Search results for: human body communication

Authors: Erkan Talay, Mustafa Yigit Yagci

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For the systems like sliding door, designers should predict not only strength but also dynamic behavior of the system and this prediction usually becomes more critical if design has radical changes refer to previous designs. Also, sometimes physical tests could cost more than expected, especially for rail geometry changes, since this geometry affects design of the body. The aim of the study is to observe and understand the dynamics of the sliding door in virtual environment. For this, multibody dynamic model of the sliding door was built and then affects of various parameters like rail geometry, roller diameters, or center of mass detected. Also, a design of experiment study was performed to observe interactions of these parameters.

Keywords: design of experiment, minimum closing effort, multibody simulation, sliding door

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Authors: Abram Zoltan

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Over the past hundred years, human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, have released enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to dissipate additional heat into the lower atmosphere and affect the global climate. Climate change affects many social and environmental determinants of health: clean air, safe drinking water, and adequate food. Our aim is to draw attention to the effects of climate change on the health and health care system. Improving climate awareness and the knowledge related to climate change's health impacts are essential among medical students and practicing medical doctors. Therefore, in their everyday practice, they also need some assistance and up-to-date knowledge of how climate change can endanger human health and deal with these novel health problems. Our activity, based on the cooperation of more universities, aims to develop new curriculum outlines and learning materials on climate change's health impacts for medical schools. Special attention is intended to pay to the possible preventative measures against these impacts. For all of this, the project plans to create new curriculum outlines and learning materials for medical students, elaborate methodological guidelines and create training materials for medical doctors' postgraduate learning programs. The target groups of the project are medical students, educational staff of medical schools and universities, practicing medical doctors with special attention to the general practitioners and family doctors. We had searched various surveys, domestic and international studies about the effects of climate change and statistical estimation of the possible consequences. The health effects of climate change can be measured only approximately by considering only a fraction of the potential health effects and assuming continued economic growth and health progress. We can estimate that climate change is expected to cause about 250,000 more deaths. We conclude that climate change is one of the most serious problems of the 21st century, affecting all populations. In the short- to medium-term, the health effects of climate change will be determined mainly by human vulnerability. In the longer term, the effects depend increasingly on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions. We can contribute to reducing environmental pollution by raising awareness and by educating the population.

Keywords: climate change, health impacts, medical students, education

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Authors: Malik Abdul Jabbar Zen, Wiwik Misaco Yuniarti, Azisya Amalia Karimasari, Novita Priandini

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Zoonos is as an infectiontransmitted froma nimals to human sand vice versa currently having increased in the last 20 years. The experts/scientists predict that zoonosis will be a threat to the community in the future since it leads on 70% emerging infectious diseases (EID) and the high mortality of 50%-90%. The zoonosis’ spread from animal to human is caused by contaminated food known as foodborne disease. One World One Health, as the conceptual prevention toward zoonosis, requires the crossed disciplines cooperation to accelerate and streamlinethe handling ofanimal-based disease. E-Vet Smart Rapid System is an integrated innovation in the veterinary expertise application is able to facilitate the prevention, treatment, and educationagainst pandemic diseases and zoonosis. This system is constructed by Decision Support System (DSS) method provides a database of knowledge that is expected to facilitate the identification of disease rapidly, precisely, and accurately as well as to identify the deduction. The testingis conducted through a black box test case and questionnaire (N=30) by validity and reliability approach. Based on the black box test case reveals that E-Vet Rapid System is able to deliver the results in accordance with system design, and questionnaire shows that this system is valid (r > 0.361) and has a reliability (α > 0.3610).

Keywords: diagnosis, disease, expert systems, livestock, zoonosis

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Authors: Ling-Lang Huang, Yih-Jer Wu

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Empathy is crucial for a patient-physician relationship and medical professionalism. Internet activity, gaming, or even addiction, have been more and more common among medical students. However, there’s been no report showing whether internet behavior has a substantial impact on empathy in medical students to our best knowledge. All year-2 medical students taking the optional course 'Narrative, Comprehension, and Communication' were enrolled. Internet behaviors are divided into two groups, 'internet users without online gaming (IU)' and 'internet users with online gaming (IG)', each group was further divided into 3 groups according to their average online retention time each day (< 2, 2 - 6, > 6 hours). Empathy was evaluated by the scores of the reports and humanities reflection after watching indicated movies, and by self-measured empathy questionnaire. All students taking the year-2 optional course 'Narrative, Comprehension, and Communication' were enrolled. As compared with students in the IU group, those in the IG group had significantly lower scores for the reports (81.3 ± 3.7 vs. 86.4 ± 5.1, P = 0.014). If further dividing the students into 5 groups (IU < 2, IU 2-6, IG < 2, IG 2 - 6, and IG > 6 hours), the scores were significantly and negatively correlated to online gaming with longer hours (r = -0.556, P = 0.006). However, there was no significant difference between IU and IG groups (33.0 ± 5.4 vs. 34.8 ± 3.2, P = n.s.), in terms of scores in the self-measured empathy questionnaire, neither was there any significant trend of scores along with longer online hours across the 5 groups (r = -0.164, P = n.s.). To date, there has been no evidence showing whether different internet behaviors (with or without online gaming) have distinct impacts on empathy. Although all of the medical students had a similarly good self-perception for empathy, our data suggested that online gaming did have a negative impact on their actual expression of empathy. Our observation has brought up an important issue for pondering: May IT- or gaming-assisted medical learning actually harm students’ empathy? In conclusion, this data suggests that long hours of online gaming harms expression of empathy, though all medics think themselves a person of high empathy.

Keywords: empathy. Internet, medical students, online gaming

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Authors: Mitra Sadoughi

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This study presents the knowledge-sharing model based on individual and organizational factors related to faculty members. To achieve this goal, individual and organizational factors were presented through qualitative research in the form of open codes, axial, and selective observations; then, the final model was obtained using structural equation model. Participants included 1,719 faculty members of the Azad Universities, Mazandaran Province, Region 3. The samples related to the qualitative survey included 25 faculty members experienced at teaching and the samples related to the quantitative survey included 326 faculty members selected by multistage cluster sampling. A 72-item questionnaire was used to measure the quantitative variables. The reliability of the questionnaire was 0.93. Its content and face validity was determined with the help of faculty members, consultants, and other experts. For the analysis of quantitative data obtained from structural model and regression, SPSS and LISREL were used. The results showed that the status of knowledge sharing is moderate in the universities. Individual factors influencing knowledge sharing included the sharing of educational materials, perception, confidence and knowledge self-efficiency, and organizational factors influencing knowledge sharing included structural social capital, cognitive social capital, social capital relations, organizational communication, organizational structure, organizational culture, IT infrastructure and systems of rewards. Finally, it was found that the contribution of individual factors on knowledge sharing was more than organizational factors; therefore, a model was presented in which contribution of individual and organizational factors were determined.

Keywords: knowledge sharing, social capital, organizational communication, knowledge self-efficiency, perception, trust, organizational culture

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Authors: Ted Gournelos

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Marketing approaches in practice and academic literature usually foreground the importance of product and brand awareness in strategy. Decisions emphasize justifications and promotions of existing projects, which has the unintended consequence of pushing marketing, public relations, and other communications to secondary strategies and tactics rather than as inherent pieces of organizational development. In other words, marketers implement what others have already decided. This is a challenge not only for the communications field, but also for the organizations themselves, since integrated communications employees are often the primary, if not the only, touchpoints for client/customer/user research and interaction. Organizations thus become increasingly out of touch, raising the risk of public or human resources crisis and decreasing the focus on opportunities for development and growth. This paper will discuss the potential for social entrepreneurship to refocus marketing and communications professionals on primary strategy, and suggest best practices for developing initiatives not only to impact marketing efforts themselves, but also the guiding organizational approaches to project management, human resources, corporate social responsibility, and research. It will provide a comparative analysis of social media marketing efforts conducted by food security non-governmental organizations from several countries, pointing out both flaws and areas of opportunity for integration with for-profit organizational strategy, and discuss the implications of descriptive, proactive, and interactive messaging.

Keywords: social enterprise, strategy, innovation, social media

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Authors: P. Narrima, C. Y. Looi, M. A. Mohd, H. M. Ali

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Persea declinata (Bl.) Kosterm is a member of the Lauraceae family, widely distributed in Southeast Asia. It is from the same genus with avocado (Persea americana Mill), which is widely consumed as food and for medicinal purposes. In the present study, we examined the anticancer properties of Persea declinata (Bl.) Kosterm bark methanolic crude extract (PDM). PDM exhibited a potent antiproliferative effect in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells, with an IC50 value of 16.68 µg/mL after 48h of treatment. We observed that PDM caused cell cycle arrest and subsequent apoptosis in MCF-7 cells, as exhibited by increased population at G0/G1 phase, higher lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release, and DNA fragmentation. Mechanistic studies showed that PDM caused significant elevation in ROS production, leading to perturbation of mitochondrial membrane potential, cell permeability, and activation of caspases-3/7. On the other hand, real-time PCR and Western blot analysis showed that PDM treatment increased the expression of the proapoptotic molecule, Bax, but decreased the expression of prosurvival proteins, Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL, in a dose-dependent manner. These findings imply that PDM could inhibit proliferation in MCF-7 cells via cell cycle arrest and apoptosis induction, indicating its potential as a therapeutic agent worthy of further development.

Keywords: antiproliferative, apoptosis, MCF-7 human breast cancer, Persea declinata

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Authors: W. Mohammed Saeed, A. J. Mcbain, S. M. Cruickshank, C. A. O’Neill

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In the gut, probiotics have been shown to protect epithelial cells from pathogenic bacteria through a number of mechanisms: 1-Increasing epithelial barrier function, 2-Modulation of the immune response especially innate immune response, 3-Inhibition of pathogen adherence and down regulation of virulence factors. Since probiotics have positive impacts on the gut, their potential effects on other body tissues, such as skin have begun to be investigated. The purpose of this project is to characterize the potential of probiotic bacteria lysate as therapeutic agent for preventing or reducing the S. aureus infection. Normal human primary keratinocytes (KCs) were exposed to S. aureus (106/ml) in the presence or absence of L. rhamnosus GG lysate (extracted from 108cfu/ml). The viability of the KCs was measured after 24 hours using a trypan blue exclusion assay. When KCs were treated with S aureus alone, only 25% of the KCs remained viable at 24 hours post infection. However, in the presence of L. rhamnosus GG lysate the viability of pathogen infected KCs increased to 58% (p=0.008, n=3). Furthermore, when KCs co-exposed, pre- exposed or post-exposed to L. rhamnosus GG lysate, the viability of the KCs increased to ≈60%, the L. rhamnosus GG lysate was afforded equal protection in different conditions. These data suggests that two possible separate mechanisms are involved in the protective effects of L. rhamnosus GG such as reducing S. aureus growth, or inhibiting of pathogenic adhesion. Interestingly, a lysate of L rhamnosus GG provided significant reduction in S. aureus growth and adhesion of S. aureus that being viable following 24 hours incubation with S aureus. Therefore, a series of Liquid Chromatography (RP-LC) methods were adopted to partially purify the lysate in combination with functional assays to elucidate in which fractions the efficacious molecules were contained. In addition, the Mass Spectrometry-based protein sequencing was used to identify putative proteins in the fractions. The data presented from purification process demonstrated that L. rhamnosus GG lysate has the potential to protect keratinocytes from the toxic effects of the skin pathogen, S. aureus. Three potential mechanisms were identified: inhibition of pathogen growth; competitive exclusion; and displacement of the pathogen from keratinocyte binding sites. In this study, ‘moonlight’ proteins were identified in the current study’s MS/MS data for L. rhamnosus GG lysate, which could elucidate the ability of lysate in the competitive exclusion and displacement of S. aureus from keratinocyte binding sites. Taken together, it can be speculated that L. rhamnosus GG lysate utilizes different mechanisms to protect keratinocytes from S. aureus toxicity. The present study indicates that the proteinaceous substances are involved in anti-adhesion activity. This is achieved by displacing the pathogen and preventing the severity of pathogen infection and the moonlight proteins might be involved in inhibiting the adhesion of pathogens.

Keywords: lysate, fractions, adhesion, L. rhamnosus GG, S. aureus toxicity

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Authors: Fayad Ghawbar

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The significance of the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system in the 5G wireless communication system is essential to enhance channel capacity and provide a high data rate resulting in a need for dual-polarization in vertical and horizontal. Furthermore, size reduction is critical in a MIMO system to deploy more antenna elements requiring a compact, low-profile design. A compact dual-band 4-MIMO antenna system has been presented in this paper with pattern and polarization diversity. The proposed single antenna structure has been designed using two antenna layers with a C shape in the front layer and a partial slot with a U-shaped cut in the ground to enhance isolation. The single antenna is printed on an FR4 dielectric substrate with an overall size of 18 mm×18 mm×1.6 mm. The 4-MIMO antenna elements were printed orthogonally on an FR4 substrate with a size dimension of 36 × 36 × 1.6 mm3 with zero edge-to-edge separation distance. The proposed compact 4-MIMO antenna elements resonate at 3.4-3.6 GHz and 4.8-5 GHz. The s-parameters measurement and simulation results agree, especially in the lower band with a slight frequency shift of the measurement results at the upper band due to fabrication imperfection. The proposed design shows isolation above -15 dB and -22 dB across the 4-MIMO elements. The MIMO diversity performance has been evaluated in terms of efficiency, ECC, DG, TARC, and CCL. The total and radiation efficiency were above 50 % across all parameters in both frequency bands. The ECC values were lower than 0.10, and the DG results were about 9.95 dB in all antenna elements. TARC results exhibited values lower than 0 dB with values lower than -25 dB in all MIMO elements at the dual-bands. Moreover, the channel capacity losses in the MIMO system were depicted using CCL with values lower than 0.4 Bits/s/Hz.

Keywords: compact antennas, MIMO antenna system, 5G communication, dual band, ECC, DG, TARC

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Authors: Jason Chen, Jennifer Chen, Shiyu Li

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We examine whether managerial ability (MA), the passing of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002 (SOX), and corporate operational complexity affect the accuracy of environmental capital expenditure projections of the environmentally sensitive industries (ESI). Prior studies found that firms in the ESI manipulated their projected environmental capital expenditures as a tool to achieve corporate legitimation and suggested that human factors must be examined to determine whether they are part of the determinants. We use MA to proxy for the latent human factors to examine whether MA affects the accuracy of financial disclosures in the ESI. To expand Chen and Chen (2020), we further investigate whether (1) SOX and (2) firms with complex operations and financial reporting in conjunction with MA affect firms’ projection accuracy. We find, overall, that MA is positively correlated with firm’s projection accuracy in the annual 10-Ks. Furthermore, results suggest that SOX has a positive, yet temporary, effect on MA, and that leads to better accuracy. Finally, MA matters for firms with more complex operations and financial reporting to make less projection errors than their less-complex counterparts. These results suggest that MA is a determinant that affects the accuracy of environmental capital expenditure projections for the firms in the ESI.

Keywords: managerial ability, environmentally sensitive industries, sox, corporate operational complexity

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Authors: Abdul Musaweer Habib, Habibul Hasan Mazumder, Saiful Islam, Sohel Sikder, Omar Faruk Sikder

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The plethora of genome sequence information of bacteria in recent times has ushered in many novel strategies for antibacterial drug discovery and facilitated medical science to take up the challenge of the increasing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to current antibiotics. In this study, we adopted subtractive genomics approach to analyze the whole genome sequence of the Fusobacterium nucleatum, a human oral pathogen having association with colorectal cancer. Our study divulged 1499 proteins of Fusobacterium nucleatum, which has no homolog in human genome. These proteins were subjected to screening further by using the Database of Essential Genes (DEG) that resulted in the identification of 32 vitally important proteins for the bacterium. Subsequent analysis of the identified pivotal proteins, using the KEGG Automated Annotation Server (KAAS) resulted in sorting 3 key enzymes of F. nucleatum that may be good candidates as potential drug targets, since they are unique for the bacterium and absent in humans. In addition, we have demonstrated the 3-D structure of these three proteins. Finally, determination of ligand binding sites of the key proteins as well as screening for functional inhibitors that best fitted with the ligands sites were conducted to discover effective novel therapeutic compounds against Fusobacterium nucleatum.

Keywords: colorectal cancer, drug target, Fusobacterium nucleatum, homology modeling, ligands

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Authors: Shankha Sanyal, Archi Banerjee, Sayan Biswas, Sourya Sengupta, Sayan Nag, Ranjan Sengupta, Dipak Ghosh

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The term ‘gestalt’ has been widely used in the field of psychology which defined the perception of human mind to group any object not in part but as a 'unified' whole. Music, in general, is polyphonic - i.e. a combination of a number of pure tones (frequencies) mixed together in a manner that sounds harmonious. The study of human brain response due to different frequency groups of the acoustic signal can give us an excellent insight regarding the neural and functional architecture of brain functions. Hence, the study of music cognition using neuro-biosensors is becoming a rapidly emerging field of research. In this work, we have tried to analyze the effect of different frequency bands of music on the various frequency rhythms of human brain obtained from EEG data. Four widely popular Rabindrasangeet clips were subjected to Wavelet Transform method for extracting five resonant frequency bands from the original music signal. These frequency bands were initially analyzed with Detrended/Adaptive Fractal analysis (DFA/AFA) methods. A listening test was conducted on a pool of 100 respondents to assess the frequency band in which the music becomes non-recognizable. Next, these resonant frequency bands were presented to 20 subjects as auditory stimulus and EEG signals recorded simultaneously in 19 different locations of the brain. The recorded EEG signals were noise cleaned and subjected again to DFA/AFA technique on the alpha, theta and gamma frequency range. Thus, we obtained the scaling exponents from the two methods in alpha, theta and gamma EEG rhythms corresponding to different frequency bands of music. From the analysis of music signal, it is seen that loss of recognition is proportional to the loss of long range correlation in the signal. From the EEG signal analysis, we obtain frequency specific arousal based response in different lobes of brain as well as in specific EEG bands corresponding to musical stimuli. In this way, we look to identify a specific frequency band beyond which the music becomes non-recognizable and below which in spite of the absence of other bands the music is perceivable to the audience. This revelation can be of immense importance when it comes to the field of cognitive music therapy and researchers of creativity.

Keywords: AFA, DFA, EEG, gestalt in music, Hurst exponent

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Authors: Weeam Abdulrahman, Gawaher Al-Madwary, Fatima Al-Ammari, Razan Mohammad

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This research discusses the AI features in Replika which is a dialog with a customized characters application, interaction and communication with AI in different ways that is provided for the user. spreading a survey with questions on how the AI worked is one approach of exposing the app to others to utilize and also we made an analysis that provides us with the conclusion of our research as a result, individuals will be able to try out the app. In the methodology we explain each page that pops up in the screen while using replika and Specify each part and icon.

Keywords: Replika, AI, artificial intelligence, dialog app

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Authors: Namrata Yaduvanshi, Shilpa Kapoor, Pooja Pawar, Sadhna Singh

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In the present paper, we have investigated the high-pressure structural phase transition and elastic properties of cerium mononitride. We studied theoretically the structural properties of this compound (CeN) by using the Improved Interaction Potential Model (IIPM) approach. This compound exhibits first order crystallographic phase transition from NaCl (B1) to tetragonal (BCT) phase at 37 GPa. The phase transition pressures and associated volume collapse obtained from present potential model (IIPM) show a good agreement with available theoretical data.

Keywords: phase transition, volume collapse, elastic constants, three body interaction

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Authors: Khadija Rafi, Neha Jamil, Laiba Khalid, Meerub Nawaz, Mahwish Farooq

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Speech articulation is a complex process to produce intelligible sounds with the help of precise movements of various structures within the vocal tract. All these structures in the vocal tract are named as articulators, which comprise lips, teeth, tongue, and palate. These articulators work together to produce a range of distinct phonemes, which happen to be the basis of language. It starts with the airstream from the lungs passing through the trachea and into oral and nasal cavities. When the air passes through the mouth, the tongue and the muscles around it form such coordination it creates certain sounds. It can be seen when the tongue is placed in different positions- sometimes near the alveolar ridge, soft palate, roof of the mouth or the back of the teeth which end up creating unique qualities of each phoneme. We can articulate vowels with open vocal tracts, but the height and position of the tongue is different every time depending upon each vowel, while consonants can be pronounced when we create obstructions in the airflow. For instance, the alphabet ‘b’ is a plosive and can be produced only by briefly closing the lips. Articulation disorders can not only affect communication but can also be a hurdle in speech production. To improve articulation skills for such individuals, doctors often recommend speech therapy, which involves various kinds of exercises like jaw exercises and tongue twisters. However, this disorder is more common in children who are going through developmental articulation issues right after birth, but in adults, it can be caused by injury, neurological conditions, or other speech-related disorders. In short, speech articulation is an essential aspect of productive communication, which also includes coordination of the specific articulators to produce different intelligible sounds, which are a vital part of spoken language.

Keywords: linguistics, speech articulation, speech therapy, language learning

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Authors: Aiydh Aljeddani, Fran Martin

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Sustainable human development is an essential component of a sustainable economic, social and environmental development. Addressing sustainable learning only through the addition of new teaching methods, or embedding certain approaches, is not sufficient on its own to support the goals of sustainable human development. This research project seeks to explore how the process of redesigning the current principles of curriculum based on the concept of sustainable learning could contribute to preparing a citizen who could later contribute towards sustainable human development. Multiple qualitative methodologies were employed in order to achieve the aim of this study. The main research methods were teachers’ field notes, artefacts, informal interviews (unstructured interview), a passive participant observation, a mini nominal group technique (NGT), a weekly diary, and weekly meeting. The study revealed that the integration of a curriculum for sustainable development, in addition to the use of innovative teaching approaches, highly valued by students and teachers in social studies’ sessions. This was due to the fact that it created a positive atmosphere for interaction and aroused both teachers and students’ interest. The content of the new curriculum also contributed to increasing students’ sense of shared responsibility through involving them in thinking about solutions for some global issues. This was carried out through addressing these issues through the concept of sustainable development and the theory of Thinking Activity in a Social Context (TASC). Students had interacted with sustainable development sessions intellectually and they also practically applied it through designing projects and cut-outs. Ongoing meetings and workshops to develop work between both the researcher and the teachers, and by the teachers themselves, played a vital role in implementing the new curriculum. The participation of teachers in the development of the project through working papers, exchanging experiences and introducing amendments to the students' environment was also critical in the process of implementing the new curriculum. Finally, the concept of sustainable learning can contribute to the learning outcomes much better than the current curriculum and it can better develop the learning objectives in educational institutions.

Keywords: redesigning, social studies and citizenship education curriculum, sustainable learning, thinking activity in a social context

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Authors: Marzena Świgoń

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The purpose of this paper is to describe the perceptions of knowledge and information sharing by the Polish academic community. An electronic questionnaire was used to gather opinions of respondents. The presented results are a part of the findings of empirical studies carried out amongst academics from various types of universities and academia located throughout Poland.

Keywords: academics, information sharing, knowledge sharing, scholarly communication

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Authors: Omer Shujat Bhatti, Afshan Huma

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Online educational system were considered a great opportunity for distance learning. In recent days of COVID19 pandemic, it enable the continuation of educational activities at all levels of education, from primary school to the top level universities. One of the key considered element in supporting the online educational system is video lectures. The current research explored the usefulness of the video lectures delivered to technical students of masters level with a focus on MSc Sustainable Environmental design students who have diverse backgrounds in the formal educational system. Hence they were unable to cope right away with the online system and faced communication and understanding issues in the lecture session due to internet and allied connectivity issues. Researcher used self prepared video lectures for respective subjects and provided them to the students using Youtube channel and subject based Whatsapp groups. Later, students were asked about the usefulness of the lectures towards a better understanding of the subject and an overall enhanced learning experience. More than 80% of the students appreciated the effort and requested it to be part of the overall system. Data collection was done using an online questionnaire which was prior briefed to the students with the purpose of research. It was concluded that video lectures should be considered an integral part of the lecture sessions and must be provided prior to the lecture session, ensuring a better quality of delivery. It was also recommended that the existing system must be upgraded to support the availability of these video lectures through the portal. Teachers training must be provided to help develop quality video content ensuring that is able to cover the content and courses taught.

Keywords: video lectures, online distance education, synchronous instruction, asynchronous communication

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Authors: Constantius Tri Handoko

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Tattoos on the body of Christian youths seemed interesting as the majority of Christian look at tattoo and tattooing activity are prohibited. This research besides to understand the motivation behind why Christian youth in Surabaya and Sidoarjo, Indonesia being tattooed also focus on the regard to what functions and meanings of the tattoos are. By using visual discourse analysis, the tattoos had relation to the informants’ social lives dimension, such as the Christian symbol tattoos expressed their spiritual life journey, a faith symbol to God, as personal symbols (identity), art expression, as well as fashion. On the other hands, tattoos also became a hatred symbol to Jesus and the Christian faith, since the tattoo wearers who were a former Christians felt disappointed to God as they thought God never help them to survive in their lives.

Keywords: tattoo, representation, identity, belief, Christian

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Authors: Kosutic Milenko, Filipovic Jelena

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Cereals constitute the staple food of the human race. In accordance with the modern nutritionist opinions, cereal products, flakes and snack products are the most common foods in the daily diet, such as ready to eat breakfast cereal, flakes, and snacks. Extrusion technology makes it possible to apply different sources of ingredients for the enrichment of cereal-based flakes or snacks products. Substances with strong antioxidant properties such as wild oregano have a positive impact on human health, therefore attracting the attention of scientists, consumers and food industry experts. This paper investigates the effects of simultaneous addition of dry residue of wild oregano (0.5% and 1%), on the physical and colour properties of corn flakes to obtain new products with altered nutritional properties. Post-hoc Tukey’s HSD test at 95% confidence limit showed significant differences between various samples. Addition of dry residue wild oregano positively influenced physical characteristics (decreased bulk density 30.2%, increased expansion rate 44.9%), influenced of decrease hardness 38.1% and work of compression 40.3% also significantly change the color of flakes product. Presented data point that investigated corn flakes is a new product with good physical and sensory properties due to higher level of dry residue of wild oregano.

Keywords: flakes product, wild oregano, phisical properties, colour, sensory properties

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Authors: Maria Borawska, Patryk Nowakowski, Sylwia K. Naliwajko, Renata Markiewicz-Zukowska, Anna Puscion-Jakubik, Krystyna Gromkowska-Kepka, Justyna Moskwa

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Coprinus comatus (O. F. Müll.) Pers.) should not be confused with the common Ink Cap, which contains coprine and can induce coprine poisoning. We study the possibility of applying coprinus mushroom (Coprinus comatus), available in Poland, as food product supporting the treatment of human glioblastoma cells. The U87MG and T98 glioblastoma cell lines were exposed to water (CW) or ethanol 95° (CE) Cantharellus extracts (50-500 μg/ml), with or without temozolomide (TMZ) during 24, 48 or 72 hours. The cell division was examined by the H³-thymidine incorporation. The statistical analysis was performed using Statistica v. 13.0 software. Significant differences were assumed for p < 0.05. We found that both, CW and CE, administrated alone, had inhibitory effect on cell lines growth, but the CE extract had a higher degree of growth inhibition. The anti-tumor effect of TMZ (50 μM) on U87MG was enhanced by mushroom extracts, and the effect was lower to the effect after using Coprinus comatus extracts (CW and CE) alone. A significant decrease (p < 0.05) in pro-MMP2 (82.61 ± 6.3% of control) secretion in U87MG cells was observed after treated with CE (250 μg/ml). We conclude that extracts of Coprinus comatus, edible mushroom, present cytotoxic properties on U87MG and T98 cell lines and may cooperate with TMZ synergistically enhancing its growth inhibiting activity against glioblastoma U87MG cell line.

Keywords: anticancer, glioma, mushroom, temozolomide

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Authors: Shazwanis Shukri

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The Mediterranean Sea, at the crossroads of three continents has always been the focus of pan-European and worldwide attention. Over the past decade, the Mediterranean Sea has become a hotbed for irregular migration particularly from the African continent toward the Europe. Among the major transit routes in the Mediterranean Sea include the Strait of Gibraltar, Canary Island and island of Lampedusa. In recent years, Mediterranean Sea has witnessed significant numbers of accidents and shipwrecks involving the irregular migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe via the sea. The shipwrecks and traffickers exploitation of migrants draw most of the attention particularly for the European Union (EU). This incident has been a wakeup call for the EU and become the top political agenda in the EU policy to tackle irregular migration and human smuggling at sea. EU has repeatedly addressed irregular migration as one of the threats the EU and its citizens may be confronted with and therefore immediate measures are crucial to tackle the crisis. In light of this, various initiatives have been adopted by the EU to strengthen external border control and restrict access to irregular migrants, notably through the enforcement of Frontex and Eunavfor Med. This paper analyses current development of counter-migration operations by the EU in response to migration crisis in the Mediterranean Sea. The analysis is threefold. First, this study examines the patterns and trends of irregular migration’s movements from recent perspective. Second, this study concentrates on the evolution of the EU operations that are in place in the Mediterranean Sea, notably by Frontex and Eunavfor Med to curb the influx of irregular migrants to the European countries, including, among others, Greece and Italy. Third, this study investigates the EU approaches to fight against the proliferation of human trafficking networks at sea. This study is essential to determine the roles of the EU in tackling migration crisis and human trafficking in the Mediterranean Sea and the effectiveness of their counter-migration operations to reduce the number of irregular migrants travelling via the sea. Elite interviews and document analysis were used as a methodology in this study. The study discovers that the EU operations have successfully contributed to reduce the numbers of irregular migrant’s arrival to Europe. The study also shows that the operations were effective to disrupt smugglers business models particularly from Libya. This study provides essential understanding about the roles of the EU not limited to tackle the migration crisis and disrupt trafficking networks, but also pledged to prevent further loss of lives at sea.

Keywords: European union, frontex, irregular migration, Mediterranean sea

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Authors: Lineo Dzansi

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South African government has been mandated by the Constitution (Act 108 of 1996) to deliver basic services to all who live in it. However, service delivery has always been marred with much criticism and citizens’ dissatisfaction regarding the quality of services rendered to them. This is evidenced by public protests that are common in South Africa lately which they are mostly alleged to link with failure by the government through various municipalities to meet citizens’ service delivery expectations. Municipalities render services through people. People management plays a crucial role in influencing employee and organisational performance and it thus needs to be conducted in a fair and just manner. Literature confirms that there is a relationship between organisational justice perceptions and employee behaviour, and that positive or negative justice perceptions can have an influence on employee attitudes, commitment to their jobs and organisation. The nature of the attachments formed by individuals to their employing organisations depends on the manner in which the organisation treats them. This implies that Municipal employees’ commitment could be linked to fair or unfair perceptions of Human Resource Management practices within their organisations. Unfortunately, the political nature of municipal environment could be a fertile ground for appointments of people based on political affiliation as a reward for political patronage rather than on merit. This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between municipal employees’ perceptions of fairness of Human Resource Management practices and employee commitment from the organisational justice point of view. Research on organisational justice has shown that employees’ organisational justice perceptions link directly with job satisfaction and employee organisational commitment. Quantitative research methods were employed to collect and analyse data from selected managerial and non-managerial municipal employees within selected municipalities in Free State Province of South Africa. Employee commitment has positive relationships with HRM practices at the .05 and .01 levels of significance – indicating that the higher the levels of HRM practices in municipal employees the higher the organisational commitment of employees. Therefore, it is concluded that organisational commitment of municipal employees (EOC) is positively related to their perceptions of fairness of HRM practices (PHF) of municipalities. In other words, fair HRM practices of municipalities promote organisational commitment in municipal employees.

Keywords: organisational Justice, HRM practices, employee organisational commitment, employee attitudes

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Authors: Henry Wilde, Thiravat Hemachudha

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Human rabies deaths are underreported worldwide at 55,000 annual cases; more than of dengue and Japanese encephalitis. Almost half are children. A recent study from the Philippines of nearly 2,000 rabies deaths revealed that none of had received incomplete or no post exposure prophylaxis. Coming from a canine rabies endemic country, this is not unique. There are two major barriers to reducing human rabies deaths: 1) the large number of unvaccinated dogs and 2) post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) that is not available, incomplete, not affordable, or not within reach for bite victims travel means. Only the first barrier, inadequate vaccination of dogs, is now being seriously addressed. It is also often not done effectively or sustainably. Rabies PEP has evolved as a complex, prolonged process, usually delegated to centers in larger cities. It is virtually unavailable in villages or small communities where most dog bites occur, victims are poor and usually unable to travel a long distance multiple times to receive PEP. Reseacrh that led to better understanding of the pathophysiology of rabies and immune responses to potent vaccines and immunoglobulin have allowed shortening and making PEP more evidence based. This knowledge needs to be adopted and applied so that PEP can be rendered safely and affordably where needed the most: by village health care workers who have long performed more complex services after appropriate training. Recent research makes this an important and long neglected goal that is now within our means to implement.

Keywords: rabies, post-exposure prophylaxis, availability, immunoglobulin

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Authors: Narayan Bhattarai, Arjun Bhattarai, Kabi Raj Paudyal, Lalu Paudel

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Palung granite is leucocratic, alkali feldspar granite, which is one of the six major granite bodies of the Lesser Himalaya of Nepal. The Cambro-Ordovician granite body has intruded on the Palaeozoic metasedimentary rock of the Kathmandu Complex in Central Nepal. The granite crystallized from magma that was mainly generated by anatexis of the Precambrian continental crust. The magma is heterogeneous with respect to the primary ages and/or metamorphic histories of the magma source rocks. This indicates either a derivation from (meta-) sediments or an intense mixing of different crustally derived magmas. The genesis of the Palung granite is possibly related to an orogeny which affected the Indian shield in lower Paleozoic times. The granite body has been mapped into different zones with visual inspection and petrographical study: i. Quartz rich granite: Quartz is smokey to grayish, euhedral to subherdal, 0.2 to 0.7 cm, and constitutes 30 to 40%. Feldspar is white to brownish, subhedral to euhedral, more than 3 cm, and constitutes 20–30%. Tourmaline is black, 0.1 to 0.2 cm in size, and consists of 10 to 20%. Biotite is black flakes up to o.2 cm, representing 5-8%. ii. Feldspar rich granite: white to grayish, medium to coarse-grained, containing feldspar, quartz, biotite, muscovite and tourmaline. Feldspar porphyritic crystals up to 2.5 cm subherdral represent 50–60%, quartz is smokey transparent and represents 30–40%, biotite is dark brown to black, crystals are irregular, 0.5 cm and represent 8–20%, tourmaline is black fractured, small needles represent 5–10%, and muscovite is white to brown and represents 1-4%. iii. Biotite granite: grey to white, medium to coarse-grained, containing quartz, feldspar, biotite and tourmaline. Feldspar crystals up to 2.5 cm represent 40–50%, quartz is smokey, representing 30–40%, biotite is dark brown to black, crystal size 0.5cm, representing 10–20%, tourmaline is black, small needle, 5–10%, and muscovite is white to brown, representing 3-5%. and iv. Muscovite granite: medium-coarse-grained, brown and gray, containing quartz, feldspar, muscovite and tourmaline. Feldspar is white to brown; crystal sizes 0.2–0.4 cm represents 40–50%; quartz is brown and white, transparent, crystals up to 1 cm represent 35–50%; tourmaline is black, opaque, needle shaped; size up to 7–20%; and muscovite is brownish to white, with flakes up to 0.3 cm representing 5–10%. The xenoliths are very common and are not genetically related. Xenoliths are composed mostly of fine-grained, grayish quartz biotite (muscovite) schist and garnetiferous quartz mica schist.

Keywords: leucocratic granite, cambro-ordovician granite, lesser himalayan granite, pegmatite

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Authors: Yoshio Kurosawa

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To reduce the interior noise of cars in high-frequency region, sound proof materials are laminated with the body panels and the interior trims. Therefore, sound proof properties of the laminates play an important role for the efficient acoustical design. A program code which predicts both sound absorption properties and sound insulation properties of the laminates are developed. This program code is used for transfer matrix method by Biot theory. This report described the outline of this program code, and the calculation results almost agreed with the experimental results.

Keywords: porous media, transmission loss, Biot theory, transfer matrix method

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Authors: Tharsinithevy Kirupananthan, Thivahary Geretharan

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Since creation of agricultural enterprises going to reflect the micro and macro level development of Sri Lanka, it is vey important to study the entrepreneurial trends of Agricultural Undergraduates. Likert scale scoring method was used to assess the responses of involvement, Role model effect, aware of demands, confidence and willingness. 37.8% were strongly agreed to do full time business. The average score for to do agriculture businesses were between agree and strongly agree. The average scores for role model effects were less than agree. Average score for aware of needs of society was less than agree. 75.7% of them were able to identify the demands of the society. The demands identified were human capital, self sufficient domestic production, safe and nutritional foods. The confidence of having enough skills score was less than agree. 64.1% of them were owned special skills to carry out entrepreneurial activities. Such skills were possession of different human capitals management skills. The willingness responses scores were more than agree. 61.5% of them were discussed their business plan. Their dream plans were development of new food products, Quality planting materials, harmless method of cultivation and floricultural industry. Those were supported by government policies and other related organizations.

Keywords: agricultural undergraduates, entrepreneurial trends, likert scale Sri Lanka

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Authors: Saliha Ozcan

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Technology has become an integral part of our lives, aiding individuals in accessing higher order competencies, such as global awareness, creativity, collaborative problem solving, and self-directed learning. Students need to acquire these competencies, often referred to as 21st century skills, in order to adapt to a fast changing world. Today, an ever-increasing number of schools are exploring how engagement through telecollaboration can support language learning and promote 21st century skill development in classrooms. However, little is known regarding how telecollaboration may influence the way students acquire 21st century skills. In this paper, we aim to shed light to the potential implications of telecollaborative practices in acquisition of 21st century skills. In our context, telecollaboration, which might be carried out in a variety of settings both synchronously or asynchronously, is considered as the process of communicating and working together with other people or groups from different locations through online digital tools or offline activities to co-produce a desired work output. The study presented here will describe and analyse the implementation of a telecollaborative project between two high school classes, one in Spain and the other in Sweden. The students in these classes were asked to carry out some joint activities, including creating an online platform, aimed at raising awareness of the situation of the Syrian refugees. We conduct a qualitative study in order to explore how language, culture, communication, and technology merge into the co-construction of knowledge, as well as supporting the attainment of the 21st century skills needed for network-mediated communication. To this end, we collected a significant amount of audio-visual data, including video recordings of classroom interaction and external Skype meetings. By analysing this data, we verify whether the initial pedagogical design and intended objectives of the telecollaborative project coincide with what emerges from the actual implementation of the tasks. Our findings indicate that, as well as planned activities, unplanned classroom interactions may lead to acquisition of certain 21st century skills, such as collaborative problem solving and self-directed learning. This work is part of a wider project (KONECT, EDU2013-43932-P; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance), which aims to explore innovative, cross-competency based teaching that can address the current gaps between today’s educational practices and the needs of informed citizens in tomorrow’s interconnected, globalised world.

Keywords: 21st century skills, telecollaboration, language learning, network mediated communication

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Authors: Zhengkun Yi

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Surface texture discrimination using artificial tactile sensors has attracted increasing attentions in the past decade as it can endow technical and robot systems with a key missing ability. However, as a major component of texture, roughness has rarely been explored. This paper presents an approach for tactile surface roughness discrimination, which includes two parts: (1) design and fabrication of a bioinspired artificial fingertip, and (2) tactile signal processing for tactile surface roughness discrimination. The bioinspired fingertip is comprised of two polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layers, a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) bar, and two perpendicular polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) film sensors. This artificial fingertip mimics human fingertips in three aspects: (1) Elastic properties of epidermis and dermis in human skin are replicated by the two PDMS layers with different stiffness, (2) The PMMA bar serves the role analogous to that of a bone, and (3) PVDF film sensors emulate Meissner’s corpuscles in terms of both location and response to the vibratory stimuli. Various extracted features and classification algorithms including support vector machines (SVM) and k-nearest neighbors (kNN) are examined for tactile surface roughness discrimination. Eight standard rough surfaces with roughness values (Ra) of 50 μm, 25 μm, 12.5 μm, 6.3 μm 3.2 μm, 1.6 μm, 0.8 μm, and 0.4 μm are explored. The highest classification accuracy of (82.6 ± 10.8) % can be achieved using solely one PVDF film sensor with kNN (k = 9) classifier and the standard deviation feature.

Keywords: bioinspired fingertip, classifier, feature extraction, roughness discrimination

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Authors: Sakshi Yadav, Sushila Shekhawat

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This study addresses different types of points of view as seen in nature documentary films with the help of three eco documentaries, and it would be significant in understanding the role of the narrative point of view as a tool for showing and telling in documentaries. Narrative analysis of a film forms an essential aspect of the discourse of scholarship in film studies. Narration is the chain of events occurring in time and space. The notion of narrative provides the idea of coherence and wholeness to the story. There are various components that the narration carries, one of which is the perspective or point of view. The narrator plays the role of a mediator between the film and the audience; thus, his perspective influences the way the audience interprets the film. Feature films have been analyzed through narrative points of view; however, this research intends to conduct it from the angle of a nature documentary film. The study will examine narrative viewpoints unique to nature documentary films using three ecological documentary films-The Cove (2009), Tale of a forest (2012), and Before the flood (2016). This research will apply the framework of narrative theory and will investigate the impact of the different types of narrative points of view, as each portrays the human-nature relationship from a different standpoint, and it will also study the effect that the narrative point of view has on the mode of these eco documentaries.

Keywords: ecodocumentary, narrative, human-nature relationship, point of view

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