Search Results (161)

The intersection of religion and education in the United States dates to colonial times, as do attempts by religious institutions and individuals to regulate educational content. After a prominent retreat by religious fundamentalists following the Scopes Monkey Trial, conservative Christians have once again entered political debates about educational content in the form of modern culture wars issues. Both conservatives and liberals have attempted to punish educators for political comments made in class, but the influence of religion on individual attitudes has yet to be examined. In this article, we use an original survey experiment to examine individuals’ propensity to punish a professor who makes politically charged comments in class. We also assess whether religious individuals are more likely to punish professors for comments disparaging conservatives or liberals. We find that high-attending religious individuals, including both Evangelicals and Catholics, are more likely to support punishing the professor. However, we find that the propensity to punish is not related to the target of the professor’s comments. These findings suggest a resurgence of religious interest in education as a cultural issue at the individual, and not just institutional, level and a coalition between Evangelicals and Catholics on this issue. Full article

Modern software solutions have a multiplicative effect on enhancing quality of life across various urban sectors, including the environment, education, public health, security, transportation, time efficiency, employment, and other key aspects of city living. This article addresses a specific issue concerning the organisation of leisure activities for both local residents and tourists, using the Chechen Republic as a case study. In response, the study aimed to develop a digital solution to address this challenge, with potential for integration into the Republic’s unified digital ecosystem. By employing system analysis methods, the authors identified the key objects and stakeholders involved in the problem domain. They also defined the software product’s functionality and classified user categories. Using Unified Modelling Language methods, a use case diagram was developed to illustrate the conceptual operation of the system. Furthermore, object-oriented design methods were applied to create a user interface prototype for the software product. As a result, a digital service was developed that enables users to create personalised leisure routes, taking into account individual goals, time constraints, traffic conditions, and the real-time status of urban infrastructure. The resulting software solution is both customisable and scalable. The article also presents selected examples of project development. Full article

For the majority of human history, humans lived in sustenance hunter–gatherer tribes. Due to rapid cultural evolution in the past few thousand years, our biological evolution has not kept up, and many of the adaptations are, as a result, better suited to ancestral conditions than they are to modern conditions. This is known as evolutionary mismatch. While evolutionary mismatches can be seen across many facets of contemporary human life (e.g., diet, exercise, online communication), evolutionary mismatches are particularly pervasive in our elementary schools. Due to the critical nature of social learning and cultural transmission, there is a long history of learning that has shaped the evolved learning mechanisms of children. Rather than learning from hands-on, collaborative experiences as was typical for our ancestors, children today often learn in age-segregated classrooms through passive instruction and standardized curricula. In this entry, eight common school-related issues are identified and the associated evolutionary mismatch is outlined. The goal is to provide educators with a model of how an evolutionary lens can be used to better understand, and potentially improve, modern schooling systems. Full article

The promotion of sustainable schools is an important criterion for the promotion of ecological protection and the transformation of today’s society into a more sustainable one. The early childhood environment is believed to provide the ideal foundation for fostering values and attitudes related to sustainable education and promoting pro-environmental behaviors. The main goal of this study is to explore educators’ perceptions and expectations regarding the role of sustainable schools in shaping the environmental awareness and behavior of young children. A pilot study was carried out in the context of quantitative research on Preschool Teachers of Primary Education. Research results indicate that a Sustainable School (SS), beyond the curriculum, must promote issues of environmental awareness, culture, equality, natural resource management, and human rights. Also, it was seen that a modern school should provide Educators with new training opportunities in teaching methods that are based on sustainability principles and promote sustainability skills. Students’ acquisition of environmental knowledge can positively influence pro-environmental behavior and increase the likelihood of engaging in sustainable practices to protect the environment. Full article

Energy poverty, resulting from poor energy efficiency and economic and social barriers to accessing appropriate, modern, and sustainable energy services, remains a critical issue in Jordan, a country facing growing climate pressures, particularly given its history of rapid urbanization. This study examines energy poverty through a multidimensional lens, considering its spatial and socio-demographic variations across Jordan. Drawing on data from 19,475 households, we apply a novel energy poverty index and binary logistic regression to analyze key determinants of energy poverty and discuss their intersection with climate vulnerability. The energy poverty index (EPI) is structured around four pillars: housing, fuel, cooling, and wealth. The results show that 51% of households in Jordan are affected by energy poverty. Contributing factors include geographic location, gender, age, education level, dwelling type, ownership of cooling appliances, and financial stability. The results indicate that energy poverty is both a socio-economic and infrastructural issue, with the highest concentrations in the northern and southern regions of the country, areas also vulnerable to climate risks such as drought and extreme heat. Our findings emphasize the need for integrated policy approaches that simultaneously address income inequality, infrastructure deficits, and environmental stressors. Targeted strategies are needed to align social and climate policies for effective energy poverty mitigation and climate resilience planning in Jordan. Full article

Enhancing and developing multicultural education is essential in today’s interconnected world, characterized by significant migration and refugee movements, as it serves as a fundamental element for effectively integrating migrant and refugee students within host nations. In Greece, which has long dealt with the challenge of integrating thousands of individuals fleeing conflict and disasters, there is a pressing need to evolve and modernize this educational approach. This qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews with nine multicultural educators in Greece, seeks to explore how teachers foster a sense of belonging and inclusion in their diverse classrooms. Despite facing systemic challenges, the findings reveal that educators strive to highlight students’ cultural heritages through collaborative group activities that encourage trust, respect, and appreciation for diversity. Additionally, the research delves into how teachers cope with the psychological trauma often experienced by these students. Participants expressed that the inconsistent availability of specialists and monitoring for students dealing with severe psychological issues complicates their teaching efforts. Full article

The forestry sector is increasingly dealing with a significant lack of labor and faces the difficult task of securing a professional, stable and sustainable manpower. In this study, different strategic directions for strengthening forestry workforce sustainability are presented and evaluated. The considered strategic directions were developed with respect to forestry employees’ views on necessary measures for making the forestry occupation more appealing. Those measures were observed in three categories: (I) stronger recruiting, (II) stronger retention and (III) higher work commitment. The findings of the survey and other performed analyses resulted in the creation of four different strategic directions: (1) the direct financial strategy, implying increased direct monetary compensation as the main instrument and putting focus on labor productivity; (2) the indirect financial strategy, stressing worker wellbeing through indirect material benefits and aiming at performance quality; (3) the educational strategy, focusing on worker training and education and (4) the technical–technological strategy, aiming at the increased utilization of modern machinery and advanced technologies in forest operations. The results of the study include a comparison of the defined strategies by SWOT analysis and the construction of An analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model as the multi-criteria tool for strategy evaluation. Considering the possibility and conditions of its implementation in the national forestry sector, the technical–technological strategy has been evaluated as best option to pursue. The objective of the study is to contribute to enhancing the sustainability of forestry workforce by defining critical issues and pointing to specific cornerstones that can assist in formulating effective future policies and strategies in the forestry sector. Full article

Due to the intermittent and uncertain nature of emerging renewable energy sources in the modern power grid, the level of dispatchable power sources has been reduced. The contemporary power system is attempting to address this by investing in energy storage within the context of standalone microgrids (SMGs), which can operate in an island mode and off-grid. While renewable-rich SMGs can facilitate a higher level of renewable energy penetration, they also have more reliability issues compared to conventional power systems due to the intermittency of renewables. When an SMG system needs to be upgraded for reliability improvement, the cost of that reliability improvement should be divided among diverse customer sectors. In this research, we present four distinct approaches along with comprehensive simulation outcomes to address the problem of allocating reliability costs. The central issue in this study revolves around determining whether all consumers should bear an equal share of the reliability improvement costs or if these expenses should be distributed among them differently. When an SMG system requires an upgrade to enhance its reliability, it becomes imperative to allocate the associated costs among various customer sectors as equitably as possible. In our investigation, we model an SMG through a simulation experiment, involving nine distinct customer sectors, and utilize their hourly demand profiles for an entire year. We explore how to distribute the total investment cost of reliability improvement to each customer sector using four distinct methods. The first two methods consider the annual and seasonal peak demands in each industry. The third approach involves an analysis of Loss of Load (LOL) events and determining the hourly load requirements for each sector during these events. In the fourth approach, we employ the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) technique. The annual peak demand approach resulted in the educational sector bearing the highest proportion of the reliability improvement cost, accounting for 21.90% of the total burden. Similarly, the seasonal peak demand approach identified the educational sector as the most significant contributor, though with a reduced share of 15.44%. The normalized average demand during Loss of Load (LOL) events also indicated the same sector as the highest contributor, with 12.34% of the total cost. Lastly, the TOPSIS-based approach assigned a 15.24% reliability cost burden to the educational sector. Although all four approaches consistently identify the educational sector as the most critical in terms of its impact on system reliability, they yield different cost allocations due to variations in the methodology and weighting of demand characteristics. The underlying reasons for these differences, along with the practical implications and applicability of each method, are comprehensively discussed in this research paper. Based on our case study findings, we conclude that the education sector, which contributes more to LOL events, should bear the highest amount of the Cost of Reliability Improvement (CRI), while the hotel and catering sector’s share should be the lowest percentage. This highlights the necessity for varying reliability improvement costs for different consumer sectors. Full article

As the process of agricultural modernization accelerates, exploring the impact of agricultural mechanization services on production technology efficiency has become a key issue for enhancing agricultural productivity and promoting sustainable agricultural development. The study focuses on cotton growers in the Tarim River Basin and systematically explores the impact and driving mechanisms of agricultural mechanization services (AMSs) on cotton production’s technical efficiency within the framework of the social–ecological system (SES). By employing a combination of stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and propensity score matching (PSM), the research indicates that the adoption of AMSs significantly enhances the production technical efficiency of cotton farmers. Among the sample that adopted this service, as much as 53.04% of the farmers have their production efficiency within the range of [0.8, 0.9], demonstrating a high production capability. In contrast, the production efficiency values of the farmers who did not adopt such services are more dispersed, with inefficient samples accounting for 11.48%. Furthermore, while the technical efficiency levels across different regions are similar, there are significant efficiency differences within regions. A further analysis indicates that the age of the household head, their education level, the number of agricultural laborers in the family, the proportion of income from planting, and irrigation convenience have a positive impact on farmers’ adoption of AMSs, while the degree of land fragmentation has a negative impact. Therefore, AMSs are not only a core pathway to enhance cotton production’s technical efficiency but also an important support for promoting agricultural modernization in arid areas and strengthening farmers’ risk-resistance capabilities. Future policies should focus on optimizing service delivery, enhancing technical adaptability, and promoting regional collaboration to drive the high-quality development of the cotton industry and support sustainable rural revitalization. Full article

Project-Based Learning is central to modern engineering education, but assessing the originality of student work poses significant challenges, particularly when previous project repositories are accessible. This paper addresses the issue by proposing a framework based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Large Language Models to evaluate the originality of project proposals in the context of a master’s course in Electronic Engineering. The system processes and summarizes prior work—including reports, code, and presentations—creating a semantically indexed knowledge base. Upon receiving a new proposal, the RAG system compares it to this base, identifies the most similar previous works, and generates an originality assessment. Results show the effectiveness of the approach, with a strong correlation (coefficient of 0.87) between the originality scores assigned by the system and those given by expert instructors in a blind evaluation. The proposed RAG system demonstrates its ability to systematically detect similarities and potential lack of originality that might be overlooked by human evaluators due to the volume of prior work. This framework provides an objective and efficient tool to support originality assessment, benefiting both instructors and students by promoting genuine innovation in PBL settings. Full article

Since the early years of the 21st century, there has been a clear critique of the diotic way of farming in the international scientific arena, emphasizing that the existing models of economic development are exacerbating social inequalities and overexploiting natural resources. At the same time, the literature promotes the implementation of a new way of farming that takes into account environmental, social, and economic concerns. We have brought together new methods and ways of farming in these areas into one broad concept, called the conclusion of sustainable development. Within this concept, particular emphasis has been placed on sustainable energy development, the intensive development of technologies based on renewable energy sources, and the advancement of end-user awareness of modern technologies. The aim of this paper was to identify the factors that determine the ecological attitude of users of single-family houses in Poland when making strategic energy decisions related to the choice of heating devices in a household. To solve this research problem, the authors conducted a nationwide survey on a representative sample of single-family house users. In turn, the results were analyzed using log-linear analysis. The results showed that the determinants of the ecological nature of such energy decisions are primarily the age of the house users and their level of education. It was found that younger people are significantly more likely to think about ecology when making decisions related to how a building is heated than older people. In addition, people with a higher level of education are more likely to think about ecology when making such decisions than those with a lower level of education. Findings showed that the gender of the occupant of a single-family house, as well as the size of the town in which the building is located, have no significant impact on the ecological nature of decisions related to the choice of the method of obtaining energy for home heating. It was also shown that territorial variation, i.e., the region of the country, had no effect on this issue. The identification of socio-demographic determinants of the ecological nature of decisions related to the choice of heating devices in single-family houses in Poland fills the research gap and thus contributes to the literature in this area. Full article

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an urgent global health threat with many anthropogenic drivers outside of healthcare. The impacts of modern agriculture on human health are manifold, from the food systems and dietary patterns they support to the less apparent effects of environmental stresses and biodiversity loss in ecosystems. Intensive practices, such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, induce abiotic stresses that deplete biodiversity and drive AMR in soil and aquatic microbiomes. The overuse of antibiotics in livestock production is another major driver of AMR. Changes in weather patterns due to climate change have the potential to exacerbate these issues as warmer and wetter weather increases the potential for bacterial infection. While practices exist to address healthcare-associated drivers, the impact of agriculture and environmental destruction are not widely appreciated in healthcare and biomedical sciences. It is imperative that healthcare professionals and public health experts understand these connections to properly address the emergent issue of AMR. This review aims to summarize the current data on important agricultural and environmental drivers of AMR for educational purposes, to fill gaps in knowledge, and to improve current practices and stimulate further research. Full article

In this article, the authors examine the history, development, and current state of K-12 online learning, challenging the assertions that COVID-19-era distance education was unprecedented. Drawing on historical examples, the authors demonstrate how educational systems have repeatedly leveraged various technologies for remote instruction during disruptions, from correspondence courses to radio broadcasts to modern digital platforms. The analysis reveals persistent challenges in implementing effective online learning, including inadequate teacher preparation, inconsistent terminology, and limited theoretical frameworks. While K-12 online learning has shown promise for expanding educational access and flexibility, adoption remains relatively low globally. The article concludes that realizing the potential of K-12 online learning requires addressing fundamental issues in research, practice, and policy while learning from past experiences rather than treating each implementation as novel. Full article

The teaching of human anatomy is experiencing significant transformation. Particularly in recent years, incorporating new digital technologies has drastically changed the approach to education. Our bibliometric study aims to investigate trends and issues from 2004 to 2024 related to digital technology in human anatomy teaching. The publication trend in the field has steadily increased over the years, peaking in 2022 and declining in 2023. Despite the limited statistics for 2024, we do not project an exponential increase in publications. Co-citation analysis identified notable references that significantly influenced the field, emphasizing modernization through innovative methodologies. Leading a significant portion of global collaboration, the United States promoted robust multilateral partnerships. Co-occurrence word analysis highlighted the merging of current technology with student-centered learning approaches, reflecting a shift towards more interactive and immersive learning experiences. Thematic map analysis identified distinct research areas with emerging or declining themes. The analysis of topic trends over the last five years revealed a persistent interest in terms like “palmar” and “carpal”, as well as innovative technologies like “cone beam computed tomography”, “augmented reality”, and “virtual reality”. Our bibliometric study revealed a sector in constant transformation, presenting a scenario where integrating technology with traditional teaching methods could enhance medical students’ comprehension of human anatomy. On the other hand, it also highlighted the anticipated challenges of ensuring equal access to cutting-edge technology, providing sufficient training for academic staff, and addressing emerging ethical issues. Full article

With the rapid development of information technology, blended learning has become a crucial aspect of modern education. However, the fragmented use of various teaching platforms, such as Xuexitong and Rain Classroom, has led to the dispersion of teaching data. This not only increases the cognitive load on teachers and students but also hinders the systematic recording of teaching activities and learning outcomes. Moreover, existing blended learning evaluation systems exhibit significant shortcomings in large-scale data storage and secure sharing. To address these issues, this study designs a blended teaching evaluation management system based on blockchain and searchable encryption. First, an on-chain and off-chain collaborative storage model is established using the Ethereum blockchain and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to ensure secure and large-scale storage of student work data. Next, a role-based access control scheme utilizing smart contracts is proposed to effectively prevent unauthorized access. Simultaneously, a searchable encryption scheme is designed using AES-CBC-256 and SHA-256 algorithms, enabling data sharing while safeguarding data privacy. Additionally, the smart contract comprehensively records students’ grade information, including weekly regular scores, midterm scores, final scores, overall scores, and their rankings, ensuring transparency in the evaluation process. Based on these technical solutions, a general-purpose teaching evaluation management system (B-Education) is developed. The experimental results demonstrate that the system accurately records teaching activities and learning outcomes, improving the transparency of teaching evaluations while ensuring data security and privacy. The system’s gas consumption remains within a reasonable range, demonstrating good flexibility and usability. Educational institutions can flexibly configure course evaluation criteria and adjust the weighting of various grades based on their specific needs. This study provides an innovative solution for blended teaching evaluation, offering significant theoretical value and practical implications. Full article