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Household food insecurity and poor well-being have increased during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and resulting lockdown measures. Home food growing has been associated with improved food access and well-being, but it is unknown what role it plays during food supply crises and lockdown. It is also unclear how home food growing and social restrictions may affect opinions about growing food in urban areas (i.e. urban agriculture; UA).

A cross-sectional online survey was conducted during the UK national lockdown in March-April 2020 to measure home food growing, perceived food insecurity, well-being, and opinions of UA. The participants were 477 UK-based adults (369 female, mean age 39.57 years ± 13.36); 152 participants were engaged in home food growing prior to the pandemic. Responses were compared to data collected from a separate sample of participants before the pandemic (N=583) to explore potential shifts in opinions about UA.

Participants who engaged in home food growing had lower levels of food insecurity (U_­=19894.50, z=−3.649, p<0.001, r=−0.167) and higher well-being (U=19566.50, z=−3.666, p<0.001, r=−0.168) than those not engaged in home food growing. Perceived food insecurity partially mediated the relationship between home food growing and well-being; home food growing was associated with less food insecurity, which in turn was associated with better well-being. There were no differences in opinions of UA compared to the sample of participants from before the pandemic.

Home food growing may have had a protective effect over perceived food security and well-being in the early stages the pandemic. Opinions of UA were positive and unchanged compared to data collected pre-pandemic. Policies that support home food growing and access to suitable growing spaces and resources may be beneficial for food system resilience and well-being.

Different countries have responded to the pandemic with distinct domestic and international travel restrictions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stringency of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) countermeasures in Japan against their G20 cohorts. Primary data were monitored at a ski resort in Kyushu regarding the social acceptance of initial COVID-19 countermeasures, ranging from hygiene and local “lockdowns” to border control measures.

The stringency of the COVID-19 countermeasures was examined using data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) and triangulated with the early stage social acceptance of survey respondents in Aso Kuju National Park in February 2020 that consisted of 165 valid Japanese language questionnaires.

An one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) identified significant differences in social acceptance for countermeasures, with more-concerned respondents agreeing more strongly with “low-tech” health protocols, such as washing hands (M = 3.7) or wearing a mask (3.4). More concerned visitors were significantly more likely to modify their travel plans (2.9) or cancel their trip altogether (2.7). Male day trippers were less likely to be concerned by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper's originality is derived from a triangulation of the stringency of Japan's initial COVID-19 countermeasures via a combination of comparison with G20 cohorts and social acceptance of domestic snowboarders and skiers. Moreover, by shining a light on the trade-off between public health and human rights, the paper provides a current review of the ethical dimension of a travel restriction debate that is often overlooked in the ongoing pandemic.

The study aims to summarise the literature on cancer care pathways at the diagnostic and treatment phases. The objectives are to find factors influencing the delivery of cancer care pathways; to highlight any interrelating factors; to find gaps in the literature concerning areas of research; to summarise the strategies and recommendations implemented in the studies.

The study used a qualitative approach and developed a causal loop diagram to summarise the current literature on cancer care pathways, from screening and diagnosis to treatment. A total of 46 papers was finally included in the analysis, which highlights the recurring themes in the literature.

The study highlights the myriad areas of research applied to cancer care pathways. Factors influencing the delivery of cancer care pathways were classified into different albeit interrelated themes. These include access barriers to care, hospital emergency admissions, fast track diagnostics, delay in diagnosis, waiting time to treatment and strategies to increase system efficiency.

As far as the authors know, this is the first study to present a visual representation of the complex relationship between factors influencing the delivery of cancer care pathways.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) necessitated the need for “Hospital-at-home” improvisations that involve wearable technology to classify patients within households before visiting health institutions. Do-It-Yourself wearable devices allow for the collection of health data leading to the detection and/or prediction of the prevalence of the disease. The sensitive nature of health data requires safeguards to ensure patients’ privacy is not violated. The previous work utilized Hyperledger Fabric to verify transmitted data within Smart Homes, allowing for the possible implementation of legal restrictions through smart contracts in the future. This study aims to explore privacy-enhancing authentication schemes that are operated by multiple credential issuers and capable of integration into the Hyperledger ecosystem.

Design Science Research is the methodology that was used in this study. An architecture for ABC-privacy was developed and evaluated.

While the privacy-by-design architecture enhances data privacy through edge and fog computing architecture, there is a need to provide an additional privacy layer that limits the amount of data that patients disclose. Selective disclosure of credentials limits the number of information patients or devices divulge.

The evaluation of this study identified Coconut as the most suitable attribute-based credentials scheme for the Smart Homes Patients and Health Wearables use case Coconut user-centric architecture Hyperledger integration multi-party threshold authorities public and private attributes re-randomization and unlinkable revelation of selective attribute revelations.