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Purpose: This paper aims to explore the potential of implementing an action competence teaching model as a framework for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) in higher education. The paper seeks to draw insights from the students on the potential of this teaching model. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a quantitative research design in exploring the potential of an action competence teaching model. This study used self-report measures to obtain insights into the objective of the study. Findings: The action competence teaching model was seen as useful in equipping students with knowledge about a problem, confidence and willingness to act. However, some issues like the design of the projects, teamwork and instructional practices were identified and discussed. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to implement an action competence teaching model to help draw insights from students on its potential. This paper documents certain aspects of action competence that require attention before being implemented in higher education. This information so far lacking in scientific literature contributes to ongoing discussions on SDGs while unveiling strengths and weaknesses to be considered.

The nanoLED, an electroluminescent device utilizing quantum dots (QDs), is expected to be a promising candidate for the next‐generation display. This paper presents a newly developed QD protection technology for cadmium‐free nanoLEDs that enables simultaneous achievement of high‐efficiency electroluminescence (EL) and long lifetime. The device which was prototyped by applying ZnSeTe blue QDs to an emissive layer demonstrated a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 21.0% and a luminance half‐lifetime (LT50) of 128,000 hours at 100 nits. These results indicate that cadmium‐free nanoLEDs can meet the requirements for display application in terms of both EL efficiency and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across three pre-registered studies (n = 221 4-9-year olds, 51% female; 218 parents, 80% female; working- and middle-class backgrounds; data collected during 2019-2021) conducted in the United States (Studies 1-2; 74% White) and China (Study 3; 100% Asian), we document the emergence of a preference for "strivers." Beginning at age 7, strivers (who work really hard) were favored over naturals (who are really smart) in both cultures (R 2 ranging .03-.11). We explored several lay beliefs surrounding this preference. Beliefs about outcomes and the controllability of effort predicted the striver preference: Children who expected strivers to be more successful than naturals and believed effort was more controllable than talent preferred strivers more. Implications of the striver preference in education and beyond are discussed., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Emergency remote teaching of listening comprehension is a challenge requiring rethinking of the delivery methods and use of technologies. The paper presents an approach to teaching listening comprehension remotely to students of translating and interpreting for whom this skill will be crucial in their future profession. The aim of the study was to examine the impact of using YouTube videos with captions in listening comprehension lessons on the students' listening skills and their confidence in foreign language use. A standard questionnaire was used to record their learning experience. In spite of being taught remotely, students improved in listening comprehension and profited from being able to consider their individual needs during listening assignments. They used captions in comprehension difficulties similar to those in real life, such as strong accents, fast speech, and unknown words. Positive correlation was identified between the use of captions and students' performance in listening tests. It appears captions have a potential to help improve in listening, recognizing accents, segmenting connected speech, and acquiring new vocabulary.

Large-scale assessments are rich sources of data that can inform a diverse range of research questions related to educational policy and practice. For this reason, datasets from large-scale assessments are available to enable secondary analysts to replicate and extend published reports of assessment results. These datasets include multiple imputed values for proficiency, known as "plausible values." Plausible values enable the analysis of achievement in large-scale assessment data with complete-case statistical methods such as t-tests implemented in readily-available statistical software. However, researchers are often challenged by the complex and unfamiliar nature of plausible values, large-scale assessments, and their datasets. Misunderstandings and misuses of plausible values may therefore arise. The aims of this paper are to explain what plausible values are, why plausible values are used in large-scale assessments, and how plausible values should be used in secondary analysis of the data. Also provided are answers to secondary researchers' frequently asked questions about the use of plausible values in analysis gathered by the authors during their experience advising secondary users of these databases.

As the application of visual-spatial skills in academic disciplines, vocational fields and daily life is becoming more and more prominent, it is of great theoretical and practical significance how to make use of big data and artificial intelligence technology to conduct research on the relationship between visual-spatial skills and students' grades. This paper explores and analyses from the perspective of artificial intelligence, combining students' visual-spatial skills and students' specific attribute characteristics to construct an expert system, which defines the prediction of academic performance as a classification problem corresponding to the five categories of excellent, good, moderate, passing, and weak, respectively, and based on which a deep neural network-based classification prediction model for students' performance is designed. The experimental results show that visual-spatial skills plays an important role in the professional learning of science and engineering students, while the classification model designed in this paper has high accuracy in the grade prediction process. This paper not only helps to fill the gaps in the current research field, but is also expected to provide scientific basis for educational practice and promote the development of the education field in a more intelligent and personalized direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is intended to assess all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to ensure equity and inclusion. This paper explores the extent to which equity and inclusion are achieved for students with disability through NAPLAN reporting. Document analysis of publicly accessible NAPLAN reports, technical reports, handbooks and protocols was conducted to evaluate how this cohort is represented in NAPLAN reports. This paper demonstrates the paucity of NAPLAN reporting about students with disability. It highlights opportunities for NAPLAN data from this cohort to be reported and used to inform educational decisions at all levels (teachers, schools, systems and parents) for students with disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction, we set the stage for a collection of papers from the Co-constructing Mathematics Motivation in Primary Education–A Longitudinal Study in Six European Countries Project (MATHMot for short), an international study aiming to identify the factors that shape the development of motivation in mathematics from a comparative perspective in primary education. Students' motivation, performance, academic emotions, and subject-related identity and agency are observed across six countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Portugal, and Serbia. MATHMot builds on the belief that one of the main goals of mathematics teaching should be children's long-term motivation for learning the subject, which in turn supports students in striving for exemplary achievement in mathematics. This special section attempts to observe students' mathematics motivation in early grades and how different contributions from the classroom, home or the student's individual characteristics shed light on its development and adjacent concepts like academic emotions and math-related identity and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and defends the counter-hegemonic methods applied to the investigation of a high-profile national policy for Early Education and Care (ECCE) in Ireland. The policy, the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) seeks to ensure the full inclusion and meaningful participation of children with disabilities in mainstream, state funded ECCE. It makes a significant contribution to data and debate on how research about inclusion can become inclusion in the context of policy evaluation. The design of the policy evaluation included surveys, in depth interviews and qualitative case studies of pre-schools and children supported by AIM which were deliberately designed to be counter-hegemonic through the recruitment of practitioners as co-researchers (as expert representatives within a feminised workforce), and the use of a participative method of elicitation that sough the perspectives and lived experiences of inclusion among fourteen children supported by AIM. This method was multi-modal mapping. With a focus on these counter-hegemonic elements, the paper poses questions about how the approach was counterhegemonic in terms of its theoretical underpinning, practical approach, and outcomes. Thematic analysis of the data collected by practitioner researchers for the child case studies showed that the approach did achieve counter-hegemony through the achievement of redistribution, representation, and recognition in both the enactment of the research, and in the reporting of children's lived experience in the study as a whole. However, the extent of counter-hegemony achieved was limited when practitioner researchers were unable to deploy the multi-modal mapping method because of limited time, or because the child was not a speaker of English or was as yet, non-speaking. In a context where policy makers have a preference for positivist and rationalist approaches to evaluating the impact of policies, we assert that research about policies for inclusion, should be enacted as inclusion and social justice through the deliberate deployment of participatory and counter-hegemonic methods. We also assert that multi-modal mapping holds particular promise for researching the lived experience of inclusion and participation from the perspective of children and argue that more work needs to be done on developing these methods so that they are effective with all children, including those who are non-speaking. Finally, we posit that Fraser's triune model of social justice can be applied as a benchmark for designing and evaluating counter-hegemonic modii and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an account of recognition and its relation to knowledge. One important observation is that while 'know' is a stative verb, 'recognize' is an achievement verb. A second is that 'recognize' is knowledge entailing, both when combined with a complementizer phrase and when combined with a noun phrase. The behavior of the latter kind of construction is particularly subtle and is the main focus of this paper. This paper ends with an interesting puzzle about object recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the modeling and design work of the sluice gate project, this paper proposes an automatic generation template of the sluice gate project with customized semantics and project layout scheme, aiming at realizing the rapid assembling of all kinds of components of the sluice gate project. In the construction process, this paper first starts from basic parametric modeling and proposes constraints as the basis of modeling. Subsequently, a template library framework is developed based on the constraints to ensure that the generated templates have a high degree of standardization and consistency. Finally, an efficient and flexible template library is successfully constructed by using the customized classes and functions of Revit API, which provides powerful technical support for the modeling and design work of sluice gate engineering. This achievement helps to promote the informationization and intelligent development of the water conservancy engineering industry, and its versatility and scalability also make it have a wide range of application prospects in other water conservancy engineering fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fractional reduced differential transform method is a finite iterative method based on infinite fractional expansions. The obtained result is the approximation of the real value. Currently, there are few reports on the approximate error and applicable condition. In this paper, we study the factors related to the approximate errors according to the fractional expansions. Our research shows that the approximate errors relate not only to fractional order but also to time t, and that they increase rapidly with time t. This method can only be applied within a certain time range, and the time range is relevant to fractional order and fractional expansions. We can ascertain this time range according to the absolute error and the relative error. Many obtained achievements may be incorrect if the applicable conditions are not satisfied. Some examples presented in this paper verify our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender disparity in science and mathematics performance is being researched internationally. In a complex education system, like Pakistan, studying the difference in isolation may not generate holistic understanding. Therefore, this paper investigates changes in trends of performance in Science and Mathematics for both genders across public and private schools. Data were gathered from a nationwide sample of elementary grades students (n=15,391) using SATs/MATS. Independent t-test and two-way-ANOVA were employed to analyse data. Results revealed that girls outperformed boys in Science (p<0.01) while no gender differences in performance were observed in Mathematics. Gender and school systems demonstrated significant interaction effect only in mathematics, unveiling that girls perform better in public schools while this difference diminished in the private school system. The results show implications for employing gender-fair policies and practices in science and mathematics education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent primary development in criminology is a growing recognition that there has been Western domination in knowledge production and dissemination. The imbalance of knowledge in criminology is a significant weakness of the discipline. Prominent scholars have called for the decolonisation of criminological knowledge to correct this bias. Asian criminology and Southern criminology are the latest developments and promising forces in decolonising criminology (Liu 2018; Moosavi 2018). One of Asian criminology’s exceptional contributions to the current decolonisation movement is its significant theoretical achievements. This paper reviews theoretical efforts in Asian criminology and the theoretical innovation of the theoretical works, particularly those developed by Liu (Liu 2014; 2016; 2017; 2021a; 2022; 2023). It shows how theory development in criminology can gain insights from observations based on Asian contexts. The paper provides an update on these developments and their contributions to the reconstruction of criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on an educational policy initiative taken by the New Labour Government in England in the 1990s-2000s to extend parental choice in publicly funded school education, and to widen social access to different educational approaches. As such, the policy which led to the opening of a Steiner Academy School in Herefordshire contained elements of educational diversity and inclusion, a degree of parental choice that had not been considered previously, and an extending of social access to different and distinctive educational approaches. For example, in the case of the Steiner Academy Hereford, the National Curriculum for schools in England was set aside in favour of the Steiner Waldorf curriculum framework. The paper seeks to set out the main features of the negotiation that led up to the state funding of Steiner education in England, along with an exploration of the processes, compromises, achievements and setbacks that were encountered along the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exclusionary school discipline is one of the primary ways that schools address student behavior. Existing scholarship has focused on examining the implications of exclusionary school discipline for two sets of outcomes: academic achievement and future juvenile and criminal legal involvement. However, these two areas of scholarship are largely treated as separate. In this paper, we bridge these two research areas by drawing on scholarship examining the negative educational consequences of police contact for youth. Specifically, we formally test the proposition that the association between school suspension in childhood and adolescent academic achievement is mediated by police contact experienced in early adolescence. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we find support for this hypothesis: Early adolescent police contact explains approximately 30% of the association between school suspension in childhood and adolescent GPA. By relying on exclusionary school discipline, our results suggest that schools are setting the stage for youth to become involved in the criminal legal system, which, in turn, hinders future academic achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Remote Sensing is the property of Editorial Office of Journal of Remote Sensing & Science Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The learning process can be conceptualized as a dynamic system constantly evolving and adapting in response to a variety of stimuli and inputs. This paper presents a novel approach to competency-based assessment that integrates a dynamic assignment design of personalized activities with the aid of a 3D matrix array structure. This structure, named Topic, Activity, and Competency (TAC) cuboid, provides a detailed view of the student's progress, enabling the design of tailored curricular strategies to facilitate the development of competencies. Personalized activities serve as control inputs that adapt to each learner's state, driving a feedforward that promotes proactive improvement. An automation process becomes necessary to cope with the increased data volume from the TAC cuboid and the information complexity. The concept model registers TAC cuboid information, enabling a dynamic analysis to forward an adequate workload when required to facilitate students' achievement of their expected mathematical competencies. Additionally, the paper discusses the initial application of these models in an educational role-playing game, demonstrating their effectiveness in a gamified learning environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe the history of logical investigations at the University of Poznań. The organisational structures within the discipline as well as the outstanding logicians and their achievements are presented. Connections with the Lviv–Warsaw School are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The size and number of global threats to humanity's at least cultural survival on the very small blue planet of Earth is growing. Exponential population growth and additionally exponential growth of all kinds of consumption have led to the planet's limits finally being exceeded in the final quarter of the last century. Meanwhile this growth has already probably generated irreversible changes in the world which have brought or will bring the climate very soon beyond "tipping points" leading to "runaway effects", endangering mankind or at least its cultural achievements. Science and education need to provide pathways for survival and the design of a sustainable future, and thereby replace having to deal with short-term and small problems by tackling these global threats. This paper discusses these issues, underlines the significance of global studies and outlines approaches to the design of a trans-disciplinary global sustainability science curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this journal, Sciffer et al. (Large-scale Assessments in Education 10:1–22, 2022), hereafter SP&M, conclude that school socioeconomic compositional (SEC) or school socioeconomic status (school-SES) effects in Australia are substantial and substantively important for research and policy. This paper demonstrates that these claims are unwarranted. Their SEC estimates are much larger than estimates from comparable studies and a metastudy. Despite plausible theoretical reasons and empirical evidence, SP&M do not consider that school academic composition is a significant predictor of student achievement independent of SEC. SEC effects are confounded by academic composition and are typically trivial when considering academic composition. The second part of this paper compares SP&M's estimates with analysis of the same data, from the Australian National Assessments in Performance—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). In a model corresponding to SP&M analyses comprising demographics, SES, school-SES, and student-level prior achievement, the effects of school-SES are small, with standardized effects mostly less than 0.10. With the addition of academic composition measured by school-level prior achievement, school-SES effects are effectively zero. In contrast, academic composition has significant, albeit small, impacts on student achievement. Therefore, contrary to SP&M's (2022) conclusion, school-SES effects on student achievement in NAPLAN are negligible, whereas school-level prior achievement has small effects. That is not to say that school-SES is always irrelevant, but any assessment of its importance must consider both student- and school-level prior achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

V. S. Naipaul's novel A House for Mr. Biswas depicts the peculiar phenomenon of the protagonist Biswas's lifelong pursuit of "a house". This paper uses the method of Ethical Literary Criticism to explore the reasons Biswas pursued "a house" throughout his entire life, which reveals the close relationship between Biswas's pursuit of "a house" and the exploration of "identity". This paper argues that Biswas tried to establish his ethical identity as a son, son-in-law, husband, and father by obtaining a house in order to realize his existential value and meaning in life. In this sense, the ethical significance of space is also revealed in the novel by revealing the relationship between "house" and "identity". By focusing on spatial ethics, this paper emphasizes that the "house" in the novel is not only a house, but also has the ethical values of "independence", "personal dignity", "life achievement", and "responsibility and obligation" in the essential sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a contrastive genre analysis of rhetorical structures of linguistic research articles written in English and Vietnamese. The quantitative method was employed with data from a corpus of 35 English and 35 Vietnamese research articles randomly selected from internationally and Vietnamese reputable journals of linguistics published in the five-year period from 2015 to 2019. The rhetorical model of research articles in Applied Linguistics, as suggested by Pho (2008), was applied as a framework to analyse the corpus of this study. Findings reveal some similarities and differences in the structure of English and Vietnamese research articles. Generally, the macro-structure of Vietnamese articles is basically similar to that of English articles. However, in English articles, there are often more parts than in Vietnamese ones, and the discussion tends to be separated into a single section. The findings of this study can shed some light on the path of graduate students and novice scholars, especially Vietnamese researchers, who strive to publish their scientific achievements in reputable journals so that they will be accepted as new dwellers of the linguistic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger study examining the effects of Computer- Assisted Language Learning (CALL) on secondary school students' achievement in learning English pronunciation, which was carried out in December 2016 in Kenya. The paper seeks to determine the difference in English language pronunciation achievement between two groups of secondary school students in Gucha subcounty, Kenya: those taught using CALL and those taught using the traditional method. The content taught was the same, and while the experimental group was exposed to CALL method, the control group was taught through the traditional method. The two groups were tested prior to the implementation of CALL treatment. The findings revealed that CALL positively affects students' achievement in English pronunciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of organisational culture in supporting organisational outcomes is well documented in the further education (FE) sector within the UK. The benefits of a strong and unifying culture are recognised as having a positive impact on staff and students. However, a cultural institutional dichotomy has been acknowledged between the business and educational needs of colleges within the FE sector since the advent of incorporation in 1993. This paper utilised an interpretive, hermeneutical approach to analyse the perceptions of principals, middle leaders and teachers, within three general further education colleges (GFECs) in England to determine if that dichotomy exists in their current operating environment. The paper concludes that while there are elements of a clash of business and education ideals, general further education college (GFEC) culture has moved beyond the narrative of being corporate and driven solely by the concept of performativity. The article contributes to the ongoing debate on FE purpose and establishes the importance of aligning macro and subcultures into a set of professional working practices within GFECs to support positive student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, public procurement goals have expanded from obtaining free competition and lowest prices to achieving objectives of “horizontal” policies that take into account ecological and social aspects. However, the Tinbergen Rule states that one instrument should be matched with one goal, while using one instrument for achieving multiple goals would undermine its effectiveness. In this paper, we will examine whether implementation of “horizontal” public procurement policies related to green public procurement, socially responsible public procurement and the promotion of micro, small and medium enterprises ’ participation affect achievement of the “primary” public procurement goal of free competition. Our study is based on empirical data on more than 65,000 public procurements carried out in Slovenia during the period 2016-2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The North-South gap of China has widened in recent decades. • This paper focused on the North-South industrial transfer and its impact on emissions. • The North-South transfer aggravated the imbalance of carbon emissions across regions in China. • The spillover effect is the dominant path behind the impact of the transfer. In recent years, the gap between the north and the south of China has been expanding, showing a decreasing proportion of value-added and an increasing proportion of carbon emissions in the north of China, and vice versa in the south of China. Based on the most recent inter-provincial input-output table of China in 2012 and 2017, this paper focused on the North-South industrial transfer of manufacturing, quantified its impact on regional carbon emissions, and decomposed the path of impacts. The results suggest that the North-South industrial transfers of China during 2012-2017 indeed aggravated the imbalance of carbon emissions in the north and the south of China. Further explorations of path decompositions show that the spillover effect through production linkages is the major path where industrial transfer influences regional carbon emissions, particularly in the north of China. The results provide insightful policy implications for the achievement of carbon emissions reduction targets in China as well as the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this scientific paper is to identify and test some of the factors that affect the proper management of microfinance institutions in Kosovo. The management of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in the modern economy is very important and for this reason, special attention is paid, as the results of MFIs depend on the way they are managed and on the performance they have. The analysis period in this study includes the time from 2014 to 2019, while the source of data was: AMIK, CBK, and KSA. For the realization of this scientific study, we have used a comprehensive methodology, which includes the narrative method, the method of analysis, as well as the econometric method, through the multivariate regression model. In the framework of this paper, importance has been paid to staff empowerment and capacity building, which we have addressed as an important factor in achieving the success of MFIs. The results of the study clearly show that the empowerment of staff's staff has a positive impact on the achievement of results and the success of MFIs because it helps staff make more flexible decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing education does not only involve years of schooling, quality matters! This paper aims at providing better data on schooling with a focus on learning outcomes. It provides the largest dataset on learning outcomes, years of schooling and learning-adjusted year of schooling (LAYS) with comparable data between 1970 and 2020. The quantity dimension is measured by years of schooling and uses the latest data from Barro and Lee (J Dev Econ 104:184–198, 2013), while the quality dimension is taken from linking standardized, psychometrically robust international achievement tests and hybrid tests. The data are available for more than 120 countries between 1970 and 2020. Several findings can be highlighted. A global convergence on both learning outcomes and enrollment has occurred since 1970, but a breakdown can be found after 1990. A very low number of countries perform better after 2000 regarding the quality of schooling, while most countries have a stable level of learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the formidable challenges in spatial infrared dim target detection, this paper introduces an advanced detection approach based on the refinement of the YOLOv8 algorithm. In contrast to the conventional YOLOv8, our method achieves remarkable improvements in detection accuracy through several novel strategies. Notably, by incorporating a deformable convolutional module into the YOLOv8 backbone network, our method effectively captures more intricate image features, laying a solid foundation for subsequent feature fusion and detection head predictions. Furthermore, a dedicated small target detection layer, built upon the original model, significantly enhances the model's capability in recognizing infrared small targets, thereby boosting overall detection performance. Additionally, we utilize the WIoU-v3 as the localization regression loss function, effectively reducing sensitivity to positional errors and leveraging the advantages of multi-attention mechanisms. To enrich the quantity and quality of the spatial infrared dim target dataset, we employ image enhancement techniques to augment the original dataset. Extensive experiments demonstrate the exceptional performance of our method. Specifically, our approach achieves a precision of 95.6%, a recall rate of 94.7%, and a mean average precision (mAP) exceeding 97.4%, representing substantial improvements over the traditional YOLOv8 algorithm. Moreover, our detection speed reaches 59 frames/s, satisfying the requirements for real-time detection. This achievement not only validates the efficacy and superiority of our algorithm in spatial infrared dim target detection, but also offers novel insights and methodologies for research and applications in related fields, holding immense potential for future applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the group consensus problem of second-order multi-agent systems (MAS) under asynchronous denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Asynchronous DoS attacks involve the interruption of certain communication links, allowing the MAS to be reimagined as a switching system with a persistent dwell time (PDT). The agents in each group can be divided into three types, which are inter-act agents, intra-act agents with zero in-degree, and other agents. Then, according to the properties of the different agents, suitable agents are pinned. By leveraging the concepts of switching topology and the PDT, a suitable event-triggered control protocol is designed, along with the establishment of conditions to ensure the group consensus of the MAS. Moreover, through the construction of topology-dependent Lyapunov functions, the achievement of group consensus within the MAS under asynchronous DoS attacks is demonstrated. Subsequently, a numerical example is presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1950s, invasive prenatal diagnostics have played an integral role in perinatal management. However, its significance extends beyond detecting genetic abnormalities. This paper comprehensively reviews the indications for amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling. Additionally, it examines various methods of genomic, infectious, and biochemical analysis, with a particular emphasis on the achievements of the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sought to delineate how English media frame Kazakhstan. We employed co-occurrence network and sentiment analysis across 130 newspaper pieces published in 2022 and 2023. The results showed that the news in the UK and Qatar often associated Kazakhstan with Russia and China, and also referred to it as a Muslim country, which until the events of January 2022 was considered a peaceful and quiet country. Among the prevailing terms, there were "Kazakhstan," "country," "Tokayev," "Russia," and "protest". Kazakhstan was represented as a country ruled by an influential leader (Tokayev), maintaining diplomatic relations with countries in Europe and Asia. Kazakhstan's image suffered due to the violent crackdown on protests during the January events and accusations of supporting Russia to circumvent sanctions, which the government denies. However, the January events awakened a wave of foreign media interest in Kazakhstan, which gradually subsided over time. The sentiment analysis unearthed that the peak of positive sentiment coincided with events such as scientific achievements, cultural successes and progressive changes, while the decline was characterized by coverage of problems within the country facing serious challenges, including worker safety issues, political suppression, economic instability and questions about the legitimacy of elections. Resultantly, a rather ambivalent portrayal emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Empresa y Humanismo is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, S.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most outcome studies for children and young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviour have focused on sexual recidivism as their primary outcome measure. Relatively little is known about broader life outcomes for children displaying such behaviours, nor about the processes involved with longer-term developmental success or failure. This paper examines long-term life course outcomes for 69 adults in the UK who presented with abusive sexual behaviour as children. Between 10 and 20 years after their childhood sexual behaviour problems, few in the sample had sexually reoffended, but general life course outcomes were much less positive. A range of individual, relational and social/environmental factors appeared to be associated with successful and unsuccessful outcomes. Successful outcomes were associated with stable partner relationships, wider supportive relationships, and educational opportunity and achievement. The findings highlight the importance of broad-based, developmental interventions in assisting those with childhood sexual behaviour problems to live successfully. The findings outlined in this paper support a move away from a traditional focus on clinical programmes of "sex offence specific work" with young people towards more developmental approaches that focus actively on wider individual, relational, and socio-environmental factors associated with desistance and resilient life outcomes. This includes, but is not restricted to, interventions that are future-oriented and that promote the skills necessary for the development of supportive personal and intimate partner relationships. The importance of wider health promotion, general wellbeing and educational success is also emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Derecho Privado (0123-4366) is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia, Departmento de Derecho Civil and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In high-performance sport, an athlete's ability to overcome setbacks and sustain their pursuit of long-term goals is essential for success. Grit (i.e., passion and perseverance over long-terms) has been linked to success in a variety of domains but is often critiqued for its limited predictive utility when compared to other psychological variables including self-control, conscientiousness, and mental toughness. The purpose of this study was to examine whether grit predicted important athlete outcomes (i.e., various measures of sport performance and athlete well-being) beyond other determinants of success. Data from 214 collegiate student-athletes (111 women, 103 men; M age  = 21.02, SD = 2.26) from Western Canadian universities were analysed. When predicting performance, the addition of the grit subscales (i.e., consistency of interests, perseverance of effort, adaptability to situations) explained an additional 11% of variance (R 2  = 0.37, F[7, 203] = 7.16, p < .001) beyond self-control, conscientiousness, and mental toughness in subjective sport performance perceptions; however, grit did not add unique variance when entered into models predicting athlete goal achievement perceptions or highest level of competition. When predicting well-being, addition of the grit subscales added 18% of unique variance (R 2  = 0.43, F[7, 203] = 21.43, p < .001) beyond other determinants of success in eudaimonic well-being, and 5% (R 2  = 0.17, F[7, 203] = 6.95, p < .001) in satisfaction with sport, but did not add any unique variance to the model predicting mood. The partial support of the predictive utility of grit illustrates the complexity of forecasting success in sport and offers evidence that grit should continue to be studied as a motivational disposition in the domain of sport., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Crown Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Rehabilitation clinicians strive to encourage children's sustained effort within challenging practice conditions. Effort influences intervention success, yet it is rarely defined or measured. Effort can be conflated with individual factors, such as motivation and engagement, that might influence it. Contextual factors that likely impact children's effort, such as practice conditions and therapeutic interactions, are generally under-described. Defining, describing, and measuring effort and its influencers is necessary to enhance understanding of differences in rehabilitation intervention outcomes across individuals and contexts and to support the development of personalized precision rehabilitation approaches. This narrative review describes effort conceptualization in rehabilitation, particularly in relation to intensity, engagement, and participation nomenclature. The review outlines individual and contextual factors that may influence children's effort in rehabilitation and describes potential next steps for effort description and measurement. Subsequent work should aim to identify factors that can be targeted in clinical practice to promote and sustain children's effort in the rehabilitation process, thereby individualizing interventions and potentially improving their effectiveness. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: Effort as it relates to rehabilitation is confusingly described and infrequently measured. Engagement, involvement, intensity, and participation are terms alluding to effort. Child-specific and therapy-specific factors, alone and in combination, may influence children's effort. Clearer conceptualization of effort and the factors that influence it will support personalization of interventions. Better measurement will enhance knowledge about relationships between effort and therapeutic outcomes., (© 2023 The Author. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Mac Keith Press.)

This study examines the substantive impact of educational reforms on school and classroom organization worldwide, noting that many reforms have been more rhetorical than practical in enhancing educational quality. It highlights the crucial role of school principals in driving changes to improve student learning, despite the challenges of implementing reforms that have historically not led to significant increases in student achievement. Focusing on the General Education Quality Improvement Programme (GEQIP) in Ethiopia as a case study, this research aims to assess the extent of reform implementation across schools by identifying variations in the level of implementation. Through a quantitative approach using school principal surveys, the study employs a range of methodological strategies--including principal component analysis (PCA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), hierarchical cluster analysis, and K-means cluster analysis--to develop scales and indicators that classify schools into high or low categories of policy implementation. The findings reveal a partial and uneven implementation of GEQIP across Ethiopian schools, with notable disparities in reform adoption levels. This paper concludes by discussing the effectiveness of the methodologies used to categorize schools based on reform implementation and the implications of these findings for the successful execution of educational reforms in Ethiopia and similarly situated contexts. The study underscores the necessity of devising targeted strategies to assist principals and schools in fully achieving the goals of educational reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the number of countries experiencing a deterioration in food security has been increasing to the detriment of the healthy development of their people. China has made significant achievements in safeguarding food security, but only some studies have comprehensively summarized China's important initiatives and successful experiences in protecting food security since the 1960s. In this paper, we use qualitative and quantitative methods to determine the food security indicator system and observe the development of China's food security from 1961 to 2019 to provide a reference for countries threatened by hunger and malnutrition to get out of the predicament. First, 199 pieces of literature were subjected to three-level coding and saturation test using Nvivo software to preliminarily establish an indicator system for measuring China's food security, which consists of two categories: food chain and external environment, five subsystems: food supply, food circulation, food consumption, international factors, and domestic factors, as well as 12 specific indicators. Subsequently, the entropy weight coefficient and hierarchical analysis methods are used to calculate two different indicator weights. Monte Carlo simulation compares the uncertainty of the indicator weights calculated by the two methods. We found that the uncertainty of the indicator weights determined by the hierarchical analysis method is much higher than that of the entropy coefficient method, so the indicator weights determined by the entropy coefficient method are chosen. Based on the formation of the food security indicator system, the obstacle degree test was carried out for each indicator. We found that the average wage of urban employees before 2015 was the main obstacle to China's food security. However, the population kept growing after 2015, which became the main obstacle to China's food security. Secondly, the evolution characteristics of the overall level of China's food security and the subsystems from 1961 to 2019 were analyzed individually. We found that the overall level of China's food security has been continuously improving. However, the subsystems still have hidden dangers, and the most prominent one is the food consumption subsystem, whose composite index has been continuously decreasing and has become the main factor undermining China's food security. The scientific construction of China's food security indicator system will help to identify and warn of hidden food security problems promptly and, at the same time, will help to summarize and promote China's successful experience in safeguarding food security. Food security is the foundation of agricultural development, and ensuring food security significantly impacts national security, social stability, people's livelihoods, and health. A scientifically constructed indicator system for China's food security can help identify and alert potential food security risks. Based on accurate indicator data and analysis results, more effective food security policies and measures can be formulated, ultimately promoting the sustainable development of the gain industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of the concept of sustainable development, the Olympic Games have become a vehicle to demonstrate and promote the principles and practices of sustainability. The aim of this paper is to explain and evaluate how the application of sustainable development in the context of the Summer Olympic Games has evolved. Two processes have been influential in this change: first, the institutional expectations of the International Olympic Committee have encouraged greater responsibility towards the creation of legacies by potential host cities through the IOC Charter, the Olympic Agenda 2020, and the Olympic Agenda 2020+5; and second, the context and inventiveness of host cities has created new perspectives on sustainability to secure the event and raise its global profile. This paper will focus on the sustainability benchmarks established in London 2012 and evaluate whether these have been continued or extended in the subsequent editions of the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro (2016), Tokyo (2021) and Paris (2024). The changing discourses reveal the tensions between the IOC's agendas for the event, the motivations of the host cities and the realities of delivery in changing socio-economic and political circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational outcomes for children are of the utmost importance since they form the foundation of education systems worldwide. Children's learning outcomes have been adversely affected by natural and human disasters since their inception. This paper employs a scoping review approach to investigate the influence of environmental shocks and child labour on children's educational outcomes. Numerous empirical studies have been screened in this study to determine how environmental shocks and child labour influence children's educational outcomes. This present study is the most recent research to examine the influence of environmental shocks and child labour on children's educational outcomes. This study found that environmental shocks (death, climate variability, flooding, and hurricanes) are positively associated with child labour and negatively related to children's learning outcomes, while child labour (farming, domestic chores, fishing, and hawking) has a negative influence on children's educational outcomes. This study also found that the interaction effect of environmental shocks and child labour has detrimental impacts on children's learning outcomes. Available literature has shown that research on the influence of environmental shocks and child labour on children's education and environmental shocks on child labour is still growing. More studies are needed on the influence of other kinds of environmental shocks and child labour on children's educational outcomes as well as the influence of environmental shocks on child labour, particularly on the African continent. This is because there is a dearth of literature despite the fact that they are susceptible to environmental shocks since they are located in the tropics and other areas habitually unprotected from life-threatening weather events, which reduce their per capita income and increase child labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the models developed by probabilistic safety analyses (PSA) and in their applications associated with nuclear power plants (NPPs), the risk importance of a particular feature can be, most generally, divided into two categories: importance with respect to the risk-increase potential and importance with respect to the risk-decrease potential. A representative measure of the first category is risk achievement worth (RAW), while a representative measure of the second category is risk reduction worth (RRW). The present paper discusses the use of RAW and RRW in achieving safe design and points out some implications of their mutual dependency on the selection of a risk-reduction strategy. A simple example is provided to illustrate the differences between the two basic strategies and point out to the main issues and conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The goal of the author is to investigate a slightly obscure topic: the practice of interwar military justice in Hungary and its related questions, with an emphasis on matters concerning the peculiarities on how to implement them. The bill - which came into effect in 1930 - was born amidst uncommon historical conditions, since the Trianon Peace Treaty basically degraded Hungary into a quasi-numb entity. It is without a doubt that the decade-long consolidation - and its achievements - that came after can be regarded as one of the most prominently successful periods of the era's political history. The historical pressure, the necessity of being able to defend ourselves along with the importance of national security demanded that our army remained intact, despite the prohibitions that surrounded its existence. This called for ensuring that the legal environment was modernized enough to be capable of supporting this goal. The system of regulations inherited from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was subjected to scrutiny and as a result ended up as a state-of-the art framework that even surpassed the European standards it aimed to match. This paper, putting emphasis on the most important dogmatic junctions, will further review these regulations - substantive or procedural contents alike -. After a brief diversion towards taking a glimpse into the historical situation, we will introduce the system of sanctions and punishments pertaining to military personnel, and proceed with the regulations related to their implementation, which in turn will offer a glimpse into the contemporary philosophy that surrounded military justice and procedure. In accordance, further regulations containing provisions regarding infrastructure, personnel, accommodation, and institution security in general would emerge. The author of the article provides a summary of the most important current relevant legal provisions. It touches upon the military justice system and its subsystems, introduces the more substantive procedural rules, and concludes with an argument on practical implementation. It will also raise the theoretical question on a future independent regulation which would take place in accordance with the reforms of the Hungarian military and the national strategy on defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]