Usage of Facebook by Student Leaders in Creating Awareness Regarding Covid-19 in Guwahati

Pandemic like COVID-19 has triggered disruptions in personal and collective lives globally. It is not only a pandemic, but also an Infodemic of misinformation about the virus which raises demand for reliable and trustworthy information. With the advent of social media creation and consumption of news have been changing among the young generation. Student leaders have taken on additional work and assumed new responsibilities by volunteering in their communities and creating awareness among the public about the accuracy of information and measures to be taken against the deadly virus. This study explores the use of Facebook handles by the student leaders of two universities in Guwahati in creating awareness about the health-related messages regarding Covid-19 and its vaccination. The researcher will use critical discourse analysis to evaluate the use of social networking sites by the students’ leaders. To understand the usage by the leaders, Facebook pages of the leaders would be followed and studied backed with unstructured interviews with the leaders to understand the purpose of and pattern of using the social media handles.

A Multi-attention Collaborative Deep Learning Approach for Blood Pressure Prediction

We develop a deep learning model based on Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) to predict blood pressure based on a unique data set collected from physical examination centers capturing comprehensive multi-year physical examination and lab results. In the Multi-attention Collaborative Deep Learning model (MAC-LSTM) we developed for this type of data, we incorporate three types of attention to generate more explainable and accurate results. In addition, we leverage information from similar users to enhance the predictive power of the model due to the challenges with short examination history. Our model significantly reduces predictive errors compared to several state-of-the-art baseline models. Experimental results not only demonstrate our model’s superiority but also provide us with new insights about factors influencing blood pressure. Our data is collected in a natural setting instead of a setting designed specifically to study blood pressure, and the physical examination items used to predict blood pressure are common items included in regular physical examinations for all the users. Therefore, our blood pressure prediction results can be easily used in an alert system for patients and doctors to plan prevention or intervention. The same approach can be used to predict other health-related indexes such as BMI.

The effects of visual formats on Facebook health-related posts: evidence from eye movement analysis

PurposeThis study aimed to provide user-centered evidence for health professionals to make optimal use of images for the effective dissemination of health information on Facebook (FB).Design/methodology/approachUsing an eye-tracking experiment and a survey method, this study examined 42 participants' reading patterns as well as recall and recognition outcomes with 36 FB health information posts having various FB post features.FindingsThe findings demonstrated that FB posts with text-embedded images received more attention and resulted in the highest recall and recognition. Meanwhile, compared to text-embedded images, visual only images yielded less effective recall of information, but they caught the viewers' attention; graphics tended to attract more attention than photos. For effective communication, the text features in FB posts should align with the formats of the images.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study provide practical implications for health information disseminators by suggesting that text-embedded images should be used for effective health communication.Originality/valueThis study provided evidence of users' different viewing patterns for FB health information posts and the relationship between FB post types and recall and recognition outcomes.

Descriptive Study of Safety and Health Training Content in Iranian Universities and Higher Education Institutes

The root cause of many workplace incidents is the lack of knowledge on occupational safety and health principles. Despite the safety and health authorities in organizations, safety and health is the general responsibility of all other experts working in an organization. Experts and managers are expected to think, decide and work safely in workplaces. However, we don’t have enough information about the level of safety and health-related education when they were in universities. In addition, there is not too much reliable published reports on the academic teaching of safety and health courses and syllabus in higher education in Iran. Therefore, the current study was aimed to provide a general view of the status of occupational safety and health teaching subjects in different academic disciplines (excluding specialized fields in occupational safety and health) in the Iranian higher educational system. Firstly, the latest edition of the entire program (curricula) of all academic disciplines held in Iranian universities was downloaded. Secondly, the required information, including discipline title, program’s degree, number of required (core) and elective (non-core) courses, and program’s date of approval, were recorded in an Excel sheet. Every course’s title and syllabus were then studied to find out any safety and health-related topics. Finally, data were analyzed and reported. 251 academic disciplines in the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) and 771 disciplines in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT) were investigated. Most of the curriculums have been revised by both ministries since 2011. Results showed that 20 percent of the MOHME‎ ‎disciplines and 10.4 percent of MSRT‎ disciplines were included in the occupational safety and health courses. The number of courses with health and safety content (syllabus outline) in the MOHME ‎‎and the MSRT‎ were 168 and 173. Most health and safety courses presented in the MOHME academic majors were in the basic medical sciences category of disciplines. A majority of MSRT covered academic safety and health courses and topics were presented in the engineering category of disciplines. Presenting lessons with health and safety content at the MOHME ‎was more practical than that of the MSRT. The quality and quantity of teaching on safety and health topic were not at satisfactory levels. Revising the course syllabus of the academic disciplines and adding theoretical and practical courses related to each field's specific health and safety curriculum can make a significant contribution in improving the general knowledge of the safety and health of the university graduates. In turn, it improves future workplace safety and health conditions, managers’ insights and decision-makers on the importance of safety and health at work. It protects the people's life and the property of the organization.