Feasibility of a Home-Based Task-Switching Training in Middle-Aged Caregivers

The current study aimed at investigating feasibility of a self-administered task-switching training in a middle-aged working population. Eighty-one caregivers (41–62 years old) were instructed to train at home 8 times either within a 7- or 14-day interval. Only 56.7% performed more than 50% of the instructed number of training sessions. However, compliant caregivers (who completed more than 4 training sessions) showed significant training gains and transfer to an untrained task-switching task. Although transfer effects to other cognitive tasks were not found, trained participants tended to report fewer everyday memory failures than a control group. In conclusion, the implementation of a home-based task-switching training in everyday life of caregivers is possible. However, there is only limited evidence for generalization of results of previous laboratory studies. Adherence and transfer to other cognitive tasks are discussed as important challenges in conveying laboratory findings into real life.

The Escalating Cyberbullying Menace Through Social Media Platforms in Developing Countries Including India

This chapter focuses on the social media vulnerabilities due to excessive usage among the youth in developing countries like India. The increasing psychological dependence and ubiquitousness in the availability of technological gadgets make interaction possible at any time to anyone making the act of cyberbullying easier. The vulnerable sections of every society, especially the children, youth, and women, face incremental psychological health issues due to the negative impact of ever-increasing cyberbullying in one way or another. The chapter reports descriptively the extensive damages that are inflicted by social media platforms on the productivity of the developing countries due to the negative influence on the youth and working population of the developing countries including India.

Financing of the Program of state guarantees of free medical care: how to solve the deficit problem?

Introduction. The critical problem of Russian health care is the deficit of funding for the program of state-guaranteed medical care for citizens of Russia. Purpose of the study. To search for solutions to the problem of financing the deficit of the program of state guarantees of free medical care in the Russian Federation. Material and methods. Retrospective data analysis was carried out to analyse the reasons for the deficit in the financing of the program of state guarantees of free medical care and search for solutions in the experience of other countries. Results. The analysis showed that the reasons for the deficit of the program of state guarantees of free medical care are the shortcomings of the mandatory health insurance (MHI) income system: linking contributions for the working population to the wages fund; the vagueness of the definition of the non-working population and the payment of contributions for its MHI by the constituent entities of the Russian Federation; non-participation of the solvent population in the co-financing of medical care; deficit of economic integration between the payment of MHI treatment and the health care system; the absence of formalized mechanisms for reimbursing the expenses of the MHI system by the federal budget to pay for aid in catastrophic situations. Discussion. The authors see the solution to the problem of the deficit of the program of state guarantees of free medical care in the modernization of the MHI income system: replacement of the MHI contributions paid by employers with an additional “medical” part of the value-added tax; replacement of the MHI contributions paid by the constituent entities of the Russian Federation for the non-working population with a targeted “medical” tax on retail sales; creation of a system of additional income based on the principle “the guilty person pays for causing harm to health”; recognition of the cost of medical care to the population in catastrophic situations as an unconditional obligation of the federal budget. Conclusion. a systemic solution to the problem of the financing deficit of the program of state guarantees of free medical care for the citizens of Russia seems to be the modernization of the MHI income system.

The rise in youth employment? Impact evaluation of COVID-19 consequences

The COVID-19 pandemic has significant consequences in many areas and has largely contributed to rising unemployment in almost all countries. The situation is similar in Slovakia, where various degrees of shut-down measures have caused an inflow of newly unemployed people in all age groups. This article focuses on unemployed youth as a vulnerable and disadvantaged group of the working population, as starting a career during a pandemic is complicated or even impossible in some industries under these conditions. In this study, the real situation in Slovakia in 2020-2021 is compared with the development of the job market before the pandemic. The main contribution of the study is the quantification of the extent of the pandemic impact on unemployed youth, but also on other age groups; this evaluation can be considered very accurate given the counterfactual approach used. The results of this study can be used in practice to identify the most affected groups of the population and to implement policy measures aimed at mitigating the effects of the pandemic, and then to adjust the intensity and amount of allocated funds that will be needed to be spent to support the placement of young people into the labor market.

Characteristics of migration from Serbia to Slovakia (on the example of the municipality of Kovačica)

Due to numerous transformation problems which determined the collapse of the industrial sector, unemployment and low living standards, an increasing number of working population leaves Serbia. For a very long time, Serbian emigration was directed primarily to the developed Western European countries (especially Germany and Austria). However, Slovakia has recently joined the narrow circle of countries-destinations for emigrants from Serbia. The article focuses on this wave of the working population emigration from Serbia to Slovakia and considers it in the framework of the contemporary migration theories, especially the push-and-pull factors theory. The research data was compared with the relevant data from previous studies. The research was conducted in the municipality of Kovačica (northern Serbia) with a questionnaire on the sample of 100 respondents (the snowball method was applied), and the authors also used various other data sources: statistical data (censuses, migration statistics, etc.), media reports and scientific papers. Given the unfavorable social-economic context of the Serbian working population emigration and the chosen theoretical framework, the authors considered economic factors as crucial for this wave of migration, which seems to be similar to the previous waves of migration. In general, this assumption was confirmed: emigrants from Serbia go to Slovakia for a variety of reasons, but the key ones are the small salary in Serbia, the impossibility to find a job in ones profession, and a poor financial and political situation in the country. On the other hand, Slovakia attracts Serbian migrants by offering possibilities to earn more money, to have higher living standards, better conditions for education and work, thus, promising a better and predictable future.

Peer To Peer Real-Time Communication Using WebRTC

The covid-19 pandemic has led to things happening virtually. Students are attending their classes in online mode. More than 50 percent of the working population is working from home. Online meetings have become necessary part of everyone's life. With the existing platforms, users need to setup or install packages on their systems to run the application which sometimes becomes confusing for first timers or non-technical people. This paper proposes to build a full-fledged feature rich web-based video conferencing application using WebRTC technology. WebRTC is used to enable real time audio and video communication from a web browser without the need of installing software or plugins so that users can focus on their work rather than worrying about how to use a video conferencing platform.