• Energy Research
• 3. Good health close
• COVID-19 close

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a type of force majeure that significantly and unexpectedly affected all human lifestyles. This study includes an integrative review of articles published across Scopus and Web of Science journals and compiled using the systematic review methodology based on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Statement and VOSreview (visualization of similarities) software by defining keywords that include “construction industry” and “force majeure” and “environmental risks” as a starting point. Moreover, the research years and the countries covered by this research were determined in a second stage. Finally, the abstracts of selected studies were reviewed in order to extract factors similar to the pandemic conditions of COVID-19 along with the brief results of the research. Out of 6384 publications identified and 56 publications reporting, 20 studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria with full text. Based on our findings, there has been a continuous growth of publications on construction risk and environmental research since 2010. Malaysia had the greatest contribution to the research topic of the countries covered by the study, followed by Egypt. The Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management journal published the greatest number of publications related to the research topic. In this review, the most important previous studies are classified according to their handling of force majeure and environmental risks and the most important factors mentioned in these studies are identified. In addition, recommendations are made for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and for mitigating its effects on the construction industry in the Arab world and Malaysia. The results of this review will benefit researchers and construction companies alike in furthering research on reducing the risks of COVID-19 to construction projects and avoiding the significant economic loss that results from stopping these projects.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educational mobile games may play a significant role to facilitate students’ learning. Several studies have indicated that these games using mobile phones may improve students’ learning motivation and effectiveness when they are equipped with appropriate learning strategies. However, investigating the impact of learning strategies in students’ utilization of educational mobile games has received little scholarly attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, this research proposed two learning games scenarios to fill this gap. In the first scenario, students were offered an educational mobile game with a learning strategy called ‘scaffolding strategy’; while in the second scenario, the same game was offered without the strategy. To achieve this objective, an experimental design with a research model was developed to examine the role of scaffolding learning strategy in students’ use of educational mobile games. In this experimental study, 43 students from two classes participated in the two learning scenarios. The results indicate that educational mobile gaming with the scaffolding learning strategy significantly influenced students’ utilization of the mobile game. In addition, the adoption of the learning strategy significantly affected students’ perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and behavioural intention to use, compared with the same game without the learning strategy. The results also indicate that the introduction of the scaffolding learning strategy into the educational mobile game will increase students’ learning effectiveness and motivation.

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 are geared toward sustainable development through various pathways, one being reducing inequality as covered in SDG 10. Inequalities are a threat to health and wellbeing of populations and a planet Earth in which we live. This rapid review aims to identify key issues that are likely to exacerbate inequalities around the six SDGs directly related to One Health, which are SDG 3, 6, 11, 13, 14 and 15, and suggest some actions that may help to address them using inclusive governance taking into account the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Informed by the literature on SDGs and using the “inclusive development concept” by Gupta and Vegelin, literature search was done in Google Scholar, PubMed Central, as well as, searching of references in the relevant articles identified using search terms from the six SDGs that are directly related to One Health. In the context of the SDGs, in order to achieve One Health through inclusive governance, and tackle inequalities, the following needs to be considered and addressed: increasing number of armed conflicts; ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; ensuring availability of water and sanitation facilities; improving city and urban areas planning to cope with climate change; improving governance arrangements for addressing climate change factoring gender and human rights; multisectoral planning for conservation of oceans, seas, and marine resources; balancing trade regulation of wildlife trade with conservation efforts; need for a research collaborative involving experts from environmental sciences, wildlife, agriculture and human health to study and develop scientific evidence on contribution of changes in land use practices to occurrence of zoonotic diseases; and need of a legislation for promoting animal welfare to protect public health. Also, inclusion of people with disabilities in the use of digital technologies is critical.

SARS-CoV-2, a serious threat to sustainable development prospects, is spreading within countries at varying speeds, among other things depending on their population density, behavioural responses, cultural factors, personal hygiene practices and habits. This has led to significant variation in countries’ policy responses aimed at stemming the proliferation of the virus. Using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, we conducted a comparative study at the European level to study the performance of different combinations of COVID-19 containment measures along with the response speeds. A set of configurations for two different scenarios (above- and below-median death rates) helps to illustrate how specific containment measures in each examined European country are related to the number of deaths. The main observation arising from the analysis is that the speed of response along with the decision to suspend international flights might determine the epidemic outbreak’s impact on fatality. The results also imply that several different combinations of containment measures are associated with death rates across Europe. The outcome of this analysis can assist in identifying which set of containment measures in the event of an epidemic outbreak is beneficial/detrimental.

In recent years, the continuous spread of the COVID-19 epidemic has impacted the supply chain of enterprises. Mitigating the supply chain’s vulnerability has great significance for the survival and development of enterprises. Optimizing the business environment and building a digital government will help improve the external environment for enterprise development. However, its impact on the vulnerability of the enterprise supply chain has yet to be studied. Taking the impact of COVID-19 as an example, this paper uses the survey data of nearly 40,000 enterprises of the National Federation of Industry and Commerce in 2020 and “10,000 private enterprises evaluating the business environment”, to conduct systematic empirical research and fill the research gap in this area. The study indicates that the business environment and digital government can significantly mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the supply chain. This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that the business environment and digital government can prompt the government to introduce effective mitigation measures promptly, better guarantee production factors and logistics, and thus improve the vulnerability of the enterprise supply chain. This study deepens our understanding of the economic outcome of the business environment and digital government and also sheds new light on supply chain management.

The continual spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), posing a severe threat to the health worldwide. The main protease (Mpro, alias 3CLpro) of SARS-CoV-2 is a crucial enzyme for the maturation of viral particles and is a very attractive target for designing drugs to treat COVID-19. Here, we propose a multiple conformation-based virtual screening strategy to discover inhibitors that can target SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. Based on this strategy, nine Mpro structures and a protein mimetics library with 8960 commercially available compounds were prepared to carry out ensemble docking for the first time. Five of the nine structures are apo forms presented in different conformations, whereas the other four structures are holo forms complexed with different ligands. The surface plasmon resonance assay revealed that 6 out of 49 compounds had the ability to bind to SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. The fluorescence resonance energy transfer experiment showed that the biochemical half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values of the six compounds could hamper Mpro activities ranged from 0.69 ± 0.05 to 2.05 ± 0.92 μM. Evaluation of antiviral activity using the cell-based assay indicated that two compounds (Z1244904919 and Z1759961356) could strongly inhibit the cytopathic effect and reduce replication of the living virus in Vero E6 cells with the half-maximal effective concentrations (EC50) of 4.98 ± 1.83 and 8.52 ± 0.92 μM, respectively. The mechanism of the action for the two inhibitors were further elucidated at the molecular level by molecular dynamics simulation and subsequent binding free energy analysis. As a result, the discovered noncovalent reversible inhibitors with novel scaffolds are promising antiviral drug candidates, which may be used to develop the treatment of COVID-19.

SummaryAccording to the World Health Organization (WHO), the COVID‐19 pandemic has been the greatest challenge to humanity since World War II. Spain is one of the countries experiencing severe consequences from the COVID‐19 pandemic outbreak. In such a situation, when the population is quarantined, hospitals are crowded, and industries are shutting down; energy supply becomes a critical and “hard to predict” service. In this way, the study of the impact of COVID‐19 on the selling price of electricity in Spain is highlighted more comprehensively. Given the high level of uncertainty in global energy markets, there is a research gap that needs to be filled, that is, the creation of new decision support mechanisms that can reduce risks and ensure more significant forecasting for investments and energy management to deal with seemingly unprecedented effects experienced through the current pandemic. This study examines and develops econometric models to determine the impact of COVID‐19 on the Spanish electricity market. This article's main result is a framework that predicts the dynamic electricity market's behavior during shifting periods, that is, the COVID‐19 pandemic period. Noteworthy that the result of this article is useful in electricity market management and strategic developments.