version provided in institutional repository, for final publisher version, visit: https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/216115/

The adoption of cutting-edge technologies to steer business activities during community lockdown to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, even if involuntarily, provides evidence that technologies not only offer competitive advantages but also provides a means for survival, by improvising existing business models. In June 2019, we issued a call for papers to address the awareness, adoption, and implementation challenges of technologies that can drive businesses of all sizes in the fourth industrial revolution. We intended to identify as critical elements the “must-have” and a “nice to have” technologies for small businesses and innovation. Then the ongoing COVID-19 global health pandemic struck in December 2019, forcing the need for digitization of business activities and remote operations, which was considered a “nice to have” to immediately become a “critical to have” to survive in the ever increasingly uncertain business environment. This paper identifies the technologies, evaluates disruptive software platforms, and strategies needed for creating and managing small business innovation and highlighting the complexity of that process and the context within which this process takes place. We integrate this discussion alongside a summary of the articles included in the Special Issue. The current realities show that technologies that enable social business creation, customer relationship management systems, new communications channels, virtual reality technologies for remote operations, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are crucial to lowering the costs of doing business. Big data and predictive and visual analytics are critical enablers to aiding complex business decisions in the current challenging business climate.

This article discusses data safety monitoring during Covid‐19. the pandemic of Covid‐19 has created the imperative for new treatments and a vaccine, countless clinical trials already in progress have still needed oversight. With the emergence of Covid-19, studies needed to quickly adapt because what it meant to protect study participants wasn’t the same as it had been weeks earlier. One of the primary roles of DSMBs is to evaluate interim data to ensure that participants aren’t at additional risk by virtue of being randomized to a study arm found to have more risks or fewer benefits than other arms. Stopping a study early when it falls out of equipoise is the most monumental task a data safety monitoring boards (DSMB) is charged to perform. The pandemic brought with it risks that changed many studies’ risk-benefit calculus. In some cases, merely attending a visit to report symptoms, check progress, verify pill counts, or report adverse events posed additional risk. Participants in placebo arms are typically expected to experience little benefit, and certainly not greater harm, than participants in the active therapy group. Suddenly, participating in even the most innocuous placebo arm might result in unforeseen harm. DSMBs’ primary responsibility is to protect research participants, but if data is compromised, then the benefit of the study will never outweigh the risks to participants. Thus, protecting the integrity of data collection was also foremost in the minds of DSMB members. Researchers, representatives from the National Institutes of Health, and DSMB members were in constant communication about trials already in progress.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created huge damage to society and brought panic around the world. Such panic can be ascribed to the seemingly deceptive features of COVID-19: Compared to other deadly viral outbreaks, it has medium transmission and mortality rates. As a result, the severity of the causative coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was deeply underestimated by society at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. Based on this, in this review, we define the viruses with features similar to those of SARS-CoV-2 as the Panic Zone viruses. To contain those viruses, accurate and fast diagnosis followed by effective isolation and treatment of patients are pivotal at the early stage of virus breakouts. This is especially true when there is no cure or vaccine available for a transmissible disease, which is the case for the current COVID-19 pandemic. As of July 2020, more than 100 kits for COVID-19 diagnosis on the market have been surveyed in this review, while emerging sensing techniques for SARS-CoV-2 are also discussed. It is of critical importance to rationally use these kits for efficient management and control of the Panic Zone viruses. Therefore, we discuss guidelines to select diagnostic kits at different outbreak stages of the Panic Zone viruses, SARS-CoV-2 in particular. While it is of utmost importance to use nucleic acid based detection kits with low false negativity (high sensitivity) at the early stage of an outbreak, the low false positivity (high specificity) gains importance at later stages of the outbreak. When society is set to reopen from the lockdown stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes critical to have immunoassay based kits with high specificity to identify people who can safely return to society after their recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infections. Finally, since a massive attack from a viral pandemic requires a massive defense from the whole society, we urge both government and the private sector to research and develop affordable and reliable point-of-care testing (POCT) kits, which can be used massively by the general public (and therefore called massive POCT) to contain Panic Zone viruses in the future.

Link to published version included, and author's accepted version included here.

This article draws on a broadcast popular among the anti-vaccine community to map out six themes used by the broadcast to mislead viewers about COVID-19. The themes are the claim that “they” – government and pharma – are lying to you, claims that COVID-19 is an excuse to remove civil liberties, viewing everyone as an expert, claiming that science cannot save us, skewing the science, and a claim that “they” are out to harm the viewers. The article points out that similar themes are used to mislead followers with anti-vaccine information. It highlights the concern that these themes will not only mislead people who are already anti-vaccine about the pandemic, but may draw in people who are not anti-vaccine but are seeking information about COVID-19, and suggests some options for dealing with the misinformation. Scientists benefit from understanding these claims, as we are often tasked with providing rebuttals to this misinformation.

Digitization of operations and processes and technology adoption by small and medium scale enterprise in the less developed and emerging economies (LDEE) has been slow or non-existent. Technology needs to guide new business creation, sustain competitive advantage, and survive in the post-COVID-19 pandemic and the interconnected global economy. Entrepreneurs need an awakening to the current transformation as the digital era is now, to create business ventures that can compete in the fourth industrial revolution engineered by advanced technologies. This paper doubles as a research note and a call for papers for a special issue to address these urgent needs in the face of current realities

Dates of grant: December 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021

Award amount: $108,970

Funder: U.S. Treasury

Research grant: Funding to process and analyze weekly samples of wastewater from Kent State University residence halls to determine the presence of the COVID-19 virus. Based on the results, testing of students in residence halls where increased viral load has been identified will be coordinated.

Principal Investigator: Xiaozhen Mou

Co-Principal Investigator: Melissa Zullo

Even amid a global pandemic, the ideologies, thought processes, and motivations of public actors can be explained through theory, particularly framing. We argue that the words and symbols used or not used are vitally important to shaping how the public understands, responds to, and navigates our new normal. Moreover, this framing shapes our collective understanding of who or what is valued. We posit that austerity politics at all levels of government has not only helped to create a patchwork system of crisis response, but also explains the variation in framing of the pandemic response as tradeoffs among competing values (e.g., equity versus economy; us versus other; health versus business). The success or failure of these frames can lead to an environment in which administrative evil flourishes.

Dates of grant: September 1, 2020 - February 28, 2022

Award amount: $75,000

Funder: National Science Foundation

Research grant: The goal of this project is to develop a federated machine-learning (FL) framework and application on mobile devices for understanding human behaviors and mental health during pandemics such as the current COVID-19 outbreak. https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2041065

Principal Investigator: Ruoming Jin

Co-Principal Investigator: D Keene

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the concept of normal in the United States: education became homebound, social interactions moved behind the protection of digital screens and masks, the general population became non-essential workers as U.S. states went into lockdown, and regular activities were substantially modified to be conducted with physical distancing. To learn more about the changing education of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children during the pandemic, researchers at Kent State University and Texas Women's University recently conducted a national survey involving 133 parents of DHH children. Based on the survey results, here are five recommendations that parents should know about educating DHH children during this new normal.

Pedagogy using gamification has recently received much attention as a way of enhancing student learning and retention. Additionally, academic institutions are making extensive use of online resources to expand teaching beyond the traditional classroom setting. Both academic institutions and companies utilize virtual teams to accomplish remote teamwork, particularly in a post‐COVID environment. Despite the growing interest in incorporating gamification into teaching for business school courses, prior researchers have paid little attention to team‐based gamification in the online learning environment. The purpose of this study is to examine if team members’ perceived team cohesion influences their perceptions of flow. Also, we investigate the relationships among three flow dimensions: concentration, perceived control, and perceived enjoyment. We tested our research model using an enterprise resource planning simulation game involving 187 business students. The results of structural equation modeling with partial least squares analysis support all of our hypotheses.

Dates of grant: January 1, 2021 - December 31, 2021

Award amount: $20,000

Funder: Poetry Foundation

Other Sponsored Activity: Funding for the Wick Poetry Center to continue to offer a range of programming and outreach events and workshops, especially in the underserved populations in our community.

Principal Investigator: David Hassler

Co-Principal Investigator: Jessica Jewell

Dates of grant: May 15, 2020 - May 14, 2021

Award amount: $10,000

Funder: Neilsen Foundation

Other Sponsored Activity: Grant to provide home-based exercise options for individuals with spinal cord injuries who can no longer exercise at university laboratories or rehab centers due to Covid-19. Exercise routines are provided through a combination of home-based exercise equipment and online exercise classes.

Principal Investigator: John McDaniel

The COVID-19 pandemic affected every functioning system in the United States. Workers deemed "essential" faced multiple threats to their well-being that quickly led to acute symptoms of anxiety, depression, burnout, and overall exhaustion, and organizations were challenged to devise employee protocols to maintain sustainability. This qualitative study takes a tension-centered approach to discern how "essential workers" in the United States navigated this tenuous work landscape, particularly with regard to emotional work and workplace dignity. We conducted 19 semi-structured in-depth interviews with essential workers during COVID-19. Our constant comparative analysis of the data identified a macro-tension between vulnerability and sustainability that was revealed through two micro-tensions: (a) essential work as instrumental and disposable, and (b) workplace dignity as recognized and transgressed. We unpack the emotional responses enmeshed in these micro-tensions and situate our findings at the intersection of organizational sustainability, emotional work and workplace dignity. We offer theoretical and practical implications for essential workers and organizations.

Background: COVID-19 has spread very rapidly, and it is important to build a system that can detect it in order to help an overwhelmed health care system. Many research studies on chest diseases rely on the strengths of deep learning techniques. Although some of these studies used state-of-the-art techniques and were able to deliver promising results, these techniques are not very useful if they can detect only one type of disease without detecting the others.

Objective: The main objective of this study was to achieve a fast and more accurate diagnosis of COVID-19. This study proposes a diagnostic technique that classifies COVID-19 x-ray images from normal x-ray images and those specific to 14 other chest diseases.

Methods: In this paper, we propose a novel, multilevel pipeline, based on deep learning models, to detect COVID-19 along with other chest diseases based on x-ray images. This pipeline reduces the burden of a single network to classify a large number of classes. The deep learning models used in this study were pretrained on the ImageNet dataset, and transfer learning was used for fast training. The lungs and heart were segmented from the whole x-ray images and passed onto the first classifier that checks whether the x-ray is normal, COVID-19 affected, or characteristic of another chest disease. If it is neither a COVID-19 x-ray image nor a normal one, then the second classifier comes into action and classifies the image as one of the other 14 diseases.

Results: We show how our model uses state-of-the-art deep neural networks to achieve classification accuracy for COVID-19 along with 14 other chest diseases and normal cases based on x-ray images, which is competitive with currently used state-of-the-art models. Due to the lack of data in some classes such as COVID-19, we applied 10-fold cross-validation through the ResNet50 model. Our classification technique thus achieved an average training accuracy of 96.04% and test accuracy of 92.52% for the first level of classification (ie, 3 classes). For the second level of classification (ie, 14 classes), our technique achieved a maximum training accuracy of 88.52% and test accuracy of 66.634% by using ResNet50. We also found that when all the 16 classes were classified at once, the overall accuracy for COVID-19 detection decreased, which in the case of ResNet50 was 88.92% for training data and 71.905% for test data.

Conclusions: Our proposed pipeline can detect COVID-19 with a higher accuracy along with detecting 14 other chest diseases based on x-ray images. This is achieved by dividing the classification task into multiple steps rather than classifying them collectively.

The ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic may be the greatest global biopsychosocial stressor in living memory, and there is widespread anticipation of a 'mental health pandemic.' Hardly mentioned, if ever, during the current COVID-19 pandemic is the effect on gender diverse (GD) populations. Using a novel approach, we address this gap in the current literature by comparing resilience, psychological distress, and perceived risk in a sample of college students at a public, R1, 4-year university. The survey included demographic questions, the Brief Resilience Scale, the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, and self-reported risk of contracting COVID-19. GD individuals (n = 83) were matched with male (n = 83) and female (n = 83) peers on survey cohort (1, 2, or 3), White versus Non-White, age category, and student status (undergraduate vs. graduate). GD individuals reported lower psychological resilience (M = 2.88, SD = 0.93) than both male (M = 3.57, SD = 0.81) and female (M = 3.37, SD = 0.83) students, higher psychological distress (M = 12.33, SD = 6.04) than both males (M = 6.7, SD = 5.76) and females (M = 8.70, SD = 6.57), and similar perceived risk (p = .54). Nearly half (48.2%) of GD individuals were above the cutoff for severe psychological distress. During the unprecedented events of the novel coronavirus pandemic, students in higher education settings are facing tremendous biopsychosocial stress. GD students had very high levels of psychological distress relative to their male and female peers during the pandemic and may need additional support and expanded access to treatment.

Science and medical professionals are often looked to as experts in the event of a health crisis, but relatively few have received formal training in science communication. We provide a brief review of the current outbreak situation and suggestions for engaging in reliable, effective science communication online.

Dates of grant: August 4, 2020 - February 4, 2021

Award amount: $1,200

Funder: Stark Community Foundation

Other Sponsored Activity: This funding covers the cost of materials for the creation of standards-based STEM activities for 300 K-3 students that are interactive and meant to be completed at home with parents. The activities are distributed through the Early Childhood Resource Center's project SPARK to Stark County families who lack technology to access educational resources online.

Principal Investigator: Joanne Caniglia

Co-Principal Investigator: Davison Mupinga

Dates of grant: June 24, 2020 - June 23, 2021

Award amount: $10,000

Funder: Neilsen Foundation

Research grant: Grant to provide home-based electrical stimulation-based exercise options for individuals with spinal cord injuries who can no longer exercise at university laboratories or rehab centers due to Covid-19. Participants will use neuromuscular stimulation devices for meaningful exercise to their paralyzed lower limbs. Training will be provided via Zoom meetings.

Principal Investigator: John McDaniel

Purpose

Crises influence individuals’ career development. The COVID-19 crisis has global impacts in financial, health and social aspects and service industries are at the forefront of the pervasive impacts. This study investigated how college students’ perceptions of COVID-19 interplayed with self-efficacy on their academic plans and further identified major differences between students in service-oriented and non-service-oriented majors.

Design/methodology/approach

A self-administered online survey was conducted with 299 undergraduates at a large Midwestern university during COVID-19. Regression analyses, including conditional analyses, examined the study hypotheses using SPSS.

Findings 

The results showed that, in general, students’ self-efficacy reduced their intentions to change their academic majors. The joint effects of self-efficacy and perception of COVID-19 diverged among students in non-service-oriented majors but converged among students in service-oriented majors (e.g. hospitality and tourism). These students in the service fields showed more commitment to their current majors even as their concerns about the social implications of COVID-19 increased research in the context of service management by highlighting how service sectors are influenced by COVID-19.

Practical implications 

This study suggests that academic institutions should try to improve students’ self-efficacy to maintain their career commitments during crisis times. Furthermore, service organizations should highlight the importance of social aspects as recovery from COVID-19 begins as a tool to recruit college graduates.

Originality/value 

The literature on career decisions of students in service industries is quite limited. This study enriches the body of career decisions research in the context of service management by highlighting how service sectors are influenced by COVID-19.

Decreases in individuals' physical activity and increases in sedentary behavior and bodyweight have been reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study assessed the ability of physical activity monitoring, which may promote physical activity and discourage sedentary behavior, to mitigate these negative outcomes. An evaluation of university samples ( N = 404, 40.5 ± 15.4 years) of self-reported physical activity, sedentary behavior, and bodyweight prior to the closure of campus due to the pandemic in March of 2020 and again at the time of the survey administration (May-June 2020) during pandemic-related restrictions was performed. Participants also reported whether they did ( n = 172) or did not ( n = 232) regularly use physical activity monitoring technology. While physical activity was unchanged during the pandemic ( p ≥ 0.15), participants significantly increased sitting by 67.8 ± 156.6 min/day and gained 0.64 ± 3.5 kg from pre-campus to post-campus closure ( p < 0.001). However, the use of activity monitoring did not moderate these changes. In conclusion, while physical activity was not affected, participants reported significant increases in sedentary behavior and bodyweight during the COVID-19 pandemic. These changes occurred regardless of whether participants regularly used physical activity monitoring or not.

Dates of grant: February 1, 2021 - March 1, 2022

Award amount: $15,000

Funder: Texas Woman's University

Research grant: COVID-19 is a source of distress for school psychologists and students, and will likely increase errors in administration of norm-referenced tests that determine special education accessibility and access to services and protections afforded to students with disabilities. In addition, a lack of in-person instruction has likely led to declines in academic and cognitive ability. This study aims to provide a better understanding of how valid norm-referenced test scores obtained during COVID-19 are, and how intensive of interventions special education students will likely require. https://twu.edu/woodcock-institute/funded-research-grants/2020-21-funded-research-grants/

Principal Investigator: Adam Lockwood

This article aims to review the important roles of health knowledge organization systems (KOSs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Different types of knowledge organization systems, including term lists, synonym rings, thesauri, subject heading systems, taxonomies, classification schemes, and ontologies are widely recognized and applied in both modern and traditional information systems. Apart from their usage in the management of data, information, and knowledge, KOSs are seen as valuable components for large information architecture, content management, findability improvement, and many other applications. After introducing the challenges of information overload and semantic conflicts, the article reviews the efforts of major health KOSs, illustrates various health coding schemes, explains their usages and implementations, and reveals their implications for health information exchange and communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some general examples of the applications, services, and analysis powered by KOSs are presented at the end. As revealed in this article, they have become even more critical to aid the frontline endeavors to overcome the obstacles due to information overload and semantic conflicts that can occur during devastating historic and worldwide events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has created disruptions to daily life resulting in wide-spread unemployment and psychological distress. Recent studies have reported high rates of alcohol use during this time; however, longitudinal data remain scarce and factors associated with increases in high-risk drinking observed over time are unknown.

Aims

The current study examined changes in high-risk drinking patterns across four 7-day observation periods, prior to and following a university wide campus closure. Additionally, factors associated with changes in alcohol use patterns were examined including financial distress, psychological distress, impact of racial tensions and virus-related fears.

Method

Students (N = 1001) in the Midwestern USA completed repeated assessments between March and June 2020. Each survey included a timeline follow-back measure of alcohol use. Pandemic-related distress spanning several factors was assessed at the final follow-up.

Results

Risky drinking patterns increased significantly over time. Overall, psychological distress and impact of racial tensions were associated with higher rates of risky drinking, whereas COVID-19-related fears were associated with lower rates. However, only financial-related distress was associated with an increase in risky drinking patterns over time.

Conclusions

Increased risky drinking patterns observed in the current study may signal problems that are likely to persist even after the direct impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on daily life ends. Individuals experiencing financial distress may represent a particularly high-risk group. Interventions targeting the cross-section of job loss, financial stress and problematic alcohol use will be important to identify.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes COVID-19, utilizes angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) for entry into target cells. ACE2 has been proposed as an interferon-stimulated gene (ISG). Thus, interferon-induced variability in ACE2 expression levels could be important for susceptibility to COVID-19 or its outcomes. Here, we report the discovery of a novel, transcriptionally independent truncated isoform of ACE2, which we designate as deltaACE2 (dACE2). We demonstrate that dACE2, but not ACE2, is an ISG. In The Cancer Genome Atlas, the expression of dACE2 was enriched in squamous tumors of the respiratory, gastrointestinal and urogenital tracts. In vitro, dACE2, which lacks 356 amino-terminal amino acids, was non-functional in binding the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and as a carboxypeptidase. Our results suggest that the ISG-type induction of dACE2 in IFN-high conditions created by treatments, an inflammatory tumor microenvironment or viral co-infections is unlikely to increase the cellular entry of SARS-CoV-2 and promote infection.

Preprint available here on biorxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.19.210955

Dates of grant: January 10, 2020 - January 10, 2023

Award amount: $100,000

Funder: Prentiss Foundation

Research grant: This project will create interprofessional healthcare faculty and student teams from across the university’s health sciences and other programs to apply expertise and technologies, while delivering community-based services with community partners to prevent, mitigate and manage the COVID-19 epidemic.

Principal Investigator: Sonia Alemagno

Co-Principal Investigator: Matthew Stefanak

Dates of grant: May 28, 2020 - May 27, 2024

Award amount: $30,000

Funder: Federal Aviation Administration

Other Sponsored Activity: CARES Act funds for the Kent State University airport to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the impacts of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Principal Investigator: Constance Hawke

Co-Principal Investigators: David Poluga

Dates of grant: April 1, 2020 - September 30, 2021

Award amount: $166,265.00

Funder: Subaward Ohio Development Services Agency / U.S. Small Business Administration

Other Sponsored Activity: Supplemental funds for the Tuscarawas Small Business Development Center to provide information, advising, and training services to businesses affected by COVID-19 in areas such as reopening strategies, accessing and applying for financial resources, and understanding and mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on small businesses.

Principal Investigator: Stephen Schillig

Dates of grant: April 21, 2020 - April 20, 2021

Award amount: $9,653,622.00

Funder: U.S. Department of Education

CARES Act funding: Emergency financial aid grants to students under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Principal Investigator: Brenda Burke

Dates of grant: May 5, 2020 - May 4, 2021

Award amount: $9,653,622.00

Funder: U.S. Department of Education

CARES Act grant: Institutional portion of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Principal Investigator: Jeannie Reifsnyder

Dates of grant: May 1, 2020 - October 31, 2020

Award amount: $10,000

Funder: Burton D. Morgan Foundation

Research grant: Work with local first responders to create personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare professionals in Ohio, using 3D printing and laser-cutting technologies.

Principal Investigator: JR Campbell

Co-Principal Investigators: Hilary Kennedy, Chris Woolverton, Kevin A. Pospichel, Mark Mistur, Rick Ferdig

Dates of grant: May 1, 2020 - August 31, 2020

Award amount: $3,000

Funder: United Way of Portage County

Research grant: Work with local first responders to create personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare professionals in Ohio, using 3D printing and laser-cutting technologies.

Principal Investigator: JR Campbell

Co-Principal Investigators: Hilary Kennedy, Chris Woolverton, Kevin A. Pospichel, Mark Mistur, Rick Ferdig

Across the globe, students have been away from schools and their teachers, but literacy learning has continued. In many countries, students’ literacy proficiency is often measured via high‐stakes assessment tests. However, such tests do not make visible students’ literacy lives away from formal learning settings, so students are positioned as task responders, rather than as agentive readers and writers. The authors explore the fluidity and diversity of literacy events and practices for students and their teachers observed during the recent period of COVID‐19 lockdown restrictions. In this piece for The Inside Track, we consider how schools in the United States have been educating the very youngest students to how colleges of teacher education are grappling with a transition to a new shelter in place at home and virtual teaching and learning during the global pandemic. This contrasts to the emergence of public environmental literacy events observed in the United Kingdom, specifically in the South of England.

Over the course of the first six weeks of lockdown, the affordances of the range of these events and the influence of the specific, local cultures (Street, 1984) were documented, highlighting how the immediate physical and virtual environments appear to have become more significant during the COVID‐19 pandemic. As students and their teachers respond and react to new literacy experiences, we hope to expose potential points of intersection where students, with encouragement from their teachers, crafted new and hybrid literacy practices appropriated and recontextualized within new communicative space(s) (Dyson, 2001). Writing instructional practices across the world vary to some extent; in the United States, there are many similarities to what are considered best practices, despite each state holding different standards for writing instruction (Lacina, 2018). Teachers in the United States focus much more of their instructional time in the area of reading, instead of writing (Edwards, 2003; Puranik, Al Otaiba, Sidler, and Greulich, 2014). However, much has been written about teacher planning and instruction with process writing instruction, such as writers' workshop (Troia, Lin, Cohen, & Monroe, 2011). Within a writers' workshop classroom, the teacher uses literature as a model for writing (Lacina & Espinosa, 2010); the teacher teaches minilessons and scaffolds the teaching of writing. Researchers also have noted the importance of teaching writing within the content areas (Fisher & Frey, 2020) and the need to teach using the new literacies (Lacina & Block, 2012). Researchers who study writing instructional practices have found that there is great variance between teachers’ writing instructional practices (Cutler & Graham, 2008); with such variance, there are also connections between teachers’ writing instructional practices and their beliefs about teaching writing. Students out‐of‐school literacy lives often demonstrate a broader conceptualization of writing than is displayed in their school writing (Chamberlain, 2019; Dyson, 2020). Current definitions of literacy appear to mean reading, not writing. It is easier to test, measure, and compare reading proficiency than writing accomplishments. However, writing is better positioned as purposeful in the lives of students and reflected through sociocultural and situated identities where writing is framed as a mode of social or personal action (Prior, 2006; Rowsell & Pahl, 2007). The National Literacy Trust’s recent research based on over 4,000 questionnaire responses (Clark, Picton, & Lant, 2020) of children and young people in the United Kingdom suggested that new and positive writing habits have been developed during this time of lockdown. Educators have studied students’ consumption and production of texts through a framework of multimodality in both in‐ and out‐of‐school contexts (Lenters, 2016, 2018). Studying a framework of multimodality in the area of literacy has helped educators rethink the way literacy is instructed in school spaces (Kendrick & McKay, 2004; Kress, 1997; Lenters, 2018). However, rather than polarizing the literacies acquired in different settings, those of school and away from school, which serves only to limit our understanding of such encounters, the learnings from the examples in this piece aim to make visible the unique nature of students' interactions with their writing (Reder & Davilla, 2005) when schooled literacy (Cook‐Gumperz, 2006) is not an option.

COVID-19 is proving to be a particularly cruel disease not just because
of its pathophysiology but also due to its potentially devastating
consequences for engendering loneliness. From the outset of the
pandemic, we have learned of countless individuals having to die alone
or loved ones not being able to grieve by providing burial services (Miller, 2020).
This disease holds particularly dire consequences for many
populations—most notably the elderly and those with compromised health
conditions but also minorities and the homeless; these groups have also
faced unique difficulties in contending with loneliness well before this
crisis (Rokach, 2019).
For as much attention that this disease has rightfully focused on the
elderly, individuals can experience different developmental challenges
with loneliness throughout the lifespan including adolescence and young
adulthood (Luhmann and Hawkley, 2016)—and,
indeed, there is already evidence of heightened psychological problems
amongst Chinese youth in the wake of this pandemic (Liang et al., 2020).
Accordingly, it will be important for psychologists to assess how
age-based threats to loneliness evolve in the era of COVID-19.

As of August 2020, thousands of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) publications have been produced. Manual assessment of their scope is an overwhelming task, and shortcuts through metadata analysis (e.g., keywords) assume that studies are properly tagged. However, machine learning approaches can rapidly survey the actual text of publication abstracts to identify research overlap between COVID-19 and other coronaviruses, research hotspots, and areas warranting exploration. We propose a fast, scalable, and reusable framework to parse novel disease literature. When applied to the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), dimensionality reduction suggests that COVID-19 studies to date are primarily clinical-, modeling- or field-based, in contrast to the vast quantity of laboratory-driven research for other (non-COVID-19) coronavirus diseases. Furthermore, topic modeling indicates that COVID-19 publications have focused on public health, outbreak reporting, clinical care, and testing for coronaviruses, as opposed to the more limited number focused on basic microbiology, including pathogenesis and transmission.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, people from around the world made numerous homemade masks for themselves and their community due to shortage of medical masks as well as to stop the spread of COVID-19. The purpose of the current study was to conduct cross cultural exploration of the reasons for making masks, self-construal and wellbeing associated with masks making by collecting data from residents across US, India, and China. The finding of this study presented different reasons for making masks as well as self-construal, and wellbeing in people who made masks versus those who did not. Differences were also observed among three different cultural groups. This study offers a unique contribution to the public health research engaging in craft making related activities to gain a better perspective of the state of health of a population and the understanding of cross-cultural study of craft making behavior during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to think more deeply about who and what we value in society, with value determined not on conditions set by capital but instead on achieving meaning in life. In this commentary, we pose a series of interconnected questions to geography: What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Furthermore, is such a life possible under capitalism? And what does a society that prioritizes meaningful life look like?

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed our social lives. Stay-at-home orders and physical distancing guidelines have led to restricted face-to-face interactions. The role of communication technologies has become important more than ever. The present study investigated how people use interpersonal (i.e., phone calling, texting, video chatting) and masspersonal media (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) for different purposes (i.e., social connection, entertainment, information seeking) during the pandemic. Further, we examined how such mediated communication is associated with users’ loneliness and, in turn, satisfaction with life. Results showed that people preferred interpersonal media for social connection and masspersonal media for entertainment and information seeking. The use of interpersonal and masspersonal media and its purpose were associated with users’ psychological well-being both positively and negatively. Social use of interpersonal media was associated with decreased loneliness and, in turn, increased satisfaction with life. However, using media for information seeking was associated with increased loneliness and, in turn, decreased satisfaction with life.

Despite the global impact of COVID-19, studies comparing the effects of COVID-19 on population mental health across countries are sparse. This study aimed to compare anxiety and depression symptoms during the COVID-19 lockdown among adults from 11 countries and to examine their associations with country-level COVID-19 factors and personal COVID-19 exposure. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among adults (≥18 years) in 11 countries (Brazil, Bulgaria, China, India, Ireland, North Macedonia, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, United States). Mental health (anxiety, depression, resilient coping, hope) and other study data were collected between June–August 2020. Of the 13,263 participants, 62.8% were female and 51.7% were 18–34 years old. Participants living in Brazil had the highest anxiety and depression symptoms while participants living in Singapore had the lowest. Greater personal COVID-19 exposure was associated with increased anxiety and depression symptoms, but country-level COVID-19 factors were not. Higher levels of hope were associated with reduced anxiety and depression; higher levels of resilient coping were associated with reduced anxiety but not depression. Substantial variations exist in anxiety and depression symptoms across countries during the COVID-19 lockdown, with personal COVID-19 exposure being a significant risk factor. Strategies that mitigate COVID-19 exposure and enhance hope and resilience may reduce anxiety and depression during global emergencies.

Background: Face mask shortages in health care and use recommendations and requirements in a variety of community and professional contexts associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States created initial and ongoing demand for face masks. In March 2020, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided guidelines for use of cotton masks for individuals in health care settings and in public. Community volunteers provide a potential workforce to rapidly and flexibly address critical needs in emergent circumstances.

Methods: People Protecting Each-other Sustainably (PPEs) was developed to recruit and manage over 100 Northeast Ohio volunteers. People Protecting Each-other Sustainably used the social media platform Facebook to facilitate material donations, volunteer recruitment and training, and to function as an ongoing central communications hub. Leaders used an assembly line process with zero contact pick up and drop off at multiple stages of production to allow safe assembly and distribution of face masks.

Results: A total of 7695 handmade face masks were created to distribute to local frontline responders in 10 weeks. Use of upsourced and donated materials allowed this project to reduce potential landfill waste and made a zero cost project possible. Volunteers had positive responses to the project and reported benefits from their participation.

Conclusion: This model has been successfully recreated by a smaller group in Geauga County, Ohio, with similarly successful results. Clearly this model of community mobilization has the potential to be replicated in other state of emergency crises and emergency response situations to produce lifesaving or necessary equipment when industry standard equipment is not readily available

In the fall of 2019, the Music Library Association's Reference and Access Services Subcommittee surveyed academic librarians as to the following parameters regarding their music reference services: delivery methods, physical locations, staffing models, approaches to training, perceived effectiveness of services, and changes over time. Findings suggest that despite technological advances, most music reference help is delivered through in-person, email, phone, and chat. Just over half of respondents have only librarians addressing reference questions, while the remainder also use students and paraprofessionals. There was no meaningful difference in perceived effectiveness between the various staffing models. While only 19 percent of participants are situated in branch libraries for music, these locations experienced a higher increase in reference transactions and more outreach and instruction over the last five years and also ranked their reference services with more effectiveness. Additionally, respondents identified training and outreach as integral to the effectiveness of reference services and communicated their experiences with changes to service and staffing models.

Dates of grant: March 2, 2020 - February 28, 2021

Award amount: $1,000

Funder: Sigma Theta Tau

Research grant

Principal Investigator: Kimberly Ann Cleveland

Co-Principal Investigators: Dr. Gregory Gibson and Dr. Christopher Woolverton

Dates of grant: March 1, 2020 - December 30, 2020

Award amount: $31,451.61

Funder: U.S. Treasury

Other Sponsored Activity: Funds to provide additional counseling services and additional support for student well-being at the Tuscarawas campus during the coronavirus pandemic.

Principal Investigator: Laurie Donley

The unfolding of the coronavirus pandemic is a pivotal moment, one that will shape us individually and collectively for years to come. Experiencing these events as an early career public health professional has brought to mind lessons I have learned about the value of public health evidence. Having reliable information in this time is critical, particularly as we are called to do our part in curbing the spread of the virus through social distancing. As a public health professional, I support my personal network of family and friends by sharing meaningful evidence. I share information to stay connected and highlight how public health works and what we know about this novel virus, and I offer a perspective on what the mitigation efforts we are living through mean for our health. Within my state, this includes watching a daily press conference hosted by the governor of Ohio, reading updates from my colleagues in epidemiology, and searching emerging research for information about the virus.

Lessons in how to evaluate evidence were among the most important that I learned through my doctoral studies. Experience in how to do so was bolstered by my role as the first student editor of AJPH. By working with editor-in-chief Alfredo Morabia, MD, PhD, and the entire editorial team of the Journal, I learned the value of strong public health evidence and how to identify it. I developed these skills by working with associate editors as they made decisions about which articles to feature and about finding leading public health professionals to provide editorials. Through these activities, I strengthened my ability to think critically about evidence, observed firsthand how evidence is vetted, and participated directly in the important work of the Journal. I also acquired insight into how important the dissemination of research is. Sharing evidence and results with the broader community is an essential piece of the research process. Through my experience as student editor, I acquired a deep appreciation for this process that I now apply to my own work as a postdoctoral researcher. This has become particularly relevant in these times, as wide dissemination of evidence about coronavirus is informing the actions taken at all levels of the public health system.

When I view these experiences in light of the current pandemic, it is clear that the work of public health is continual and that new evidence emerges about this novel coronavirus every day. It is essential to determine what is factual and accurate and to promote information that helps others take needed and appropriate action. News reports have applauded the efforts of Ohio’s Governor DeWine and health director Amy Acton, MD, MPH, for their work in implementing evidence-based social-distancing measures early, while working to educate the public on how to “flatten the curve.”

Social-distancing measures have been in place in Ohio since early March, beginning with the closure of the 2020 Arnold Classic, a fitness expo in Columbus, Ohio, that brings together athletes from more than 80 countries and 60 000 spectators. With the closure of Ohio’s universities shortly thereafter, I found myself undertaking completely virtual work. No one has been left untouched by these widespread mitigation efforts, and while we all adjust to this “new normal,” it is important not to lose sight of the facts and evidence that inform these policies. Each day, I am reminded about the power of information and evidence, and I actively promote its importance. Public health professionals are working tirelessly across the globe to develop and share the necessary evidence that will help us, as a global society, emerge from this pandemic safely.

As of 2016, Medicaid accounted for nearly 20% of state general fund budgets. Optional Medicaid services like podiatry are often subject to cost-cutting measures in periods of economic downturn, as was the case in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis. Although the cuts were intended as a cost-saving measure, research indicates they had the opposite effect. The restriction and limitation of these services during the Great Recession resulted in both poorer health outcomes for beneficiaries, and poorer financial outcomes for state Medicaid programs. With states citing record levels of unemployment as of April 2020 and projecting significant declines in annual revenue in 2021, the economic conditions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to rival those of the Great Recession. Given the historical precedent for restricting or eliminating optional Medicaid services as a cost-saving measure, it is likely that podiatric services will once again come under scrutiny. Previous efforts by state-level podiatric societies have proven successful in lobbying for the reinstatement of coverage under Medicaid by conveying evidence of the negative outcomes associated with elimination to stakeholders. The specialty must once again engage policymakers by drawing on evidence gleaned and lessons learned from past cuts of optional Medicaid services to avert counterproductive coverage restrictions intended to mitigate the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, physical activity (PA) behaviors were altered worldwide due to public health measures such as "lockdown." This study described PA among adults residing in 11 countries during COVID-19 lockdown and examined factors associated with PA engagement. We conducted a cross-sectional anonymous survey among adults (≥18 years old) in 11 countries (Brazil, Bulgaria, China, India, Ireland, Malaysia, North Macedonia, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, United States). Of 11,775 participants, 63.7% were female and 52.8% were 18-34 years old. More than 40% of participants were insufficiently active (43.9%) and reported a decrease in their PA during lockdown (44.8%). Statistically significant differences were observed in (1) proportions of participants being insufficiently active, (2) level of PA, and (3) decrease in PA across the 11 countries. More stringent governmental policy responses were associated with greater likelihood of being insufficiently active during lockdown (adjusted odds ratio = 1.22, 95% confidence interval = 1.03, 1.45). Higher depression or anxiety scores were associated with greater likelihood of decreased level of PA during lockdown.We found substantial reductions in PA levels during COVID-19 lockdown across countries. Country-specific PA promotion interventions are needed during this and similar global emergencies.

After reading Dr. Alpert's commentary, we suspect art inspires life but not consistently with historical fact. Duty to serve, a hallmark of professional medicine, is not always exhibited during pandemics. The perception is that physicians provided care to others without personal regard in pandemics. Yet, Camus's physician did not view himself as heroic. Rieux stated “there is no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency” and it was about “giving people a chance,” trying to alleviate suffering (p. 278).

Since the mid-1980s, medical historians have accepted the Zuger-Miles hypothesis, arguing there was no “strong or constant” tradition of physicians rendering care in epidemics because of a sense of professional responsibility. Most physicians treated patients who sought help often at great cost and personal risk. Other physicians fled in time of plague. During yellow fever and cholera outbreaks, physicians refused to visit patients who were acutely ill. Overtreatment with dangerous and ineffective therapies was worse than abandonment. Some physicians acted on the basis of monetary or contractual agreements. Other physicians became itinerant: “frequently bills were set up upon their doors and written, ‘here is a doctor to be let’ . . . several of those physicians were fain for a while to sit still and look about them, or . . . remove their dwellings, and set up in a new place and among new acquaintance” (p. 361).

Modern debate over physician duty occurred during the century-old Spanish influenza pandemic wherein more than 600 US civilian physicians died. Recent concerns about duty have occurred during the HIV, SARS, Ebola, and current COVID19 outbreak. Hundreds of health care workers in West Africa died during the Ebola outbreak, and numerous health care workers have succumbed during the current pandemic.

Even with social and organizational changes in modern medicine, with conflicting duties and roles for physicians in complex economic and contractual settings, the Zuger-Miles hypothesis is confirmed. We were heartened by selfless efforts of house staff in the current pandemic, placing patient care and duty above personal and family obligations. We witnessed fear of contagion among providers—translated into refusal to provide care but also translated into significant morbidity and mortality for providers. Colleagues reported feeling sidelined; physicians wanted to do more. We heard concerns regarding institutional exploitation: the duty to do more. Physician duty and obligations toward patients should not be exploited, placing physicians at risk and in circumstances considered morally, psychologically, or physically unacceptable. Our observations confirm that duty during pandemics is not a heroic, dichotomous, individual choice but rather a complex, nuanced decision, influenced by conflicting, competing, and overlapping goals, moral obligations, and institutional and contractual concerns.

Camus's Plague reminds physicians that dead rats are everywhere—epidemics, wars, and natural disasters—creating refugees, illness, and untold human suffering. Despite social, political, and scientific progress, these threats persist and repeat. Camus's physician protagonist compiles his chronicle so that he can “bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence” (p. 278). Camus's protagonist continues to remind physicians of the duty to care for patients and of pandemic lessons from history.

Benefits of Pinterest as a Teaching Resource One of the key benefits of Pinterest for teachers is that it can provide instructional ideas that teachers can adapt for their classrooms. Tips for Using Pinterest In light of these benefits and weaknesses, we present the following tips for teachers using Pinterest as a teaching resource Tip 1. These tips are things teachers can do before using Pinterest (#1-3), while using Pinterest (#4) and after using Pinter est (#5) that will help make the social media platform even more useful.

This proposal focuses on the multifaceted interplay between video games, connectiveness, and online communities in a time of emergency; COVID-19 has presented challenges for teenagers, forcing them to re-mediate their interactions with peers. Digital entertainment has been frequently accused to be a bearer of negative attitudes and anti-social behaviors, but there is also relevant evidence about how video games can foster bonding and inclusion. Nevertheless, updated lenses are needed for understanding the impact of the pandemic on playing and vice versa; in other words, video games can become a lens through which we can understand how teenagers and young adults experience and see the world around them, especially during these turbulent times. Moreover, video games are increasingly experienced in multiple ways, from watching live shows on Twitch.tv to discussing games on Reddit; as such, this additional layer must be investigated too for situating the impact of gaming practices on social and individual schemes. This article intends to provide a snapshot of how this medium can be used as a catalyst for social research, looking at its consumption but also at the social halo it conveys. More specifically, an ethnographic approach has been chosen for providing an intensive analysis of how the acclaimed video game Animal Crossing was perceived and used as a socializing tool by a teenager.

The coronavirus-2019 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the United States on March 13, 2020. The disruptions resulting from subsequent unprecedented mitigation efforts have limited and, in some cases. eliminated the ability of psychologists to meet in person with their patients, clients, and examinees. This has led to a broad and sudden reliance on synchronous (live) videoconferencing (also commonly referred to as telehealth, telepsychological practice. and telepractice) to deliver clinical services. A vital component of psychological practice involves the administration of psychological testing, particularly in clinical settings and specialties that rely heavily on the use of assessment instruments. Remote administration of psychological testing presents challenges that cannot be ignored, even in a crisis, without risking the violation of ethical standards and without compromising the reliability and interpretability of test results and the security of test instruments. With these considerations in mind, we provide practical guidance for remote test administration, using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory instruments.

Anxiety and depressive symptoms are prevalent in athletes. The pandemic of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) may increase risk for symptoms due to fear of exposure during competition or uncertainty regarding participation. The current study examined the prevalence of COVID-19 anxiety in 437 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I student-athletes and its association with psychological symptoms. Only 0.2% of participants endorsed COVID-19 anxiety symptoms above cutoff. COVID-19 anxiety did not change after postponement of fall sports or differ between persons competing in different seasons. However, higher levels of COVID-19 anxiety were significantly associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. Though student-athletes generally reported low levels of psychological symptoms, females endorsed significantly higher levels than males. Low levels of COVID-19 anxiety in student-athletes may reflect protective factors (e.g., health knowledge, emotion regulation) or the tendency for this population to minimize psychological symptoms. Further investigations on the psychological impact of COVID-19 in athletes is needed.

The authors provide an urgent call for cross- and intercultural scholars to re-examine many of the related themes and classic or contemporary study areas of “intercultural communication” and “intercultural relations” in light of the impacts that the novel coronal (COVID-19) pandemic is having on human interaction both across and within our social-cultural contexts. As scholars focusing on intercultural communications/relations, education, management, psychology, and social issues, the global COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a range of intercultural problems or issues that need to be researched to better understand related aspects of human suffering, social disruption, and economic inequalities. New research projects/papers need to address how these impact key intercultural theme/topic areas like cultural attributions/expectations, values/beliefs, identities, perceptions/stereotypes/prejudice, language/speech codes, cultural systems/patterns, acculturation/adaptation, intercultural effectiveness/sensitivity/competence, and conflict (Kulich et al., 2020, Table 3.7). Some research areas and applications potentially affected by COVID are highlighted, including our sense of national/international identity and cooperation, our mediated or actual social networks, our ways of framing or carrying out intercultural or cross-cultural cooperation, new issues emerging in inter-group contact, how we apply cross-cultural taxonomies or dimensions to analyze data, and how these ultimately affect our relationships with each other across all levels of culture (from dyads, to groups, sub- or co-cultures) or express and affirm interculturality at such times. Each area is highlighted by calls for specific types of intercultural research to address these challenges and opportunities.

Remote delivery poses numerous challenges, particularly for discussion-based classes. Here, we describe a class management model that uses a conversational approach between instructional coleaders to introduce topics and facilitate student discussions. The conversational approach enabled us to model various aspects of the scientific process, such as asking questions and generating hypotheses, aimed at an emergent subject, such as COVID-19. Students' feedback was positive, noting how the class enabled them to connect their existing knowledge with the daily influx of new insights about SARS-CoV-2. While our class focuses on COVID-19-related topics, this model of a conversational style class can be easily implemented for other course topics.

As we enter the second quarter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS–CoV-2) increasingly available (though still limited and/or slow in some areas), we are faced with new questions and challenges regarding this novel virus. When to test? Whom to test? What to test? How often to test? And, what to do with test results? Since SARS–CoV-2 is a new virus, there is little evidence to fall back on for test utilization and diagnostic stewardship (1). Several points need to be considered to begin answering of these questions; specifically, what types of tests are available and under which circumstances are they useful? This understanding can help guide the use of testing at the local, regional, state, and national levels and inform those assessing the supply chain to ensure that needed testing is and continues to be available. Here, we explain the types of tests available and how they might be useful in the face of a rapidly changing and never-before-experienced situation. There are two broad categories of SARS–CoV-2 tests: those that detect the virus itself and those that detect the host’s response to the virus. Each will be considered separately.

We must recognize that we are dealing with (i) a new virus, (ii) an unprecedented pandemic in modern times, and (iii) uncharted territory. With this in mind, in the absence of either proven effective therapy or a vaccine, diagnostic testing, which we have, becomes an especially important tool, informing patient management and potentially helping to save lives by limiting the spread of SARS–CoV-2. What is the most appropriate test, and for whom and when?

Hypothetically, if the entire world’s population could be tested all at once, with a test providing 100% specificity and sensitivity (unrealistic, obviously), we might be able to identify all infected individuals and sort people into those who at that moment in time were asymptomatic, minimally/moderately symptomatic, and severely symptomatic. The asymptomatic and minimally/moderately symptomatic could be quarantined to avoid the spread of the virus, with the severely symptomatic managed and isolated in health care settings. Contract tracing could be carried out to find those at risk of being in the incubation period by virtue of their exposure. Alternatively, testing for a host response, if, again, the test were hypothetically 100% sensitive and specific, could identify those previously exposed to the virus and (if we knew this to be true, which we do not) label those who are immune to the virus, who could be tapped to work in settings where potentially infected individuals (e.g., sick patients in hospitals) might otherwise pose a risk. Unfortunately, these hypothetical scenarios are not reality. However, with this ideal situation as a guide, what we do have available as tests today should be carefully considered in terms of how they can be leveraged to move the current crisis closer to the ideal situation, especially in the absence of therapeutics or vaccines.

Although the virus can be cultured, this is dangerous and not routinely done in clinical laboratories. While detection of viral antigens is theoretically possible, this approach has not, to date, been a primary one, but one that those participating in the summit considered to deserve further research.

We are in the midst of a pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a novel coronavirus. At the time of writing, there were 2.17 million global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases with 146,000 deaths. Unfortunately, some of these deaths represent health care workers and first responders. One major challenge in preventing the occupational spread of SARS-CoV-2 is the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), particularly filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs). (Our use of the phrase “surgical mask design or type” below is to denote the appearance of the mask. It is the textile that we believe makes this design of mask an FFR, as it creates a negative pressure environment that filters Bitrex particles out of the air that the user is breathing.)

Hospitals have been greatly impacted by COVID-19, but research by Rowe et al. (2020) suggests that home healthcare agencies have also been dealing with effects of COVID-19 since early in the pandemic. To date, the focus of research and education has been on providing effective hospital-based care, understanding stressors experienced by healthcare providers, identifying and treating complications of the virus, preventing morbidity and mortality, and developing a safe and effective vaccine. There is a critical need for additional research on the care of community dwelling patients with COVID-19 and to establish home-based protocols for infection prevention and control in the home.

Dates of grant: July 15, 2020 - June 30, 2021

Award amount: $10,000

Funder: Brain Health Research Institute pilot grant

Research grant: The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to cause psychological distress. During the Spring of 2020 we found high levels of distress among college students, a vulnerable population. However, people are resilient, and distress may be temporary or lasting. Also, we do not know what increases risk or protects against mental health problems from COVID-19. This research will provide a 6-month follow-up of mental health outcomes, and will identify protective and risk factors for depression and anxiety. https://www.kent.edu/brainhealth/covid-pilot-grant-awardees

Principal Investigator: Joel Hughes

Co-Principal Investigators: Greg Gibson, Christopher Woolverton, Anthony Vander Horst

Novel and unconventional strategies continue to emerge in response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19). One recent innovative response is high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) use for adults experiencing the respiratory effects of COVID-19. HFNC provides warmed, humidified oxygen at higher fractions of inspired oxygen (FiO2) levels and flow rates than conventional oxygen therapy, potentially reducing the number of patients requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation. Increased HFNC use stems from an attempt to mitigate the virus’s devastating pulmonary effects, including alveolar inflammation that leads to scarring and respiratory compromise, which persist after the virus has been treated.

However, HFNC is controversial because of limited and inconsistent research and the risk for aerosolization of virus particles. This article discusses the delivery of HFNC, its benefits and risks, and nursing considerations. 

It is generally agreed that striking a balance between resuming economic and social activities and keeping the effective reproductive number (R0) below 1 using non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important goal until and even after effective vaccines become available. Therefore, the need remains to understand how the virus is transmitted in order to identify high-risk environments and activities that disproportionately contribute to its spread so that effective preventative measures could be put in place. Contact tracing and household studies in particular provide robust evidence about the parameters of transmission. In this viewpoint, we discuss the available evidence from large-scale, well-conducted contact tracing studies from across the world and argue that SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics should inform policy decisions about mitigation strategies for targeted interventions according to the needs of the society by directing attention to the settings, activities and socioeconomic factors associated with the highest risks of transmission.

An ongoing pandemic, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is threatening the nations of the world regardless of health infrastructure conditions. In the age of digital electronic information and telecommunication technology, scalable telehealth services are gaining immense importance by helping to maintain social distances while providing necessary healthcare services. This paper aims to review the various types of scalable telehealth services used to support patients infected by COVID-19 and other diseases during this pandemic. Recently published research papers collected from various sources such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, PubMed, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore databases using the terms "Telehealth", "Coronavirus", "Scalable" and "COVID-19" are reviewed. The input data and relevant reports for the analysis and assessment of the various aspects of telehealth technology in the COVID-19 pandemic are taken from official websites. We described the available telehealth systems based on their communication media such as mobile networks, social media, and software based models throughout the review. A comparative analysis among the reviewed systems along with necessary challenges and possible future directions are also drawn for the proper selection of affordable technologies. The usage of scalable telehealth systems improves the quality of the healthcare system and also reduces the infection rate while keeping both patients and doctors safe during the pandemic.

Many challenges continue to hinder digital technologies' adoption by small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) in developing economies. Comparatively, there are more success stories by SMEs in emerging markets. However, most SMEs operating in the informal sector in the emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) face similar challenges that inhibit the adoption of advanced technologies and innovations needed to improve business operations and re-engineer processes. This article evaluates the implementation and use of state-of-the-art technologies by SMEs in EMDEs to improve operations performance and create sustainable competitive advantages. Further, the papers in this Special Issue identify FinTech and analytical algorithms as some of the current technologies employed by SMEs in EMDEs to improve operations and processes in the manufacturing and service industries. The recognized technologies and technical innovations that seem novel in EMDEs have long existed in the advanced economies. Most state-of-the-art technologies, including cloud computing, 'big data', and predictive analytics that can improve operations and strategic decisions, are yet to make inroads in most EMDEs. Also, disruptive computing technologies, data analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) required to engineer new business models, reduce overheads, enhance competitive advantages, and digitize SMEs' business operations remain untapped. The absence and non-adoption of digital technologies in EMDEs explain why business activities in most EMDEs remain shut during the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 and the community lockdown to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategies to survive the 'new normal' imposed by COVID-19 and fierce global competition includes a successful adoption of advanced technologies.

The paper offers some thoughts prompted by the research paper published by Peter Lor, Bradley Wiles, and Johannes Britz, "Re-Thinking Information Ethics: Truth, Conspiracy Theories, and Librarians in the COVID-19 Era," in LIBRI, March 2021. It highlights two significant contributions, an analysis of the misinformation in the COVID-19 pandemic and the notion of alethic rights, the right of truth of patrons based on the work of D'Agostini. This reflection then situates the COVID-19 misinformation campaign within the broader disinformation ecology within which it exists. While it agrees that alethic rights are an important ethical framework, it wonders whether it practically advances work beyond that libraries and librarians are already doing, e.g., in collection decisions, approaches to reference questions, or library programming. It looks at the debate between John Swan and Noel Peattie on the inclusion of books representing outright lies in the collection (e.g., Holocaust denial). It then contrasts a right to information and authorities propagating and validating that information with a right to misinformation and authorities for propagating and validating that misinformation that exists within disinformation ecologies. The problem of truth, its authorities and its context appears to be more complicated than an appeal to alethic truths: for example, liberals and conservatives differ on the meaning of a rational consensus on contentious political matters, such as climate change. Given the dire consequences of misinformation on democracies and public health, an appeal to professional neutrality is woefully inadequate. There must be proactive resistance, if not outright repudiation.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in countless ways. This has included the move to emergency remote learning for PreK-12 and post-secondary education around the world. While school districts and post-secondary education institutions originally anticipated relatively brief closures, the impact of COVID-19 resulted in extensive periods of emergency remote teaching and learning. Many K-12 school districts and institutions of higher education had to teach online for almost all of the spring semester (2020); they have also added contingency plans for future remote instruction in the summer and for the 2020-2021 academic year. As we move beyond the survival phase of remote teaching and learning, it is critical now to transition to a thriving phase of remote teaching, learning, and teacher education.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a number of rapidly emerging and unprecedented challenges for those engaged in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, forcing service providers to improvise their treatment strategies as the crisis deepened. Drawing from five ongoing federally funded SUD projects in Appalachian Tennessee and hundreds of hours of meetings and interviews, this article explores the pandemic's impact on an already structurally disadvantaged region, its recovery community, and those who serve it. More specifically, we note detrimental effects of increased isolation since the implementation of COVID-19 safety measures, including stakeholders' reports of higher incidences of relapse, overdose, and deaths in the SUD population. Treatment providers have responded with telehealth services, but faced barriers in technology access and computer literacy among clients. Providers have also had to restrict new clients to accommodate social distancing, faced delays in health screening those they can accept, and denied family visitations, which has affected retention. In light of these challenges, several promising lessons for the future emerged––such as preparing for an influx of new and returning clients in need of SUD treatment; making arrangements for long-term housing and facility modification; developing a hybrid care delivery model, taking advantage of new regulations enabling telemedicine; budgeting for and storing personal protective equipment (PPE) and related supplies; and developing disaster protocols to withstand threats to intake, retention, and financial solvency.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted education, forcing teachers and teacher educators into emergency, remote instruction. While there were noted challenges, there also were global success stories of innovation in preparing current and future teachers. This AACE and SITE-published, open access eBook contains 133 chapters with over 850 pages documenting best practices, strategies, and efforts by teacher educators, professional developers, researchers, and practitioners. It is divided into seven sections that address pedagogy, collaboration, field experiences, preservice education methods, professional development, digital tools, and equity issues. Chapters are presented as innovations with supporting materials that could be easily replicated or studied.

The COVID-19 pandemic has closed non-essential businesses which may alter individuals' leisure behaviors. Consequently, physical activity and sedentary behavior may be negatively impacted as many fitness and recreational centers have been closed. This study aimed to examine the impact of the pandemic on physical activity and sedentary behavior in a sample of university students and employees before and after the university cancelled face-to-face classes and closed campus. Participants ( N = 398) completed the validated Godin physical activity questionnaire and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire which assessed physical activity and sedentary behavior pre- and post-cancellation of face-to-face classes. Participants were also separated in the groups ( low, moderate, high physical activity) based upon a tertile split of pre-pandemic total physical activity. Physical activity group by time ANOVAs were used to assess potential changes in total physical activity and sedentary behavior. Post-cancellation sedentary behavior was greater ( F (1, 388) = 9.2, p = 0.003, partial η 2 = 0.032) than pre-cancellation. Physical activity group moderated ( F (2, 395) = 22.0, p < 0.001, partial η 2 ≥ 0.10) changes in total physical activity from pre- to post cancellation. The high activity group decreased physical activity whereas the moderate and low activity groups increased physical activity ( t ≥ 2.4, p ≤ 0.02, Cohen's d = 0.23). While the university closure increased sedentary behavior across the sample, it only decreased physical activity in participants who were the most active pre-cancellation. Pandemic-related closure of facilities designed for physical activity may disproportionately impact active individuals.

Dates of grant: June 1, 2020 - November 15, 2020

Award amount: $7,500

Funder: Scripps Howard Foundation

Other Sponsored Activity: Funding to help establish the Collaborative News Lab @ Kent State University, a news commons for professional media partners in Northeast Ohio. Student reporters and their university-based mentors will work collaboratively with local editors to produce multi-platform content that covers the arc of the coronavirus pandemic, its effects and aftermath. The News Lab will also help cover other vital local stories that may be neglected because of the overwhelming demands placed on short-staffed professional newsrooms.

Principal Investigator: Susan Zake

Co-Principal Investigator: Kevin Dilley

This paper provides the author's assessment of the nature of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic crisis as of the period from mid-March to mid-April 2020. This analysis at this early stage of this crisis does not aim to offer specific predictions regarding how this emergency will continue to evolve or ultimately end. Instead, it documents key themes and issues that have developed during the earliest phase of the crisis and it utilizes known select points from the preexisting scientific literature in order to provide insight into some of the core issues that psychologists and other social scientists (in particular) will likely strive to investigate in the coming months and years. Issues involving loss, mental health, prosocial and destructive social behavior, and social, economic, and political matters are particularly highlighted.

School-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are implementing telecommunication technologies for service provision. Telepractice is one among an array of service delivery models that can be successfully implemented in the public-school setting. While many school-based SLPs have been plunged into telepractice with the recent pandemic, this temporary shift to emergency instruction is not the same as fully implementing a telepractice service delivery model. SLPs who recognize the potential application of telecommunications would profit from additional training and experience to take advantage of the benefits of this service delivery model. The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of telepractice as a service delivery model, and to answer the who, what, when, where, and why questions of school-based telepractice. Telepractice is one of several service delivery models that school-based SLPs can confidently utilize to provide effective speech and language therapy services to school-age students.