Search results for: positive communication

Authors: John Zanetich

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Due to their positive associations with student learning and retention, certain undergraduate opportunities are designated ‘high-impact.’ High-Impact Practices (HIPs) such as, learning communities, community based projects, research, internships, study abroad and culminating senior experience, share several traits bin common: they demand considerable time and effort, learning occurs outside of the classroom, and they require meaningful interactions between faculty and students, they encourage collaboration with diverse others, and they provide frequent and substantive feedback. As a result of experiential learning in these practices, participation in these practices can be life changing. High impact learning helps individuals locate tacit knowledge, and build mental models that support the accumulation of knowledge. On-going learning from experience and knowledge conversion provides the individual with a way to implicitly organize knowledge and share knowledge over a lifetime. Knowledge conversion is a knowledge management component which focuses on the explication of the tacit knowledge that exists in the minds of students and that knowledge which is embedded in the process and relationships of the classroom educational experience. Knowledge conversion is required when working with tacit knowledge and the demand for a learner to align deeply held beliefs with the cognitive dissonance created by new information. Knowledge conversion and tacit knowledge result from the fact that an individual's way of knowing, that is, their core belief structure, is considered generalized and tacit instead of explicit and specific. As a phenomenon, tacit knowledge is not readily available to the learner for explicit description unless evoked by an external source. The development of knowledge–related capabilities such as Aggressive Development of Tacit Knowledge (ADTK) can be used in experiential educational programs to enhance knowledge, foster behavioral change, improve decision making, and overall performance. ADTK allows the student in HIPs to use their existing knowledge in a way that allows them to evaluate and make any necessary modifications to their core construct of reality in order to amalgamate new information. Based on the Lewin/Schein Change Theory, the learner will reach for tacit knowledge as a stabilizing mechanism when they are challenged by new information that puts them slightly off balance. As in word association drills, the important concept is the first thought. The reactionary outpouring to an experience is the programmed or tacit memory and knowledge of their core belief structure. ADTK is a way to help teachers design their own methods and activities to unfreeze, create new learning, and then refreeze the core constructs upon which future learning in a subject area is built. This paper will explore the use of ADTK as a technique for knowledge conversion in the classroom in general and in HIP programs specifically. It will focus on knowledge conversion in curriculum development and propose the use of one-time educational experiences, multi-session experiences and sequential program experiences focusing on tacit knowledge in educational programs.

Keywords: tacit knowledge, knowledge management, college programs, experiential learning

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Authors: B. S. Premalatha, Kausalya Sahani

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Background: Voice is multidimensional which convey emotion, feelings, and communication. Voice disorders have an adverse effect on the physical, emotional and functional domains of an individual. Self-rating by clients about their voice problem helps the clinicians to plan intervention strategies. Voice handicap index is one such self-rating scale contains 30 questions that quantify the functional, physical and emotional impacts of a voice disorder on a patient’s quality of life. Each subsection has 10 questions. Though adapted and validated versions of VHI are available in other Indian languages but not in Telugu, which is a Dravidian language native to India. It is mainly spoken in Andhra Pradesh and neighbouring states in southern India. Objectives: To adapt and validate the English version of Voice Handicap Index (VHI) into Telugu language and evaluate its internal consistency and clinical validate in Telugu speaking population. Materials: The study carried out in three stages. First stage was a forward translation of English version of VHI, was given to ten experts, who were well proficient in writing and reading Telugu and five speech-language pathologists to translate into Telugu. Second Stage was backward translation where translated version of Telugu was given to a different group of ten experts (who were well proficient in writing and reading Telugu) and five speech-language pathologists who were native Telugu speakers and had good proficiency in Telugu and English. The third stage was an administration of translated version on Telugu to the targeted population. Totally 40 clinical subjects and 40 normal controls served as participants, and each group had 26 males and 14 females’ age range of 20 to 60 years. Clinical group comprised of individuals with laryngectomee with the Tracheoesophageal puncture (n=18), laryngitis (n=11), vocal nodules (n=7) and vocal fold palsy (n=4). Participants were asked to mark of their each experience on a 5 point equal appearing scale (0=never, 1=almost never, 2=sometimes, 3=almost always, 4=always) with a maximum total score of 120. Results: Statistical analysis was made by using SPSS software (22.0.0 Version). Mean, standard deviation and percentage (%) were calculated all the participants for both the groups. Internal consistency of VHI in Telugu was found to be excellent with the consistency scores for all the domains such as physical, emotional and functional are 0.742, 0.934and 0.938. The validity of scores showed a significant difference between clinical population and control group for domains like physical, emotional and functional and total scores. P value found to be less than 0.001( < 0.001). Negative correlation found in age and gender among self-domains such as physical, emotional and functional total scores in dysphonic and control group. Conclusion: The present study indicated that VHI in Telugu is able to discriminate participants having voice pathology from normal populations, which make this as a valid tool to collect information about their voice from the participants.

Keywords: adaptation, Telugu Version, translation, Voice Handicap Index (VHI)

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Authors: Muhammad Younas, Sidra Sawati, M. Razzaq Athar

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Organizational development history reveals that it has ever been a challenge to identify and fathom the role of talent management, career development and compensation management towards employees’ retention and organizational performance. Organizations strive hard to measure the impact of all those factors which affect employee retention and organizational performance. Researchers have worked in great deal in order to know the relationship of independent variables i.e. Talent Management, Career Development and Compensation Management on dependent variables i.e. Employee Retention and Organizational Performance. Employees adorned with latest skills with long lasting loyalty play a significant role towards successful achievement of short term as well as long term goals of the organizations. Retention of valuable and resourceful employees for a longer time is equally essential for meeting the set goals. The organizations which spend reasonable chunk of their resources for taking such measures that help to retain their employees through talent management and satisfactory career development always enjoy a competitive edge over their competitors. Human resource is regarded as one of the most precious and difficult resource to management. It has its own needs and requirement. It becomes an easy prey to monotony when lacks career development. Wants and aspirations of this resource are seldom met completely but can be managed through career development and compensation management. In this era of competition, organizations have to take viable steps to management their resources especially human resource. Top management and Managers keep on working for an amenable solution in order to address the challenges relating career development and compensation management as their ultimate goal is to ensure the organizational performance on optimum level. The current study was conducted to examine the impact of Talent Management, Career Development and Compensation Management towards Employees Retention and Organizational Performance with mediating effect of Employees Motivation in Service Sector of Pakistan. The current study is based on Resource Based View (RBV) and Ability Motivation Opportunity (AMO) theories. It explains that by increasing internal resources we can manage employee talent, career development through compensation management and employee motivation more effectively. It will result in effective execution of HRM practices for employee retention enabling an organization to achieve and sustain competitive advantage through optimal performance. Data collection was made through a structured questionnaire which was based upon adopted instruments after testing reliability and validity. A total 300 employees of 30 firms in service sector of Pakistan were sampled through non-probability sampling technique. Regression analysis revealed that talent management, career development and compensation management have significant positive impact on employee retention and perceived organizational performance. The results further showed that employee motivation have a significant mediating effect on employee retention and organizational performance. The interpretation of the findings and limitations, theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.

Keywords: career development, compensation management, employee retention, organizational performance, talent management

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Authors: Jayashree Aanand, Gajjam

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The grammatical tradition in Sanskrit literature emphasizes the importance of the correct use of Sanskrit words or linguistic units (sādhu śabda) that brings the meritorious values, denying the attribution of the same religious merit to the incorrect use of Sanskrit words (asādhu śabda) or the vernacular or corrupt forms (apa-śabda or apabhraṁśa), even though they may help in communication. The current research, the culmination of the doctoral research on sentence definition, studies the difference among the comprehension of both correct and incorrect word forms in Sanskrit and Marathi languages in India. Based on the total of 19 experiments (both web-based and classroom-controlled) on approximately 900 Indian readers, it is found that while the incorrect forms in Sanskrit are comprehended with lesser accuracy than the correct word forms, no such difference can be seen for the Marathi language. It is interpreted that the incorrect word forms in the native language or in the language which is spoken daily (such as Marathi) will pose a lesser cognitive load as compared to the language that is not spoken on a daily basis but only used for reading (such as Sanskrit). The theoretical base for the research problem is as follows: among the three main schools of Language Science in ancient India, the Vaiyākaraṇas (Grammarians) hold that the corrupt word forms do have their own expressive power since they convey meaning, while as the Mimāṁsakas (the Exegesists) and the Naiyāyikas (the Logicians) believe that the corrupt forms can only convey the meaning indirectly, by recalling their association and similarity with the correct forms. The grammarians argue that the vernaculars that are born of the speaker’s inability to speak proper Sanskrit are regarded as degenerate versions or fallen forms of the ‘divine’ Sanskrit language and speakers who could not use proper Sanskrit or the standard language were considered as Śiṣṭa (‘elite’). The different ideas of different schools strictly adhere to their textual dispositions. For the last few years, sociolinguists have agreed that no variety of language is inherently better than any other; they are all the same as long as they serve the need of people that use them. Although the standard form of a language may offer the speakers some advantages, the non-standard variety is considered the most natural style of speaking. This is visible in the results. If the incorrect word forms incur the recall of the correct word forms in the reader as the theory suggests, it would have added one extra step in the process of sentential cognition leading to more cognitive load and less accuracy. This has not been the case for the Marathi language. Although speaking and listening to the vernaculars is the common practice and reading the vernacular is not, Marathi readers have readily and accurately comprehended the incorrect word forms in the sentences, as against the Sanskrit readers. The primary reason being Sanskrit is spoken and also read in the standard form only and the vernacular forms in Sanskrit are not found in the conversational data.

Keywords: experimental sociolinguistics, grammaticality and meaningfulness, Marathi, Sanskrit

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Authors: Muzaffer Topgul, Hasan Atac

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After the September 11 attacks, fight against terrorism has risen to higher levels in security concepts of the countries. The following reactions of some nation states have led to the formation of unstable areas in different parts of the World. Especially, in Iraq and Syria, the influences of radical groups have risen with the weakening of the central governments. Turkey (with the geographical proximity to the current crisis) has become a stop on the movement of people who were displaced because of terrorism. In the process, the policies of the Syrian regime resulted in a civil war which is still going on since 2011, and remain as an unresolved crisis. With the extension of the problem, changes occurred in foreign policies of the World Powers; moreover, the ongoing effects of the riots, conflicts of interests of foreign powers, conflicts in the region because of the activities of radical groups increased instability within the country. This case continues to affect the security of Turkey, particularly illegal immigration. It has exceeded the number of two million Syrians who took refuge in Turkey due to the civil war, while continuing uncertainty about the legal status of asylum seekers, besides the security problems of asylum-seekers themselves, there are problems in education, health and communication (language) as well. In this study, we will evaluate the term of immigration through the eyes of national and international law, place the disorganized and illegal immigration in security sphere, and define the elements/components of irregular migration within the changing security concept. Ultimately, this article will assess the effects of the Syrian refuges to Turkey’s short-term, mid-term, and long-term security in the light of the national and international data flows and solutions will be presented to the ongoing problem. While explaining the security problems the data and the donnees obtained from the nation and international corporations will be examined thorough the human security dimensions such as living conditions of the immigrants, the ratio of the genders, especially birth rate occasions, the education circumstances of the immigrant children, the effects of the illegal passing on the public order. In addition, the demographic change caused by the immigrants will be analyzed, the changing economical conditions where the immigrants mostly accumulate, and their participation in public life will be worked on and the economical obstacles sourcing due to irregular immigration will be clarified. By the entire datum gathered from the educational, cultural, social, economic, demographical extents, the regional factors affecting the migration and the role of irregular migration in Turkey’s future security will be revealed by implication to current knowledge sources.

Keywords: displaced people, human security, irregular migration, refugees

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Authors: Ya-Hsing Yeh, I-Chun Tai, Ming-Chieh Lin, Li-Ting Lee, Ping-Ting Hsieh, Yi-Chen Ling, Jhia-Ying Du, Li-Ping Chang, Guan-Long Yu

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Objective: To understand the connection between children/adolescents and those who they miss, as well as the correlation between connection and their emotions. Method: Based on the objective, a close-ended questionnaire was made into a formal questionnaire after experts evaluated its validity. In February 2017, the paper-based questionnaire was adopted. Twenty-one elementary schools and junior high schools in Taiwan were sampled by purposive sampling approach and the fifth to ninth graders were our participants. A total of 2,502 valid questionnaires were retrieved. Results: Forty-four-point three percent of children/adolescents missed a person in mind, or they thought a person as a significant other in mind, but they had no connection with them. The highest proportion of those they wanted to contact with was ‘Friends and classmates’, and the others were ‘immediate family’, such as parents and grandparents, and ‘academic or vocational instructors, such as home-room teachers, coaches, cram school teachers and so on, respectively. Only 14% of children/adolescents would actively contact those they missed. The proportion of what children/adolescents ‘often’ actively keeping in touch with those they missed felt happy or cheerful was higher compared with those who ‘seldom’ actively keeping in touch with people they missed whenever they recalled who they missed, or the person actively contacted with them. Sixty-one-point seven percent of participants haven’t connected with those they missed for more than one year. The main reason was ‘environmental factors’, such as school/class transfer or moving, and then ‘academic or personal factors’, ‘communication tools’, and ‘personalities’, respectively. In addition to ‘greetings during festivals and holidays’, ‘hearing from those they missed’, and ‘knowing the latest information about those they missed on their Internet communities’, children/adolescents would like to actively contact with them when they felt ‘happy’ and ‘depressed or frustrated. The first three opinions of what children/adolescents regarded truly connection were ‘listening to people they missed attentively’, ‘sharing their secrets’, and ‘contacting with people they regularly missed with real actions’. In terms of gender, girls’ proportion on ‘showing with actions, including contacting with people they missed regularly or expressing their feelings openly’, and ‘sharing secrets’ was higher than boys’, while boy’s proportion on ‘the attitudes when contacting people they missed, including listening attentively or without being distracted’ was higher than girls’. Conclusions: I. The more ‘active’ connection they have, the more happiness they feel. II. Teachers can teach children how to manage their emotions and express their feelings appropriately. III. It is very important to turn connection into ‘action.’ Teachers can set a good example and share their moods with others whatever they are in the mood. This is a kind of connection.

Keywords: children, connection, emotion, mental health

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Authors: Adeiza Matthew, Oluwadamilola Abubakar

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Wood energy, also known as wood fuel, is a renewable energy source that is derived from woody biomass, which is organic matter that is harvested from forests, woodlands, and other lands. Woody biomass includes trees, branches, twigs, and other woody debris that can be used as fuel. Wood energy can be classified based on its sources, such as trees outside forests, residues from wood harvesting and conversion, and energy plantations. There are several policy frameworks that support the use of wood energy, including participatory forest management and agroforestry. These policies aim to promote the sustainable use of woody biomass as a source of energy while also protecting forests and wildlife habitats. There are several options for using wood as a fuel, including central heating systems, pellet-based systems, wood chip-based systems, log boilers, fireplaces, and stoves. Each of these options has its own benefits and drawbacks, and the most appropriate option will depend on factors such as the availability of woody biomass, the heating needs of the household or facility, and the local climate. In order to use wood as a fuel, it must be harvested and stored properly. Hardwood or softwood can be used as fuel, and the heating value of firewood depends on the species of tree and the degree of moisture content. Proper harvesting and storage of wood can help to minimize environmental impacts and improve wildlife habitats. The use of wood energy has several environmental impacts, including the release of greenhouse gases during combustion and the potential for air pollution from combustion by-products. However, wood energy can also have positive environmental impacts, such as the sequestration of carbon in trees and the reduction of reliance on fossil fuels. The regulation and legislation of wood energy vary by country and region, and there is an ongoing debate about the potential use of wood energy in renewable energy technologies. Wood energy is a renewable energy source that can be used to generate electricity, heat, and transportation fuels. Woody biomass is abundant and widely available, making it a potentially significant source of energy for many countries. The use of wood energy can create local economic and employment opportunities, particularly in rural areas. Wood energy can be used to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Properly managed forests can provide a sustained supply of woody biomass for energy, helping to reduce the risk of deforestation and habitat loss. Wood energy can be produced using a variety of technologies, including direct combustion, co-firing with fossil fuels, and the production of biofuels. The environmental impacts of wood energy can be minimized through the use of best practices in harvesting, transportation, and processing. Wood energy is regulated and legislated at the national and international levels, and there are various standards and certification systems in place to promote sustainable practices. Wood energy has the potential to play a significant role in the transition to a low-carbon economy and the achievement of climate change mitigation goals.

Keywords: biomass, timber, charcoal, firewood

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Authors: Harvey Sanchez-Restrepo, Jorge Louca

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Equity and education are major focus of government policies around the world due to its relevance for addressing the sustainable development goals launched by Unesco. In this research, we developed a primary analysis of a data set of more than one hundred educational and non-educational factors associated with learning, coming from a census-based large-scale assessment carried on in Ecuador for 1.038.328 students, their families, teachers, and school directors, throughout 2014-2018. Each participating student was assessed by a standardized computer-based test. Learning outcomes were calibrated through item response theory with two-parameters logistic model for getting raw scores that were re-scaled and synthetized by a learning index (LI). Our objective was to develop a network for modelling educational deprivation and analyze the structure of inequality gaps, as well as their relationship with socioeconomic status, school financing, and student's ethnicity. Results from the model show that 348 270 students did not develop the minimum skills (prevalence rate=0.215) and that Afro-Ecuadorian, Montuvios and Indigenous students exhibited the highest prevalence with 0.312, 0.278 and 0.226, respectively. Regarding the socioeconomic status of students (SES), modularity class shows clearly that the system is out of equilibrium: the first decile (the poorest) exhibits a prevalence rate of 0.386 while rate for decile ten (the richest) is 0.080, showing an intense negative relationship between learning and SES given by R= –0.58 (p < 0.001). Another interesting and unexpected result is the average-weighted degree (426.9) for both private and public schools attending Afro-Ecuadorian students, groups that got the highest PageRank (0.426) and pointing out that they suffer the highest educational deprivation due to discrimination, even belonging to the richest decile. The model also found the factors which explain deprivation through the highest PageRank and the greatest degree of connectivity for the first decile, they are: financial bonus for attending school, computer access, internet access, number of children, living with at least one parent, books access, read books, phone access, time for homework, teachers arriving late, paid work, positive expectations about schooling, and mother education. These results provide very accurate and clear knowledge about the variables affecting poorest students and the inequalities that it produces, from which it might be defined needs profiles, as well as actions on the factors in which it is possible to influence. Finally, these results confirm that network analysis is fundamental for educational policy, especially linking reliable microdata with social macro-parameters because it allows us to infer how gaps in educational achievements are driven by students’ context at the time of assigning resources.

Keywords: complex network, educational deprivation, evidence-based policy, large-scale assessments, policy informatics

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Authors: Burak Oksuzoglu, Savas Yildirim, Ferhat Kutlu

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Opinion mining (OM) is one of the natural language processing (NLP) problems to determine the polarity of opinions, mostly represented on a positive-neutral-negative axis. The data for OM is usually collected from various social media platforms. In an era where social media has considerable control over companies’ futures, it’s worth understanding social media and taking actions accordingly. OM comes to the fore here as the scale of the discussion about companies increases, and it becomes unfeasible to gauge opinion on individual levels. Thus, the companies opt to automize this process by applying machine learning (ML) approaches to their data. For the last two decades, OM or sentiment analysis (SA) has been mainly performed by applying ML classification algorithms such as support vector machines (SVM) and Naïve Bayes to a bag of n-gram representations of textual data. With the advent of deep learning and its apparent success in NLP, traditional methods have become obsolete. Transfer learning paradigm that has been commonly used in computer vision (CV) problems started to shape NLP approaches and language models (LM) lately. This gave a sudden rise to the usage of the pretrained language model (PTM), which contains language representations that are obtained by training it on the large datasets using self-supervised learning objectives. The PTMs are further fine-tuned by a specialized downstream task dataset to produce efficient models for various NLP tasks such as OM, NER (Named-Entity Recognition), Question Answering (QA), and so forth. In this study, the traditional and modern NLP approaches have been evaluated for OM by using a sizable corpus belonging to a large private company containing about 76,000 comments in Turkish: SVM with a bag of n-grams, and two chosen pre-trained models, multilingual universal sentence encoder (MUSE) and bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT). The MUSE model is a multilingual model that supports 16 languages, including Turkish, and it is based on convolutional neural networks. The BERT is a monolingual model in our case and transformers-based neural networks. It uses a masked language model and next sentence prediction tasks that allow the bidirectional training of the transformers. During the training phase of the architecture, pre-processing operations such as morphological parsing, stemming, and spelling correction was not used since the experiments showed that their contribution to the model performance was found insignificant even though Turkish is a highly agglutinative and inflective language. The results show that usage of deep learning methods with pre-trained models and fine-tuning achieve about 11% improvement over SVM for OM. The BERT model achieved around 94% prediction accuracy while the MUSE model achieved around 88% and SVM did around 83%. The MUSE multilingual model shows better results than SVM, but it still performs worse than the monolingual BERT model.

Keywords: BERT, MUSE, opinion mining, pretrained language model, SVM, Turkish

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Authors: S. C. Lin, W. W. Cheng, M. S. Wu

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This study attempted to investigate the connection between teacher professional development program and students’ Learning. This study took Readers’ Theater Teaching Program (RTTP) for professional development as an example to inquiry how participants apply their new knowledge and skills learned from RTTP to their teaching practice and how the impact influence students learning. The goals of the RTTP included: 1) to enhance teachers RT content knowledge; 2) to implement RT instruction in teachers’ classrooms in response to their professional development. 2) to improve students’ ability of reading fluency in professional development teachers’ classrooms. This study was a two-year project. The researchers applied mixed methods to conduct this study including qualitative inquiry and one-group pretest-posttest experimental design. In the first year, this study focused on designing and implementing RTTP and evaluating participants’ satisfaction of RTTP, what they learned and how they applied it to design their English reading curriculum. In the second year, the study adopted quasi-experimental design approach and evaluated how participants RT instruction influenced their students’ learning, including English knowledge, skill, and attitudes. The participants in this study composed two junior high school English teachers and their students. Data were collected from a number of different sources including teaching observation, semi-structured interviews, teaching diary, teachers’ professional development portfolio, Pre/post RT content knowledge tests, teacher survey, and students’ reading fluency tests. To analyze the data, both qualitative and quantitative data analysis were used. Qualitative data analysis included three stages: organizing data, coding data, and analyzing and interpreting data. Quantitative data analysis included descriptive analysis. The results indicated that average percentage of correct on pre-tests in RT content knowledge assessment was 40.75% with two teachers ranging in prior knowledge from 35% to 46% in specific RT content. Post-test RT content scores ranged from 70% to 82% correct with an average score of 76.50%. That gives teachers an average gain of 35.75% in overall content knowledge as measured by these pre/post exams. Teachers’ pre-test scores were lowest in script writing and highest in performing. Script writing was also the content area that showed the highest gains in content knowledge. Moreover, participants hold a positive attitude toward RTTP. They recommended that the approach of professional learning community, which was applied in RTTP was benefit to their professional development. Participants also applied the new skills and knowledge which they learned from RTTP to their practices. The evidences from this study indicated that RT English instruction significantly influenced students’ reading fluency and classroom climate. The result indicated that all of the experimental group students had a big progress in reading fluency after RT instruction. The study also found out several obstacles. Suggestions were also made.

Keywords: teacher’s professional development, program evaluation, readers’ theater, english reading instruction, english reading fluency

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Authors: Xabier Barandiaran, Igone Guerra

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The economic and financial crisis that hit European countries in 2008 revealed the inability of governments to respond unilaterally to the so-called “wicked” problems that affect our societies. Closely linked to this, the increasing disaffection of citizens towards politics has resulted in growing distrust of the citizenry not only in the institutions in general but also in the political system, in particular. Precisely, these two factors provoked the action of the local government of Gipuzkoa (Basque Country) to move from old ways of “doing politics” to a new way of “thinking politics” based on a collaborative approach, in which innovative modes of public decision making are prominent. In this context, in 2015, the initiative Etorkizuna Eraikiz (Building the Future), a contemporary form of networked governance, was launched by the Provincial Government. The paper focuses on the Etorkizuna Eraikiz initiative, a sound commitment from a local government to build jointly with the citizens the future of the territory. This paper will present preliminary results obtained from three different experiences of co-creation developed within Etorkizuna Eraikiz in which the formulation of networked governance is a mandatory pre-requisite. These experiences show how the network building approach among the different agents of the territory as well as the co-creation of public policies is the cornerstone of this challenging mission. Through the analysis of the information and documentation gathered during the four years of Etorkizuna-Eraikiz, and, specifically by delving into the strategy promoted by the initiative, some emerging analytical conclusions resulting from the promotion of this collaborative culture will be presented. For example, some preliminary results have shown a significant positive relationship between shared leadership and the formulation of the public good. In the period 2016-2018, a total of 73 projects were launched and funding by the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa within the Etorkizuna Eraikiz initiative, that indicates greater engagement of the citizenry in the process of policy-making and therefore improving, somehow, the quality of the public policies. These statements have been supported by the last survey about the perspectives of the citizens toward politics and policies. Some of the more prominent results show us that there is still a high level of distrust in Politics (78,9% of respondents) but a greater trust in institutions such the Political Government of Gipuzkoa (40,8% of respondents declared as “good” the performance of this provincial institution). Regarding the Etorkizuna Eraikiz Initiative, it is being more readily recognized by citizens over this period of time (25,4% of the respondents in June 2018 agreed to know about the initiative giving it a mark of 5,89 ) and thus build trust and a sense of ownership. Although, there is a clear requirement for further research on the linkages between collaborative governance and level of trust, the paper, based on these findings, will provide some managerial and theoretical implications for collaborative governance in the territory.

Keywords: network governance, collaborative governance, public sector innovation, citizen participation, trust

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Authors: Wei Hing Rosenkvist

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In the past few decades, concerns and demands of promoting student intercultural communicative competence in foreign language education have been increasing along with the rapid growth of information technologies and globalization in the 21st century. In Sweden, related concepts such as internationalization, global citizenship, multiculturalism, and intercultural communication etc., are also keywords that would be found in the written learning objectives of the foreign language education in all levels. Being one of the leading higher institutes in distance education in Europe, Dalarna University clearly states that after completion of the teacher education program, students shall understand the needs for integrating internationalization, intercultural and global perspective in teaching and learning in Swedish schools and implement their own studies to promote education in an international and global context. Despite the fact that many teachers and educators agree with the institutes’ mission and vision about the importance of internationalization and the need of increasing student understanding of intercultural and global perspective, they might find this objective unattainable and restricted due to the nature of the subject and their personal knowledge of intercultural competence. When conducting a comprehensive Chinese language course for the students who are going to become Chinese foreign language teachers, the researcher found that all the learning objectives are linguistic oriented while grammatical components dominate the entire course. Apparently, there is a gap between the learning objectives of the course and the DU’s mission of fostering an international learner with intercultural and globalized perspectives. How to include this macro-learning objective in a foreign language course is a great challenge to the educator. Although scholars from different academic domains have provided different theoretical frameworks and approaches for developing student intercultural competence, research that focuses on the didactic perspectives of developing student intercultural competence in teaching Chinese as a foreign language education (CFL) is limited and practical examples are rare. This has motivated the researcher to conduct an action research study that aims at integrating DU’s macro-learning objective in a current CFL course through different didactic practices with a purpose of developing the teacher student intercultural competence. This research study aims to, firstly, illustrate the cross-cultural knowledge integrated into the present Chinese language course for developing intercultural competence. Secondly, it investigates different didactic means that can be utilized to deliver cross-cultural knowledge to student teachers in the present course without generating dramatic disturbance of the syllabus. Thirdly, it examines the effectiveness of these didactic means in enhancing teacher student intercultural competence regarding the need for integrating and implementing internationalization, intercultural and global perspectives in teaching and learning in Swedish schools. Last but not least, it intends to serve as a practical example for developing the student teachers’ intercultural competence in foreign language education in DU and fill in the research gap of this academic domain worldwide.

Keywords: intercultural competence, foreign language education, action research, teacher education

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Authors: Javier Carroquino, Nieves García-Casarejos, Pilar Gargallo, F. Javier García-Ramos

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The energy used in agriculture is a source of global emissions of greenhouse gases. The two main types of this energy are electricity for pumping and diesel for agricultural machinery. In order to reduce these emissions, the European project LIFE REWIND addresses the supply of this demand from renewable sources. First of all, comprehensive data on energy demand and available renewable resources have been obtained in several case studies. Secondly, a set of simulations and optimizations have been performed, in search of the best configuration and sizing, both from an economic and emission reduction point of view. For this purpose, it was used software based on genetic algorithms. Thirdly, a prototype has been designed and installed, that it is being used for the validation in a real case. Finally, throughout a year of operation, various technical and economic parameters are being measured for further analysis. The prototype is not connected to the utility grid, avoiding the cost and environmental impact of a grid extension. The system includes three kinds of photovoltaic fields. One is located on a fixed structure on the terrain. Another one is floating on an irrigation raft. The last one is mounted on a two axis solar tracker. Each has its own solar inverter. The total amount of nominal power is 44 kW. A lead acid battery with 120 kWh of capacity carries out the energy storage. Three isolated inverters support a three phase, 400 V 50 Hz micro-grid, the same characteristics of the utility grid. An advanced control subsystem has been constructed, using free hardware and software. The electricity produced feeds a set of seven pumps used for purification, elevation and pressurization of water in a drip irrigation system located in a vineyard. Since the irrigation season does not include the whole year, as well as a small oversize of the generator, there is an amount of surplus energy. With this surplus, a hydrolyser produces on site hydrogen by electrolysis of water. An off-road vehicle with fuel cell feeds on that hydrogen and carries people in the vineyard. The only emission of the process is high purity water. On the one hand, the results show the technical and economic feasibility of stand-alone renewable energy systems to feed seasonal pumping. In this way, the economic costs, the environmental impacts and the landscape impacts of grid extensions are avoided. The use of diesel gensets and their associated emissions are also avoided. On the other hand, it is shown that it is possible to replace diesel in agricultural machinery, substituting it for electricity or hydrogen of 100% renewable origin and produced on the farm itself, without any external energy input. In addition, it is expected to obtain positive effects on the rural economy and employment, which will be quantified through interviews.

Keywords: drip irrigation, greenhouse gases, hydrogen, renewable energy, vineyard

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Authors: Kristine Demilou D. Santiago

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An access to a high-quality health care system is what sets apart industrialized nations, such as the United States from other developing countries, which in this case is specifically pertaining to their older population. But what was the underrated factor in the sphere of quality healthcare rendered to elderly people in the Western context? Will this salient factor could push conviction to prorogue the existing gaps between self-denial patient-client and cheek by jowl medications? Are the natural socio-environmental approaches of caregiving the protracted remedy to healthcare disparities for aging population considering their day to day living? The conceptual framework of this model is primarily associated with addressing health and illness of human beings considering the biological, psychological and socio-environmental factors around them. The relevance of biopsychosocial formulation advancing each of the characteristics in the Biopsychosocial (BPS) model in a balance contemplation is the tumult of this study in an attempt to respond to prevailing disparities in caregiving services for old-aged patients on a day to day living. Caregiving services have been the medium path connecting between the patient and its prescribed medications. Moreover, caregivers serve as positive reinforcers in a patient’s environment. Therefore, caregivers play an important role in healthcare delivery to patients. They are considered significant people whom their acts will give an impact to a patient’s view in life. This research study intends to present the supreme importance of biopsychosocial assessment to old-aged patients with mental health illness and conditions. Biopsychosocial assessment will secure the quality of full medication to an old-aged adult suffering from a mental illness. This is because it offers a recognizably wholesome approach to medical healing of old-aged adult patients. The principle of biopsychosocial supersedes the biomedicine being offered to old-aged adults having mental illness, but it does not take away the high relevance of scientific biomedicine in healing patients. The framework presented an overlapping participation of each of its factors in its BPS model that affects in general a person’s health. The correlation between the biological (physiological), psychological (mental) and social (environment) in a person’s health condition requires equal attention according to BPS, and it always coexist with each other. Indisputably said, bio-medicine has been and is being in its unceasing endeavor to provide scientifically proven health care medications for every individual seeking medical treatments. As we grow older and eventually reach the other side of the median population, not only our physiological aspects change, our psychological and socio-environmental changes happen too. Caregiving is a salient responsibility taking place on these inevitable changes.

Keywords: biopsychosocial formulation, caregiving through natural approaches, US health care, BPS in caregiving, caregiving for aging population

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Authors: Ling-Ling E, Lin Feng, Hong-Chen Liu, Dong-Sheng Wang, Zhanping Shi, Juncheng Wang, Wei Luo, Yan Lv

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The objective of this study was to compare the effects of the two calcium phosphate composite scaffolds on the attachment, proliferation and osteogenic differentiation of rabbit dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs). One nano-hydroxyapatite/collagen/poly (L-lactide) (nHAC/PLA), imitating the composition and the micro-structure characteristics of the natural bone, was made by Beijing Allgens Medical Science & Technology Co., Ltd. (China). The other beta-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP), being fully interoperability globular pore structure, was provided by Shanghai Bio-lu Biomaterials Co, Ltd. (China). We compared the absorption water rate and the protein adsorption rate of two scaffolds and the characterization of DPSCs cultured on the culture plate and both scaffolds under osteogenic differentiation media (ODM) treatment. The constructs were then implanted subcutaneously into the back of severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice for 8 and 12 weeks to compare their bone formation capacity. The results showed that the ODM-treated DPSCs expressed osteocalcin (OCN), bone sialoprotein (BSP), type I collagen (COLI) and osteopontin (OPN) by immunofluorescence staining. Positive alkaline phosphatase (ALP) staining, calcium deposition and calcium nodules were also observed on the ODM-treated DPSCs. The nHAC/PLA had significantly higher absorption water rate and protein adsorption rate than ß-TCP. The initial attachment of DPSCs seeded onto nHAC/PLA was significantly higher than that onto ß-TCP; and the proliferation rate of the cells was significantly higher than that of ß-TCP on 1, 3 and 7 days of cell culture. DPSCs+ß-TCP had significantly higher ALP activity, calcium/phosphorus content and mineral formation than DPSCs+nHAC/PLA. When implanted into the back of SCID mice, nHAC/PLA alone had no new bone formation, newly formed mature bone and osteoid were only observed in β-TCP alone, DPSCs+nHAC/PLA and DPSCs+β-TCP, and this three groups displayed increased bone formation over the 12-week period. The percentage of total bone formation area had no difference between DPSCs+β-TCP and DPSCs+nHAC/PLA at each time point，but the percentage of mature bone formation area of DPSCs+β-TCP was significantly higher than that of DPSCs+nHAC/PLA. Our results demonstrated that the DPSCs on nHAC/PLA had a better proliferation and that the DPSCs on β-TCP had a more mineralization in vitro, much more newly formed mature bones in vivo were presented in DPSCs+β-TCP group. These findings have provided a further knowledge that scaffold architecture has a different influence on the attachment, proliferation and differentiation of cells. This study may provide insight into the clinical periodontal bone tissue repair with DPSCs+β-TCP construct.

Keywords: dental pulp stem cells, nano-hydroxyapatite/collagen/poly(L-lactide), beta-tricalcium phosphate, periodontal tissue engineering, bone regeneration

Procedia PDF Downloads 324

Authors: Saheli Mitra, Ramesh Karri, Praveen K. Mylapalli, Arka. B. Dey, Gourav Bhattacharya, Gouriprasanna Roy, Syed M. Kamil, Surajit Dhara, Sunil K. Sinha, Sajal K. Ghosh

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The most well-known structures of lyotropic liquid crystalline systems are the two dimensional hexagonal phase of cylindrical micelles with a positive interfacial curvature and the lamellar phase of flat bilayers with zero interfacial curvature. In aqueous solution of surfactants, the concentration dependent phase transitions have been investigated extensively. However, instead of changing the surfactant concentrations, the local curvature of an aggregate can be altered by tuning the electrostatic interactions among the constituent molecules. Intermediate phases with non-uniform interfacial curvature are still unexplored steps to understand the route of phase transition from hexagonal to lamellar. Understanding such structural evolution in lyotropic liquid crystalline systems is important as it decides the complex rheological behavior of the system, which is one of the main interests of the soft matter industry. Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) is an anionic surfactant and can be considered as a unique system to tune the electrostatics by cationic additives. In present study, imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) with different number of carbon atoms in their single hydrocarbon chain were used as the additive in the aqueous solution of SDS. At a fixed concentration of total non-aqueous components (SDS and IL), the molar ratio of these components was changed, which effectively altered the electrostatic interactions between the SDS molecules. As a result, the local curvature is observed to modify, and correspondingly, the structure of the hexagonal liquid crystalline phases are transformed into other phases. Polarizing optical microscopy of SDS and imidazole-based-IL systems have exhibited different textures of the liquid crystalline phases as a function of increasing concentration of the ILs. The small angle synchrotron x-ray diffraction (SAXD) study has indicated the hexagonal phase of direct cylindrical micelles to transform to a rectangular phase at the presence of short (two hydrocarbons) chain IL. However, the hexagonal phase is transformed to a lamellar phase at the presence of long (ten hydrocarbons) chain IL. Interestingly, at the presence of a medium (four hydrocarbons) chain IL, the hexagonal phase is transformed to another hexagonal phase of direct cylindrical micelles through the lamellar phase. To the best of our knowledge, such a phase sequence has not been reported earlier. Even though the small angle x-ray diffraction study has revealed the lattice parameters of these phases to be similar to each other, their rheological behavior has been distinctly different. These rheological studies have shed lights on how these phases differ in their viscoelastic behavior. Finally, the packing parameters, calculated for these phases based on the geometry of the aggregates, have explained the formation of the self-assembled aggregates.

Keywords: lyotropic liquid crystals, polarizing optical microscopy, rheology, surfactants, small angle x-ray diffraction

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Authors: Gasto Lyakurwa, Glory Bakari, Edwin Sabuhoro

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Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) are established to promote and act as a remedy to the protection of wildlife resources outside the core protected area. WMAs aim to address issues of poverty, ensure sustainable use of wildlife resources, and share benefits from wildlife with the member villages. Successfully managed WMA in Tanzania improves local livelihood and conserves local biodiversity through tourism revenues and the protection of wildlife, respectively. Benefits accrued at household levels as a result of conservation activities in WMA can positively influence attitudes towards wildlife conservation. This research intends to assess the positive socio-economic impacts of WMA benefits on households in Burunge WMA in Tanzania. A questionnaire survey was conducted among four randomly selected villages in the ten villages forming the Burunge WMA to explore the household-level benefits of conservation activities. An example of a question item was whether household heads feel that they are benefiting from WMA and if they could remember some of the benefits. Interviews with leaders from WMA and member villages combined the survey to capture aspects of benefit distribution to households. A total of 80 households were used as samples of the recruited study sites. Moreover, the four WMA leaders and the eight village leaders of the respective study villages were interviewed. The study findings revealed that the shared benefit has mostly reached the community level and is less likely to reach the household level. Economic activities such as agriculture and livestock keeping were found to be more important for households than conservation-related economic activities. Conservation-related economic activities generate marginal direct benefits from WMA benefits to households, with ecotourism accounting for only 19.5%. The study also indicates that a direct share of financial benefits from WMA to households is lacking. Wildlife conservation benefits are less likely to reach household levels in WMAs, with the implication of reducing people's conservation attitudes and impeding community conservation success. WMA can utilize the finances from tourism fees and concessions to establish a Community Considerations Bank, which can lend money to some individuals at no or low interest rates. Considering the importance of education and health to households, WMA stands in a good position to provide health insurance premiums and student scholarships to motivate household participation in conservation activities. Community-based organizations and governments responsible for wildlife conservation should create mechanisms to channel conservation benefits to households in order to ensure the achievement of wildlife conservation objectives through WMA. These findings are expected to contribute to forming more WMAs with enhanced mechanisms for sharing conservation benefits to benefit the conservation of natural resources outside of the core protected areas. Motivated households are expected to respect wildlife and are less likely to engage in illegal activities such as poaching and harvesting conserved natural resources while coexisting with wildlife.

Keywords: social economic benefits, individuals, wildlife management areas, biodiversity, community

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Authors: M. Louise Humbert, Karen E. Chad, Natalie E. Houser, Marta E. Erlandson

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Physical literacy is the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and takes responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life. In recent years, physical literacy has emerged as a determinant of health, promoting a positive lifelong physical activity trajectory. Physical literacy’s holistic approach and emphasis on the intrinsic valuation of movement provide an encouraging avenue for intervention among children to develop competent and confident movers. Although there is research on physical literacy interventions, no evidence exists on the outcomes of multi-sectoral interventions involving a combination of home, school, and community contexts. Since children interact with and in a wide range of contexts (home, school, community) daily, interventions designed to address a combination of these contexts are critical to the development of physical literacy. Working with school administrators and teachers, sports and recreation leaders, and community members, our team of university and community researchers conducted and evaluated one of the first multi-contextual and multi-sectoral physical literacy interventions in Canada. Schools played a critical role in this multi-sector intervention, and in this project, teachers and administrators focused their actions on developing physical literacy in students 10 to 14 years of age through the instruction of physical literacy-focused physical education lessons. Little is known about the experiences of educators when they work alongside an array of community representatives to develop physical literacy in school-aged children. Given the uniqueness of this intervention, we sought to answer the question, ‘What were the experiences of school-based educators involved in a multi-sectoral partnership focused on creating a physical literacy enriched community intervention?’ A thematic analysis approach was used to analyze data collected from interviews with educators and administrators, informal conversations, documents, and observations at workshops and meetings. Results indicated that schools and educators played the largest role in this multi-sector intervention. Educators initially reported a limited understanding of physical literacy and expressed a need for resources linked to the physical education curriculum. Some anxiety was expressed by the teachers as their students were measured, and educators noted they wanted to increase their understanding and become more involved in the assessment of physical literacy. Teachers reported that the intervention’s focus on physical literacy positively impacted the scheduling and their instruction of physical education. Administrators shared their desire for school and division-level actions targeting physical literacy development like the current focus on numeracy and literacy, treaty education, and safe schools. As this was one of the first multi-contextual and multi-sectoral physical literacy interventions, it was important to document creation and delivery experiences to encourage future growth in the area and develop suggested best practices.

Keywords: physical literacy, multi sector intervention, physical education, teachers

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Authors: S. Hussain, C. Grieco, M. Brosnan

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Background and Aims: Autism is a complex neurobehavioural disorder, characterised by impairments in the development of language and communication skills. The study involved a state-of-art systematic review, in addition to qualitative data analysis, to establish the evidence for social stories as an intervention strategy for autistic children. An up-to-date review of the use of digital technologies in the delivery of interventions to autistic children was also carried out; to propose the efficacy of digital technologies and the use of social stories to improve intervention outcomes for autistic children. Methods: Two student researchers reviewed a range of randomised control trials and observational studies. The aim of the review was to establish if there was adequate evidence to justify recommending social stories to autistic patients. Students devised their own search strategies to be used across a range of search engines, including Ovid-Medline, Google Scholar and PubMed. Students then critically appraised the generated literature. Additionally, qualitative data obtained from a comprehensive online questionnaire on social stories was also thematically analysed. The thematic analysis was carried out independently by each researcher, using a ‘bottom-up’ approach, meaning contributors read and analysed responses to questions and devised semantic themes from reading the responses to a given question. The researchers then placed each response into a semantic theme or sub-theme. The students then joined to discuss the merging of their theme headings. The Inter-rater reliability (IRR) was calculated before and after theme headings were merged, giving IRR for pre- and post-discussion. Lastly, the thematic analysis was assessed by a third researcher, who is a professor of psychology and the director for the ‘Centre for Applied Autism Research’ at the University of Bath. Results: A review of the literature, as well as thematic analysis of qualitative data found supporting evidence for social story use. The thematic analysis uncovered some interesting themes from the questionnaire responses, relating to the reasons why social stories were used and the factors influencing their effectiveness in each case. However, overall, the evidence for digital technologies interventions was limited, and the literature could not prove a causal link between better intervention outcomes for autistic children and the use of technologies. However, they did offer valid proposed theories for the suitability of digital technologies for autistic children. Conclusions: Overall, the review concluded that there was adequate evidence to justify advising the use of social stories with autistic children. The role of digital technologies is clearly a fast-emerging field and appears to be a promising method of intervention for autistic children; however, it should not yet be considered an evidence-based approach. The students, using this research, developed ideas on social story interventions which aim to help autistic children.

Keywords: autistic children, digital technologies, intervention, social stories

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Authors: N. Slepickova Kasalkova, P. Slepicka, L. Bacakova, V. Svorcik

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Tissue engineering includes combination of materials and techniques used for the improvement, repair or replacement of the tissue. Scaffolds, permanent or temporally material, are used as support for the creation of the "new cell structures". For this important component (scaffold), a variety of materials can be used. The advantage of some polymeric materials is their cytocompatibility and possibility of biodegradation. Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) is a biodegradable,  semi-crystalline thermoplastic polymer. PLLA can be fully degraded into H₂O and CO₂. In this experiment, the effect of the surface modification of biodegradable polymer (performed by plasma treatment) on the various cell types was studied. The surface parameters and changes of the physicochemical properties of modified PLLA substrates were studied by different methods. Surface wettability was determined by goniometry, surface morphology and roughness study were performed with atomic force microscopy and chemical composition was determined using photoelectron spectroscopy. The physicochemical properties were studied in relation to cytocompatibility of human osteoblast (MG 63 cells), rat vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC), and human stem cells (ASC) of the adipose tissue in vitro. A fluorescence microscopy was chosen to study and compare cell-material interaction. Important parameters of the cytocompatibility like adhesion, proliferation, viability, shape, spreading of the cells were evaluated. It was found that the modification leads to the change of the surface wettability depending on the time of modification. Short time of exposition (10-120 s) can reduce the wettability of the aged samples, exposition longer than 150 s causes to increase of contact angle of the aged PLLA. The surface morphology is significantly influenced by duration of modification, too. The plasma treatment involves the formation of the crystallites, whose number increases with increasing time of modification. On the basis of physicochemical properties evaluation, the cells were cultivated on the selected samples. Cell-material interactions are strongly affected by material chemical structure and surface morphology. It was proved that the plasma treatment of PLLA has a positive effect on the adhesion, spreading, homogeneity of distribution and viability of all cultivated cells. This effect was even more apparent for the VSMCs and ASCs which homogeneously covered almost the whole surface of the substrate after 7 days of cultivation. The viability of these cells was high (more than 98% for VSMCs, 89-96% for ASCs). This experiment is one part of the basic research, which aims to easily create scaffolds for tissue engineering with subsequent use of stem cells and their subsequent "reorientation" towards the bone cells or smooth muscle cells.

Keywords: poly(L-lactic acid), plasma treatment, surface characterization, cytocompatibility, human osteoblast, rat vascular smooth muscle cells, human stem cells

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Authors: Obinna Benedict Duru

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This study focuses on the elderly and the challenges that confront them. The elderly are that particular segment of our population who by virtue of the aging process have attained the stage in most cases where they are confronted with the challenges of economic dependency and social marginality. These challenges are as a result of the physical and biological decline occasioned by social myths and realities which portray the elderly as a dependent population whose members could not and should not work and who need social assistance that the younger population is obliged to provide. From the moment of birth to the moment of death, our bodies are constantly changing. We are all enmeshed in the process of growing old, a transition from youthfulness to elderliness. In youth-oriented modern societies like ours, we tend to attach positive importance and significance to the biological changes that occur early in life and define later physical changes in negative terms. Children growing up and young adults receive more attention, greater responsibilities and more legal rights to reward them on their way. But few people are congratulated on getting old. We commiserate with people who are getting old and make jokes about their supposedly physical, mental and biological decline. Wrinkles, loss of weight and vitality are all parts of the aging process. In almost all parts of the world, earlier researches have shown that about fifty percent of the elderly who suffer from stroke, arthritis, senility and other age related diseases are the disengaged and neglected elderly. Rapid technological changes render the knowledge and skills of the elderly obsolete; education is geared toward the young and the generational competition for jobs leads to pressures on the elderly to retire. Control of initial resources are shifted to the middle-aged and older workers are pushed into positions of economic dependency. This study therefore, among other things tend to discover how some government policies have affected the elderly particularly in Africa. To discover the prospects and possibilities of the elderly for a better living. To make a comparison of the advances in healthcare giving made in the advanced western societies to the practice in Sub Saharan Africa etc. The hypotheses of this study include: that the elderly in Sub Saharan Africa are more vulnerable than their counterparts in Europe and America. The elderly are more prone to social isolation, and that the elderly are mostly affected by age-related sickness etc. With a survey method as the research design, and sample size of about 500 respondents,probability sampling technique was used. Data which were analyzed using chi-square and tables were collected through primary and secondary sources. The findings made include: that the elderly suffer pains of old age especially when disengaged from work or social activity. That loss of income condemn the elderly to a life of vegetable existence, and that those who do not have other means of re-integration usually see old age with regret and despair. It is therefore, recommended among other things that social welfare scheme and the process of re-integration at old age be introduced for the non pensionable elderly in Africa.

Keywords: elderly, social isolation, dependency, re-integration

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Authors: Tashinga Matindike

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By means of definition, digital artworks encompass an array of artistic productions that are expressed in a technological form as an essential part of a creative process. Examples include illustrations, photos, videos, sculptures, and installations. Within the context of the visual arts, the process of repatriation involves the return of once-appropriated goods. Archiving denotes the preservation of a commodity for storage purposes in order to nurture its continuity. The aforementioned definitions form the foundation of the academic framework and premise of the argument, which is outlined in this paper. This paper aims to define, discuss and decipher the complexities involved in digitising artworks, whilst explaining the benefits of the process, particularly within the South African context, which is rich in tangible and intangible traditional cultural material, objects, and performances. With the internet having been introduced to the African Continent in the early 1990s, this new form of technology, in its own right, initiated a high degree of efficiency, which also resulted in the progressive transformation of computer-generated visual output. Subsequently, this caused a revolutionary influence on the manner in which technological software was developed and uterlised in art-making. Digital technology and the digitisation of creative processes then opened up new avenues of collating and recording information. One of the first visual artists to make use of digital technology software in his creative productions was United States-based artist John Whitney. His inventive work contributed greatly to the onset and development of digital animation. Comparable by technique and originality, South African contemporary visual artists who make digital artworks, both locally and internationally, include David Goldblatt, Katherine Bull, Fritha Langerman, David Masoga, Zinhle Sethebe, Alicia Mcfadzean, Ivan Van Der Walt, Siobhan Twomey, and Fhatuwani Mukheli. In conclusion, the main objective of this paper is to address the following questions: In which ways has the South African art community of visual artists made use of and benefited from technology, in its digital form, as a means to further advance creativity? What are the positive changes that have resulted in art production in South Africa since the onset and use of digital technological software? How has digitisation changed the manner in which we record, interpret, and archive both written and visual information? What is the role of South African art institutions in the development of digital technology and its use in the field of visual art. What role does digitisation play in the process of the repatriation of artworks and artefacts. The methodology in terms of the research process of this paper takes on a multifacted form, inclusive of data analysis of information attained by means of qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Keywords: digital art, digitisation, technology, archiving, transformation and repatriation

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Authors: Anatoliy A. Alabugin, Nikolay K. Topuzov, Sergei V. Aliukov

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It is well known, that while we do a quantitative evaluation of the quality control of some economic processes (in particular, resource saving) with help innovation factors, there are three groups of problems: high uncertainty of indicators of the quality management, their considerable ambiguity, and high costs to provide a large-scale research. These problems are defined by the use of contradictory objectives of enhancing of the quality control in accordance with innovation factors and preservation of economic stability of the enterprise. The most acutely, such factors are felt in the countries lagging behind developed economies of the world according to criteria of innovativeness and effectiveness of management of the resource saving. In our opinion, the following two methods for reconciling of the above-mentioned objectives and reducing of conflictness of the problems are to solve this task most effectively: 1) the use of paradigms and concepts of evolutionary improvement of quality of resource-saving management in the cycle "from the project of an innovative product (technology) - to its commercialization and update parameters of customer value"; 2) the application of the so-called integrative-cyclical approach which consistent with complexity and type of the concept, to studies allowing to get quantitative assessment of the stages of achieving of the consistency of these objectives (from baseline of imbalance, their compromise to achievement of positive synergies). For implementation, the following mathematical tools are included in the integrative-cyclical approach: index-factor analysis (to identify the most relevant factors); regression analysis of relationship between the quality control and the factors; the use of results of the analysis in the model of fuzzy sets (to adjust the feature space); method of non-parametric statistics (for a decision on the completion or repetition of the cycle in the approach in depending on the focus and the closeness of the connection of indicator ranks of disbalance of purposes). The repetition is performed after partial substitution of technical and technological factors ("hard") by management factors ("soft") in accordance with our proposed methodology. Testing of the proposed approach has shown that in comparison with the world practice there are opportunities to improve the quality of resource-saving management using innovation factors. We believe that the implementation of this promising research, to provide consistent management decisions for reducing the severity of the above-mentioned contradictions and increasing the validity of the choice of resource-development strategies in terms of parameters of quality management and sustainability of enterprise, is perspective. Our existing experience in the field of quality resource-saving management and the achieved level of scientific competence of the authors allow us to hope that the use of the integrative-cyclical approach to the study and evaluation of the resulting and factor indicators will help raise the level of resource-saving characteristics up to the value existing in the developed economies of post-industrial type.

Keywords: integrative-cyclical approach, quality control, evaluation, innovation factors. economic sustainability, innovation cycle of management, disbalance of goals of development

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Authors: Papazafeiropoulou Olga

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The purpose of this paper focuses on exploring the emergence of Greek tragedy on the American stage until the first half of the 20th century through the intellectual processes and contributions of Greek, Italian and Jewish community theatre. Drawing on a wide range of sources, we trace Greek tragedy on the American stage, exploring the intricate processes of community’s theatre identities. The announcement aims to analyze the distinct yet related efforts of first Americans to intersect with Greek tragedy, searching simultaneously for the identities of immigrants. Ultimately, ancient drama became a vehicle not only for great developments in the American theater. In 1903, the Greek actor Dionysios Taboularis arrived in America, while the immigrant stream from Greece to America brought his artistic heritage, presenting in “Hall House” of Chicago the play Return. In 1906, in New York, an amateur group presented the play The Alosi of Messolonghi, and the next year in Chicago, an attempt was noted with a dramatic romance. In the decade 1907-1917, Nikolaos Matsoukas founded and directed the “Arbe theater”, while Petros Kotopoulis formed a troupe. In 1930, one of the greatest Greek theatrical events was the arrival of Marika’s Kotopoulis. Also, members of Vrysoula’s Pantopoulos formed the “Athenian Operetta”, with a positive influence on Greek American theatre. Italian immigrant community, located in tenement “Little Italies” throughout the city, and soon amateur theatrical clubs evolved. The earliest was the “Circolo Filodrammatico Italo-Americano” in 1880. Fausto Malzone’s artistic direction paved the way for the professional Italian immigrant theatre. Immigrant audiences heard the plays of their homeland, representing a major transition for this ethnic theatre. In 1900, the community had produced the major forces that created the professional theatre. By l905, the Italian American theatre had become firmly rooted in its professional phase. Yiddish Theater was both an import and a home-grown phenomenon. In 1878, The Sorceress was brought to America by Boris Thomashefsky. Between 1890 and 1940, many Yiddish theater companies appeared in America, presenting adaptations of classical plays. Αmerica’s people's first encounter with ancient texts was mostly academic. The tracing of tragedy as a form and concept that follows the evolutionary course of domestic social, aesthetic, and political ferments according to the international trends and currents draws conclusions about the early Greek, Italian, and Jewish immigrant’s theatre in relationship to the American scene until the first half of 20th century. Presumably, community theater acquired identity by intersecting with the spiritual reception of tragedy in America.

Keywords: American, community, Greek, Italian, identities, intersection, Jewish, theatre, tragedy

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Authors: Saeed Nazari, Masoom Nazari, Ali Hejazi, Siamak Sanoobari Ghazi Jahani, Mohammad Dehghani, Javad Vakili

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More than ever, digitization is an imperative for businesses to keep their competitive advantages, foster innovation and reduce paperwork. To design and successfully implement digital transformation initiatives within process safety management system, employees need to be equipped with the right tool, frameworks, and best practices. we developed a unique full stack application so-called SHEQTool which is entirely dynamic based on our extensive expertise, experience, and client feedback to help business processes particularly operations safety management. We use our best knowledge and scientific methodologies published by CCPS and OSHA Guidelines to streamline operations and integrated them into task management within Petrochemical Companies. We digitalize their main process safety management system elements and their sub elements such as hazard identification and risk management, training and communication, inspection and audit, critical changes management, contractor management, permit to work, pre-start-up safety review, incident reporting and investigation, emergency response plan, personal protective equipment, occupational health, and action management in a fully customizable manner with no programming needs for users. We review the feedback from main actors within petrochemical plant which highlights improving their business performance and productivity as well as keep tracking their functions’ key performance indicators (KPIs) because it; 1) saves time, resources, and costs of all paperwork on our businesses (by Digitalization); 2) reduces errors and improve performance within management system by covering most of daily software needs of the organization and reduce complexity and associated costs of numerous tools and their required training (One Tool Approach); 3) focuses on management systems and integrate functions and put them into traceable task management (RASCI and Flowcharting); 4) helps the entire enterprise be resilient to any change of your processes, technologies, assets with minimum costs (through Organizational Resilience); 5) reduces significantly incidents and errors via world class safety management programs and elements (by Simplification); 6) gives the companies a systematic, traceable, risk based, process based, and science based integrated management system (via proper Methodologies); 7) helps business processes complies with ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 31000, best practices as well as legal regulations by PDCA approach (Compliance).

Keywords: process, safety, digitalization, management, risk, incident, SHEQTool, OSHA, CCPS

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Authors: Victor Pena Ribeiro, Caroline Arruda, Jennyfer Andrea Aldana Mejia, Jairo Kenupp Bastos

Abstract:

Leishmaniasis is a serious health problem around the world. The treatment of infected individuals with pentavalent antimonial drugs is the main therapeutic strategy. However, they present high toxicity and persistence side effects. Therefore, the discovery of new and safe natural-derived therapeutic agents against leishmaniasis is important. Propolis is a resin of viscous consistency produced by Apis mellifera bees from parts of plants. The main types of Brazilian propolis are green, red, yellow and brown. Thus, the aim of this work was to investigate the chemical composition and leishmanicidal properties of a brown propolis (BP). For this purpose, the hydroalcoholic crude extract of BP was obtained and was fractionated by liquid-liquid chromatography. The chemical profile of the extract and its fractions were obtained by HPLC-UV-DAD. The fractions were submitted to preparative HPLC chromatography for isolation of the major compounds of each fraction. They were analyzed by NMR for structural determination. The volatile compounds were obtained by hydrodistillation and identified by GC/MS. Promastigote forms of Leishmania amazonensis were cultivated in M199 medium and then 2×106 parasites.mL-1 were incubated in 96-well microtiter plates with the samples. The BP was dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and diluted into the medium, to give final concentrations of 1.56, 3.12, 6.25, 12.5, 25 and 50 µg.mL⁻¹. The plates were incubated at 25ºC for 24 h, and the lysis percentage was determined by using a Neubauer chamber. The bioassays were performed in triplicate, using a medium with 0.5% DMSO as a negative control and amphotericin B as a positive control. The leishimnicidal effect against promastigote forms was also evaluated at the same concentrations. Cytotoxicity experiments also were performed in 96-well plates against normal (CHO-k1) and tumor cell lines (AGP01 and HeLa) using XTT colorimetric method. Phenolic compounds, flavonoids, and terpenoids were identified in brown propolis. The major compounds were identified as follows: p-coumaric acid (24.6%) for a methanolic fraction, Artepelin-C (29.2%) for ethyl acetate fraction and the compounds of hexane fraction are in the process of structural elucidation. The major volatile compounds identified were β-caryophyllene (10.9%), germacrene D (9.7%), nerolidol (10.8%) and spathulenol (8.5%). The propolis did not show cytotoxicity against normal cell lines (CHO) with IC₅₀ > 100 μg.mL⁻¹, whereas the IC₅₀ < 10 μg.mL⁻¹ showed a potential against the AGP01 cell line, propolis did not demonstrate cytotoxicity against HeLa cell lines IC₅₀ > 100 μg.mL⁻¹. In the determination of the leishmanicidal activity, the highest (50 μg.mL⁻¹) and lowest (1.56 μg.mL⁻¹) concentrations of the crude extract caused the lysis of 76% and 45% of promastigote forms of L. amazonensis, respectively. To the amastigote form, the highest (50 μg.mL⁻¹) and lowest (1.56 μg.mL⁻¹) concentrations caused the mortality of 89% and 75% of L. amazonensis, respectively. The IC₅₀ was 2.8 μg.mL⁻¹ to amastigote form and 3.9 μg.mL⁻¹ to promastigote form, showing a promising activity against Leishmania amazonensis.

Keywords: amastigote, brown propolis, cytotoxicity, promastigote

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Authors: Tak Mau Simon Chan, Ying Chuen Lance Chan

Abstract:

Homelessness has been a popular and controversial debate in Hong Kong, a city which is densely populated and well-known for very expensive housing. The constitution of the homeless as threats to the community and environmental hygiene is ambiguous and debatable in the Hong Kong context. The lack of an intervention model is the critical research gap thus far, aside from the tangible services delivered. The life story approach (LSA), with its unique humanistic orientation, has been well applied in recent decades to depict the needs of various target groups, but not the homeless. It is argued that the life story approach (LSA), which has been employed by health professionals in the landscape of dementia, and health and social care settings, can be used as a reference in the local Chinese context through indigenization. This study, therefore, captures the viewpoints of service providers and users by constructing an indigenous intervention model that refers to the LSA in serving the chronically homeless. By informing 13 social workers and 27 homeless individuals in 8 focus groups whilst 12 homeless individuals have participated in individual in-depth interviews, a framework of LSA in homeless people is proposed. Through thematic analysis, three main themes of their life stories was generated, namely, the family, negative experiences and identity transformation. The three domains solidified framework that not only can be applied to the homeless, but also other disadvantaged groups in the Chinese context. Based on the three domains of family, negative experiences and identity transformation, the model is applied in the daily practices of social workers who help the homeless. The domain of family encompasses familial relationships from the past to the present to the speculated future with ten sub-themes. The domain of negative experiences includes seven sub-themes, with reference to the deviant behavior committed. The last domain, identity transformation, incorporates the awareness and redefining of one’s identity and there are a total of seven sub-themes. The first two domains are important components of personal histories while the third is more of an unknown, exploratory and yet to-be-redefined territory which has a more positive and constructive orientation towards developing one’s identity and life meaning. The longitudinal temporal dimension of moving from the past – present - future enriches the meaning making process, facilitates the integration of life experiences and maintains a more hopeful dialogue. The model is tested and its effectiveness is measured by using qualitative and quantitative methods to affirm the extent that it is relevant to the local context. First, it contributes to providing a clear guideline for social workers who can use the approach as a reference source. Secondly, the framework acts as a new intervention means to address problem saturated stories and the intangible needs of the homeless. Thirdly, the model extends the application to beyond health related issues. Last but not least, the model is highly relevant to the local indigenous context.

Keywords: homeless, indigenous intervention, life story approach, social work practice

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Authors: Mitali Saha, Soma Das

Abstract:

The fabrication of nanoscale materials for use in chemical sensing, biosensing and biological analyses has proven a promising avenue in the last few years. Cholesterol has aroused considerable interest in recent years on account of its being an important parameter in clinical diagnosis. There is a strong positive correlation between high serum cholesterol level and arteriosclerosis, hypertension, and myocardial infarction. Enzyme-based electrochemical biosensors have shown high selectivity and excellent sensitivity, but the enzyme is easily denatured during its immobilization procedure and its activity is also affected by temperature, pH, and toxic chemicals. Besides, the reproducibility of enzyme-based sensors is not very good which further restrict the application of cholesterol biosensor. It has been demonstrated that carbon nanotubes could promote electron transfer with various redox active proteins, ranging from cytochrome c to glucose oxidase with a deeply embedded redox center. In continuation of our earlier work on the synthesis and applications of carbon and metal based nanoparticles, we have reported here the synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CCNT) by burning coconut oil under insufficient flow of air using an oil lamp. The soot was collected from the top portion of the flame, where the temperature was around 6500C which was purified, functionalized and then characterized by SEM, p-XRD and Raman spectroscopy. The SEM micrographs showed the formation of tubular structure of CCNT having diameter below 100 nm. The XRD pattern indicated the presence of two predominant peaks at 25.20 and 43.80, which corresponded to (002) and (100) planes of CCNT respectively. The Raman spectrum (514 nm excitation) showed the presence of 1600 cm-1 (G-band) related to the vibration of sp2-bonded carbon and at 1350 cm-1 (D-band) responsible for the vibrations of sp3-bonded carbon. A nonenzymatic cholesterol biosensor was then fabricated on an insulating Teflon material containing three silver wires at the surface, covered by CCNT, obtained from coconut oil. Here, CCNTs worked as working as well as counter electrodes whereas reference electrode and electric contacts were made of silver. The dimensions of the electrode was 3.5 cm×1.0 cm×0.5 cm (length× width × height) and it is ideal for working with 50 µL volume like the standard screen printed electrodes. The voltammetric behavior of cholesterol at CCNT electrode was investigated by cyclic voltammeter and differential pulse voltammeter using 0.001 M H2SO4 as electrolyte. The influence of the experimental parameters on the peak currents of cholesterol like pH, accumulation time, and scan rates were optimized. Under optimum conditions, the peak current was found to be linear in the cholesterol concentration range from 1 µM to 50 µM with a sensitivity of ~15.31 μAμM−1cm−2 with lower detection limit of 0.017 µM and response time of about 6s. The long-term storage stability of the sensor was tested for 30 days and the current response was found to be ~85% of its initial response after 30 days.

Keywords: coconut oil, CCNT, cholesterol, biosensor

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Authors: Hilal Köse, Şeyma Dombaycıoğlu, Ali Osman Aydın, Hatem Akbulut

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Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have become promising power sources for a wide range of applications, such as mobile communication devices, portable electronic devices and electrical/hybrid vehicles due to their long cycle life, high voltage and high energy density. Graphite, as anode material, has been widely used owing to its extraordinary electronic transport properties, large surface area, and high electrocatalytic activities although its limited specific capacity (372 mAh g-1) cannot fulfil the increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries with higher energy density. To settle this problem, many studies have been taken into consideration to investigate new electrode materials and metal oxide/graphene composites are selected as a kind of promising material for lithium ion batteries as their specific capacities are much higher than graphene. Among them, SnO₂, an n-type and wide band gap semiconductor, has attracted much attention as an anode material for the new-generation lithium-ion batteries with its high theoretical capacity (790 mAh g-1). However, it suffers from large volume changes and agglomeration associated with the Li-ion insertion and extraction processes, which brings about failure and loss of electrical contact of the anode. In addition, there is also a huge irreversible capacity during the first cycle due to the formation of amorphous Li₂O matrix. To obtain high capacity anode materials, we studied on the synthesis and characterization of SnO₂-Graphene nanocomposites and investigated the capacity of this free-standing anode material in this work. For this aim, firstly, graphite oxide was obtained from graphite powder using the method described by Hummers method. To prepare the nanocomposites as free-standing anode, graphite oxide particles were ultrasonicated in distilled water with SnO2 nanoparticles (1:1, w/w). After vacuum filtration, the GO-SnO₂ paper was peeled off from the PVDF membrane to obtain a flexible, free-standing GO paper. Then, GO structure was reduced in hydrazine solution. Produced SnO2- graphene nanocomposites were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses. CR2016 cells were assembled in a glove box (MBraun-Labstar). The cells were charged and discharged at 25°C between fixed voltage limits (2.5 V to 0.2 V) at a constant current density on a BST8-MA MTI model battery tester with 0.2C charge-discharge rate. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) was performed at the scan rate of 0.1 mVs-1 and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements were carried out using Gamry Instrument applying a sine wave of 10 mV amplitude over a frequency range of 1000 kHz-0.01 Hz.

Keywords: SnO₂-graphene, nanocomposite, anode, Li-ion battery

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Authors: Alexander Zibenberg, Rima’a Da’As

Abstract:

According to the author’s knowledge, individuals are naturally inclined to classify people as leaders and followers. Individuals utilize cognitive structures or prototypes specifying the traits and abilities that characterize the effective leader (implicit leadership theories) and effective follower in an organization (implicit followership theories). Thus, the present study offers insights into understanding how teachers' personal values (self-enhancement and self-transcendence) explain the preference for styles of effective leader (i.e., principal) and assumptions about the traits and behaviors that characterize effective followers (i.e., student). Beyond the direct effect on perceptions of effective types of leader and follower, the present study argues that values may also interact with organizational and personal contexts in influencing perceptions. Thus authors suggest that teachers' managerial position may moderate the relationships between personal values and perception of the effective leader and follower. Specifically, two key questions are addressed in the present research: (1) Is there a relationship between personal values and perceptions of the effective leader and effective follower? and (2) Are these relationships stable or could they change across different contexts? Two hundred fifty-five Israeli teachers participated in this study, completing questionnaires – about the effective student and effective principal. Results of structural equations modeling (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation showed: first: the model fit the data well. Second: researchers found a positive relationship between self-enhancement and anti-prototype of the effective principal and anti-prototype of the effective student. The relationship between self-transcendence value and both perceptions were found significant as well. Self-transcendence positively related to the way the teacher perceives the prototype of the effective principal and effective student. Besides, authors found that teachers' managerial position moderates these relationships. The article contributes to the literature both on perceptions and on personal values. Although several earlier studies explored issues of implicit leadership theories and implicit followership theories, personality characteristics (values) have garnered less attention in this matter. This study shows that personal values which are deeply rooted, abstract motivations that guide justify or explain attitudes, norms, opinions and actions explain differences in perception of the effective leader and follower. The results advance the theoretical understanding of the relationship between personal values and individuals’ perceptions in organizations. An additional contribution of this study is the application of the teacher's managerial position to explain a potential boundary condition of the translation of personal values into outcomes. The findings suggest that through the management process in the organization, teachers acquire knowledge and skills which augment their ability (beyond their personal values) to predict perceptions of ideal types of principal and student. The study elucidates the unique role of personal values in understanding an organizational thinking in organization. It seems that personal values might explain the differences in individual preferences of the organizational paradigm (mechanistic vs organic).

Keywords: implicit leadership theories, implicit followership theories, organizational paradigms, personal values

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