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Previous research has shown that many students still prefer reading and annotating academic material in print form rather than on a screen, despite the increasing availability of digital reading material provided by instructors. This study aims to investigate the mediating effect of an Annotation Tool on digital reading as notetaking and underlining can enhance the capacity to understand and memorize digital written material by reducing cognitive load and facilitates comprehension. It involved 112 first-year students of a Master's Degree Course on Educational Technologies. The results confirmed that most students prefer academic texts on paper and that the use of a social annotation tool with digital academic texts can positively change perceptions of digital reading and comprehension. A significant correlation exists between reading others’ annotations to summarize concepts, clearer content understanding, and satisfaction with digital academic texts, suggesting improvements for academic teaching practices in digital material provision.

Terminal tubal obstruction with formation hydrosalpinx results in cellular deciliation, hormone receptor depletion and intraluminal scarring. Fluid secretion, blood flow, and muscular contractility are similarly progressively affected to varying degrees. Intraluminal epithelial damage is best assessed by salpingoscopy or microsalpingoscopy and extratubal pathology by laparoscopy. Hydrosalpinges with severe intratubal pathology require excision and IVF management for fertility. Restorative salpingostomy can be considered at a single endoscopic procedure when salpingoscopy severity scale indicates mild or no significant change. The role of reproductive surgery should be considered complementary to IVF allowing infertile couples the possibility of recurring natural conception.

One of the most pressing emergent educational issues addressed by the international research literature concerns the effects that excessive or problematic smartphone use can have on students’ academic performance. An exploratory study was thus carried out with 46 students enrolled in a five-year degree program at the University of Padova (Italy) who were asked to provide their perceptions of their level of smartphone dependence and academic performance. Findings seem to indicate a significant correlation between high levels of smartphone addiction, difficulty concentrating while studying, and a frequent tendency to procrastinate on completing assigned tasks. Responses regarding smartphone distraction during in-person classes were particularly interesting: over 75% of respondents reported using their smartphones frequently in class. In order of importance, their reasons for doing so were to view and answer social media messages (61%), “boredom” due to the teaching strategies employed by some teachers in presenting lessons (41%), and the need to take a break from concentrating in class (35%). Lastly, smartphone use and its effects on academic performance involve three principal components: usage time, distraction in class, and frequency of smartphone checks. Smartphone usage time seems to have a direct negative effect on exam grades. Distraction in class is most significant for respondents who use their smartphones for messaging, while the frequency with which respondents check their smartphones is inversely proportional to their age...

Animals can adjust their behavior in response to changes in the environment when these changes can be predicted. Here the authors show the role of the cerebellum in zebrafish that change their swimming as they adjust to long-lasting changes in visual feedback

The paper presents the findings of a study of the application of a teaching model (Digital Storytelling for Competencies—DSCM) which used Digital Storytelling to encourage students enrolled in a second-cycle degree program in Social Work to reflect on their future professional competencies. Students analyzed and discussed particularly significant stories (critical incidents) drawn from real-life work situations, which they then made into short digital story videos, casting themselves as actors in a role-play process. Students’ perceptions were analyzed to determine the model’s effectiveness, particularly as regards the extent to which the process of creating the digital story was able to stimulate reflection on the most important competencies required in the students’ future working careers. The findings were highly encouraging, and the model will be tested with students and professionals together in the field.

The brain's ability to integrate sensory and motor information allows us to maintain a sense of orientation in space, a process in which head‐direction cells play a key role. While these neurons have been studied extensively in mammals, their presence and function in non‐mammalian species remain less understood. Here, I summarize the research work for my PhD thesis, where we explore the interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) in zebrafish, a lesser known brain region, using whole‐brain electron microscopy and calcium imaging techniques. We identified a novel population of unipolar neurons, with their activity exhibiting a dynamic, rotational pattern during head movements, even in the absence of sensory cues. This population mirrors the functionality of head‐direction cells observed in mammals, suggesting a conserved mechanism for spatial orientation across vertebrates. Our findings reveal the potential of the zebrafish IPN as a vertebrate model for studying ring attractor networks, a theoretical framework previously used to explain head‐direction cell activity. These results pave the way for future research on how motor and sensory signals converge in the vertebrate brain to maintain spatial orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aureobasidium pullulans is a ubiquitous polymorphic black yeast with industrial and agricultural applications. It has recently gained attention amongst cell biologists for its unconventional mode of proliferation in which multinucleate yeast cells make multiple buds within a single cell cycle. Here, we combine a chemical transformation method with genome-targeted homologous recombination to yield ∼60 transformants/μg of DNA in just 3 days. This protocol is simple, inexpensive, and requires no specialized equipment. We also describe vectors with codon-optimized green and red fluorescent proteins for A. pullulans and use these tools to explore novel cell biology. Quantitative imaging of a strain expressing cytosolic and nuclear markers showed that although the nuclear number varies considerably among cells of similar volume, total nuclear volume scales with cell volume over an impressive 70-fold size range. The protocols and tools described here expand the toolkit for A. pullulans biologists and will help researchers address the many other puzzles posed by this polyextremotolerant and morphologically plastic organism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic world initially regarded Wikipedia with misgivings for a number of reasons, including the uncertainty concerning the reliability of its content, its anonymous authorship and the fact that students often use it as an easy way to cut and paste material for their coursework. In recent years, however, university instructors' perception of Wikipedia has changed significantly: it is seen as a useful teaching resource, as well as a promising environment for learning and collaborative knowledge building. It can be used for teaching purposes by assigning students to create and edit encyclopaedia articles. Such assignments can have many benefits: in addition to improving students' understanding of content, the assignments have been shown to increase their intrinsic motivation to learn, develop digital competences and build cross-cutting skills in online communication and interaction. Lastly, in connection with universities' institutional role, editing Wikipedia can be an interesting channel for the public communication of science.

L’articolo presenta una ricerca condotta presso una Unità Sanitaria Locale all’interno di un corso di aggiornamento professionale per Infermieri di Day Surgery Multidisciplinare, basato sul metodo del Digital Storytelling. Attraverso dei focus group i partecipanti hanno raccontato storie tratte dalle loro reali esperienze professionali dove si sono trovati ad affrontare un problema particolarmente critico e, dopo averne discusso evidenziando le competenze richieste per risolverlo, le hanno trasformate in narrazioni digitali. La realizzazione dei Digital Storytelling attraverso un role-playing in contesti reali di lavoro ha fatto emergere le dimensioni emozionale, partecipativa e collaborativa. La messa a punto della sceneggiatura e dello storyboard con l’utilizzo di foto e video ha permesso di focalizzare i contesti specifici dei problemi raccontati favorendo l’esplicitazione di molta conoscenza tacita. I video sono poi divenuti disponibili per essere diffusi online come supporti formativi per l’aggiornamento professionale tra pari o per i nuovi assunti anche in altre Unità Sanitarie Locali del territorio.

Three-dimensional (3D) digital brain atlases and high-throughput brain-wide imaging techniques generate large multidimensional datasets that can be registered to a common reference frame. Generating insights from such datasets depends critically on visualization and interactive data exploration, but this a challenging task. Currently available software is dedicated to single atlases, model species or data types, and generating 3D renderings that merge anatomically registered data from diverse sources requires extensive development and programming skills. Here, we present brainrender: an open-source Python package for interactive visualization of multidimensional datasets registered to brain atlases. Brainrender facilitates the creation of complex renderings with different data types in the same visualization and enables seamless use of different atlas sources. High-quality visualizations can be used interactively and exported as high-resolution figures and animated videos. By facilitating the visualization of anatomically registered data, brainrender should accelerate the analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of brain-wide multidimensional data.

The paper presents the results of the “Learning with Wikipedia” project which involved 1200 students and 30 faculty members at the University of Padova in creating and expanding encyclopedia articles on various subject-specific topics. Teaching activities were developed which considered Wikipedia not so much as a container for Open Educational Resources, but as a true learning environment, well organized with precise rules that can stimulate instructors to adopt Open Educational Practices. Students attended workshops where they were introduced to the project’s aims, the competences expected of them, and the procedures for contributing to the encyclopedia. One of the most significant points that emerged during the project was the importance of stimulating the full set of digital competences (for example finding and evaluating information). Gaining these competences is essential for the activities’ success and for participating, now and in the future in an extended community based on OER. That's why we investigated students’ and instructors’ perceptions regarding a set of digital competences gained by working with Wikipedia. The project was also able to make students and instructors understand that writing encyclopedia articles is not a mere academic exercise, but is a Service Learning activity that benefits the entire community, and that Wikipedia should be considered as a participatory social process and not just as a means of learning subject-specific content.

The recent media interest in the topic of fake news shows that particular attention must be given to fact-checking process: each student must be educated in these skills that will be useful during his / her school curriculum and subsequently also in work and life contexts. These skills are not only technological but also “critical thinking” skills and they are made explicit above all as Information Literacy skills, that is, as the set of technical and methodological skills that enable students to know where and how to search for information online, to filter it effectively and above all, to evaluate them adequately (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). The article presents the results of an exploratory survey about their perceptions of fake news on 184 students of the third and fourth year of secondary school (16-18 years). In particular, the perceptions and the approach to the phenomenon of fake news by the girls of the boys are compared which, although presenting many similarities, differ in some fundamental aspects, such as the perception of their technological skills and the importance given to different characteristics of the source as well as their views on which institutions should deal with the problem.

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In this paper we describe an innovative approach to the design process of Smart City interventions. We tested it with participants enrolled in the Master’s Degree program in “Innovators in enterprise and public administration”: the objective of the Master was to stimulate the acquisition of technical and methodological skills useful in designing and implementing specific Smart City actions. During the "project work" phase, participants learned about a design method named SAM – Smart City Model - based on the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). We present an overview of design criteria for Smart City projects, the description of the theoretical framework of Activity Theory, and our proposal of the SAM design model. We also present some examples of student’s “projects” and a more extensive description of one case study about the full design process of an App planned using SAM, for “smart health” vaccine management and monitoring services. The App was later published and made available to the citizens and was successful in attracting thousands of users. All the participants considered the model very useful in particular because it made possible to understand the interaction and solve contradictions between different stakeholders and systems involved.

We present Stytra, a flexible, open-source software package, written in Python and designed to cover all the general requirements involved in larval zebrafish behavioral experiments. It provides timed stimulus presentation, interfacing with external devices and simultaneous real-time tracking of behavioral parameters such as position, orientation, tail and eye motion in both freely-swimming and head-restrained preparations. Stytra logs all recorded quantities, metadata, and code version in standardized formats to allow full provenance tracking, from data acquisition through analysis to publication. The package is modular and expandable for different experimental protocols and setups. Current releases can be found at https://github.com/portugueslab/stytra. We also provide complete documentation with examples for extending the package to new stimuli and hardware, as well as a schema and parts list for behavioral setups. We showcase Stytra by reproducing previously published behavioral protocols in both head-restrained and freely-swimming larvae. We also demonstrate the use of the software in the context of a calcium imaging experiment, where it interfaces with other acquisition devices. Our aims are to enable more laboratories to easily implement behavioral experiments, as well as to provide a platform for sharing stimulus protocols that permits easy reproduction of experiments and straightforward validation. Finally, we demonstrate how Stytra can serve as a platform to design behavioral experiments involving tracking or visual stimulation with other animals and provide an example integration with the DeepLabCut neural network-based tracking method.

L’articolo presenta una esperienza di didattica universitaria relativa all’acquisizione e valutazione delle competenze digitali attraverso la creazione e l’editing di voci di Wikipedia. Le competenze digitali sono declinate secondo il framework europeo DigComp 2.1. Il processo di creazione delle voci è stato monitorato nelle sue articolazioni tra contesti formali e informali di apprendimento nel tentativo di sviluppare un ambiente per la costruzione di conoscenza in grado di favorire una valutazione autentica, situata e partecipata attraverso sia gli interventi regolativi del docente e dei tutor, sia i feedback di altri utenti di Wikipedia.

A major goal in ecology is to understand how interactions among organisms influence ecosystem services. This work compares the effects of two Lepidoptera defoliators, one non-native (Hyphantria cunea) and one native (Lymantria dispar) to Europe, on the colonization of black poplar (the Populus nigra clone “Jean Pourtet”) roots by an arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiotic fungus (Funneliformis mosseae) in a pot experiment. The effects of defoliation have also been assessed on the expression of fungal and plant genes playing a role during symbiosis. Both control and defoliated poplars have shown a low level of mycorrhization. Additionally, neither the non-native nor the native insect seem to strongly affect the AM colonization, at least at the time of observation (eight days from the end of the defoliation). Concerning the gene expression analysis, our results suggest that defoliation does not influence neither the expression of genes coding for a fungal and a plant phosphate transporter nor that of a gene coding for a fungal ATPase, and that there were no differences between defoliation carried out by the non-native and the native insect.

Impairments of the dialog between excitation and inhibition (E/I) is commonly associated to neuropsychiatric disorders like autism, bipolar disorders and epilepsy. Moderate levels of hyperexcitability can lead to mild alterations of the EEG and are often associated with cognitive deficits even in the absence of overt seizures. Indeed, various testing paradigms have shown degraded performances in presence of acute or chronic non-ictal epileptiform activity. Evidences from both animal models and the clinics suggest that anomalous activity can cause cognitive deficits by transiently disrupting cortical processing, independently from the underlying etiology of the disease. Here, we will review our understanding of the influence of an abnormal EEG activity on brain computation in the context of the available clinical data and in genetic or pharmacological animal models.