"Long COVID" and Its Impact on The Environment: Emerging Concerns and Perspectives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented global health and economic crises. The emergence of long COVID-19 has raised concerns about the interplay between SARS-CoV-2 infections, climate change, and the environment. In this context, a concise analysis of the potential long-term effects of the COVID-19 epidemic along with the awareness aboutenvironmental issues are realized. While COVID-19 effects in the short-term have reduced environmental air pollutants and pressures, CO2 emissions are projected to increase as the economy recovers and growth rates return to pre-COVID-19 levels. This review discusses the systematic effects of both the short-term and long-term effects of the pandemic on the clean energy revolution and environmental issues. This article also discusses opportunities to achieve long-term environmental benefits and emphasizes the importance of future policies in promoting global environmental sustainability. Future directions for growth and recovery are presented to cope with long COVID-19 epidemic along with the critical findings focussing on various aspects: waste management, air quality improvement.

Hotspots and Trends of Layered Double Hydroxide-based Adsorbents for Polluted Water Treatment: Insights from Bibliometric Analysis.

The use of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) as adsorbent for water treatment has been gaining relevance in recent years. In this context, this work aimed to map, through a bibliometric study, the extent of research that deals with the theme. The scientific database used was the Web of Science, and the chronology of the search consideredthe period from 1997 to 2022. The bibliometix R-package and VOSviewer software were used in this study. The searches retrieved a total of 663 documents, from 69 countries, distributed among all continents, which China (328), India (51) and Japan (40) were the most productive countries. Important journals in the environmental area and with high impact factor, such as Chemical Engineering Journal (44), Applied Clay Science (38), Journal of Hazardous Materials (35) and Chemosphere (27) most published in the area. The network of keywords used by the authors indicates that the publications retrieved deal mainly with aspects related to the efficiency of (LDHs) in the removal of different pollutants, the composition, the synthesis route and the association with other materials and/or techniques. The result of this study constitutes an important tool for directing future research on the subject.

Technology use for health education to caregivers: an integrative review of nursing literature.

Providing caregivers with health education through educational technologies enhances safe care; and stimulates the decision process and communication among professionals, caregivers and patients. This article is an integrative review to identify what educational technologies have been used for health education to caregivers. The databases Web of Science, Bireme and Scopus were consulted. The inclusion criteria are as follows: full papers, published between 2001 and 2011, in English, Portuguese or Spanish. The descriptors used are the following: educational technology, health education and caregivers. Thirty-four papers were found, 27 of which were excluded because they did not comply with the inclusion criteria, resulting in a final sample of 7 papers. The results evidenced the use of light and hard technologies in health education for caregivers, aimed at the therapeutic discussion of care as well as telehealth service delivery. Research is needed which uses and assesses the use of hard educational technologies in health education for caregivers.

COVID-19 pandemic in Uttarakhand, India: Environmental recovery or degradation?

The human coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 is now a global pandemic. Personal hygiene such as hand-washing, the use of personal protective equipment, and social distancing via local and national lockdowns are used to reduce the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns may have significant impacts on environmental quality and ergonomics. However, limited studies exists on the impacts of COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns on environmental quality and ergonomics in low-income settings. Therefore, the present study investigated the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on socioeconomics, ergonomics and environment (water quality, air quality and noise) in Uttarakhand, India. Approximately 55% of respondents experienced headaches, and the other common health-related issue was back pain, with 45% of respondents having problems with their backs. Water and air quality significantly improved during the lockdown relative to the pre-lockdown period, but was observed to return to their previous characteristics afterwards. Lockdowns significant increased the concentration of indoor air pollutants while noise pollution levels significantly declined. In summary, lockdowns have adverse impacts on ergonomics, resulting in work-related human health risks. The impacts of lockdowns on environmental quality are mixed: temporary improvements on water and air quality, and noise reduction were observed, but indoor air quality deteriorated. Therefore, during lockdowns there is a need to minimize the adverse environmental and ergonomic impacts of lockdowns while simultaneously enhancing the beneficial impacts.

Effluent treatment using activated carbon adsorbents: a bibliometric analysis of recent literature.

Agricultural practices and industrial and human discharges play an important role in the generation of highly contaminated effluents, which becomes a threat to the environment. The persistence of many of these compounds to conventional treatments in recent years has meant that numerous efforts have been devoted to the proposal of new selective materials that allow the removal of these contaminants by adsorption. In addition, bibliometric studies have grown as powerful tools to indicate trends in innovation. In this way, the present study consisted of evaluating the potential interest to use activated carbon as adsorbent through a prospection study in scientific and technological databases. The number of records obtained for the use of activated carbon in effluent remediation processes is equivalent to 4898, which corresponds to approximately 2.5% of the total documents (articles/patents) found for the use of carbon with no defined purpose. A total of 2275 works that used the adsorptive property of activated carbon were recovered. According to the data recovered, Brazil is the leader in scientific publications among Latin American countries and the 12th worldwide, according to the SciELO and Scopus databases, respectively. In general, a significant number of patents have been recovered for this theme, in the Derwent database, 1167 documents were recovered. The results obtained in this work evidenced the growing interest in developing technologies in this area.

Measures of knowledge about standard precautions: a literature review in nursing.

BACKGROUND: Standard precautions (SP) play an important role in hospital infection control, as well as in issues related to biosafety and security of patients, professionals and students active in direct or indirect health care delivery. OBJECTIVE: This research aimed to identify in the literature which instruments nurse researchers have used to evaluate knowledge, attitudes and compliance with SP for infection control. METHODS: A literature review was undertaken in the databases Web of Science, Bireme (Medline and Lilacs) and Scopus. RESULTS: 91.66% of the studies were ranked as evidence level IV; 66.66% of the instruments were structured questionnaires, 58.33% of which had been validated and half of these instruments presented reliability and validity scores for the instrument used. Publications were concentrated in 2009 (41.66%), mostly in English (75%), in nursing journals with impact factor above 1.60 (83.33%). CONCLUSIONS: The instruments nurse researchers most employed were structured questionnaires associated with Likert-type rating scales.