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Firmly, the bearing capacity test of 1:1 equal ratio pillar under different constraint forms and different filling medium conditions was carried out. The results show that the binding pillar-forming effect is relatively good. The constraint ability of unconstrained, metal mesh, polyester mesh, hooked iron flat-hoop bushing, bellows, and spiral iron pipe is enhanced, in turn, and the carrying capacity is improved successfully. The homogeneity of high-water materials is better than concrete, and they have better compressibility, but their carrying capacity is relatively weak. The carrying capacity of concrete pillars is generously higher than that of high-water materials, but the compressibility is poor. Second, the migration characteristics of the surrounding rock structure of the gob-side entry retaining and the rule of side support are analyzed, the requirements of the side support are pointed out, and the side-support technology of the binding pillar is proposed. Taking Hijiata Mine's 50108 working face gob-side entry retaining as an example, the bellows pump-filled concrete pillar is used as the side support body, supplemented by handling steel mesh and air-duct cloth, and toughness material is sprayed between the pillars to seal the goaf, meeting the requirements of side support and road stability. The pillar has the characteristics of high early strength, strong final consolidation carrying capacity, good crimping effect, high mechanism degree, fast construction speed, less concrete consumption, low comprehensive cost, etc., and it has a good application prospect in the gob-side entry retaining or rapid advanced working face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Umsatzsteuer-Rundschau is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: Strongyloidiasis, a parasitic infection, presents a significant public health challenge in tropical regions due to the limited repertoire of effective treatments. The screening of chemical libraries against the therapeutically relevant third-stage larvae (L3) of the model parasite Strongyloides venezuelensis yielded meager success rates. This situation is reminiscent of Gram-negative bacteria, where drug entry is a limiting factor. Methods: Here, we set out to determine whether similar barriers are in place and establish whether structural and property requirements exist for anti-strongyloides drug discovery. We focused on dyes as their uptake and effects on viability can be independently assessed in the multicellular parasite, thus providing a means to study the possibility of similar entry rules. We tested different dyes in in vitro assays on L3s. Results: We found that staining was necessary to reduce parasite viability, with some dyes achieving anti-strongyloides effects at concentrations similar to those of the reference drug, ivermectin (IV). Some dyes also showed activity against female adults at concentrations well below that of ivermectin. Unfortunately, the most potent dye, Methylene Blue, was unable to prevent the infection in a preliminary in vivo mouse model assay, presumably due to fast dye clearance. Structural analysis showed that positive charges facilitated the access of the compounds to the L3 tissue, thus providing a structural tool for the introduction of activity. For female adults, low globularity is additionally required. As a proof of concept, we added a positive charge to an inactive compound of one of our chemical libraries and re-determined the activity. Conclusions: These findings allow us to establish structural rules for parasite entry that could be of interest for future drug screening or drug development campaigns. These rules might also be applicable to other related parasites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the propagation of a stochastic SIR-type epidemic in two connected populations: a relatively small local population of interest which is surrounded by a much larger external population. External infectives can temporarily enter the small population and contribute to the spread of the infection inside this population. The rules for entry of infectives into the small population as well as their length of stay are modeled by a general Markov queueing system. Our main objective is to determine the distribution of the total number of infections within both populations. To do this, the approach we propose consists of deriving a family of martingales for the joint epidemic processes and applying classical stopping time or convergence theorems. The study then focuses on several particular cases where the external infection is described by a linear branching process and the entry of external infectives obeys certain specific rules. Some of the results obtained are illustrated by numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Belügyi Szemle / Academic Journal of Internal Affairs is the property of Ministry of Interior of Hungary and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Resources & Ecology is the property of Journal of Resources & Ecology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper enhances the agent model of ordinary individuals by incorporating the roles of places in the transmission, prevention, and control in the process, establishing a fundamental connection between these two types of agents through individual travel rules. The impact of real-world prevention and control measures on regional epidemic transmission is studied based on this model. Firstly, based on the analysis of place elements in typical cases of major infectious diseases, we give the classification of places. Secondly, the resident agent and the place agent are constructed and rules are established to form an agent-based major infectious disease transmission model considering the place. Then, the simulation process is established and an ideal regional environment is constructed to simulate overall changes in major infectious disease scale and spread speed. Additionally, evolutionary simulations are conducted for individual isolation intensity and place control time during emergency management stages to compare infection outcomes, and we analyze different roles and application scenarios of specific prevention and control measures. Finally, simulation results from real major infectious disease cases in Yangzhou, China, validate the effectiveness of this model in predicting major infectious disease development trends as well as evaluating prevention and control measure effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2016, UOW Library staff have been engaged in developing a culture of agility, strong digital literacy, and experimental exploration as part of the Future-Ready Library and the Thriving Digital Library strategies. This culture enabled the trial and implementation of a proactive chat widget at University of Wollongong Library prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative and quantitative data show how valuable proactive chat was to the students and staff at UOW during a period of high uncertainty. Pro-active chat achieved the goal of equitable provision of resources to library users at a time when visitor and travel rules restricted physical access to UOW Library buildings and on-site staff. The pandemic has been declared over, however, UOW Library continues to utilise proactive chat and to build upon and expand its functionality. The lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown that to withstand and succeed in the face of continued change to the provision of services in the GLAM sector, the attributes of agility and flexibility as well as strong and ongoing growth in digital literacy skills are vital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving Target Defense (MTD) is a security technique for Software Defined Networks (SDN) to change the attack surface constantly. Although MTD is an effective technique, it makes the digital forensics procedure challenging due to high transitions in the system state. There is an ever-increasing requirement for SDN forensics due to the increasing number of cyberattacks and the adoption of SDN by large-scale cloud service providers, telecommunication operators, and internet service providers. In this paper, we have proposed a digital forensics scheme for MTD-based SDN to record every movement of the MTD for collecting attack-related evidence, especially the attacker (attack source), to augment the forensics investigation. The proposed technique consists of a three-level logging mechanism. The first one is the native logging technique of ONOS. The second is a Java-based logging application called "Java ONOS Logs Collector (JOLC)", developed to capture MTD-based SDN logs. Lastly, we utilized the Fluentd unified logging tool to dig out evidential data from MTD logs. The experimental testbed comprises an ONOS SDN controller, Mininet, and an event-based MTD application running over SDN using JSON FlowRule scripts on the ONOS controller while using sflow-rt to detect the level of attack/number of packets sent by the attacker. The native ONOS logging mechanism provides initial-level artifacts. The developed JOLC application creates separate files for ONOS and Mininet/host machine logs stored with the current timestamp. Fluentd generates a single file for the SDN controller, Mininet, and host machine logs, along with the flow rule entry into the SDN controller. Experimental results confirmed that our proposed multi-level forensics technique successfully collected all the relevant records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has completely disrupted and possibly permanently changed the way humans travel. In Puerto Rico, major travel restrictions to the island have persisted at different levels since March 2020, which heavily influenced residents' travel behaviors. However, it remains unclear about how big the impact is and how inequitable it might be. The goal of this study is to evaluate COVID-19's impacts on Puerto Rican's travel behaviors by analyzing travel flows from Puerto Rico to the contiguous US with a modified gravity model. The roles of socioeconomic factors regarding the Puerto Rican travelers and COVID-19 factors regarding the destination US states have been assessed. COVID-19 was a strong deterring factor of travel at the beginning of the pandemic and also in the winter of 2020, but it did not keep Puerto Ricans from traveling during the summer 2020 when most travel restrictions were lifted. We found that the elderly population of Puerto Rico, despite being more vulnerable to COVID-19, were much more likely to travel during the pandemic. We also found that, during the holiday season in 2020, some socioeconomically disadvantaged populations were more likely to be traveling, a direct contradiction to their travel flows the year prior. These findings shed light on about how disproportionately affected populations behavior changed from pre-pandemic to after the pandemic started. With the continuance of the pandemic, this information is extremely valuable for future planning with respect to emergency management, travel regulation, and social benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout film history, time travel has been an intriguing concept revisited time and again by film productions, creating a universe of time travel principles and becoming a discipline of scientific import. With some of the greatest minds and thinkers of our time contributing to the living discourse, time travel has gained global significance and has developed several rules films attempt to follow. Time travel theory postulates several theories concerning the effect of an individual traveling through time and coming into contact with themselves; some benign, some many catastrophic. This study reviews time travel films to determine the cinematic consistency of three of these rules; the grandfather paradox, time-traveling for self-benefit, and meeting oneself in an alternate time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Jurisprudence Faculty Journal / Magallaẗ Kulliyyaẗ Al-fiqh is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Advanced cooperative vehicle fleet technology has shown potential for improving safety and efficiency near freeway bottlenecks. This study focuses on resolution strategies for cooperative vehicle fleets for reducing rear-end collision risks near recurrent bottlenecks. Based on different vehicle types and time requirements and intentions, different resolution strategies are proposed to determine the travel rules and sequence of vehicle flows when a cooperative vehicle fleet needs to change its original fixed formation. Then, a series of experimental scenarios is designed by setting different vehicle types (conventional vehicles and connected and automated vehicles), requirements and intentions in different areas of multilane freeways. The experimental scenarios are simulated based on the MATLAB platform to test the proposed strategy. The results show that the proposed strategy can effectively reduce vehicle rear-end collisions, and the average cost savings of the conflict resolution process is 25.71%. The proposed strategies in this research provide autonomous resolutions for vehicle conflicts in different scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Big Four' accountancy firms dominate the auditing market, auditing almost all the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 companies. This leads to people having to accept auditing results even if they may be poor quality and/or for inadequate purposes. In addition, accountants may provide different auditing results with the same financial data. These issues are hard for regulators such as the Financial Reporting Council to identify because of insufficient resources or inconsistent compliance. In this paper, we proposed a triple-entry accounting protocol to allow users to report Bitcoin transactions to a third-party auditor to comply with regulations such as the travel rule. It allows the auditor to easily detect anomalies and identify the non-compliant parties, whilst the blockchain itself provides a transparent and immutable record of these anomalies. Despite building on a public ledger, our solution preserves privacy and offers an interoperability layer for information exchange. Merkle proofs were used to record non-compliant transactions whilst allowing compliant transactions to be pruned from an auditor's active database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the evolving demands of programmable networks and address the limitations of traditional fixed-type protocol parsers, we propose a dynamic and configurable low-latency parser implemented on an FPGA. The architecture consists of three protocol analysis modules and a TCAM-SRAM. Latency is reduced by optimizing the state machine and parallel extraction matching. At the same time, we introduce the chain mapping idea and container concept to formulate the matching and extraction rules of table entries and enhance the extensibility of the parser. Furthermore, our system supports dynamic configuration through SDN control, allowing flexible adaptation to diverse scenarios. Our design has been verified and simulated with a cocotb-based framework. The resulting architecture is implemented on Xilinx Ultrascale+ FPGAs and supports a throughput of more than 80 Gbps, with a maximum latency of only 36 nanoseconds for L4 protocol parsing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a global health problem, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crosses national borders, leading UN (United Nations) multilateral agencies to call for all countries to improve the stewardship of antibiotics in humans and animals. South American countries have changed their regulations regarding antibiotic use in livestock production. This literature review examines how far the five largest meat-producing countries in South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay) have come in terms of the relevant legislation. Rules on market entry (marketing authorization and official distribution systems) are already set in all countries examined. Four countries do not allow growth promoters based on critically important antibiotics, and countries have also begun to set guidelines and minimum welfare and biosecurity requirements to reduce the therapeutic demand for antibiotics. Nonetheless, there are aspects related to the distribution, use, and disposal of antibiotics that need to be developed further. In conclusion, legislation in South American countries is moving towards the goals set by UN multilateral agencies, but more can be done. Differences between countries' rules and the gold standards set by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), World Health Organization (WHO), and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reveal possible adaptations to the countries' realities. Further studies must examine compliance with the legislation already set and investigate other tools that can be used alongside legislation as a driving force to change stakeholder behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to most countries, Saudi Arabia faced several challenges during the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, some of which were related to the religious position of the country. The main challenges included deficits in knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward COVID-19, the negative psychological impacts of the pandemic on the general population and healthcare workers, vaccine hesitancy, the management of religious mass gatherings (e.g., Hajj and Umrah), and the imposition of travel regulations. In this article, we discuss these challenges based on evidence from studies involving Saudi Arabian populations. We outline the measures through which the Saudi authorities managed to minimize the negative impacts of these challenges in the context of international health regulations and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roads are important drivers of habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation that affect global biodiversity. Detrimental effects of roads include direct mortality of individual animals, spread of habitat-altering invasive plants, and loss of demographic and genetic connectivity of wildlife populations. Various measures address the negative effects of roads on wildlife. However, most strategies for minimizing or mitigating the effects of roads are focused on the actual roads themselves rather than on the collective travel network across landscapes. We summarized a growing body of literature that has documented the effects of road density on wildlife populations and the benefits associated with lower densities. This literature supports the application of limits on road density as a viable tool for managing cumulative effects. Based on these examples, we recommend road densities, including all linear features used for travel, of less than 0.6 km/km2 as a general target for travel management in areas where wildlife conservation is a priority. Lower densities may be necessary in particularly sensitive areas, whereas higher densities may be appropriate in areas less important to landscape-level conservation and wildlife connectivity. Public policy and funding also are needed to address challenges of enforcing off-highway vehicle regulations. In applying this general overview to a case study of the Mojave desert tortoise Gopherus agassizii, we found that all management plans across the species' range lack considerations of road density and that tortoise populations declined within all conservation areas with road densities of more than 0.75 km/km2. From this, we provide several travel management recommendations specific to Mojave desert tortoise conservation beginning with identifying the entire travel network within management areas. Specific actions for managing or setting limits for road density depend on the site-specific biological or management context, for instance relative to habitat quality or proximity to designated tortoise conservation areas. In addition, increasing law enforcement and public outreach will improve enforcement and compliance of travel regulations, and installing tortoise-exclusion fencing along highways will reduce road kills and allow tortoise populations to reoccupy depleted areas adjacent to highways. Implementation of these recommendations would improve the prospects of reversing desert tortoise population declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic records of a patient's health history are often shared among healthcare providers, and patient data must be kept secure to maintain the privacy of patients. One way of doing this is through data hiding, and this paper demonstrates a scheme to achieve this. This paper proposes a capacity-raising reversible data-hiding scheme using an empirical rules table in dual images. The aim of this research is to avoid drawing awareness to the transmission of information by providing a steganographic technique capable of embedding high-capacity data into an image while maintaining the good quality of the image. To hide the secret message(s), a rules table containing 13 entries is presented. This rules table is extendable to a table of up to 262,133 entries (with each entry containing one distinct character) that are related to the 13 entries in terms of the rules. The rules of this table are used during the embedding and extraction procedures. In the proposed method, 512 × 512 images are divided into 1 × 2 blocks where adjacent pixels are represented using x and y for both embedding and extraction, respectively. Recovery of the cover image from the stego image is also achievable during the extraction process. Conducted experiments show that the proposed method has an average pixel-to-signal noise ratio of 52.65 dB, which is higher than that achieved with the methods discussed in this paper. Additionally, the proposed method can embed a wider range of characters (depending on the image size) as compared to the rest of the methods, hence its high embedding capacity of 4.25 bpp. The proposed method can also withstand security attacks such as RS, pixel value difference, entropy, and chi-square attacks. The proposed method is also undetectable under visual attack analyses such as the difference histogram, pixel difference histogram, and visual inspection. Based on the higher embedding capacity, pixel-to-signal noise ratio, the ability of this method to be undetected under visual attack analysis, and the ability of this method to withstand security attacks, it can be concluded that the proposed method is superior to the other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the interpretation of Article 306 of the Value-added Tax Directive within a legal dispute between the Polish National Tax Information Authority and C., a company. It assesses whether C.'s resale of accommodation services falls under the VAT regulations designed for travel agencies. It delves into European Union and Polish legal frameworks to determine if C.'s operations qualify for the specialized VAT treatment designated for travel agencies.

High penetration of renewable energy in the power grid causes serious frequency deviations. Large-scale integrations of electric vehicles (EVs) in the power grid provide considerable vehicle-to-grid potential for frequency regulation. Existing frequency regulation strategies with aggregated EVs realize accurate power control that relies on complete information interaction between the EV aggregator and individual EVs. However, the data collection for all EV parameters is not applicable due to privacy protection and the limited communication environment. Considering the limited data collection from grid-connected EVs, this paper provides a novel frequency regulation strategy and tends to address the uncertain influence from EV users' charging requirements, the EV aggregator's power regulation, and the frequency regulation performance. Firstly, considering the influence of the limited data collection by EVs on the users' requirement of traveling and regulation preference, a probabilistic evaluation model for the available regulation capacity of the EV aggregator and the probabilistic control method for EVs are developed. Then, a frequency regulation strategy with error correction control and progressive regulation recovery is developed to simultaneously guarantee the system frequency regulation performance and the regulation requirements of EV users. Finally, case studies are carried out to validate the effectiveness of frequency regulation strategy for decreasing the uncertain influence from the limited data collection, ensuring the EV users' requirements, and improving the system frequency stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: International travel poses the risk of importing SARS-CoV-2 infections and introducing new viral variants into the country of destination. Established measures include mandatory quarantine with the opportunity to abbreviate it with a negative rapid antigen test (RAT). Methods: A total of 1,488 returnees were tested for SARS-CoV-2 with both PCR and RAT no earlier than 5 days after arrival. We assessed the sensitivity and specificity of the RAT. Positive samples were evaluated for infectivity in vitro in a cell culture outgrowth assay. We tracked if participants who tested negative were reported positive within 2 weeks of the initial test. Results: Potential infectiousness was determined based on symptom onset analysis, resulting in a sensitivity of the antigen test of 89% in terms of infectivity. The specificity was 100%. All positive outgrowth assays were preceded by a positive RAT, indicating that all participants with proven in vitro infectivity were correctly identified. None of the negative participants tested positive during the follow-up. Conclusions: RAT no earlier than the 5th day after arrival was a reliable method for detecting infectious travellers and can be recommended as an appropriate method for managing SARS-CoV-2 travel restrictions. Compliance to the regulations and a high standard of test quality must be ensured.

This study explores the potential of automated fire safety conformity checks using a BIM tool. The focus is on travel distance regulations, one of the major concerns in building design. Checking travel distances requires information about the location of exits. Preferably, the Building Information Model (BIM) of the building should contain such information, and if not, user input can be requested. However, a faster, yet still reliable and accurate, methodology is strived for. Therefore, this study presents an automated solution that uses machine learning to add the required semantics to the building model. Three algorithms (Bagged KNN, SVM, and XGBoost) are evaluated at a low Level of Detail (LOD) BIM models. With precision, recall, and F1 scores ranging from 0.87 to 0.90, the model exhibits reliable performance in the classification of doors. In a validation process with two separate sample buildings, the models accurately identified all ’Exits’ in the first building with 94 samples, with only 5 to 6 minor misclassifications. In the second building, all models- with the exception of the SVM - correctly classified every door. Despite their theoretical promise, oversampling techniques do not enhance the results, indicating their inherent limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to investigate practice changes among Southern and Northern California's radiation oncology centers during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Methods: On the online survey platform SurveyMonkey, we designed 10 survey questions to measure changes in various aspects of medical physics practice. The questions covered patient load and travel rules; scopes to work from home; new protocols to reduce corona virus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19) infection risk; availability of telemedicine; and changes in fractionation schedules and/or type of treatment plans. We emailed the survey to radiation oncology centers throughout Northern and Southern California, requesting one completed survey per center. All responses were anonymized, and data were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Results: At the end of a 4‐month collection period (July 2, 2021 to October 11, 2021), we received a total of 61 responses throughout Southern and Northern California. On average, 4111 patients were treated per day across the 61 centers. New COVID‐19‐related department and hospital policies, along with hybrid workflow changes, infectious control policies, and changes in patient load have been reported. Results also showed changes in treatment methods during the pandemic, such as increased use of telemedicine, hypofractionation for palliative, breast cancer, and prostate cancer cases; and simultaneous boosts, compared to sequential boosts. Conclusion: Our California radiation oncology center population study shows changes in various aspects of radiation oncology practices during the COVID‐19 pandemic. This study serves as a pilot study to identify possible correlations and new strategies that allow radiation oncology centers to continue providing quality patient care while ensuring the safety of both staff and patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic temporarily paralysed demand for air travel causing long-term implications for all industry stakeholders involved. Nobody was spared, and without government support, many airlines, airports and air navigation service providers (ANSP), would have gone out of business already in the first year of the pandemic. In order to assess the global impact of COVID-19 on the aviation industry, this paper reviewed data from publications by various international aviation organizations, academic papers, and annual reports by airlines, airports and ANSPs, etc. The findings show that the global aviation industry was severely hit by the pandemic, pushing all stakeholders to adopt countermeasures, with the most common response by airlines being the reconfiguring their networks and capacity or switching to cargo operations, airports and other operators reacted by reducing staff numbers, while passengers had to adapt to the new travel rules and the new normality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was undertaken to identify stakeholder needs and wants in relation to an Infant and Young Child Feeding, Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) strategy for the 16 Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states during Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions. A rapid-assessment mixed-methods approach using qualitative and quantitative studies was adopted. Secondary data sources supported in-field findings. Setting/Subjects: Qualitative approaches included 17 key informant interviews from 7 SADC member states. Quantitative methods of an online survey elicited feedback from 61 participants from 11 SADC member states. Outcome measures: More strategic, best practice, infant and young child feeding SBCC programmes are recommended in SADC. Programme challenges included increased demands on health systems from Covid-19, poor attitudes and beliefs toward IYCF behaviours, the dual burden of undernutrition and overnutrition, and financial and human resource capacity challenges to implement and evaluate SBCC campaigns at scale. Opportunities were also identified for improved detection, better meeting IYCF nutritional needs from locally sourced foods, training and capacity building for greater engagement of front-line field staff, effective policy development to support parent-friendly hospitals and workplaces, and improved regional integration. The needs assessment demonstrated that priority programme planning can continue while the health sector deals with a pandemic threat. The adaptation to virtual support provided a variety of learnings for research designs, data collection and analysis, albeit over an extended timeframe of six months. A number of innovative approaches were identified in the resultant SBCC strategy for SADC along with opportunities for regional efficiencies in adapting existing, best practice SBCC creative and programming approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented spread of SARS-CoV-2 has pushed governmental bodies to undertake stringent actions like travel regulations, localized curfews, curb activity participation, etc. These restrictions assisted in controlling the proliferation of the virus; however, they severely affected major economies. This compels policymakers and planners to devise strategies that restrain virus spread as well as operationalize economic activities. In this context, we discuss some of the potential implications of seat inventory management in long-distance passenger trains and create a balance between operators' operational efficiency and passengers' safety. The paper introduces a novel seat assignment policy that aims to mitigate virus diffusion risk among passengers by reducing interaction among them. A mixed-integer linear programming problem has been formulated that concomitantly maximizes the operator's revenue and minimizes virus diffusion. The validity of the model has been tested using real-life data obtained from Indian Railways. The computational results show that a mere 50% capacity utilization may distress operators' economics and prove ineffectual in controlling SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The proposed model produces encouraging results in restricting virus diffusion and improving revenue even under 100% capacity utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) require all the header matching rules to be reported which is termed as multi-match packet classification. Ternary content-addressable memories (TCAMs) are the preferred choice for performing hardware-based multi-match packet classification in speed critical applications. However, TCAMs cannot deliver multi-match results directly due to in-built priority encoder. Prior research focused on this drawback and have come up with solutions for yielding multi-match results from the TCAMs. However, prior works have not laid enough emphasis on exploiting the structural properties of real-world NIDS header rule databases for optimizing the key TCAM parameters. In the first part of this work, the existing designs in the literature are classified based on the design approach, and the performance of all the designs is summarized with respect to crucial performance metrics. In the second part, a rule entry compression mechanism based on layered encoding is proposed, which can yield reduced TCAM entry size. The proposed compression approach makes use of the structural properties present in real-world Snort header rule databases. Assuming commercially available TCAM configurations, the proposed compression reduced the overall TCAM bits required for accommodating the classifier by 50 % . Simulation results showed that, by integrating the existing TCAM-based multi-match designs with the proposed compression, the improvement in the TCAM energy and delay per packet has, respectively, ranged between 46.23 - 35.16 % and 29.04 - 1.64 % when tested upon latest real-world Snort databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• International travel enables the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and its viral variants • The antigen test showed a sensitivity of 100% with respect to in vitro infectivity • An antigen test following quarantine effectively detects infectious travellers • Travel regulations rely heavily on test quality and compliance International travel poses the risk of importing SARS-CoV-2 infections and introducing new viral variants into the country of destination. Established measures include mandatory quarantine with the opportunity to abbreviate it with a negative rapid antigen test (RAT). A total of 1,488 returnees were tested for SARS-CoV-2 with both PCR and RAT no earlier than 5 days after arrival. We assessed the sensitivity and specificity of the RAT. Positive samples were evaluated for infectivity in vitro in a cell culture outgrowth assay. We tracked if participants who tested negative were reported positive within 2 weeks of the initial test. Potential infectiousness was determined based on symptom onset analysis, resulting in a sensitivity of the antigen test of 89% in terms of infectivity. The specificity was 100%. All positive outgrowth assays were preceded by a positive RAT, indicating that all participants with proven in vitro infectivity were correctly identified. None of the negative participants tested positive during the follow-up. RAT no earlier than the 5th day after arrival was a reliable method for detecting infectious travellers and can be recommended as an appropriate method for managing SARS-CoV-2 travel restrictions. Compliance to the regulations and a high standard of test quality must be ensured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since modern times, western countries had influenced the formulation of rules for travelling China through a series of gunboat diplomacy and a series of unequal treaties, and promoted the formation of three major peregrination routes, namely south China centered on Guangzhou and Shanghai, southwest China centered on the Yangtze River and Chengdu, and north China centered on Beijing and the Great Wall. Overpopulation, lack of curiosity and knowledge, difficulties in board and lodging, good onlookers, beauty of exotic scenery, and intensive farming were the common perceptions of the collective impression of China by the three types of peregrinators coming to China. These perceptions were the historical map for the west to construct the image of modern China, and had a profound influence on the formation of China's image of "the inferior other". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability of Software Defined Network's (SDNs) flow rule entry in the flow table is considered a key factor in the timely delivery of a certain flow. The controller is approached for instructions on how to deal with the flow when the rule for such flow is missing. The controller then updates the flow table accordingly at the switch so that flow could be dealt with locally. It becomes problematic when no rule is defined yet at the controller by the application plane. In most of these cases, such a situation is handled by programming the controller with wildcard rules. However, handling many flows at once under wildcard rules severely hampers the network performance. Flow rules formation by the application plane is sometimes critical and time-consuming which increases the latency ratio by creating a bottleneck at the switch level. To avoid the bottlenecks due to rule absence, in this paper, rather than waiting for the application plane's response and putting the pending traffic flows in the buffer, which may be dropped, the controller is programmed in a way that has the built-in mechanism of self-flow rule formation. This atomized mechanism is based on the previously available traces of the same flows when they were forwarded on the network using the wildcard rules. To assess the performance of the proposed work, it is emulated and benchmarked with the latest research. The results show considerable performance achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore a key tension between certification and entrepreneurial entry. On the one hand, more stringent certifications may provide greater legitimacy. On the other hand, market entry may be facilitated by easing such standards. To reconcile this tension, we examine discontinued certifications. We draw on research into how new ventures use certifications to gain legitimacy, along with quantitative data from new venture credit records. We show that after a certification is discontinued, new ventures in emerging industries continue to conform to these discontinued certified standards. Our study shows that those whose attributes do not provide other sources of legitimacy (e.g., unconventional founders in emerging industries) are more likely than other new ventures to comply with discontinued certification. However, those with other legitimating attributes (e.g., elite institution alumni founders) can overcome such legitimacy deficits and take advantage of new rules easing entry. Overall, our findings show that discontinued certifications can become certification "relics" whose standards continue to linger and influence entry, even after they are no longer formally in effect. Our study and its findings enhance our understanding of institutional support for new ventures, as well as the repertoire of strategic actions available to new ventures to gain legitimacy and acceptance in the face of institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong employed a strategy of intermittent public health and social measures alongside increasingly stringent travel regulations to eliminate domestic SARS-CoV-2 transmission. By analyzing 1899 genome sequences (>18% of confirmed cases) from 23-January-2020 to 26-January-2021, we reveal the effects of fluctuating control measures on the evolution and epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 lineages in Hong Kong. Despite numerous importations, only three introductions were responsible for 90% of locally-acquired cases. Community outbreaks were caused by novel introductions rather than a resurgence of circulating strains. Thus, local outbreak prevention requires strong border control and community surveillance, especially during periods of less stringent social restriction. Non-adherence to prolonged preventative measures may explain sustained local transmission observed during wave four in late 2020 and early 2021. We also found that, due to a tight transmission bottleneck, transmission of low-frequency single nucleotide variants between hosts is rare. Hong Kong has used an elimination strategy to control SARS-CoV-2 with stringent measures including traveller quarantine. Here, the authors show that the majority of community-acquired cases until January 2021 resulted from three importations, and that increased transmission followed prolonged periods of restrictions, likely due to adherence fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although COVID-19 lockdowns and travel regulations have restricted the spatial area for human activities, tourists can still use virtual devices and applications for travel purposes. This study aimed to explore the thermal comfort and satisfaction of tourists under various tourist activity intensities, using experimental and semi-structured interview methods, combined with microclimate simulation experiments and electrocardiogram data to monitor physiological indicators. The results showed that: (1) The thermal comfort of virtual tourists had a significant correlation with the environmental temperature. (2) The thermal comfort of virtual tourists differed under various activity intensities. The virtual tourism activity intensity moderated the relation between environmental temperature and tourists' thermal comfort. (3) In the state of exercise (slow walking, fast walking), the environmental temperature affected tourists' physiological indicators. (4) Virtual tourism that integrates realistic visual, audio, and tactile sensations can improve tourists' perception and satisfaction. The results provide a new perspective for the study of the virtual tourism experience and thermal comfort. In addition, it provides theoretical and practical support for the development of virtual tourism scenes in the environmental temperature context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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