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Following the waning severity of COVID-19 due to vaccination and the development of immunity, the current variants of SARS-CoV-2 often lead to mild upper respiratory tract infections (MURTIs), suggesting it is an appropriate time to review the pathogenesis and treatment of such illnesses. The present article reviews the diverse causes of MURTIs and the mechanisms leading to symptomatic illness. Different symptoms of MURTIs develop in a staggered manner and require targeted symptomatic treatment. A wide variety of remedies for home treatment is available, including over-the-counter drugs and plant-derived substances. Recent pharmacological research has increased the understanding of molecular effects, and clinical studies have shown the efficacy of certain herbal remedies. However, the use of subjective endpoints in these clinical studies may suggest limited validity of the results. In this position paper, the importance of patient-centric outcomes, including a subjective perception of improved well-being, is emphasized. A best practice approach for the management of MURTIs, in which pharmacists and physicians create an improved multi-professional healthcare setting and provide healthcare education to patients, is proposed. Pharmacists act as first-line consultants and provide patients with remedies, considering the individual patient’s preferences towards chemical or plant-derived drugs and providing advice for self-monitoring. Physicians act as second-line consultants if symptoms worsen and subsequently initiate appropriate therapies. In conclusion, general awareness of MURTIs should be increased amongst medical professionals and patients, thus improving their management.

The article discusses the importance of the use of recycled paper to ensure sufficient supply of printing paper in the graphics art industry amidst the increase in demand. Topics inlcude the incompatibility of some printing technologies with paper recycling systems, the global market demand for paper materials, as well as the paper requirements in regions like Europe, North America and Asia.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a profound effect on the use of constructivism in learning. As schools and learning institutions around the world were forced to transition to online classrooms, teachers had to find new ways to reach their students and engage them in an educational environment. This study was conducted to synthesize the various researches about the impact of a pandemic on the constructivism theory of learning. This paper used the general principle of constructivism to conduct the synthesis review. The findings indicated that there was disruption in student engagement but collaboration among students was maintained. Also, the process of lesson contextualization was interrupted as classes were moved to online platforms. Teachers have used various tools to check the integrity of the students’ outputs and literature suggest that outputs have been upright and reliable. The support of the parents to the learning of the students was perceived to be enhanced. Hence, the constructivism approach was taken to a new level and was truly reshaped by the pandemic.

Medication prescription procedures were reviewed at psychiatric residential treatment centers (RTC), and a quality improvement project was conducted in order to implement integrated electronic medical records (EMR) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE). To assess the impact of preexisting prescribing practices on RTCs, surveys were sent anonymously to current and past providers of regional and local RTCs. The surveys assessed the impact of the prescribing protocol on workflow, the frequency of medication errors, the impact such errors had on patient care, the overall provider satisfaction, and the discrepancies between electronic and paper charts. Current providers were then re-surveyed after implementing the integrated CPOE system in May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first round of provider survey results revealed that the majority of staff (n = 10, 70%) observed frequent medication errors and were largely dissatisfied with the current medication ordering and administration process (n = 10; 70%). Incident Response Improvement System (IRIS) reports revealed the most common medication errors were omissions, incorrect dosing, and incorrect medications administered. After the initiation and implementation of the CPOE, staff satisfaction increased with the process (n = 14; 50%) noting that medication errors were less frequent than before (n = 14; 50%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Journal of the Australian Library & Information Association has published a special issue featuring papers from the 2023 Research Application in Information and Library Studies (RAILS) conference. RAILS serves as an important platform for library and information research in Australasia and the Pacific region, aiming to raise the visibility of research from this area and promote a more balanced and representative research environment. The papers in this issue cover a range of topics, highlighting the diversity of research activities and expertise in the region. The upcoming RAILS 2024 conference, with the theme "Making a Difference: Research with Real-world Impact," is scheduled for November and aims to explore how research can lead to improved outcomes for library and information services. [Extracted from the article]

This Afterward to a suite of papers studying and interpreting the work of Hans Loewald (Atsmon, Goldstein, Milch-Reich, Ofer, and Young, all this issue) takes the opportunity to reflect on why Loewald is currently in the air. It considers not only why Loewald, but why Loewald now, and, specifically, why Loewald especially in times of trouble? The meaning of an international Loewald Reading Group cohering during the time of Covid lockdown is emphasized, and the poignancy of the group originating as a way of continuing Lew Aron's teaching of Loewald, which was tragically cut short, is acknowledged and honored. Finally, the way that Loewald's writing challenges the reader to unpack a concentration of ideas (on the one hand) while relaxing and inviting them to dream freely and without judgment (on the other) is seen as a living out of the very theoretical precepts he evolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficacious, effective and efficient communication between healthcare professionals (HCP) and patients is essential to achieve a successful therapeutic alliance. Telemedicine (TM) has been used for decades but during the COVID‐19 pandemic its use has become widespread. This position paper aims to describe the terminology and most important forms of TM among HCP and patients and review the existing studies on the uses of TM for asthma and allergy. Besides, the advantages and risks of TM are discussed, concluding that TM application reduces costs and time for both, HCP and patients, but cannot completely replace face‐to‐face visits for physical examinations and certain tests that are critical in asthma and allergy. From an ethical point of view, it is important to identify those involved in the TM process, ensure confidentiality and use communication channels that fully guarantee the security of the information. Unmet needs and directions for the future regarding implementation, data protection, privacy regulations, methodology and efficacy are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current nursing professional development programs include online education related to caring for COVID-19-positive patients. However, these resources failed to attract significant uptake of knowledge acquisition mainly because of poorly structured web pages. This discussion paper presents a unique perspective to designing professional development programs for frontline nurses working during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond through the use of interactive digital content (IDC). An overview of IDC is provided, followed by strategies for transforming existing nursing professional development education into IDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Interest in and use of electronic consent (e-consent) in the conduct of academic clinical trials has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. E-consent offers advantages including increased efficiency and accessibility, and reduced burden on site staff, which can be appealing to academic trialists anticipating challenges in recruitment to complex trial designs or with limited funding. However, there are many options to consider when using e-consent in a study protocol. This paper presents five case studies from Norwich Clinical Trials Unit, demonstrating how e-consent models can be effectively tailored to the needs of different trials. These examples illustrate the options around and benefits of e-consent, the acceptability of e-consent by participants, and the design considerations that were made during the development of the trial protocols. Case studies: Five randomised trials are presented, selected from a range of different trial designs, disease areas, interventions, and patient populations. E-consent was either offered as an alternative to paper consent, according to participant preference, or as the sole method of consent. E-consent was generally used to facilitate remote consent in decentralised trials but was also chosen to increase efficiency and reduce burden in an emergency department setting. The technical implementation of e-consent and detailed participant procedures were tailored to the needs of the trial settings and patient populations. For example, accompanying participant information sheets were provided in paper or electronic form, and electronic signatures could be typed or drawn. Administrative data on uptake of e-consent is presented where available. Conclusion: This paper demonstrates that the operational and technical aspects of implementing e-consent in clinical trials can be influenced by the trial design, the needs and characteristics of the trial population, financial/efficiency considerations, and level of risk. E-consent is not a one-size-fits-all tool for trials, and its use should be carefully considered during the development of the trial protocol, in conjunction with patient and public involvement contributors, site staff and other trial stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The outbreak of COVID-19 has produced an unprecedented number of trials and articles. Objective To study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on otolaryngology-head and neck surgery (ORL-HNS) journal processing times. Methods Original papers search of published in selected ORL-HNS journals in terms of times from submission-to-acceptance (S-A), acceptance-to-first online publication (A-P), and submission-to-online publication (S-P). Papers were divided into those published in the pre-COVID-19 era and those during the COVID-19 era. The latter were further divided into unrelated to COVID-19 and related to COVID-19. Results A total of 487 articles from 5 selected ORL-HNS journals were included, of which 236 (48.5%) were published during the pre-COVID-19 era and 251 (51.5%) were published during the COVID-19 era. Among them, 180 (37%) papers were not related to COVID-19, and 71 (14.5%) were related to COVID-19. The S-A duration of COVID-19-related articles was significantly shorter compared with that of papers submitted in the pre-COVID-19 era and to papers submitted in the COVID-19 era but unrelated to COVID-19 (median 6 to 34 days compared to 65 to 125 and 46 to 127, respectively) in all 5 journals. The most prominent reductions in S-A and S-P times were documented in the laryngology and otology/neurotology disciplines, respectively. Conclusions Processing times of the included papers were significantly shorter in most of the selected ORL-HNS journals during the COVID-19 era compared with the pre-COVID-19 era. COVID-19-related papers were processed more rapidly than non-COVID-19-related papers. These findings testify to the possibility of markedly expediting S-P times and hopefully set a precedent for postpandemic publishing schedules. Level Of Evidence: 5 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-cost diagnostic tools for point-of-care immunoassays, such as the paper-based enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA), have become increasingly important, especially so in the recent COVID-19 pandemic. ELISA is the gold-standard antibody/antigen sensing method. This paper reports an easy-to-fabricate nitrocellulose (NC) paper plate, coupled with a desktop scanner for ELISA, which provides a higher protein immobilization efficiency than the conventional cellulose paper-based ELISA platforms. The experiments were performed using spiked samples for the direct ELISA of rabbit IgG with a limit of detection (LOD) of 1.016 μg/mL, in a measurement range of 10 ng/mL to 1 mg/mL, and for the sandwich ELISA of sperm protein (SP-10) with an LOD of 88.8 ng/mL, in a measurement range of 1 ng/mL to 100 μg/mL. The described fabrication method, based on laser-cutting, is a highly flexible one-step laser micromachining process, which enables the rapid production of low-cost NC paper-based multi-well plates with different sizes for the ELISA measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores historians' role in shaping public policy amid crises through the programs of the Idaho State Historical Society (ISHS). ISHS navigated the post-2008 recession, aligning with the History Relevance Campaign to redefine history's societal value and develop a legislative outreach program. This article encapsulates the ISHS's journey and history's power--through the agency's new briefing paper program--to inform, unite, guide policy, and promote informed governance. The article describes the author's workflow, which features traditional research methodology and adaptable projectmanagement philosophies and stresses the value of searchable research libraries as a framework for historians to manage multiple projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions made the concept of home testing increasingly popular. Here, we designed a linear transport unit connected to a paper-based multiplexed colorimetric platform, which can be used to test for food safety and physiological status. The device is composed of a linear transport unit and a paper-based multiplexed colorimetric reaction unit. The linear transporting unit uses the capillary phenomenon to collect samples, and the multiplexed colorimetric reaction unit can be used to detect different targets using a hydrophilic area and wax as the hydrophobic barrier. A rapid and multiplexed naked-eye readout of the colorimetric response is achieved in a few minutes. In this study, we demonstrate that the device can be used to detect nitrite, pesticides, lactate, and glycogen. It is a convenient and cheap home self-testing device that can be applied to different situations. This device could lead to earlier screening and, consequently, earlier referrals for further confirmation and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aim: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus pandemic is still ravaging the world with its ongoing resurgence and continuous mutation, suggesting the need for continuous research on safe and effective novel vaccines. Presently several types of vaccines have been developed and emerged in the global market to control COVID-19 virus. Consequently, the knowledge and information on COVID-19 have been expanding at a high level. Researchers need to gain relevant knowledge regarding the different vaccines; however scattered information makes this process time-consuming and laborious. The present study aimed to evaluate the characteristics and trends in global COVID-19 vaccine high-cited literature using bibliometric and visualizations methods and offer some directions and suggestions for future research. Methodology: Studies published between December 2019 and 22 Nov 2022 on COVID-19 vaccines were retrieved from the Scopus database. From the 16026 studies retrieved, 406 were identified as high-cited papers (HCPs) having received 100 or more citations. From the 406 HCPs, information about publications outputs, countries, institutions, journals, keywords, and citation counts was identified. Data analysis and visualization were conducted using Microsoft Excel, VOSViewer and Bibliometrix R software. Results: The 406 global HCPs on COVID-19 vaccines research were identified in Scopus database since Dec 2019 till 30 Nov 2022 using a search strategy, which received 123614 citations, averaging 304.17 citations per publication (CPP). An external funding was received by 53.20% (216 publications), which were cited 76107 times (with an average of 352.35 CPP). The 7086 authors from 694 organizations affiliated to 76 countries and publishing in 121 journals were involved in global COVID-19 vaccine research. The most productive countries were USA (n=213), U.K (n=91), China (n=36) and Germany (n=35). The most impactful countries in terms of citations per paper (CPP) and relative citation index (RCI) were South Africa (794.68 and 2.61), Germany (507.11 and 1.67), U.K. (396.59 and 1.30) and Spain (367.5 and 1.121). The most productive organizations were University of Oxford, U.K., Imperial College London, U.K. (n=25 each), Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), USA and Tel Aviv University (n=19 each) and the most impactful organizations were University of Cambridge, U.K (783.4 and 2.57), Emory University, USA (780.1 and 2.56), John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA (702.67 and 2.31) and National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases. USA (676.41 and 2.22). The most productive authors were A.J. Pollard (n=16) and T. Lambe (n=14) (of University of Oxford), O. Tureci and P.R. Dormitzer (n=12 each) (of BioNTechSE, Germany) and the most impactful were D. Cooper (1239.22 and 4.07), K.J. Janseu (1228.11 and 4.03) (BioNTechSE, Germany, K.A. Swanson (987.0 and 3.24) (University of Oxford, U.K.) and P.R. Dormitzer (983 and 3.23) (BioNTechSE, Germany). The most productive journals were New England Journal of Medicine (n=53), The Lancet (n=28), Nature (n=22) and JAMA (N=17). The most impactful journals (as per citations per paper) were New England Journal of Medicine (613.15), Lancet (496.39), Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics (369.67) and Nature (360.64). Among population age groups, the major focus was on adults (51.48%) and Middle Aged (39.16%). Among publication types, the major focus was Clinical Studies (26.85%), Epidemiology (22.66%) and Genetics (21.92%). The most significant keywords by frequency of appearances were "COVID-19" (n=388), "COVID-19 Vaccines" (n=357), "Vaccination" (n=221), "Prevention & Control" (n=181) and "Vaccine Immunogenicity" (n=133). Conclusion: The HCPs in COVID-19 vaccine research was done mainly by the authors and institutions of high-income countries (HIC) and was published in high-impact medical journals. Our research has identified the leading countries, institutions, journals, hotspots and development trend in the field that could provide the foundation for further investigations. The bibliometric analysis will help the clinicians to rapidly identify the potential collaborative partners, identify significant studies, and research topics within their domains of COVID-19 vaccines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing awareness of the importance of bacterial-resistant surfaces has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic global problem. Therefore, the need for antibacterial surfaces has become urgent. The by-product bagasse papers (BPs) were modified with antimicrobial natural rosin, followed by the synthesised graphene oxide and silver nanoparticles (GO-Ag-NPs) through a spin coating approach. The modified samples exhibited a remarkable antibacterial activity towards E. coli (G−ve bacteria) and S. aureus (G+ve bacteria). The microstructure, as well as phase composition of the prepared composites, was identified using various techniques such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscope (SEM) and hydrophilicity which was metered by water contact angle (WCA). The obtained results demonstrated that the halos of inhibition were noticed for decorated TBP samples by GO-Ag-NPs with various diameters ranging from 20 to 25 mm. Consequently, packaging applications could be extra developed with these renewable nanomaterials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 outbreak led to widespread disruption and stress to people's lives. Concern about the escalation of domestic violence (DV) rates and related mental health issues soon emerged following the implementation of strategies aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. This perspective paper presents an overview of the issues, argues for greater recognition of the link between DV against women and serious emotional distress, and the need for greater awareness and knowledge about DV among mental health professionals. While we acknowledge that men also experience DV, their rates are much lower than for women and in this paper our focus is on women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: The critical care nursing workforce is in crisis, with one‐third of critical care nurses worldwide intending to leave their roles. This paper aimed to examine the problem from a wellbeing perspective, offering implications for research, and potential solutions for organisations. Design: Discursive/Position paper. Method: The discussion is based on the nursing and wellbeing literature. It is guided by the authors' collaborative expertise as both clinicians and researchers. Data were drawn from nursing and wellbeing peer‐reviewed literature, such as reviews and empirical studies, national surveys and government and thinktank publications/reports. Results: Critical care nurses have been disproportionately affected by the COVID‐19 pandemic with studies consistently showing critical care nurses to have the worst psychological outcomes on wellbeing measures, including depression, burnout and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These findings are not only concerning for the mental wellbeing of critical care nurses, they also raise significant issues for healthcare systems/organisations: poor wellbeing, increased burnout and PTSD are directly linked with critical care nurses intending to leave the profession. Thus, the wellbeing of critical care nurses must urgently be supported. Resilience has been identified as a protective mechanism against the development of PTSD and burnout, thus offering evidence‐based interventions that address resilience and turnover have much to offer in tackling the workforce crisis. However, turnover data must be collected by studies evaluating resilience interventions, to further support their evidence base. Organisations cannot solely rely on the efficacy of these interventions to address their workforce crisis but must concomitantly engage in organisational change. Conclusions: We conclude that critical care nurses are in urgent need of preventative, evidence‐based wellbeing interventions, and make suggestions for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews have long been recognized as among the most important forms of scientific communication. The rapid growth of the primary literature has further increased the need for reviews to distill and interpret the literature. This review on Reviews and Reviewing: Approaches to Research Synthesis encompasses the evolution of the review literature, taxonomy of review literature, uses and users of reviews, the process of preparing reviews, assessment of review quality and impact, the impact of information technology on the preparation of reviews, and research opportunities for information science related to reviews and reviewing. In addition to providing a synthesis of prior research, this review seeks to identify gaps in the published research and to suggest possible future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The openness and resilience of the global research placed new terms in the post-pandemic academic world. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, a wide variety of scientific articles and research literature have been published in a short period. COVID-19 related research papers in the social sciences focused on the impact of the new disease on social, behavioral or economic outcomes. This paper aimed to explore and understand what the impact and which topics are covered in the papers about COVID-19 in Romanian social sciences ISI journals. As such, the approach highlights that performing the query by the term "covid" in seven Romanian journals indexed in the social sciences ISI database, Amfiteatru Economic registered the highest impact in terms of the number of citations per article. Moreover, most of the papers covering topics on COVID-19 were published in 2021, compared to the previous and current year. The findings also show that journals with a higher AIS and IF have a higher share of cited articles. Results presented in this study, identify as well, the word cloud diagrams for the covered topics in the title of the papers. In such regard, the most frequent words in the corpus made of titles of cited papers are teleworking, workaholism. For the uncited papers, the results suggest that more general terms are frequent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the onset of COVID-19, research production in economics and finance (measured by the posting of working papers) increased by 29 |$\%$|⁠. Production increases were widespread across geographies, job titles, departments, and ages with larger increases in top departments and for people under the age of 35. Men and women both experienced production increases with the exception of women between the age of 35 and 49, who experienced no production gains despite large increases for men in the same age group. COVID-19 increased reliance on past coauthorship networks, with larger production gains for authors that are more central to the network. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the COVID-19 pandemic prevails, research related to COVID-19 has spread beyond medicine, health science, and biology to almost all academic fields. Library and information science is one of the most active fields that publish COVID-19-related research papers. This study examined 696 research papers related to COVID-19 whose journal being categorized as "information science & library science" by Web of Science. The result of bibliometric analysis showed that the publications were active and on the rise. Most papers were published in English and produced in the United States. According to the keyword clustering map produced by semantic network analysis, two fields, bibliometrics and health communication, were publishing research papers related to COVID-19 most actively. Moreover, the most productive journal was a library and information science journal focusing on health informatics. Additionally, a tendency was found that researchers preferred to publish on journals with high impact factors. Compared with non-COVID-19-related research papers, there was a significant decrease of "time for acceptance" of COVID-19-related papers, and the proportion of open access was relatively high. Confronting the global crisis of COVID-19, the library and information science field also made efforts and challenges to resolve the slow peer-review, delayed publishing, and high paywalls, which have been recognized as a "chronic diseases" of the academic publishing ecosystem. It is expected that these endeavors can serve as a turning point to reconsider and innovate the traditional research-publishing lifecycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Outcome based education involves a student centric approach. Active participation of students in the classroom plays a significant role in the Outcome Based Education model. This paper explains the use of two active learning techniques viz. 1) Muddiest Point Technique 2) One Minute Paper for three courses taught to third year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate program. The Muddiest Point Technique was used for the course Computer Oriented Numerical Methods (CONM) by using Padlet as a tool to record the conceptual difficulties. One Minute Paper (OMP) was applied to the two courses, Analysis and Synthesis of Mechanisms (ASM) using traditional One Minute Paper and to another course namely Automation and Control Engineering (ACE) using goggle form. Students' responses to the survey questionnaire showed that implementation of these techniques improved overall understanding of the course content. It gives students a chance to communicate their conceptual difficulties without any hesitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]