Search Results (347)

This study examines how teacher–student relationships and school engagement change across online and in-school learning, based on the experiences of 105 cross-regional secondary vocational students in China. Using questionnaire surveys, the study explores students’ perceptions and learning needs in both settings. The findings confirm that teachers play a consistently positive role in promoting student engagement across both online and in-school learning modalities. While affective engagement was higher during online learning, driven by stronger teacher responsiveness and improved student–teacher relationships, students reported increased pride in their schools after returning home, reflecting a renewed appreciation. In-school learning was associated with higher behavioral engagement and greater motivation, despite tensions over intensified academic tasks. Online learning facilitated cognitive engagement through easier vocabulary searches; nevertheless, poor home environments reduced motivation. Enhancing engagement may require offering students autonomy, valuing their input, and clarifying the relevance of the learning content. Full article

This paper suggests a theoretical framework to summarise the empirical literature on the relationships between sports and both religious and secular ethics, and it suggests two interrelated theoretical models to empirically evaluate the extent to which religious and secular ethics, as well as sports policies, affect achievements in sports. I identified two national ethics (national pride/efficiency) and two social ethics (social cohesion/ethics) by measuring achievements in terms of alternative indexes based on Olympic medals. I referred to three empirical models and applied three estimation methods (panel Poisson, Data Envelopment, and Stochastic Frontier Analyses). I introduced two sports policies (a quantitative policy aimed at social cohesion and a qualitative policy aimed at national pride), by distinguishing sports in terms of four possibly different ethics to be used for the eight summer and eight winter Olympic Games from 1994 to 2024. I applied income level, health status, and income inequality, to depict alternative social contexts. I used five main religions and three educational levels to depict alternative ethical contexts. I applied country dummies to depict alternative institutional contexts. Empirical results support the absence of Olympic ethics, the potential substitution of sport and secular ethics in providing social cohesion, and the dependence of sports on politics, while alternative social contexts have different impacts on alternative sport achievements. Full article

The use of augmented reality (AR) tools and innovative learning environments in education have increased over the last few years due to the rapid advancement of technology. In this study, an AR mathematics learning intervention has been proposed which consisted of the creation of 3D multibase blocks to perform AR arithmetic calculations conducted through active methodologies in the future classroom lab (FCL). The aim of this study was to analyze pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) affective domain (emotion, self-efficacy, and attitude), engagement, motivation, and confidence. The sample consisted of 97 PSTs enrolled on the second year of the Primary Education degree, who were attending the “Mathematics and its Didactics” subject. The findings revealed a significant increase in PSTs’ satisfaction, fun, confidence, and pride, and a decrease in uncertainty, nervousness, and concern. Regarding PSTs’ self-efficacy, a significant improvement was observed in knowing the necessary steps to teach mathematical concepts and work in the FCL. No significant differences were found in attitude, engagement, and motivation; however, the PSTs showed a high disposition in all of them before starting the intervention. Additionally, the PSTs reported to be more confident, and it enhanced their knowledge in the use of 3D design and AR applications to create multibase blocks to support the teaching–learning content of arithmetic operations. Full article

The art of food–drink pairing has always fascinated gourmets and cooking enthusiasts. While wine has long held pride of place on the table, natural mineral water plays a central role in this new concept. Through the Pyramid of Natural Mineral Waters, we aim to explore the relationships between the structure of water and food, flavors and aromas, revealing a world of previously unexplored nuances and tastes. This new approach is based on the analysis of the fixed residue of water, i.e., the amount of mineral salts dissolved in it. The fixed residue gives the water unique organoleptic characteristics, influencing the perception of flavors and sensations in the mouth. By analyzing the technical data sheet of mineral waters designed by us, it is possible to identify their main characteristics and combine them in a consistent way with various dishes, as proposed in the pyramid scheme. There are many possible combinations between natural mineral waters and foods, depending on numerous factors, including the type of water and the salts dissolved in it, the type of food, the cooking method, and the types of sauces and condiments present in the dish. To guide consumers in this fascinating universe, the figure of the water sommelier, or so-called hydro-sommelier, was born. As expert connoisseurs of natural mineral waters, they are able to recommend the ideal water for every occasion, maximizing the taste characteristics of the food served at the table. This study is completed with the construction of the Pyramid of Natural Mineral Waters, which relates the composition of water, specifically the salient characteristics related to dissolved minerals, with the respective food combinations recommended by us, in relation to the structure of both water and food. Full article

Wittgenstein lists prayer as a distinct language-game, but leaves to others the investigation of its character. Formulating it as “conversation with God” is correct but potentially unhelpful, in part because it presupposes that we can understand what God is independently of knowing what it is to pray. But by situating the language-game in the context of our human form of life we make better progress. The discussion of this paper, the focus of which is Christian prayer, first reminds us of what it is to have a soul life—i.e., a life in which hope, conscience, and vitality are interpenetrating elements. It next sketches a more distinctly Christian anthropology in which our lives our understood as marred by pride, lack of trust and openness, and ingratitude. Against this backdrop, prayer can be understood for what it is as the soul coming out of its proud retreat, speaking in its own voice, owning its distortions, acknowledging its gratitude, and pleading its true desires. And God can be understood as (inter alia) that to which prayer is principally offered. Full article

Background: Decision-making under risk is a crucial process for undertaking health behaviors. Although the influence of individual differences on decision-making under risk has been widely examined, there is no clear consensus yet as to how to explain this process considering both young and older adults. The main aim of this preliminary study was to examine age differences in decision-making under risk, risk propensity, sensation-seeking, and self-conscious emotions between younger and older adults. Methods: A total of 40 subjects (20 young adults and 20 older adults) participated in the present study. The young adults were aged 18–35 years (M = 23.25, SD = 2.59). The older adults were aged 65–70 years (M = 68.50, SD = 4.01). Participants completed the Risk Propensity Scale, the Sensation-Seeking Scale, the Test of Self-Conscious Affect, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. Results: The results indicated that the groups showed different behaviors in sensation-seeking (p < 0.001, pη2 = 0.14). The older group showed a larger propensity to seek recreational activities and unconventional behaviors than the younger group (p < 0.0001, d = 0.78; p = 0.001, d = 0.75). Also, the older adults demonstrated a greater inclination toward pride (p < 0.01, d = 0.78), whereas younger adults exhibited a stronger tendency towards shame (p < 0.01, d = 0.76). Conclusions: These data suggest a shift in risk preferences as individuals age, potentially influenced by a variety of psychological, social, and experiential factors. The applications of this study can support psychological well-being, productivity, and quality of life in later adulthood. Full article

Background. Emotions are a crucial part of our human nature. The recognition of emotions is an essential component of our social and emotional skills. Facial expressions serve as a key element in discerning others’ emotions. Different databases of images of facial emotion expressions exist worldwide; however, most of them are limited to only adult faces and include only the six basic emotions, as well as neutral faces, ignoring more complex emotional expressions. Here, we present the Children’s Emotions Database (CED), a novel repository featuring both basic and complex facial expressions captured from preschool-aged children. The CED is one of the first databases to include complex emotional expressions in preschoolers. Our aim was to develop such a database that can be used further for research and applied purposes. Methods. Three 6-year-old children (one female) were photographed while showing different facial emotional expressions. The photos were taken under standardized conditions. The children were instructed to express each of the following basic emotions: happiness, pleasant surprise, sadness, fear, anger, disgust; a neutral face; and four complex emotions: pride, guilt, compassion, and shame; this resulted in a total of eleven expressions for each child. Two photos per child were reviewed and selected for validation. The photo validation was performed with a sample of 104 adult raters (94 females; aged 19–70 years; M = 29.9; SD = 11.40) and a limited sample of 32 children at preschool age (17 girls; aged 4–7 years; M = 6.5; SD = 0.81). The validation consisted of two tasks—free emotion labeling and emotion recognition (with predefined labels). Recognition accuracy for each expression was calculated. Results and Conclusions. While basic emotions and neutral expressions were recognized with high accuracy, complex emotions were less accurately identified, consistent with the existing literature on the developmental challenges in recognizing such emotions. The current work is a promising new database of preschoolers’ facial expressions consisting of both basic and complex emotions. This database offers a valuable resource for advancing research in emotional development, educational interventions, and clinical applications tailored to early childhood. Full article

In health professions education, the hidden curriculum is a set of implicit rules and expectations about how clinicians act and what they value. In fields that are very homogenous, such as rehabilitation professions, these expectations may have outsized impacts on students from minoritized backgrounds. This qualitative study examined the hidden curriculum in rehabilitation graduate programs—speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, and physical therapy—through the perspectives and experiences of 21 students from minoritized backgrounds. Semi-structured interviews explored their experiences with their programs’ hidden curricula. These revealed expectations about ways of being, interacting, and relating. Three overarching themes emerged, each reflecting tensions between conflicting values: (i) blend in but stand out; (ii) success lies in individualism, while de-prioritizing the individual; and (iii) fix the field, using your identities as a tool. When the expectations aligned with students’ expectations for themselves, meeting them was a source of pride. However, when the social expectations clashed with their own culture, dis/ability, gender, or neurotype, these tensions became an additional cognitive burden, and they rarely received mentorship for navigating it. Health professions programs might benefit from fostering students’ critical reflection on their hidden curricula and their fields’ cultural norms to foster greater belonging, agency, and identity retention. Full article

With the increasing demand for near real-time atmospheric water vapor monitoring, this study evaluates the performance of the open-source PRIDE PPP-AR software (version 3.0.5) for retrieving Zenith Total Delay (ZTD) and Integrated Water Vapor (IWV) over the African continent over a one-year period. PRIDE PPP-AR is compared with established PPP-AR and PPP solutions, including CSRS-PPP, IGN-PPP, and NGL and using GipsyX, ERA5, and IGS products as references. A robust methodology combining time series processing and statistical evaluation was adopted. Multiple tools were leveraged to ensure a comprehensive performance analysis of GNSS data from seven stations in Africa, where such studies remain scarce. The results show that PRIDE PPP-AR achieves ZTD accuracy comparable to GipsyX (RMSE < 6 mm, R² ≈ 0.99) and performs at a similar level to NGL and CSRS-PPP. Compared to the other solutions, PRIDE PPP-AR has an accuracy similar to CSRS-PPP and NGL, but slightly better than IGN-PPP, in line with ERA5 and IGS references. For IWV retrieval, comparisons with ERA5 indicate RMSE values of about 1.5 to 2.7 kg/m², depending on station location and climatic conditions. IWV variability tends to increase towards the equator, where the recorded fluctuations are higher than in subtropical zones. In addition, collocated radiosonde (RS) measurements in Abidjan confirm good agreement, further validating the reliability of the software. This study highlights the potential of GNSS meteorology, in providing reliable spatiotemporal IWV monitoring and indicates that the PRIDE PPP-AR is ready for the high precision meteorological applications in African regions. These results offer promising prospects for spatiotemporal studies through African multi-GNSS networks and the PRIDE PPP-AR approach. Full article

Point-of-care (POC) tests for blood ammonia (BA) measurement have not been well evaluated in veterinary species. This cross-sectional study sought to establish an inferred reference interval for BA using a POC analyser in dogs and cats. Blood ammonia was measured in 175 dogs and 63 cats for which relevant clinical history and laboratory data was available. Reference values were inferred based on comparisons between patients with and without disease pathologies reported to cause BA elevation. Descriptive statistics, Pearson Chi², and Mann–Whitney U testing were used to assess for associations between clinical parameters and BA concentration. Seventy-one percent (124/175) of dogs and forty-six percent (29/63) of cats had undetectable BA. Following the exclusion of dogs with potential causes of hyperammonaemia, all remaining dogs had BA < 30 µg/dL. With one exception, all dogs with BA > 30 µg/dL had liver disease. All dogs with a clinical suspicion of hepatic encephalopathy (HE) had BA > 40 µg/dL. Following the exclusion of cats with potential causes of hyperammonaemia, all remaining cats had BA < 25 µg/dL. Only 50% of cats with BA > 25 µg/dL had liver disease. All cats with a clinical suspicion of HE had BA > 30 µg/dL. Based on this study population, BA < 30 µg/dL and <25 µg/dL should be considered normal in dogs and cats, respectively. Additionally, dogs with BA > 30 µg/dL are likely to have liver disease, while cats with BA > 25 µg/dL appear to exhibit a wider variety of disease pathologies. Full article

Computed tomography (CT) is the imaging method of choice for evaluating the canine nasal cavity, being invaluable in determining disease extent, guiding sampling, and planning treatment. While predictions of pathology type can be made, there is significant overlap between CT changes noted in neoplastic, inflammatory, and infectious nasal disease. Recent years have seen remarkable advancement in computer-aided detection systems in human medicine, with machine and deep learning techniques being successfully applied for the identification and accurate classification of intranasal pathology. This study aimed to develop a neural network pipeline for differentiating nasal pathology in dogs using CT studies of the head. A total of 80 CT studies were recruited for training and testing purposes. Studies falling into one of the three groups (normal nasal anatomy, fungal rhinitis, and intranasal neoplasia) were manually segmented and used to train a suite of neural networks. Standard accuracy metrics assessed performance during training and testing. The machine learning algorithm showed reasonable accuracy (86%) in classifying the diagnosis from an isolated scan slice but high accuracy (99%) when aggregating over slices taken from a full scan. These results suggest that machine learning programmes can accurately discriminate between intranasal pathologies based on canine computed tomography. Full article

This case study analyzes the academic emotions generated in a STEAM educational project developed in the controversial heritage of the Río Tinto and its surroundings. Twenty-five secondary education students participated in a didactic sequence that combined programming and the use of sensors for physicochemical data collection with inquiry- and modeling-based methodologies to address socio-scientific issues. Data were collected through open-ended questionnaires and field notebooks, allowing for an analysis of the emotions expressed at different stages of the project. The results show that epistemic emotions, such as curiosity and surprise, were predominant, highlighting the positive impact of experimental learning in this educational approach. Achievement emotions, such as pride and enjoyment, were linked to overcoming technological challenges, while thematic emotions, such as admiration and disgust, emerged from the heritage context, fostering critical reflection on environmental and historical issues. Negative emotions, such as frustration and anxiety, were also identified, mainly related to the technical difficulties and organizational challenges in group work. It is concluded that the proposed didactic sequence, by integrating the STEAM approach within a heritage context, mobilizes the epistemic emotions that were key in fostering analytical thinking and scientific exploration, while thematic emotions strengthened students’ connection with environmental and historical issues. Full article

The resurgence of phage therapy in Western societies has been in direct response to recent increases in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) that have ravaged many societies. While phage therapy as a concept has been around for over 100 years, it has largely been replaced by antibiotics due to their relative ease of use and their predictability in spectrum of activity. Now that antibiotics have become less reliable due to greater antibiotic resistance and microbiome disruption, phage therapy has once again become a viable and promising alternative, but it is not without its challenges. Much like the development of antibiotics, with deployment of phage therapeutics there will be a simultaneous need for diagnostics in the clinical laboratory. This review provides an overview of current challenges to widespread adoption of phage therapy with a focus on adoption in the clinical diagnostic laboratory. Current barriers include a lack of standard methodology and quality controls for phage susceptibility testing and selection, the absence of phage-antibiotic synergy testing, and the absence of standard methods to assay phage activity on biofilms. Additionally, there are a number of lab-specific administrative and regulatory barriers to widespread phage therapy adoption including the need for pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) assays, methods to account for changes in phages after passaging, an absence of regulatory guidance on what will be required for agency approvals of phages and how broad that approval will apply, and the increased need for lab personnel or automation to account for the work of testing large phage libraries against bacteria isolates. Full article

Canine chronic inflammatory enteropathy (CIE) has been associated with coagulation abnormalities, predisposing affected dogs to a hypercoagulable state and potential thromboembolic events. This study aimed to evaluate the coagulation status in dogs with CIE using a viscoelastic point-of-care device, a Viscoelastic Coagulation Monitor (VCM Vet^®). A retrospective review of medical records identified 38 dogs diagnosed with CIE that underwent VCM Vet^® testing. Coagulation profiles were classified as hypercoagulable, normocoagulable, or hypocoagulable. The results demonstrate that 81.5% of dogs exhibited hypercoagulability, and significant associations were found between the coagulation status and the type of CIE. Hypercoagulability was more commonly found in immunosuppressive-responsive enteropathy (IRE) cases. Albumin and cobalamin were significantly higher in food-responsive enteropathy, whereas the canine chronic enteropathy clinical activity index (CCECAI) was significantly higher in immunosuppressive-responsive enteropathy and non-responsive enteropathy. One dog with protein-losing enteropathy (PLE) was suspected of having developed possible pulmonary thromboembolism. These findings reinforce previous reports of hypercoagulability in CIE and suggest that VCM Vet^® is a valuable and easy tool to assess coagulation abnormalities in a clinical setting. Further investigation is warranted to evaluate the clinical implications of hypercoagulability in CIE and the potential role of anticoagulant therapy in disease management. Full article

It is with great pride and pleasure that we present this Special Issue, “Current and Future Trends in Cosmetics Research: The 10th Anniversary of Cosmetics”, marking a significant milestone–a decade of Cosmetics serving as a vibrant platform for disseminating cutting-edge research in cosmetic science [...] Full article