Search Results (33)

In the context of increasing digitization, integrating ICT technologies, artificial intelligence, and remote working is altering residential mobility patterns and housing preferences. This study examines the housing market’s impact, focusing on how residential affordability affects residential choices, using a case study of the Metropolitan City of Florence. The analysis employs a methodology centered on the Debt-to-Income Ratio (DTI), which cross-references real estate market values (source: Agenzia delle Entrate and leading real estate portals) with household income brackets to identify affordable areas. The results reveal a clear divide: households with incomes below EUR 26,000 per year (representing about 69% of the population) are excluded from the central urban property market. This evidence confirms regional and national trends, emphasizing a growing mismatch between housing costs and disposable incomes. The study concludes that affordability is a technical–financial parameter and a valuable tool for supporting inclusive urban planning. Its application facilitates the orientation of effective public policies and the identification of socially sustainable housing solutions. Full article

This research explores the perspectives of kindergarten through to Grade 12 (K-12) teachers on incorporating information and communication technology (ICT) into the environmental education (EE) curriculum. In the context of the increasing influence of ICT in education, this study examines both the potential enhancements ICT offers to EE and the challenges it poses. Using data from an online survey and an in-person focus group, the investigation addresses the capacity of ICT to promote environmental stewardship and personal growth, alongside concerns regarding technology’s potential to alienate students from nature and the divided opinions among educators regarding optimal technology use. Attention is given to systemic barriers that complicate EE integration and the variability of its implementation in Ontario, Canada, where EE is mandated across K-12 curricula. The findings illuminate educators’ concerns about digital dependencies among their students and the difficulty they face in striking a balance between the use of ICT and non-technical pedagogical approaches when engaging students in environmental lessons. Importantly, study participants identified limited contemporary and timely technological tools to support EE delivery that deemphasize using personal mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets). In response, we recommend three forms of technology (and accompanying lesson ideas) that are affordable, easy to integrate into classrooms, and do not require off-site trips, thereby enhancing accessibility and equity. This study’s implications are aimed at educators, policymakers, and stakeholders seeking to enhance EE delivery within a technologically evolving educational framework and ensure the development of environmentally conscious students. Full article

Continuous crop monitoring enables the early detection of field emergencies such as pests, diseases, and nutritional deficits, allowing for less invasive interventions and yielding economic, environmental, and health benefits. The work organization of modern agriculture, however, is not compatible with continuous human monitoring. ICT can facilitate this process using autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) to navigate crops, detect issues, georeference them, and report to human experts in real time. This review evaluates the current state of ICT technology to determine if it supports autonomous, continuous crop monitoring. The focus is on shifting from traditional cloud-based approaches, where data are sent to remote computers for deferred processing, to a hybrid design emphasizing edge computing for real-time analysis in the field. Key aspects considered include algorithms for in-field navigation, AIoT models for detecting agricultural emergencies, and advanced edge devices that are capable of managing sensors, collecting data, performing real-time deep learning inference, ensuring precise mapping and navigation, and sending alert reports with minimal human intervention. State-of-the-art research and development in this field suggest that general, not necessarily crop-specific, prototypes of fully autonomous UGVs for continuous monitoring are now at hand. Additionally, the demand for low-power consumption and affordable solutions can be practically addressed. Full article

The past two years saw a rapid proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. Digital technologies and environments offer many affordances. New digital literacy practices in universities have implications for teaching and learning. E-textbooks, in particular, act as mediating tools that can facilitate teaching and learning through developing students’ understandings of scientific concepts. This paper positions e-textbooks as mediators of learning, rather than merely objects of learning. There is thus a need to understand the mediating role of e-textbooks that lecturers draw on in their teaching. While much research was conducted on students’ use of e-textbooks, relatively little was conducted on lecturers’ use of e-textbooks in engineering education. The current study aimed to answer the following research question: What are lecturers’ perspectives on the use of e-textbooks to facilitate learning in engineering? To address this question, data were collected through five individual interviews conducted with engineering lecturers working in the Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) of first-year students from three engineering departments (chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and nautical science) at a university of technology in South Africa. The data were analysed using thematic content analysis with the help of ATLAS.ti. Data analysis was guided by a theoretical framework that drew on the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). In this study, the focus was on e-textbooks as pedagogical tools within engineering teaching and learning. The findings provide insight into how lecturers incorporate e-textbooks into their teaching, but also reveal the extent to which new digital literacy reading practices remain unfamiliar to engineering lecturers. CHAT enabled the identification of a critical insight, namely, the tension between mediation and division of labour. This highlights important aspects of the discourse surrounding seamless technology integration in higher education. The discussion points to the need for an expansive transformation regarding the use of e-textbooks as important mediating tools for teaching and learning. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic affected many aspects of human life including consumer behavior. The main aim of this paper was to identify basic patterns of changes in consumer attitudes towards agri-food products under the influence of the 2020 pandemic and to better understand to what extent and what kind of food market problems appeared for the inhabitants of the Danube microregion. For this purpose, an explorative study was elaborated. Assuming that the experience of COVID-19 affected consumer attitudes and sense of food security, a hybrid survey was conducted in the Danube microregion (Croatia, Serbia and Romania) during 2022. Data collected from a total of 903 respondents were statistically analyzed in SPSS. Descriptive statistics, PCA, ANOVA and t-Test were employed. The main results have shown that although the surveyed population of the Danube microregion during the pandemic in 2020 was generally not afraid of food shortages, food was in most part available for their families and their shopping habits have not changed to a large degree, the experience of the pandemic has raised the level of awareness about some issues related to food and specifically the prices of food products. Also, three different patterns of attitude and behavior towards food and agriculture, which emerged as a result of the experience of the pandemic in 2020, were identified. These patterns also proved to be different for different segments of the population. The findings suggest the need for stronger support for the development of locally affordable food systems with the use of ICT as a coping mechanism in crises. Full article

Herein, pyridinium and 4-vinylpyridinium groups are introduced into the VIE-active N,N′-disubstituted-dihydrodibenzo[a,c]phenazines (DPAC) framework to afford a series of D-π-A-structured dihydrodibenzo[a,c]phenazines in consideration of the aggregation-benefited performance of the DPAC module and the potential mitochondria-targeting capability of the resultant pyridinium-decorated DPACs (DPAC-PyPF₆ and DPAC-D-PyPF₆). To modulate the properties and elucidate the structure–property relationship, the corresponding pyridinyl/4-vinylpyridinyl-substituted DPACs, i.e., DPAC-Py and DPAC-D-Py, are designed and studied as controls. It is found that the strong intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) effect enables the effective separation of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of DPAC-PyPF₆ and DPAC-D-PyPF₆, which is conducive to the generation of ROS. By adjusting the electron-accepting group and the π-bridge, the excitation, absorption, luminescence, photosensitizing properties as well as the mitochondria-targeting ability can be finely tuned. Both DPAC-PyPF₆ and DPAC-D-PyPF₆ display large Stokes shifts (70–222 nm), solvent-dependent absorptions and emissions, aggregation-induced emission (AIE), red fluorescence in the aggregated state (λ_em = 600–650 nm), aggregation-promoted photosensitizing ability with the relative singlet-oxygen quantum yields higher than 1.10, and a mitochondria-targeting ability with the Pearson coefficients larger than 0.85. DPAC-D-PyPF₆ shows absorption maximum at a longer wavelength, slightly redder fluorescence and better photosensitivity as compared to DPAC-PyPF₆, which consequently leads to the higher photocytotoxicity under the irradiation of white light as a result of the larger π-conjugation. Full article

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, digital interactions ceased to be “just another form of communication”; indeed, they became the only means of social interaction, mediated and driven by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Consequently, working in a digital context switched from being a phenomenon to be studied to the primary means of socializing and the primary workspace for researchers. This study explores four different methodologies to question how discursive interactions related to power and newsworthiness may be addressed in digital contexts. The multimodal approach was reviewed through the affordances of critical discourse analysis, issue ownership and salience, morphological discourse analysis, and protest event analysis. It starts by theoretically addressing concepts of multimodality and phenomenology by focusing on the implications of both perspectives. It examines publications and interactions in digital contexts in Ecuador from March 2017 to December 2020 within three political phenomena. The results of the analysis of these publications and interactions suggest that when analyzing political participation and newsworthiness, the virtual becomes a subjective space. Moreover, qualitative research is one of the primary ways to combine multimodality with other forms of discourse analysis. This paper concludes that perceptions, practices, and meanings assigned to social online representations can be better analyzed through multimodality, which tackles the intertwined characteristics of virtual discourses. Full article

As the most widely used disposable paper-based diagnostic tool in the world, immunochromatographic test strips (ICTS) have occupied more and more positions in the field of rapid diagnosis due to their ease of operation and affordability. Therefore, the development of an easily prepared, sensitive, and accurate signal reporter is of great significance for the detection of some low-abundance biomarkers in clinical diagnosis. Herein, Mg/Fe layered double hydroxide nanoflowers (MF NFs) were selected as adsorption templates and sulfhydryl-functionalized, followed by one-step loading of hydrophobic CdSe/ZnS quantum dots in the organic phase via a metal-thiol covalent bond. After coating the reporter with branched polyethyleneimine (PEI), a novel ICTS fluorescent reporter was prepared. The modification of PEI not only improved the hydrophilicity of MF@CdSe/ZnS NFs but also introduced amino functional groups on the surface of the reporter for subsequent conjugation with antibodies. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV-vis absorption, X-ray diffraction, fluorescence spectroscopy, and infrared spectroscopy were used to characterize the composition of MF@CdSe/ZnS NFs. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the detection range of MF@CdSe/ZnS@PEI-ICTS for the model analyte HCG was 0.1–500 mIU/mL, and the limit of detection (LOD) reached was 0.1 mIU/mL. The potential for practical application was validated by the detection of HCG in spiked healthy human serum, showing overall recoveries between 90.48 and 116.1% with coefficients of variation that ranged from 3.66 to 12.91%. Full article

The COVID-19 virus has altered the nature of education. These modifications may be reversed once universities reopen. Nevertheless, a few of these modifications afford novel options to match pre-COVID-19 suggestions. This study’s purpose is to study staff members’ perceptions of online teaching during COVID-19, describe future projections regarding teaching, and identify the drivers of change in the future learning environment. The study community represents faculty staff in Saudi universities. The sample consisted of 127 faculty staff in nine Saudi universities. Participants had positive perceptions of the usage of e-learning platforms during COVID-19 according to data analysis (though negative experiences existed). Future research must focus on the subtle challenges of aligning theoretical and methodological designs to appropriately analyze the phenomenon under inquiry while contributing to a well-executed body of research in the field of educational technology. Future study is required to determine how teachers perceive information and communications technology (ICT) trading strategies in the light of COVID-19. Full article

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can play a significant role in the socioeconomic development of many countries. Digitisation in South Africa has increased, and ICT skills are pivotal in the sustainability of youth employability in the labour market. Hence, ICT skills, soft, hard, and technical skills are required in government, private organisations, and businesses. This study aims to investigate possible ways educational systems can adopt ICT skills to improve youth employability in South Africa. This study examines the factors that affect youth employability such as lack of ICT skills, access, income, affordability, infrastructure, poverty gap, inequality, lack of education, lack of access to information, and high demand for IT skills expectations in organisations as among the challenges that hinder youth employability in the South African economy. We propose that educational institutions should incorporate practical pedagogy to prepare qualified youths for the labour market. This study focuses on using ICTs for the sustainable development of youth employability in South Africa. The Sustainable Livelihood Theory was used as the study framework while the quantitative method was used for the data collection process. The researchers used close-ended and open-ended questions to draft a questionnaire to gather data from 49 respondents. We triangulated the received data from youths living in the East Rand of Johannesburg. Results derived from the study show the significance of ICT skills in educational systems on youth employability. The practical implication of the study recommends that policymakers implement ICT skill strategies to support educational institutions to prepare youths for the labour market. Full article

The aim of this study was to investigate the pedagogical actions of Physical Sciences teachers when enacting simulations in 5E inquiry-based science teaching for current electricity. Three grade 10 teachers from three high schools who were teaching at schools where ICT resources are available participated in this study. Data was collected by means of lesson observations and interviews. The lesson observation and interview transcripts were coded to generate themes. The results of this study showed that the simulations enable teachers to afford learners with opportunities to engage in hands-on inquiry based on the 5E model. The hands-on activities that students engage in on the simulation help them to explain phenomena from evidence and also allow them to acquire autonomy from the teacher. When students are hands-on, they get the chance to test their hypothesis and also to develop their understanding of the phenomenon that is investigated. Through the use of the simulated activity, teachers were able to support leaners to reflect on activities to reconcile their new knowledge with previous ideas. While it is acknowledged that PhET simulated activity is not a substitute for hands-on practical work in a laboratory, the findings show it can be a powerful tool for supporting inquiry learning. Full article

Neospora caninum is an intracellular protozoan parasite responsible for numerous abortion outbreaks and neonatal abnormalities in cattle. Rapid and accurate diagnosis is critical for N. caninum control owing to the lack of vaccine or drug-based control strategies. Herein, we evaluated the performance of four frequently used antigens in the diagnosis of N. caninum infection using immunochromatographic tests (ICTs) as a rapid, affordable, and field applicable tool. These antigens included recombinant proteins of N. caninum surface antigen 1 (NcSAG1), dense granule proteins 7 (NcGRA7) and 6 (NcGRA6), in addition to native Neospora lysate antigen (NLA). Our study revealed the utility of all antigen-based ICTs for detection of specific antibodies to N. caninum. However, the NcSAG1-based ICT was the best for detection of all control N. caninum-infected mouse or cattle sera, while NcGRA7 and NcGRA6-based ICTs exhibited specific ability to detect samples from acute and sub-acute infection in mice and cattle, respectively. Analyses of the NcSAG1-based ICT against enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) of the same antigen revealed its efficiency in detection of field cattle samples as observed in high sensitivity (84.2%), specificity (93.5%), agreement (90%), and kappa value (0.78). The current knowledge provides an efficient platform for N. caninum control through on-site diagnosis of infected cattle. Full article

Innovations in industrial automation, information and communication technology (ICT), renewable energy as well as monitoring and sensing fields have been paving the way for smart devices, which can acquire and convey information to the Internet. Since there is an ever-increasing demand for large yet affordable production volumes for such devices, printed electronics has been attracting attention of both industry and academia. In order to understand the potential and future prospects of the printed electronics, the present paper summarizes the basic principles and conventional approaches while providing the recent progresses in the fabrication and material technologies, applications and environmental impacts. Full article

Currently, some universities in Cambodia are exploring the usage of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which can support education by allowing cost-free independent learning for university students. For effective implementation, it is fundamental to understand the current Cambodian ecosystem, how universities implement MOOCs for teaching, and how students use them for learning. Due to a current gap in the literature on this matter, this research work aims to investigate students’ awareness of MOOCs, usage, and difficulties encountered with their adoption for learning. This research work is a case study of a university in Cambodia, and it adopts a mixed-mode approach involving a quantitative questionnaire, followed by qualitative semi-structured interviews. Currently, many students are not aware of MOOCs, and regarding those using them, they report a low level of organized effort, which points out to the fact that students are in general not very organized and systematic in the way they approach learning using MOOCs. Furthermore, a major issue still lies in the way these courses are implemented in the curriculum and the learning activities, underlined by the type of ICTs affordances currently exploited by the usage of MOOCs for learning. Full article

Society 5.0 represents an opportunity to transform the economy and create a digital society with the goal of long-term sustainable development and economic growth. There is a growing importance of boosting ICT as an effective and efficient means of achieving this transformation, and Target 9c of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is to ‘Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries’. Mobile telecommunication systems have become the most effective and convenient means of communicating in the world, and as such, they are revolutionizing business operations. Nigeria is the fastest growing telecommunication market in Africa, with approximately 298 million subscribers accommodated by over 53,000 base transceiver stations (BTSs) which are largely concentrated in urban areas. As a result of increasing subscribers, all mobile network service providers in Nigeria are building new BTSs, often without considering existing infrastructure. This has led to a proliferation of masts, defacing the environment and causing unnecessary environmental pollution as BTSs are largely powered by diesel generators. It is therefore becoming paramount for the telecommunication regulatory body in Nigeria to enforce principles of infrastructure sharing and the colocation of sites for all mobile network service provider BTSs to improve network availability, reliability, scalability, customer satisfaction and sustainability. This paper argues, through the development of ICT tools and their application to a case study, that infrastructure sharing and colocation of sites is not only feasible if supported correctly but also offers the potential to reduce operational and capital expenditure, reduce the number of BTSs required for the rapidly growing mobile telecoms industry in Nigeria and in doing so reduce environmental pollution. Full article