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In Britain as elsewhere, planning systems are entering a “digital turn.” However, the emerging conversations around PlanTech in policy, industry, and research yield contrasting views about the promises of digital technology and “data-driven” decisions to enhance and embed public participation in the planning system. With faster, data-driven processes capable of engaging more people in more diverse ways, PlanTech offers to revolutionise planning systems. However, empirical evidence demonstrates low citizen trust in government and web-based technologies, democratic and participatory deficits, the complexity of the planning system and its opaque technocratic terminology, multi-layered digital divides, and other socio-technical factors that hinder effective and inclusive public consultations in planning. This article provides a preliminary, high-level research agenda for public consultations across Britain’s three nations that centres around a critical pragmatic design, deployment, and evaluation of blended/“phygital” (simultaneously physical and digital) information-rich ecologies of smart engagement. A review of selected national policy in Britain provides initial insight into the emphasis (or lack of) put on the adoption of digital tools within the planning process of each British nation. In doing so, the research sets out a conceptual model that complements existing models for participatory planning by adopting Beyon-Davies’ unified conception of information, systems, and technology. The conceptual model presented sets out seven Is of information-rich phygital ecologies and three interdependent “pillars” for smart engagement that enable one to gaze both deeply and broadly into opportunities for smart engagement through and beyond PlanTech.

Digital twins have great potential for improving urban management. However, the way that they are formulated seems to vary according to the aims of the urban management taking place. For instance, digital twins are made sophisticated and innovative when the urban manager wants to demonstrate technological prowess; they contribute to generating useful interventionist strategies if social engineering is occurring; they emphasize exploratory and collaborative mechanisms if the urban manager wants to uncover people's attitudes; and they tend to focus upon citizen engagement and mechanisms for social improvements when societal reform is the main aim. Yet those who build digital twins seldom declare their worldviews or specify why they are doing so, and this leads to two problems. Firstly, it becomes difficult to evaluate and compare different digital twins. Secondly, since urban management projects often have several contrasting aims, many researchers construct seemingly pluralistic digital twins which are, in fact, severely afflicted with inconsistency and poorly measured priorities as to what needs to be included and addressed. In order to clarify the situation, this paper comprehensively analyses the research literature to conceptualize different approaches to implementing digital twins. It then assesses three alternative, theoretical paradigms upon which a pluralistic digital twin might be grounded and evaluated, and it concludes that ''critical realism'', rather than ''post-modernism'' or ''ontological flexibility' is the most appropriate.

In Thailand, social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic came into effect halfway through the university semester with teaching moving from the classroom to online. This was a completely new paradigm for most teachers. To understand the impact of the shift, a survey of all 52 English language teachers at one respected Thai university was conducted with two main focuses. First, teachers were asked to rate the seriousness of 17 potential problems at two time points, after the first week of online teaching and several weeks later. Second, teachers were asked to give comments about these problems and about the advantages and disadvantages of online teaching. Effect size differences between the two ratings were calculated. For the qualitative data, keyword analyses were used to identify patterns in the responses, and responses with similar content were grouped. The findings show that initially teachers rated many of the problems as serious, but that they quickly found solutions such as dividing lessons into a greater number of shorter units. However, problems remained with identifying suitable stimulating activities and marking student assignments. Teachers were ambivalent about the benefits of online teaching citing practical advantages but also highlighting difficulties in achieving some English language objectives and in gauging student reactions. Directions for dealing with the issues arising from these findings are given.

Background Climate plays a key role in the life histories of tropical vertebrates. However, tropical forests are only weakly seasonal compared with temperate and boreal regions. For species with limited ability to control core body temperature, even mild climatic variation can determine major behavioural outcomes, such as foraging and predator avoidance. In tropical forests, sloths are the arboreal vertebrate attaining the greatest biomass density, but their capacity to regulate body temperature is limited, relying on behavioural adaptations to thermoregulate. Sloths are largely or strictly nocturnal, and depend on crypsis to avoid predation. The harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) is a sloth-specialist and exerts strong top-down control over its prey species. Yet the role of environmental variables on the regulation of predator–prey interactions between sloths and harpy eagles are unknown. The harpy eagle is considered Near Threatened. This motivated a comprehensive effort to reintroduce this species into parts of Mesoamerica. This effort incidentally enabled us to understand the prey profile of harpy eagles over multiple seasons. Methods Our study was conducted between 2003 and 2009 at Soberanía National Park, Panamá. Telemetered harpy eagles were seen hunting and feeding on individual prey species. For each predation event, field assistants systematically recorded the species killed. We analysed the effects of climatic conditions and vegetation phenology on the prey species profile of harpy eagles using generalised linear mixed models. Results Here we show that sloth predation by harpy eagles was negatively affected by nocturnal ambient light (i.e. bright moonshine) and positively affected by seasonally cool temperatures. We suggest that the first ensured low detectability conditions for sloths foraging at night and the second posed a thermally unsuitable climate that forced sloths to forage under riskier daylight. We showed that even moderate seasonal variation in temperature can influence the relationship between a keystone tropical forest predator and a dominant prey item. Therefore, predator–prey ecology in the tropics can be modulated by subtle changes in environmental conditions. The seasonal effects shown here suggest important demographic consequences for sloths, which are under top-down regulation from harpy eagle predation, perhaps limiting their geographic distribution at higher latitudes.

Abstract Background Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the motor neuromuscular system leading to complete paralysis and premature death. The multifactorial nature of ALS that involves both cell-autonomous and non-cell-autonomous processes contributes to the lack of effective therapies, usually targeted to a single pathogenic mechanism. RNS60, an experimental drug containing oxygenated nanobubbles generated by modified Taylor-Couette-Poiseuille flow with elevated oxygen pressure, has shown anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties in different experimental paradigms. Since RNS60 interferes with multiple cellular mechanisms known to be involved in ALS pathology, we evaluated its effect in in vitro and in vivo models of ALS. Methods Co-cultures of primary microglia/spinal neurons exposed to LPS and astrocytes/spinal neurons from SOD1G93A mice were used to examine the effect of RNS60 or normal saline (NS) on the selective motor neuron degeneration. Transgenic SOD1G93A mice were treated with RNS60 or NS (300 μl/mouse intraperitoneally every other day) starting at the disease onset and examined for disease progression as well as pathological and biochemical alterations. Results RNS60 protected motor neurons in in vitro paradigms and slowed the disease progression of C57BL/6-SOD1G93A mice through a significant protection of spinal motor neurons and neuromuscular junctions. This was mediated by the (i) activation of an antioxidant response and generation of an anti-inflammatory environment in the spinal cord; (ii) activation of the PI3K-Akt pro-survival pathway in the spinal cord and sciatic nerves; (iii) reduced demyelination of the sciatic nerves; and (iv) elevation of peripheral CD4+/Foxp3+ T regulatory cell numbers. RNS60 did not show the same effects in 129Sv-SOD1G93A mice, which are unable to activate a protective immune response. Conclusion RNS60 demonstrated significant therapeutic efficacy in C57BL/6-SOD1G93A mice by virtue of its effects on multiple disease mechanisms in motor neurons, glial cells, and peripheral immune cells. These findings, together with the excellent clinical safety profile, make RNS60 a promising candidate for ALS therapy and support further studies to unravel its molecular mechanism of action. In addition, the differences in efficacy of RNS60 in SOD1G93A mice of different strains may be relevant for identifying potential markers to predict efficacy in clinical trials.

Deception detection, especially in online communication, is a burgeoning area of research, but most previous studies have focused on English. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the applicability of English deceptive features to Thai and also examine whether there are any Thai-specific features not found in English which are associated with Thai deception in online communication. 96 Thai-language chat dialogues were analyzed with results suggesting that features identified in English deception research cannot be transferred to Thai. Two Thai-specific indicators of deception were also identified. The results have implications for theories of deception detection and for the transfer of research findings between languages.

In most current work on genre, a set of genre categories needs to be predetermined. However, there are some cases where such predetermined genres cannot be clearly identified. Popular science, for instance, is a broad register carrying several specific purposes within it, suggesting that there are several genres of popular science, but it is unclear what these genres are. This paper introduces a linguistic approach to reveal hidden genres. For 600 written popular science texts from a variety of sources and disciplines, linguistic features were analysed using a range of computer programs and a cluster analysis conducted. The analysis produced four clusters with shared linguistic features, representing text types. The association of these text types with key features, functional relations, dominant sources, and prototypical members of each cluster helps us to induce genres on the basis of communicative purposes, a traditional criterion in identifying genres. Whether the produced text types are equivalent to genres was evaluated with a test set of data. The proposed approach achieves more than 70 % accuracy. The approach appears applicable for identifying genres of popular science and has pedagogical implications.

Adaptive plasticity allows organisms to cope with environmental change, thereby increasing the population's long-term fitness. However, individual selection can only compare the fitness of individuals within each generation: if the environment changes more slowly than the generation time (i.e., a coarse-grained environment) a population will not experience selection for plasticity even if it is adaptive in the long-term. How does adaptive plasticity then evolve? One explanation is that, if competing alleles conferring different degrees of plasticity persist across multiple environments, natural selection between genetic lineages could select for adaptive plasticity (lineage selection). We show that adaptive plasticity can evolve even in the absence of such lineage selection. Instead, we propose that adaptive plasticity in coarse-grained environments evolves as a by-product of inefficient short-term natural selection: populations that rapidly evolve their phenotypes in response to selective pressures follow short-term optima, with the result that they have reduced long-term fitness across environments. Conversely, populations that accumulate limited genetic change within each environment evolve long-term adaptive plasticity even when plasticity incurs short-term costs. These results remain qualitatively similar regardless of whether we decrease the efficiency of natural selection by increasing the rate of environmental change or decreasing mutation rate, demonstrating that both factors act via the same mechanism. We demonstrate how this mechanism can be understood through the concept of learning rate. Our work shows how plastic responses that are costly in the short term, yet adaptive in the long term, can evolve as a by-product of inefficient short-term selection, without selection for plasticity at either the individual or lineage level.

Schizophrenic discourse is characterized by thought disorder, or a lack of coherence, prompting substantial research into identifying and measuring the incoherent discourse of schizophrenics. Much of this research has examined short extracts of elicited spoken data and used researcher judgments. This study examines the connectedness of naturally-occurring extensive written schizophrenic discourse using three methods of analysis: an automated analysis of cohesion, lexical cohesion analysis, and topic-based analysis focusing on propositional coherence. The results show that the schizophrenic texts are highly cohesive, especially in their use of connectives and the density of connections. The texts also show high proportions of topic shifts and a greater average distance of moves between concepts. These suggest that the topic structure of the schizophrenic texts consists predominantly of repetitive topic maintenance interspersed with short unrelated mini-topics, and it is this structure that manifests thought disorder.

This research investigates whether there are relationships between the choices of concept reiterations and interlocutors' orientations, between the choices of concept reiterations and contexts of communication, and between affective connotations of paraphrase, interlocutors' orientations and contexts of communication. The data were collected from four different contexts, namely, the Hotel, Forum, Court, and Debate corpora. The results suggested no clear relationship between interlocutors' orientations and the choices of concept reiterations but the contexts of communication were likely to influence choices of reiterations, especially in the use of repetitions and the purposeful shift of paraphrase connotations to achieve the professional goals of communication in the Hotel and Court corpora which are the contexts where interlocutors are bound by their social roles.

The languaging curriculum involves learning to strategically make use of available tools and resources to successfully do things with English for real-world purposes. In this article, we describe how languaging was implemented in a task where students communicate about a hobby of their choice on Reddit discussion forums. Over three weeks, the students learned to analyse existing posts on the Reddit forums and to apply language use strategies, tools and resources to interact successfully with other hobby enthusiasts. Data gathered from the students' learning reflections suggest that the aims of this innovative task were achieved. The students engaged in successful real-world communication, changed their attitudes towards the nature of English and English language learning, and learnt how to exploit existing examples to produce their own effective contributions. More than half of the students were still communicating on Reddit six months after the end of the course. Two key challenges were identified that require further research: the need for teachers to change their beliefs about the nature of language teaching, especially the importance of accuracy; and problems with how to assess students' successful communication.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0103606.].

The language of religious leaders expressed in their sermons characterizes the social characteristics of their groups. Over the past decades, most studies into cults specifically destructive cults and mainstream religion have mainly focused on their social-psychological characteristics with limited applicability to other religious groups. In this study, corpus-based methods were applied to the sermons of the leaders of two destructive cults (namely, Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones and Heaven's Gate led by Marshall Applewhite) and the sermons of mainstream religious groups represented by Baptist preachers to distinguish the language between dangerous and beneficial religious groups based on the patterns of key linguistic features. The methodological process includes keyness analyses (namely, keyword analysis, key semantic tag analysis, and key part-of-speech analysis) and multidimensional analysis. The results from a keyness perspective show that the destructive cult sermons promote non-religious concepts with the use of othering, intensification, and strong elaboration. For the mainstream sermons, they uphold religious concepts for life development with the use of personal involvement and moderate elaboration. The results from a text dimension perspective show that the language of destructive cults and the language of mainstream religion displayed in their sermons are both persuasive and elaborative. However, the language of destructive cults is more persuasive and elaborative than the language of mainstream religion. The findings may serve as a basis for how to recognize the potential detrimental and beneficial characteristics of religious groups based on their language.

Alzheimer's disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia in the aging population, is characterized by the presence of neuritic plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and extensive neuronal apoptosis. Neuritic plaques are mainly composed of aggregates of amyloid-β (Aβ) protein while neurofibrillary tangles are composed of the hyperphosphorylated tau protein. Despite intense investigations, no effective therapy is currently available to halt the progression of this disease. Here, we have undertaken a novel approach to attenuate apoptosis and tau phosphorylation in cultured neuronal cells and in a transgenic animal model of AD. RNS60 is a 0.9% saline solution containing oxygenated nanobubbles that is generated by subjecting normal saline to Taylor-Couette-Poiseuille (TCP) flow under elevated oxygen pressure. In our experiments, fibrillar Aβ1-42, but not the reverse peptide Aβ42-1, induced apoptosis and cell death in human SHSY5Y neuronal cells. RNS60, but not NS (normal saline), RNS10.3 (TCP-modified saline without excess oxygen) or PNS60 (saline containing excess oxygen without TCP modification), attenuated Aβ(1-42)-induced cell death. RNS60 inhibited neuronal cell death via activation of the type 1A phosphatidylinositol-3 (PI-3) kinase-Akt-BAD pathway. Furthermore, RNS60 also decreased Aβ(1-42)-induced tau phosphorylation via (PI-3 kinase-Akt)-mediated inhibition of GSK-3β. Similarly, RNS60 treatment suppressed neuronal apoptosis, attenuated Tau phosphorylation, inhibited glial activation, and reduced the burden of Aβ in the hippocampus and protected memory and learning in 5XFAD transgenic mouse model of AD. Therefore, RNS60 may be a promising pharmaceutical candidate in halting or delaying the progression of AD.

Increase of the density of dendritic spines and enhancement of synaptic transmission through ionotropic glutamate receptors are important events, leading to synaptic plasticity and eventually hippocampus-dependent spatial learning and memory formation. Here we have undertaken an innovative approach to upregulate hippocampal plasticity. RNS60 is a 0.9% saline solution containing charge-stabilized nanobubbles that are generated by subjecting normal saline to Taylor-Couette-Poiseuille (TCP) flow under elevated oxygen pressure. RNS60, but not NS (normal saline), PNS60 (saline containing a comparable level of oxygen without the TCP modification), or RNS10.3 (TCP-modified normal saline without excess oxygen), stimulated morphological plasticity and synaptic transmission via NMDA- and AMPA-sensitive calcium influx in cultured mouse hippocampal neurons. Using mRNA-based targeted gene array, real-time PCR, immunoblot, and immunofluorescence analyses, we further demonstrate that RNS60 stimulated the expression of many plasticity-associated genes in cultured hippocampal neurons. Activation of type IA, but not type IB, phosphatidylinositol-3 (PI-3) kinase by RNS60 together with abrogation of RNS60-mediated upregulation of plasticity-related proteins (NR2A and GluR1) and increase in spine density, neuronal size, and calcium influx by LY294002, a specific inhibitor of PI-3 kinase, suggest that RNS60 upregulates hippocampal plasticity via activation of PI-3 kinase. Finally, in the 5XFAD transgenic model of Alzheimer's disease (AD), RNS60 treatment upregulated expression of plasticity-related proteins PSD95 and NR2A and increased AMPA- and NMDA-dependent hippocampal calcium influx. These results describe a novel property of RNS60 in stimulating hippocampal plasticity, which may help AD and other dementias.

English language education in Thailand is rated poorly internationally and needs improvement. Research identifying the reasons for the l highlights assessment as a key concern since assessment has washback effects on learning. However, little is known about the assessment practices teachers use. This paper has three goals: to identify the assessment practices used, to identify the reasons underlying teachers' decisions about assessment, and to promote assessment practices likely to have positive washback. A survey of 329 teachers found that two-thirds of students' scores came from tests, but that all teachers used some form of continuous assessment. From interviews with 29 teachers, teachers used tests to reduce their workload and to prepare students for the national ONET exams, while using continuous assessment to motivate students and to prepare them for real-world uses of English. Based on evidence that continuous assessment is more likely to promote positive washback, 303 assessment activities designed by teachers were analyzed for potential benefits. Rating the activities on five criteria, 39 assessment activities with potential positive washback were identified, designed into attractive formats, and disseminated to teachers. Using these activities with positive washback is likely to have beneficial effects on English language education in Thailand.

In multiple sclerosis (MS) and other autoimmune diseases, the autoreactive T cells overcome the resistance provided by the regulatory T cells (Tregs) due to a decrease in the number of Foxp3-expressing Tregs. Therefore, upregulation and/or maintenance of Tregs during an autoimmune insult may have therapeutic efficacy in autoimmune diseases. Although several immunomodulatory drugs and molecules are available, most present significant side effects over long-term use. Here we have undertaken an innovative approach to upregulate Tregs and achieve immunomodulation. RNS60 is a 0.9% saline solution generated by subjecting normal saline to Taylor-Couette-Poiseuille (TCP) flow under elevated oxygen pressure. RNS60, but not NS (normal saline), RNS10.3 (TCP-modified saline without excess oxygen) and PNS60 (saline containing excess oxygen without TCP modification), was found to upregulate Foxp3 and enrich Tregs in MBP-primed T cells. Moreover, RNS60, but not NS, RNS10.3 and PNS60, inhibited the production of nitric oxide (NO) and the expression of iNOS in MBP-primed splenocytes. Incubation of the cells with an NO donor abrogated the RNS60-mediated upregulation of Foxp3. These results suggest that RNS60 boosts Tregs via suppression of NO production. Consistent to the suppressive activity of Tregs towards autoreactive T cells, RNS60, but not NS, RNS10.3, or PNS60, suppressed the differentiation of Th17 and Th1 cells and shifted the balance towards a Th2 response. Finally, RNS60 treatment exhibited immunomodulation and ameliorated adoptive transfer of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, an animal model of MS, via Tregs. These results describe a novel immunomodulatory property of RNS60 and suggest its exploration for therapeutic intervention in MS and other autoimmune disorders.

Understanding how language is used in specific contexts and the reasons for this can be helped by examining historical change in genres. In this study focusing on business communication, texts serving the same purpose of demanding payment for a debt but separated by 4,000 years are analysed. The ancient text is a Sumerian cuneiform tablet which is compared to two modern model business letters. The texts are investigated through a genre analysis focusing on functions and linguistic features and a multidimensional register analysis. Both analyses produce similar results with the main exception being the sequencing of functions. The lack of much meaningful change in business communication in the last 4,000 years is likely to be due to the dominant influence of communicative purposes in guiding how language is used.

In the test-centric Thai education system, results on national exams are often viewed as indicators of educational success. These exams use multiple-choice which can have detrimental effects on students' attitudes and learning. If school assessments also rely on multiple-choice exams, the situation would be worrying, yet there is little data available on how English language courses at Thai schools are evaluated. This paper presents the initial results of a large-scale survey of the assessment practices of several hundred Thai teachers. On average, exams and quizzes account for 64% of marks for a course, and 60% of exam scores come from multiple-choice (meaning that multiple-choice accounts for 27% of marks). Furthermore, a high proportion of teachers use some innovative and creative assessment practices, providing chances for further positive developments. To promote more positive impacts from assessment, a greater proportion of the overall scores should be assigned to innovative formative assessment.

A PhD combines experiential learning of the research process with socialisation into the research community. Studying a PhD is a highly individual experience with each student seeking and receiving different types of support from different agents. In this paper we investigate the experiences of four PhD students at a Humanities faculty at a Thai university through a series of interviews. To account for the unique nature of each student's experience, we use Individual Networks of Practice (INoPs) as the main method of analysis. The interviews were first analysed by adapting Sala-Bubaré and Castelló's (2016) model of socialisation, identifying the social agents and the content of the experience shared with each agent, and then constructing an INoP (Zappa-Hollman and Duff 2015) map to visually represent each student's social network. These INoPs served to guide a qualitative analysis of the salient issues in the interviews. The INoPs highlight the unique nature of each student's set of agents and experiences, but there are also commonalities across students showing that peers and faculty staff serve as key social agents.

Portfolios are popular in language teaching, both as a learning tool and a process-oriented assessment instrument. They require the compilation of student projects, performances, and other assignments over a semester or school year to record the growth of learning. When portfolios are used for evaluation, they are called an alternative assessment because the teacher assesses progress through the collection of student work, as opposed to basing student achievement only on scores from paper and pencil tests. Any teaching method, including portfolio-based instruction, will not be fully successful if students are not engaged in the process. This was the situation at Thailand's King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, where many undergraduate students of science and engineering saw their English classes as barely relevant and a burden. Most students were more concerned with passing the course than with learning and therefore did only the minimum work required to get a reasonable grade instead of devoting themselves to improving their English. This was in spite of the fact that their English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses utilized paper-based portfolios, allowed students to choose learning tasks and materials from the self-access center and the Internet, and encouraged them to reflect on their learning. Unfortunately, this reflection on learning was often scanty, and portfolios were submitted with uncompleted tasks and entries copied from other students. Clearly, the students were unmotivated, and the use of portfolios had little beneficial effect. In an attempt to improve the situation, the authors introduced an electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) project. While traditional portfolios are paper-based, the relatively recent inclusion of computers in education has led to the development of e-portfolios, where the coursework is typically assigned, accessed, completed, evaluated, and stored on a computer or website. In this article, the authors describe and evaluate this e-portfolio project and look specifically at the "e-pet," a special feature that keeps students motivated. (Contains 1 table.)

Contradictory tensions are apparent during the feedback given to pre-service English language teachers by trainers following their practice teaching. Trainers' beliefs may serve as a resource in dealing with these conflicting tensions. Trainers' beliefs about the feedback they provide during teaching practice conferences were elicited, and feedback on teaching practice across one full course was recorded to investigate the congruence between these beliefs and the practice of giving feedback. Framed within a dialogic approach, beliefs and practice were analyzed with a specific focus on elements of authoritativeness in the feedback discourse. Findings highlight two sets of beliefs: those based closely on trainers' personal experience or "experiential beliefs", and "received beliefs": those associated with widely-accepted progressive methodologies which trainers may be under social pressure to conform to. Experiential beliefs and practice show high levels of congruence, but received beliefs, here reflecting the social desirability of low levels of authoritativeness, are more often incongruent with practice.