E-Connection

BackgroundTelehealth, including video consultation (VC), has become prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the experience and concern of women using VC for postpartum care has yet to be adequately studied but is crucial for their adoption. The study aimed to assess the experience and attitude of postpartum mothers (PPM) towards using VC as a novel model of care delivery and the factors that could potentially affect their adoption.MethodData were gathered from PPM participating in VC using Zoom platform for postpartum care using mixed method. In-depth interviews (IDI) of twenty-five PPM were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and audited for accuracy. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes relating to perceived threat, usefulness, ease of use, and attitudes toward using VC in postpartum care. The themes are reported based on the “Health Information Technology Acceptance Model” framework. Preliminary quantitative data on the acceptability of VC were collected using structured surveys.ResultsPPMs valued convenience, accessibility, and personalised care VC offered to address their immediate postpartum concerns. They perceived VC as suitable for seeking medical opinions, improving confidence in parent crafting, and providing better care access. They recognised the lack of physical examination as a major limitation in VC and proposed a hybrid postpartum care model, combining VC and in-person consultation to cater to individual needs and preferences. PPMs alluded to trust in the care providers, flexibility in VC appointment timings and enhanced interface of remote platforms as enablers for VC adoption. Preliminary quantitative data shows that PPMs found VC saved time (100%), energy (98%), and money (90%) and was appropriate (94%), easy to use (96%), acceptable (96%) for postpartum care.ConclusionPPMs favoured combining VC and in-person consultation to mitigate their concerns and personalise their care needs.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, various restrictions forced people around the world to socially isolate. People were asked to stay at home and were largely unable to do many of the activities that they derived meaning from. Since meaning is often related to mental health, these restrictions were likely to decrease mental health. The current study aimed to examine these effects and additionally benefit individuals’ mental health by making their meaning salient. Specifically, the goal of the research was to design an intervention that could counter the potential negative effects of social distancing. We recruited a total of 96 U.S.A. residents (Mage = 34.45, 92.7% Female) and assigned them to either the control group or to a meaning salience intervention. That is, participants either focused on the meaning of their daily activities (n = 45) or did not participate in any study-related activities during the week (n = 51). They completed various measures of mental health before and after this experimental period. Results suggested that the control group reported significantly greater anxiety, depression, and stress at the end of the week. In contrast, the experimental group reported less anxiety and trended toward less depression and stress at the end of that same week. In all, results suggest that simply focusing on one’s daily activities and the meaning found in them protected people from the otherwise detrimental effects of the restrictions. This provides a promising and simple intervention that may assist both individuals and practitioners aiming to improve mental health, especially in challenging times.

Stansbury, Nicholas MD; MacKinnon, Rene MD; Weingarten, Sarah J. MD; Schorge, John O. MDAuthor Information

Grimes, Sarah Bundrick MD; Diouf, Arame Thiam MD; Saldaña-Solórzano, César Francisco MD; Chescheir, Nancy C. MD Author Information

Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall view, reflections from the K-12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62,7% of the whole world population. In addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive dependency on online solutions.

Classification is the most important and complicated issue in disability sports. Currently, table tennis (TT) players with physical impairments (PI) and intellectual impairments (II) have been included at the Paralympic Games. There are ten classes for TT players with PI (five classes for wheelchair and five classes for standing players) and one class for players with II. TT-specific classification systems for PI players are physical and functional approaches and for II players are functional and cognitive approaches. 3S (speed, spin, and spot) principles are used to classify players with PI, and 3S and 3C (control, consistency, and change) principles are used to classify players with II. Para-TT classification systems are based on evidence and physical and functional evaluations. Medical and technical competent classifiers need to work together to make fair classifications for players. Recently, countries focused on winning medals at the major Championships and started to include elite able-bodied players with very mild impairments in Para-TT. The objective minimal impairment criteria (MIC) are urgently required by ITTF-PTT to maintain fairness of competition and protect actual disabled players. Therefore, evidence-based research is helpful to revise the TT classification system scientifically. In the presentation, the related evidence and information will be provided to identify and tackle the main issues and the future directions for Para-TT classification and research will be offered to include more scientists and classifiers.

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ABSTRACT As chip scale packages migrate to finer pitch, high density interconnect substrate technology co-evolves to provide the higher interconnect needs. But the load board, with its large area, thick substrate and many layers cannot keep up. While integrating a few high density interconnect layers on top of a conventional load board to do the geometry transformation is being done, it is very expensive in direct cost and in yielded cost. An alternative solution is to adopt the approach for testing a single die or whole wafer: add a space transformer from the fine pitch pads of the device to the coarse pitch pads of the circuit board. After all, needle probe cards have been doing this for many years. Other technologies have evolved for wafer probing that use a ceramic substrate as the space transformer. In many probe cards, for example, MEMs compliant tips are fabricated on the top of the ceramic substrate on pitches as fine as 2 mils [4]. The pads on the bottom of the ceramic substrate interface to the load board with another compliant one to one interposer but on pitches of 50 to 100 mils [4]. This same approach can be implemented for final test of packaged devices. A daughter board acts as the space transformer from the finer pads pitch of the CSP to the coarser pad pitch of the load board. A fine pitch socket technology is used on the top surface and a board to board interposer is used between the daughter card and the conventional load board. Highlighted in this article is such a board-to-board interposer from HCD Inc. High Connection Density's interconnect technology enables high speed, high current & low profile connectivity reducing the cost of test for board to board, package to board and flex to board connections and in today's world of increasing pin count and high performance applications, it is the technology of choice with excellent electrical performance and reliable contact.

Platforms with multiple cores are now prevalent everywhere from desktops and graphics processors to laptops and embedded systems. By adding more parallel computational resources while managing power consumption, multicore platforms offer better programmability, performance, and power efficiency. Signal processing systems of tomorrow will be and must be implemented on platforms with multiple cores. Writing efficient parallel applications that utilize the computing capability of many processing cores require some effort. Signal processing algorithm designers must understand the nuances of a multicore computing engine; only then can the tremendous computing power that such platforms provide be harnessed efficiently. To give a thorough perspective of the area, we have organized two special issues on this topic.