bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Efficacy of the Sensorimotor Training Program on Sensorimotor Development, Auditory and Visual Skills of Schoolchildren Aged 5–8 Years
Authors: Stephens-Sarlós Erzsébet , Stephens Patrick , Szabo Attila 
Published: August 2024

Abstract
Background
Around 800 million young children worldwide have cognitive-developmental limitations due to issues related to biological, environmental, and psychosocial factors. These problems lead to educational challenges, limited skill development, and higher unemployment rates. Therefore, timely interventions addressing the underlying problems in institutional settings are critically important.

Objective
The authors created the “Sensorimotor Training Program” (STP) as a critical intervention to develop skills essential for starting school. This experimental study aimed to investigate the impact of the STP in an institutional setting, targeting the specific auditory and visual skills crucial for kindergarten and primary school learning.

Methods
The STP comprises 120 training sessions focused on sensorimotor maturation. Seven hundred and seventy-two children aged 5–8 participated in the study, with 704 in the experimental and 68 in the control group, each containing a relatively balanced ratio of boys to girls. The study spanned six to eight months, with three to five weekly sessions.

Results
The intervention resulted in significant improvements in sensorimotor development in the experimental compared to the control group [p < .001, effect size (d) = .483; auditory skills r = .605 p < .001, d = .366; visual skills r = .542, p < .001, d = .294]. The intervention group also improved compared to its baseline measurements.

Conclusion
These results show that implementing the STP in school settings can improve sensorimotor development, impacting auditory and visual skills in children aged 5–8. These intervention-based improvements are above and beyond biological maturation.
Teaching in a collaborative mathematic learning activity with and without a social robot
Authors: Ekström Sara , Pareto Lena , Ljungblad Sara 
Published: August 2024

Abstract
There is a growing interest in whether social robots, which are embodied and exhibit human-like behaviour, can be used for teaching and learning. Still, very few studies focus on the teacher’s role. This study focuses on how a teacher acted in a learning-by-teaching activity with 20 children. In this small-scale field experiment, the teacher’s interactions and teaching actions were observed when the teacher scaffolded a learning activity where children played a collaborative digital mathematics game to strengthen their mathematical reasoning and conceptual understanding of arithmetic. When playing, the children were acting as tutors for a tutee, according to the learning-by-teaching principle. In one scenario, the tutee was a younger child; in the other, the tutee was a social robot. Twenty 30-minute game-playing sessions are observed, video-recorded, and transcribed. The study explores the teacher’s interactions and teaching actions in the two scenarios and discusses the results from the perspective of the teacher’s role, social norms, and teacher digital competence. The interaction and thematic analyses show similarities and characteristic differences in the teacher’s interaction patterns in the two scenarios. The teaching actions are similar on a structural level and differ regarding the types and distribution of teaching actions. In the child-child scenario, the teacher directs most teaching actions to both players, and the actions are didactic (mathematical) scaffolding. In contrast, in the child-robot scenario, the teacher only addresses the tutor, and the scaffolding is socially oriented. Implications for a teaching practice involving social robots as learning companions are discussed regarding teachers’ presence and participation, types of social robot knowledge that go beyond digital competence, and new challenges introduced by using social robots as learning companions in the classroom. The study contributes new insights into the teacher’s role and actions when teaching with a social robot in a collaborative learning situation, which is relevant for educational research and teaching practice.
Using expansive learning to design and implement video-annotated peer feedback in an undergraduate general education module
Authors: Gatrell Dave , Mark KaiPan , Au-Yeung Cypher , Leung Ka Yee 
Published: August 2024

AbstractExisting studies have measured the effect of video-based feedback on student performance or satisfaction. Other issues are underacknowledged or merit further investigation. These include sociocultural aspects which may shape the design and implementation of video-based feedback, the ways students use technology to engage in feedback, and the processes through technology may transform learning. This study investigates the design and implementation of a video-annotated peer feedback activity to develop students’ presentation skills and knowledge of climate science. It explores how their use of a video annotation tool re-mediated established feedback practices and how the systematic analysis of contradictions in emerging practices informed the subsequent redesign and reimplementation of the approach. Employing a formative intervention design, the researchers intervened in the activity system of a first-year undergraduate education module to facilitate two cycles of expansive learning with an instructor and two groups of Hong Kong Chinese students (n = 97, n = 94) across two semesters. Instructor interviews, student surveys, and video annotation and system data were analysed using Activity Theory-derived criteria to highlight contradictions in each system and suggest how these could be overcome. The findings highlight the critical importance of active instructor facilitation; building student motivation by embedding social-affective support and positioning peer feedback as an integrated, formative process; and supporting students’ use of appropriate cognitive scaffolding to encourage their interactive, efficient use of the annotation tool. Conclusions: In a field dominated by experimental and quasi-experimental studies, this study reveals how an Activity Theory-derived research design and framework can be used to systemically analyse cycles of design and implementation of video-annotated peer feedback. It also suggests how the new activity system might be consolidated and generalised.
Decoding educational augmented reality research trends: a topic modeling analysis
Authors: Ozyurt Hacer , Ozyurt Ozcan 
Published: August 2024

Abstract
This study aims to examine the temporal evolution and changes of research interests and trends in the educational augmented reality (AR) literature. To this end, 3718 articles published in the 2003–2022 period and indexed in the Scopus database were analyzed through machine learning-based semantic topic modeling and descriptive analysis. The findings indicate a notable upswing in studies on educational AR, particularly since 2015. The articles were categorized into eleven primary themes through topic modeling analysis. The three most prevalent topics in terms of volume are “Augmented Reality in Education and Cultural Heritage”, “Medical Education and Patient Care”, and “Enhancing Safety and Information in Food Consumption”. Observations across different times reveal that “Augmented Reality in Electrical and Electronic Systems” and “Gesture-Based Instruction and Maintenance” were studied in the initial periods. Since 2015, there has been a notable increase in applications falling under the “Serious Games” category. The least voluminous and slowest-evolving topics are identified as “Serious Games for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”, “Augmented Reality in Chemistry and Biology Laboratories”, and “Augmented Reality for Safe and Efficient Driving”. Considering the recent momentum gained by these topics, it is anticipated that they will become popular topics for future studies. This study represents a significant milestone as the first and most comprehensive research using machine learning in its field, not only explaining the current state of the field but also providing valuable information for future research efforts.
Right and Duty: Investment Risk Under Different Renewable Energy Support Policies
Authors: Alcorta Peio , Espinosa Maria Paz , Pizarro-Irizar Cristina 
Published: August 2024

AbstractRenewable energy projects are subject to risk due to the uncertainty of future electricity prices and the amount of energy produced. Public support usually consists of some form of guarantee, either on the price received per MWh supplied or the return on investment per MW installed. This support reduces the investor’s risk, which is then assumed by the regulator. However, most of these policies do not only grant the investor the right to receive a guaranteed payment but also limit its potential benefits (i.e., impose an obligation). We propose a model with analytical solutions in which, considering the randomness of the market price, as well as that of the energy production, we quantify the risk removed under different types of regulations and assign a value to both the rights and the obligations that each policy entails. Finally, we apply the model to the case of Spain, which has undergone several changes in its green energy support system in recent years. Our results indicate that in the context of low electricity prices, the obligations imposed by most of these policies are negligible compared to the rights received. By contrast, in the context of high electricity prices and increasingly competitive renewable energy sources, the assumed obligations become more notable to the point of the support policy becoming a liability. Nevertheless, a sufficiently risk-averse investor may be incentivized by a policy with negative expected regulatory costs.
Try to esCAPE from Cybersecurity Incidents! A Technology-Enhanced Educational Approach
Authors: Pirta-Dreimane Rūta , Brilingaitė Agnė , Roponena Evita , Parish Karen , Grabis Jānis , Lugo Ricardo Gregorio , Bonders Mārtiņš 
Published: August 2024

AbstractIncorporating gamification elements and innovative approaches in training programs are promising for addressing cybersecurity knowledge gaps. Cybersecurity education should combine hard and soft skill development when building the capacity to manage cyber incidents requiring timely communication, team collaboration, and self-efficacy in risk assessment and incident mitigation. The paper presents a design and evaluation of the technology-enhanced cybersecurity education approach CAPE which works as a hybrid escape room. It combines a virtualized infrastructure simulating the business environment and the physical environment where game participants play the role of the incident response team at the organization’s premises. The CAPE could be applied as a student-centered approach in the educational environment. The work employed a multiple-methods research approach to design a gamified approach and investigate crisis communication, collaboration, self-regulation, and technical competences in incident management scenarios. The design science methodology empowered the game’s construction with an attack surface covering physical and digital security. The undergraduate students participated in the pilot execution and completed the psychological questionnaires. The results were analyzed using statistical methods. Results of the CAPE execution showed a positive impact on student performance and increased interest in cybersecurity. The designed approach promoted field-specific competence development. The results demonstrated the significance of psychological aspects related to incident management.
Graphical abstract
Holocene ecosystem and temperature development inferred from invertebrate remains in Zminje Jezero (Dinaric Alps, Montenegro)
Authors: Schmidhauser Noé R. M. M. , Finsinger Walter , Cagliero Eleonora , Heiri Oliver 
Published: August 2024

AbstractLake Zminje Jezero (1535 m a.s.l.) in Montenegro was studied for chironomid and other aquatic invertebrate remains in a sediment sequence dating back to 12,000 calibrated 14C years before present (cal yr BP), providing, to our knowledge, the first lake-sediment record studied for chironomids and other associated chitinous aquatic invertebrate remains in the Dinaric Alps. Changes in chironomid and other invertebrate remains along the record make it possible to constrain changes of relevant environmental variables for aquatic invertebrates in the lake including temperature, oxygen availability, trophic status and water depth. The results suggest moderate changes in trophic conditions with chironomid assemblages indicating meso- to eutrophic conditions during the analysed interval. Invertebrate assemblages were typical for lakes with relatively high oxygen availability with a minor trend during the middle to late Holocene to conditions observed in lakes that are more hypoxic. A change in temperature is suggested in the earlier part of the record when the share of chironomid taxa adapted to warmer conditions increased, at the Younger Dryas to Holocene transition, whereas later no particularly pronounced shifts in temperature-sensitive taxa were observed. July air temperatures were estimated based on chironomid assemblages using a transfer function based on calibration data consisting of 117 lakes sampled in the Swiss Alps and northern Switzerland. The results suggest that temperatures rapidly increased by 5 °C at the onset of the Holocene (11,500 cal yr BP) leading to a relatively warm early to mid-Holocene and thereafter slightly decreased during the late Holocene. Reconstructed temperatures are discussed together with a previously published pollen record for our study site and are broadly consistent with other chironomid-based temperature reconstructions from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. From ca. 3000 cal yr BP sedimentation rates increased and from ca. 500 cal yr BP onwards pollen data suggest that the vegetation and lake catchment were affected by human activities, possibly influencing chironomid and other invertebrate assemblages in the lake and thereby also reconstructed temperatures. Overall, our results show that combining analyses of chironomid and other invertebrate assemblages can provide valuable insights into long-term environmental changes and can provide temperature reconstructions for small mountain lakes in the Balkans, such as Zminje Jezero.
Probabilistic maximization of time-dependent capacities in a gas network
Authors: Heitsch Holger , Henrion René , Tischendorf Caren 
Published: August 2024

Abstract
The determination of free technical capacities belongs to the core tasks of a gas network owner. Since gas loads are uncertain by nature, it makes sense to understand this as a probabilistic problem provided that stochastic modeling of available historical data is possible. Future clients, however, do not have a history or they do not behave in a random way, as is the case, for instance, in gas reservoir management. Therefore, capacity maximization becomes an optimization problem with uncertainty-related constraints which are partially of probabilistic and partially of robust (worst case) type. While previous attempts to solve this problem were devoted to models with static (time-independent) gas flow, we aim at considering here transient gas flow subordinate to the isothermal Euler equations. The basic challenge addressed in the manuscript is two-fold: first, a proper way of formulating probabilistic constraints in terms of the differential equations has to be provided. This will be realized on the basis of the so-called spherical-radial decomposition of Gaussian random vectors. Second, a suitable characterization of the worst-case load behaviour of future customers has to be found. It will be shown, that this is possible for quasi-static flow and can be transferred to the transient case. The complexity of the problem forces us to constrain ourselves in this first analysis to simple pipes or to a V-like structure of the network. Numerical solutions are presented and show that the differences between quasi-static and transient solutions are small, at least in these elementary examples.
Selected Mesoamerican Crops – Anti-Obesity Potential and Health Promotion. A Review
Authors: Hernández-Pérez Talía , Paredes-López Octavio 
Published: August 2024

AbstractMesoamerica is the center of origin of a great number of food crops that nowadays are part of a healthy diet. Pre-Columbian civilizations utilized more than 90% of these foods as ingredient or in main dishes, as well as for remedies and religious ceremonies. Since several years ago, Mesoamerican foods have been recognized by their outstanding concentration of bioactive compounds, including, phenolic compounds, pigments, essential fatty acids, amino acids, peptides, carbohydrates and vitamins, which provide a great number of health benefits. As a result of their unique composition, these ancient crops have several positive effects, such as hypoglycemic, antioxidant, anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory, anti-ageing, neuroprotective, anti-diarrheal, and anti-hypercholesterolemic capacity. Hence, this review is focused mainly in the anti-obesity and antioxidant potential of some of the most cultivated, harvested, as well as commercialized and consumed, food crops native of Mesoamerica, like, nopal and its fruit (Opuntia ficus indica spp.), chia (Salvia hispanica L.), pumpkin (Cucurbita spp.) and cacao (Theobroma cacao).
Ad Hoc Adaptations to Climate Change in Coastal Communities
Authors: Castro Brianna 
Published: August 2024

AbstractClimate change disproportionately impacts coastal residents in the United States. Existing studies document institutional efforts to adapt to sea level rise through projects like seawalls, beach nourishment, and property acquisitions to protect communities from rising seas. Such studies capture institutional adaptations, but do not include ad hoc adaptations by homeowners impacted by climate change. How are homeowners adapting to climate hazards? This paper analyzes ethnographic and interview data from 100 households in two coastal counties in North Carolina, a state with one of the most climate vulnerable shorelines in the country. This analysis of homeowner response considers ad hoc adaptations along the North Carolina coast. Results show that homeowners recognize climate hazards and regularly adapt on their own within the context of institutionally maintained flood protection infrastructure and transportation access to the places where they live. Residents are aware of and attempt to access support for home adaptations when programs or funds are available to them after disasters and do so with varying levels of success, though the more pervasive adaptations to chronic stress are not supported by government programs or insurance mechanisms. Ad hoc adaptations may provide short-term protection from climate hazards but have questionable long-term efficacy as sea levels rise and storm strength and frequency increases. Leaving communities and households to adapt on their own as chronic climate hazards outpace institutional response exacerbates existing inequalities by relying on residents with different levels of resources and agency to adapt.
Learning variational autoencoders via MCMC speed measures
Authors: Hirt Marcel , Kreouzis Vasileios , Dellaportas Petros 
Published: August 2024

AbstractVariational autoencoders (VAEs) are popular likelihood-based generative models which can be efficiently trained by maximising an evidence lower bound. There has been much progress in improving the expressiveness of the variational distribution to obtain tighter variational bounds and increased generative performance. Whilst previous work has leveraged Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for constructing variational densities, gradient-based methods for adapting the proposal distributions for deep latent variable models have received less attention. This work suggests an entropy-based adaptation for a short-run metropolis-adjusted Langevin or Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) chain while optimising a tighter variational bound to the log-evidence. Experiments show that this approach yields higher held-out log-likelihoods as well as improved generative metrics. Our implicit variational density can adapt to complicated posterior geometries of latent hierarchical representations arising in hierarchical VAEs.
Memory-based reference and immunity to error through misidentification
Authors: García-Carpintero Manuel 
Published: August 2024

AbstractWittgenstein distinguished between two uses of ‘I’, one “as object” and the other “as subject”, a distinction that Shoemaker elucidated in terms of a notion of immunity to error through misidentification (‘IEM’); in their use “as subject”, first-personal claims are IEM, but not in their use “as object”. Shoemaker argued that memory judgments based on “personal”, episodic memory are only de facto IEM, not strictly speaking IEM, while Gareth Evans disputed it. In the past two decades research on memory has produced very significant results, which have changed the philosophical landscape. As part of it, several new arguments have been made for and against the IEM of personal memories. The paper aims to defend the Shoemaker line by critically engaging with some compelling recent contributions.
Precision breeding in agriculture and food systems in the United Kingdom
Authors: Watson Oli , Hayta Sadiye 
Published: August 2024

AbstractIn recent years there have been major advances in precision breeding technologies, such as gene editing, that offer promising solutions to revolutionise global crop production and tackle the pressing issues in food systems. The UK has leading expertise in genomics, and research is already taking place to develop crops with improved resilience to climate change, resistance to disease and less reliance on chemical inputs. In March 2023, the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act received Royal Assent and passed into UK law. It provides a framework from which to build more proportionate regulations for plants and animals made using genetic technologies which contain genetic changes that could also arise through traditional breeding—known as ‘Precision Bred Organisms’. New legislation and the utilization of UK world-leading research could help to enhance the efficiency of breeding systems and enable the development of plants and animals that are healthier, better for the environment and more resilient to climate change.
NGO ‘Screen-Being’ and Stakeholder Engagement: A ‘Wicked Problem’?
Authors: Letiche Hugo , Cordery Carolyn , de Loo Ivo 
Published: August 2024

AbstractAmple survey research and content analysis has established that NGO internet presence is qualitatively weak and characterized by the dominance of asymmetrical communication. We argue that the emergent communicative and social paradigm of on-line interaction forms what could be defined as a wicked problem. NGOs, seen as a ‘sender’ of information, may well face a crisis of accountability determined by the very nature of the media; whereas the NGOs’ ‘information receivers’ often are deprived of the very possibility of stakeholder relatedness. In the internet-based/on-screen ‘universe’, information and electronic flow are assumed to be continual, which supersedes the entity logic crucial to NGO accountability and legitimacy. In designing their social media presence, NGOs may, therefore, face an impossible challenge.Informed by Stéphane Vial’s analysis of the nature of on-line interactive media, we evaluate these conundrums. Then, inspired by Lucas Introna and Fernando Ilharco, we question the dialogic potential to ‘screen-being’. While the shift from an ‘actor-centric’ to ‘flow-oriented’ paradigm of ‘screen-being’ is inherent to digital communication, it destabilizes the entity-grounded accountability of NGO legitimacy. Hence, we end with explicating the risks to dialogic relatedness of ‘sceen being’ for NGOs. By so doing, we challenge the oft vocalized perspective that NGOs ‘just’ have to increase their digital communications in order to improve their relations with various stakeholders.