Search results for: learning society

Authors: Smriti Pahwa, Karishma Vats, Aditi Macwan, Jija Dutt, Sumukhi Vaid

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Age approporiate complementary feeding has been stressed upon for sound young child nutrition and appropriate growth. National Infant and Young Child Feeding guidelines, policies and programs indicate cognizance of the issue taken by the country’s government, policy makers and technical experts. However, it is important that ordinary people, the caregivers of young children too understand the importance of appropriate feeding. For this, an interface might be required where ordinary people could participate in assessing the gaps in IYCF as a first step to take subsequent action. In this context an attempt was made to extrapolate a citizen led learning level survey that has been involving around 25000 ordinary citizens to reach out to 600,000 children annually for over a decade in India. Based on this philosophy of involving ordinary people in simple assessments to produce understandable actionable evidence, a rapid diet assessment tool was developed and collected from caregivers of 90 < 3year children from two urban clusters in Ahmedabad and Baroda, Gujarat. Target sample for pilot was selected after cluster census. Around half the mothers reported that they had not yet introduced water or other fluids to their < 6 month babies. However, about a third were already feeding them food other than mother’s milk. Although complementary feeding was initiated in almost all (95%) children more than 6 months old, frequency was suboptimal in 60%; in 80% cases no measure was taken to either improve energy or nutrient density; only 33% were fed protective foods; Green Leafy Vegetables consumption was negligible (1.4%). Anganwadi food was not consumed. By engaging ordinary people to generate evidence and understand the gaps, such assessments have the potential to be used to generate useful evidence for action at scale as well as locally.

Keywords: citizen led, grass root engagement, IYCF (Infant and Young Child Feeding), rapid diet assessment, under nutrition

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Authors: Varun Joshi, M. S. Rawat

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The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) is inherently fragile and susceptible to landslide hazard due to its extremely weak geology, highly rugged topography and heavy monsoonal rainfall. One of the most common hazards in the IHR is landslide, and this event is particularly frequent in Himalayan states of India i.e. Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Landslides are mostly triggered by extreme rainfall events but the incidence increases during monsoon months (June to September). Natural slopes which are otherwise stable but they get destabilized due to anthropogenic activities like construction of various developmental activities and deforestation. These activities are required to fulfill the developmental needs and upliftment of societal status in the region. Landslides also trigger during major earthquakes and reported most observable and damaging phenomena. Studies indicate that the landslide phenomenon has increased many folds due to developmental activities in Himalayan region. Gradually increasing and devastating consequences of landslides turned into one of the most important hydro-geological hazards in Himalayan states especially in Uttarakhand and Sikkim states of India. The recent most catastrophic rainfall in June 2013 in Uttarakhand lead to colossal loss of life and property. The societal damage due to this incident is still to be recovered even after three years. Sikkim earthquake of September 2011 is witnessed for triggering of large number of coseismic landslides. The rescue and relief team faced huge problem in helping the trapped villagers in remote locations of the state due to road side blockade by landslides. The recent past incidences of landslides in Uttarakhand, as well as Sikkim states, created a new domain of research in terms of understanding the phenomena of landslide and management of disaster in such situation. Every year at many locations landslides trigger which force dwellers to either evacuate their dwelling or lose their life and property. The communication and transportation networks are also severely affected by landslides at several locations. Many times the drinking water supply disturbed and shortage of daily need household items reported during monsoon months. To minimize the severity of landslide in IHR requires in-depth research and developmental planning. For most of the areas in the present study, landslide hazard zonation is done on 1:50,000 scale. The land use planning maps on extensive basis are not available. Therefore, there is a need of large-scale landslide hazard zonation and land use planning maps. If the scientist conduct research on desired aspects and their outcome of research is utilized by the government in developmental planning then the incidents of landslide could be minimized, subsequent impact on society, life and property would be reduced. Along with the scientific research, there is another need of awareness generation in the region for stake holders and local dwellers to combat with the landslide hazard, if triggered in their location.

Keywords: coseismic, Indian Himalayan Region, landslide hazard zonation, Sikkim, societal, Uttarakhand

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Authors: Galih Imaduddin

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Knowledge has been viewed as one of the most important resources in organizations, including those that operate in the healthcare sector. On that basis, Knowledge Management (KM) is crucial for healthcare organizations to improve their productivity and ensure effective utilization of their resources. Despite the growing interests to understand how KM might work for healthcare organizations, there is only a modest amount of empirical inquiries which have specifically focused on the tools and initiatives to share knowledge. Hence, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate the way healthcare organizations, particularly public sector ones, utilize knowledge sharing tools and initiatives for the benefit of patient-care. Employing a qualitative method, 13 (thirteen) Community Health Centers (CHCs) from a high-performing district health setting in Indonesia were observed. Data collection and analysis involved a repetition of document retrievals and interviews (n=41) with multidisciplinary health professionals who work in these CHCs. A single case study was cultivated reflecting on the means that were used to share knowledge, along with the factors that inhibited the exchange of knowledge among those health professionals. The study discovers that all of the thirteen CHCs exhibited and applied knowledge sharing means which included knowledge documents, virtual communication channels (i.e. emails and chatting applications), and social learning forums such as staff meetings, morning briefings, and communities of practices. However, the intensity of utilization was different among these CHCs, in which organizational culture, leadership, professional boundaries, and employees’ technological aptitude were presumed to be the factors that inhibit knowledge sharing processes. Making a distance with the KM literature of other sectors, this study denounces the primacy of technology-based tools, suggesting that socially-based initiatives could be more reliable for sharing knowledge. This suggestion is largely due to the nature of healthcare work which is still predominantly based on the tacit form of knowledge.

Keywords: knowledge management, knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing tools and initiatives, knowledge sharing inhibitors, primary health care organizations

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Authors: Javed Iqbal

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The growing need for energy by the human society and depletion of conventional energy sources demands a renewable, safe, infinite, low-cost and omnipresent energy source. One of the most suitable ways to solve the foreseeable world’s energy crisis is to use the power of the sun. Photovoltaic devices are especially of wide interest as they can convert solar energy to electricity. Recently the best performing solar cells are silicon-based cells. However, silicon cells are expensive, rigid in structure and have a large timeline for the payback of cost and electricity. Organic photovoltaic cells are cheap, flexible and can be manufactured in a continuous process. Therefore, organic photovoltaic cells are an extremely favorable replacement. Organic photovoltaic cells utilize sunlight as energy and convert it into electricity through the use of conductive polymers/ small molecules to separate electrons and electron holes. A major challenge for these new organic photovoltaic cells is the efficiency, which is low compared with the traditional silicon solar cells. To overcome this challenge, usually two straightforward strategies have been considered: (1) reducing the band-gap of molecular donors to broaden the absorption range, which results in higher short circuit current density (JSC) of devices, and (2) lowering the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy of molecular donors so as to increase the open-circuit voltage (VOC) of applications devices.8 Keeping in mind the cost of chemicals it is hard to try many materials on test basis. The best way is to find the suitable material in the bulk. For this purpose, we use computational approach to design molecules based on our organic chemistry knowledge and determine their physical and electronic properties. In this study, we did DFT calculations with different options to get high open circuit voltage and after getting suitable data from calculation we finally did synthesis of a novel D–π–A–π–D type low band-gap small molecular donor material (ZOPTAN-TPA). The Aarylene vinylene based bis(arylhalide) unit containing a cyanostilbene unit acts as a low-band- gap electron-accepting block, and is coupled with triphenylamine as electron-donating blocks groups. The motivation for choosing triphenylamine (TPA) as capped donor was attributed to its important role in stabilizing the separated hole from an exciton and thus improving the hole-transporting properties of the hole carrier.3 A π-bridge (thiophene) is inserted between the donor and acceptor unit to reduce the steric hindrance between the donor and acceptor units and to improve the planarity of the molecule. The ZOPTAN-TPA molecule features a low HOMO level of 5.2 eV and an optical energy gap of 2.1 eV. Champion OSCs based on a solution-processed and non-annealed active-material blend of [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) and ZOPTAN-TPA in a mass ratio of 2:1 exhibits a power conversion efficiency of 1.9 % and a high open-circuit voltage of over 1.0 V.

Keywords: high open circuit voltage, donor, triphenylamine, organic solar cells

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Authors: Cristian Matti, Valerie Fowles, Eva Enyedi, Piotr Pogorzelski

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The system mapping process can be defined as a knowledge service where a team of facilitators, experts and practitioners facilitate a guided conversation, enable the exchange of information and support an iterative curation process. System mapping processes rely on science-based tools to introduce and simplify a variety of components and concepts of socio-technical systems through metaphors while facilitating an interactive dialogue process to enable the design of co-created maps. System maps work then as “artifacts” to provide information and focus the conversation into specific areas around the defined challenge and related decision-making process. Knowledge management facilitates the curation of that data gathered during the system mapping sessions through practices of documentation and subsequent knowledge co-production for which common practices from data science are applied to identify new patterns, hidden insights, recurrent loops and unexpected elements. This study presents empirical evidence on the application of these techniques to explore mechanisms by which visual tools provide guiding principles to portray system components, key variables and types of data through the lens of climate change. In addition, data science facilitates the structuring of elements that allow the analysis of layers of information through affinity and clustering analysis and, therefore, develop simple indicators for supporting the decision-making process. This paper addresses methodological and empirical elements on the horizontal learning process that integrate system mapping through visual tools, interpretation, cognitive transformation and analysis. The process is designed to introduce practitioners to simple iterative and inclusive processes that create actionable knowledge and enable a shared understanding of the system in which they are embedded.

Keywords: indicators, knowledge management, system mapping, visual tools

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Authors: Cristina Opris, Bogdan Cojocaru, Madalina Tudorache, Simona M. Coman, Vasile I. Parvulescu, Camelia Bala, Bahir Duraki, Jeroen A. Van Bokhoven

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The tremendous achievements in the development of the society concretized by more sophisticated materials and systems are merely based on non-renewable resources. Consequently, after more than two centuries of intensive development, among others, we are faced with the decrease of the fossil fuel reserves, an increased impact of the greenhouse gases on the environment, and economic effects caused by the fluctuations in oil and mineral resource prices. The use of biomass may solve part of these problems, and recent analyses demonstrated that from the perspective of the reduction of the emissions of carbon dioxide, its valorization may bring important advantages conditioned by the usage of genetic modified fast growing trees or wastes, as primary sources. In this context, the abundance and complex structure of lignin may offer various possibilities of exploitation. However, its transformation in fuels or chemicals supposes a complex chemistry involving the cleavage of C-O and C-C bonds and altering of the functional groups. Chemistry offered various solutions in this sense. However, despite the intense work, there are still many drawbacks limiting the industrial application. Thus, the proposed technologies considered mainly homogeneous catalysts meaning expensive noble metals based systems that are hard to be recovered at the end of the reaction. Also, the reactions were carried out in organic solvents that are not acceptable today from the environmental point of view. To avoid these problems, the concept of this work was to investigate the synthesis of superparamagnetic core shell catalysts for the fragmentation of lignin directly in the aqueous phase. The magnetic nanoparticles were covered with a nanoshell of an oxide (niobia) with a double role: to protect the magnetic nanoparticles and to generate a proper (acidic) catalytic function and, on this composite, cobalt nanoparticles were deposed in order to catalyze the C-C bond splitting. With this purpose, we developed a protocol to prepare multifunctional and magnetic separable nano-composite Co@Nb2O5@Fe3O4 catalysts. We have also established an analytic protocol for the identification and quantification of the fragments resulted from lignin depolymerization in both liquid and solid phase. The fragmentation of various lignins occurred on the prepared materials in high yields and with very good selectivity in the desired fragments. The optimization of the catalyst composition indicated a cobalt loading of 4wt% as optimal. Working at 180 oC and 10 atm H2 this catalyst allowed a conversion of lignin up to 60% leading to a mixture containing over 96% in C20-C28 and C29-C37 fragments that were then completely fragmented to C12-C16 in a second stage. The investigated catalysts were completely recyclable, and no leaching of the elements included in the composition was determined by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES).

Keywords: superparamagnetic core-shell catalysts, environmental production of fuels, renewable lignin, recyclable catalysts

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Authors: Pac Ordu

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The paper was conceived on the premise that employment of tertiary education graduates has become an endemic problem in Nigeria. Recognizing the objective of current education as schooling for paid employment, the paper identified that the basic objective of present-day education should be schooling to become self-employed. While schooling to become a successful employee was identified as the focus for the older generation, schooling to become self-employed was defined as the focus for 21st-century teaching and learning. Hence, the paper condemned the inability of curriculum implementers to teach creative trends to enable students to acquire practical skills and small business operation-oriented competencies. A review of some disciplines was made to show the new trend of education that would empower Nigerian students with small business enterprise operation skills for self-employment on graduation. This was further made to draw the attention of institutions and curriculum designers to the need for our curriculum to be functional in line with demands of the innovative economic environment. The paper also noted that at periods of recession with its attendant effects, was the best period for students of entrepreneurship to dream and create their small business enterprises. It highlighted the role of Federal College of Education (Technical) Omoku, Rivers State, Nigeria and the national recognition it has received for developing an innovative, practical model of teaching entrepreneurship education in Nigeria Colleges of Education system. In order to equip students for economic survival on graduation, the introduction of innovative teaching can only be successful if lecturers shift their focus away from the conventional emphasis on theory to students’ energy quotients. While the paper obviously recommended that lecturers should be creative and teach outside the curriculum box, it further recommended that students should use this period of their studentship to dream, create and operate their own small business enterprises.

Keywords: 21st century students, curriculum, entrepreneurship, hands-on-training, innovative

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Authors: Ahmed Chouari

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Although research methods has been an integral part of the curriculum in Moroccan higher education for decades, it seems that the research methods teaching pedagogy that teachers use suffers from a serious absence of a body of literature in the field. Also, the various challenges that both teachers and students of research methods face have received little interest by researchers in comparison to other fields such as applied linguistics. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to remedy to this situation by exploring one of the major issues in teaching research methods – that is, the phenomenon of students’ dissatisfaction with the research methods course in higher education in Morocco. The aim is also to understand students’ attitudes and perceptions on how to make the research methods course more effective in the future. Three qualitative research questions were used: (1) To what extent are graduate students satisfied with the pedagogies used by the teachers of the research methods course in Moroccan higher education? (2) To what extent are graduate students satisfied with the approach used in assessing research methods in Moroccan higher education? (3) What are students’ perceptions on how to make the research methods course more effective in Moroccan higher education? In this study, a qualitative content analysis was adopted to analyze students’ views and perspectives about the major factors behind their dissatisfaction with the course at the School of Arts and Humanities – University of Moulay Ismail. A semi-structured interview was used to collect data from 14 respondents from two different Master programs. The results show that there is a general consensus among the respondents about the major factors behind the ineffectiveness of the course. These factors include theory-practice gap, heavy reliance on theoretical knowledge at the expense of procedural knowledge, and ineffectiveness of some teachers. The findings also reveal that teaching research methods in Morocco requires more time, better equipment, and more competent teachers. Above all, the findings indicate that today there is an urgent need in Morocco to shift from teacher-centered approaches to learner-centered approaches in teaching the research methods course. These findings, thus, contribute to the existing literature by unraveling the factors that impede the learning process, and by suggesting a set of strategies that can make course more effective.

Keywords: competencies, learner-centered teaching, research methods, student autonomy, pedagogy

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Authors: Massimo Miccoli, Luca Marangoni, Alberto Aniello Scaringi, Alessandro Marceddu, Alessandro Amicone

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The susceptibility of deep neural networks (DNNs) to adversarial manipulations is a recognized challenge within the computer vision domain. Adversarial examples, crafted by adding subtle yet malicious alterations to benign images, exploit this vulnerability. Various defense strategies have been proposed to safeguard DNNs against such attacks, stemming from diverse research hypotheses. Building upon prior work, our approach involves the utilization of autoencoder models. Autoencoders, a type of neural network, are trained to learn representations of training data and reconstruct inputs from these representations, typically minimizing reconstruction errors like mean squared error (MSE). Our autoencoder was trained on a dataset of benign examples; learning features specific to them. Consequently, when presented with significantly perturbed adversarial examples, the autoencoder exhibited high reconstruction errors. The architecture of the autoencoder was tailored to the dimensions of the images under evaluation. We considered various image sizes, constructing models differently for 256x256 and 512x512 images. Moreover, the choice of the computer vision model is crucial, as most adversarial attacks are designed with specific AI structures in mind. To mitigate this, we proposed a method to replace image-specific dimensions with a structure independent of both dimensions and neural network models, thereby enhancing robustness. Our multi-modal autoencoder reconstructs the spectral representation of images across the red-green-blue (RGB) color channels. To validate our approach, we conducted experiments using diverse datasets and subjected them to adversarial attacks using models such as ResNet50 and ViT_L_16 from the torch vision library. The autoencoder extracted features used in a classification model, resulting in an MSE (RGB) of 0.014, a classification accuracy of 97.33%, and a precision of 99%.

Keywords: adversarial attacks, malicious images detector, binary classifier, multimodal transformer autoencoder

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Authors: Afnan Khoja, Ittisak Subrungruang, Kritchaya Ritruechai, Linda Jones, David Wall

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Background: Some characteristics might be stated as an objective of the curriculum and some might be hidden. The hidden curriculum is the unwritten and unintended lessons and perspectives that students absorb in school. Though, the hidden characteristics are expected that tutors hope students might have in order to become medical educators. We suspected our faculty hoped we would develop skills, know and develop beyond the written outcomes. Our research question aimed to explore the hidden curriculum; as part of our learning; we had to design and report findings. Summary of Work: We undertook semi-structured interviews with a sample of the centre for medical education faculty at Dundee. Participants answered the question , of what are the hidden characteristics that they hope Dundee MMed graduates might have after graduation. Thematic analysis was carried out on the interview scripts. Summary of Results: A thematic analysis was carried out on the interview transcripts. Three main themes were identified from all respondents' comments. These were lifelong learners, being flexible and problem solvers. In addition individual respondents also described sense of humour, collaboration, humility, role model, inquisitiveness, optimism, and ability to express oneself clearly. Discussion: Tutors put great value on three behaviours lifelong learner, flexible, and problem solver, which are part of professional characteristics in leadership. Therefore, leadership characteristics is incorporated as the outcomes of hidden characteristics that tutors would like to see. Conclusion: Tutors in the Master's program of medical education at the University of Dundee hope that medical education students should present the three main hidden characteristics, which are lifelong learner, flexible, and problem solver after graduation. Take-home Messages: These hidden characteristics are considered as informal unless a change has been made to the formal curriculum. Therefore, to reach the tutors’ expectations, further studies might be held to make this personal characteristics transformation more accessible.

Keywords: characteristics, hidden curriculum, transformation, informal

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Authors: N. Perini, M. C. Thaller, F. Mercuri, S. Orlanducci, A. Rubechini, L. Migliore

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The preservation of cultural heritage is one of the major challenges of today’s society, because of the fundamental right of future generations to inherit it as the continuity with their historical and cultural identity. Parchments, consisting of a semi-solid matrix of collagen produced from animal skin (i.e., sheep or goats), are a significant part of the cultural heritage, being used as writing material for many centuries. Due to their animal origin, parchments easily undergo biodeterioration. The most common biological damage is characterized by isolated or coalescent purple spots that often leads to the detachment of the superficial layer and the loss of the written historical content of the document. Although many parchments with the same biodegradative features were analyzed, no common causative agent has been found so far. Very recently, a study was performed on a purple-damaged parchment roll dated back 1244 A.D, the A.A. Arm. I-XVIII 3328, belonging to the oldest collection of the Vatican Secret Archive (Fondo 'Archivum Arcis'), by comparing uncolored undamaged and purple damaged areas of the same document. As a whole, the study gave interesting results to hypothesize a model of biodeterioration, consisting of a microbial succession acting in two main phases: the first one, common to all the damaged parchments, is characterized by halophilic and halotolerant bacteria fostered by the salty environment within the parchment maybe induced by bringing of the hides; the second one, changing with the individual history of each parchment, determines the identity of its colonizers. The design of this model was pivotal to this study, performed by different labs of the Tor Vergata University (Rome, Italy), in collaboration with the Vatican Secret Archive. Three documents, belonging to a collection of dramatically damaged parchments archived as 'Faldone Patrizi A 19' (dated back XVII century A.D.), were analyzed through a multidisciplinary approach, including three updated technologies: (i) Next Generation Sequencing (NGS, Illumina) to describe the microbial communities colonizing the damaged and undamaged areas, (ii) RAMAN spectroscopy to analyze the purple pigments, (iii) Light Transmitted Analysis (LTA) to evaluate the kind and entity of the damage to native collagen. The metagenomic analysis obtained from NGS revealed DNA sequences belonging to Halobacterium salinarum mainly in the undamaged areas. RAMAN spectroscopy detected pigments within the purple spots, mainly bacteriorhodopsine/rhodopsin-like pigments, a purple transmembrane protein containing retinal and present in Halobacteria. The LTA technique revealed extremely damaged collagen structures in both damaged and undamaged areas of the parchments. In the light of these data, the study represents a first confirmation of the microbial succession model described above. The demonstration of this model is pivotal to start any possible new restoration strategy to bring back historical parchments to their original beauty, but also to open opportunities for intervention on a huge amount of documents.

Keywords: biodeterioration, parchments, purple spots, ecological succession

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Authors: Eleanor K. P. Kwan

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English academic writing, it has been argued, is an acquired language even for English speakers. For research students whose English is not their first language, however, the acquisition process is often more challenging. Instead of hoping that students would acquire the conventions themselves through extensive reading, there is a need for the explicit teaching of linguistic conventions in academic writing, as explicit teaching could help students to be more aware of the different generic conventions in different disciplines in science. This paper presents an interuniversity effort to develop an online academic writing resource for research students in five subdisciplines in engineering, upon the completion of the needs analysis which indicates that students and faculty members are more concerned about students’ ability to organize an extended text than about grammatical accuracy per se. In particular, this paper focuses on the materials developed for thesis writing (also called dissertation writing in some tertiary institutions), as theses form an essential graduation requirement for all research students and this genre is also expected to demonstrate the writer’s competence in research and contributions to the research community. Drawing on Swalesian move analysis of research articles, this online resource includes authentic materials written by students and faculty members from the participating institutes. Highlight will be given to several aspects and challenges of developing this online resource. First, as the online resource aims at moving beyond providing instructions on academic writing, a range of interactive activities need to be designed to engage the users, which is one feature which differentiates this online resource from other equally informative websites on academic writing. Second, it will also include discussion on divergent textual practices in different subdisciplines, which help to illustrate different practices among these subdisciplines. Third, since theses, probably one of the most extended texts a research student will complete, require effective use of signposting devices to facility readers’ understanding, this online resource will also provide both explanation and activities on different components that contribute to text coherence. Finally results from piloting will also be included to shed light on the effectiveness of the materials, which could be useful for future development.

Keywords: academic writing, English for academic purposes, online language learning materials, scientific writing

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Authors: Wissal Ben Arfi, Lubica Hikkerova, Jean-Michel Sahut

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This study examines interfirm networks in the digital transformation era, and in particular, how tacit knowledge codification affects innovation success within digital platforms. Hence, one of the most important features of digital transformation and innovation process outcomes is the emergence of digital platforms, as an interfirm network, at the heart of open innovation. This research aims to illuminate how digital platforms influence inter-organizational innovation through virtual team interactions and knowledge sharing practices within an interfirm network. Consequently, it contributes to the respective strategic management literature on new product development (NPD), open innovation, industrial management, and its emerging interfirm networks’ management. The empirical findings show, on the one hand, that knowledge conversion may be enhanced, especially by the socialization which seems to be the most important phase as it has played a crucial role to hold the virtual team members together. On the other hand, in the process of socialization, the tacit knowledge codification is crucial because it provides the structure needed for the interfirm network actors to interact and act to reach common goals which favor the emergence of open innovation. Finally, our results offer several conditions necessary, but not always sufficient, for interfirm managers involved in NPD and innovation concerning strategies to increasingly shape interconnected and borderless markets and business collaborations. In the digital transformation era, the need for adaptive and innovative business models as well as new and flexible network forms is becoming more significant than ever. Supported by technological advancements and digital platforms, companies could benefit from increased market opportunities and creating new markets for their innovations through alliances and collaborative strategies, as a mode of reducing or eliminating uncertainty environments or entry barriers. Consequently, an efficient and well-structured interfirm network is essential to create network capabilities, to ensure tacit knowledge sharing, to enhance organizational learning and to foster open innovation success within digital platforms.

Keywords: interfirm networks, digital platform, virtual teams, open innovation, knowledge sharing

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Authors: Adriana Pereira Arteaga

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In many Latin American countries the transition towards legal pluralism - has developed as part of what is called Latin-American-Constitutionalism over the last thirty years. The aim of this paper is to discuss how legal pluralism in its current form in Bolivia may produce exclusion and violence. Legal sources and discourse analysis - as an approach to examine written language on discourse documentation- will be used to develop this paper. With the constitution of 2009, Bolivia was symbolically "re-founded" into a multi-nation state. This shift goes hand in hand with the "indigenista" and "decolonisation" ideologies developing since the early 20th century. Discourses based on these ideologies reflect the rejection of liberal and western premises on which the Bolivian republic was originally built after independence. According to the "indigenista" movements, the liberal nation-state generates institutions corresponding to a homogenous society. These liberal institutions not only ignore the Bolivian multi-nation reality, but also maintain the social structures originating form the colony times, based on prejudices against the indigenous. The described statements were elaborated through the image: the indigenous people humiliated by a cruel western system as highlighted by the constitution's preamble. This narrative had a considerable impact on the sensitivity of people and received great social support. Therefore the proposal for changing structures of the nation-state, is charged with an emancipatory message of restoring even the pre-Columbian order. An order at times romantically described as the perfect order. Legally this connotes a rejection of the positivistic national legal system based on individual rights and the promotion of constitutional recognition of indigenous justice administration. The pluralistic Constitution is supposed to promote tolerance and a peaceful coexistence among nations, so that the unity and integrity of the country could be maintained. In its current form, legal pluralism in Bolivia is justified on pre-existing rights contained for example in the International - Labour - Organization - Convention 169, but it is more developed on the described discursive constructions. Over time these discursive constructions created inconsistencies in terms of putting indigenous justice administration into practice: First, because legal pluralism has been more developed on level of political discourse, so a real interaction between the national and the indigenous jurisdiction cannot be observed. There are no clear coordination and cooperation mechanisms. Second, since the recently reformed constitution is based on deep sensitive experiences, little is said about the general legal principles on which a pluralistic administration of justice in Bolivia should be based. Third, basic rights, liberties, and constitutional guarantees are also affected by the antagonized image of the national justice administration. As a result, fundamental rights could be violated on a large scale because many indigenous justice administration practices run counter to these constitutional rules. These problems are not merely Bolivian but may also be encountered in other regional countries with similar backgrounds, like Ecuador.

Keywords: discourse, indigenous justice, legal pluralism, multi-nation

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Authors: Preet Gill, Danus Ravindran

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These The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in widespread implications for medical specialist training programs worldwide, including radiology. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the Australian and New Zealand radiology trainee experience and well-being, as well as to compare the Australasian experience with that reported by other countries. An anonymised electronic online questionnaire was disseminated to all training members of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists who were radiology trainees during the 2020 – 2022 clinical years. Trainees were questioned about their experience from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australasia (March 2020) to the time of survey completion. Participation was voluntary. Questions assessed the impact of the pandemic across multiple domains, including workload (inpatient/outpatient & individual modality volume), teaching, supervision, external learning opportunities, redeployment and trainee wellbeing. Survey responses were collated and compared with other peer reviewed publications. Answer options were primarily in categorical format (nominal and ordinal subtypes, as appropriate). An opportunity to provide free text answers to a minority of questions was provided. While our results mirror that of other countries, which demonstrated reduced case exposure and increased remote teaching and supervision, responses showed variation in the methods utilised by training sites during the height of the pandemic. A significant number of trainees were affected by examination cancellations/postponements and had subspecialty training rotations postponed. The majority of trainees felt that the pandemic had a negative effect on their training. In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on radiology trainees across Australia and New Zealand. The present study has highlighted the extent of these effects, with most aspects of training impacted. Opportunities exist to utilise this information to create robust workplace strategies to mitigate these negative effects should the need arise in the future.

Keywords: COVID-19, radiology, training, pandemic

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Authors: Juhi Sah

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Habitat is characterized by the inter-dependency of environmental elements. Anthropocentric development approach is increasing our vulnerability towards natural hazards. Hence, manmade interventions should have a higher level of sensitivity towards the natural settings. Sensitivity towards the environment can be assessed by the behavior of the stakeholders involved. This led to the establishment of a hypothesis: there exists a legitimate relationship between the behavioral sciences, land use evolution and environment conservation, in the planning process. An attempt has been made to establish this relationship by reviewing the existing set of knowledge and case examples pertaining to the three disciplines under inquiry. Understanding the scarce & deteriorating nature of fresh-water reserves of earth and experimenting the above concept, a case study of a growing urban center's river flood plain is selected, in a developing economy, India. Cases of urban flooding in Chennai, Delhi and other mega cities of India, imposes a high risk on the unauthorized settlement, on the floodplains of the rivers. The issue addressed here is the encroachment of floodplains, through psychological enlightenment and modification through knowledge building. The reaction of an individual or society can be compared to a cognitive process. This study documents all the stakeholders' behavior and perception for their immediate natural environment (water body), and produce various land uses suitable along a river in an urban settlement as per different stakeholder's perceptions. To assess and induce morally responsible behavior in a community (small scale or large scale), tools of psychological inquiry is used for qualitative analysis. The analysis will deal with varied data sets from two sectors namely: River and its geology, Land use planning and regulation. Identification of a distinctive pattern in the built up growth, river ecology degradation, and human behavior, by handling large quantum of data from the diverse sector and comments on the availability of relevant data and its implications, has been done. Along the whole river stretch, condition and usage of its bank vary, hence stakeholder specific survey questionnaires have been prepared to accurately map the responses and habits of the rational inhabitants. A conceptual framework has been designed to move forward with the empirical analysis. The classical principle of virtues says "virtue of a human depends on its character" but another concept defines that the behavior or response is a derivative of situations and to bring about a behavioral change one needs to introduce a disruption in the situation/environment. Owing to the present trends, blindly following the results of data analytics and using it to construct policy, is not proving to be in favor of planned development and natural resource conservation. Thus behavioral assessment of the rational inhabitants of the planet is also required, as their activities and interests have a large impact on the earth's pre-set systems and its sustenance.

Keywords: behavioral assessment, flood plain encroachment, land use planning, river sustenance

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Authors: Jian-Heng Wu, Bor-Shen Lin

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The temperature-salinity relationship is one of the most important characteristics used for identifying water masses in marine research. Temperature-salinity characteristics, however, may change dynamically with respect to the geographic location and is quite sensitive to the depth at the same location. When depth is taken into consideration, however, it is not easy to compare the characteristics of different water masses efficiently for a wide range of areas of the ocean. In this paper, the Gaussian mixture model was proposed to analyze the temperature-salinity-depth characteristics of water masses, based on which comparison between water masses may be conducted. Gaussian mixture model could model the distribution of a random vector and is formulated as the weighting sum for a set of multivariate normal distributions. The temperature-salinity-depth data for different locations are first used to train a set of Gaussian mixture models individually. The distance between two Gaussian mixture models can then be defined as the weighting sum of pairwise Bhattacharyya distances among the Gaussian distributions. Consequently, the distance between two water masses may be measured fast, which allows the automatic and efficient comparison of the water masses for a wide range area. The proposed approach not only can approximate the distribution of temperature, salinity, and depth directly without the prior knowledge for assuming the regression family, but may restrict the complexity by controlling the number of mixtures when the amounts of samples are unevenly distributed. In addition, it is critical for knowledge discovery in marine research to represent, manage and share the temperature-salinity-depth characteristics flexibly and responsively. The proposed approach has been applied to a real-time visualization system of ocean data, which may facilitate the comparison of water masses by aggregating the data without degrading the discriminating capabilities. This system provides an interface for querying geographic locations with similar temperature-salinity-depth characteristics interactively and for tracking specific patterns of water masses, such as the Kuroshio near Taiwan or those in the South China Sea.

Keywords: water mass, Gaussian mixture model, data visualization, system framework

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Authors: Antonios Paraskevas, Michael Madas

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For a university to maintain its international competitiveness in education, it is essential to recruit qualitative academic staff as it constitutes its most valuable asset. This selection demonstrates a significant role in achieving strategic objectives, particularly by emphasizing a firm commitment to the exceptional student experience and innovative teaching and learning practices of high quality. In this vein, the appropriate selection of academic staff establishes a very important factor of competitiveness, efficiency and reputation of an academic institute. Within this framework, our work demonstrates a comprehensive methodological concept that emphasizes the multi-criteria nature of the problem and how decision-makers could utilize our approach in order to proceed to the appropriate judgment. The conceptual framework introduced in this paper is built upon a hybrid neutrosophic method based on the Neutrosophic Analytical Hierarchy Process (N-AHP), which uses the theory of neutrosophy sets and is considered suitable in terms of a significant degree of ambiguity and indeterminacy observed in the decision-making process. To this end, our framework extends the N-AHP by incorporating the Neutrosophic Delphi Method (N-DM). By applying the N-DM, we can take into consideration the importance of each decision-maker and their preferences per evaluation criterion. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed model is the first which applies the Neutrosophic Delphi Method in the selection of academic staff. As a case study, it was decided to use our method for a real problem of academic personnel selection, having as the main goal to enhance the algorithm proposed in previous scholars’ work, and thus taking care of the inherent ineffectiveness which becomes apparent in traditional multi-criteria decision-making methods when dealing with situations alike. As a further result, we prove that our method demonstrates greater applicability and reliability when compared to other decision models.

Keywords: multi-criteria decision making methods, analytical hierarchy process, delphi method, personnel recruitment, neutrosophic set theory

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Authors: Inese Trusina, Elita Jermolajeva, Viktors Gopejenko, Viktor Abramov

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Global challenges require a transition from the existing linear economic model to a model that will consider nature as a life support system for the development of the way to social well-being in the frame of the ecological economics paradigm. The objective of the article is to present the results of the analysis of socio-economic systems in the context of sustainable development using the systems power (energy flows) changes analyzing method and structural Kaldor's model of GDP. In accordance with the principles of life's development and the ecological concept was formalized the tasks of sustainable development of the open, non-equilibrium, stable socio-economic systems were formalized using the energy flows analysis method. The methodology of monitoring sustainable development and level of life were considered during the research of interactions in the system ‘human - society - nature’ and using the theory of a unified system of space-time measurements. Based on the results of the analysis, the time series consumption energy and economic structural model were formulated for the level, degree and tendencies of sustainable development of the system and formalized the conditions of growth, degrowth and stationarity. In order to design the future state of socio-economic systems, a concept was formulated, and the first models of energy flows in systems were created using the tools of system dynamics. During the research, the authors calculated and used a system of universal indicators of sustainable development in the invariant coordinate system in energy units. In order to design the future state of socio-economic systems, a concept was formulated, and the first models of energy flows in systems were created using the tools of system dynamics. In the context of the proposed approach and methods, universal sustainable development indicators were calculated as models of development for the USA and China. The calculations used data from the World Bank database for the period from 1960 to 2019. Main results: 1) In accordance with the proposed approach, the heterogeneous energy resources of countries were reduced to universal power units, summarized and expressed as a unified number. 2) The values of universal indicators of the life’s level were obtained and compared with generally accepted similar indicators.3) The system of indicators in accordance with the requirements of sustainable development can be considered as a basis for monitoring development trends. This work can make a significant contribution to overcoming the difficulties of forming socio-economic policy, which is largely due to the lack of information that allows one to have an idea of the course and trends of socio-economic processes. The existing methods for the monitoring of the change do not fully meet this requirement since indicators have different units of measurement from different areas and, as a rule, are the reaction of socio-economic systems to actions already taken and, moreover, with a time shift. Currently, the inconsistency or inconsistency of measures of heterogeneous social, economic, environmental, and other systems is the reason that social systems are managed in isolation from the general laws of living systems, which can ultimately lead to a systemic crisis.

Keywords: sustainability, system dynamic, power, energy flows, development

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Authors: Ho Yin Wickson Cheung, Liora Malki-Epshtein

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Outdoor air pollution presents a significant challenge for public health globally, especially in urban areas, with road traffic acting as the primary contributor to air pollution. Several studies have documented the antagonistic relation between traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) and the impact on health, especially to the vulnerable group of population, particularly young pupils. Generally, TRAP could cause damage to their brain, restricting the ability of children to learn and, more importantly, causing detrimental respiratory issues in later life. Butlittle is known about the specific exposure of children at school during the school day and the impact this may have on their overall exposure to pollution at a crucial time in their development. This project has set out to examine the air quality across primary schools in South-East London and assesses the variability of data found based on their geographic location and surroundings. Nitrogen dioxide, PM contaminants, and carbon dioxide were collected with diffusion tubes and portable monitoring equipment for eight schools across three local areas, that are Greenwich, Lewisham, and Tower Hamlets. This study first examines the geographical features of the schools surrounding (E.g., coverage of urban road structure and green infrastructure), then utilize three different methods to capture pollutants data. Moreover, comparing the obtained results with existing data from monitoring stations to understand the differences in air quality before and during the pandemic. Furthermore, most studies in this field have unfortunately neglected human exposure to pollutants and calculated based on values from fixed monitoring stations. Therefore, this paper introduces an alternative approach by calculating human exposure to air pollution from real-time data obtained when commuting within related areas (Driving routes and field walking). It is found that schools located highly close to motorways are generally not suffering from the most air pollution contaminants. Instead, one with the worst traffic congested routes nearby might also result in poor air quality. Monitored results also indicate that the annual air pollution values have slightly decreased during the pandemic. However, the majority of the data is currently still exceeding the WHO guidelines. Finally, the total human exposures for NO2 during commuting in the two selected routes were calculated. Results illustrated the total exposure for route 1 were 21,730 μm/m3 and 28,378.32 μm/m3, and for route 2 were 30,672 μm/m3 and 16,473 μm/m3. The variance that occurred might be due to the difference in traffic volume that requires further research. Exposure for NO2 during commuting was plotted with detailed timesteps that have shown their peak usually occurred while commuting. These have consolidated the initial assumption to the extremeness of TRAP. To conclude, this paper has yielded significant benefits to understanding air quality across schools in London with the new approach of capturing human exposure (Driving routes). Confirming the severity of air pollution and promoting the necessity of considering environmental sustainability for policymakers during decision making to protect society's future pillars.

Keywords: air pollution, schools, pupils, congestion

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Authors: Celeste Lawson

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Learning to embrace and value teamwork assessment at a university level is critical for students, as graduates enter a real-world working environment where teamwork is likely to occur virtually. Student disdain for teamwork exercises is an area often overlooked or disregarded by academics. This research explored the implementation of an online teamwork assessment approach at a regional Australian university with a significant cohort of Distance Education students. Students had disliked teamwork for three reasons: it was not relevant to their study, the grading was unfair amongst team members, and managing the task was challenging in a virtual environment. Teamwork assessment was modified so that the task was an authentic task that could occur in real-world practice; team selection was based on the task topic rather than randomly; grading was based on the individual’s contribution to the task, and students were provided virtual team management skills as part of a the assessment. In this way, management of the team became an output of the task itself. Data was gathered over three years from student satisfaction surveys, failure rates, attrition figures, and unsolicited student comments. In one unit where this approach was adopted (Advanced Public Relations), student satisfaction increased from 3.6 (out of 5) in 2012 to 4.6 in 2016, with positive comments made about the teamwork approach. The attrition rate for another unit (Public Relations and the Media) reduced from 20.7% in 2012 to 2.2% in 2015. In 2012, criticism of teamwork assessment made up 50% of negative student feedback in Public Relations and the Media. By 2015, following the successful implementation of the teamwork assessment approach, only 12.5% of negative comments on the student satisfaction survey were critical of teamwork, while 33% of positive comments related to a positive teamwork experience. In 2016, students explicitly nominated teamwork as the best part of this unit. The approach is transferable to other disciplines and was adopted by other academics within the institution with similar results.

Keywords: assessment, distance education, teamwork, virtual

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Authors: Adawati Suhaili, Kamisah Osman, Mohd Effendi, Ewan Mohd Matore

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The global education reform has prompted Malaysia to transform the education system in Malaysia through the Malaysian Education Blueprint (MEB) 2013-2025. This transformation is aimed to achieve the top one-third rank in international assessment. The low achievement of student scientific literacy in TIMMS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study ) and PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) has caused concern to the Ministry Of Education (MOE) despite various reform efforts. Therefore, an alternative action by enhancing the role of the Head of Science Panels (HoSPs) as a key change agent in catalyzing the improvement of student performance should be considered. Highlights of previous studies have shown that subject leadership is able to enhance teacher teaching quality in order to increase student learning. To lead the Science department and guide Science teachers more effectively, HoSPs need to strengthen their leadership skills. However, the issue of weaknesses in the leadership competencies of HoSPs in Malaysia has caused them to lack confidence and ability in leading the Science Department. The main objective of this study is to explore the factors that contribute to the problems faced by HoSPs at Sarawak in their leadership roles. This study used a qualitative design framework and using a semi-structured interview method for data collection. There were six informants involved in the interview consisting of lecturers, Senior Administrative Assistant Teacher and HoSPs. The findings of the study had been identified four main factors that contribute to problems in the leadership competencies of HoSPs in Sarawak, namely leadership practices, leadership structure, academic subjects and school change. The results are significant to the MOE in strengthening the leadership competencies of HoSPs in a more focus for improving the achievement of scientific literacy of students in Malaysia. This study can help improve the Hosps' leadership competencies in Malaysia.

Keywords: issues, problems, Malaysia education blueprint, leadership competencies, head of science panels

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Authors: Kabiru Adamu

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The Nigerian electricity industry was deregulated and privatized in 2005 and 2014 in line with global trend and practice. International and multilateral lending institutions advised developing countries, Nigeria inclusive, to adopt deregulation and privatization as part of reforms in their electricity sectors. The ideological basis of these reforms are traceable to neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is an ideology that believes in the supremacy of free market and strong non-interventionist competition law as against government ownership of the electricity market. This ideology became a state practice and a blue print for the deregulation and privatization of the electricity markets in many parts of the world. The blue print was used as a template for the privatization of the Nigerian electricity industry. In this wise, this paper, using documentary analysis and review of academic literatures, examines neoliberalism as an ideology and model of economic governance for the electricity supply industry in Nigeria. The paper examines the origin of the ideology, it features and principles and how it was used as the blue print in designing policies for electricity reforms in both developed and developing countries. The paper found out that there is gap between the ideology in theory and in practice because although the theory is rational in thinking it is difficult to be implemented in practice. The paper argues that the ideology has a mismatched effect and this has made its application in the electricity industry in many developing countries problematic and unsuccessful. In the case of Nigeria, the article argues that the template is also not working. The article concludes that the electricity sectors in Nigeria have failed to develop into competitive market for the benefit of consumers in line with the assumptions and promises of the ideology. The paper therefore recommends the democratization of the electricity sectors in Nigeria through a new system of public ownership as the solution to the failure of the neoliberal policies; but this requires the design of a more democratic and participatory system of ownership with communities and state governments in charge of the administration, running and operation of the sector.

Keywords: electricity, energy governance, neo-liberalism, regulation

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Authors: Indra Bahadur Chand

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This paper will focus on the need for development and application of global protocols and policy in planning, designing, development, and management of systems of eco-towns and eco-villages so that sustainable development will be assured from the perspective of environmental, economical, peace, and harmonized social dynamics. This perspective is essential for the development of civilized and eco-friendly human settlements in the town and rural areas of the nation that will be a milestone for developing a happy and sustainable lifestyle of rural and urban communities of the nation. The urban population of most of the town of developing economies has been tremendously increasing, whereas rural people have been tremendously migrating for the past three decades. Consequently, the urban lifestyle in most towns has stressed in terms of environmental pollution, water crisis, congested traffic, energy crisis, food crisis, and unemployment. Eco-towns and villages should be developed where lifestyle of all residents is sustainable and happy. Built up environment of settlement should reduce and minimize the problems of non ecological CO2 emissions, unbalanced utilization of natural resources, environmental degradation, natural calamities, ecological imbalance, energy crisis, water scarcity, waste management, food crisis, unemployment, deterioration of cultural heritage, social, the ratio among the public and private land ownership, ratio of land covered with vegetation and area of settlement, the ratio of people in the vehicles and foot, the ratio of people employed outside of town and village, ratio of resources recycling of waste materials, water consumption level, the ratio of people and vehicles, ratio of the length of the road network and area of town/villages, a ratio of renewable energy consumption with total energy, a ratio of religious/recreational area out of the total built-up area, the ratio of annual suicide case out of total people, a ratio of annual injured and death out of total people from a traffic accident, a ratio of production of agro foods within town out of total food consumption will be used to assist in designing and monitoring of each eco-towns and villages. An eco-town and villages should be planned and developed to offer sustainable infrastructure and utilities that maintain CO2 level in individual homes and settlements, home energy use, transport, food and consumer goods, water supply, waste management, conservation of historical heritages, healthy neighborhood, conservation of natural landscape, conserving bio-diversity and developing green infrastructures. Eco-towns and villages should be developed on the basis of master planning and architecture that affect and define the settlement and its form. Master planning and engineering should focus in delivering the sustainability criteria of eco towns and eco village. This will involve working with specific landscape and natural resources of locality.

Keywords: eco-town, ecological habitation, master plan, sustainable development

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Authors: Lota Largavista

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This study entitled, ‘The Organizational Structure, Development Features, and Metadiscoursal Elements in the Expository Writing of Freshman College Writers’ aimed to examine essays written by college students. It seeks to examine the organizational structure and development features of the essays and describe their defining characteristics, the linguistic elements at both macrostructural and microstructural discourse levels and the types of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers that are employed in order to negotiate meanings with their prospective readers. The different frameworks used to analyze the essays include Toulmin’s ( 1984) model for argument structure, Olson’s ( 2003) three-part essay structure; Halliday and Matthiesen (2004) in Herriman (2011) notions of thematic structure, Danes (1974) thematic progression or method of development, Halliday’s (2004) concept of grammatical and lexical cohesion ;Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse strategies; and Chung and Nation’s( 2003) four-step scale for technical vocabulary. This descriptive study analyzes qualitatively and quantitatively how freshman students generally express their written compositions. Coding of units is done to determine what linguistic features are present in the essays. Findings revealed that students’ expository essays observe a three-part structure having all three moves, the Introduction, the Body and the Conclusion. Stance assertion, stance support, and emerging moves/strategies are found to be employed in the essays. Students have more marked themes on the essays and also prefer constant theme progression as their method of development. The analysis of salient linguistic elements reveals frequently used cohesive devices and metadiscoursal strategies. Based on the findings, an instructional learning plan is being proposed. This plan is characterized by a genre approach that focuses on expository and linguistic conventions.

Keywords: metadiscourse, organization, theme progression, structure

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Authors: Frederick Gooding

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This paper explores how many Hip Hop artists have intentionally and strategically invoked sustainability principles of people, planet and profits as a means to create community, compensate for and cope with structural inequalities in society. These themes not only create community within one's country, but the powerful display and demonstration of these narratives create community on a global plane. Listeners of Hip Hop are therefore able to learn about the political events occurring in another country free of censure, and establish solidarity worldwide. Hip Hop therefore can be an ingenious tool to create self-worth, recycle positive imagery, and serve as a defense mechanism from institutional and structural forces that conspire to make an upward economic and social trajectory difficult, if not impossible for many people of color, all across the world. Although the birthplace of Hip Hop, the United States of America, is still predominately White, it has undoubtedly grown more diverse at a breath-­taking pace in recent decades. Yet, whether American mainstream media will fully reflect America’s newfound diversity remains to be seen. As it stands, American mainstream media is seen and enjoyed by diverse audiences not just in America, but all over the world. Thus, it is imperative that further inquiry is conducted about one of the fastest growing genres within one of the world’s largest and most influential media industries generating upwards of $10 billion annually. More importantly, hip hop, its music and associated culture collectively represent a shared social experience of significant value. They are important tools used both to inform and influence economic, social and political identity. Conversely, principles of American exceptionalism often prioritize American political issues over those of others, thereby rendering a myopic political view within the mainstream. This paper will therefore engage in an international contextualization of the global phenomena entitled Hip Hop by exploring the creative genius and marketing appeal of Hip Hop within the global context of information technology, political expression and social change in addition to taking a critical look at historically racialized imagery within mainstream media. Many artists the world over have been able to freely express themselves and connect with broader communities outside of their own borders, all through the sound practice of the craft of Hip Hop. An empirical understanding of political, social and economic forces within the United States will serve as a bridge for identifying and analyzing transnational themes of commonality for typically marginalized or disaffected communities facing similar struggles for survival and respect. The sharing of commonalities of marginalized cultures not only serves as a source of education outside of typically myopic, mainstream sources, but it also creates transnational bonds globally to the extent that practicing artists resonate with many of the original themes of (now mostly underground) Hip Hop as with many of the African American artists responsible for creating and fostering Hip Hop's powerful outlet of expression. Hip Hop's power of connectivity and culture-sharing transnationally across borders provides a key source of education to be taken seriously by academics.

Keywords: culture, education, global, hip hop, mainstream music, transnational

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Authors: Maryvone Cunha de Morais, Lilian Cristine Hübner

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Based on a translanguaging theoretical approach, which considers language not as separate entities but as an entire repertoire available to bilingual individuals, this systematic review aimed at analyzing the methods (aims, samples investigated, type of stimuli, and analyses) adopted by studies on translanguaging practices associated with written and oral tasks (separately or integrated) in bilingual education. The PRISMA criteria for systematic reviews were adopted, with the descriptors "translanguaging", "bilingual education" and/or “written and oral tasks" to search in Pubmed/Medline, Lilacs, Eric, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases for articles published between 2017 and 2021. 280 registers were found, and after following the inclusion/exclusion criteria, 24 articles were considered for this analysis. The results showed that translanguaging practices were investigated on four studies focused on written production analyses, ten focused on oral production analysis, whereas ten studies focused on both written and oral production analyses. The majority of the studies followed a qualitative approach, while five studies have attempted to study translanguaging with quantitative statistical measures. Several types of methods were used to investigate translanguaging practices in written and oral production, with different approaches and tools indicating that the methods are still in development. Moreover, the findings showed that students’ interactions have received significant attention, and studies have been developed not just in language classes in bilingual education, but also including diverse educational and theoretical contexts such as Content and Language Integrated Learning, task repetition, Science classes, collaborative writing, storytelling, peer feedback, Speech Act theory and collective thinking, language ideologies, conversational analysis, and discourse analyses. The studies, whether focused either on writing or oral tasks or in both, have portrayed significant research and pedagogical implications, grounded on the view of integrated languages in bi-and multilinguals.

Keywords: bilingual education, oral production, translanguaging, written production

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Authors: Hassan Nour, Nouh Mounadi, Oussama Abchir, Belaidi Salah, Samir Chtita

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Cholinesterase enzymes are biological catalysts essential for the transformation of acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter implicated in memory and learning, into acetic acid and choline, altering the neurotransmission process in Alzheimer’s disease patients. Therefore, inhibition of cholinesterase enzymes is a relevant strategy for the symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The current investigation aims to explore potential cholinesterase (ChE) inhibitors through a comprehensive computational approach. Forty-nine phytoconstituents extracted from Cannabis sativa L. were in-silico screened using molecular docking and pharmacokinetic and toxicological analysis to evaluate their possible inhibitory effect on the cholinesterase enzymes. Two phytoconstituents belonging to cannabinoid derivatives were revealed to be promising candidates for Alzheimer's therapy by acting as cholinesterase inhibitors. They have exhibited high binding affinities towards the cholinesterase enzymes and showed their ability to interact with key residues involved in cholinesterase enzymatic activity. In addition, they presented good ADMET profiles allowing them to be promising oral drug candidates. Furthermore, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were executed to explore their interaction stability under mimetic biological conditions and thus support our findings. To corroborate the docking results, the binding free energy corresponding to the more stable ligand-ChE complexes was re-estimated by applying the MM-PBSA method. MD and MM-PBSA studies affirmed that the ligand-ChE recognition is a spontaneous reaction leading to stable complexes. The conducted investigations have led to great findings that would strongly guide the pharmaceutical industries toward the rational development of potent anti-Alzheimer agents.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, molecular docking, Cannabis sativa L., cholinesterase inhibitors, molecular dynamics, ADMET, MM-PBSA

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Authors: Lailial Muhtifah, Sirtul Marhamah

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This article forwards the conceptual framework of continuous academic lecturer model in Islamic higher education (IHE). It is intended to make a contribution to the broader issue of how the concept of excellence can promote adherence to standards in higher education and drive quality enhancement. This model reveals a process and steps to increase performance and achievement of excellence regular lecturer gradually. Studies in this model are very significant to realize excellence academic culture in IHE. Several steps were identified from previous studies through literature study and empirical findings. A qualitative study was conducted at institute. Administrators and lecturers were interviewed, and lecturers learning communities observed to explore institute culture policies, and procedures. The original in this study presents and called Continuous Academic Lecturer Model (CALM) with its components, namely Standard, Quality, and Excellent as the basis for this framework (SQE). Innovation Excellence Framework requires Leaders to Support (LS) lecturers to achieve a excellence culture. So, the model named CALM-SQE+LS. Several components of performance and achievement of CALM-SQE+LS Model should be disseminated and cultivated to all lecturers in university excellence in terms of innovation. The purpose of this article is to define the concept of “CALM-SQE+LS”. Originally, there were three components in the Continuous Academic Lecturer Model i.e. standard, quality, and excellence plus leader support. This study is important to the community as specific cases that may inform educational leaders on mechanisms that may be leveraged to ensure successful implementation of policies and procedures outline of CALM with its components (SQE+LS) in institutional culture and professional leader literature. The findings of this study learn how continuous academic lecturer is part of a group's culture, how it benefits in university. This article blends the available criteria into several sub-component to give new insights towards empowering lecturer the innovation excellence at the IHE. The proposed conceptual framework is also presented.

Keywords: continuous academic lecturer model, excellence, quality, standard

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Authors: Ruth Hegarty, Noel Connaughton

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Sustainability reporting has become a priority for many global multinational companies. This is associated with ever-increasing expectations from key stakeholders for companies to be transparent about their strategies, activities and management with regard to sustainability issues. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) encourages reporters to only provide information on the issues that are really critical in order to achieve the organisation’s goals for sustainability and manage its impact on environment and society. A key challenge for most reporting organisations is how to identify relevant issues for sustainability reporting and prioritise those material issues in accordance with company and stakeholder needs. A recent study indicates that most of the largest companies listed on the world’s stock exchanges are failing to provide data on key sustainability indicators such as employee turnover, energy, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), injury rate, pay equity, waste and water. This paper takes an indepth look at the approaches used by a select number of international sustainability leader corporates to identify key sustainability issues. The research methodology involves performing a detailed analysis of the sustainability report content of up to 50 companies listed on the 2014 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI). The most recent sustainability report content found on the GRI Sustainability Disclosure Database is then compared with 91 GRI Specific Standard Disclosures and a small number of GRI Standard Disclosures. Preliminary research indicates significant gaps in the information disclosed in corporate sustainability reports versus the indicator content specified in the GRI Content Index. The following outlines some of the key findings to date: Most companies made a partial disclosure with regard to the Economic indicators of climate change risks and infrastructure investments, but did not focus on the associated negative impacts. The top Environmental indicators disclosed were energy consumption and reductions, GHG emissions, water withdrawals, waste and compliance. The lowest rates of indicator disclosure included biodiversity, water discharge, mitigation of environmental impacts of products and services, transport, environmental investments, screening of new suppliers and supply chain impacts. The top Social indicators disclosed were new employee hires, rates of injury, freedom of association in operations, child labour and forced labour. Lesser disclosure rates were reported for employee training, composition of governance bodies and employees, political contributions, corruption and fines for non-compliance. The reporting on most other Social indicators was found to be poor. In addition, most companies give only a brief explanation on how material issues are defined, identified and ranked. Data on the identification of key stakeholders and the degree and nature of engagement for determining issues and their weightings is also lacking. Generally, little to no data is provided on the algorithms used to score an issue. Research indicates that most companies lack a rigorous and thorough methodology to systematically determine the material issues of sustainability reporting in accordance with company and stakeholder needs.

Keywords: identification of key stakeholders, material issues, sustainability reporting, transparency

Procedia PDF Downloads 285