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This activity guide provides scenarios, questions for further discussion, and sample activities for each of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Standards Frameworks--Learner, School Librarian, and School Library--across the four Domains--Think, Create, Share, and Grow. These engaging activities will support school librarians in their application of the AASL Standards to teach information literacy skills and to embed the inquiry process across all that they do. This collection of resources and activities is not meant to represent all inquiry methods and approaches. It is hoped that the guide will encourage discussions around the importance of these topics and ways to implement best practices.

Nowadays, digitalisation is present in all links of the product life cycle and within product design. Packaging is a critical element that affects the customer’s purchase intention. Therefore, packaging is one of the elements for which it is positive to include techniques and methods based on Industry 4.0 to obtain results from users and bring them closer to the process. The relationship between packaging and the expected quality and emotions of users is a topic that is addressed in the social axis of sustainability and involves an effort to strengthen the relationship with the user. This article studies the expected quality of nougat in terms of packaging shape and colour using ANOVA analysis. For this purpose, a survey was carried out among 122 participants in Spain and Mexico. The main conclusion is that packaging with a combination of three shapes (rectangle, square and triangle) and colours (yellow, orange and red) enhances consumers’ emotions of Admiration, Satisfaction, Pleasant Surprise, Attraction, Fascination and Joy.

The use of synthetic antibiotics to treat bacterial infections can trigger resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics. One effort to overcome this is to explore microorganisms that produce antibacterial compounds from nature. A previous study reported isolates of Bacillus sp. AM12 from mangrove soil displayed antibacterial potential based on preliminary screening of the perpendicular streak test. This study was designed to confirm the antibacterial potential of Bacillus sp. AM12 uses chemical solvent extraction. Bacillus sp. AM12 was fermented in 100 mL liquid ISP-2 sterile and shaken at 150 rpm for 7 days. The supernatant was filtered from the cell mass using Whatman paper and extracted using 100 mL of ethyl acetate solvent (1:1, v/v) twice. The filtrate was evaporated at 40ºC until a thick, clear yellowish colored extract was obtained. The thick extract was tested for antibacterial activity using the Kirby-Bauer method against two Gram positive and two Gram negative bacterial targets. Antibacterial screening showed moderate diameter zone of inhibition of 6.72 ± 0.21 mm, 6.82 ± 0.15 mm, and 6.62 ± 0.21 mm against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Streptococcus mutans FNCC 0405, and Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 70060, respectively. However, no antibacterial activity was observed against Escherichia coli ATCC 25922. Analysis of the chemical composition of ethyl acetate crude extracts using GC-MS has detected 10 different compounds, in which the 3 most dominant antibacterial compounds were Benzene, 1,2,4-Trimethyl-, Benzene, 1-ethyl-2-methyl- and 2-butoxyethyl acetate. In general, these results provide an initial description of Bacillus sp. AM12 is a potential of antibacterial producer.

The rapid digitalization of China’s healthcare system, a phenomenon that accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic, had two negative consequences for a significant portion of elderly persons in China. The first is an unfortunate practical outcome: their exclusion from many health services such as online medical appointment platforms, e-prescription requests, obtaining e-referrals, and sharing electronic medical records. The second is an emotionally debilitating identity crisis as elderly persons’ former status as knowledgeable senior mentors was replaced with social perceptions of them as helpless and ignorant souls reliant on more youthful persons for guidance and assistance. This article adopts a grounded theory to explore the phenomenon from the perception of excluded elderly persons using participatory observation and in-depth interviews of 44 elderly clients of a rural hospital in the Shandong province in eastern China. The study shows that the current focus on direct practical aspects of digital exclusion may fail to capture the impact and ancillary consequences such as a painful loss of self-esteem by the digitally excluded. As the study illustrates, the practical aspects can all be overcome through intervention by those who aid the digitally excluded but this help may exacerbate the rarely considered ancillary harms of digital exclusion. Studies of digital exclusion will make more significant contributions to our understanding of the phenomenon if they look beyond the obvious direct consequences of digital exclusion to consider possible ancillary and flow-on effects.

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Electromyograms (EMG)-based hand gesture recognition systems are a promising technology for human/machine interfaces. However, one of their main limitations is the long calibration time that is typically required to handle new users. The paper discusses and analyses the challenge of cross-subject generalization thanks to an original dataset containing the EMG signals of 14 human subjects during hand gestures. The experimental results show that, though an accurate generalization based on pooling multiple subjects is hardly achievable, it is possible to improve the cross-subject estimation by identifying a robust low-dimensional subspace for multiple subjects and aligning it to a target subject. A visualization of the subspace enables us to provide insights for the improvement of cross-subject generalization with EMG signals., info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

I discuss the investigation of heavy exotic mesons using lattice QCD static potentials and the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. I summarize selected recent results for b¯b¯qq tetraquarks, for I = 0 bottomonium and for I = 1 bottomonium.

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The enhancement of the evaporation from porous media (PM) remains a significant challenge due to complexity of liquid flow and internal morphology[1]. Nowadays, graphene coating attracts attention for improving surface performance in thermal management applications due to its anisotropic properties. This study is focused on the influence of the graphene on the PM evaporation capability using an innovative experimental technique developed at CREST. The technique utilizes a pressure decrease as a promoting force for the evaporation. In the setup Fig :1 two volumes are separated by a vacuum valve (V1) to keep them at different pressures. A porous sample is placed in one of the volumes (Vol_1). The PM is saturated with degassed pure ethanol using a precise syringe till the vapor saturation. Upon opening of the valve (V1), the vapour expands into the vacuumized second volume (Vol_2) to provide the rapid pressure decrease. The evaporation rate is calculated from measured vapor pressure stabilization with ideal gas assumption of vapour state. Stainless steel particles (spherical, Ø45µm) have been sintered under vacuum condition to form porous tablets of Ø20x 5mm with pore size 2-3 µm. Some of the porous samples have been coated with graphene using freeze-drying-coating technique [2]. Fig :2 presents the comparison of the evaporation rate from graphene-coated PM, an uncoated PM, and from a free surface as a reference. As expected, uncoated PM dramatically reduces the evaporation rate with respect to the free surface case. At the same time, coated PM shows steeper evaporation rate in comparison to uncoated one. This effect could be implemented for enhancement of porous evaporators., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In a matching market with distributional objectives, we study the existence of mechanisms that weakly improve the distributional objective (compared to a status-quo matching), and satisfy constrained efficiency, individual rationality, and strategy-proofness.

L’enseignement supérieur en Communauté française de Belgique fait face à la diversification des profils et à la massification des publics étudiants. Parallèlement, une forme de désengagement de la part des inscrit.e.s est régulièrement rapportée. En vue d’apporter des éléments de réponse à ces difficultés, une expérience de co-création de dispositif pédagogique a été mise en place, pour et avec des étudiant.e.s, en partenariat étroit avec l’équipe pédagogique. Nous en présentons le principe et les impacts observés à travers une recherche-action, au terme d’un processus d’évolution itérative de 3 ans. L’expérience a été menée dans le cadre d’un cours de physique appliquée de 1er cycle à l’Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Nous relatons les effets du processus de co-création sur trois dimensions distinctes, à savoir le dispositif de cours, les membres de l’équipe pédagogique et la cohorte des inscrit.e.s au cours., info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The Antarctic ice sheet mass loss is one of the many consequences of Global Warming. This mass loss is primarily driven by ocean warming and the subsequent acceleration of glaciers. The associated increase in iceberg and ice-shelf melt has been shown to significantly impact the Southern Ocean and the global climate. While sub-ice shelf cavities and subsequent basal melting are not represented in the models of the 5th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), neither in the models of the phase 6 (CMIP6), some studies have highlighted the importance of this largest freshwater flux. It can significantly influence ocean properties and even potentially slow down the decline of the sea ice around Antarctica. Furthermore, it could also reduce mixing between surface water and warm Circumpolar Deep Waters, thereby increasingice shelf basal melt. The existing studies neglect the contribution of the surface meltwater notably because it is considered to be negligible over the present period and could remain low in the CMIP5-based projections to 2100. However, the most recent projections based on CMIP6 suggest surface melt rates at least as high as current basal melt rates, questioning the future influence of the surface meltwater on the ocean. We use the ocean and sea-ice model NEMO-SI3 to perform a simulation where future meltwater fluxes are added into the nearest ocean grid cells in addition to iceberg and ice-shelf melt. The comparison with a reference simulation will enable to study the sensitivity of the ocean properties and ice shelf basal melt to this additional freshwater flux, and also to assess the interest of taking into account this process in projections to 2100 and beyond., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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Sub-shelf melting is the main driver of current Antarctic mass loss. However, the ocean processesgoverning ice shelf melting are not well understood and sub-shelf melt is currently themain uncertainty source within Antarctic sea level projections. Several parameterizations of differentcomplexity exist and can be used by standalone ice sheet models to link oceanic propertiesto sub-shelf melt.The various melt parameterizations already contribute significantly to the uncertainty of futuresimulations of the Antarctic ice sheet. In addition, several approaches exist to determine thetuning parameters used within the sub-shelf melt parameterizations, adding another layer of uncertainty.Furthermore, how the parameterization is integrated into the initialization procedureof the ice sheet model additionally contributes to the uncertainty of the projections.Here, we use Kori, a vertically integrated hybrid (SSA-SIA) ice sheet–ice shelf model (the successorof f.ETISh with improved initialization procedure strongly reducing the model drift), toinvestigate how the different possibilities of implementing the sub-shelf melt parameterizationsin a standalone ice sheet model contribute to the uncertainty of Antarctica’s future contributionto global mean sea level rise. In particular, the different possibilities of integrating the sub-shelfmelt parameterization into the initialization procedure of the ice sheet model are evaluated inmore detail. To minimize the feedback of different ice geometries after the initialization, a similarinitialization procedure, based on data assimilation of the ice geometry and aiming for a steadystate at the end of the initialization, is performed for all experiments., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Estimating the contribution of marine ice sheets to sea-level rise is complicated by ice grounded below sea level that is replaced by ocean water when melted. The common approach is to only consider the ice volume above floatation, defined as the volume of ice to be removed from an ice column to become afloat. With isostatic adjustment of the bedrock and external sea-level forcing that is not a result of mass changes of the ice sheet under consideration, this approach breaks down, because ice volume above floatation can be modified without actual changes in the sea-level contribution. We discuss a generalised approach for estimating the sea-level contribution from marine ice sheet models that conserves mass and consistently takes the effect of bedrock changes into account., info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Recent observations show that the Antarctic ice sheet is currently losing mass at an accelerating rate in areas subject to high sub-shelf melt rates. The resulting thinning of the floating ice shelves reduces their ability to restrain the ice flowing from the grounded ice sheet towards the ocean, hence raising the sea level by increased ice discharge. Despite a relatively good understanding of the drivers of current Antarctic mass changes, projections of the Antarctic ice sheet are associated with large uncertainties, especially under high‐emission scenarios. This uncertainty may notably be explained by unknowns in the long-term impacts of basal melting and changes in surface mass balance. Here, we use observationally-calibrated ice-sheet model projections to investigate the future trajectory of the Antarctic ice sheet until the end of the millennium related to uncertainties in the future balance between sub-shelf melting and ice discharge on the one hand, and the changing surface mass balance on the other. Our large ensemble of simulations, forced by a panel of CMIP6 climate models, suggests that the ocean will be the main driver of short-term Antarctic mass loss, triggering ice loss in the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) already during this century. Under high-emission pathways, ice-ocean interactions will result in a complete WAIS collapse, likely completed before the year 2500 CE, as well as a significant grounding-line retreat in the East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS). We show that with regional near-surface warming higher than +7.5°C, which may occur by the end of this century under unabated emission scenarios, major ice loss is expected as the increase in surface runoff outweighs the increase in snow accumulation, leading to a decrease in the mitigating role of the ice sheet surface mass balance., info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In 1995, Glendenning, Kettner, and Weber postulated the existence of some exotic kinds of compact stars resembling white dwarfs (WDs) but containing a very dense core made of strange quark matter. The surrounding layers were described by the same equation of state as for the outer crust of a neutron star. In this work, we revisit the structure of these elusive strange dwarfs (SDs) and compute their tidal deformability in full general relativity using a more realistic model for their crust, taking into account elasticity and different possible compositions. We show that SDs hidden among WD binaries could be potentially unmasked through gravitational-wave observations with future space-based detectors such as LISA., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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Gold nanorods (AuNRs) have emerged as highly promising materials for advancing biomedical in vivo applications. They exhibit two distinct Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) bands, namely transverse and longitudinal. The maximum absorption wavelength of the latter can be precisely tuned by adjusting the aspect ratio of the rods. For high aspect ratios, the absorption wavelength falls within the near-infrared (NIR) region, where minimal absorption of light by endogenous molecules enables excellent penetration into tissues. Photothermal therapy (PTT) is a promising noninvasive cancer treatment strategy exploiting the conversion of light to heat by photothermal agents for thermal ablation of cancer cells. PTT has attracted much attention due to its simple operation, short treatment duration, and minimal intrusion. AuNRs possess several qualities that make them excellent photothermal agents: high biocompatibility, long circulation times, ease in functionalization, and intense optial extinction coefficients in the NIR region. However, one limitation is their anisotropic structure that is susceptible to deformation upon laser irradiation leading to a rapid decrease of their NIR extinction and photothermal efficiency. To address this challenge, we have employed an effective approach to stabilize the rod shape, involving the use of calix[4]arene-tetradiazonium salts, which can be irreversibly and strongly grafted onto surfaces through the reduction of their diazonium groups. We have adapted this calixarene-based coating technology to fabricate ultrastable AuNRs which exhibit superior stability compared to conventional AuNRs, notably under laser irradiation., info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished