Prevalence of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in South Asia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Vaccine uptake and coverage in susceptible populations are needed through effective vaccination campaigns to address the COVID-19 pandemic in South Asian countries. We aimed to measure the pooled proportion of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in this regard. Research articles published between January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2021, were searched through Medline, PubMed, Cochrane, Google Scholar, and the WHO COVID-19 database. The Joanna Briggs Institute (2014) tool for prevalence studies was used to assess data quality. We performed a meta-regression test and a sensitive analysis among the studies and used the DerSimonian and Laird random-effects model to measure the pooled effect estimates. Subgroup analyses were performed concerning vaccine hesitancy, countries, study population, study level, and the time since the first outbreak of the pandemic. A total of 43 studies out of 598 published articles across the eight countries in South Asia were included. The pooled proportion of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was 26.5% (95% CI [22, 31], I2 = 99.59%). Vaccine hesitancy was higher in Afghanistan (37%), Pakistan (33%), and Bangladesh (28.9%); among the general population (29%); at community levels (27.9%); and the duration of time of 1–12 months since the first outbreak in each country (27.5%). Vaccine hesitancy exists in South Asia with different rates among countries, population sub-groups, communities, study- levels, duration of time since the first outbreak, and study population. Therefore, enhancing public awareness of vaccination and vaccine hesitancy is required to prevent future pandemics

An Approach to Improve the Performance of Mobile Computation Technology Using Data Offloading

Modern mobile phones have a powerful processing unit that can perform multiple operations simultaneously. But the main constrain is the processing power and energy required to drive it. Cloud computing has come as a blessing for the mobile computing as it possesses a vast resource, high storage capacity and high processing power. In Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC), computation is offloaded to the cloud, cloud processes the data and generates information; and sends it back to the mobile device. Probability of offloading depends on line bandwidth, line length, size of data, processing speed of mobile, processing speed of cloud, storage and energy capacity of mobile etc. This paper presents a model for efficient data offloading decision, depending on the total execution time of a task when the data computation happens in the mobile and when it is offloaded to the cloud. An algorithm has been proposed here on data offloading decision. As thus an equation has been proposed to observe the probability of offloading process

Numerical Design and Investigation of Circularly Segmented Air Holes-Assisted Hollow-Core Terahertz Waveguide as Optical Chemical Sensor

In this paper,a polarization-maintaining single-mode rectangular-shaped hollow-core waveguide with four segmented air cladding in the terahertz (THz) regime is presented for detecting various toxic industrial chemicals. A new type of injection moldable cyclic olefin copolymer, commercially named as TOPAS is used as the base fiber material for its high optical transmission and high resistance to other chemicals. The finite element method with a perfectly matched layer as the boundary condition is employed for numerical explorations. The proposed sensor exhibits ultra-high relative sensitivity of 99.73% and ultra-low effective material loss of 0.007 cm−1 at 1.6 THz frequency for Toluene in y polarization. This sensor also evinces a high birefringence of $4.16\times 10^{-3}$ at 1.6 THz frequency. A maximum V parameter of 2.224 has been found at 2.2 THz which ensures the single-mode propagation of light. The sensor shows a very low confinement loss of $3.2\times 10^{-11}$ dB/m and a high numerical aperture of 0.3574 at 1.6 THz frequency for Hydrogen Sulfide. This paper also concentrates on other important design parameters such as bending loss, mode field radius, beam divergence and effective area for serviceability of the sensor in the THz region. This sensor can be a very good candidate for various chemical detection as well as other applications in the terahertz regime