Search results for: special education classes

Authors: Elizabeth Radian

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In a challenging era of neoliberalism and managerialism in social services, the status of Canadian social work education at the Bachelor of Social Work level (BSW) was examined to determine how prepared students were to practice in a time of resource cutbacks and insecurity. Curricula in BSW programs was the focus as this generalist degree results in the greatest number of social work graduates in Canada, most of whom work at the front lines in service delivery. The study reviewed the practice frameworks that students in BSW programs were exposed to. Traditionally, schools of social work have embraced two major practice frameworks. The person in environment framework is a well-established practice framework taught in most schools. The framework offers some focus on smaller scale social change, tweaking existing arrangements and is more accepting of the status quo. An alternate practice framework taught in fewer schools has been described as a structural, progressive or anti oppressive framework. This latter framework challenges the status quo, is focused on social justice and social transformation, often incorporating social action strategies to ensure marginalized voices are heard. Using a content analysis methodology of keywords and phrases to delineate framework orientation, practice frameworks articulated in the curricula were determined by reviewing the mission/mandate of schools offering a BSW degree, their core course outlines and core course textbooks. Social action, as one strategy for initiating social change and transformation was considered. Initial research for 28 schools was completed in 2000, with follow up replications of the initial study in 2005 and 2014. These earlier studies displayed that the dominant practice framework taught in BSW programs was the person in environment framework. A lesser number of schools were categorized as primarily offering a structural, progressive or anti oppressive framework. The findings from the current study of 39 Canadian schools of social work are considered to determine how prominent structural, progressive and anti oppressive frameworks exist in current BSW curricula. This study can assist in contemplating the question – are we educating future practitioners for acceptance or action.

Keywords: social work education and pedagogy, social change, social justice, social services

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Authors: Mustapha Benssalah, Mustapha Djeddou, Karim Drouiche

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The random number generation (RNG) presents a significant importance for the security and the privacy of numerous applications, such as RFID technology and smart cards. Since, the quality of the generated bit sequences is paramount that a weak internal generator for example, can directly cause the entire application to be insecure, and thus it makes no sense to employ strong algorithms for the application. In this paper, we propose a new pseudo random number generator (PRNG), suitable for cryptosystems ECC-based, constructed by randomly selecting points from several elliptic curves randomly selected. The main contribution of this work is the increasing of the generator internal states by extending the set of its output realizations to several curves auto-selected. The quality and the statistical characteristics of the proposed PRNG are validated using the Chi-square goodness of fit test and the empirical Special Publication 800-22 statistical test suite issued by NIST.

Keywords: PRNG, security, cryptosystem, ECC

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Authors: Jeffrey Siphiwe Mkhize

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Twelve years of schooling for most South African children, particularly those children from disadvantaged past, are confronted with numerous and diverse challenges. These challenges range from infrastructural limitations, language of teaching, poor resources and varying family backgrounds. Likewise, schools are categorized to signify schools’ geographic location, poverty lines, societal class and type of students that the school are likely to enroll. Such categorization perpetuates particular lines of identities that are indirectly reinforced by the same system that seeks to redress. South African universities prefer point systems to determine students’ suitability to gain access to their programmes. Once students are admitted based on the qualifying points there is an assumed equity in the manner in which they receive tuition. They are assumed as equal; noting the widened access to South African universities as means to redress past inequalities. Given the challenges, inequalities, it is necessary to view higher education as a site for knowledge construction that is accessible to all students. Epistemological access is key to all students irrespective of their socio-economic status. This paper seeks to contribute to the discourse of student engagement using lecturer-student relationship as a lens to understand this phenomenon. Data were generated using South African Survey of Student Engagement, focus group interviews, semi-structured one-on-one-interviews as well as document analysis. The focus was on students registered for the first year of a Bachelor of Education degree as well as lecturers that teach high risk modules in this qualification at the same level. The findings suggest that lecturers are challenged by overcrowded classrooms and over-enrolled modules; this challenge hampers their good intentions to become more efficient and innovative in their teaching. Students lack confidence in approaching lecturers for assistance. Collaborative learning has stronger results and students believe in self-support to deal with their challenges based on their individual strengths. Collaborative learning is key to student academic performance.

Keywords: collaborative learning, consultations, student engagement, student performance

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Authors: A. Aarabzadeh, R. Hizaji

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Reinforced Concrete (RC) deep beams are a special type of beams due to their geometry, boundary conditions, and behavior compared to ordinary shallow beams. For example, assumption of a linear strain-stress distribution in the cross section is not valid. Little study has been dedicated to fixed-end RC deep beams. Also, most experimental studies are carried out on simply supported deep beams. Regarding recent tendency for application of deep beams, possibility of using fixed-ended deep beams has been widely increased in structures. Therefore, it seems necessary to investigate the aforementioned structural element in more details. In addition to experimental investigation of a concrete deep beam under cyclic load, different failure mechanisms of fixed-ended deep beams under this type of loading have been evaluated in the present study. The results show that failure mechanisms of deep beams under cyclic loads are quite different from monotonic loads.

Keywords: deep beam, cyclic load, reinforced concrete, fixed-ended

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Authors: Pooja Khanal, Huaming Zhang

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Labeling of issues/bugs, also known as bug classification, plays a vital role in software engineering. Some known labels/classes of bugs are 'User Interface', 'Security', and 'API'. Most of the time, when a reporter reports a bug, they try to assign some predefined label to it. Those issues are reported for a project, and each project is a repository in GitHub/GitLab, which contains multiple issues. There are many software project repositories -ranging from individual projects to commercial projects. The labels assigned for different repositories may be dependent on various factors like human instinct, generalization of labels, label assignment policy followed by the reporter, etc. While the reporter of the issue may instinctively give that issue a label, another person reporting the same issue may label it differently. This way, it is not known mathematically if a label in one repository is similar or different to the label in another repository. Hence, the primary goal of this research is to find the semantic differences between bug labeling of different repositories via machine learning. Independent optimal classifiers for individual repositories are built first using the text features from the reported issues. The optimal classifiers may include a combination of multiple classifiers stacked together. Then, those classifiers are used to cross-test other repositories which leads the result to be deduced mathematically. The produce of this ongoing research includes a formalized open-source GitHub issues database that is used to deduce the similarity of the labels pertaining to the different repositories.

Keywords: bug classification, bug labels, GitHub issues, semantic differences

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Authors: Delies L. Alejo

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This study explores the psychosocial influences of Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) on patients in the Philippine Orthopedic Center Hospital in the Philippines, examining their social functioning and proposing interventions for reintegration. Quantitative data were collected through surveys using a concurrent triangulation research design, while qualitative insights were obtained via interviews. Findings revealed significant psychosocial challenges among SCI patients, impacting relationships, family dynamics, work, friendships, parenting, education, and self-care. Demographic profiles indicated variations in psychosocial functioning. The study underscores the importance of tailored interventions for SCI patients based on age, marital status, gender, education, and occupation. Triangulation of data enhanced understanding, revealing four themes: ‘Resilient Navigation of Intimacy and Connection,’ ‘Family Dynamics and Care Challenges,’ ‘Occupational Hurdles and Work Engagement,’ and ‘Social and Community Integration Obstacles.’ The study proposes a holistic intervention plan, addressing emotional challenges, creating support networks, implementing vocational rehabilitation, promoting community engagement, and sustaining collaboration with healthcare professionals.

Keywords: spinal cord injury, psychosocial influences, social functioning, concurrent triangulation, intervention plan

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Authors: Kym Drady

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This paper considers whether creativity is the missing link which would allow the evolution of organisational behaviour and profitability if it was ‘released’. It suggests that although many organisations try to engage their workforce and expect innovation they fail to provide the means for its achievement. The paper suggests that creative thinking is the ‘glue’ which links organisational performance to profitability. A key role of a university today, is to produce skilled and capable graduates. Increasing competition and internationalisation has meant that the employability agenda has never been more prominent within the field of education. As such it should be a key consideration when designing and developing a curriculum. It has been suggested that creativity is a valuable personal skill and perhaps should be the focus of an organisations business strategy in order for them to increase their competitive advantage in the twenty first century. Flexible and agile graduates are now required to become creative in their use of skills and resources in an increasingly complex and sophisticated global market. The paper, therefore, questions that if this is the case why then does creativity fail to appear as a key curriculum subject in many business schools. It also considers why policy makers continue to neglect this critical issue when it could offer the ‘key’ to economic prosperity. Recent literature does go some way to addressing by suggesting that small clusters of UK Universities have started including some creativity in their PDP work. However, this paper builds on this work and proposes that that creativity should become a central component of the curriculum. The paper suggests that creativity should appear in every area of the curriculum and that it should act as the link that connects productivity to profitability rather than being marginalised as an additional part of the curriculum. A range of data gathering methods have been used but each has been drawn from a qualitative base as it was felt that due to nature of the study individual’s thoughts and feelings needed to be examined and reflection was important. The author also recognises the importance of her own reflection both on the experiences of the students and their later working experiences as well as on the creative elements within the programme that she delivered. This paper has been drawn from research undertaken by the author in relation to her PhD study which explores the potential benefits of including creativity in the curriculum within business schools and the added value this could make to their employability. To conclude, creativity is, in the opinion of the author, the missing link to organisational profitability and as such should be prioritised especially by higher education providers.

Keywords: business curriculum, business curriculum, higher education, creative thinking and problem-solving, creativity

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Authors: Paul Flynn, Luke O’Donnell

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There is a pressing societal need for educators in formal and non-formal settings to develop pedagogical frameworks, programmes, and interventions that support the development of transversal skills for life beyond the classroom. These skills include communication, collaboration, interpersonal relationship building, problem-solving, and planning, and organizational skills; or lifeworld literacies encountered first hand. This is particularly true for young people aged between 15-18. This demographic represents both the future of society and those best positioned to take advantage of well-designed, structured educational supports within and across formal and non-formal settings. Secondary school history has been identified as an appropriate area of study which deftly develops many of those transversal skills so crucial to positive societal engagement. However, in the formal context, students often challenge history’s relevance to their own lived experience and dismiss it as a study option. In response to such challenges, teachers will often design stimulating lessons which are often well-received. That said, some students continue to question modern-day connections, presenting a persistent and pervasive classroom distraction. The continuing decline in numbers opting to study second-level history indicates an erosion of what should be a critical opportunity to develop all-important lifeworld literacies within formal education. In contrast, students readily acknowledge relevance in non-formal settings where many participants meaningfully engage with history by way of student-focused activities. Furthermore, many do so without predesigned pedagogical aids which support transversal skills development as embodied learning outcomes. As this paper will present, there is a dearth of work pertaining to the circular subject of history and its embodied learning outcomes, including lifeworld literacies, in formal and non-formal settings. While frequently challenging to reconcile formal (often defined by strict curricula and examination processes), and non-formal engagement with history, opportunities do exist. In the Irish context, this is exemplified by a popular university outreach programme: breaking the SEAL. This programme supports second-level history students as they fulfill curriculum requirements in completing a research study report. This report is a student-led research project pulling on communication skills, collaboration with peers and teachers, interpersonal relationships, problem-solving, and planning and organizational skills. Completion of this process has been widely recognized as excellent preparation not only for higher education (third level) but work-life demands as well. Within a formal education setting, the RSR harnesses non-formal learning virtues and exposes students to limited aspects of independent learning that relate to a professional work setting –a lifeworld literacy. Breaking the SEAL provides opportunities for students to enhance their lifeworld literacy by engaging in an independent research and learning process within the protective security of the classroom and its teacher. This paper will highlight the critical role this programme plays in preparing participating students (n=315) for life after compulsory education and presents examples of how lifeworld literacies may be developed through a scaffolded process of historical research and reporting anchored in non-formal contexts.

Keywords: history, education, literacy, transversal skills

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Authors: Jiri Dufek

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The national model of the Czech Republic has been modified in a detailed way to get detailed travel demand in the municipality level (cities, villages over 300 inhabitants). As a technique for this detailed modelling, three-dimensional procedure for calibrating gravity models, was used. Besides of zone production and attraction, which is usual in gravity models, the next additional parameter for trip distribution was introduced. Usually it is called by “third dimension”. In the model, this parameter is a demand between regions. The distribution procedure involved calculation of appropriate skim matrices and its multiplication by three coefficients obtained by iterative balancing of production, attraction and third dimension. This type of trip distribution was processed in R-project and the results were used in the Czech Republic transport model, created in PTV Vision. This process generated more precise results in local level od the model (towns, villages)

Keywords: trip distribution, three dimension, transport model, municipalities

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Authors: Manana Lobzhanidze

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The COVID-19 pandemic has made significant changes in migration processes, notably changes in the study migration process. The constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in the studying process, which negatively affected its efficiency. The educational process has partially or completely shifted to distance learning; Both labor and study migration have increased significantly in the world. The employment and education market has become global and consequently, a number of challenges have arisen for employers, researchers, and businesses. The role of preparing qualified personnel in achieving high productivity is justified, the benefits for employers and employees are assessed on the one hand, and the role of study migration for the country’s development is examined on the other hand. Research methods. The research is based on methods of analysis and synthesis, quantitative and qualitative, groupings, relative and mean quantities, graphical representation, comparison, analysis and etc. In-depth interviews were conducted with experts to determine quantitative and qualitative indicators. Research findings. Factors affecting study migration are analysed in the paper and the environment that stimulates migration is explored. One of the driving forces of migration is considered to be the desire for receiving higher pay. Levels and indicators of study migration are studied by country. Comparative analysis has found that study migration rates are high in countries where the price of skilled labor is high. The productivity of individuals with low skills is low, which negatively affects the economic development of countries. It has been revealed that students leave the country to improve their skills during study migration. The process mentioned in the article is evaluated as a positive event for a developing country, as individuals are given the opportunity to share the technology of developed countries, gain knowledge, and then introduce it in their own country. The downside of study migration is the return of a small proportion of graduates from developed economies to their home countries. The article concludes that countries with emerging economies devote less resources to research and development, while this is a priority in developed countries, allowing highly skilled individuals to use their skills efficiently. The paper studies the national education system examines the level of competition in the education market and the indicators of educational migration. The level of competition in the education market and the indicators of educational migration are studied. The role of qualified personnel in achieving high productivity is substantiated, the benefits of employers and employees are assessed on the one hand, and the role of study migration in the development of the country is revealed on the other hand. The paper also analyzes the level of competition in the education and labor markets and identifies indicators of study migration. During the pandemic period, there was a great demand for the digital technologies. Open access to a variety of comprehensive platforms will significantly reduce study migration to other countries. As a forecast, it can be said that the intensity of the use of e-learning platforms will be increased significantly in the post-pandemic period. The paper analyzes the positive and negative effects of study migration on economic development, examines the challenges of study migration in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests ways to avoid negative consequences, and develops recommendations for improving the study migration process in the post-pandemic period.

Keywords: study migration, COVID-19 pandemic, factors affecting migration, economic development, post-pandemic migration

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Authors: Victoria L. Malakhova

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The research is devoted to multimodal content and its effectiveness in developing students’ linguistic and intercultural communicative competences as an indefeasible constituent of their future professional activity. Description of multimodal content both as a linguistic and didactic phenomenon makes the study relevant. The objective of the article is the analysis of creolized texts and the effect they have on fostering higher education students’ skills and their productivity. The main methods used are linguistic text analysis, qualitative and quantitative methods, deduction, generalization. The author studies texts with full and partial creolization, their features and role in composing multimodal textual space. The main verbal and non-verbal markers and paralinguistic means that enhance the linguo-pragmatic potential of creolized texts are covered. To reveal the efficiency of multimodal content application in English teaching, the author conducts an experiment among both undergraduate students and teachers. This allows specifying main functions of creolized texts in the process of language learning, detecting ways of enhancing students’ competences, and increasing their motivation. The described stages of using creolized texts can serve as an algorithm for work with multimodal content in teaching English as a foreign language. The findings contribute to improving the efficiency of the academic process.

Keywords: creolized text, English language learning, higher education, language and communication competences, multimodal content

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Authors: Mukadder Baran, Mustafa Sözbilir

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicabillity of the Context- and Problem-Based Learning (CPBL) in general chemistry course to the subject of “Thermodynamics” but also the influence of CPBL on students’ achievement, retention of knowledge, their interest, attitudes, motivation and problem-solving skills. The study group included 13 freshman students who were selected with the sampling method appropriate to the purpose among those taking the course of General Chemistry within the Program of Medical Laboratory Techniques at Hakkari University. The application was carried out in the Spring Term of the academic year of 2012-2013. As the data collection tool, Lesson Observation form were used. In the light of the observations held, it was revealed that CPBL increased the students’ intragroup and intergroup communication skills as well as their self-confidence and developed their skills in time management, presentation, reporting, and technology use; and that they were able to relate chemistry to daily life. Depending on these findings, it could be suggested that the area of use of CPBL be widened; that seminars related to constructive methods be organized for teachers. In this way, it is believed that students will not be passive in the group any longer. In addition, it was concluded that in order to avoid the negative effects of the socio-cultural structure on the education system, research should be conducted in places where there is socio-cultural obstacles, and appropriate solutions should be suggested and put into practice.

Keywords: chemistry, education, science, context-based learning

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Authors: Lalanthica Yogendran, Manassa Hany, Saira Pasha, Benjamin Chaucer, Simarpreet Kaur, Christopher Janusz

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Children and adolescent patients visit the Psychiatric Emergency Department (ED) for multiple reasons. Visiting the Psychiatric ED itself can be a traumatic experience that can affect an adolescents mental well-being, regardless of a history of mental illness. Despite this, limited research exists in this domain. Prospective studies have correlated adverse psychosocial determinants among adolescents to risk factors for poor well-being and unfavorable behavior outcomes. Studies have also shown that physiological stress is a contributor in the development of health problems and an increase in substance abuse in adolescents. This study aimed to retrospectively determine which psychosocial factors are associated with an increase in psychiatric ED visits. 600 charts of patients who had a psychiatric ED and inpatient admission visit from January 2014 through December 2014 were reviewed. Sociodemographics, diagnoses, ED visits and inpatient admissions were collected. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests and independent t-test analyses were utilized to examine differences in the sample to determine which factors affected ED visits and admissions. The sample was 50% female, 35.2% self-identified black, and had a mean age of 13 years. The majority, 85%, went to public school and 17% were in special education. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder was the most common admitting diagnosis, found in 132(23%) responders. Most patients came from single parent household 305 (53%). The mean ages of patients that were sexually active, with legal issues, and reporting marijuana substance abuse were 15, 14.35, and 15 years respectively. Patients from two biological parent households had significantly fewer ED visits (1.2 vs. 1.7, p < 0.01) and admissions (0.09 vs. 0.26, p < 0.01). Among social factors, those who reported sexual, physical or emotional abuse had a significantly greater number of ED visits (2.1 vs. 1.5, p < 0.01) and admissions (0.61 vs. 0.14, p < 0.01) than those who did not. Patients that were sexually active or had legal issues or substance abuse with marijuana had a significantly greater number of admissions (0.43 vs. 0.17, p < 0.01), (0.54 vs. .18, p < 0.01) and (0.46 vs. 0.18, p < 0.01) respectively. This data supports the theory of the stability of a two parent home. Dual parenting plays a role in creating a safe space where a child can develop; this is shown by subsequent decreases in psychiatric ED visits and admissions. This may highlight the psychological protective role of a two parent household. Abuse can exacerbate existing psychiatric illness or initiate the onset of new disease. Substance abuse and legal issues result in early induction to the criminal system. Results show that this causes an increase in frequency of visits and severity of symptoms. Only marijuana, but not other illicit substances, correlated with higher incidence of psychiatric ED visits. This may speak to the psychotropic nature of tetrahydrocannabinols and their role in mental illness. This study demonstrates the array of psychosocial factors that lead to increased ED visits and admissions in children and adolescents.

Keywords: adolescent, child psychiatry, emergency department, substance abuse

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Authors: Zilola Kozimova

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Humans are highly social creatures, and our social surroundings create a large part of our daily experiences. Feeling connected and belonging at school have been studied a lot, especially in the period up to college. The need to feel connected becomes even more vital when people choose to study abroad. The number of published research in the field has increased recently, creating sufficient studies for a systematic literature review. The current study was conducted to find out existing trends and central themes in the field regarding international student connectedness. Using PRISMA 2020 and Shariff et al.’s work as the guidelines, I conducted a systematic literature review of studies regarding international student connectedness in higher education. Three steps of inclusion/exclusion criteria were used to determine the final studies to be included. The results show an increasing trend in the field as the number of related studies drastically rose after 2017. the results showed that there are three phases in the research regarding the connectedness of international students: a rejection period, a sudden increase of interest in the topic, and merging as an essential part of the mental well-being of international students. There is also a change in the themes regarding the topic, as there is a rise in the number of research published regarding international students’ mental health in recent years, connectedness being a sub-topic.

Keywords: international students, connectedness, mental well-being of international students, trends, higher education

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Authors: Victoria Lewis, L. Dumbell

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The British Equestrian Federation (BEF) aims to develop a holistic coach education and certification program, moving away from traditional autocratic instruction in line with the UK Coaching Framework. This framework is based on generic coaching science research where the coach is cited as a pivotal aspect in developing sporting success. Theoretic knowledge suggests that the role of the sports coach is to develop the physical, tactical, technical and psychological attributes of the athlete and is responsible for the planning, organization and delivery of the training plan and competition schedule. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that is the role required in equestrian sport as the rider takes responsibility for many of these tasks. This research aimed to address the void in current knowledge by gaining an understanding of coaching in equestrian sport in order to improve coaching education system through awareness of the role of the coach. Objectives were to examine the relationship between coach and rider at elite level in equestrian sport providing empirical evidence to suggest that the rider is, in part, ‘self –coached’. To identify the elite equestrian coaches’ role in coaching these ‘self-coached riders. A qualitative method using semi-structured interviews was used. A sample of elite coaches (N=3) and elite riders (N=3) were interviewed. Analysis of the transcripts revealed a total of 534 meaning units that were further grouped into sub-themes and general themes from the coaches’ perspective and the riders’ perspective. This led to the development of a final thematic structure revealing major dimensions that characterized coaching in elite equestrian sport. It was found that the riders at the elite level coach themselves the majority of the time, therefore, can be considered as ‘self-coached’ athletes. However, they do use elite coaches in a mentoring and consultancy role, where they seek guidance from the coach on specific problems, to sound ideas off or to seek reassurance that what they are doing is correct. Findings from this research suggest that the rider-coach relationship at the elite level is a professional one, based on trust and respect, but not a close relationship as seen in other sports. The results show the imperative need for the BEF to educate coaches in coaching the self-coached rider at the elite level, particularly in terms of mentoring skills. As well as incorporating rider education aimed at developing the independent, self-coached riders.

Keywords: coaching, elite sport, equestrian, self coached

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Authors: Rima Hleiss, Elie Bitar, Mahmoud Hassan, Mohamad Khalil

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A comprehensive study of object recognition in the human brain requires combining both spatial and temporal analysis of brain activity. Here, we are mainly interested in three issues: the time perception of visual objects, the ability of discrimination between two particular categories (objects vs. animals), and the possibility to identify a particular spatial representation of visual objects. Our experiment consisted of acquiring dense electroencephalographic (EEG) signals during a picture-naming task comprising a set of objects and animals’ images. These EEG responses were recorded from nine participants. In order to determine the time perception of the presented visual stimulus, we analyzed the Event Related Potentials (ERPs) derived from the recorded EEG signals. The analysis of these signals showed that the brain perceives animals and objects with different time instants. Concerning the discrimination of the two categories, the support vector machine (SVM) was applied on the instantaneous EEG (excellent temporal resolution: on the order of millisecond) to categorize the visual stimuli into two different classes. The spatial differences between the evoked responses of the two categories were also investigated. The results showed a variation of the neural activity with the properties of the visual input. Results showed also the existence of a spatial pattern of electrodes over particular regions of the scalp in correspondence to their responses to the visual inputs.

Keywords: brain activity, categorization, dense EEG, evoked responses, spatio-temporal analysis, SVM, time perception

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Authors: S. Roy, R. Rekha, K. Sriram, G. Subhadra, R. Johana

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Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death in most industrialized countries. Many chemical drugs are available in the market which targets different receptor proteins related to cardiovascular diseases. Of late the traditional herbal drugs are safer when compared to chemical drugs because of its side effects. However, many herbal remedies used in treating cardiovascular diseases have not undergone scientific assessment to prove its pharmacological activities. There are many natural compounds, nature derived and Natural product mimic compounds are available which are in the market as approved drug. In the most of the cases drug activity at the molecular level are not known. Here we have categorized those compounds with our experimental compounds in different classes based on the structural similarity and physicochemical properties, using a tool, Chemmine and has attempted to understand the mechanism of the action of a experimental compound, which are clustered with Simvastatin, Lovastatin, Mevastatin and Pravastatin. Target protein molecule for Simvastatin, Lovastatin, Mevastatin and Pravastatin is HMG-CoA reductase, so we concluded that the experimental compound may be able to bind to the same target. Molecular docking and atomic interaction studies with simvastatin and our experimental compound were compared. A pharmacophore modeling was done based on the experimental compound and HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor.

Keywords: molecular docking, physicochemical properties, pharmacophore modeling structural similarity, pravastatin

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Authors: Kalyani Gandhi

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The eighteenth century in Britain saw a great burst of activity in writing (letters, journals, newspapers, essays); often these modes of writing had a public-spirited bent in-step with the prevailing intellectual atmosphere. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the leading intellectuals of that period who utilized letter writing to convey her thoughts on the exciting political developments of the late eighteenth century. Fusing together her anxieties and concerns about humanity in general and herself in particular, Wollstonecraft’s views of the world around her are filtered through the lens of her subjectivity. Thus, Wollstonecraft’s letters covered a wide range of topics on both the personal and political level (for the two are often entwined in Wollstonecraft’s characteristic style of analysis) such as sentiment, gender, nature, peasantry, the class system, the legal system, political duties and rights of both rulers and subjects, death, immortality, religion, family and education. Therefore, this paper intends to examine the manner in which Wollstonecraft utilizes letter-writing to constitute and develop Romantic self-hood, understand the world around her and illustrate her ideas on the political and social happenings in Europe. The primary text analyzed will be Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written During a Short Stay in Sweden, Denmark and Norway (1796) and the analysis of this text will be supplemented by researching 18th-century British letter writing culture, with a special emphasis on the epistolary habits of women. Within this larger framework, this paper intends to examine the manner in which this hybrid of travel and epistolary writing aided Mary Wollstonecraft's expression on Romantic selfhood and how it was complicated by ideas of gender. This paper reveals Wollstonecraft's text to be wrought with anxiety about the world around her and within her; thus, the personal-public nature of the epistolary format particularly suits her characteristic point of view that looks within and without. That is to say, Wollstonecraft’s anxieties about gender and self, are as much about the women she sees in the world around her as much as they are about her young daughter and herself. Wollstonecraft constantly explores and examines this anxiety within the different but interconnected realms of politics, economics, history and society. In fact, it is her complex technique of entwining these aforementioned concerns with a closer look at interpersonal relationships among men and women (she often mentions specific anecdotes and instances) that make Wollstonecraft's Letters so engaging and insightful. Thus, Wollstonecraft’s Letters is an exemplar of British Romantic writing due to the manner in which it explores the bond between the individual and society. Mary Wollstonecraft's nuances this exploration by incorporating her concerns about women and the playing out of gender in society. Thus, Wollstonecraft’s Letters is an invaluable contribution to the field of British Romanticism, particularly as it offers crucial insight on female Romantic writing that can broaden and enrich the current academic understanding of the field.

Keywords: British romanticism, letters, feminism, travel writing

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Authors: Elisa Santana-Monagas, Juan L. Núñez, Jaime León, Samuel Falcón, Celia Fernández, Rocío P. Solís

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Students’ emotional experiences have been a widely discussed theme among researchers, proving a central role on students’ outcomes. Yet, up to now, far too little attention has been paid to teaching practices that negatively relate with students’ negative emotions in the higher education. The present work aims to examine the relationship between teachers’ teaching practices (i.e., students’ evaluations of teaching and autonomy support), the students’ feelings of boredom and agentic engagement and motivation in the higher education context. To do so, the present study incorporates one of the most popular tools in natural processing language to address students’ evaluations of teaching: sentiment analysis. Whereas most research has focused on the creation of SA models and assessing students’ satisfaction regarding teachers and courses to the author’s best knowledge, no research before has included results from SA into an explanatory model. A total of 225 university students (Mean age = 26.16, SD = 7.4, 78.7 % women) participated in the study. Students were enrolled in degree and masters’ studies at the faculty of Education of a public university of Spain. Data was collected using an online questionnaire students could access through a QR code they completed during a teaching period where the assessed teacher was not present. To assess students’ sentiments towards their teachers’ teaching, we asked them the following open-ended question: “If you had to explain a peer who doesn't know your teacher how he or she communicates in class, what would you tell them?”. Sentiment analysis was performed with Microsoft's pre-trained model. For this study, we relied on the probability of the students answer belonging to the negative category. To assess the reliability of the measure, inter-rater agreement between this NLP tool and one of the researchers, who independently coded all answers, was examined. The average pairwise percent agreement and the Cohen’s kappa were calculated with ReCal2. The agreement reached was of 90.8% and Cohen’s kappa .68, both considered satisfactory. To test the hypothesis relations a structural equation model (SEM) was estimated. Results showed that the model fit indices displayed a good fit to the data; χ² (134) = 351.129, p < .001, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .09, TLI = .91, CFI = .92. Specifically, results show that boredom was negatively predicted by autonomy support practices (β = -.47[-.61, -.33]), whereas for the negative sentiment extracted from SET, this relation was positive (β = .23[.16, .30]). In other words, when students’ opinion towards their instructors’ teaching practices was negative, it was more likely for them to feel bored. Regarding the relations among boredom and student outcomes, results showed a negative predictive value of boredom on students’ motivation to study (β = -.46[-.63, -.29]) and agentic engagement (β = -.24[-.33, -.15]). Altogether, results show a promising future for sentiment analysis techniques in the field of education as they proved the usefulness of this tool when evaluating relations among teaching practices and student outcomes.

Keywords: sentiment analysis, boredom, motivation, agentic engagement

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Authors: Juliet Sorensen, Anna Maitland

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Introduction: Characterized by lack of water and sanitation, food insecurity, and low access to hospitals and clinics, informal urban settlements in Lagos, Nigeria have very poor health outcomes. With little education and a general inability to demand basic rights, these communities are often disempowered and isolated from understanding, claiming, or owning their health needs. Utilizing community-based participatory research characterized by interdisciplinary, cross-cultural partnerships, evidence-based assessments, and both primary and secondary source research, a holistic health education and advocacy program was developed in Lagos to address health barriers for targeted communities. This includes a first of its kind guide formulated to teach community-based health educators how to transmit health information to low-literacy Nigerian audiences while supporting behavior change models and social support mechanisms. This paper discusses the interdisciplinary contributions to developing a health education program while also looking at the need for greater beneficiary ownership and implementation of health justice and access. Methods: In March 2016, an interdisciplinary group of medical, legal, and business graduate students and faculty from Northwestern University conduced a Health Needs Assessment (HNA) in Lagos with a partner and a local non-governmental organization. The HNA revealed that members of informal urban communities in Lagos were lacking basic health literacy, but desired to remedy this lacuna. Further, the HNA revealed that even where the government mandates specific services, many vulnerable populations are unable to access these services. The HNA concluded that a program focused on education, advocacy, and organizing around anatomy, maternal and sexual health, infectious disease and malaria, HIV/AIDS, emergency care, and water and sanitation would respond to stated needs while also building capacity in communities to address health barriers. Results: Based on the HNA, including both primary and secondary source research on integrated health education approaches and behavior change models and responsive, adaptive material development, a holistic program was developed for the Lagos partners and first implemented in November 2016. This program trained community-nominated health educators in adult, low-literacy, knowledge exchange approaches, utilizing information identified by communities as a priority. After a second training in March 2017, these educators will teach community-based groups and will support and facilitate behavior change models and peer-support methods around basic issues like hand washing and disease transmission. They will be supported by community paralegals who will help ensure that newly trained community groups can act on education around access, such as receiving free vaccinations, maternal health care, and HIV/AIDS medicines. Materials will continue to be updated as needs and issues arise, with a focus on identifying best practices around health improvements that can be shared across these partner communities. Conclusion: These materials are the first of their kind, and address a void of health information and understanding pervasive in informal-urban Lagos communities. Initial feedback indicates high levels of commitment and interest, as well as investment by communities in these materials, largely because they are responsive, targeted, and build community capacity. This methodology is an important step in dignity-based health justice solutions, albeit in the process of refinement.

Keywords: community health educators, interdisciplinary and cross cultural partnerships, health justice and access, Nigeria

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Authors: Daniel Puciato, Piotr Oleśniewicz, Julita Markiewicz-Patkowska, Krzysztof Widawski, Michał Rozpara, Władysław Mynarski, Agnieszka Gawlik, Małgorzata Dębska, Soňa Jandová

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Physical activity as a part of people’s everyday life reduces the risk of many diseases, including those induced by lifestyle, e.g. obesity, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, coronary heart disease, degenerative arthritis, and certain types of cancer. That refers particularly to professionally active people, including the early senior group working on non-manual positions. The aim of the study is to evaluate the relationship between physical activity and the socio-economic status of non-manual workers from Wroclaw—one of the biggest cities in Poland, a model setting for such investigations in this part of Europe. The crucial problem in the research is to find out the percentage of respondents who meet the health-related recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the volume, frequency, and intensity of physical activity, as well as to establish if the most important socio-economic factors, such as gender, age, education, marital status, per capita income, savings and debt, determine the compliance with the WHO physical activity recommendations. During the research, conducted in 2013, 1,170 people (611 women and 559 men) aged 21–60 years were examined. A diagnostic poll method was applied to collect the data. Physical activity was measured with the use of the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire with extended socio-demographic questions, i.e. concerning gender, age, education, marital status, income, savings or debts. To evaluate the relationship between physical activity and selected socio-economic factors, logistic regression was used (odds ratio statistics). Statistical inference was conducted on the adopted ex ante probability level of p<0.05. The majority of respondents met the volume of physical effort recommended for health benefits. It was particularly noticeable in the case of the examined men. The probability of compliance with the WHO physical activity recommendations was highest for workers aged 21–30 years with secondary or higher education who were single, received highest incomes and had savings. The results indicate the relations between physical activity and socio-economic status in the examined women and men. People with lower socio-economic status (e.g. manual workers) are physically active primarily at work, whereas those better educated and wealthier implement physical effort primarily in their leisure time. Among the investigated subjects, the youngest group of non-manual workers have the best chances to meet the WHO standards of physical activity. The study also confirms that secondary education has a positive effect on the public awareness on the role of physical activity in human life. In general, the analysis of the research indicates that there is a relationship between physical activity and some socio-economic factors of the respondents, such as gender, age, education, marital status, income per capita, and the possession of savings. Although the obtained results cannot be applied for the general population, they show some important trends that will be verified in subsequent studies conducted by the authors of the paper.

Keywords: IPAQ, nonmanual workers, physical activity, socioeconomic factors, WHO

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Authors: Eny Syatriana

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English proficiency of Indonesian secondary school students is below standard. The low proficiency may come from poor teaching materials that do not meet the students’ need. The main objective for English teachers is to improve the English proficiency of the students. The purpose of this study is to explore the application Mapping, Practicing, Using (MPU) strategy with Instructional Materials Based on the School Curriculum toward the English achievement of Indonesian EFL Students. This paper is part my dissertation entitles 'Designing instructional materials for secondary school students based on the school curriculum' consisting of need analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation; this paper discusses need analysis and creates a model of creating instructional materials through deep discussion among teachers of secondary schools. The subject consisted of six English teachers and students of three classes at three different secondary schools in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Pretest and posttest design were administered to see the effectiveness of the MPU strategy. Questionnaires were administered to see the teachers and students’ perception toward the instructional materials. The result indicates that the MPU strategy is effective in improving the English achievement; instructional materials with different strategies improve the English achievement of the students. Both teachers and students argue that the presented instructional materials are effective to be used in the teaching and learning process to increase the English proficiency of the students.

Keywords: proficiency, development, English for secondary school students, instructional materials

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Authors: Ahmed Mateen, Zhu Qingsheng, Muhammad Awais, Muhammad Yahya Saeed

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This paper targets the rising factor of entrepreneurship innovation, which lacks in Pakistan as compared to the other countries or the regions like China, India, and Malaysia, etc. This is an exploratory and explanatory study. Major aspects have identified as the direction for the policymakers while highlighting the issues in true spirit. IT needs to be considered not only as a technology but also as itself growing as a new community. IT management processes are complex and broad, so generally requires extensive attention to the collective aspects of human variables, capital and technology. In addition, projects tend to have a special set of critical success factors, and if these are processed and given attention, it will improve the chances of successful implementation. This is only possible with state of the art intelligent decision support systems and accumulating IT staff to some extent in decision processes. This paper explores this issue carefully and discusses six issues to observe the implemented strength and possible enhancement.

Keywords: security and defense forces, IT-incentives, big IT-players, IT-entrepreneurial-culture

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Authors: Binu Sahayam

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HIV/AIDS epidemic is in its third decade and has become a virulent disease that threatens the world population. Many countless efforts had been made yet this has become a social and developmental concern. According to UNAIDS 2013 Report, In India around 2.4 million people are currently living with HIV and third in the infection rate. As every country is facing this health issue, this has become a social and developmental concern for India. In country like India, open discussion on sex and sexuality is not possible due to its conventional culture. Educational institution like schools and colleges can create awareness on sex education, life skill education, information on HIV and STD which is lacking. It is very clear that preventive knowledge remains low and this leads to increase in the HIV/AIDS infection rate. HIV/AIDS is a disease which is not curable but preventable, keeping this in mind religious leaders of various have come forward in addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS using various social strategies. The study has been focused on three main India religious teachings Hinduism, Christianity and Islam in addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS and its possible intervention in dealing with HIV/AIDS prevention. The study is important because it highlights the health issues, stigma discrimination, psychological disturbances and insecurity faced by the infected and affected persons. Therefore, this study privileges the role of religious leadership in the efforts and processes of preventing HIV/AIDS, caring and providing support to People living with HIV/AIDS and argues that intervention of religious leadership is an effective measure to confront many of the barriers associated with HIV/AIDS.

Keywords: HIV and AIDS, STDs, religion and religious organisation

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Authors: N. Ahmadi, H. Yousefnia, A. Bahrami-Samani

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Chitosan is a natural and biodegradable polysaccharide with special characteristic for application in intracavital therapy. 166Ho-chitosan has been reported for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and RSV with promising results. The aim of this study was to prepare 186/188Re-chitosan for radiosynovectomy purposes and investigate the probability of its leakage from the knee joint. 186/188Re was produced by neutron irradiation of the natural rhenium in a research reactor. Chemical processing was performed to obtain (186/188Re)-NaReO4- according to the IAEA manual. A stock solution of chitosan was prepared by dissolving in 1 % acetic acid aqueous solution (10 mg/mL). 1.5 mL of this stock solution was added to the vial containing the activity and the mixture was stirred for 5 min in the room temperature. The radiochemical purity of the complex was checked by the ITLC method, showing the purity of higher than 98%. Distribution of the radiolabeled complex was determined after intra-articular injection into the knees of rats. Excellent retention was observed in the joint with approximately no activity in the other organs.

Keywords: chitosan, leakage, radiosynovectomy, rhenium

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Authors: Lubabatu Sada Sodangi

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The rapid growth in exchange and accessibility of information via the internet makes many organisations acquire data on their own operation. The aim of data mining is to analyse the different behaviour of a dataset using observation. Although, the subset of the dataset being analysed may not display all the behaviours and relationships of the entire data and, therefore, may not represent other parts that exist in the dataset. There is a range of techniques used in data mining to determine the hidden or unknown information in datasets. In this paper, the performance of two algorithms Chi-Square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) and multilayer perceptron (MLP) would be matched using an Adult dataset to find out the percentage of an/the adults that earn > 50k and those that earn <= 50k per year. The two algorithms were studied and compared using IBM SPSS statistics software. The result for CHAID shows that the most important predictors are relationship and education. The algorithm shows that those are married (husband) and have qualification: Bachelor, Masters, Doctorate or Prof-school whose their age is > 41<57 earn > 50k. Also, multilayer perceptron displays marital status and capital gain as the most important predictors of the income. It also shows that individuals that their capital gain is less than 6,849 and are single, separated or widow, earn <= 50K, whereas individuals with their capital gain is > 6,849, work > 35 hrs/wk, and > 27yrs their income will be > 50k. By comparing the two algorithms, it is observed that both algorithms are reliable but there is strong reliability in CHAID which clearly shows that relation and education contribute to the prediction as displayed in the data visualisation.

Keywords: data mining, CHAID, multi-layer perceptron, SPSS, Adult dataset

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Authors: Linda Dusman, Linda Baker

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The Bearman Study of Audience Engagement examined the potential for real-time music education during online symphony orchestra concerts. It follows on the promising results of a preliminary study of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) education during live concerts, funded by the National Science Foundation with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. For the Bearman Study, audience groups were recruited to attend two previously recorded concerts of the National Orchestral Institute (NOI) in 2020 or the Utah Symphony in 2021. They used a smartphone app called EnCue to present real-time program notes about the music being performed. Short notes along with visual information (photos and score fragments) were designed to provide historical, cultural, biographical, and theoretical information at specific moments in the music where that information would be most pertinent, generally spaced 2-3 minutes apart to avoid distraction. The music performed included Dvorak Symphony No. 8 and Mahler Symphony No. 5 at NOI, and Mendelssohn Scottish Symphony and Richard Strauss Metamorphosen with the Utah Symphony, all standard repertoire for symphony orchestras. During each phase of the study (2020 and 2021), participants were randomly assigned to use the app to view program notes during the first concert or to use the app during the second concert. A total of 139 participants (67 in 2020 and 72 in 2021) completed three online questionnaires, one before attending the first concert, one immediately after the concert, and the third immediately after the second concert. Questionnaires assessed demographic background, expertise in music, engagement during the concert, learning of content about the composers and the symphonies, and interest in the future use of the app. In both phases of the study, participants demonstrated that they learned content presented on the app, evidenced by the fact that their multiple-choice test scores were significantly higher when they used the app than when they did not. In addition, most participants indicated that using the app enriched their experience of the concert. Overall, they were very positive about their experience using the app for real-time learning and they expressed interest in using it in the future at both live and streaming concerts. Results confirmed that informal real-time learning during concerts is possible and can generate enhanced engagement and interest in classical music.

Keywords: audience engagement, informal education, music technology, real-time learning

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Authors: Fatma Hsain Ali Suliman

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Personality plays an important role in acquiring a second language. For second language learners to make maximum progress with their own learning styles, their individual differences must be recognized and attended to. Personality is considered to be a pattern of unique characteristics that give a person’s behavior a kind of consistency and individuality. Therefore, the enclosed study, which is entitled “The Role of Personality in Second language Acquisition: Extroversion and Introversion”, tends to shed light on the relationship between learners’ personalities and second language acquisition process. In other words, it aims at drawing attention to how individual differences of students as being extroverts or introverts could affect the language acquisition process. As a literature review, this paper discusses the results of some studies concerning this issue as well as the point views of researchers and scholars who have focused on the effect of extrovert and introvert personality on acquiring a second language. To accomplish the goals of this study, which is divided into 5 chapters including introduction, review of related literature, research method and design, results and discussions and conclusions and recommendations, 20 students of English Department, Faculty of Arts, Misurata University, Libya were handed out a questionnaire to figure out the effect of their personalities on the learning process. Finally, to be more sure about the role of personality in a second language acquisition process, the same students who were given the questionnaire were observed in their ESL classes.

Keywords: second language acquisition, personality, extroversion, introversion, individual differences, language learning strategy, personality factors, psycho linguistics

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Authors: Okunola Solomon Olufemi

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The study focused on the contribution of urban agriculture to the livelihood of 107 respondents in Kwara State of Nigeria. The study employed structured questionnaire to collect relevant data for the study while descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution and percentage were employed to analyses the objectives. Most respondents (82.9%), were one time or the other in a married state and they had formal education (80.4%) while many of the lot (58.9%) had superior education ranging from OND to Ph.D level. These farmers were either retired government workers or those trying to argument their family income or trying to be food sufficient. Most of the respondents (77.4%) had a farm size of less than or equal to 3 hectares showing that most the urban farmers were smallholders which might be as a result of stiff completion for land resource. Most of the respondents had a relatively large family size of 6 and above members. Most respondents used family labor (59.8%). Respondents in the study area also made use of the cooperatives and daily contributions for loanable funds, while few respondents utilized the formal sector. .Urban agriculture accounted for 84.4% of the Livelihood outcomes of the respondents. While non-farming activities contributed 17.6%.Most of the respondents (31.8%) participated in non-farming activities to generate extra income while their major constraints were shortage of land both in term of access and tenure (34.1%), limited access to resource and agricultural inputs (29.3%), and prohibitive urban policies and regulation (23.2%).

Keywords: poverty throes, urban agriculture, rigors of farming, non-farming, married state

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Authors: Olga A. Gnatyuk

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The article is devoted to the phenomenon of interference that occurs in the case of the Russian-Spanish language contact. The questions of the definition of the term and levels, as well as prerequisites of interference occurrence, are considered. Interference, which is an essential part of bilingualism, may become apparent at different linguistic levels. Interference is especially evident in oral speech. The article reviews some examples of grammatical interference in Russian-Spanish bilingualism of Russian immigrants living in Spain. According to the results of the research, some cases of mother-tongue interference in Russian-Speaking Spanish language learners’ speech were revealed. Special attention is paid to such key spheres of grammatical interference as articles, personal pronouns, gender, and number of nouns. In the research, the drop of a link-verb, as well as its usage in some incorrect form, are observed in Russian immigrants’ speech. Conclusions are drawn that in the Spanish language, interference errors appear because of a consequence of both the absence in the Russian language of certain phenomena and categories of the Spanish language and the discrepancy of the linguistic systems of the two languages.

Keywords: bilingualism, interference, grammatical interference, Russian language, Spanish language

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