Search results for: prospective memory

Authors: Dalila Lino

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Practicum is a central dimension of teacher education programs. Learning how to teach is, in effect, a complex process that integrates periods of observation, experimentation, reflection, planning, and evaluation in a real context of practices, providing opportunities for prospective teachers to understand the various dimensions of education and to implement the knowledge built over the theoretical courses they have taken. At the pre-service training of early childhood teachers, specialized guidance and in particular pedagogical supervision assumes a key role in the professional development of students in training. The main goal of this study is to describe and analyze the supervision process that occurs during the practicum of preschool education master programs in Portugal. The objectives of the study are: (i) to describe the cooperative process of professional development experienced by student teachers during the practicum; (ii) to identify the strengths and weaknesses of supervision process; (iii) to identify the supervision styles used by university supervisors and cooperating teachers. The methodology used is the mix-method research and data was collected through semi-structured interviews and online questionnaires. The participants are newly graduated Portuguese early childhood teachers, university supervisors and cooperating teachers. The results reveal gaps in the specialized training of cooperating teachers and university supervisors, a large number of trainees per supervisor, which makes it difficult to support students, and those interpersonal relationships between university supervisors and students and/or cooperating teachers and students interfere in the development of the supervisory processes. The study highlights the need to invest in the specialized training of university supervisors and cooperating teachers to create better opportunities to support the professional development of prospective teachers.

Keywords: mentoring, pedagogical supervision, practicum, preschool teacher education

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Authors: Fouzia Ajmal

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Global Citizenship Education (GCED) could prove to be the best solution to prevent violent extremism as it will sustain a respect for all and build up a feeling of having a place with humankind. To meet the target 4.7 of sustainable development goals, it is important to focus on global citizenship education at all levels of education in general and in pre-service teacher education in particular so that the message and practices reach the young masses. The pre-service education is imperative to develop knowledge, skills and disposition of prospective teachers. The current study was conducted to investigate the integration of GCED in pre-service teacher education curriculum of Pakistan. The study was delimited to B.Ed (hons) Elementary Education programme. The curriculum of B.Ed Elementary developed by Higher Education Commission was analyzed through Curriculum Alignment Matrix. 31 course outlines were analyzed, and percentage was used to analyze the level of integration of GCED in courses. The analyses depicted that the concepts of civic sense, tolerance, duties and rights of citizens and fundamental rights of humans are partially aligned in a few of the courses. The tolerance, active citizenship, and respect for cultural diversity and religious harmony are evident in Pakistan Studies and teaching of social studies courses. The relevant books are also mentioned as resources in these courses. The intercultural understanding is not very evident while globalization is mentioned in a few courses. It is recommended that a deliberate effort may be made to integrate concepts of Global Citizenship Education so as to enable the prospective teachers in developing necessary skills to play their active role in promoting peace and building resilience to extremism in elementary school students.

Keywords: curriculum analysis, global citizenship education, preservice teacher education, resilience building

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Authors: Wen-Shu Lai, Yi-Ting Wang

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss and clarify what are the essences of Colombian-born sculptor Doris Salcedo’s works. Under the frameworks of Buber’s dialogical philosophy of the “I-Thou relation” and Zurmuehlen’s philosophy of “Art as Presence” within the context of art praxis, Salcedo’s selected works are analyzed and interpreted. Salcedo’s sculptures and installations have expressed her concerns of the collective and personal memories within the context of Colombia’s violent, historical and political conflicts, especially the trauma inscribed onto her fellow people. Salcedo tried to rescue that memory though her work does not directly represent the violent incidents happened in Colombia. They are indirect portraits of the disappeared, the victims, and the lack of identity. What the viewers see is something in between vanishing and emergence, personal and collective. The work, the artist and the viewer are witnesses and also survivors of Columbia’s violent incidents. On the site, the work, the disappeared and the witness-survivors encounter each other, then mourning, memory and dialogue are unfolded, brought to present. Firstly, it is the power of encounter that allows the viewer-witness to recognize the effaced victims, repressive violence, and the profound mourning for the loss, then restore their existence through dialogues and bring them to present. In her sculptures and installations, the displacement of the fragments and the incoherent sites make these daily household objects become unfamiliar, arose feelings of uncanniness of the viewer. The feelings of alienation, confusion, displacement bring the viewer to here and now. The more one studies these objects and sites, the more hidden details begin to appear. And the more one looks at the details, the more absent memories or stories reveals themselves and becomes present. Salcedo’s work is about loss, displacement and alienation caused by violence. She expressed that words are no longer possible when one deals with violence. However, her installation translates the violence, memory, and loss of beloved ones into a place of dialogue, in which the visitors can immerse themselves in a twilight zone between knowing and not knowing, remembering and forgetting. The spaces are the sites or non-sites inhabited by the remains or traces of the victims, the wonders of the survivor-witnesses where they join together through encounter, remain present to others through genuine dialogue. In the moment, the past memory and the ongoing life merge, accept each other, and reconcile. Salcedo reconfigures the silent violence and repressive history in Colombia and transforms them into sites and installations. The victims, the viewer and the artist join together while contemplating and sharing the human situation of silent repression. In the moment of contemplating, a dialogue, spoken or not, occurs in the specific sites. People have become aware and present, and mutual understanding has achieved. This research concludes that encounter, presence and dialogue are the three essences embedded in Salcedo’s works.

Keywords: dialogue, Doris Salcedo, encounter, presence

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Authors: Ferreira RC, Simons HZ, Thompson WS, Cutler AJ, Dopico XC, Smyth DJ, Mashar M, Schuilenburg H, Walker NM, Dunger DB, Wallace C, Todd JA, Wicker LS, Pekalski ML

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Type 1 diabetes is caused by autoimmune destruction of insulin-secreting beta cells in the pancreas. T cells are known to play an important role in this immune-mediated destruction; however, there is no general consensus regarding alterations in cytokine production or T cell subsets in peripheral blood of patients with type 1 diabetes. Using polychromatic flow cytometry of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), we assessed production of the proinflammatory cytokines IL-21, IFN-γ and IL-17 by memory CD4 T effector (Teff) cells in 69 patients with type 1 diabetes and 61 healthy donors. We found a 21.9% (95% CI 5.8, 40.2; p = 3.9 × 10(-3)) higher frequency of IL-21(+) CD45RA(-) memory CD4(+) Teffs in patients with type 1 diabetes (geometric mean 5.92% [95% CI 5.44, 6.44]) compared with healthy donors (geometric mean 4.88% [95% CI 4.33, 5.50]). In a separate cohort of 30 patients with type 1 diabetes and 32 healthy donors, we assessed the frequency of circulating T follicular helper (Tfh) cells in whole blood. Consistent with the increased production of IL-21, we also found a 14.9% increase in circulating Tfh cells in the patients with type 1 diabetes (95% CI 2.9, 26.9; p = 0.016). Analysis of IL-21 production by PBMCs from a subset of 46 of the 62 donors immunophenotyped for Tfh showed that frequency of Tfh cells was associated with the frequency of IL-21+ cells (r2 = 0.174, p = 0.004). These results indicate that increased IL-21 production is likely to be an aetiological factor in the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes that could be considered as a potential therapeutic target.

Keywords: T follicular helper cell, IL-21, IL-17, type 1 diabetes

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Authors: Yuh-Jen Wu, Chun-Min Lin

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Homophonic words are common in Mandarin Chinese which belongs to the tonal language family. Using homophonic cues to study foreign languages is one of the learning techniques of mnemonics that can aid the retention and retrieval of information in the human memory. When learning difficult foreign words, some learners transpose them with words in a language they are familiar with to build an association and strengthen working memory. These phonological clues are beneficial means for novice language learners. In the classroom, if mnemonic skills are used at the appropriate time in the instructional sequence, it may achieve their maximum effectiveness. For Chinese-speaking students, proper use of Chinese-English homophonic word pairs may help them learn difficult vocabulary. In this study, a database program is developed by employing Visual Basic. The database contains two corpora, one with Chinese lexical items and the other with English ones. The Chinese corpus contains 59,053 Chinese words that were collected by a web crawler. The pronunciations of this group of words are compared with words in an English corpus based on WordNet, a lexical database for the English language. Words in both databases with similar pronunciation chunks and batches are detected. A total of approximately 1,000 Chinese lexical items are located in the preliminary comparison. These homophonic word pairs can serve as a valuable tool to assist Chinese-speaking students in learning and memorizing new English vocabulary.

Keywords: Chinese, corpus, English, homophonic words, vocabulary

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Authors: Pavel Svoboda, Oldřich Müller

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The paper contains a screening of the opinions of helping professional workers working in a home for seniors with individuals with neurocognitive disorders and compares them with the opinions of a younger generation of students who are just preparing for this work. The authors carried out a comparative questionnaire survey with both target groups, focusing on the analysis and comparison of possible differences in their knowledge in the field of care for elderly people with neurocognitive disorders. Specifically, they focused on knowledge and experience with approaches, methods and tools applicable within the framework of music therapy interventions, as they are understood in practice in comparison with the theoretical knowledge of secondary school students focused on social work. The questionnaire was mainly aimed at assessing the knowledge of the possibilities of effective memory stimulation of the elderly and their communication skills using the means of music. The conducted investigation was based on the research of studies dealing with so-called non-pharmacological approaches to the given clientele; for professional caregivers, it followed music therapy lessons, which the authors regularly implemented from the beginning of 2022. Its results will, among other things, serve as the basis for an upcoming study with a scoping design review.

Keywords: neurocognitive disorders, seniors, music therapy intervention, melody, rhythm, text, memory stimulation, communication skills

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Authors: Leah Lee

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This paper examines the correlation between deep learning models and emotions with noises to see whether or not noises mask emotions. The deep learning models used are plain convolutional neural networks (CNN), auto-encoder, long short-term memory (LSTM), and Visual Geometry Group-16 (VGG-16). Emotion datasets used are Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS), Crowd-sourced Emotional Multimodal Actors Dataset (CREMA-D), Toronto Emotional Speech Set (TESS), and Surrey Audio-Visual Expressed Emotion (SAVEE). To make it four times bigger, audio set files, stretch, and pitch augmentations are utilized. From the augmented datasets, five different features are extracted for inputs of the models. There are eight different emotions to be classified. Noise variations are white noise, dog barking, and cough sounds. The variation in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 0, 20, and 40. In summation, per a deep learning model, nine different sets with noise and SNR variations and just augmented audio files without any noises will be used in the experiment. To compare the results of the deep learning models, the accuracy and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) are checked.

Keywords: auto-encoder, convolutional neural networks, long short-term memory, speech emotion recognition, visual geometry group-16

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Authors: Vasoontara Yiengprugsawan, Sam-ang Seubsman

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As Thais live longer, caregivers will become even more important to social and healthcare systems. Commonly reported in many low and middle‐income countries in Asia, formal social welfare services to support caregivers are lacking and informal family support will be required for all levels of care. In 2005, 87,151 open‐university adults were recruited to the Thai Cohort Study, with the majority aged between 25 and 39 years, and residing nationwide. At the 4‐year follow up in 2009 (n=60569) and the 8‐year follow‐up in 2013 (n=42785), prospective cohort participants were asked if they provide care for chronically ill, disabled, or frail family members. Among Thai cohort members reporting between 2009 and 2013, approximately 56% were not caregivers in either year, 24.5% reported providing care in 2009 only, 8.6% in 2013 only, and 10.6% reported providing care at both time points. Caregivers in the cohort reported providing financial support, help with shopping, emotional support, and assist with daily activities. Kessler 6 psychological distress scale, measured in both 2009 and 2013, was used as the primary outcome of a relationship between caregiving status and mental health. Using multivariate logistic regression, our 4‐year longitudinal findings revealed that cohort members who reported providing care at both time points were 1.4 to 1.6 times more likely to report high psychological distress than non‐caregivers, after accounting for potential covariates. With increasing needs for informal care provided by family members, the future health and social welfare system will need to provide adequate support to caregivers (e.g., respite care, clinical support and information for the family, and awareness of mental health among caregivers).

Keywords: family caregivers, psychological distress, prospective cohort, longitudinal study, Thailand

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Authors: L. A. Toro, N. Prieto, J. J. Vargas

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There are many control charts for monitoring mean and variance. Among these, the X y R, X y S, S2 Hotteling and Shewhart control charts, for mentioning some, are widely used for monitoring mean a variance in industrial processes. In particular, the Shewhart charts are based on the information about the process contained in the current observation only and ignore any information given by the entire sequence of points. Moreover, that the Shewhart chart is a control chart without memory. Consequently, Shewhart control charts are found to be less sensitive in detecting smaller shifts, particularly smaller than 1.5 times of the standard deviation. These kind of small shifts are important in many industrial applications. In this study and effective alternative to Shewhart control chart was implemented. In case of univariate process an Exponentially Moving Average (EWMA) control chart was developed and Multivariate Exponentially Moving Average (MEWMA) control chart in case of multivariate process. Both of these charts were based on memory and perform better that Shewhart chart while detecting smaller shifts. In these charts, information the past sample is cumulated up the current sample and then the decision about the process control is taken. The mentioned characteristic of EWMA and MEWMA charts, are of the paramount importance when it is necessary to control industrial process, because it is possible to correct or predict problems in the processes before they come to a dangerous limit.

Keywords: control charts, multivariate exponentially moving average (MEWMA), exponentially moving average (EWMA), industrial control process

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Authors: Regis Pochon, Nicolas Stefaniak, Veronique Baltazart, Pamela Gobin

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Anxiety is known to have an impact on working memory. In reasoning or memory tasks, individuals with anxiety tend to show longer response times and poorer performance. Furthermore, there is a memory bias for negative information in anxiety. Given the crucial role of working memory in lexical learning, anxious students may encounter more difficulties in learning to read and spell. Anxiety could even affect an earlier learning, that is the activation of phonological representations, which are decisive for the learning of reading and writing. The aim of this study is to compare the access to phonological representations of beginning readers and writers according to their level of anxiety, using an auditory lexical decision task. Eighty students of 6- to 9-years-old completed the French version of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale and were then divided into four anxiety groups according to their total score (Low, Median-Low, Median-High and High). Two set of eighty-one stimuli (words and non-words) have been auditory presented to these students by means of a laptop computer. Stimuli words were selected according to their emotional valence (positive, negative, neutral). Students had to decide as quickly and accurately as possible whether the presented stimulus was a real word or not (lexical decision). Response times and accuracy were recorded automatically on each trial. It was anticipated a) longer response times for the Median-High and High anxiety groups in comparison with the two others groups, b) faster response times for negative-valence words in comparison with positive and neutral-valence words only for the Median-High and High anxiety groups, c) lower response accuracy for Median-High and High anxiety groups in comparison with the two others groups, d) better response accuracy for negative-valence words in comparison with positive and neutral-valence words only for the Median-High and High anxiety groups. Concerning the response times, our results showed no difference between the four groups. Furthermore, inside each group, the average response times was very close regardless the emotional valence. Otherwise, group differences appear when considering the error rates. Median-High and High anxiety groups made significantly more errors in lexical decision than Median-Low and Low groups. Better response accuracy, however, is not found for negative-valence words in comparison with positive and neutral-valence words in the Median-High and High anxiety groups. Thus, these results showed a lower response accuracy for above-median anxiety groups than below-median groups but without specificity for the negative-valence words. This study suggests that anxiety can negatively impact the lexical processing in young students. Although the lexical processing speed seems preserved, the accuracy of this processing may be altered in students with moderate or high level of anxiety. This finding has important implication for the prevention of reading and spelling difficulties. Indeed, during these learnings, if anxiety affects the access to phonological representations, anxious students could be disturbed when they have to match phonological representations with new orthographic representations, because of less efficient lexical representations. This study should be continued in order to precise the impact of anxiety on basic school learning.

Keywords: anxiety, emotional valence, childhood, lexical access

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Authors: Wai Yan Shih, Sau Man Wong, Wing Chung Chang, Wai Chi Chan

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Background: Late-life depression is associated with significant consequences. Although symptomatic reduction is achievable through pharmacological interventions, older adults are more vulnerable to the side effects than their younger counterparts. In addition, drugs do not address underlying cognitive dysfunctions such as rumination and reduced autobiographical memory specificity (AMS), both shown to be maladaptive coping styles that are associated with a poorer prognosis in depression. Considering how aging is accompanied by cognitive, psychological and physical changes, the interplay of these age-related factors may potentially aggravate and interfere with these depressive cognitive dysfunctions in late-life depression. Special care should, therefore, be drawn to ensure these cognitive dysfunctions are adequately addressed. Aim: This randomized controlled trial aims to examine the effect of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) on depressed older adults, and whether the potential benefits of MBCT are mediated by improvements in rumination and AMS. Method: Fifty-seven participants with an average age of 70 years old were recruited from multiple elderly centers and online mailing lists. Participants were assessed with: (1) Hamilton depression scale, (2) ruminative response scale, (3) autobiographical memory test, (4) mindful attention awareness scale, and (5) Montreal cognitive assessment. Eligible participants with mild to moderate depressive symptoms and normal cognitive functioning were randomly allocated to an 8-week MBCT group or active control group consisting of a low-intensity exercise program and health education. Post-intervention assessments were conducted after the 8-week program. Ethics approval was given by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong/Hospital Authority. Results: Mixed-factorials ANOVAs demonstrated significant time x group interaction effects for depressive symptoms, AMS, and dispositional mindfulness. A marginally significant interaction effect was found for rumination. Simple effect analyses revealed a significant reduction in depressive symptoms for the both the MBCT group (mean difference = 7.1, p = .000), and control group (mean difference = 2.7, p = .023). However, only participants in the MBCT group demonstrated improvements in rumination, AMS, and dispositional mindfulness. Bootstrapping-based mediation analyses showed that the effect of MBCT in alleviating depressive symptoms was only mediated by the reduction in rumination. Conclusions: The findings support the use of MBCT as an effective intervention for depressed older adults, considering the improvements in depressive symptoms, rumination, AMS and dispositional mindfulness despite their age. Reduction in ruminative tendencies plays a major role in the cognitive mechanism of MBCT.

Keywords: mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, depression, older adults, rumination, autobiographical memory specificity

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Authors: Mohamed A. Hammad, Dzul Azri Mohamed Noor, Syed Azhar Syed Sulaiman, Ahmed A. Khamis, Abeer Kharshid, Nor Azizah Aziz

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The effect of statins dose intensity (SDI) on glycemic control in patients with existing diabetes is unclear. Also, there are many contradictory findings were reported in the literature; thus, it is limiting the possibility to draw conclusions. This project was designed to compare the effect of SDI on glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c%) control in outpatients with Type 2 diabetes in the endocrine clinic at Hospital Pulau Pinang, Malaysia, between July 2015 and August 2016. A prospective cohort study was conducted, where records of 345 patients with Type 2 diabetes (Moderate-SDI group 289 patients and high-SDI cohort 56 patients) were reviewed to identify demographics and laboratory tests. The target of glycemic control (HbA1c < 7% for patient < 65 years, and < 8% for patient ≥ 65 years) was estimated, and the results were presented as descriptive statistics. From 289 moderate-SDI cohorts with a mean age of 57.3 ± 12.4 years, only 86 (29.8%) cases were shown to have controlled glycemia, while there were 203 (70.2%) cases with uncontrolled glycemia with confidence interval (CI) of 95% (6.2–10.8). On the other hand, the high-SDI group of 56 patients with Type 2 diabetes with a mean age 57.7±12.4 years is distributed among 11 (19.6%) patients with controlled diabetes, and 45 (80.4%) of them had uncontrolled glycemia, CI: 95% (7.1–11.9). The study has demonstrated that the relative risk (RR) of uncontrolled glycemia in patients with Type 2 diabetes that used high-SDI is 1.15, and the excessive relative risk (ERR) is 15%. The absolute risk (AR) is 10.2%, and the number needed to harm (NNH) is 10. Outpatients with Type 2 diabetes who use high-SDI of statin have a higher risk of uncontrolled glycemia than outpatients who had been treated with a moderate-SDI.

Keywords: cohort study, diabetes control, dose intensity, HbA1c, Malaysia, statin, type 2 diabetes mellitus, uncontrolled glycemia

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Authors: Jaspal Rana

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Oxidative stress has been identified as an underlying cause of ischemia-reperfusion (IR) related cognitive dysfunction and brain damage. Therefore, antioxidant based therapies to treat IR injury are being investigated. Allium cepa L. (onion) is used as culinary medicine and is documented to have marked antioxidant effects. Hence, the present study was designed to evaluate the effect of A. cepa outer scale extract (ACE) against IR induced cognition and biochemical deficit in mice. ACE was prepared by maceration with 70% methanol and fractionated into ethylacetate and aqueous fractions. Bilateral common carotid artery occlusion for 10 min followed by 24 h reperfusion was used to induce cerebral IR injury. Following IR injury, ACE (100 and 200 mg/kg) was administered orally to animals for 7 days once daily. Behavioral outcomes (memory and sensorimotor functions) were evaluated using Morris water maze and neurological severity score. Cerebral infarct size, brain thiobarbituric acid reactive species, reduced glutathione, and superoxide dismutase activity was also determined. Treatment with ACE significantly ameliorated IR mediated deterioration of memory and sensorimotor functions and rise in brain oxidative stress in animals. The results of the present investigation revealed that ACE improved functional outcomes after cerebral IR injury which may be attributed to its antioxidant properties.

Keywords: ischemia-reperfusion, neuroprotective, stroke, antioxidant

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Authors: Zahra Hassani

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Background and Purpose: Poststroke depression (PSD) is one of the complications of a stroke that reduces the patient's chance of recovery, becomes irritable, and changes personality. Cognitive rehabilitation is one of the non-pharmacological methods that improve deficits such as attention, memory, and symptoms of depression. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to evaluate the Efficacy of Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy on Poststroke Depression among Survivors of stroke. Method: In this study, a systematic review of the databases Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Elsevier between the years 2015 and 2019 with the keywords cognitive rehabilitation therapy, post-stroke, depression Search is done. In this process, studies that examined the Efficacy of Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy on Poststroke Depression among Survivors of stroke were included in the study. Results: Inclusion criteria were full-text availability, interventional study, and non-review articles. There was a significant difference between the articles in terms of the indices studied, sample number, method of implementation, and so on. A review of studies have shown that cognitive rehabilitation therapy has a significant role in reducing the symptoms of post-stroke depression. The use of these interventions is also effective in improving problem-solving skills, improving memory, and improving attention and concentration. Conclusion: This study emphasizes on the development of efficient and flexible adaptive skills through cognitive processes and its effect on reducing depression in patients after stroke.

Keywords: cognitive therapy, depression, stroke, rehabilitation

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Authors: Mariane G. Tadros, Shahira M. Ezzat, Maha M. Salama, Mohamed A. Farag

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In this study, the in vitro anticholinesterase activity of the volatile oils of both O. basilicum and O. africanum was investigated and both samples showed significant activity. As a result, the major constituents of the two oils were isolated using several column chromatography. Linalool, 1,8-cineol and eugenol were isolated from the volatile oil of O. basilicum and camphor was isolated from the volatile oil of O. africanum. The anticholinesterase activity of the isolated compounds were also evaluated where 1,8-cineol showed the highest inhibitory activity followed by camphor. To confirm these activities, learning and memory enhancing effects were tested in mice. Memory impairment was induced by scopolamine, a cholinergic muscarinic receptor antagonist. Anti-amnesic effects of both volatile oils and their terpenoids were investigated by the passive avoidance task in mice. We also examined their effects on brain acetylcholinesterase activity. Results showed that scopolamine-induced cognitive dysfunction was significantly attenuated by administration of the volatile oils and their terpenoids, eugenol and camphor, in the passive avoidance task and inhibited brain acetylcholinesterase activity. These results suggest that O. basilicum and O. africanum volatile oils can be good candidates for further studies on Alzheimer’s disease via their acetylcholinesterase inhibitory actions.

Keywords: Ocimum baselicum, Ocimum africanum, GC/MS analysis, anticholinesterase

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Authors: Veysel Çelik, Aynur Aker, Ebru Güç

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Developments in information and communication technologies have increased both the speed of producing information and the speed of accessing new information. Accordingly, the daily lives of individuals have started to change. New concepts such as e-mail, e-government, e-school, e-signature have emerged. For this reason, prospective teachers who will be future teachers or school administrators are expected to have a high awareness of digital data security. The aim of this study is to reveal the effect of the digital storytelling technique on the data security awareness of pre-service teachers of computer and instructional technology education departments. For this purpose, participants were selected based on the principle of volunteering among third-grade students studying at the Computer and Instructional Technologies Department of the Faculty of Education at Siirt University. In the research, the pretest/posttest half experimental research model, one of the experimental research models, was used. In this framework, a 6-week lesson plan on digital data security awareness was prepared in accordance with the digital narration technique. Students in the experimental group formed groups of 3-6 people among themselves. The groups were asked to prepare short videos or animations for digital data security awareness. The completed videos were watched and evaluated together with prospective teachers during the evaluation process, which lasted approximately 2 hours. In the research, both quantitative and qualitative data collection tools were used by using the digital data security awareness scale and the semi-structured interview form consisting of open-ended questions developed by the researchers. According to the data obtained, it was seen that the digital storytelling technique was effective in creating data security awareness and creating permanent behavior changes for computer and instructional technology students.

Keywords: digital storytelling, self-regulation, digital data security, teacher candidates, self-efficacy

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Authors: Krzysztof Skiba, Zbigniew Czyz, Ksenia Siadkowska, Piotr Borowiec

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The article presents selected concepts of technologies that use intelligent materials in aircraft in order to improve their performance. Most of the research focuses on solutions that improve the performance of fixed wing aircraft due to related to their previously dominant market share. Recently, the development of the rotorcraft has been intensive, so there are not only helicopters but also gyroplanes and unmanned aerial vehicles using rotors and vertical take-off and landing. There are many different technologies to change a shape of the aircraft or its elements. Piezoelectric, deformable actuator systems can be applied in the system of an active control of vibration dampening in the aircraft tail structure. Wires made of shape memory alloys (SMA) could be used instead of hydraulic cylinders in the rear part of the aircraft flap. The aircraft made of intelligent materials (piezoelectrics and SMA) is one of the NASA projects which provide the possibility of changing a wing shape coefficient by 200%, a wing surface by 50%, and wing deflections by 20 degrees. Active surfaces made of shape memory alloys could be used to control swirls in the flowing stream. An intelligent control system for helicopter blades is a method for the active adaptation of blades to flight conditions and the reduction of vibrations caused by the rotor. Shape memory alloys are capable of recovering their pre-programmed shapes. They are divided into three groups: nickel-titanium-based, copper-based, and ferromagnetic. Due to the strongest shape memory effect and the best vibration damping ability, a Ni-Ti alloy is the most commercially important. The subject of this work was to prepare a conceptual design of a rotor blade with SMA actuators. The scope of work included 3D design of the supporting rotor blade, 3D design of beams enabling to change the geometry by changing the angle of rotation and FEM (Finite Element Method) analysis. The FEM analysis was performed using NX 12 software in the Pre/Post module, which includes extended finite element modeling tools and visualizations of the obtained results. Calculations are presented for two versions of the blade girders. For FEM analysis, three types of materials were used for comparison purposes (ABS, aluminium alloy 7057, steel C45). The analysis of internal stresses and extreme displacements of crossbars edges was carried out. The internal stresses in all materials were close to the yield point in the solution of girder no. 1. For girder no. 2 solution, the value of stresses decreased by about 45%. As a result of the displacement analysis, it was found that the best solution was the ABS girder no. 1. The displacement of about 0.5 mm was obtained, which resulted in turning the crossbars (upper and lower) by an angle equal to 3.59 degrees. This is the largest deviation of all the tests. The smallest deviation was obtained for beam no. 2 made of steel. The displacement value of the second girder solution was approximately 30% lower than the first solution. Acknowledgement: This work has been financed by the Polish National Centre for Research and Development under the LIDER program, Grant Agreement No. LIDER/45/0177/L-9/17/NCBR/2018.

Keywords: aircraft, helicopters, shape memory alloy, SMA, smart material, unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV

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Authors: Panagiota A. Kotsoni, George S. Ypsilandis

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Learning an L2 is a demanding process for all students and in particular for those with learning disabilities (LD) who demonstrate an inability to catch up with their classmates’ progress in a given period of time. This area of study, i.e. examining children with learning disabilities in L2 has not (yet) attracted the growing interest that is registered in L1 and thus remains comparatively neglected. It is this scientific field that this study wishes to contribute to. The longitudinal purpose of this study is to locate effective Supportive Feedback Strategies (SFS) and add to the quality of learning in second language vocabulary in both typically developing (TD) and LD children. Specifically, this study aims at investigating and comparing the performance of TD with LD children on two different types of SFSs related to vocabulary short and long-term retention. In this study two different SFSs have been examined to a total of ten (10) unknown vocabulary items. Both strategies provided morphosyntactic clarifications upon new contextualized vocabulary items. The traditional SFS (direct) provided the information only in one hypertext page with a selection on the relevant item. The experimental SFS (engaging) provided the exact same split information in three successive hypertext pages in the form of a hybrid dialogue asking from the subjects to move on to the next page by selecting the relevant link. It was hypothesized that this way the subjects would engage in their own learning process by actively asking for more information which would further lead to their better retention. The participants were fifty-two (52) foreign language learners (33 TD and 19 LD) aged from 9 to 12, attending an English language school at the level of A1 (CEFR). The design of the study followed a typical pre-post-post test procedure after an hour and after a week. The results indicated statistically significant group differences with TD children performing significantly better than the LD group in both short and long-term memory measurements and in both SFSs. As regards the effectiveness of one SFS over another the initial hypothesis was not supported by the evidence as the traditional SFS was more effective compared to the experimental one in both TD and LD children. This difference proved to be statistically significant only in the long-term memory measurement and only in the TD group. It may be concluded that the human brain seems to adapt to different SFS although it shows a small preference when information is provided in a direct manner.

Keywords: learning disabilities, memory, second/foreign language acquisition, supportive feedback

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Authors: Diptoshi Roy, G. Sreevidya Varma, S. Asokan, Chandasree Das

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Germanium Telluride based quaternary thin film switching devices with composition Ge₁₅In₅Te₅₆Ag_24, have been deposited in sandwich geometry on glass substrate with aluminum as top and bottom electrodes. The bulk glassy form of the said composition is prepared by melt quenching technique. In this technique, appropriate quantity of elements with high purity are taken in a quartz ampoule and sealed under a vacuum of 10^-5 mbar. Then, it is allowed to rotate in a horizontal rotary furnace for 36 hours to ensure homogeneity of the melt. After that, the ampoule is quenched into a mixture of ice - water and NaOH to get the bulk ingot of the sample. The sample is then coated on a glass substrate using flash evaporation technique at a vacuum level of 10^-6 mbar. The XRD report reveals the amorphous nature of the thin film sample and Energy - Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDAX) confirms that the film retains the same chemical composition as that of the base sample. Electrical switching behavior of the device is studied with the help of Keithley (2410^c) source-measure unit interfaced with Lab VIEW 7 (National Instruments). Switching studies, mainly SET (changing the state of the material from amorphous to crystalline) operation is conducted on the thin film form of the sample. This device is found to manifest memory switching as the device remains 'ON' even after the removal of the electric field. Also it is found that amorphous Ge₁₅In₅Te₅₆Ag₂₄ thin film unveils clean memory type of electrical switching behavior which can be justified by the absence of fluctuation in the I-V characteristics. The I-V characteristic also reveals that the switching is faster in this sample as no data points could be seen in the negative resistance region during the transition to on state and this leads to the conclusion of fast phase change during SET process. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) studies are performed on the chosen sample to study the structural changes at the time of switching. SEM studies on the switched Ge₁₅In₅Te₅₆Ag₂₄ sample has shown some morphological changes at the place of switching wherein it can be explained that a conducting crystalline channel is formed in the device when the device switches from high resistance to low resistance state. From these studies it can be concluded that the material may find its application in fast switching Non-Volatile Phase Change Memory (PCM) Devices.

Keywords: Chalcogenides, Vapor deposition, Electrical switching, PCM.

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Authors: Maylen Villamanan Alba

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Latin America is marked by its history: conquest, colonialism, and slavery left deep footprints in most Latin American countries. Also, the past century has been affected by wars, military dictatorships, and political violence, which profoundly influenced Latin American popular culture. Consequently, reminiscences of historical crimes are frequently present in daily life, media, public opinion, and arts. This legacy is remembered in novels, paintings, songs, and films. In fact, Latin American cinema has a trend which refers to the verisimilitude with reality in fiction films. These films about historical violence are narrated as fictional characters, but their stories are based on real historical contexts. Therefore, cultural criminology has considered films as a significant field to understand social representations of violence related to historical crimes. The aim of the present contribution is to analyze the legacy of past and historical memory in social representations of violence in Latin American cinema as a critical approach to historical crimes. This qualitative research is based on content analysis. The sample is seven multi-award winning films of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema of Havana. The films selected are Kamchatka, Argentina (2002); Carandiru, Brazil (2003); Enlightened by fire, Argentina (2005); Post-mortem, Chile (2010); No, Chile (2012) Wakolda; Argentina (2013) and The Clan, Argentina (2015). Cultural criminology highlights that cinema shapes meanings of social practices such as historical crimes. Critical criminology offers a critical theory framework to interpret Latin American cinema. This analysis reveals historical conditions deeply associated with power relationships, policy, and inequality issues. As indicated by this theory, violence is characterized as a structural process based on social asymmetries. These social asymmetries are crossed by social scopes, including institutional and personal dimensions. Thus, institutions of the states are depicted through personal stories of characters involved with human conflicts. Intimacy and social background are linked in the personages who simultaneously perform roles such as soldiers, policemen, professionals or inmates and they are at the same time depict as human beings with family, gender, racial, ideological or generational issues. Social representations of violence related to past legacy are a portrait of historical crimes perpetrated against Latin American citizens. Thereby, they have contributed to political positions, social behaviors, and public opinion. The legacy of these historical crimes suggests a path that should never be taken again. It means past legacy is a reminder, a warning, and a historic lesson for Latin American people. Social representations of violence are permeated by historical memory as denunciation under a critical approach.

Keywords: Latin American cinema, historical memory, social representation, violence

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Authors: Elham Bagheri, Yalda Mohsenzadeh

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Image memorability refers to the phenomenon where certain images are more likely to be remembered by humans than others. It is a quantifiable and intrinsic attribute of an image. Understanding how visual perception and memory interact is important in both cognitive science and artificial intelligence. It reveals the complex processes that support human cognition and helps to improve machine learning algorithms by mimicking the brain's efficient data processing and storage mechanisms. To explore the computational underpinnings of image memorability, this study examines the relationship between an image's reconstruction error, distinctiveness in latent space, and its memorability score. A trained autoencoder is used to replicate human-like memorability assessment inspired by the visual memory game employed in memorability estimations. This study leverages a VGG-based autoencoder that is pre-trained on the vast ImageNet dataset, enabling it to recognize patterns and features that are common to a wide and diverse range of images. An empirical analysis is conducted using the MemCat dataset, which includes 10,000 images from five broad categories: animals, sports, food, landscapes, and vehicles, along with their corresponding memorability scores. The memorability score assigned to each image represents the probability of that image being remembered by participants after a single exposure. The autoencoder is finetuned for one epoch with a batch size of one, attempting to create a scenario similar to human memorability experiments where memorability is quantified by the likelihood of an image being remembered after being seen only once. The reconstruction error, which is quantified as the difference between the original and reconstructed images, serves as a measure of how well the autoencoder has learned to represent the data. The reconstruction error of each image, the error reduction, and its distinctiveness in latent space are calculated and correlated with the memorability score. Distinctiveness is measured as the Euclidean distance between each image's latent representation and its nearest neighbor within the autoencoder's latent space. Different structural and perceptual loss functions are considered to quantify the reconstruction error. The results indicate that there is a strong correlation between the reconstruction error and the distinctiveness of images and their memorability scores. This suggests that images with more unique distinct features that challenge the autoencoder's compressive capacities are inherently more memorable. There is also a negative correlation between the reduction in reconstruction error compared to the autoencoder pre-trained on ImageNet, which suggests that highly memorable images are harder to reconstruct, probably due to having features that are more difficult to learn by the autoencoder. These insights suggest a new pathway for evaluating image memorability, which could potentially impact industries reliant on visual content and mark a step forward in merging the fields of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. The current research opens avenues for utilizing neural representations as instruments for understanding and predicting visual memory.

Keywords: autoencoder, computational vision, image memorability, image reconstruction, memory retention, reconstruction error, visual perception

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Authors: Mohamed A. Hammad, Dzul Azri Mohamed Noor, Syed Azhar Syed Sulaiman, Abeer Kharshid, Nor Azizah Aziz, Tarek M. Elsayed

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Medication safety is always an issue. In 2015, the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau released a statement requesting all statins manufacturers in Malaysia to include the risk of diabetes information in the drug information leaflet in response to United States Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA) report. However, the data regarding this warning label in Malaysia is limited, so there is still some uncertainty whether such risk can also be observed in the Malaysian population or not. The study aims to determine the effect of statins on HbA1c% in type 2 diabetic outpatients in endocrine clinics at Hospital Pulau Pinang between June 2015 and May 2016 in Malaysia. In a prospective cohort study, records of 400 type 2 diabetic patients (control group 104 patients not using statin and treatment group 296 patients using statin) were reviewed to identify demographic criteria and lab tests. The prevalence of glycemic control (Glycated hemoglobin, HbA1C ≤ 7% for patient < 65 years, and < 8% for patient ≥ 65 years) was estimated, according to American Diabetes Association guidelines 2015. The results were presented as descriptive statistics. From 296 patients with Type 2 diabetes using statins cohort with a mean age of 57.52 ± 12.2 years, only 81 (27.4%) cases had controlled glycemia, and 215 (72.6%) had uncontrolled glycemia, CI: 95% (6.3–11.1). While the control group 104 diabetic patients had a mean age 46.1 ± 18 years and distributed among 59 (56.7%) patients with controlled diabetes and 45 (43.3%) cases, had uncontrolled glycemia, CI: 95% (5.2–10.3). The relative risk (RR) of uncontrolled glycemia in diabetic patients used statins was 1.68, and the excessive relative risk (ERR) was 68%. The absolute risk (AR) was 29.3%, and the number needed to harm (NNH) was 4. Diabetic patients using statins have more risk of uncontrolled glycemia than the patients with Type 2 diabetes non-using statins.

Keywords: diabetes mellitus, HbA1c, Malaysia, outpatients, statin, type 2, uncontrolled glycemia

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Authors: Shalu Jain, Anju Bansal, Anup Kumar, Sunita Saxena

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Objectives: The novel TMPRSS2:ERG gene fusion is a common somatic event in prostate cancer that in some studies is linked with a more aggressive disease phenotype. Thus, this study aims to determine whether clinical variables are associated with the presence of TMPRSS2:ERG-fusion gene transcript in Indian patients of prostate cancer. Methods: We evaluated the clinical variables with presence and absence of TMPRSS2:ERG gene fusion in prostate cancer and BPH association of clinical patients. Patients referred for prostate biopsy because of abnormal DRE or/and elevated sPSA were enrolled for this prospective clinical study. TMPRSS2:ERG mRNA copies in samples were quantified using a Taqman chemistry by real time PCR assay in prostate biopsy samples (N=42). The T2:ERG assay detects the gene fusion mRNA isoform TMPRSS2 exon1 to ERG exon4. Results: Histopathology report has confirmed 25 cases as prostate cancer adenocarcinoma (PCa) and 17 patients as benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH). Out of 25 PCa cases, 16 (64%) were T2: ERG fusion positive. All 17 BPH controls were fusion negative. The T2:ERG fusion transcript was exclusively specific for prostate cancer as no case of BPH was detected having T2:ERG fusion, showing 100% specificity. The positive predictive value of fusion marker for prostate cancer is thus 100% and the negative predictive value is 65.3%. The T2:ERG fusion marker is significantly associated with clinical variables like no. of positive cores in prostate biopsy, Gleason score, serum PSA, perineural invasion, perivascular invasion and periprostatic fat involvement. Conclusions: Prostate cancer is a heterogeneous disease that may be defined by molecular subtypes such as the TMPRSS2:ERG fusion. In the present prospective study, the T2:ERG quantitative assay demonstrated high specificity for predicting biopsy outcome; sensitivity was similar to the prevalence of T2:ERG gene fusions in prostate tumors. These data suggest that further improvement in diagnostic accuracy could be achieved using a nomogram that combines T2:ERG with other markers and risk factors for prostate cancer.

Keywords: prostate cancer, genetic rearrangement, TMPRSS2:ERG fusion, clinical variables

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Authors: Linda Jane Wells

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In 1914 Topsy Smith, a woman of the First Nations Arabana tribe arrived in Alice Springs with her seven children and a herd of goats. They had come in from the goldfields at Arltunga where they had been living, and Topsy’s husband, Welsh-born Bill Smith, had recently died. Sergeant Stott, the local policeman and sub-protector of Aborigines for the region, erected a tin shed for Topsy and the children to live in, which became known as the Bungalow for half-castes. Over the years that followed many more children of mixed descent were removed from their families and brought to live at the Bungalow until, a decade later, sixty children were growing up there, cared for predominantly by Topsy Smith; Ida Standley who was the first, white schoolteacher for the town; and Sergeant Stott. The story of the Bungalow is pivotal to the foundations of social relations in the town of Alice Springs and beyond. At the same time, it is little known, recognised or understood locally, let alone more broadly. This is typical of the dominant historic narratives that have emerged out of the Australian colonial project and led to ‘the Great Australian Silence.’ The term was coined by Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner in his 1968 Boyer Lectures, in reference to the omission of the Aboriginal experience from the dominant narratives of the nation’s history. In his lecture, he attributed this silence to something that may have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views which turned, under habit and over time, into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale. This doctoral project, underpinned by a methodology of practice-led research, engages a bricolage of methods including archival research, ethnography, and oral histories to research the bungalow and the context in which it operated. Techniques of fictocriticism, speculative biography, autoethnography, and archival poetics are then engaged to write the research outcomes into a post-colonial, multi-genre work of creative non-fiction that speaks into the silences in the archives. The overall intent of this doctoral work is to explore and demonstrate how techniques of creative non-fiction can be used to rewrite narratives of Australian colonial history that resonate beyond the academy, thus contributing to the bank of post-colonial stories and working towards a more just, honest and inclusive national ‘memory’ and identity.

Keywords: Australian history, collective memory, creative non-fiction, postcolonialism

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Authors: Hanna Teklu Gebregziabher

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Background: A variety of techniques for medical termination of second-trimester pregnancy can be used, but there is no consensus about which is the best. Even though most evidence suggests the combined use of intracervical Foley catheter and vaginal misoprostol is safe, effective, and acceptable method for termination of second-trimester pregnancy, which is comparable to mifepristone-misoprostol combination regimen with lower cost and no additional maternal risks. The use of mifepristone and misoprostol alone with no other procedure is still the most common procedure in different institutions for 2nd-trimester pregnancy. Methods: A cross-sectional comparative prospective study design is employed on women who were admitted for 2nd-trimester medical abortion and medical abortion failed or if there was no change in cervical status after 24 hours of 1st dose of misoprostol. The study was conducted at St. Paulose Hospital Millennium Medical College. A sample of 44 participants in each arm was necessary to give a two-tailed test, a type 1 error of 5%, 80% statistical power, and a 1:1 ratio among groups. Thus, a total of 94 cases, 47 from each arm, were recruited. Data was entered and cleaned by using Epi-info and analyzed using SPSS version 29.0 statistical software and was presented in descriptive and tabular forms. Different variables were cross-tabulated and compared for significant differences and statistical analysis using the chi-square test and independent t-test, to conclude. Result: There was a significant difference between the two groups on induction to expulsion time and number of doses used. The mean ± SD of induction to expulsion time for those used misoprostol alone was 48.09 ± 11.86 and those who used trans-cervical catheter sequentially with misoprostol were 36.7 ±6.772. Conclusion: The use of a trans-cervical Foley catheter in conjunction with misoprostol in a sequential manner is a more effective, safe, and easily accessible procedure. In addition, the cost of utilizing the catheter is less compared to the cost of misoprostol and is readily available. As a good substitute, we advised using Trans-cervical Catether even for medical abortions performed in the second trimester.

Keywords: second trimester, medical abortion, catheter, misoprostol

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Authors: Mohammed AL-Hasani

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The Pandemic COVID-19 altered the daily habits and affected the functional performance of the cities after this crisis leaving remarkable impacts on many metropolises worldwide. It is so obvious that having more densification in the city leads to more threats altering this main approach that was called for achieving sustainable development. The main goal to achieve resiliency in the cities, especially in forcing risks, is to deal with a planning system that is able to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the impacts that had been affected. Many Cities in London, Wuhan, New York, and others worldwide carried different planning approaches and varied in reaction to safeguard the impacts of the pandemic. The cities globally varied from the radiant pattern predicted by Le Corbusier, or having multi urban centers more like the approach of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, or having linear growth or gridiron expansion that was common by Doxiadis, compact pattern, and many other hygiene patterns. These urban patterns shape the spatial distribution and Identify both open and natural spaces with gentrified and gentrifying areas. This crisis paid attention to reassess many planning approaches and examine the existing urban patterns focusing more on the aim of continuity and resiliency in managing the crises within the rapid transformation and the power of market forces. According to that, this paper hypothesized that those urban planning patterns determine the method of reaction in assuring quarantine for the inhabitance and the performance of public services and need to be updated through carrying out an innovative urban management system and adopt further resilience patterns in prospective urban planning approaches. This paper investigates the adaptivity and resiliency of variant urban planning patterns regarding selected cities worldwide that affected by COVID-19 and their role in applying certain management strategies in controlling the pandemic spread, finding out the main potentials that should be included in prospective planning approaches. The examination encompasses the spatial arrangement, blocks definition, plots arrangement, and urban space typologies. This paper aims to investigate the urban patterns to deliberate also the debate between densification as one of the more sustainable planning approaches and disaggregation tendency that was followed after the pandemic by restructuring and managing its application according to the assessment of the spatial distribution and urban patterns. The biggest long-term threat to dense cities proves the need to shift to online working and telecommuting, creating a mixture between using cyber and urban spaces to remobilize the city. Reassessing spatial design and growth, open spaces, urban population density, and public awareness are the main solutions that should be carried out to face the outbreak in our current cities that should be managed from global to tertiary levels and could develop criteria for designing the prospective cities

Keywords: COVID-19, densification, resiliency, urban patterns

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Authors: Lubomir Vecera, Tomas Gabrhelik, Benjamin Tolmaci, Josef Srovnal, Emil Berta, Petr Prasil, Petr Stourac

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Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide and colon cancer is the second most common type of cancer. Currently, there are only a few studies evaluating the effect of postoperative analgesia on the prognosis of patients undergoing radical colon cancer surgery. Postoperative analgesia in patients undergoing colon cancer surgery is usually managed in two ways, either with strong opioids (morphine, piritramide) or epidural analgesia. In our prospective study, we evaluated the effect of postoperative analgesia on the presence of circulating tumor cells or minimal residual disease after colon cancer surgery. A total of 60 patients who underwent radical colon cancer surgery were enrolled in this prospective, randomized, two-center study. Patients were randomized into three groups, namely piritramide, morphine and postoperative epidural analgesia. We evaluated the presence of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and cytokeratin 20 (CK-20) mRNA positive circulating tumor cells in peripheral blood before surgery, immediately after surgery, on postoperative day two and one month after surgery. The presence of circulating tumor cells was assessed by quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). In the priritramide postoperative analgesia group, the presence of CEA mRNA positive cells was significantly lower on a postoperative day two compared to the other groups (p=0.04). The value of CK-20 mRNA positive cells was the same in all groups on all days. In all groups, both types of circulating tumor cells returned to normal levels one month after surgery. Demographic and baseline clinical characteristics were similar in all groups. Compared with morphine and epidural analgesia, piritramide significantly reduces the amount of CEA mRNA positive circulating tumor cells after radical colon cancer surgery.

Keywords: cancer progression, colon cancer, minimal residual disease, perioperative analgesia.

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Authors: Tamar Trop, Michal Roffeh

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One of the emerging trends in construction is installing an exterior “green wall” (GW). GW is an overarching and most common term for various techniques of incorporating greenery into buildings’ vertical elements, mainly facades. This green infrastructure yields numerous benefits for the urban environment, the public, and the buildings’ tenants and users, such as enhancing air quality and biodiversity, managing stormwater runoff, mitigating urban heat island and climate change, improving urban aesthetics and mental wellbeing, improving indoor comfort conditions, and saving energy. Yet, the penetration rate of GWs into the construction market, especially into the housing sector, is still very slow. Furthermore, the research regarding prospective homebuyers’ willingness to purchase and pay a price premium for GW apartments is scarce and does not refer to newly built buildings and specific GW types. This research aims to narrow these knowledge gaps by exploring the willingness of prospective homebuyers in Israel to purchase a newly built apartment with a hydroponic living wall, the size of the PP that they would be willing to pay for it, and the various factors ̶ knowledge-related, concern, economic, and personal ̶ that influence these motivations. A nationwide online survey was conducted among a sample of 514 adults using a structured questionnaire. Findings show that despite low familiarity with GWs and strong concerns about various kinds of nuisance, technical issues, and maintenance costs, potential homebuyers express a relatively high willingness to purchase and pay a significant price premium for such an apartment. The main motivations behind this willingness were found to be potential energy savings and governmental incentives. Study findings can contribute to a better understanding of the maturity of the housing market in Israel to adopt GWs and to better tailor intervention tools for increasing GWs’ uptake among potential homebuyers.

Keywords: green façade, green wall, living wall, willingness to pay

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Authors: Sabitha Rahim

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In the context of teaching vocabulary of English as Foreign Language (EFL), the confluence of memory and retention is one of the most significant factors in students' language acquisition. The progress of students engaged in foreign language acquisition is often stymied by vocabulary attrition, which leads to learners' lack of confidence and motivation. However, among other factors, little research has investigated the importance of neuroplasticity in Foreign Language acquisition and how underused neural pathways lead to the loss of plasticity, thereby affecting the learners’ vocabulary retention and motivation. This research explored the effect of enhancing vocabulary acquisition of EFL students in the Foundation Year at King Abdulaziz University through various methods and neuroplasticity exercises that reinforced their attention, motivation, and engagement. It analyzed the results to determine if stimulating the brain of EFL learners by various physical and mental activities led to the improvement in short and long term memory in vocabulary retention. The main data collection methods were student surveys, assessment records of teachers, student achievement test results, and students' follow-up interviews. A key implication of this research is for the institutions to consider having multiple varieties of student activities promoting brain plasticity within the classrooms as an effective tool for foreign language acquisition. Building awareness among the faculty and adapting the curriculum to include activities that promote brain plasticity ensures an enhanced learning environment and effective language acquisition in EFL classrooms.

Keywords: language acquisition, neural paths, neuroplasticity, vocabulary attrition

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Authors: Yue Sun, Yuan Wang

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Most of the earliest national industries in Wuhan are located along the Hanjiang River, and Qiaokou is considered to be a gathering place for Dahankou old industrial base. Zongguan Waterworks, Pacific Soap Factory, Fuxin Flour Factory, Nanyang Tobacco Factory and other hundred-year-old factories are located along Hanjiang River in Qiaokou District, especially the Gutian Industrial Zone, which was listed as one of 156 national restoration projects at the beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. After decades of development, Qiaokou has become the gathering place of the chemical industry and secondary industry, causing damage to the city and serious pollution, becoming a marginalized area forgotten by the central city. In recent years, with the accelerated pace of urban renewal, Qiaokou has been constantly reforming and innovating, and has begun drastic changes in the transformation of old cities and the development of new districts. These factories have been listed as key reconstruction projects, and a large number of industrial heritage with historical value and full urban memory have been relocated, demolished and reformed, with only a few factory buildings preserved. Through the methods of industrial archaeology, image analysis, typology and field investigation, this paper analyzes and summarizes the spatial characteristics of industrial heritage in Qiaokou District, explores urban renewal from the perspective of industrial heritage protection, and provides design strategies for the regeneration of urban industrial sites and industrial heritage.

Keywords: industrial heritage, urban renewal, protection, urban memory

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