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• A history of parallel and distributed computing (PDC) technology evolution, from the late 1990s to the present. • Specific ways in which teaching PDC has changed during that timespan. • Descriptions and pictures of a wide variety of Beowulf clusters. • Select software tools specifically designed for PDC education. • A dozen insights reflecting the author's experiences as a PDC educator. Much has changed about parallel and distributed computing (PDC) since the author began teaching the topic in the late 1990s. This paper reviews some of the key changes to the field and describes their impacts on his work as a PDC educator. Such changes include: the availability of free implementations of the message passing interface (MPI) for distributed-memory multiprocessors; the development of the Beowulf cluster; the advent of multicore architectures; the development of free multithreading languages and libraries such as OpenMP; the availability of (relatively) inexpensive manycore accelerator devices (e.g., GPUs); the availability of free software platforms like CUDA, OpenACC, OpenCL, and OpenMP for using accelerators; the development of inexpensive single board computers (SBCs) like the Raspberry Pi, and other changes. The paper details the evolution of PDC education at the author's institution in response to these changes, including curriculum changes, seven different Beowulf cluster designs, and the development of pedagogical tools and techniques specifically for PDC education. The paper also surveys many of the hardware and software infrastructure options available to PDC educators, provides a strategy for choosing among them, and provides practical advice for PDC pedagogy. Through these discussions, the reader may see how much PDC education has changed over the past two decades, identify some areas of PDC that have remained stable during this same time period, and so gain new insight into how to efficiently invest one's time as a PDC educator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to design and validate a tool to measure the three levels (knowledge, skill and attitude) of climate change competence in children aged 10–12 years (pre-teens). The scale was designed on the basis of an exhaustive literature review and the evaluation of a panel of CC experts. The initial model constructed was refined based on a pilot study with 67 children and a new evaluation by the panel of experts. The resulting scale was then validated using the confirmatory composite analysis using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (N = 459). The final scale consists of 30 items divided into the three dimensions of competence and the distribution of items is as follows: 14 in knowledge (three items in biophysical processes, three in causes, three in consequences and three in mitigation), nine in skill (three in consumerism, three in transport and three in energy saving) and nine in attitude (three in worry, three in hope and three in interest). Based on the high loadings obtained in the different sub-dimensions in the validation process, it is determined that the instrument "climate change competence scale in pre-teens" is reliable and suitable for the assessment of competence in students of this age range. • The title of the paper has been modified by revising the language. • First title: Validation of the three-dimensional climate change competence scale in preteens. • Second title: Evaluating Climate Change Competence in Preteens: Instrument Development and Validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NMRduino is a compact, cost-effective, sub-MHz NMR spectrometer that utilizes readily available open-source hardware and software components. One of its aims is to simplify the processes of instrument setup and data acquisition control to make experimental NMR spectroscopy accessible to a broader audience. In this introductory paper, the key features and potential applications of NMRduino are described to highlight its versatility both for research and education. [Display omitted] • Versatile, open-source pulse programmer and data acquisition unit for low-frequency magnetic resonance. • Leverages the extensive codebase and support community of the "Arduino" ecosystem. • Suitable for demonstrating magnetic resonance principles in teaching labs • Allows spin hyperpolarization control and detection in nT to mT fields [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Classical weed biological control is hardly practiced in Argentina today. • There is a small community of local experts that work mostly for overseas projects. • The National Strategy on Invasive Alien Species promotes biocontrol initiatives. • A prioritization process is developed to select the best target(s) for biocontrol. • Public awareness and outreach activities could help gain biocontrol public support. Argentina hosted pioneering classical weed biological control projects that were carried out by state institutions between the 1970s and 1990s, at a time when the practice was almost unheard of in Latin America. Despite the early development of these initiatives, the discipline did not prosper and all projects were discontinued. Notwithstanding, Argentina continued to provide biological control agents for the control of weeds in many other parts of the world, ensuring the expertise persisted. Although public concern about invasive plants and chemical-dependent agricultural practices has increased over time, it did not lead to a greater acceptance of classical biological control of weeds, which is still regarded with mistrust or ignored in many public and academic circles alike. Furthermore, there are no systems in place to reach a consensus on declaring weeds as targets for biological control in Argentina. In this paper we discuss different ways in which the community of researchers working in the field in Argentina can help relaunch the biological control of weeds, including the preparation of a prioritized list of target species. A list of this kind would not only reduce costs, but also help in developing trust in the discipline of biological control informing regulators and decision makers in this regard. Prospects are brighter today than a few years ago, but considerable communication and educational work on the benefits of this practice is still required to gain more support before it can effectively be re-implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The EasyPAP environment allows students to really focus on parallelism while developing OpenMP, OpenCL or MPI kernels. • Interactive display of increasingly optimized variants of a 2D kernel help to popularize HPC. • Linking CPUs and image tiles in monitoring windows allow to better understand scheduling policies. • Linking tasks and image tiles when visualizing port mortem execution traces help to diagnose parallel efficiency issues. This paper presents EasyPAP , an easy-to-use programming environment designed to help students to learn parallel programming. EasyPAP features a wide range of 2D computation kernels that the students are invited to parallelize using Pthreads, OpenMP, OpenCL or MPI. Execution of kernels can be interactively visualized, and powerful monitoring tools allow students to observe both the scheduling of computations and the assignment of 2D tiles to threads/processes. By focusing on algorithms and data distribution, students can experiment with diverse code variants and tune multiple parameters, resulting in richer problem exploration and faster progress towards efficient solutions. We present selected lab assignments which illustrate how EasyPAP improves the way students explore parallel programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Epilepsy awareness days around the world are playing a significant role in increasing epilepsy awareness but have not been researched. • We sought to find out what these days the world was, their nature, and roles in relation to the Intersectoral Global Action Plan (IGAP). • We found global awareness days (n = 2), awareness months (n = 4), regional awareness weeks (n = 5), regional awareness days (n = 1), and national awareness days (n = 7). • We concluded that if epilepsy awareness days are cost-effective, contextual, and collaborative, more could be achieved during the 10 years the IGAP is running. This research sought to find out the epilepsy awareness days around the world and understand the nature and role of the days in the fight against epilepsy in relation to the Intersectoral Global Action Plan (IGAP) on epilepsy and other neurological disorders (2022–2031). We conducted a review of journal articles. The databases that we searched were ProQuest Central, EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete, EBSCO Medline, PubMed Central, Wiley Online, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), African Journals Online (AJOL), and Google Scholar. We limited our search to papers of relevance to our subject published between January 2000 and January 2023. We searched 'epilepsy awareness day, week, or month'. From the databases, 13 articles met our inclusion criteria. We augmented our results with a search on Google of articles about epilepsy awareness day, week, or month. We also searched directly on the websites of epilepsy organizations. We found that epilepsy awareness days fall into these categories: global awareness days (n = 2), awareness months (n = 4), regional awareness weeks (n = 5), and regional awareness days (n = 1). Our search for national awareness days (n = 7) was not comprehensive, and this could be an area for future research. The literature shows that epilepsy awareness days could play a role in (1) reducing knowledge and treatment gaps, (2) increasing participation, (3) unlocking resources, and (4) necessitating policy change and increasing networking. The major role of these dedicated days in the IGAP is to accelerate awareness and advocacy for policy change and improved interventions. Epilepsy awareness days are bringing stakeholders together already, and IGAP initiatives could tap into this achievement to accelerate awareness in a cost effective, contextual and collaborative manner. This could be achieved by adopting themes that relate more directly to the IGAP goals. Another important strategy is to motivate countries that do not have national epilepsy days or regions that do not have a regional awareness days, to consider doing one within the confines of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the effects of exposure to toxic chemicals, and individual airborne metals in particular, in early childhood on school-level standardized test performance a decade later. The analysis links the cohort-level proficiency of primary school students born in the United States in the early 2000s to Toxics Release Inventory exposure, exploiting variation in the timing and magnitude of toxicity risk within public school catchment areas to estimate the impact of early exposure on educational outcomes. Estimates of airborne toxicity, which account for composition, may better correspond to human health risks from air pollution than total fine particulates. One standard deviation higher aggregate airborne toxicity in the catchment area during the year in which most students were born causes cohorts to perform 0.016 standard deviations worse on statewide tests. Finally, airborne chromium is identified as a driver of this effect: a ten percent change in ambient chromium concentrations during the first year of life causes a decrease in standardized test proficiency of 0.01 standard deviations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Boardgames pervasive in Iron Age southern Africa. • Boardgames played a vital role in education, skills development and relaxation. • Boardgames were played across class, age, and gender categories. • Meanings and names of boardgames in southern Africa different to that of other regions of the Indian Ocean. What games did the inhabitants of ancient southern Africa play to enrich their lives during the Iron Age (500–1900 CE)? We address this question by drawing from archaeological fingerprints of board games (tsoro / mufuvha) documented at farmer and forager sites in different parts of southern Africa. The typology of games and their spatial locations in the archaeology were compared with historical and contemporary gaming in selected African communities to map continuity and change in social significance temporally and spatially. Within limitations imposed by a lack of well-resolved chronologies for the material remains of board games, the comparison provided a platform to make inferences about how and why the games were played in the everyday life of Iron Age communities. Based on the strong correlation between the ethnographic and archaeological data, the conclusion of the paper is that board games were played for edutainment, skills development, gambling, and social engineering. However, this is tentative and opens possibilities for further research into the role of indigenous games in the development of ancient southern African communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]