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In an ever-increasingly diverse workforce, cross-cultural communication skills are essential for success regardless of job title or task. We present an engaging and customizable 30-minute activity designed to develop participants' cross-cultural communication skills by increasing awareness and sensitivity to interpersonal differences in collaborative group settings. Drawing from a multiculturalism approach to diversity, participants learn that acknowledging our differences facilitates more effective and strategic communication. We provide detailed instructions for running this exercise to meet instructors' and students' outlined learning objectives. The debriefing questions and post-lesson reflections support an environment where facilitators and participants grow. This experiential exercise suits any discipline's synchronous undergraduate, graduate, and professional classes.

This paper explores the education of prospective teachers with regard to the Theory of Didactical Situations when they engage in lesson study. We particularly focus on studying how a lesson study process oriented towards the Theory of Didactical Situations contributes to increasing prospective teachers' self-efficacy to plan and teach lessons based on such theory, reducing the gap between theory and practice. Prior to the study, we will discuss how the theoretical postulates assumed in lesson study affect crucial aspects of the process. The study is implemented with 47 prospective early childhood education teachers. We also consider another group of 47 prospective teachers that were engaged in practicum at the time the lesson study process took place. Using a quasi-experimental methodology based on a questionnaire developed ad hoc that captures the particularities of the didactic paradigm assumed, the results of our study show that both lesson study and practicum lead to a statistically significant increase in future teachers' self-efficacy to plan and teach lessons in line with the paradigm assumed. However, size effect measures show that the increase observed in the lesson study group is significantly higher, which supports the benefits of lesson study in initial teacher education. We discuss what the features of lesson study are that could be related to this increase. Finally, we sketch new lines of research connected with the benefits of lesson study versus other teacher education experiences like practicum, as well as with links between self-efficacy and knowledge growth in lesson study.

Abstract Background Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) encompasses a range of histological findings from the generally benign simple steatosis to steatohepatitis (MASH) which can progress to fibrosis and cirrhosis. Several factors, including the microbiome, may contribute to disease progression. Results Here, we demonstrate links between the presence and abundance of specific bacteria in the adipose and liver tissues, inflammatory genes, immune cell responses, and disease severity. Overall, in MASLD patients, we observed a generalized obesity-induced translocation of gut bacteria to hepatic and adipose tissues. We identified microbial patterns unique to more severely diseased tissues. Specifically, Enterococcus, Granulicatella, and Morganellaceae abundance is positively correlated with immune cell counts and inflammatory gene expression levels, and both genera are significantly enriched in MASH patients. Brevibacterium is enriched in adipose tissues of patients with liver fibrosis. Conclusion Together, these results provide further insight into the microbial factors that may be driving disease severity. Video Abstract

This study's main objective is to present bibliometric data on articles related to digital educational environments (DEEs) published in the journals indexed in Scopus database between 2003 and February 2023. The data collected from 61 articles published within the study's scope were subjected to bibliometric analysis based on six categories: number of articles and citations, most cited articles, most used keywords, most influential countries, most-important institutions, and the most important journals. This study was designed as a descriptive study and offers bibliometric network maps of the most popular papers, keywords and countries, institutions, and journals. VOS viewer was used to create network diagrams and bibliometric analyses. The bibliometric analysis showed that the most frequently used keywords were digital learning environment(s), digital educational environment. The most prolific authors related to DEE are Antón-Sancho, Vergara, Barana, and Marchisio. The results showed that DEE studies were started in 2003 and the most articles were published in 2021. This study presents a global perspective on DEEs and proposes vision for future research.

Aim. To evaluate the efficacy of oral administration of the original ademetionine (Geptral) at a dose of 1500 mg/s in patients with NAFLD at the steatosis stage and cognitive impairment within the framework of a prospective observational open non-comparative study in real clinical practice against the background of achieved lifestyle modification. Materials and methods. Thirty patients with NAFLD and cognitive impairment were examined using routine methods examination. NAFLD was diagnosed in accordance with the clinical guidelines of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. All patients met the criteria for MAFLD. Cognitive functions were assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale. After selection, patients were recommended dietary and physical activity modification in combination with oral administration of the original ademetionine at a dose of 1500 mg/day. The duration of the study was 6 months. Results. Oral administration of the original ademetionine for 6 months against the background of lifestyle modification improved cognitive functions with an increase in the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale score from 19.1 (16.3–20.1) to 27.6 (25.1–29.0; p=0.001). In addition, the study found a decrease in the severity of steatosis according to the FLI index and quantitative ultrasound. Additionally, a decrease in the Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) scores from 34 [25–39] to 19 [16–27]; p=0.000002, and 10-year fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular risk according to the SCORE2 scale from 34 [15–44] to 9 [7–13]; p=0.000002, was revealed. Conclusion. The original ademetionine as a multitarget drug for NAFLD may be useful in terms of improving cognitive functions, increasing adherence to lifestyle modification, and improving its quality and duration.

Business letters written in the 18th century are considered in the article within the independent epistolary genre. The material for the analysis was comprised of the official letters written by Privy Councillor V.N. Tatishchev during his governorship in Astrakhan and heading the Kalmyk Commission at the Board of Foreign Affairs. The documents are stored in the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. The study was conducted using the model of document genre that combines multi-level coordinated parameters, such as: “function”, “addresser”, “addressee”, “nature of the information transmitted”, “structure”, “modality”, “space”, “time”. The linguistic means of their realization are revealed. Being determined by the functions of the writing and the status relations of the addresser and the addressee, the variability of these means is noted and described. The results of the analysis have enabled the author to determine that business letters provide the addresser with the opportunity to carry out communication in different directions: vertical (with higher or lower addressees) and horizontal (with the addressees who have equal status with the addresser). They perform the informing and regulating functions, thus implementing the corresponding modality, and have a similar structure with a stable set of elements and the order of their sequence in the text. The genre specificity of the documents under study is manifested in the absence of self-nomination and mandatory reference to the addresser, in the use of a welcome address as a means of expressing the “addressee” properties, and the presence of optional elements.

The methodology of the article is based on the ideas of historical poetics by A.N. Veselovsky and M.M. Bakhtin. The author examines the reception of Shakespeare’s heritage in Russia in the last third of the 18th century. This idea is demonstrated in the analyses of the adaptation of the bourgeois drama The Tombs of Verona (L.-S. Mercier) by V.P. Pomerantsev (the first Russian interpreter of the plot of Romeo and Juliet). In this regard, the author focuses on the genre poetics of Mercier’s play and Pomerantsev’s translation in their correlation to the poetological and pragmatic factors of the epoch. Special attention is paid to the sources of the plot of Mercier’s play, thus confirming the idea of the indirect reception of Shakespeare’s heritage in Europe (and Russia) in the 18th century as well as its genre transformation. Despite the similarity of the genre of Mercier’s play and its Russian interpretation, discrepancies are revealed at the level of poetics. Mercier replaces sonnet imagery vital for Shakespeare’s play with the images familiar to his contemporaries, i. e., the elegiac intonations of E. Parny. Russian readers became acquainted with Parny’s poetry long after Pomerantsev’s translation. That’s why the translator replaced Parny’s gallant imagery with the elegiac imagery of the Russian verse of the 18th century (much more ponderous than Parny’s) as well as with the intonations of the Russian Rousseau. Mercier’s play, like most 18th-century adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, ends happily. Pomerantsev agrees with it because he perceives the genre of this plot as a bourgeois drama, not a tragedy.

The Arctic has become an area of heightened interest for many nations, with environmental issues in the region remaining a critical subject of discussion. Countries such as China, the EU, and the USA have expressed their interest in shaping the environmental agenda in the Arctic. To prevent environmental conflicts and find mutually acceptable solutions, it is essential to study the distinctive features of the environmental policies adopted by these major global players. This article presents the results of a study aimed at identifying differences in the environmental security policies embedded in the current legislation of Russia, China, the USA, and the European Union. These entities declare their fundamental interests in the Arctic and position themselves as key players in the region, making it necessary for Russia to engage with them in various capacities. The study employs a comparative analysis of the environmental policies of the selected nations. A hierarchical framework was used for comparison, analyzing the content of environmental legislation in terms of concepts, objectives, policy directions, and implementation mechanisms. The novelty of the approach lies in its consideration of the socio-cultural factors underpinning the environmental concepts that shape each nation’s environmental policy. The study uncovered significant differences in the regulatory frameworks for environmental policy across Russia, China, the USA, and the EU, largely stemming from differences in worldviews and values. However, it also revealed substantial alignment in policy directions influenced by the global environmental agenda. A key feature of Russia’s environmental policy is its emphasis on placing the individual at the center of environmental considerations, coupled with strict, scientifically grounded regulation of emissions and pollutant discharges. The findings of this study can inform the development of a negotiation framework for the Russian Federation, incorporating environmental imperatives that reflect the unique characteristics of the Arctic. This framework can support Russia’s efforts in fostering international cooperation in the region.

Compressive word formation results from the active tendency to save speech effort and, accordingly, to save linguistic means, which makes its research relevant. At the lexical level, the principle of economy is realized in constriction, truncation, semantic condensation, i.e. processes based on reduction, minimization of structures. The aim of the study is to identify and fix the manifestations of this tendency in modern Russian speech, to generalize the ways of linguistic compression as mechanisms of its representation, to establish their universality and specificity in the Russian language in the pan-Slavic context. The research material is Internet resources, dictionaries of neologisms, the Russian national corpus, the speech of young people. The material was analyzed with both general scientific (relevant material collection, observation, analysis, systematization, description, interpretation), and linguistic methods (methods of word-formation, component, contextual, comparative analysis; structural-semantic method; method of modeling the derivational basis). Among extralinguistic and linguistic reasons for active compression word production, the author points out the influence of the English language as the most important factor, acting both as a donor of short lexical units and as a translator of derivation methods and mechanisms. Among the compression phenomena in modern speech, the article considers such phenomena as borrowings, collocations, composites, clipping, derivation with zero affixation, univerbation, semantic condensation. It is revealed that form compression not only strengthens its communicative function, but also, due to the pragmatic possibilities of the compression, increases its emotional-evaluative and relational functions. The analysis of the main manifestations of form compression in modern Russian speech allows us to conclude that they are universal, but at the same time have some specific features due to the specific national derivational system.

The modification of fertile stamens into sterile staminodes has occurred independently many times in the flowering plant lineage. In the genus Aquilegia (columbine) and its closest relatives, the two stamen whorls closest to the carpels have been converted to staminodes. In Aquilegia, the only genetic analyses of staminode development have been reverse genetic approaches revealing that B-class floral identity genes are involved. A. jonesii, the only species of columbine where staminodes have reverted to fertile stamens, allows us to explore the genetic architecture of staminode development using a forward genetic approach. We performed QTL analysis using an outcrossed F2 population between A. jonesii and a horticultural variety that makes fully developed staminodes, A. coerulea 'Origami'. Our results reveal a polygenic basis for staminode loss where the two staminode whorls are under some level of independent control. We also discovered that staminode loss in A. jonesii is not complete, in which staminode-like traits sometimes occur in the inner fertile stamens, potentially representing a fading boundary of gene expression. The QTLs identified in this study provide a map to guide future reverse genetic and functional studies examining the genetic basis and evolutionary significance of this trait.