Search

The International Conference on Cognitive Modeling brings together researchers from around the world whose main goal is to build computational systems that reflect the internal processes of the mind. In this issue, we present the five best representative papers on this work from our 19th meeting, ICCM 2021, which was held virtually from July 3 to July 9, 2021. Three of these papers provide new techniques for refining computational models, giving better methods for taking empirical data and producing accurate computational models of the cognitive systems that produce them. The other two papers focus on explanation: using models to elucidate the underlying processes affecting cognition in such diverse domains as logical reasoning and the effects of caffeine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What might it mean to reimagine brown‐girl‐as‐failure to brown‐girl‐as‐success? This article draws on findings from an empirical research study of academically successful teenage girls from Aotearoa New Zealand. In this paper we focus on what it means to be an intelligent and successful young brown woman in the context of the contemporary white‐centering of meritocratic success, and the oppressive narrative that brown girls are not bright. Using a creative methodology, Laurel Richardson's collective storying and Patricia Leavy's fiction‐based research, the paper engages in forms of creative analytic practice and new knowledge representation, which prioritize authentic voice and understanding of the young women participants' lived experiences. Collective stories were used in the study to challenge existing public discourses of girls and success, including the white‐centering of such depictions, and to create narratives that participants could identify with, particularly those that were often unspoken but widely experienced. Using collective stories in the study offered a space of resonance with participants who could engage with the stories during the research process and contribute to their (re)storying. The interplay between the theoretics of methodological creativity and the symbolic violence of a colonial positioning of successful girlhood offers a novel contribution to girlhood studies. Through collective storying and a further interweaving of poetic voice, the disruption of the narrative of deficit offers remembering and revalidation of brown success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Instructional videos constitute a pivotal component in flipped learning. Despite their significance, there is a dearth of research specifically dedicated to instructional videos within the context of flipped classrooms. This paucity has led to an empirical void in verifying the efficacy of instructional videos in flipped learning environments. Objectives: The present study endeavours to contribute to the extant literature on flipped pedagogical practices by providing empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of instructional videos in flipped learning environments. Methods: This study employs a convergent mixed‐methods design. Forty‐five instructional videos in three subtypes were administered in two classes over a 15‐week semester. Data, both quantitative (log data from the learning management system) and qualitative (from focus group discussions at two time points), were concurrently collected from a flipped class (n = 25) and a blended class (n = 28) with the aim of gauging student engagement and learning outcomes in the flipped class and understanding video‐viewing features typical of the flipped class. Results: Both datasets corroborated that participants in the flipped class outperformed their counterparts in the blended class in terms of video‐watching, peer interaction, knowledge retention, and transfer skills. Conclusions: The instructional videos within the flipped classroom setting serve to enhance student engagement in the learning process and improve learning outcomes. The efficacy of these instructional videos in flipped learning can be further augmented through strategic approaches in both their design and implementation. Lay Description: What is currently known about this topic: The flipping pedagogy is conducive to learning.Videos play a crucial role in flipped learning.Videos prepared students for classroom activities.However, engaging students with pre‐class videos presents a challenge. What this paper adds: This paper furnishes direct empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of instructional videos in flipped learning.It uncovers factors affecting student engagement with videos in flipped learning.It offers insights into the design and implementation of videos in flipped learning. Implications for practice: Considering facilitating conditions and affective factors when creating videos.Acknowledging learner characteristics when designing videos.Utilizing instructional strategies when implementing videos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept and influence of untraded inter‐dependencies are under‐explored in the industrial cluster and informal economy literature. In this paper, we attempt to bridge this gap by extending the conventional Cobb‐Douglas production function to operationalising and testing the moderating effects of two forms of untraded inter‐dependencies in informal production. Based on the diffusion theory, we argue that knowledge‐sharing would favour informal production, as opposed to tool‐sharing. Using quantitative methods, 334 informal artisans were randomly sampled from three clusters in the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana and analysed data obtained with moderating models and simple slopes plots. The tested models and fuzzy set configurations confirmed that knowledge‐sharing, but not tool‐sharing, has significant interaction effects on informal production. The optimal model derived would be one in which capital interacts with incremental knowledge‐sharing at the existing level of tool‐sharing among the artisans. This paper serves as an extension of new economic geography with an additional factor of untraded inter‐dependencies. As part of post‐COVID restoration and enhancement of informal production processes, we recommend city officials to deliberately plan and space clustered enterprises that enable the observed rates of interactions between production factors and untraded inter‐dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency management bears the important responsibility of preventing and resolving security risks and responding to disasters and accidents in time. At the same time, it shoulders the important mission of protecting people's lives and property and maintaining social stability. However, there is little research on the forecast of the huge gap and demand for talent. To strengthen the emergency management ability and modernization, improve the ability of emergency management personnel training and solve the shortage of emergency management personnel at this stage, this paper studied the positioning of emergency management personnel in China and the demand for various emergency management personnel. By means of field interviews, questionnaire surveys, participatory research and expert meetings, this research analyzed the characteristics of emergency management talents in China, defined its classification and forecasted its demand. The results showed that emergency management talents in China could be divided into four categories: administrative management talents, practical talents, expert talents and support talents. According to the data calculation results of five representative provinces, Guangdong Province (area with relatively developed economy), Beijing (administrative centre and economically developed area), Sichuan Province (natural disaster‐prone area), Shanxi Province (developed area of energy industry such as coal) and Jiangsu Province (industrially developed areas), it is concluded that the total demand for emergency management talents in China at this stage is about 794,900, and the gap is about 411,200. At present, China's emergency management talents are in short supply. The research results of this paper can provide sufficient data support for the training of emergency management talents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discern, clarify, criticise, and advocate some uses of phenomenology in sociological research. Phenomenology is increasingly evoked or implicitly employed in sociological endeavours. Little attention, however, is paid to what is entailed in taking a phenomenological approach, and whether it is employed to advance empirical or theoretical knowledge. I build an analytic typology of different empirical and theoretical uses of phenomenology, criticise a range of these uses, and argue that other uses bear significant potential for the advancement of theoretical and empirical knowledge. The paper's main contribution lies in comparing and contrasting the many invocations of phenomenology in contemporary social scientific research to discern their benefits and shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyploid organisms are common and can be found across the tree of life. A key question is to understand how and why these polyploid lineages become established and persist in populations, particularly since they are predicted to have a low probability of success. While the collection of papers in this special issue addresses broad questions on the evolutionary ecology of polyploids, ultimately, these studies also highlight the myriad ways that we are examining what drives the success of polyploid lineages. In this paper we consider where we've been and the challenges that we face, and then propose several directions that will allow us to continue to propel the field towards our ultimate goal of understanding the rules that govern the establishment and persistence of polyploid populations. We conclude that developing this rule set will require a combination of model systems for which we have detailed knowledge of the phylogenetic and population genetic history, expanding our perspective beyond plants to include greater taxonomic breadth, and conducting studies in ecologically relevant settings. Additionally, we argue that future research on the evolutionary ecology of polyploidy should focus on integrating theory and empirical research, providing mechanistic linkages between the effects of whole genome duplication and population demography, and build a predictive framework to understand how anthropogenic change will impact polyploid organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional approaches for designing metasurfaces with the desired scattering response are often a time‐consuming and onerous process that heavily relies on the design experience and empirical methods. In this paper, a time and resource‐efficient design method is proposed for the synthesis of multiple metasurface polarizers with an efficient automated data generation process by utilizing the structure validation surrogate model (SVSM). Moreover, a novel attention and space‐to‐depth enhanced adaptive tandem network (ASE‐ATN) is proposed which integrates symmetry‐aware space‐to‐depth (SA‐SPD) along with the attention mechanism for efficient feature extraction. Several design examples of metasurfaces with linear polarization to orthogonal linear polarization (LP‐OLP) and/or linear polarization to circular polarization (LP‐CP) conversion capabilities are provided to verify the performance of the proposed method. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated through the fabrication and measurement of a dual‐band dual‐polarization converter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent advances in technological capabilities have led to a massive production of time‐series data and remarkable progress in longitudinal designs and analyses within psychological research. However, implementing time‐series analysis can be challenging due to the various characteristics and complexities involved, as well as the need for statistical expertise. This paper introduces a statistical pipeline on time‐series analysis for studying the changes in a single process over time at either a population or individual level, both retrospectively and prospectively. This is achieved through systemization and extension of existing modelling and inference techniques. This analytical approach enables practitioners not only to track but also to model and evaluate emerging trends and apparent seasonality. It also allows for the detection of unexpected events, quantifying their deviations from baseline and forecasting future values. Given that other discernible population‐ and individual‐level changes in psychological and behavioural processes have not yet emerged, continued surveillance is warranted. A near real‐time monitoring tool of time‐series data could guide community psychological responses across multiple ecological levels, making it a valuable resource for field practitioners and psychologists. An empirical study is conducted to illustrate the implementation of the introduced analytical pipeline in practice and to demonstrate its capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Paper Objectives Methods Results and Conclusions Takeaways Personalised and timely feedback in massive open online courses (MOOCs) is hindered due to the large scale and diverse needs of learners. Learning analytics (LA) can support scalable interventions, however they often lack pedagogical and contextual grounding. Previous research claimed that a human‐centred approach in the design of LA solutions can be beneficial. Yet, there is a scarcity of empirical studies discussing participatory approaches addressing LA for feedback in MOOCs.We report a human‐centred design, where an instructor and a tool developer employed a conceptual framework, named FeeD4Mi, to shape personalised LA‐informed feedback in a MOOC.The current study follows a qualitative interpretative approach to understand how the proposed conceptual framework FeeD4Mi served the MOOC instructor and the tool developer to design feedback interventions and re‐design an existing LA tool, respectively.The results showed that FeeD4Mi helped the tool developer to create a contextualised LA tool, named edX‐LIMS+. edX‐LIMS+ allowed the instructor to monitor and assist struggling MOOC learners in a timely manner. Additionally, FeeD4Mi successfully guided the course instructor in designing and delivering personalised interventions. Yet, the feedback design process was perceived as time‐demanding, an issue we plan to address in our future work.The current study extends the existing empirical research about employing human‐centred approaches for the design of LA‐driven interventions. Moreover, this study advances the theory of scalable feedback tactics, through a conceptual framework that aims to guide MOOC instructors during the definition of feedback interventions. We envision that this research contributes to promoting participatory approaches for designing, delivering, and evaluating LA‐informed feedback interventions in authentic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic relatedness figures heavily in contemporary ethical debates on egg freezing, although the arguments lack empirical‐based evidence. Rather than adding another theoretical view on the moral relevance of genetic connections, this paper instead proposes an empirically grounded perspective based on two independent qualitative interview‐based studies conducted in Belgium and France. Three themes emerge from our empirical data: (1) prioritizing family building; (2) centering the gestational experience of motherhood; and (3) identifying the complexities and limitations of adoption. These themes suggest that the relationship between egg freezing, genetics, biological motherhood, and adoption is highly complex and less straightforward than what is often assumed in the egg freezing debate. Our study provides more detailed insights into women's ambivalent experiences regarding those reproductive options. We discuss the ethical implications of our empirical findings and hold that pursuing genetic desire is not necessarily the main moral reason why women freeze their eggs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades there has been growing interest in amplifying children and young people's views (CYP) within policy debates. Despite this, they are rarely invited to participate in key policy‐making discussions, and when they are, this tends to be tokenistic. This paper presents an intergenerational methodological framework 'The Causeway Approach', inspired by the mythology of the Giant's Causeway, which addresses the challenge of CYP's voices being drowned out by adult stakeholders. This contextualised approach has significant potential to benefit CYP and communities through capacity building, strengthening of social capital and fostering intergenerational connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on empirical evidence from a 3‐year research project in Northern Uganda examining the educational experiences of refugees with disabilities. The authors present the compounded and interrelated challenges children with disabilities and their families face as they navigate their educational experiences and seek out opportunities to live well. The authors seek to make a contribution towards improving educational experiences by first highlighting compounding challenges faced by refugee children living with disabilities and their families and related policy gaps that have ramifications for refugee children's access to education in particular, and second by expanding discourse about refugee children with disabilities agency in relation to these liminal gaps and the impact the gaps have for accessing education. The authors use Powell and McGrath's (in Skills for human development: Transforming vocational education and training, Routledge, 2019; Handbook of vocational education and training, Springer, 2019) concept of critical capabilities and relationality, to expand Klocker's (in Global perspectives on rural childhood and youth: Young rural lives, Routledge, 2007) notions of thick and thin agency and to interrogate refugee children living with disabilities' agency in relation to education opportunities and rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does one assess developmental change when the measures themselves change with development? Most developmental studies of word learning use either looking (infants) or pointing (preschoolers and older). With little empirical evidence of the relationship between the two measures, developmental change is difficult to assess. This paper analyzes 914 pointing, looking children (451 female, varied ethnicities, 2.5–6.5 years, dates: 2009–2019) in 36 word‐ or sound‐learning experiments with two‐alternative test trials. Looking proportions and pointing accuracy correlated strongly (r = .7). Counter to the “looks first” hypothesis, looks were not sensitive to incipient knowledge that pointing missed: when pointing is at chance, looking proportions are also. Results suggest one possible path forward for assessing continuous developmental change. Methodological best practices are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data protection is the most prior and valuable concern as stealing personal/organizational data by cyber criminals may arise issues ranging from privacy disclosure to system hacking. Blockchain is considered a top leading technology with the influence to reshape future industries, but like other revolutionary technologies, blockchain has its merits and demerits as well. However, due to its nascent stage, blockchain technology poses numerous challenges that hinder the effective development of blockchain. To uncover this potential hindrance and group the relevant barriers, a total of 12 challenges that may hinder the progress of blockchain application development have been identified from a sample of 52 primary studies. Based on the results of our research, the six challenges are considered critical an account for more than 30% occurrence. The critical challenges are "Lack of Proper Development Tools and Technology," "Security Precaution Measures," "Lack of Governance and Standards," "Lack of Professional Expertise with Essential Skills and Knowledge," "Lack of Organizational Support," and "Interoperability Integration." Using a comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) and a questionnaire survey, a list of 65 solutions/practices has been identified to address the challenges that were identified. These solutions/practices will help blockchain developers to address the identified challenges and develop benign blockchain application in future. The results of our questionnaire survey largely align with the findings of the SLR. However, there are variations in the ranking of the challenges between the two datasets. The finding of this paper is to provide insights that can assist in streamlining and optimizing the development process of blockchain applications with greater ease and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regression test prioritization (RTP) is an active research field, aiming at re‐ordering the tests in a test suite to maximize the rate at which faults are detected. A number of RTP strategies have been proposed, leveraging different factors to reorder tests. Some techniques include an analysis of changed source code, to assign higher priority to tests stressing modified parts of the codebase. Still, most of these change‐based solutions focus on simple text‐level comparisons among versions. We believe that measuring source code changes in a more refined way, capable of discriminating between mere textual changes (e.g., renaming of a local variable) and more structural changes (e.g., changes in the control flow), could lead to significant benefits in RTP, under the assumption that major structural changes are also more likely to introduce faults. To this end, we propose two novel RTP techniques that leverage tree kernels (TK), a class of similarity functions largely used in Natural Language Processing on tree‐structured data. In particular, we apply TKs to abstract syntax trees of source code, to more precisely quantify the extent of structural changes in the source code, and prioritize tests accordingly. We assessed the effectiveness of the proposals by conducting an empirical study on five real‐world Java projects, also used in a number of RTP‐related papers. We automatically generated, for each considered pair of software versions (i.e., old version, new version) in the evolution of the involved projects, 100 variations with artificially injected faults, leading to over 5k different software evolution scenarios overall. We compared the proposed prioritization approaches against well‐known prioritization techniques, evaluating both their effectiveness and their execution times. Our findings show that leveraging more refined code change analysis techniques to quantify the extent of changes in source code can lead to relevant improvements in prioritization effectiveness, while typically introducing negligible overheads due to their execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study discusses a new approach to parental agency in pediatric palliative care based on an active form of caregiving. It also explores the possibility of a positive conceptualization of parental agency in its relational context. The paper begins with an illustrative case study based on a clinical situation. This is followed by an analysis of various aspects of parental agency based on empirical studies that disclose the insufficiencies of the traditional approach to parental agency. In the next step, parental agency is analyzed from a reality‐based perspective as an activity focused on relationships and the cognitive capacity of parents vis‐a‐vis their seriously ill children. The paper also considers the importance of the cultural and social contexts in which parental agency and decision‐making take place. This agency is addressed not as individualistic in form, and nor is it exercised in terms of fixed choices. Rather, the focus is on its dynamic and future‐oriented aspects. Consequently, parental agency should be comprehended not only as a form of proxy agency representing the child's best interests but also as a complex decision‐making process in which the parents learn from their child how to become good, compassionate caregivers and at the same time good parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Would highlighting that a customer review can be completed in 3 min influence a customer's decision to either promptly submit their review or delay it, with the potential risk of forgetting it altogether? Despite the popular approach of using task duration to mitigate task delay, the empirical support for this method is scant. This study investigates the effect of considering task duration (i.e., how long a task may take) on task delay (i.e., postponing the task until later). Across four studies, we demonstrate that making task duration salient decreases the likelihood of postponing a short task that can be achieved in one sitting. This effect occurs because considering task duration strengthens the implemental mindset, but only when task duration information is more evaluable. The findings of this paper suggest an easily implementable method that could customer engagement. Finally, we propose a set of promising avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, several publications and media outlets have highlighted how the skills and interests of autistic individuals may benefit organizations. However, there is scant empirical research on the topic. The present study's authors conducted a systematic review to find which potential employability skills, strengths, and interests of autistic individuals available research has highlighted. Data extraction methods identified 51 papers related to skills in this population. The skill sets autistic individuals may possess and the research behind these findings were organized, evaluated, and summarized. Based on these findings, investigators discuss implications for employment counseling and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite the many advantages of flipped learning, it is challenging for educators to ensure that students complete the pre‐class learning assignments before the in‐class session. Objectives: Using a learning analytics approach, this study analysed students' pre‐class video‐watching behaviour in flipped learning with a focus on learners' resource management strategies, procrastination, and repeated video‐watching. Methods: For the empirical study, three types of data (i.e., log data, survey and exam) were obtained from 70 undergraduate students who were enrolled in pre‐service teacher program designed in a flipped classroom including pre‐class videos and in‐class session. Results and conclusions: The findings showed significant differences between the non‐procrastination group and procrastination group in their video watching time and resource management strategies. Those who watched the pre‐class videos at home/dorm greatly outnumbered those who did not, and they performed better than students who watched the pre‐class videos in other locations. What are the major takeaways from the study?: This finding highlights the importance of resource management strategies in terms of the time and study environment to promote success in flipped learning courses. However, the number of times students accessed the pre‐class videos or watched the videos before class was not correlated with learning achievement. The reason for re‐watching pre‐class videos is a suggested future direction so instructors can design effective flipped learning courses. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic?: Flipped learning is a type of blended learning that combines two teaching and learning modes: face‐to‐face learning and online learning. The effectiveness of flipped learning has also been demonstrated in many empirical studies and meta‐analyses.Despite the many advantages of flipped learning, it is challenging to ensure that students complete the pre‐class materials before class.Data‐driven decisions based on the learning analytics approach can help instructors revise the in‐class activities more adoptively and individual learners can be more engaged in flipped learning. What this paper adds?: Using a learning analytics approach, this study analysed students' pre‐class video‐watching behaviour in flipped learning with a focus on learners' resource management strategies, procrastination, and repeated video‐watching.We also examined the correlations among pre‐class video‐watching behaviour variables and learning achievement.This study highlights the following: (1) The no‐procrastination group had better resource management strategies than the procrastination group; (2) students who watched pre‐class videos at home outperformed those who watched them in other locations: (3) the number of times students accessed pre‐class videos was not correlated with learning achievement; and (4) whether or not students watched pre‐class videos prior to the in‐class sessions was not correlated with learning achievement. Implications for practise and/or policy: Although flipped learning gives students considerable autonomy in terms of when and where to watch pre‐class videos at their convenience, it is necessary to help students develop resource management strategies by providing role models, best practises, and statistics in previous flipped learning classes.Research findings suggest that instructors should provide guidelines and learning strategies on how to review or repeat the pre‐class videos to improve the quality of learning.To encourage students to repeat the videos, the pre‐class videos should be short and concise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the world, countries have engaged in different iterations of curriculum change, and one of the common denominators of reform is the proposal of more agency for teachers around curriculum making. This is not an easy task for teachers. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about the effects that international ERASMUS+ mobilities have had on the power of curricular agency of teachers from two European countries. This work is based on an empirical investigation of a qualitative nature which collected the testimonies of four school headmasters, a deputy principal and eleven teachers from Ireland and Portugal, teaching different curriculum matters, who were involved in the ERASMUS+ programme. Our findings evidence a very positive impact on secondary teachers' capacity to self‐organize and achieve agency in relation to curriculum making by adapting their knowledge and skills, learnt through the mobility, to their own culture and context through collaborative communities of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross‐version defect prediction (CVDP) for evolutionary projects has attracted much attention from researchers in recent years. For multiple versions of an object‐oriented project, the degree of evolution (e.g., the degree of class change) between successive versions can reflect the differences between versions, which could affect the performance of CVDP. Therefore, how to measure the degree of evolution between successive versions and explore the correlations with the performance of CVDP are very important for software defect prediction. Based on the successive versions of evolutionary projects, this paper proposes six evolutionary measures from three aspects of class change, metric change, and label change, including the Ratio of New Classes (RNC), the Ratio of Deleted Classes (RDC), the Average Ratio of Metric Change (ARMC), the Ratio of Label Changed Classes (RLCC), the Ratio of Unchanged Classes (RUC), and the Ratio of Interference Classes (RIC). An empirical study was conducted on 40 versions of 11 object‐oriented projects from the PROMISE repository. Precision, Recall, F‐measure, and AUC were used as the performance indicators. Three correlation approaches (Pearson, Spearman, and Kendall) are applied to show the correlations between evolutionary measures and the performance of CVDP. The statistical results show that RNC, RDC, and RUC show no correlation with four performance indicators. ARMC shows weak or medium positive correlations with Recall and F‐measure. RLCC and RIC show very strong or strong negative correlations with Recall and F‐measure. The results indicate that the correlations between the proposed evolutionary measures and the performance of CVDP are different, which can guide the training set selection of CVDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing use of artificial intelligence, search engine providers are increasingly pushing advertisers to use automated bidding strategies based on machine learning. Such automated decision‐making systems leave advertisers in the dark about the data being used and how they can influence the outcome of the decision‐making process. Previous literature on artificial intelligence lacks an understanding of the dangers related to artificially intelligent systems and their lack of transparency. In response, our paper addresses the inherent risks of the automated optimization of advertisers' bidding strategies in search engine advertising. The selected empirical case of a service company therefore demonstrates how data availability can trigger a long‐term decline in advertising performance and how search engine advertising performance metrics develop before and after an event of data scarcity. Based on data collected for 525 days, difference‐in‐differences analysis shows that the algorithmic approach has a considerable and lasting negative impact on advertising performance. Furthermore, the empirical case indicates that self‐regulated learning can initialize a downward spiral that gradually impairs advertising performance. Thus, the aim of this study is to increase awareness regarding automated decision‐making dangers in search engine advertising and help advertisers take preventive measures to reduce the risks of algorithm missteps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new advancement in test automation is the use of natural language processing (NLP) to generate test cases (or test scripts) from natural language text. NLP is innovative in this context and promises of reducing test cases creation time and simplifying understanding for "non‐developer" software testers as well. Recently, many vendors have launched on the market many proposals of NLP‐based tools and testing frameworks but their superiority has never been empirically validated. This paper investigates the adoption of NLP‐based test automation in the web context with a series of case studies conducted to compare the costs of the NLP testing approach—measured in terms of test cases development and test cases evolution—with respect to more consolidated approaches, that is, programmable (or script‐based) testing and capture&replay testing. The results of our study show that NLP‐based test automation appears to be competitive for small‐ to medium‐sized test suites such as those considered in our empirical study. It minimizes the total cumulative cost (development and evolution) and does not require software testers with programming skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of authors have attributed the high and volatile oil prices experienced since the turn of the 21st century to increased speculative activities arising from a relaxation of regulations in futures markets. This study examined the effects of speculative pressure on the volatility of spot oil prices. I constructed two measures of speculative pressure and modelled the volatility in oil returns by using the GARCH autoregressive conditional jump intensity model of Chan and Maheu, which models the effects of extreme news events in returns. Empirical results showed a significant positive coefficient for speculative pressure, implying that increased speculative pressure has contributed to volatile oil prices. This result is robust to different GARCH estimators and measures of speculative pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconceptualised the interrelated learning constructs in higher education based on the Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). The university students' learning experience before, during and post the Emergency Online Learning (EOL) was investigated to explore the dynamic changes among the learning constructs in higher education. A case study of a Chinese university was conducted, and one hundred and ninety‐three university students participated in the questionnaire. The data collected from this empirical research identify different hierarchical constructs of the conceptualised learning environment and reconceptualise the period of system reformation influenced by the EOL. The key findings include the identifications of the attractors and repellors framed by the DST and the impact on the changes in the learning constructs. The results of this paper contribute to further understanding of the university constructs' changes to better plan and support students' active learning in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The implementation science literature acknowledges a need for engagement of key stakeholders when designing, delivering and evaluating implementation work. To date, the literature reports minimal or focused stakeholder engagement, where stakeholders are engaged in either barrier identification and/or barrier prioritisation. This paper begins to answer calls from the literature for the development of tools and guidance to support comprehensive stakeholder engagement in implementation research and practice. The paper describes the systematic development of the Implementation‐STakeholder Engagement Model (I‐STEM) in the context of an international, large‐scale empirical implementation study (ImpleMentAll) aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of a tailored implementation toolkit. The I‐STEM is a sensitising tool that defines key considerations and activities for undertaking stakeholder engagement activities across an implementation process. Methods: In‐depth, semistructured interviews and observations were conducted with implementers who were tailoring implementation strategies to integrate and embed internet‐based cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) services in 12 routine mental health care organisations in nine countries in Europe and Australia. The analytical process was informed by principles of first‐ and third‐generation Grounded Theory, including constant comparative method. Results: We conducted 55 interviews and observed 19 implementation‐related activities (e.g., team meetings and technical support calls). The final outcome of our analysis is expressed in an initial version of the I‐STEM, consisting of five interrelated concepts: engagement objectives, stakeholder mapping, engagement approaches, engagement qualities and engagement outcomes. Engagement objectives are goals that implementers plan to achieve by working with stakeholders in the implementation process. Stakeholder mapping involves identifying a range of organisations, groups or people who may be instrumental in achieving the engagement objectives. Engagement approaches define the type of work that is undertaken with stakeholders to achieve the engagement objectives. Engagement qualities define the logistics of the engagement approach. Lastly, every engagement activity may result in a range of engagement outcomes. Conclusion: The I‐STEM represents potential avenues for substantial stakeholder engagement activity across key phases of an implementation process. It provides a conceptual model for the planning, delivery, evaluation and reporting of stakeholder engagement activities. The I‐STEM is nonprescriptive and highlights the importance of a flexible, iterative approach to stakeholder engagement. It is developmental and will require application and validation across a range of implementation activities. Patient or Public Contribution: Patient contribution to ImpleMentAll trial was facilitated by GAMIAN‐Europe at all stages—from grant development to dissemination. GAMIAN‐Europe brings together a wide variety of patient representation organisations (local, regional and national) from almost all European countries. GAMIAN‐Europe was involved in pilot testing the ItFits‐toolkit and provided their views on the various aspects, including stakeholder engagement. Patients were also represented in the external advisory board providing support and advice on the design, conduct and interpretation of the wider project, including the development of the ItFits‐toolkit. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03652883. Retrospectively registered on 29 August 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a review of empirical studies published with a decolonial epistemic approach in psychology. Our goal was to better understand how decolonial approaches are being practiced empirically in psychology, with an emphasis on community‐social psychology. We first discuss the context of colonization and coloniality in the research process as orienting information. We identified 17 peer‐reviewed empirical articles with a decolonial approach to psychology scholarship and discerned four waves that characterize the articles: relationally‐based research to transgress fixed hierarchies and unsettle power, research from the heart, sociohistorical intersectional consciousness, and desire‐based future‐oriented research to rehumanize and seek utopia. Community‐social psychology research with a decolonial approach has the potential to remember grassroots efforts, decolonizing our world. Highlights: This paper reviews 17 empirical studies published with a decolonial epistemology in psychology.Authors discuss colonization and coloniality in the research process as orienting information. We discerned four waves within the empirical work with the potential to uplift decolonial efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a response to Kath Browne and Catherine Nash's paper 'From hegemonic to where?'. Building on their influential body of work and expanding upon further empirical research across Ireland, Canada and the UK, their paper is a direct examination of the views and experiences of those concerned about socio-legal challenges in sexuality and gender. With my responses and provocations, I gesture towards a relational geographical framing, focusing on three main themes: the everyday and relationality, experience and difference, and praxis and allyship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Existing studies confirm that some video games can change players' attitudes. However, since we do not know the specific elements responsible for attitude change, the potential of video games to achieve desired educational or behavioural outcomes often remains unfulfilled. Objectives: To fill the research gap, our study examined whether the perspective‐taking game mechanic in the serious game Czechoslovakia 38–89: Borderlands, which had previously been shown to affect attitudes, would have the same effect on another sample of players with different characteristics. Methods: We have assessed the effect of a historical video game using a perspective‐taking mechanic on players' explicit and implicit attitudes. Explicit attitude changes were measured at a general level, meaning a broad evaluation of a depicted historical event, and at a specific level, meaning a more detailed evaluation of specific aspects of the event. Simultaneously, we measured the effect of players' perceived attitude importance on attitude change. The study used a sample of 137 young adults. Results and Conclusions: This study's results indicate a significant pretest‐posttest explicit attitude change on the general level and on a specific level in comparison to the control group. Perspective‐taking game mechanics is particularly important for explicit attitude change. No change was found in implicit attitudes. The effect of the perceived attitude importance on attitude change was not confirmed. Takeaways: As one of the first to focus on the effects of specific game mechanics on attitudes, this study confirmed that perspective‐taking has stable, short‐term effects on attitude change even across different research samples. Lay Description: What is currently known about the subject matter: It is unclear why some video games can change players' attitudes while others do not.Several studies confirm video games' effect on explicit, but not on implicit, attitudes.Research on the effects of game mechanics on attitude changes is in its infancy.Very few studies focus on what role player characteristics play in their attitude changes. What our paper adds to this: Perspective‐taking as game mechanics changes explicit attitudes across populations.Perceived importance of players' attitudes towards topics not necessarily affects attitude changes.We show that only some facets of attitudes are influenced by the video game. Implications of study findings for practitioners: Particular game mechanics seem to be essential for attitude changes in players.Attitude importance and other player characteristics need further research in the video game context.DIF‐C analysis can provide more detailed information on changes in more complex explicit attitude concepts.Video games can affect the way we interpret the world around us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure‐as‐code (IaC) helps keep up with the demand for fast, reliable, high‐quality services by provisioning and managing infrastructures through configuration files. Those files ensure efficient and repeatable routines for system provisioning, but they might be affected by code smells that negatively affect quality and code maintenance. Research has broadly studied code smells for traditional source code development; however, none explored them in the "Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications" (TOSCA), the technology‐agnostic OASIS standard for IaC. In this paper, we investigate a prominent traditional implementation code smell potentially applicable to TOSCA: Large Class, or "Blob Blueprint" in IaC terms. We compare metrics‐based and unsupervised learning‐based detectors on a large dataset of manually validated observations related to Blob Blueprints. We provide insights on code metrics that corroborate previous findings and empirically show that metrics‐based detectors perform highly in detecting Blob Blueprints. We deem our results put forward a new research path toward dealing with this problem, for example, in the scope of fully automated service pipelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary on Sen and Gredebäck’s “Methodological integrity assessment in the mobile paradigm literature: A lesson for understanding opportunistic use of researcher degrees of freedom in psychology” presented in this issue. The authors discuss the operant mobile paradigm in infant memory research as well as degrees of freedom and an evaluation of the paper’s simulation analyses.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a crucial intervention because of its long‐term impact on child development. However, information concerning the effectiveness of the ECEC in developing countries like India is sparsely available. This empirical study drew upon primary data collected from India's eastern state, West Bengal and investigated whether attending preschool contributed to children's cognitive and social skill development. The study found that attending preschool did not provide dividends in the form of cognitive and social skill accumulation. Furthermore, attending private preschool was associated with socioemotional development but no cognitive development. Moreover, parents' education seems to be a strong predictor for child's development. Given the findings of this paper, preschools in India, both in the public and private sectors, would need considerable quality improvement to deliver developmentally appropriate ECEC to children. It is particularly relevant in the context of the new National Education Policy in India, which emphasises the need to provide universal access to high‐quality ECCE to all young children across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dance has entered mainstream empirical research: dance as an experimental stimulus, and dancers as movement experts. Informed by several sources, including primary sources (original, historical documents, and oral reports, such as interviews with practitioners and academic scholars of Iranian dance genres) and secondary sources (research literature), we describe what we label "Iranian classical dance" within this paper as an important resource for empirical research, not only in humanities scholarship but also, and importantly, for empirical aesthetics, emotion psychology, cross‐cultural psychology, and affective neuroscience. For this purpose, we (1) describe the aesthetics, characteristics, and history of Iranian classical dance; (2) outline issues of definition and systematization; and (3) give an overview of the cultural complexities and sociopolitical issues regarding Iranian classical dance in the past 40 years, which have shaped its current form. After the political revolution of 1979 (Iranian solar calendar year: 1358), dance in Iran—both as everyday practice and as a cultural heritage—was first forbidden, and now remains heavily restricted. International, interdisciplinary research teams can contribute to safeguarding Iranian classical dance in the future by firmly enshrining it into empirical research on human dance. We outline empirical research perspectives on Iranian classical dance, dataset resources, and expert communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synchronicity describes a meaningful coincidence of events, which is familiar to us from treatments of our patients, but unfortunately has not yet been empirically substantiated. Adding to previous findings that point out beneficial aspects of synchronicity (Marlo, 2022; Lagutina, 2021; Connolly, 2015), in this paper I will show through a series of five synchronistic moments which happened in the context of therapy and analysis and which have been documented empirically, how synchronicities occur and can be used therapeutically. In my research I found several situational factors that can be considered structural aspects of synchronistic moments. Furthermore, I will show that synchronistic phenomena can have a positive influence if certain relational and transference‐countertransference referential aspects are considered by the therapist and analyst. The concept of synchronicity brings the possibility of a further therapeutical instrument for the patient‐analyst‐dyad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we offer a collective, multi‐vocal reflection on using poetry for research purposes. These were reflections on an online sub‐plenary session organized as a workshop, which was held at the European Group for Organization Studies conference in 2021. During this workshop, the first three authors presented a step‐by‐step method for doing poetic inquiry and invited participants to apply it to their own empirical data or research praxis. The method was created in response to the marginalization of affect and embodiment in mainstream research in organization studies. Poetic inquiry aims to formulate specific practices of "writing differently" that assist researchers in their attempts to analyze and articulate their findings in embodied and affective ways. In this paper, we describe the method and bring together multi‐vocal reflections from the participants and organizers of the workshop on the affects of poetic inquiry and the (ethical) questions that it poses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Teachers often rely on the use of open‐ended questions to assess students' conceptual understanding of assigned content. Particularly in the context of mathematics; teachers use these types of questions to gain insight into the processes and strategies adopted by students in solving mathematical problems beyond what is possible through more close‐ended problem types. While these types of problems are valuable to teachers, the variation in student responses to these questions makes it difficult, and time‐consuming, to evaluate and provide directed feedback. It is a well‐studied concept that feedback, both in terms of a numeric score but more importantly in the form of teacher‐authored comments, can help guide students as to how to improve, leading to increased learning. It is for this reason that teachers need better support not only for assessing students' work but also in providing meaningful and directed feedback to students. Objectives: In this paper, we seek to develop, evaluate, and examine machine learning models that support automated open response assessment and feedback. Methods: We build upon the prior research in the automatic assessment of student responses to open‐ended problems and introduce a novel approach that leverages student log data combined with machine learning and natural language processing methods. Utilizing sentence‐level semantic representations of student responses to open‐ended questions, we propose a collaborative filtering‐based approach to both predict student scores as well as recommend appropriate feedback messages for teachers to send to their students. Results and Conclusion: We find that our method outperforms previously published benchmarks across three different metrics for the task of predicting student performance. Through an error analysis, we identify several areas where future works may be able to improve upon our approach. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Open‐ended questions are used by teachers in the domain of mathematics to assess their students understanding but automated support for these types of questions are limited in online learning platforms. Recent advancements in areas of machine learning and natural language processing have led to promising results in a range of domains and applications. What this paper adds: Emulating how teachers identify similar student answers can be used to build tools that support teachers in assessing and providing feedback to student open‐ended work. Implications for practice: Developing better automated supports can increase the amount of direct feedback students receive to guide their learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a systematic literature review of organizational resilience. It aims to identify the reasons for the unintended consequences that may occur when organizations pursue resilience and how these unintended consequences could be mitigated. The analysis of 68 articles published between 2017 and 2022 indicates that organizations could have unintended consequences when pursuing organizational resilience, resulting from the organizational resilience conceptualization, models, practices, levels and the paradox of change. Consequently, several unintended consequences may arise when implementing a resilience strategy. This includes lessened leadership effectiveness, the pursuit of unrealistic objectives, low organizational creativity and innovation, overreliance on a single strategy, compromised values, fragile relationships, a short‐term focus and organizational culture. Therefore, the overall construct aspects of organizational resilience should be researched and analyzed further by gathering additional empirical data that sheds more light on these issues. Aside from the challenge of defining and measuring organizational resilience, there is variability in how organizational resilience is developed. It has also been operationalized in various ways, with limited insight into empirical methods to identify resilience against future hardships. Although the notion is promising, it has been criticized for being ambiguous and lacking a uniform explanation, diminishing its relevance for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Several attitude scales have been developed to measure students' attitudes toward computer programming, including the prominent one developed by Cetin and Ozden. The development of these scales stemmed from the elusive nature of attitude and the lack of specific constructs to measure attitude. These instruments measure students' attitudes based on one‐dimensional perspective, thus, making it difficult to interpret the meaning of some attitude evaluations such as the meaning of neutral points in a 10‐point scale (for example). Objectives: The computer programming attitude scale was modified to measure ambivalence. The study also investigate attitude differences across demographic variables and used these variables to predict ambivalence. Methods: The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the instrument was validated using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. In the second phase, the revised scale was administered to another 547 students in four research universities for empirical investigation. Results: Results show that the instrument is valid and suitable for measuring students' programming attitudes. Participants' attitudes skewed toward the negative attitude dimension. Lastly, we found that both attitude and ambivalence are factors of programming experience. Conclusions: We discussed the findings, recommend the instrument to programming tutors, and strongly emphasise the evaluation of students' ambivalent attitudes. Lay Description: What is currently known: There are numerous scales developed to measure students' attitude toward computer programming, such as the computer programming attitude scale (CPAS).The development of these inventories stemmed from the elusive nature of attitude and the lack of specific construct to measure attitude.These instruments measure students' attitude based on one dimensional perspective, thus, making it difficult to interpret the meaning of some attitude evaluations such as the meaning of neutral points in a 10‐point scale (for example). What this paper adds: The present research brings a novel approach to instrument development by acknowledging the presence of attitude toward computer programming.This novel approach advances the knowledge of instrument development in the field of attitude measurement by introducing a paradigm shift from conventional attitude evaluation to a more diverse approach.The study has introduced new items to the existing CPAS, and subsequently, indicates the possibility of validating an attitude inventory using data obtained from ambivalence evaluation.By using this instrument, students' attitude is measured accurately rather than adopting the conventional measures that ignored the presence of negative and positive evaluations. Implication to practitioners: Through the findings of the study, computer science and programming educators would come to know that many positive and negative attitude elements are occasionally subsumed toward an attitude object, thereby leading to an ambivalence attitude.The instrument can be used by the practitioners to accurately measure students' positive and negative attitude toward programming across all levels of education.Using the instrument, practitioners can predict the identified attitude using wide range of variables such as gender, age, computational thinking skills, programming proficiency levels, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the tremendous development of artificial intelligence (AI)‐based mobile apps, they suffer from quality issues. Data‐driven AI software poses challenges for maintenance and quality assurance. Metamorphic testing has been successfully adopted to AI software. However, most previous studies require testers to manually identify metamorphic relations in an ad hoc and arbitrary manner, thereby encountering difficulties in reflecting real‐world usage scenarios. Previous work showed that information available in user reviews is effective for maintenance and testing tasks. Yet, there is a lack of studies leveraging reviews to facilitate AI function maintenance and testing activities. This paper proposes METUR, a novel approach to supporting maintenance and testing for AI functions based on reviews. Firstly, METUR automatically classifies reviews that can be exploited for supporting AI function maintenance and evolution activities. Then, it identifies test contexts from reviews in the usage scenario category. METUR instantiates the metamorphic relation pattern for deriving concrete metamorphic relations based on test contexts. The follow‐up test dataset is constructed for conducting metamorphic testing. Empirical studies on plant identification apps indicate that METUR effectively categorizes reviews that are related to AI functions. METUR is feasible and effective in detecting inconsistent behaviors by using the metamorphic relations constructed based on reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research works have proven that duplicate bug reports can provide helpful information to assist developers in software tasks such as fault localization and program fixing, while thoroughly reading duplicate bug reports is time‐consuming and inefficient. Summarization is a possible solution for gaining essential information quickly. However, there are many challenges when applying existing summarizing techniques on duplicate bug reports. Duplicate bug reports describe the same problem from different views and vary in quality, content, and writing style. Moreover, the code snippet understanding and the semantic gap between natural and programming languages make the summary generation even more difficult. Thus, in this paper, we want to investigate whether the state‐of‐the‐art summarization approaches can overcome the resistance and generate an effective summary for duplicate bug reports. We collected more than 8,000 groups of duplicate reports from GitHub and labeled 60 groups with 149 reports manually for the evaluation. Results showed that although the existing summarization approaches can work on duplicate bug reports, there are significant differences between them when it comes to code snippet summarization. Moreover, several methods can be very sluggish for summarizing long bug reports. Our study provides insights and guidelines for choosing proper summarization approaches in different scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature of neuroimaging meta‐analysis has been thriving for over a decade. A majority of them were coordinate‐based meta‐analyses, particularly the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach. A meta‐evaluation of these meta‐analyses was performed to qualitatively evaluate their design and reporting standards. The publications listed from the BrainMap website were screened. Six hundred and three ALE papers published during 2010–2019 were included and analysed. For reporting standards, most of the ALE papers reported their total number of Papers involved and mentioned the inclusion/exclusion criteria on Paper selection. However, most papers did not describe how data redundancy was avoided when multiple related Experiments were reported within one paper. The most prevalent repeated‐measures correction methods were voxel‐level FDR (54.4%) and cluster‐level FWE (33.8%), with the latter quickly replacing the former since 2016. For study characteristics, sample size in terms of number of Papers included per ALE paper and number of Experiments per analysis seemed to be stable over the decade. One‐fifth of the surveyed ALE papers failed to meet the recommendation of having >17 Experiments per analysis. For data sharing, most of them did not provide input and output data. In conclusion, the field has matured well in terms of rising dominance of cluster‐level FWE correction, and slightly improved reporting on elimination of data redundancy and providing input data. The provision of Data and Code availability statements and flow chart of literature screening process, as well as data submission to BrainMap, should be more encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to develop a K function method for analyzing distributions of polygon‐like entities in the real world by extending Ripley's K function method. Many empirical studies using the K function method assume that entities are represented by points. If entities are small enough in comparison with a study area, this approximation may be acceptable. If not, polygon‐like entities may not be approximated by points. To deal with polygon‐like entities, this paper develops a K function method for analyzing distributions of polygons. First, the paper shows a method for extending the local K function of points to that of polygons. Second, the paper compares the result obtained from the K function of polygons with that of the points representing the polygons and shows a distinctive difference. Third, the paper formulates the cross K function method of polygons to analyze the relationship between two distributions of polygons of different kinds. Fourth, the paper implements the methods in GIS. Last, the paper applies the cross K function method of polygons to actual distributions of buildings of different uses in Aoyama, Tokyo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to previous studies that generally detect scientific breakthroughs based on citation patterns, this article proposes a knowledge entity‐based disruption indicator by quantifying the change of knowledge directly created and inspired by scientific breakthroughs to their evolutionary trajectories. Two groups of analytic units, including MeSH terms and their co‐occurrences, are employed independently by the indicator to measure the change of knowledge. The effectiveness of the proposed indicators was evaluated against the four datasets of scientific breakthroughs derived from four recognition trials. In terms of identifying scientific breakthroughs, the proposed disruption indicator based on MeSH co‐occurrences outperforms that based on MeSH terms and three earlier citation‐based disruption indicators. It is also shown that in our indicator, measuring the change of knowledge inspired by the focal paper in its evolutionary trajectory is a larger contributor than measuring the change created by the focal paper. Our study not only offers empirical insights into conceptual understanding of scientific breakthroughs but also provides practical disruption indicator for scientists and science management agencies searching for valuable research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature often analyzes the effects of horizontal relationships on collaborative governance, though some scholars have started to recognize the role of hierarchical interventions. This paper identities two poorly examined areas of study. First, there is a lack of empirical studies to understand the diverse impacts of hierarchical interventions on collaborative governance. Second, there is little deliberation on how existing horizontal relationships can moderate the effects that hierarchical interventions have on collaborative governance. This paper utilizes environmental collaboration data from the Yangtze River Delta region in China to estimate the impacts of hierarchical interventions on collaborative arrangements and the contextual effects of horizontal relationships. We find that hierarchical interventions, such as top‐down regulations and performance evaluation, enhance the formalization of collaborative arrangements. Additionally, horizontal relationships derived from past experiences can moderate the effects of hierarchical interventions, notwithstanding such effects vary among different interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considered the problem of outlier detection in a repeated measure design (RMD) using the Estimate distance and the Liu and Weng's residual methods. The comparative performance of the two methods in identifying outlier in a RMD was evaluated through empirical and simulation studies. For the empirical study, two types of outliers (outliers I and II) were randomly introduced into the real‐life dataset from physiological research at a time. The results obtained revealed that the Liu and Weng's Residual and Estimate Distance tests correctly detected the outlier I randomly introduced into all the subjects at a time. However, the Liu and Weng's Residual test was only able to correctly detect the outlier II in subjects 1, 4 and 6 while the Estimate distance test could not detect the outlier II in any of the subject. In the simulation study, random samples of size 105, 120, 135, and 150 with a corresponding number of subjects (k = 7, 8, 9, 10), respectively, were generated from a multivariate normal distribution. Two types of outliers (outliers I and II) were randomly introduced into the simulated datasets. The results of the simulation study indicated that the Liu and Weng's residual and Estimate distance methods correctly detected the outlier I randomly introduced into the simulated data for all the sample sizes considered. However, the Liu and Weng's Residual test outperformed the Estimate distance test in detecting the outlier II. Thus, the Liu and Weng's Residual proved to be more powerful than the Estimate Distance test in identifying outlier in a RMD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial value problems can be solved efficiently by means of Runge–Kutta algorithms with adaptive step size control. Diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta (DIRK) methods are the most popular class among the diverse family of Runge–Kutta algorithms. In this paper, the novel class of low‐order explicit last‐stage diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta (ELDIRK) methods are explored, which combine implicit schemes with an additional explicit evaluation as an explicit last stage. ELDIRK Butcher tableaus are used to control embedded RK methods to obtain solutions of different orders. The lower‐order solution is obtained by classical implicit RK stages and the higher‐order solution is obtained by additional explicit evaluation. As a result, a significant reduction in computational cost is achieved by skipping the iterative solution of nonlinear systems for the additional step. The examination of the heat problem and the use of the innovative Butcher tableau in the finite‐element method are the main contributions of this work. Thus, it is possible to establish adaptive step size control for the new low‐order embedded methods based on an empirical method for error estimation. Two‐dimensional simulations are used to show an appropriate algorithm for the ELDIRK schemes. The new Runge–Kutta schemes' predictions of higher‐order convergence are confirmed, and their successful outcomes are illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to propose a novel reading of the critical legitimacy of the regulative use of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. After introducing some key terminology of the Dialectic, I analyse the shortcomings of two influential accounts of the regulative use of reason and identify their common problem in their commitment to the descriptivity of the ideas of reason. I then offer my rule‐based account of the regulative use of reason by clarifying how Kant transforms reason's metaphysical inclinations into prescriptive rules of bottom‐up empirical research. Finally, I explain why such interpretation of reason is metaphysically innocent and thereby a promising approach to understand its role in Kant's scientific project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restrictions imposed by the COVID‐19 pandemic have forced many to seek alternative means of training and learning, which ended up with increasing investment in the notion of the metaverse. Metaverse is envisioned as the next iteration of the Internet in which the virtual and the real world are blended to materialize a highly immersive experience. Not surprisingly, perhaps, next‐generation training and education systems are concerned with methods to integrate themselves into metaverse environments. In particular, participants are looking for more interactive and flexible training while maintaining a degree of educational content and high quality for their training plans and interactive workflows. In this paper, we conducted research to explore the role of metaverse in employee training. To this end, we utilized a variant of PlaySAFe (i.e., a 3D game) to investigate its metaverse adoption and usage. A qualitative design was adopted, using semistructured interviews to explore practitioners' experiences using the new version of PlaySAFe. After having it played in an industrial setting, we interviewed a group of software practitioners to compare the actual and expected features. This research has explored the pros and cons of using the current technologies for the practical groundwork of SAFe training. Findings from this research suggest that the metaverse holds the potential to deliver improved practical alignment in training and education programs, but that at the present time, practitioners expect more metaverse compatible features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]