To explain the menstrual cycle and menopause, human biologists during the past several decades have developed new models of the evolutionary origins and maintenance of female reproductive patterns that address both ultimate and proximate causation. Hypotheses proposed for these processes generally offer explanations for menstruation or for menopause, but not for both; ultimately, these explanations must be integrated. Reviewing current explanations, this paper offers an energetics-based evolutionary rationale compatible with past adaptations of Homo sapiens and with ecological patterns in (...) small-scale, preindustrial social systems in which food resources vary and sometimes are scarce. (shrink)

We introduce new leader humility scales capturing a theoretically rich conceptualization of leader-expressed humility aligned with traditional and ethically-grounded philosophies. These scales draw from recent inductive research (Oc et al., 2015) identifying nine dimensions of leader-expressed humility: (1) having an accurate view of self, (2) recognizing follower strengths and achievements, (3) modeling teachability and being correctable, (4) leading by example, (5) showing modesty, (6) working together for the collective good, (7) empathy and approachability, (8) showing mutual respect and fairness, and (...) (9) mentoring and coaching. The first three dimensions overlap with the most prominent conceptualization of leader-expressed humility in the literature (i.e., Owens et al., 2013). However, the latter six dimensions are unique and represent an expanded understanding of the humble behaviors of leaders, which have implications for leaders and their ethical behavior in organizations. We conducted three studies resulting in two versions of the leader-expressed humility measure: 1) a 27-item scale with the nine dimensions (i.e., the “Leader-Expressed Humility” [LEH] scale) and 2) a 9-item brief scale (i.e., the “Brief LEH” scale) comprised of one item from each of the nine dimensions. As an initial step, we generated a pool of items that reflected each dimension. Next, we validated the LEH and Brief LEH scales in Study 1 and cross-validated the Brief LEH scale in Study 2 with two samples of subordinates in Singapore. As a final step, in Study 3, we cross-validated the Brief LEH scale with a sample of subordinates in the United States. (shrink)

In complex settings, organizations overlap with other collective entities in time and space even as they struggle for visibility or invisibility as relevant entities. Moreover, they do not act as legal persons or complete organizational actors all the time. Such settings give rise to a question that bears on the fundamental question of adequately identifying and assessing causal forces in social processes, namely: Who or what is responsible here? Where personal experiences, organizational and network dynamics, and large-scale societal forces (...) seem to work together efficiently and without friction, the task of analyzing an organization as a singular collective instance with causal power driving a series of events is met with formidable challenges. I propose a practice-based framework on organizational agency to address such analytical issues and distinguish between three forms, namely organizational interventions, stable organizations, and competent organizational actors. Each of these three types differs in how to assess organizational agency and its constitution. To conclude, I call for a distinct sociological stance for answering questions of collective causation and responsibility in debates over legal liability in digitalized spheres and corporate or political responsibilities for large-scale social challenges, like sustainable transitions. This stance differs from Weberian roots, in that it neither preconditions formal procedures nor a collective actor. A case study of a scientific project network discovering catalytic mechanisms in producing hydrogen to drive a sustainable energy transition illustrates the analytical value of this framework. (shrink)

The never ending growth of digital information and the availability of low-cost storage facilities and networks capacity is leading users towards moving their data to remote storage resources. Since users’ data often holds identity-related information, several privacy issues arise when data can be stored in untrusted domains. In addition digital identity management is becoming extremely complicated due to the identity replicas proliferation necessary to get authentication in different domains. GMail and Amazon Web Services, for instance, are two examples of online (...) services adopted by million of users throughout the world which hold huge amounts of sensitive users data. State-of-the-art encryption tools for large-scale distributed infrastructures allow users to encrypt content locally before storing it on a remote untrusted repository. This approach can experience performance drawbacks, when very large data-sets must be encrypted/decrypted on a single machine. The proposed approach extends the existing solutions by providing two additional features: (1) the encryption can also be delegated to a pool of remote trusted computing resources, and (2) the definition of the encryption context which drives the tool to select the best strategy to process the data. The performance benchmarks are based on the results of tests carried out both on a local workstation and on the Grid INFN Laboratory for Dissemination Activities (GILDA) testbed. (shrink)

The concept of attractors is considered critical in the study of dynamical systems as they represent the set of states that a system gravitates toward. However, it is generally difficult to analyze attractors in complex systems due to multiple reasons including chaos, high-dimensionality, and stochasticity. This paper explores a novel approach to analyzing attractors in complex systems by utilizing networks to represent phase spaces. We accomplish this by discretizing phase space and defining node associations with attractors by finding sink (...) strongly connected components within these networks. Moreover, the network representation of phase space facilitates the use of well-established techniques of network analysis to study the phase space of a complex system. We show the latter by introducing a new node-based metric called attractivity which can be used in conjunction with the SSCC as they are highly correlated. We demonstrate the proposed method by applying it to several chaotic dynamical systems and a large-scale agent-based social simulation model. (shrink)

Children learn their native language by exposure to their linguistic and communicative environment, but apparently without requiring that their mistakes be corrected. Such learning from “positive evidence” has been viewed as raising “logical” problems for language acquisition. In particular, without correction, how is the child to recover from conjecturing an over-general grammar, which will be consistent with any sentence that the child hears? There have been many proposals concerning how this “logical problem” can be dissolved. In this study, we review (...) recent formal results showing that the learner has sufficient data to learn successfully from positive evidence, if it favors the simplest encoding of the linguistic input. Results include the learnability of linguistic prediction, grammaticality judgments, language production, and form-meaning mappings. The simplicity approach can also be “scaled down” to analyze the learnability of specific linguistic constructions, and it is amenable to empirical testing as a framework for describing human language acquisition. (shrink)

The need for better incorporation of the construct emotional intelligence (EI) into counterproductive work behavior (CWB) research may be achieved via a unified conceptual framework. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to use the Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS) approach, a conceptual framework that unifies motivational process with antecedents and outcomes, to assess differences in EI concerning a variety of constructs: organizational justice, CWB, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation. Employing established scales within a framework unifying (...) CWB, intrinsic motivation, EI, organizational justice, and outcome constructs, two EI-based profiles displayed associations with CWB based on responses from 3,293 employees. Both the first core profile, high overall justice and low emotional intelligence, and the second core profile, high emotional intelligence and low work motivation, displayed associations with interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance, as well as emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. The results are discussed with respect to possible underlying theory and an overarching unified motivation framework that incorporates goal choice, intrinsic motivation, antecedents, and outcomes. We also provide directions for future research and implications for managers in the workplace based on heuristic conceptual frameworks that combine multiple motivational perspectives into a unified model. (shrink)

Since the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 has been sweeping the world on an unprecedented scale. As an important means of fighting the virus, vaccines have provoked heated discussions. Motivated by this practical concern, the present study aims at contributing to the understanding of public opinions about vaccines, which may provide implications for the government in their making and implementation of related policies. This research adopts a corpus-based approach in conjunction with a Critical Discourse Analysis. Data for this (...) study drawn from the Coronavirus corpus show what people are actually saying in online newspapers and magazines in 20 different English-speaking countries. The collocation and frequency of the word “vaccine” are arranged in concordance contextually. Overall, this study reveals that the collocation of vaccine can be divided into several categories, and people’s major concerns about COVID-19 vaccination include global progress, equality, and the latest development. (shrink)

The proliferation of legal documents in various formats and their dispersion across multiple courts present a significant challenge for users seeking precise matches to their information requirements. Despite notable advancements in legal information retrieval systems, research into legal recommender systems remains limited. A plausible factor contributing to this scarcity could be the absence of extensive publicly accessible datasets or benchmarks. While a few studies have emerged in this field, a comprehensive analysis of the distinct attributes of legal data that influence (...) the design of effective legal recommenders is notably absent in the current literature. This paper addresses this gap by initially amassing a comprehensive session-based dataset from Jusbrasil, one of Brazil’s largest online legal platforms. Subsequently, we scrutinize and discourse key facets of legal session-based recommendation data, including session duration, types of recommendable legal artifacts, coverage, and popularity. Furthermore, we introduce the first session-based recommendation benchmark tailored to the legal domain, shedding light on the performance and constraints of several renowned session-based recommendation approaches. These evaluations are based on real-world data sourced from Jusbrasil. (shrink)

Labels provide a quick and effective solution to obtain people interesting content from large-scale social network information. The current interest label extraction method based on the subgraph stream proves the feasibility of the subgraph stream for user label extraction. However, it is extremely time-consuming for constructing subgraphs. As an effective mathematical method to deal with fuzzy and uncertain information, rough set-based representations for subgraph stream construction are capable of capturing the uncertainties of the social network. Therefore, we (...) propose an effective approach called RS_UNITE_SS, which is suitable for large-scale social network user interest label extraction. Specifically, we first propose the subgraph division algorithm to construct a subgraph stream by incorporating a rough set. Then, the algorithm for user real-time interest label extraction based on upper approximation is proposed by using sequentially characteristics of the subgraph. Empirically, we evaluate RS_UNITE_SS over real-world datasets, and experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach is more computationally efficient than existing methods while achieving higher precision value and MRR value. (shrink)

Shaping off-job life is becoming increasingly important for workers to increase and maintain their optimal functioning. Proactively shaping the job domain has been extensively studied, but crafting in the off-job domain has received markedly less research attention. Based on the Integrative Needs Model of Crafting, needs-based off-job crafting is defined as workers’ proactive and self-initiated changes in their off-job lives, which target psychological needs satisfaction. Off-job crafting is posited as a possible means for workers to fulfill their needs (...) and enhance well-being and performance over time. We developed a new scale to measure off-job crafting and examined its relationships to optimal functioning in different work contexts in different regions around the world. Furthermore, we examined the criterion, convergent, incremental, discriminant, and structural validity evidence of the Needs-based Off-job Crafting Scale using multiple methods. The results showed that off-job crafting was related to optimal functioning over time, especially in the off-job domain but also in the job domain. Moreover, the novel off-job crafting scale had good convergent and discriminant validity, internal consistency, and test–retest reliability. To conclude, our series of studies in various countries show that off-job crafting can enhance optimal functioning in different life domains and support people in performing their duties sustainably. Therefore, shaping off-job life may be beneficial in an intensified and continually changing and challenging working life. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that self‐explanation is an effective metacognitive strategy, but how can it be leveraged to improve students' learning in actual classrooms? How do instructional treatments that emphasizes self‐explanation affect students' learning, as compared to other instructional treatments? We investigated whether self‐explanation can be scaffolded effectively in a classroom environment using a Cognitive Tutor, which is intelligent instructional software that supports guided learning by doing. In two classroom experiments, we found that students who explained their steps during problem‐solving (...) practice with a Cognitive Tutor learned with greater understanding compared to students who did not explain steps. The explainers better explained their solutions steps and were more successful on transfer problems. We interpret these results as follows: By engaging in explanation, students acquired better‐integrated visual and verbal declarative knowledge and acquired less shallow procedural knowledge. The research demonstrates that the benefits of self‐explanation can be achieved in a relatively simple computer‐based approach that scales well for classroom use. (shrink)

The Bozeman scale is the most famous scale of statistical stylistics, and is based on the study of the vocabulary used by the author, and the number of verbs and adjectives in the text. Based on this scale, the ratio of dividing the number of verbs by the number of adjectives indicates its literary or sci-entific style and rationality. Therefore, this study aims to answer the follow-ing questions: How accurate is the Bozeman equation in measuring (...) the lit-erary texts and the emotionality of their authors? How does the style of a sermon differ from the style used in other literary arts? Do the subject and content of the sermon play a role in raising the level of the literary style and emotionality of the preacher? What factors affect the value of the Bozeman scale in political speeches and preaching sermons? What factors affect the value of the Bozeman scale in political speeches and preaching sermons? This study aims to apply this objective scale to sermons and compare the value of the scale in them with the percentages in other literary genres on which similar studies were conducted, such as poetry and letters. It also focuses on the impact of the content of the text on the value of the scale by comparing political speeches and preaching speeches. The study chose a sample of political speeches by Ziyâd b. Ebîh and Al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf Al-Thaqafi, and a sample of preaching sermons by `Omar bin Abdul Aziz and Al-Hassan Al-Basri, adopting the descriptive statistical analytical approach. The results revealed that the style of sermons is the most literary and emo-tional one among all other literary genres. Besides, preaching sermons sur-pass political speeches based on the value of the Bozeman scale, thus imply-ing that their style employs emotion, conscience, and literary images. In con-trast, political speeches are characterized by a rational style that relies on arguments and proofs. (shrink)

BACKGROUND -/- The importance of ontologies in the biomedical domain is generally recognized. However, their quality is often too poor for large-scale use in critical applications, at least partially due to insufficient training of ontology developers. -/- OBJECTIVE -/- To show the efficacy of guideline-based ontology development training on the performance of ontology developers. The hypothesis was that students who received training on top-level ontologies and design patterns perform better than those who only received training in the basic (...) principles of formal ontology engineering. -/- METHODS -/- A curriculum was implemented based on a guideline for ontology design. A randomized controlled trial on the efficacy of this curriculum was performed with 24 students from bioinformatics and related fields. After joint training on the fundamentals of ontology development the students were randomly allocated to two groups. During the intervention, each group received training on different topics in ontology development. In the assessment phase, all students were asked to solve modeling problems on topics taught differentially in the intervention phase. Primary outcome was the similarity of the students’ ontology artefacts compared with gold standard ontologies developed by the authors before the experiment; secondary outcome was the intra-group similarity of group members’ ontologies. -/- RESULTS -/- The experiment showed no significant effect of the guideline-based training on the performance of ontology developers (a) the ontologies developed after specific training were only slightly but not significantly closer to the gold standard ontologies than the ontologies developed without prior specific training; (b) although significant differences for certain ontologies were detected, the intra-group similarity was not consistently influenced in one direction by the differential training. -/- CONCLUSION -/- Methodologically limited, this study cannot be interpreted as a general failure of a guideline-based approach to ontology development. Further research is needed to increase insight into whether specific development guidelines and practices in ontology design are effective. (shrink)

Molecular systems orchestrating the biology of the cell typically involve a complex web of interactions among various components and span a vast range of spatial and temporal scales. Computational methods have advanced our understanding of the behavior of molecular systems by enabling us to test assumptions and hypotheses, explore the effect of different parameters on the outcome, and eventually guide experiments. While several different mathematical and computational methods are developed to study molecular systems at different spatiotemporal scales, there is still (...) a need for methods that bridge the gap between spatially‐detailed and computationally‐efficient approaches. In this review, we summarize the capabilities of agent‐based modeling (ABM) as an emerging molecular systems biology technique that provides researchers with a new tool in exploring the dynamics of molecular systems/pathways in health and disease. (shrink)

This paper investigates simple syntactic methods for revising prioritized belief bases, that are semantically meaningful in the frameworks of possibility theory and of Spohn''s ordinal conditional functions. Here, revising prioritized belief bases amounts to conditioning a distribution function on interpretations. The input information leading to the revision of a knowledge base can be sure or uncertain. Different types of scales for priorities are allowed: finite vs. infinite, numerical vs. ordinal. Syntactic revision is envisaged here as a process which transforms a (...) prioritized belief bases into a new prioritized belief base, and thus allows a subsequent iteration. (shrink)

Chronic pain is of significant global concern. There is growing evidence that body–mind therapies and psychological approaches can contribute toward changing chronic pain perceptions. This is the first model described in the literature that combines a mindfulness-based approach with dance movement therapy and explores the potential psychological and pain-related changes for this client population. In this paper, the results from the pilot study are presented involving patients with chronic headache recruited in an outpatient rehabilitation setting.Methods: In this pilot (...) study, 29 patients with chronic headache were randomized to either the Mindful-Based Dance Movement Therapy group or the waiting list control group. The MBDMT group was offered 10 sessions in a clinical outpatient rehabilitation setting for 5 weeks. Data were collected pre- and post-intervention and 16 weeks after the intervention was finished. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire−9, Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, and Numeric Rating Scale were used as outcome measures.Results: The working model of MBDMT identifies nine therapeutic mechanisms. Per-protocol analysis reveals statistically significant reduction of pain intensity and depression scores in favor of the MBDMT group, and these improvements were maintained in the follow-up assessment.Conclusions: The results suggest that MBDMT is a feasible and promising therapy approach for chronic pain patients. The pilot study offered sufficient information and preliminary results in the desirable direction to enable the researchers to move to a randomized controlled trial stage in order to establish the efficacy of the intervention.Clinical Trial Registration: The study was registered in the www.researchregistry.com, registry. (shrink)

In 2013, there were an estimated 50,000 individuals involved in downloading and sharing indecent images of children in the United Kingdom. This poses challenges for limited police resources. We argue that police officers can make most effective use of limited resources by prioritizing those offenders who pose the greatest risk of contact offending, by nature of demonstrable pedophilia, hebephilia or dual offending status and thus, those at highest risk must be dealt with first. What is currently lacking is a clear (...) idea of the potential scale of the problem in socio-economic terms and why, therefore, it is so important that evidence-based approaches to offender detection and investigation continue to be a top priority for funders and policy makers. A systematic literature review was undertaken to address two related questions. First, what is the scale of the problem in the UK, in terms of the number of pedophilic and hebephilic individuals who pose a risk of contact offending against a child? Second, what is the potential socio-economic burden generated by the national IIOC suspect pool if left unattended to by targeted police action? Applying population estimates of pedophilia and hebephilia to the male population, we estimate there are between 2,365–5,991 males with paedophila and 12,218–30,952 males with hebephilia who are likely contact offenders. Applying average prevalence and incidence based costing methods to a conservative estimate of one victim per offender, the combined socio-economic burden from these persons could amount to £236-£597 million increasing to £2.9-£7.3 billion. Applying the same costs to CEOP estimate of 50,000 IIOC offenders we estimate that between 6,000 and 27,500 dual offenders could have already committed past contact offenses, contributing an economic burden of between £97–£445 million increasing to £1.2–£5.4 billion. Future contact offenses could contribute a further burden of £16–£18.6 million increasing to £198–£227 million. Drawing upon these findings, we argue for the benefits of a research-informed prioritization approach to target IIOC offenders. (shrink)

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed (...) cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory. (shrink)

Interpersonal sensitivity, particularly threat of potential exclusion, is a critical condition in borderline personality disorder (BPD) which impairs patients’ social adjustment. Current evidence-based treatments include group components, such as mentalization-based group therapy (MBT-G), in order to improve interpersonal functioning. These treatments additionally focus on the therapeutic alliance since it was discovered to be a robust predictor of treatment outcome. However, alliance is a multidimensional factor of group therapy, which includes the fellow patients, and may thus be negatively affected (...) by the exclusion-proneness of BPD patients. The aim of this pilot study was to examine the predictive value of threat of social exclusion for the therapeutic alliance in MBT-G. In the first part of the study, social exclusion was experimentally induced in 23 BPD inpatients and 28 healthy subjects using the Cyberball paradigm, a virtual ball tossing game. The evoked level of threat was measured with the Need-Threat Scale (NTS) which captures four dimensions of fundamental human needs, i. e. the need for belongingness, for self-esteem, for control, and for a meaningful existence. In the second part of the study, therapeutic alliance was measured on three dimensions, the therapists, the fellow patients and the group as a whole, using the Group-Questionnaire (GQ-D). BPD patients scored higher in their level of threat according to the NTS in both, the inclusion and the exclusion condition. The level of threat after exclusion predicted impairments of the therapeutic alliance in MBT-G. It was associated with more negative relationships, lower positive bonding and a lower positive working alliance with the fellow patients and lower positive bonding to the group as a whole whilst no negative prediction of the alliance to the therapists was found. Consequently, our translational study design has shown that Cyberball is an appropriate tool to use as an approach for clinical questions. We further conclude that exclusion-proneness in BPD is a critical feature with respect to alliance in group treatments. In order to neutralize BPD patients’ exclusion bias, therapists may be advised to provide an “inclusive stance”, especially in initial sessions. It is also recommendable to strengthen patient to patient relations. (shrink)

This paper investigates the role that universities play in supporting social entrepreneurs (SEs) across their ecosystem. Adopting the resource-based view (RBV) approach, we argue that universities attract, mobilize, and deploy multiple resources that benefit SEs through four main mechanisms (i.e., teaching, research, outreach, and the development of partnerships). We use a qualitative approach of 62 semi-structured interviews and 8 focus groups in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Colombia. Our contribution shows that employing different resources and engaging in supportive activities (...) of universities towards SEs facilitate the development of university capabilities, such as an increased reputation, development of leadership skills for students and staff, and wider access to ecosystem resources that support other university activities related to teaching, research, and community outreach. The role that partnerships play in the development of these capabilities is fundamental, thanks to the different strategic alliances and mobilization of resources between universities and other actors while supporting SEs. This study contributes to our understanding of the role universities can play to intensify the nature of supportive ecosystems for SEs. This contribution is relevant not only to academics but also to practitioners, as this will shed light on the building, development, and scaling of a supportive ecosystem for SEs. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is considered as a self-disorder with disordered local synchronous activation. Previous studies have reported widespread dyssynchrony of local activation in patients with SZ, which may be one of the crucial physiological mechanisms of SZ. To further verify this assumption, this work used a surface-based two-dimensional regional homogeneity approach to compare the local neural synchronous spontaneous oscillation between patients with SZ and healthy controls, instead of the volume-based regional homogeneity approach described in previous study. Ninety-seven SZ (...) patients and 126 HC were recruited to this study, and we found the SZ showed abnormal 2dReHo across the cortical surface. Specifically, at the global level, the SZ patients showed significantly reduced global 2dReHo; at the vertex level, the foci with increased 2dReHo in SZ were located in the default mode network, frontoparietal network, and limbic network ; however, foci with decreased 2dReHo were located in the somatomotor network, auditory network, and visual network. Additionally, this work found positive correlations between the 2dReHo of bilateral rectus and illness duration, as well as a significant positive correlation between the 2dReHo of right orbital inferior frontal gyrus with the negative scores of the positive and negative syndrome scale in the SZ patients. Therefore, the 2dReHo could provide some effective features contributed to explore the pathophysiology mechanism of SZ. (shrink)

As a worldwide economic crisis emerged at the end of 2008, international health agencies were quick to highlight its predictable impact on health in the poorest of communities. The World Health Organization underscored the need for a multisectoral approach to the crisis, “seeking health gains through demonstrating the importance of health in all policies” and whether current investments in health addressed the broader social determinants of health. However, despite good intentions and decades of discussion addressing the need for transformative (...) changes globally to reduce poverty and improve health equity, little progress has been made.A recent report on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals indicates that many targeted goals have not been met, with some goals lagging many years behind schedule. Although progress towards achieving the MDGs has been made for some specific conditions, where targeted interventions have had an immediate impact, limited progress is reported in more complex areas such as maternal child health. Such complex health issues require structural changes, strong political will, long-term funding, and consideration of other health determinants, such as education and exposure to environmental hazards. (shrink)

This study proposes an operational approach to a metaphorical framing analysis using large-scale data. We conducted a case analysis of how war metaphors are framed to address various societal issues in a corpus of public speeches by Hong Kong government officials. By investigating patterns of lexical choices under the source domain of WAR and the underlying reasons for the source-target domain mappings (i.e. Mapping Principles), we found that the target domain of social issues in Hong Kong is primarily (...) conceptualized in terms of a combat frame, and governmental issues are primarily talked about in terms of a protection frame, both of which are positively evaluated. Additionally, economic issues are primarily addressed in terms of a strategy frame, which is both positively and negatively evaluated. We show that analyzing the Mapping Principles of these conceptual metaphors captures the “selection” process of framing at the dimensions of frame frequency and frame sentiment, allowing for a principled way to propose a metaphorical framing analysis in corpora-based studies. The proposed approach enriches Critical Discourse Analysis studies of metaphorical framing and bridges the link between metaphor analysis at a conceptual level and framing analysis at a communication level. (shrink)

BackgroundWeChat is the main social platform in China, characterized by its versatility and ease of communication. This study aimed to explore the effect of a WeChat-platform-based education and care program on relieving anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder in parents of pediatric and adolescent patients with osteosarcoma.MethodsIn total, 48 patients and 86 parents were enrolled in this randomized, controlled study and then assigned to the WBEC program and the usual education and care program for 6 months as a 1:1 (...) ratio.ResultsParents in the WBEC group had lower Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale for anxiety scores at M3 and M6 when compared to the UEC group, while anxiety rate was only decreased at M3 in the WBEC group. Meanwhile, parental HADS for depression scores were reduced at M3 and M6 in the WBEC group when compared with the UEC group; while depression rate remained the same. Parental Impact of Event Scale-Revised scores were slightly reduced among the WBEC group at M6 when compared with the UEC group [12.0 : 10.0–20.8] vs. 15.0 ], but not statistically significant.ConclusionWeChat-platform-based education and care is considered a feasible intervention to reduce anxiety and depression in parents of pediatric and adolescent patients with osteosarcoma, while also providing mild relief from PTSD. (shrink)

Background Recent publications reveal shortcomings in evidence review and summarization methods for patient decision aids. In the large-scale "Share to Care (S2C)" Shared Decision Making (SDM) project at the University Hospital Kiel, Germany, one of 4 SDM interventions was to develop up to 80 decision aids for patients. Best available evidence on the treatments' impact on patient-relevant outcomes was systematically appraised to feed this information into the decision aids. Aims of this paper were to (1) describe how PtDAs are (...) developed and how S2C evidence reviews for each PtDA are conducted, (2) appraise the quality of the best available evidence identified and (3) identify challenges associated with identified evidence. Methods The quality of the identified evidence was assessed based on GRADE quality criteria and categorized into high-, moderate-, low-, very low-quality evidence. Evidence appraisal was conducted across all outcomes assessed in an evidence review and for specific groups of outcomes, namely mortality, morbidity, quality of life, and treatment harms. Challenges in evidence interpretation and summarization resulting from the characteristics of decision aids and the type and quality of evidence are identified and discussed. Conclusions Evidence reviews in this project were carefully conducted and summarized. However, the evidence identified for our decision aids was indeed a "scattered landscape" and often poor quality. Facing a high prevalence of low-quality, non-directly comparative evidence for treatment alternatives doesn't mean it is not necessary to choose an evidence-based approach to inform patients. While there is an urgent need for high quality comparative trials, best available evidence nevertheless has to be appraised and transparently communicated to patients. (shrink)

While collaboration has always played an important role in many cases of discovery and creation, recent developments such as the web facilitate and encourage collaboration at scales never seen before, even in areas such as mathematics, where contributions by single individuals have historically been the norm. This new scenario poses a challenge at the theoretical level, as it brings out the importance of various issues which, as of yet, have not been sufficiently central to the study of problem-solving, discovery, and (...) creativity. We analyze the case of collective and web-based proof events in mathematics, which share their temporal and social nature with every case of collective problem-solving. We propose that some ideas from cognitive architectures, in particular, the notion of codelet—understood as an agent engaged in one of a multitude of available tasks—can illuminate our understanding of collective problem-solving and act as a natural bridge from some of the theoretical aspects of collective, web-based discovery to the practical concern of designing cognitively inspired systems to support collective problem-solving. We use the Pythagorean Theorem and its many proofs as a case study to illustrate our approach. (shrink)

This article uses a 36-million word corpus of news reporting on Hurricane Katrina in the United States to explore how computer-based methods can help researchers to investigate the construction of newsworthiness. It makes use of Bednarek and Caple’s discursive approach to the analysis of news values, and is both exploratory and evaluative in nature. One aim is to test and evaluate the integration of corpus techniques in applying discursive news values analysis. We employ and evaluate corpus techniques that (...) have not been tested previously in relation to the large-scale analysis of news values. These techniques include tagged lemma frequencies, collocation, key part-of-speech tags and key semantic tags. A secondary aim is to gain insights into how a specific happening – Hurricane Katrina – was linguistically constructed as newsworthy in major American news media outlets, thus also making a contribution to ecolinguistics. (shrink)

In the last few decades, the emergence of mid-scale, intermediated marketing channels that fall between commodity and direct markets has attracted growing interest from scholars for their potential to preserve small and mid-sized farms while scaling up alternative agrifood sourcing. When such mid-scale supply chains are formed among multiple business partners with shared ethics or values related to the qualities of the food and the business relationships along the supply chain, they may be termed “values-based supply chains (...) (VBSCs).” Most of the research on VBSCs to date has relied primarily on a case study approach that investigates the performance of VBSCs from the perspective of VBSC founders or leaders. In contrast, this research seeks out the perspectives of farmers who participate in VBSCs. A nationwide farmer survey conducted in 2017 offers original insights on farmer motivations for participating in VBSCs and how they are being used by farmers relative to other marketing channels. We find that VBSCs serve farms of all sizes. Overall, smaller farms were more likely to market a higher percentage of overall sales through their VBSC and more likely to rank their VBSC as one of the top three marketing channels in their portfolio. But it was the larger farms that were more likely to perceive VBSC-specific benefits. Our findings confirm that while there is a limited volume of product that such regional supply chains can currently handle, farmers view VBSCs as a valuable marketing option that aligns with their own values and preserves their product’s identity. (shrink)

This small-scale research paper analyses both teachers’ and students’ perceptions and their roles towards the use of Project Based Learning in a research context in the Republic of Kosovo. The study was completed by sixty students of three lower-secondary private schools in Kosovo and eight English language teachers who work there. The aim of this study was to investigate teachers’ perspectives on using PBL in their classes, the challenges they face while applying PBL, the most common benefits PBL (...) implementation, the materials used with this method, and the impact of PBL on students’ motivation to learn English as a Foreign Language. The data obtained from interviews with teachers highlight that teachers use PBL to a certain extent, though it works much effectively with lower-secondary and upper-secondary education. Teachers preferred to use Project Based Learning in their classrooms in general, although there appears to be some uncertainty between doing projects and Project Based Learning as a strategy. English language instructors have only seen themselves as facilitators of initiatives carried out in the classroom, resulting in a student-centered environment. In contrast to the past, it appears that teachers make extensive use of technology and involve students in a variety of activities to boost their learning and keep them engaged in PBL. Students on the other hand, through a very small number, highlighted that PBL is a better teaching approach in comparison to the traditional textbook teaching and learning. (shrink)

How might a design approach be applied to Research? Following Glanville’sGlanville, Ranulph observation that design and researchResearch are fundamentally related and that design methodsDesignmethods may be applied across domains, we framed a case study of the perceptual effects of alternate contemporary lighting technologies at an architectural scale to show how a designer/researcher could approach this kind of investigation. Design proceeds in complex domains with incomplete data and open questions. It is often concerned with the singular or unique (...) solution rather than with generalizability. Its products are applied under hybrid and dynamic, rather than controlled, conditions. Rather than work with subjects approximating a general population, informants were recruited with more extensive or diverse experiences than our own. Color perception was investigated in large-scaled installations allowing for locomotion and full visual immersion in a color-field. The effort was not to frame hypotheses for confirmation or refutation but probe the phenomena for insights. Design researchDesignresearch methods might be preferred when the nature of the investigation is exploratory or when ecological validity dominates reliability. They might also be useful in situations where significant progress is no longer being made within a particular paradigm by recasting the nature of the inquiryEnquiry outside the frameworks that presently dominate. (shrink)

Many important harms result in large part from our collective omissions, such as harms from our omissions to stop climate change and famines. Accounting for responsibility for collective omissions turns out to be particularly challenging. It is hard to see how an individual contributes anything to a collective omission to prevent harm if she couldn’t have made a difference to that harm on her own. Some groups are able to prevent such harms, but it is highly contentious whether groups can (...) be loci of responsibility. This paper takes an existing and plausible framework of moral responsibility—one based on abilities—and scales it up to accommodate responsibility for collective omissions. This centrally involves identifying what the relevant collective abilities are and how they work. One significant benefit of this approach is that we can do this while remaining neutral on the debates about collective agency and collective responsibility by showing how individualist and collectivist versions of the theory work. Finally, I explore several further upshots of the scaled-up ability-based account, including that degrees of responsibility can be cashed out in terms of strengths of the relevant abilities, which has both theoretical and applied implications. (shrink)

The temperament of the body is an essential constituent for health conservancy and diagnosis of several diseases. Hence, general body temperament and uterine dystemperament with abnormal vaginal discharge need evaluation. In addition, we also applied a computational intelligence technique for enhancing scientific validity to classify the warm-cold and wet-dry temperaments. This trial included a total of 66 participants with a vaginal discharge of reproductive age. Data included demographic characteristics of the participants, symptoms associated with vaginal discharge, women’s general temperament, and (...) symptoms of uterine dystemperament. Correlation between general body temperament and age, abnormal vaginal discharge, and its associated symptoms was also performed. Additionally, we used the Support Vector Machine-Radial Basis Function model to classify the warm-cold and wet-dry temperaments. Warm general temperament was highly prevalent, followed by moderate on the warm-cold temperament scale. In wet-dry temperament, moderate general body temperament was more prevalent. In warm-cold and wet-dry scores, 78.78% and 74.24% had warm and wet uterine dystemperament, respectively. The age and symptoms were correlated with general temperament. A strong positive correlation was found between warm general temperament and warm dystemperament of the uterus. In addition, our SVM-RBF CV-5 classification model achieved the highest accuracy. Our results showed that vaginal discharge is more common in warm general temperament and warm-wet dystemperament of the uterus. The same has been proven by computational intelligence. Nevertheless, vaginal discharge can also happen in normal and other temperaments. (shrink)

Accurate measurement of livestock weight is a primary indicator in the meat industry to increase the economic gain. In lambs, the weight of a live animal is still usually estimated manually using traditional scales, resulting in a tedious process for the experienced assessor and stressful for the animal. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem using computer vision techniques; thus, the proposed procedure estimates the weight of a lamb by analysing its zenithal image without interacting with the (...) animal, which speeds up the process and reduces weighing costs. It is based on a data-driven decision support system that uses RGB-D machine vision techniques and regression models. Unlike existing methods, it does not require walk-over-weighing platforms or special and expensive infrastructures. The proposed method includes a decision support system that automatically rejects those images that are not appropriate to estimate the lamb weight. After determining the body contour of the lamb, we compute several features that feed different regression models. Best results were achieved with Extra Tree Regression ($R^{2}$=91.94%), outperforming the existing techniques. Using only an image, the proposed approach can identify with a minimum error the optimal weight of a lamb to be slaughtered, so as to maximise the economic profit. (shrink)

Frequent pattern mining is an effective approach for spatiotemporal association analysis of mobile trajectory big data in data-driven intelligent transportation systems. While existing parallel algorithms have been successfully applied to frequent pattern mining of large-scale trajectory data, two major challenges are how to overcome the inherent defects of Hadoop to cope with taxi trajectory big data including massive small files and how to discover the implicitly spatiotemporal frequent patterns with MapReduce. To conquer these challenges, this paper presents a (...) MapReduce-based Parallel Frequent Pattern growth algorithm to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of taxi operating using large-scale taxi trajectories with massive small file processing strategies on a Hadoop platform. More specifically, we first implement three methods, that is, Hadoop Archives, CombineFileInputFormat, and Sequence Files, to overcome the existing defects of Hadoop and then propose two strategies based on their performance evaluations. Next, we incorporate SF into Frequent Pattern growth algorithm and then implement the optimized FP-growth algorithm on a MapReduce framework. Finally, we analyze the characteristics of taxi operating in both spatial and temporal dimensions by MR-PFP in parallel. The results demonstrate that MR-PFP is superior to existing Parallel FP-growth algorithm in efficiency and scalability. (shrink)

Over 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, which causes more disability than any other medical condition in the United States at a cost of $560–$635 billion per year. Opioid analgesics are frequently used to treat CP. However, long term use of opioids can cause brain changes such as opioid-induced hyperalgesia that, over time, increase pain sensation. Also, opioids fail to treat complex psychological factors that worsen pain-related disability, including beliefs about and emotional responses to pain. Cognitive behavioral therapy can (...) be efficacious for CP. However, CBT generally does not focus on important factors needed for long-term functional improvement, including attainment of personal goals and the psychological flexibility to choose responses to pain. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been recognized as an effective, non-pharmacologic treatment for a variety of CP conditions. However, little is known about the neurologic mechanisms underlying ACT. We conducted an ACT intervention in women with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected pre- and post-ACT, and changes in functional connectivity were measured using Network-Based Statistics. Behavioral outcomes were measured using validated assessments such as the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and the NIH Toolbox Neuro-QoLTM scales. Results suggest that, following the 4-week ACT intervention, participants exhibited reductions in brain activation within and between key networks including self-reflection, emotion, and cognitive control. These changes in connectivity strength were correlated with changes in behavioral outcomes including decreased depression and pain interference, and increased participation in social roles. This study is one of the first to demonstrate that improved function across the DMN, SN, and FPN may drive the positive outcomes associated with ACT. This study contributes to the emerging evidence supporting the use of neurophysiological indices to characterize treatment effects of alternative and complementary mind-body therapies. (shrink)

Nowadays, higher education worldwide is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected students’ attendance in the universities and causes universities to close down in more than 190 countries. On the other hand, novice engineers studied only a few lectures related to highway engineering. Their lectures have included very little knowledge about asphalt pavement construction as highway engineering consists of many areas that are not studied in detail during their studying years subject to their traditional education. Due to all mentioned, (...) a new drive to promote online learning paves the way to evaluate our future approach to curriculum development and delivery of educational materials for engineering courses. However, experts can offer solutions to these problems using their past experience. Hence, a system that allows experts to share their experience with other engineers after completing a project is needed. Nevertheless, the web-based expert system for maintaining flexible pavement problems in tropical regions designed in this study is a novel concept. Prior to developing this system, the need for such a system was determined through literature review and validated through a questionnaire survey. Experts were interviewed, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to construct the knowledge base of the system. Knowledge was presented as rules and coded in software through PHP programming. Web pages that support the user interface were designed using a framework that consists of CSS, HTML, and J-Query. Furthermore, the system was tested by an array of users engaged in highway engineering, namely, experts, teaching experts, novice engineers, and students. The mean values of the overall system evaluation performed by 20 users using a five-point Likert scale were 4, 4.5, 3.75, 4.25, 5, 4, and 3.5. Expert and user satisfaction prove the effectiveness of the proposed system. (shrink)

This paper combines domestic and international research results to analyze and study the difference between the attribute features of English phrase speech and noise to enhance the short-time energy, which is used to improve the threshold judgment sensitivity; noise addition to the discrepancy data set is used to enhance the recognition robustness. The backpropagation algorithm is improved to constrain the range of weight variation, avoid oscillation phenomenon, and shorten the training time. In the real English phrase sound recognition system, there (...) are problems such as massive training data and low training efficiency caused by the super large-scale model parameters of the convolutional neural network. To address these problems, the NWBP algorithm is based on the oscillation phenomenon that tends to occur when searching for the minimum error value in the late training period of the network parameters, using the K-MEANS algorithm to obtain the seed nodes that approach the minimal error value, and using the boundary value rule to reduce the range of weight change to reduce the oscillation phenomenon so that the network error converges as soon as possible and improve the training efficiency. Through simulation experiments, the NWBP algorithm improves the degree of fitting and convergence speed in the training of complex convolutional neural networks compared with other algorithms, reduces the redundant computation, and shortens the training time to a certain extent, and the algorithm has the advantage of accelerating the convergence of the network compared with simple networks. The word tree constraint and its efficient storage structure are introduced, which improves the storage efficiency of the word tree constraint and the retrieval efficiency in the English phrase recognition search. (shrink)

Workplace spirituality research has sidestepped religion by focusing on the function of belief rather than its substance. Although establishing a unified foundation for research, the functional approach cannot shed light on issues of workplace pluralism, individual or institutional faith-work integration, or the institutional roles of religion in economic activity. To remedy this, we revisit definitions of spirituality and argue for the place of a belief-based approach to workplace religion. Additionally, we describe the construction of a 15-item measure (...) of workplace religion informed by Judaism and Christianity – the Faith at Work Scale (FWS). A stratified random sample (n = 234) of managers and professionals assisted in refining the FWS which exhibits a single factor structure (Eigenvalue = 8.88; variance accounted for = 59.22%) that is internally consistent (Cronbach’s α = 0.77) and demonstrates convergent validity with the Faith Maturity Scale (r = 0.81, p > 0.0001). The scale shows lower skew and kurtosis with Mainline and Catholic adherents than with Mormons and Evangelicals. Validation of the scale among Jewish and diverse Christian adherants would extend research in workplace religion. (shrink)

Helping behavior is likely to have evolved to increase summary chances for survival of an individual and their group. Nevertheless, populations differ significantly in their eagerness to help, and still little is known about populational and inter-individual determinants of these differences. Previous studies indicated that economic and physiological factors might influence helping behavior. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of approach to resource management of a society (immediate-return economy vs. delayed-return economy), prenatal androgenization ( (...) class='Hi'>based on second-to-fourth digit ratio), and physical strength (based on hand grip strength) on helping behavior towards others. Helping was assessed in terms of both general eagerness to help and differential helping towards: (1) kin, (2) other group members indiscriminately, (3) friends, and (4) those from whom help was obtained in the past. Based on data collected in two small-scale societies, we found that people in the egalitarian immediate-return society (the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania) engaged in helping behavior significantly more often than representatives of a more stratified delayed-return economy (Yali horticulturalists of Papua). Additionally, our results revealed that physical strength was a significant predictor of helping behavior in women but not in men. We discuss our findings in the light of the adaptive value of helping behavior. (shrink)

This article reports on a study that took a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective to second language motivational self system. More specifically, it investigated the influence of an Intensive English Reading course based on the Production-Oriented Approach upon the L2MSS of Chinese university English majorsfrom the DST perspective. To this end, two intact classes composed of 50 students were assigned into experimental group and control group, who responded to an L2MSS scale before and after the one-semester intervention. Eight (...) and five students were respectively selected using the purposive sampling method from the experimental and control groups for follow-up semi-structured interviews. The quantitative results revealed that the overall and dimensional levels of L2MSS were significantly strengthened over time in the EG while kept stable in the CG. The qualitative results suggested that the enhanced Ideal L2 Self of the participants stemmed from an attractor basin that was deepened by a number of attractors encompassing Output Tasks and Peer Performance. The interview results also showed that the increased L2 Learning Experience of the participants pertained to an attractor basin that was consolidated by an array of attractors containing Output Tasks, Teacher Guidance, Group Discussion, and Peer Assessment. The findings indicated that the attractors at the subjective and social dimensions in the POA-based course collectively worked together to cause changes in L2MSS among the participants. The implications for intervening L2 motivation from a POA approach in English as a Foreign Language classrooms were discussed. (shrink)

Amartya Sen has developed the so-called capability approach to meet the criticism that income alone may be insufficient as a measure of economic inequality. This is because knowledge about people’s income does not tell us what they are able to acquire with that income. For example, people with the same income may not have the same access to health and transportation services, schools and opportunities in the labor market. Recently, there has been growing interest in empirical studies based (...) on the capability approach. Most of these, however, are only loosely related to quantitative behavioral theory, at least in a concrete and empirically operational way. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the theory of random scale models offers a powerful theoretical and empirical framework for representing and accounting for key aspects of Sen’s theory. (shrink)

Due to the advent of deglobalization and regional integration, this article aims to adopt LASSO-based network connectedness to estimate the multiscale tail risk spillover effects of global stock markets. The results show that tail risk varies across frequencies and shocks. In static analysis, the risk is centered mostly on the developed European and North American markets at a low frequency, and regionalization is imposed on the moderate frequency. Moreover, emerging markets could be sources of risk spillover, especially at the (...) highest frequency where there is no absolute risk center. In dynamic analysis, we use rolling window estimation and find that different frequencies identify distinct episodes of shocks, which provides us with the reason for the diverse risk centers at different time scales in static analysis. Our findings provide heterogeneous financial practitioners, regulators, and investors with diverse characteristics of stock markets under multiple time horizons and help them operate their own trading strategies. (shrink)

Although cognitive science was multidisciplinary from the start, an under-emphasis on anthropology has left the field with limited research in small scale, indigenous societies. Neglecting the anthropological perspective is risky, given that once-canonical cognitive science findings have often been shown to be artifacts of enculturation rather than cognitive universals. This imbalance has become more problematic as the increased use of Western theory-driven approaches, many of which assume human uniformity (“universality”), confronts the absence of a robust descriptive base that might (...) provide clarifying or even contrary evidence. We highlight the need for remedies to such shortcomings by suggesting a two-fold methodological shift. First, studies conducted in indigenous societies can benefit by relying on multidisciplinary research groups to diminish ethnocentrism and enhance the quality of the data. Second, studies devised for Western societies can readily be adapted to the changing settings encountered in the field. Here, we provide examples, drawn from the areas of emotion and facial expressions, to illustrate potential solutions to recurrent problems in enhancing the quality of data collection, hypothesis testing, and the interpretation of results. (shrink)

Historic preservation, which is a vital act for conveying people’s understanding of the past, such as events, ideas, and places to the future, allows people to preserve history for future generations. Additionally, since the historic properties are currently concentrated in urban areas, an urban-oriented approach will contribute to the issue. Hence, public awareness is a key factor that paves the way for this conservation. Public history, a history with a public audience and special methods of representation, can serve society (...) in this regard. Historical video games, which get their game objectives from the past, can be considered a form of public history, raising people’s awareness and letting them gain historical experience. While plenty of studies focused on this content with various approaches, this study takes the topic under consideration with a player-oriented focus. The research uses the Steam video game digital distribution service database to explore the existing historical games based on their genre, player scale, dimension, VR compatibility attributes, and player rating. The database includes 1,148 games published between 2002 and 2022, filtered as historical by Steam tags and sorted by player review. For the data collection, the study uses the Octoparse web scraping tool for data extraction, and for the data analysis, it uses RapidMiner Studio data mining software. The study aims to provide a framework applicable to the development of commercially playable historical video games contributing to heritage preservation by raising public awareness in the context of public history. (shrink)

Computer science advocates institutional frameworks as an effective tool for modelling policies and reasoning about their interplay. In practice, the rules or policies, of which the institutional framework consists, are often specified using a formal language, which allows for the full verification and validation of the framework (e.g. the consistency of policies) and the interplay between the policies and actors (e.g. violations). However, when modelling large-scale realistic systems, with numerous decision-making entities, scalability and complexity issues arise making it possible (...) only to verify certain portions of the problem without reducing the scale. In the social sciences, agent-based modelling is a popular tool for analysing how entities interact within a system and react to the system properties. Agent-based modelling allows the specification of complex decision-making entities and experimentation with large numbers of different parameter sets for these entities in order to explore their effects on overall system performance. In this paper we describe how to achieve the best of both worlds, namely verification of a formal specification combined with the testing of large-scale systems with numerous different actor configurations. Hence, we offer an approach that allows for reasoning about policies, policy making and their consequences on a more comprehensive level than has been possible to date. We present the institutional agent-based model methodology to combine institutional frameworks with agent-based simulations). We furthermore present J-InstAL, a prototypical implementation of this methodology using the InstAL institutional framework whose specifications can be translated into a computational model under the answer set semantics, and an agent-based simulation based on the jason tool. Using a simplified contract enforcement example, we demonstrate the functionalities of this prototype and show how it can help to assess an appropriate fine level in case of contract violations. (shrink)

The forms of words as they appear in text and speech are central to theories and models of lexical processing. Nonetheless, current methods for simulating their learning and representation fail to approach the scale and heterogeneity of real wordform lexicons. A connectionist architecture termed thesequence encoderis used to learn nearly 75,000 wordform representations through exposure to strings of stress‐marked phonemes or letters. First, the mechanisms and efficacy of the sequence encoder are demonstrated and shown to overcome problems with (...) traditional slot‐based codes. Then, two large‐scale simulations are reported that learned to represent lexicons of either phonological or orthographic wordforms. In doing so, the models learned the statistics of their lexicons as shown by better processing of well‐formed pseudowords as opposed to ill‐formed (scrambled) pseudowords, and by accounting for variance in well‐formedness ratings. It is discussed how the sequence encoder may be integrated into broader models of lexical processing. (shrink)

Attitude is a learned tendency to react positively or negatively to certain objects, situations, institutions, concepts or other people. Researches indicate that attitude towards the course is an important factor in achieving the objectives of any course. In this context, it can be said that attitude towards Religious Culture and Ethical Knowledge (RCEK) courses is important in achieving the objectives of the course. Because both the student's attitude towards religion and his/her success in the course are largely related to his/her (...) attitude towards the course. One of the most commonly used approaches to measure attitudes is to develop a scale for the attitude in question. In this context, when the literature is examined, it is seen that there is a rich literature on various attitude scales related to the RCEK course. Although the developed scales have brought the existing situation to a certain level, there was a need to develop a new scale for the following reasons: The lack of confirmatory analysis of some of the scales, the focus on the factors affecting attitude rather than directly on attitude, the fact that the scales contain questions about the importance and necessity of the course (because although they consider the course important, they may have a negative attitude towards the course), the fact that it has been 5 years since the most recent scale was developed, and the need to develop a short and concise attitude scale that measures attitude. The aim of the study is to develop an attitude scale towards RCEK course that can be used both in middle and high schools and to analyze the attitude scale towards RCEK course according to various variables. For this purpose, survey design, one of the quantitative research designs, was used. The research was conducted in 5 steps. In the first step, the attitude scales based on the literature were examined and the items were written and then the written items were sent to the field experts. In the second step, item analysis was performed, in the third step exploratory factor analysis was performed, in the fourth step confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analyses were performed, and in the fifth and last step statistical analyses were performed to determine the relationship/differentiation of the attitude towards RCEK course with various variables. Except for the first step of the research, there are study groups in each step. While forming these study groups, stratified sampling was selected as the sampling model. Gender and grade level were taken as strata. There were 887 students in total in the study groups. In data analysis, unrelated samples t-test for paired groups, one-way analysis of variance ANOVA for more than two groups, and Pearson correlation analyses were performed to determine the relationships between continuous variables. After all these analyses, a valid and reliable scale of attitudes towards the RCEK course, consisting of 9 items and explaining 57.68% variance, was developed. It was found that the scale of attitudes towards the RCEK course differed significantly according to the participants' school types, perceived teacher attitude, desire to change the RCEK teacher, and parental education levels. In addition, it was found that the scale of attitudes towards the RCEK course did not differ significantly according to gender, and there were no significant relationships between them and academic achievement and socio-economic level. As a result of this study, which aimed to develop a scale for attitudes towards the RCEK course, an attitude scale that provided validity and reliability analyses was developed. The scale consists of 9 items, 4 of which are reversed. Reverse items are coded items 4, 6, 7 and 8. (shrink)

The roles played by physics in the study of the life sciences have taken many forms over the past 100 years. Here we analyze how physics can be brought to bear on the contemporary study of morphogenesis, where new tissue-scale forms arise out of simpler, more homogenous, initial structures. We characterize how morphogenesis has been studied through reductionist approaches and discuss their limitations. We suggest that an alternative way of approaching morphogenesis that begins with a consideration of the whole (...) may also serve as a fruitful mode of scientific inquiry. Through historical analysis of concepts relevant for contemporary systems biology, we illustrate how physical thinking oriented toward the biological whole (“holistic biophysical thinking”) was exemplified in the biological theories presented earlier by D’Arcy Thompson (1860–1948) and Pere Alberch (1954–1998). We contrast the use of physics to develop the conceptual foundations of holistically oriented systems biology with the more prevalent contemporary use of physics that focuses on technological development and quantification, embedded within reductionist strategies. As an in-depth contemporary case study, we describe how in our research we have used holistic biophysical thinking to develop biological theories of vertebrate morphogenesis that account for and extend beyond genetic, molecular, and cellular processes. We propose a theory of skin development where _both_ molecular _and_ morphological patterns are orchestrated by emergent physical processes at the supracellular scale. We further posit that holistic biophysical thinking at the supracellular scale may advance theories of diseases such as cancer. (shrink)

A mobile-based messaging app (MMA) was implemented as a teachers’ community of practice in the Indian context through a large-scale educational initiative. The development process adopted a Design-based Research approach to test underlying theories in real-world settings. The researchers theorised the pedagogical affordances of the MMA Telegram using Davis and Chouinard's theoretical framework of affordances, defined as a relational process among users, designers, the environment, and the artefact. This paper discusses the iterative design process in detail. (...) The findings showed that the MMA encourages accessibility and for teachers to showcase their practice in the online community of practice and refuses (does not allow) the development of the online community of practice as an epistemic community. (shrink)