Desperate Times Research Articles

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: The Impact of Job Insecurity on Workplace Cheating Behavior

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: The Impact of Job Insecurity on Workplace Cheating Behavior

Holding on to hope in desperate times

Editorial

Article: Rendering Platforms Liable for VAT and Import Duties: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures, but What about Proper Checks and Balances?/I

Following the obligations put on platforms under the VAT e-commerce rules that entered into application on 1 July 2021 the European Commission under the Customs reform has proposed to put the obligation to pay import duties on platforms as deemed importer. In this contribution the author analyses the proposed obligations, including those originally included in the VAT in the digital age (VIDA) proposal. She answers the question to what extent platforms are able to deal with these obligations and whether they create undesired issues as regards competition.

“Desperate times, desperate measures”: an appraisal on Vietnamese law’s limitation of rights in the COVID-19 crisis

“Desperate times, desperate measures”: an appraisal on Vietnamese law’s limitation of rights in the COVID-19 crisis

How Brick-znd-mortar Bookstores Can Survive in Desperate Times in the Internet Era — A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the Operation Status of 40 Physical Bookstores in 8 Provinces

With the rapid development of the Internet era, physical bookstores have suffered setbacks in their development and are exploring survival measures. This study investigates the profitability path of physical bookstores in the Internet era, provides guidance for bookstores to provide products and services in the new environment, and provides a theoretical basis for the government to formulate policies to help physical bookstores and other real economy to develop in a high quality. The study uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the impact of six conditions, such as diversification and economy of scale, technology and automation application, on the profit and loss of physical bookstores. The study identifies the necessary condition as well as the configuration influence paths for the profitability of physical bookstores in the context of the Internet, analyses how physical bookstores can target their development according to different paths, and puts forward practical suggestions.

Mapping flooded areas utilizing Google Earth Engine and open SAR data: a comprehensive approach for disaster response

One of the most destructive and frequent natural disasters in the world, flash floods cause millions of people to be displaced annually in addition to seriously harming livelihoods and infrastructure. It affects many ecological components and applications related to water management, natural resources, agriculture, human health, and economics. Himachal Pradesh saw an unprecedented amount of rainfall in June and July 2023, which resulted in exceptionally strong monsoon conditions from July 7 to July 10. Operating out of the Meteorological Centre in Shimla, the India Meteorological Department reported widespread, unusually heavy rainfall throughout the state during this time. Cloud cover often obstructs optical satellite data during the monsoon season, which has led to the investigation of alternate techniques for mapping floods. the whole satellite image processing process was carried out using Google Earth Engine (GEE). The Kangra District's 5739 km2 area was chosen as the study's area of interest. In these circumstances, traditional methods of mapping and monitoring flood-prone areas frequently fall short because of poor visibility and overcast skies during bad weather. Technology such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) becomes a ray of hope during these desperate times. When SAR data is combined with Google Earth Engine, it becomes even more user-friendly. Using SAR data and the powerful cloud processing platform Google Earth Engine (GEE), this study suggests a flood mapping technique. When it comes to mapping flood areas, the strength of SAR data and GEE surpasses boundaries and challenges. It is evidence of both technological advancement and human inventiveness. Such tools are more critical than ever as the world deals with the increasing effects of climate change and the rising frequency of extreme weather events.

“I am your companion on earth, fight for me!”: Mutuality in Ancient Egyptian Letters to the Dead in the End of 3<sup>rd</sup> – the Beginning of 2<sup>nd</sup> Millennium BC

Although the ideological foundation of mutual aid within ancient Egyptian small social groups (family, neighbors, etc.) is mostly clear, very few written sources reveal such customs and practices of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. This gap is to some extent filled by Letters to the Dead – written requests for help addressed to deceased relatives, often mentioning mutual obligations of the living “sender” and the deceased “recipient”. Most “senders” of such letters require the “addressees” to follow the principle of reciprocity, a kind of do ut des: since the living contribute to the well-being of the dead by performing cult actions, the latter must now help the living. The rule of mutual assistance was so strict and pervasive that it transcended the boundary of life and death. The Letters to the Dead imply that deceased relatives remained firmly embedded in social networks of mutual aid. However, the most valued was not a strictly fixed “return” of the once received assistance, but the confidence that the person who received support will not fail to come to the aid of his “benefactor” if trouble happens to the latter. At the same time, the Letters to the Dead show that Egyptians considered it not too petty to refer to their former merits in desperate times: for example, to mention an offering of a bull leg and seven quails in a letter to the deceased parents.

Desperate Times, Desperate (Provisional) Measures: Rafah and South Africa’s Latest Action at the ICJ

Desperate Times, Desperate (Provisional) Measures: Rafah and South Africa’s Latest Action at the ICJ

Ending Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Faculty Requirement for Pediatric Residency Programs—Desperate Times Do Not Justify Desperate Actions

This Viewpoint discusses the issues at stake and potential adverse consequences of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medial Education’s proposal to remove the requirement for pediatric training programs to have board-certified developmental-behavioral pediatrician faculty members.

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: A Comparative Analysis of Services between Traditional and Distance Libraries in COVID-19 Era

The Library and Information Center (LIC) of Patras’ University and the Hellenic Open University Distance Library and Information Center constitute two academic libraries that serve two different academic institutions types. By the time of the first phase of the outbreak (spring 2019) they attempted to respond multidimensionally to the emerging needs, aspiring tο a seamless provision of services. Currents’ research primary objective is to record and compare their actions identifying any differences in their crisis management behavior. The study offers an overview of services offered by libraries that have limited resources and presents their attempt to remain effective under any circumstances.

Desperate times call for disparate measures: Towards harmonization of cavitation data across environments and systems

As ultrasonic techniques rapidly evolve to provide a host of cavitation-mediated therapies, it is fair to ask: how can we reconcile thedata obtained across patients and hardware systems? This talk will describe progress made towards achieving system- and patient-independentcavitation localization and dosimetry. Methods and results will be presented for the characterization, quantification, and correction of biasing factors in the propagation path and receiver system. The talk will conclude with a discussion of limitations and ongoing efforts to demonstrate the full suite of proposed techniques.

Euthanasia

Do desperate times justify desperate measures, or are some measures always off the table? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Hank is the inheritor of House of Hope, a farm facility where elderly or unwanted pets are shipped to be euthanized. This has become increasingly common because of severe global shortages that have pushed the world into near chaos. Each day, wooden crates arrive with dogs, cats, rabbits, and a menagerie of pets to be euthanized. To simplify the process, the government no longer allows families to drop off pets personally or to be with them as they are euthanized. Furthermore, due to resource scarcity it is against the law for House of Hope to take in, or adopt out, the pets that come in. Hank hates the situation, but justifies his role in it by saying, at least, he treats the animals with dignity in their final moments. Things take a turn for the strange when we learn that the unwanted elderly are also shipped in boxes to House of Hope to be euthanized as well.

P044 “Get some sleep before baby”: Discourses of sleep and pregnancy in the media

Abstract Background Physiological and psychosocial changes during pregnancy are often associated with altered sleep. Beliefs and expectations about sleep at this life-stage inform social discourses and help-seeking, in turn influencing women’s health and wellbeing. An understanding of discourses concerning sleep and pregnancy is required. Analysis of sleep-related messaging within mainstream media contributes to this understanding. Method Texts from New Zealand’s primary free online news source “Stuff” were identified using key words “sleep AND pregnancy” or “sleep AND pregnant” between December 2018 and December 2021. Forty-three relevant articles were collated. A critical discourse analysis was used to describe and interpret the texts in relation to discursive practices and wider social explanations. Findings Discursive constructions included: ‘banking’ sleep before baby; sleep’s role in ‘being the perfect mother’ (including ways to reduce risk of infant death through sleep practices); the inevitability that sleep will fail amongst the busy lifestyle of parenthood. Pregnant women were presented as responsible for good sleep yet not provided the knowledge of how to achieve it. Furthermore, pregnant women’s sleep situations were used to illustrate ‘desperate times’ associated with poor living or working situations. Conclusions Social discourses of sleep and pregnancy within mainstream media were sensationalised including tensions between discouraging ‘harmful’ sleep practices whilst also asserting that poor sleep is inevitable due to physiological changes and the negotiation of sleep with others, which would only worsen after birth. Findings will inform future research in the field of sleep as a social concept and practice among people during pregnancy.

The Resurrection of the Comfort Letter: Back to the Future?

Pandemic-induced economic shocks saw the European Commission and national competition authorities adopt so-called comfort letters to provide guidance, assurance, and legal certainty to undertakings in order to help mitigate the detrimental effects of the crisis. Whereas it is true that desperate times may call for desperate measures, the fact that the Commission continues to issue comfort letters for initiatives with little relevance to the ongoing emergency raises questions. This article analyzes the re-emergence of comfort letters from the viewpoints of legal basis and certainty. It finds that the foundations upon which the letters are constructed are shaky, which translates into the fostering of uncertainty. In that regard, explored are alternatives for Union enforcers to deploy a robust bespoke guidance regime for the future.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: Exploring the Dark Side of Job Embeddedness During COVID-19 Pandemic

Drawing upon the conservation of resource (COR) theory, the purpose of the article is to explore how the two dimensions of job insecurity, that is, quantitative, and qualitative insecurity relate to unethical pro-organisational behaviour (UPB). The study further aims to investigate if job embeddedness moderates the relationship between two forms of insecurity and UPB. The hypotheses were tested with three wave survey data collected from 354 employees during the period of strict lockdown in India when all the employees were working from home. The main and interaction effects were analysed with regression analysis on PROCESS v 3.0 macro. Quantitative job insecurity was seen to influence UPB positively, whereas no significant relation was found between qualitative insecurity and UPB. The two dimensions of job insecurity and UPB were moderated by job embeddedness such that the association was greater for employees who were more embedded. The results point towards the ‘dark side’ of embeddedness which may have deleterious effects for the organisation in the form of UPB.

PERENNIAL NARRATIVES: RELEVANCE OF CLASSICAL EUROPEAN FAIRY TALES IN MODERN SOCIETY

literature, which witnessed a giant leap in the collection of its oral narratives or tales being penned down to prevent them from disappearing in antiquity. The tales, though existent since centuries in some form or the other, have surprisingly failed to lose their importance even after having continuously existed throughout the ages. They are relevant even in today’s age of technological advancements because they have their roots in peoples’ quests for social, spiritual, moral and cultural progress, akin to aims of technology. They possess the inherent ability to explain the truths of life in a plain and lucid manner, and even provide the inspiration for hope even in the most desperate times. The creativity in the literary rendition of the different humanoids of varied psyche portrayed in the fairy tales is what enables them to maintain their perennial narrative flow without getting lost or ruptured through the sea of time, and to remain relevant even in the modern socio-cultural scenarios. This paper intends to study the spatial and temporal transcendence of fairy tales and discuss some of the reasons for the relevance of classical fairy tales even in modern culture and society.

Do Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures? The Effect of Crises on Performance Appraisals

ABSTRACT Performance appraisals can have a large impact on organizations and individuals during crises, but they may also be biased by shortcomings in raters’ cognitive processes. Despite the importance of performance appraisals during such periods, only scant research has examined how crises affect cognitive processes in performance ratings. We address this by extending the reflective-impulsive model to develop and test a theoretical model that shows how people assess performance during a crisis. Because crises deplete people’s cognitive resources, we hypothesize that raters will form less accurate impressions of ratees’ task abilities during crises and reduce the weight they assign to ratees’ task abilities in performance ratings. We also hypothesize that raters will positively weight ratees’ team satisfaction more heavily in performance ratings during a crisis, because raters tend to use interpersonal affect as a heuristic during a crisis and feel more positive interpersonal affect toward members who are higher on team satisfaction. Data on members of in-person and virtual teams from before and during the COVID-19 crisis largely support our hypotheses. Our findings respond to calls in the performance appraisal literature to investigate environmental factors; we do so by examining the effect of a critically important environmental factor: a crisis.

A systematic review on machine learning models for online learning and examination systems.

Examinations or assessments play a vital role in every student’s life; they determine their future and career paths. The COVID pandemic has left adverse impacts in all areas, including the academic field. The regularized classroom learning and face-to-face real-time examinations were not feasible to avoid widespread infection and ensure safety. During these desperate times, technological advancements stepped in to aid students in continuing their education without any academic breaks. Machine learning is a key to this digital transformation of schools or colleges from real-time to online mode. Online learning and examination during lockdown were made possible by Machine learning methods. In this article, a systematic review of the role of Machine learning in Lockdown Exam Management Systems was conducted by evaluating 135 studies over the last five years. The significance of Machine learning in the entire exam cycle from pre-exam preparation, conduction of examination, and evaluation were studied and discussed. The unsupervised or supervised Machine learning algorithms were identified and categorized in each process. The primary aspects of examinations, such as authentication, scheduling, proctoring, and cheat or fraud detection, are investigated in detail with Machine learning perspectives. The main attributes, such as prediction of at-risk students, adaptive learning, and monitoring of students, are integrated for more understanding of the role of machine learning in exam preparation, followed by its management of the post-examination process. Finally, this review concludes with issues and challenges that machine learning imposes on the examination system, and these issues are discussed with solutions.

Queering whole person care in a pandemic

How can health care providers (HCPs) working with 2SLGBTQ+ patients enact a whole person care approach during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its aftermath, and in such desperate times, is it even reasonable to expect them to? In this presentation, a nurse/nursing educator and a health care researcher/frequent patient discuss their observations and experiences of whole person care during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The conversation highlights that in the immediate chaos early on, and in the face of exhaustion, trauma, and burnout as the pandemic progressed, attending to the whole personhood of patients was/is paramount for HCPs and for the people they treat. The presenters reflect on the amplified significance of a whole person approach for 2SLGBTQ+ people who may have had negative health care experiences in the past, and may fear that they will not receive equitable care in the chaotic context of a pandemic. A whole person care approach is perhaps most necessary when it is also most difficult. In a period of such profound distress, a deeper sense of connectedness to patients may help HCPs manage feelings of helplessness they are likely to encounter, and surely helps the people they treat. The goal of this presentation is to begin a discussion about the ways that whole person approaches benefit 2SLGBTQ+ patients as well as their HCPs, with the hope that it will spark ideas for attendees to develop in their own practices.

\u201cWe are also here\u201d\u2014Spiritual Care Practitioners\u2019 Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study from Poland

Although healthcare professionals have become the symbol of risk and sacrifice during the COVID-19 pandemic, spiritual care practitioners (SCP) have also put themselves at great risk while offering their service in hospitals, hospices and other healthcare facilities. This study was designed to explore the lived experiences of SCP during the current health crisis in Poland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-four SCP. Nine major themes emerged from the interviews: personal reactions to the pandemic, SCP’s perception of the pandemic, the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of spiritual care, spiritual needs during the pandemic, work-related emotions, the impact of the COVID-19 on religion, the role of spiritual care during the outbreak, the healthcare professionals’ perceptions of SCP and barriers to the provision of spiritual care during the pandemic. The SCP indicated that although the COVID-19 crisis has affected the availability of pastoral, religious and spiritual care, it has amplified the importance of such care and has positively influenced the visibility of SCP in modern healthcare practice. Nonetheless, in such desperate times, SCP are still neglected and should be further recognised and integrated into the healthcare system.