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This paper discusses the digital hardware and software that is required for data acquisition in a portable electronic nose (e‐nose) system. A review of current e‐nose systems is presented highlighting the methods employed by these systems to acquire the data from the sensor head.

People with pre-existing mental health conditions are more likely to be affected by global crises. The Covid-19 pandemic has presented them with unique challenges, including reduced contact with the psychiatric rehabilitation and support systems. Thus, understanding the emotional experience of this population may assist mental health organizations in future global crises.

In this paper, researchers analyzed the discourse of the mentally ill during the Covid-19 pandemic, as reflected in Israeli Facebook groups: three private groups and one public group. Researchers explored the language, reactions, emotions and sentiments used in these groups during the year before the pandemic, outbreak periods and remission periods, as well as the period before the vaccine’s introduction and after its appearance.

Analyzing groups’ discourse using the collective emotion theory suggests that the group that expressed the most significant difficulty was the Depression group, while individuals who suffer from social phobia/anxiety and PTSD were less affected during the lockdowns and restrictions forced by the outbreak.

Findings may serve as a tool for service providers during crises to monitor patients’ conditions, and assist individuals who need support and help.

This study aims to investigate the characteristics, as well as the purpose and posts of the COVID-19 Facebook groups.

A systematic search for COVID-19 Facebook groups was conducted on June 1, 2020. Characteristics of the groups were examined using descriptive statistics. Mann-Whitney test was used to study the differences between groups. The study of the most popular groups’ posts was also carried out using the content analysis method.

The groups had a combined membership of 2,729,061 users. A total of 147,885 posts were received. There were about approximately 60% public groups. A high percentage of the groups (86.5%) had descriptions. The results showed a significant relationship between the groups’ description status and the number of members (p-value = 0.016). The majority of COVID-19 Facebook groups (56%) were created to meet their members’ information needs. The highest number of studied posts were related to vaccination (35.2%), followed by curfew rules (19.6%) and symptoms (10.6%).

Translating these insights into policies and practices will put policymakers and health-care providers in a stronger position to make better use of Facebook groups to support and enhance public knowledge about COVID-19.

In general, active participation increases learning outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to explore how: information and communication technologies (ICT) can be used to improve the participation of students during lectures and the effect of ICT on the learning outcomes of students.

The authors tested a specific tool, Soapbox, in a compulsory course of a Masters’ program, at VU University, The Netherlands. During half of the lectures the students were invited to participate using their mobile phone or laptop, for the other half of the lectures, taught by the same lecturer, the tool was not used. The authors compared the two groups of lectures. For the evaluation the authors used observations in the classroom, a questionnaire, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions with students and with the lecturer.

The results show that the ICT tool facilitated and increased the level of communication and interaction among the students and between the students and the lecturers. Students’ scored lectures with the tool consistently higher on the item “engaging.” Most of the students appreciated the use of the ICT tool and said that they felt more involved.

Despite the knowledge about the limited learning effect of lectures on larger groups, most of the teaching at universities is conducted through such lectures. The research shows that the majority of the students felt more involved in the lectures with the ICT tool, and almost half of the students feel that the learning effect of lectures with the tool is higher than the learning effect of lectures without. Although observations could not confirm the perceived enhanced involvement, about 80 percent would recommend using the tool in other classes, providing a case for the use of interactive technology in large-scale lectures.

Due to an international ageing population, global health organisations have recognised the challenges arising from fragmented interaction between health and social sectors in the end of life care. The purpose of this paper is to explore the existing literature on integrative palliative care services for older people.

An integrative review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses. Papers included in the review focused upon integrated care within palliative care systems (January 2007–2017). A certain number of papers were excluded when the review focused on individuals younger than 65, not written in English and not being focused on integrated palliative care.

Nine studies fitted the inclusion criteria and three themes were identified: person-centred care, co-ordination of care, and education and training. The review identifies that integrated palliative care requires co-ordinated techniques that focus upon the quality of life, individual needs and awareness of vulnerability rather than fixation on inevitable mortality.

The emerging presence of the need for integrated palliative care requires further research in order to develop coherent models of integrated palliative care which can be incorporated into practice.

This review identified themes relevant to the emerging issues in the global health sector of end of life care. The literature suggests that the optimised use of an integrated care approach to a palliative model of care is required and in need of further investigation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate a theoretical framework that examines and extends understanding of the role of cognitive/information processing, learning motivation and learning task behaviors in facilitating student engagement, course persistence and academic performance.

Student subjects were used to collect survey data. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the impact of active teaching, academic self-efficacy and task avoidance on the dependent variables – course grade, course persistence and expectancy for success.

Active teaching and academic self-efficacy were positive predictors of course grade while task avoidance was a negative predictor of course grade. Course persistence was positively impacted by academic self-efficacy and diminished by task-avoidance behaviors. Academic self-efficacy was shown to positively impact expectancy for success.

The results confirm the importance of adopting active teaching techniques, the need for periodic opportunities for experienced academic success and the need for coaching on self-regulation of study habits and class attendance behaviors.

This study builds on prior calls for more investigations on the role of teaching style on student psychological responses, engagement, learning task behaviors and academic performance. The teaching and learning processes were examined on four levels – attention/engagement, encoding, processing/synthesizing and learning task behaviors. In addition, prior work was extended by incorporating behavioral indicators (e.g. task avoidance) of learning motivation as opposed to reliance on self-reported levels of motivation that may have not been consistent with actual behaviors.

Many approaches on the economic aspect of hospital acquired infections (HAIs) have two major limitations: first, the lack of distinction between resources attributable to the management of HAI and resources absorbed by the main clinical problem for which the patient was hospitalized, and second, the lack of an adequate method for calculating the relative costs. These assume that the resources used by HAI can be determined by measuring the extra days of length of days (LOS) of infected patients versus non‐infected patients and attribute to extra‐LOS a value to the mean total cost. The aim of the article is to test a cost‐modelling method that could overcome these limitations by applying the appropriateness evaluation protocol to the medical charts of patients with hospital‐acquired symptomatic urinary tract infection (UTI) or sepsis, and by using cost‐centre accounting.

The paper explains and tests a model for calculating costs of HAIs.

The data analysis showed that it is not always true that infections protract LOS: five out of 25 sepsis cases have extra‐LOS and eight out of 25 UTI cases have extra‐LOS, while the cases of sepsis that arose in surgery ward and intensive care units and urinary tract infections in ICU are without prolongation of LOS. The data analysis also showed that, using the mean total cost, the three cases of sepsis in the general surgery and the six in the ICU did not incur costs, nor did the two cases of UTI in ICU, so that they appear to be infections at zero cost. Moreover, the weight of the cost for the bed, or for the diagnostic services, or for the pharmacological treatment, varied widely depending on the site of the HAI and the ward where the patient was hospitalized.

The method can be applied in any hospital.

Team effectiveness is often predicated by a group’s ability to communicate. However, the effect of stress response on communication success, particularly nonverbal engagement, and how this might affect team performance, is not clear; a “phenomenon” this study sought to explore.

This was an observational study in a cohort of professional rugby players. Participants gave presentations to their peers on two separate occasions during a “live-in” camp designed to have psychologically stressful elements. Presentations were video recorded and audience engagement was measured. Testosterone and cortisol were used as biomarkers of stress response, with a high testosterone–cortisol ratio considered positive. A team training session followed the presentations and participants were rated for training quality.

A small decline in testosterone was observed each day after waking. Conversely, cortisol rose after waking, with the rise being the highest on the first day. A decline in testosterone–cortisol ratio was also seen each day after waking; the decline was greatest on the first day. Presentation duration and audience engagement was greatest for the second presentation; when the testosterone-cortisol ratio decline and the cortisol increase after waking was smaller. Training quality was also better that day. Pooled data revealed a moderate inverse relationship and weak positive relationships for audience engagement with post-meeting cortisol and post-meeting testosterone–cortisol ratio, respectively. Training quality was related to testosterone and testosterone–cortisol ratio, but inversely related to cortisol.

This study suggests that in stressful conditions, as suggested by an awakening hormone response, communication and team performance could become compromised with reduced ability to engage with others.

Mechanical anisotropy associated with material extrusion additive manufacturing (AM) complicates the design of complex structures. This study aims to focus on investigating the effects of design choices offered by material extrusion AM – namely, the choice of infill pattern – on the structural performance and optimality of a given optimized topology. Elucidation of these effects provides evidence that using design tools that incorporate anisotropic behavior is necessary for designing truly optimal structures for manufacturing via AM.

A benchmark topology optimization (TO) problem was solved for compliance minimization of a thick beam in three-point bending and the resulting geometry was printed using fused filament fabrication. The optimized geometry was printed using a variety of infill patterns and the strength, stiffness and failure behavior were analyzed and compared. The bending tests were accompanied by corresponding elastic finite element analyzes (FEA) in ABAQUS. The FEA used the material properties obtained during tensile and shear testing to define orthotropic composite plies and simulate individual printed layers in the physical specimens.

Experiments showed that stiffness varied by as much as 22% and failure load varied by as much as 426% between structures printed with different infill patterns. The observed failure modes were also highly dependent on infill patterns with failure propagating along with printed interfaces for all infill patterns that were consistent between layers. Elastic FEA using orthotropic composite plies was found to accurately predict the stiffness of printed structures, but a simple maximum stress failure criterion was not sufficient to predict strength. Despite this, FE stress contours proved beneficial in identifying the locations of failure in printed structures.

This study quantifies the effects of infill patterns in printed structures using a classic TO geometry. The results presented to establish a benchmark that can be used to guide the development of emerging manufacturing-oriented TO protocols that incorporate directionally-dependent, process-specific material properties.