Exploring effects of foveal load and preview restrictions for single and multiple parafoveal words in Chinese reading

Two experiments are reported that used the boundary paradigm to investigate how foveal lexical processing load (high/low frequency) of a pre-target word influences parafoveal processing of upcoming target word(s) with either zero-, one-, two- or three-character, or full preview in Chinese reading. In Experiment 1, the three characters comprised a single word as the target while in Experiment 2 they formed multiple words (two or three words). Pre-target word analyses showed an effective foveal load manipulation with low frequency pre-targets being fixated for longer than high frequency pre-targets in both experiments. Both experiments showed robust preview extent effects at the target words, such that fixation times increased, and landing positions shortened dramatically with reduced preview extent. Modulatory influences of foveal load effects were obtained on both fixation times and landing positions at the target region. These effects themselves were consistent, but reduced, for parafoveal character strings comprised of multiple words relative to a single word, consistent with the MCU hypothesis (Zang, 2019). Our findings demonstrate that increased foveal load reduces the disruptive influence of restrictive parafoveal windows and reduces preview extent in relation to saccadic targeting. The current findings align at a very basic level with the Foveal Load Hypothesis (Henderson & Ferreira, 1990), though the results indicate that a more nuanced theoretical account is necessary to capture all aspects of the results in respect of Chinese reading

Bilingual Children

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Against the Grain: radical eco-social work and a global movement for land reform, ‘emancipatory agroecologies’, food sovereignty and climate justice

This article highlights the relevance of ‘genuine’ agrarian reform, ‘emancipatory agroecologies’, and food sovereignty to climate justice and radical eco-social work. It explores the connections between capitalism, the climate crisis and global food system and their interconnections with today’s global crises in care and democracy. It analyses the role and exploitation of women and the expropriation of land and resources from racialised ‘others’. The case for UK agrarian reform is discussed in relation to the monarchy and systems of kinship, inheritance and tax. Ongoing struggles for justice, equality and democracy in Peru are highlighted and the relevance of ‘genuine’ agrarian reform. It argues that La Via Campesina movement - an agrarian, trans-environmental movement that promotes global ‘peasant-to-peasant’ knowledge exchange, food sovereignty, ‘emancipatory agroecologies’, and ‘genuine’ agrarian reform – can unite land/social workers and women, globally, to demand climate justice and system change from below. This has implications for radical eco-social work

Educative mentoring: Exploring the articulation and enactment of the concept of educative mentoring with mentors and student teachers

Effective mentoring is an essential cornerstone when supporting the progress and development of teachers right from the start of their careers. Despite an abundance of initiatives intended to support this, concern remains over teacher recruitment and retention. This case study explored six mentor pairs’ (school mentor and student teacher) articulation and enactment of ‘educative mentoring’. This is where the mentor and student teacher operate within a constructivist-oriented model of mentoring, developing a partnership where the mentor and student teacher engage in a joint enquiry into the pedagogy of what is going on in the classroom; practices such as co-planning, looking at children’s work and encouraging the student teacher and mentor to justify their practice are employed. Three research questions were set: 1. What perceptions do mentors and student teachers have of mentoring and educative mentoring in particular? 2. What educative mentoring practices are enacted by mentors and student teachers during the mentoring relationship? 3. What supports the mentor relationship to be conducive to educative mentoring? Data were collected by online semi structured interviews with each mentor and student teacher. This was then followed by, for each mentor pair, the observation of a mentor meeting, a lesson delivered by the student teacher and the lesson debrief. The data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2022) Reflexive Thematic Analysis. From this analysis the following four findings were discussed further: 1. None of the participants recognised the term educative mentoring but when educative mentoring was explained to them, all the participants could give examples from practice of educative mentoring practices. 2. Educative mentoring practices that could be articulated by the participants during their interview, were observed in practice (mentor meeting or lesson debrief) as well as practices that had not been articulated. 3. The relational aspects of mentoring, dominated both the mentors’ and student teachers’ perceptions of mentoring but this element of mentoring appeared to be more important to student teachers than their mentors. 4. The characteristics and experiences of the mentor pairs and ‘mentorability’ of the student teacher, did appear to influence the enactment of educative mentoring practices. The findings suggest that educative mentoring is one way mentoring can be strengthened by the establishment of collaborative reciprocity between the mentor and student teacher. The following facilitate this: adopting the student teacher into the school community, mentors that can justify their pedagogy and develop a pedagogical relationship with the student teacher and develop a bi focal lens. A future longitudinal study working with mentors as they develop these and their enactment of educative mentoring is recommended

HAPS Reference Architecture Series: HAPS Advantages in an Era of Satellite Connectivity

HAPS offer an economical way to support a range of use cases, including greenfield connectivity in areas where there are no terrestrial networks and filling in gaps in cellular coverage. (These gaps are known as “white spots” and offer additional challenges by being typically small and geographically non-contiguous areas.) HAPS can typically provide connectivity of between 50 and 100 Mbps per beam, with a peak of 200 Mbps. As a result, each beam can support ~2,000 concurrent voice calls. HAPS can support automotive-related, public safety and agricultural use cases, as well as other commercial services. Automotive use cases include emergency calls, the remote unlocking of shared cars, the provision of safety-related traffic information, such as road hazard warnings, vehicle software updates and in-car entertainment. HAPS can also connect various environmental sensors to provide early warnings of natural disasters, while agricultural use cases include crops and soil health monitoring, geo-fencing (to detect movement into and out of the farm) and livestock tracking. In the aftermath of a disaster, HAPS can help affected communities overcome terrestrial communication blackouts. By enabling swift and efficient communication, HAPS can enhance situational awareness, support search and rescue efforts and aid in the recovery and rebuilding process. HAPS can also extend coverage out to sea, supporting tourism and recreation, offshore energy, mineral extraction, shipping and other parts of the marine economy

An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of R&D Expenditures and Climate Change on Wheat Productivity: Evidence from China, India, and Pakistan

This study examines how research and development (R&D) expenditures, temperature fluctuations, and rainfall variability influenced wheat productivity in China, India, and Pakistan from 1996 to 2018. Drawing on data from FAOSTAT, the Pakistan Economic Survey, and World Development Indicators, we employ Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) models to explore short- and long-run dynamics. Our findings indicate that R&D investments do not exert a significant short-run effect but play a pivotal role in boosting wheat yields over the long run. Specifically, a 1% increase in R&D expenditure correlates with a 10% rise in wheat productivity across the three countries, although the returns vary—6% in China, 17% in India, and 12% in Pakistan—due in part to differences in innovation adoption and infrastructure. Additionally, a 1% temperature rise is associated with a 4% decrease in long-run yield, while variability in rainfall disrupts sowing schedules and reduces water availability during critical growth stages, further constraining productivity. These findings underscore that while climate factors pose significant risks to wheat yields, sustained investments in agricultural R&D and improved resource management are essential for enhancing food security in South Asia

Spectatorship of Medieval Nubian Paintings: a Cross-cultural Eye Movement Study at the Archaeological Site of Old Dongola, Sudan

Our understanding of how visitors’ cultural backgrounds shape their visual engagement with archaeological heritage remains relatively limited. The present study explores the effect of visitors’ cultural backgrounds on visual inspection. Forty-eight Sudanese and 19 Western visitors of the Monastery on Kom H at the Old Dongola archaeological site (Sudan) were asked to view 17 medieval Nubian wall paintings while their eye movements were being recorded. Sudanese participants maintained a broader focus of attention than Western participants when viewing paintings, which marked a greater likelihood of looking at the painting context. In contrast, Western participants focused more on the human figures and their attributes. Taken together, these findings support the hypothesis that cultural background shapes viewing. The results are discussed in terms of development of inclusive strategies that facilitate visitors’ engagement with artefacts present at archaeological sites

EEG and EMG Induced Pain-Sensitive Learning Controller forRobotic Knee Rehabilitation Using Deep Learning

Knee pain is a problem of common interest for its increasing prevalence in adult population. It can severely impair mobility and diminish the quality of life of affected individuals. Traditional physiotherapy depends heavily on the expertise of the therapists and is often costly and sometimesinaccessible to many patients. Robotic rehabilitation, under this circumstance, is analternative solution for personalized rehabilitation therapy to these patients.Thisstudyaims at classifying knee pain-levels from the acquired EEG and EMG signals of experimental subjects using an extended Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, and also proposes a novel learning controller that learns the speed-setting of the motors depending on the degree of the classified pain-levels in knee-bending exercises. A complete stand-alone robotic physiotherapeutic system is developed to undertake knee-bending exercises on patients suffering from knee pains. The proposed system learns the pain-levels of experimental subjects at different angular position of knee bending, stores them in the matrix of a Learning controller, and utilizes the learnt experience to modulate motor speeds at different angular knee-bending for the same subject. The proposed system involves 2 classifiers, one to determine subjective intension for left/right leg selection for physiotherapy, and the other to classify pain-levels into 11 classes during knee-bending using P-1000 event related potential and EMG signals. The proposed LSTM-based classifier achieves an accuracy of 95.37% ± 2.53% in knee pain-level classification.The original contribution of the paper includes: i) extension of LSTM classifier architecture by one novel attention module, ii) inclusion of a learning controller with its thorough stability analysis, iii) design and development of the complete stand-alone robotic rehabilitative system for automatic physiotherapy. Feedback taken from healthy people with mild knee pain and clinically designated arthritic patients confirms the superiority of the new proposal over the conventional physiotherapy with respect to individual liking, convenience, trustworthiness and safety

Lattice Calculation of Short-Range Contributions to Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay π−→π+ee\pi^-\to\pi^+ ee at Physical Pion Mass

Neutrinoless double-beta ($0\nu\beta\beta$) decays provide an excellent probe for determining whether neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana fermions. The short-range matrix elements associated with the $\pi^- \rightarrow \pi^+ ee$ process contribute at leading order in the $0\nu\beta\beta$ decay channel $nn \to ppee$ through pion exchange between nucleons. However, current lattice calculations show notable discrepancies in predicting these short-range contributions. To address this issue, we perform a lattice QCD calculation of the $\pi^- \rightarrow \pi^+ ee$ matrix elements using domain wall fermion ensembles at the physical pion mass generated by the RBC/UKQCD Collaboration. To mitigate contamination from around‑the‑world effects, we develop a new method to reconstruct and subtract them directly from lattice data. We then perform a nonperturbative renormalization using the RI/SMOM approach in $(\gamma_\mu,\gamma_\mu)$ and (\slashed{q},\slashed{q}) schemes. Compared with previous studies, this work reduces the uncertainties in the matrix elements and provides an independent cross-check that helps to reconcile the discrepancies among previous lattice calculations