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The emergence of a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic has had a tremendous impact on the world, and the characteristics of its evolution need to be better understood.

To explore the changes of cases and control them effectively, this paper analyzes and models the fluctuation and dynamic characteristics of the daily growth rate based on the data of newly confirmed cases around the world. Based on the data, the authors identify the inflection points and analyze the causes of the new daily confirmed cases and deaths worldwide.

The study found that the growth sequence of the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases per day has a significant cluster of fluctuations. The impact of previous fluctuations in the future is gradually attenuated and shows a relatively gentle long-term downward trend. There are four inflection points in the global time series of new confirmed cases and the number of deaths per day. And these inflection points show the state of an accelerated rise, a slowdown in the rate of decline, a slowdown in the rate of growth and an accelerated decline in turn.

This paper has a certain guiding and innovative significance for the dynamic research of COVID-19 cases in the world.

This study aims to analyze government hotline text data and generating forecasts could enable the effective detection of public demands and help government departments explore, mitigate and resolve social problems.

In this study, social problems were determined and analyzed by using the time attributes of government hotline data. Social public events with periodicity were quantitatively analyzed via the Prophet model. The Prophet model is decided after running a comparison study with other widely applied time series models. The validation of modeling and forecast was conducted for social events such as travel and educational services, human resources and public health.

The results show that the Prophet algorithm could generate relatively the best performance. Besides, the four types of social events showed obvious trends with periodicities and holidays and have strong interpretable results.

The research could help government departments pay attention to time dependency and periodicity features of the hotline data and be aware of early warnings of social events following periodicity and holidays, enabling them to rationally allocate resources to handle upcoming social events and problems and better promoting the role of the big data structure of government hotline data sets in urban governance innovations.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns were implemented to achieve two goals: (1) to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases and (2) to reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths. In this paper, the authors aim to look at empirical evidence on how effectively lockdowns achieved these goals among small island developing states (SIDS) and for one specific SIDS economy, Guam.

The authors reviewed existing studies to form two hypotheses: that lockdowns reduced cases, and that lockdowns reduced deaths. Defining a lockdown as a positive value for Oxford COVID-19 government response tracker, OxCGRT's stringency index, the authors tested the above hypotheses on 185 countries, 27 SIDS economies and Guam using correlation and regression analyses, and using different measures of the strictness, duration and timing of the lockdown.

The authors found no evidence to support the hypothesis that lockdowns reduced the number of cases based on data for all 185 countries and 27 SIDS economies. While the authors found evidence to support the hypothesis in the case of Guam, the result required an unrealistically and implausibly long time lag of 365 days. As to the second hypothesis that lockdowns reduced the number of deaths, the authors found no evidence to support it for 185 countries, 27 SIDS economies as well as Guam.

From the review of the existing literature, the authors are the first to conduct this type of study among SIDS economies as a group and on Guam.

Studies of entrepreneurial action often distinguish between different phases such as opportunity identification, evaluation, and exploitation. Yet, the richness of past contributions masks the absence of an integral framework to organize, in a theoretically consistent ensemble, the different kinds of cognitive processes that underpin entrepreneurial action. In this chapter, we draw from research on human action and cognition to offer an integrative model of the cognitive processes that foster entrepreneurial action. By presenting a more specific articulation of when, how, and why different cognitive processes operate, we provide theorists and empiricists with a more complete picture of how entrepreneurs’ thinking evolves from the emergence of an opportunity idea to the initiation of concrete entrepreneurial acts. In addition, our framework draws attention to cognitive inflection points that entrepreneurs must navigate in their journey toward entrepreneurship. By explicitly locating these inflection points and specifying the changes in mental processing that occurs at each point, we highlight that for entrepreneurial action to ensue, entrepreneurs must shift from one type of cognitive processing to another. Along this line, our model draws attention to the entire set of cognitive “skills” entrepreneurs must master for successful completion of each phase and successful transitions between phases.

The impact of COVID-19 has led to a surge in the public’s reliance on the Internet for pandemic information, and the policy of home isolation has exacerbated this. This study aimed to investigate public information needs and ways of accessing and disseminating information during COVID-19 in mainland China.

This study used a qualitative research approach to conduct semi-structured interviews with 15 participants from 9 cities in mainland China about information needs and access behaviors during the COVID-19 outbreak. All interview recordings were converted into text and proofread, then coded and summarised in correspondence with the research questions using the grounded theory.

This study summarized the dynamics of public information needs during the 2.5-year pandemic and identified the difficulties in accessing certain information.

Although information needs of public health emergencies have been a hot topic during COVID-19, scant studies focus on information needs in specific countries in Asia, especially in mainland China, the first country with a major outbreak and stringent lockdown mandates. Therefore, the current study is well enriched by focusing on information demand behavior in the context of COVID-19. Possible measures for improvement were also given to existing and potential problems, taking into account the participants’ views.

This paper aims to identify the main inflexion points recorded into development of international accounting standards, case of IAS 38.

The paper takes the form of a conceptual discussion and graphical analysis. The main research method consisted of identifying reference moments, known as inflection points, in the evolution of accounting rules issued by the International Accounting Standards Board and formulating a general framework of testing inflection points’ theory in the development of IAS 38.

The paper highlights the reference moments recorded in the evolution of IAS 38 through the creation of inflexion points’ theory in the field of accounting regulations.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this is an original study whose results have implications into accounting regulations field, as in this area, such a theory has not been applied.

An interview with Rita McGrath a pioneer of “discovery-driven planning,” now widely recognized as one of the most effective approaches for strategy development in the face of uncertainty.

Her research and experience interacting with executive teams positions her to offer corporate leaders practical perspectives and advice on how to approach strategically the great opportunities and dangers that lie ahead in this VUCA environment.

Major inflection points that create real change unfold gradually, then suddenly. Because they do take a while to unfold, an astute strategist who was paying attention to the signs could take advantage of the inflection. The future doesn’t happen all at once. It begins to unfold unevenly, and if you can “interview” where it is starting to take place now, you can begin to develop an early point of view about it.

There’s no substitute for watching how customers interact with your product or service and listening to their conversations about their experience.

McGrath’s thesis is when an inflection point does indeed reach a tipping point, it can feel as though it came out of nowhere. Her advice: if you are making a series of small options-style investments that are at the “edges” of your mainstream activities, you are likely to pick up on weak signals that allow you to, in an optimistic scenario, surf along an inflection point so that when the opportunity presents itself, you can move with speed to capture an advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to expand our understanding of processes governing commercial property cycles, and to provide tools, which enable identification of property cycles’ turning points’ location.

This paper is divided into three parts. The first looks at the demand-supply dynamics and the location of two characteristic cyclic points, the market bottom and the cycle commencement. In the second part a property relevant formula for entropy is derived, and its relation to the cycle overheated stage and the market peak is studied. In the third part, we discuss still another characteristic point of the cycle, which relates to the stage when developers elect to undertake new projects. This analysis is done by employing the chaos theory, and its relation to the cyclic evolution.

It is found that some markets cycle, while others fluctuate only. A clear method for distinguishing among these is provided. The bottom of a cycle may overlap or be time separated from the start of a subsequent cycle. Market peaks are characterised by a sharp decrease in financial component to entropy for top quality building grades. A cycling market is characterised by crossing of a distinct vacancy rate during the cycle progression.

The tools developed in the paper allow for clear characterisation of the market types and their cyclic behaviour. This in turn allows for timely characterisation of the market state and for short time-frame forecasting. The depth of a cycle may be calculated and the subsequent correction level estimated.

The paper utilises cross-field approach by taking methods from both physics and mathematics and applying them to property markets. It breaks new ground both in property research and in applied mathematics by showing how the current frontier in pure mathematics may be applied to property.