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Higher education informatization (HEI) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the use and integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. This paper provides a bibliometric and visual analysis of the research trends, patterns, and topics in this field. Using the Web of Science database, the authors selected and analyzed 199 SCI and SSCI papers on HEI published from 2000 to 2023 by VOSviewer and CiteSpace software. The results indicate that the publication volume of HEI research has grown significantly in recent years. The author network shows the collaboration and contribution of different researchers and institutions, while the journal network reveals the multidisciplinary nature and scope of the field. The keyword network and the burst keyword analysis identify the main research themes and the emerging hot topics in HEI. The co-citation network of sources illustrates the theoretical and methodological foundations and influences of the field. The paper concludes with some implications and suggestions for future HEI research.

Based on Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, Lakoff's definition and Prince et al.'s classification of hedges, this paper takes New York Times and China Daily from January 23rd to April 8th, 2020 as corpus sources, randomly selects 39 COVID-19 reports, and makes a contrastive study of hedges among them, aiming at exploring the similarities and differences in the use of hedges in COVID-19 reports selected from Chinese and American mainstream newspapers and further revealing their influencing factors.

The genesis and spread of COVID-19 around the world since 2020 have caused severe impacts in every aspect of people's lives, from work life to recreation, social activities to physical health. Higher education has not been excluded. Universities have altered curriculum, changed delivery methods, provided more counseling, purchased new technology, and altered attendance policy for classroom, athletic, social and artistic events (Hamlin, 2021). To assess the impacts of these changes on college students, the authors created a questionnaire to ask students about their perceptions of these COVID-related impacts on their own personal lives. The survey had 56 questions about how the virus affected their academic, social, financial, physical and emotional lives. Over 800 students responded with objective input and subjective comments. Due to the volume of data, the authors have split the study into two parts. The survey results for the first part, academic and social aspects of the survey, were published in "Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on College Student Academic and Social Lives," Research in Higher Education Journal Volume 41 (see http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/213347.pdf). It will sometimes be referred to herein to provide clarity to the reader. The actual survey itself can also be found at that site. This paper focuses on the impact of the coronavirus on student financial and physical well-being, which have become major stressors to this age group and have contributed to higher levels of anxiety and depression. It also examines how the virus has affected their social and emotional well-being. Lastly, recommendations are made to help educators understand the severity of the problem, and to take action to provide assistance for those students who have been adversely affected.

The unprecedented social disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in rapid change within the family and home. This paper uses semi-structured interviews with parents around the globe to examine the following research questions: 1. How have the spatial and temporal organizations of learning and working in the home been altered throughout the COVID-19 pandemic? 2. What are the alterations in the educational processes and the role of the family in response to the changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic? We found that typical boundaries, those between the roles of family members, between work or school and home, and between leisure time and work time have been fundamentally blurred. While some of these boundaries are more porous than others, families report fundamental shifts, temporary and permanent in the way they organize their home and family, spatially and temporally, and the roles they take on within the family.

Background: Human communities suffered a vast socioeconomic burden in dealing with the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) globally. Real-word data about these burdens can inform governments about evidence-based resource allocation and prioritization. The aim of this scoping review was to map the cost-of-illness (CoI) studies associated with COVID-19. Methods: This scoping review was conducted from January 2019 to December 2021. We searched cost-of-illness papers published in English within Web of Sciences, PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, Science Direct and ProQuest. For each eligible study, extracted data included country, publication year, study period, study design, epidemiological approach, costing method, cost type, cost identification, sensitivity analysis, estimated unit cost and national burden. All of the analyses were applied in Excel software. Results: 2352 records were found after the search strategy application, finally 28 articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Most of the studies were done in the United States, Turkey, and China. The prevalence-based approach was the most common in the studies, and most of studies also used Hospital Information System data (HIS). There were noticeable differences in the costing methods and the cost identification. The average cost of hospitalization per patient per day ranged from 101$ in Turkey to 2,364$ in the United States. Among the studies, 82.1% estimated particularly direct medical costs, 3.6% only indirect costs, and 14.3% both direct and indirect costs. Conclusion: The economic burden of COVID-19 varies from country to country. The majority of CoI studies estimated direct medical costs associated with COVID-19 and there is a paucity of evidence for direct non-medical, indirect, and intangible costs, which we recommend for future studies. To create homogeneity in CoI studies, we suggest researchers follow a conceptual framework and critical appraisal checklist of cost-of-illness (CoI) studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has been contributing to new approaches to global governance. The Health Silk Road (HSR), a significant component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was proposed by China in 2016. This paper claims that HSR is a new institution introduced alongside the existing WHO-led multilateral health system, and its relationship with the existing system can be described as layering. Having explored the new development of HSR during COVID-19, this paper further argues that while HSR has its unique strength in making contributions to global health governance and economic recovery, it faces a prominent issue of securitisation in the context of China-U.S. strategic competition, suspicion of the quality of medical products and sectoral fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After three years of global rampage, the COVID-19 epidemic, the most serious infectious disease to occur worldwide since the 1918 influenza pandemic, is nearing its end. From the global experience, medical control and social control are the two main dimensions in the prevention and control of COVID-19. From the perspective of "two types of control", namely medical control and social control, this paper finds that the political system, economic structure, and cultural values of the United States greatly limit the government's ability to impose social control, forcing it to adopt medical control to fight the virus in a single dimension. In contrast, China's political system, economic structure, and cultural values allow its government to adopt stringent, extensive, and frequent social control, as well as medical control to fight the virus. This approach departs from the traditional pathway of fighting the epidemic, i.e., "infection–treatment–immunization", thereby outpacing the evolution of the virus and controlling its spread more rapidly. This finding helps explain why the Chinese government adopted a strict "zeroing" and "dynamic zeroing" policy during the first three years, at the cost of enormous economic, social, and even political legitimacy. It was not until late 2022, when the Omicron variant with the waning virulence became prevalent, that China chose to "coexist" with the virus, thus avoiding a massive epidemic-related death. While the United States adopted a pulsed-style strategy at the beginning of the epidemic, i.e., "relaxation–suppression–relaxation–suppression", and began to "coexist" with the virus in just one year, resulting in a large number of excess deaths associated with the epidemic. The study contributes to explaining the difference in the interplay between public health priorities and COVID-19 response strategies in China and the United States, based on the specific public health context and the perspective of "medical control" and "social control". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acknowledging the extreme risk COVID-19 poses to humans, this paper attempted to analyze and compare case fatality rates, identify the existence of learning curves for COVID-19 medical treatments, and examine the impact of vaccination on fatality rate reduction. Confirmed cases and deaths were extracted from the "Daily Situation Report" provided by the World Health Organization. The results showed that low registration and low viral test rates resulted in low fatality rates, and the learning curve was significant for all countries except China. Treatment for COVID-19 can be improved through repeated experience. Vaccinations in the U.K. and U.S.A. are highly effective in reducing fatality rates, but not in other countries. The positive impact of vaccines may be attributed to higher vaccination rates. In addition to China, this study identified the existence of learning curves for the medical treatment of COVID-19 that can explain the effect of vaccination rates on fatalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the outbreak of a disease caused by a pathogen with unknown characteristics, the uncertainty of its progression parameters can be reduced by devising methods that, based on rational assumptions, exploit available information to provide actionable insights. In this study, performed a few (~6) weeks into the outbreak of COVID-19 (caused by SARS-CoV-2), one of the most important disease parameters, the average time-to-recovery, was calculated using data publicly available on the internet (daily reported cases of confirmed infections, deaths, and recoveries), and fed into an algorithm that matches confirmed cases with deaths and recoveries. Unmatched cases were adjusted based on the matched cases calculation. The mean time-to-recovery, calculated from all globally reported cases, was found to be 18.01 days (SD 3.31 days) for the matched cases and 18.29 days (SD 2.73 days) taking into consideration the adjusted unmatched cases as well. The proposed method used limited data and provided experimental results in the same region as clinical studies published several months later. This indicates that the proposed method, combined with expert knowledge and informed calculated assumptions, could provide a meaningful calculated average time-to-recovery figure, which can be used as an evidence-based estimation to support containment and mitigation policy decisions, even at the very early stages of an outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the connection between international politics that characterized the outbreak of COVID-19, mainly between the United States of America and China and the devastating impact of the second wave outbreak on the Nigerian economy. At the initial stage of the pandemic on the Chinese mainland, the economy of China experienced a significant decline. The efficacy of China's response to COVID-19 led to a fractional economic recovery during the pandemic. However, the internationalization of COVID-19 was greeted with a second wave in most advanced countries, such as the United States of America, Italy, and the United Kingdom, among others. The low level of preparedness and poor responses were comparably low in second-wave countries compared to China. It also examines the failure of the United States of America and China to develop a global health framework against COVID-19, as well as the Blame Game Politics that eventually played out. The politics of shifting blame between the United States of America and China, coupled with poor responses against COVID-19 in most Western countries, culminated in a devastating outbreak in low-income countries. Nigeria's COVID-19 experience severely affected the critical sectors of the economy. However, this awkward situation has heightened Nigeria's status as a major economic victim of the pandemic in Africa. The study utilized primary and secondary sources of data. The primary data were generated through the utility of Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), and the secondary data were generated from textbooks, journal articles, and web-based materials. The data generated were analyzed using the logic induction method and thematic analysis. The study recommends rejigging the Nigerian economic framework and improving revenues through an Agrobased economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020 was paralleled by an equally overwhelming publication of scientific literature. This scientometric analysis was performed to evaluate the 100 most cited articles on COVID-19 imaging to highlight research trends and identify common characteristics of the most cited works. A search of the Web of Science database was performed using the keywords "COVID CT," "COVID Radiograph," and "COVID Imaging" on June 29, 2021. The 100 top cited articles found were arranged in descending order on the basis of citation counts and citations per year and relevant data were recorded. Our search revealed a total of 4,862 articles on COVID-19 imaging published in the years 2020 to 2021. The journal with maximum number of publications (n = 22), citation count (n = 8,788), and impact was Radiology. Citations for the top 100 articles ranged from 70 to 1,742 with the most cited article authored by A.I. Tao and published in Radiology. Two authors tied at first spot, having maximum impact, with both having 5 publications and a total of 3,638 citations among them. China was the leading country with both the maximum number of publications (n = 49) and total citations (n = 13,892), the United States coming second in both. This study evaluates publication and citation trends in literature and shows that the countries most affected by the pandemic early on have contributed to the majority of the literature. Furthermore, it will help radiologists to refer to the most popular and important article texts on which to base their unbiased and confident diagnoses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The broad impact of the COVID-19 on self-reported daily behaviors and health in Chinese and US samples remains unknown. This study aimed to compare physical and mental health between people from the United States (U.S.) and China, and to correlate mental health parameters with variables relating to physical symptoms, knowledge about COVID-19, and precautionary health behaviors. To minimize risk of exposure, respondents were electronically invited by existing study respondents or by data sourcing software and surveys were completed via online survey platforms. Information was collected on demographics, physical symptoms, contact history, knowledge about COVID-19, psychologic parameters (i.e. IES-R; DASS-21), and health behaviors. The study included a total of 1445 respondents (584 U.S.; 861 China). Overall, Americans reported more physical symptoms, contact history, and perceived likelihood of contracting COVID-19. Americans reported more stress and depressive symptoms, while Chinese reported higher acute-traumatic stress symptoms. Differences were identified regarding face mask use and desires for COVID-19 related health information, with differential mental health implications. Physical symptoms that were possibly COVID-19 related were associated with adverse mental health. Overall, American and Chinese participants reported different mental and physical health parameters, health behaviors, precautionary measures, and knowledge of COVID-19; different risk and protective factors were also identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]