Pour des systèmes de soins de santé viables : privilégier la robustesse plutôt que l’optimisation

peer reviewedLe concept de performance s'est progressivement imposé dans les politiques de santé. Présentée comme nécessaire et positive, elle est souvent réduite à l’efficience, qui se traduit par des politiques et des modes de gestion qui visent l’optimisation. Alors qu’elles seraient garantes de la soutenabilité de nos systèmes de soins de santé, ces pratiques les ont rendus fragiles. Un éclairage venu des sciences du vivant nous permet de mieux comprendre pourquoi. En effet, les biologistes constatent que les êtres vivants ne privilégient pas l’optimisation, mais bien la robustesse. Pour faire face aux fluctuations, un organisme robuste fonctionne avec des redondances, des gaspillages apparents, de l’hétérogénéité, des fluctuations organisées, de la lenteur et de l’hésitation. Il fonctionne de façon sous-optimale. Cet article propose une réflexion théorique et des pistes de gestion des organisations pour des systèmes de soins de santé plus robustes.3. Good health and well-being8. Decent work and economic growt

Effect of the European Union Emission Trading System on promoting industrial electrification

peer reviewedThe European Union designed the Emission Trading System (EU-ETS) aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Theoretically, this mechanism should incentivize consumers to emit less CO2 and invest in green technologies. While there is evidence that it helped reduce CO2 emissions, it is unclear whether it helped promote green investments. This paper answers such a question based on a large European industry. We demonstrate that historical EU-ETS prices have not been incentive enough for this industry to transition from gas to electricity to produce steam. Our calculations show that companies would have to pay at least 30,57% more for operational costs when using only electricity for heat generation compared to natural gas, even with the addition of EU-ETS prices. We argue that using both conventional and green technologies might be the way to proceed since such a hybrid solution can reduce energy costs by up to 1,68% and CO2 emissions by 16,23%. These savings could pay back the electric boiler's investment until the gas boiler's lifetime is terminated. Nevertheless, even with the addition of the EU-ETS cost, the operational cost of the electric boiler in 2030 is expected to be higher than gas unless electricity spot prices are controlled

The intergenerational association of epigenetic modifications between mothers and offspring, from birth to adolescence

peer reviewedEpigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation (DNAm), have an important role in human disease development, with early DNAm patterns potentially influencing health outcomes in later life. In this paper, we examine the intergenerational association of epigenetic mutation load (EML), a biomarker of epigenetic instability, identifying DNAm outliers. Using mother-child dyads from a UK-based cohort study, we examine the intergenerational association of EML at three time points: birth, childhood (mean age 7.5), and adolescence (mean age 17). We find significant associations of maternal EML with offspring EML during childhood and adolescence, while this association is absent at birth. This suggests that shared environment, rather than direct biological transmission, might be playing a larger role in this intergenerational correlation. When looking at the association between own EML, and maternal EML, with early-adulthood outcomes, results suggest that own EML predicts worse cognitive abilities later in life, while maternal EML is not directly associated to offspring’s outcomes

Zero-Knowledge Proofs from Learning Parity with Noise: Optimization, Verification, and Application

peer reviewedZero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) are cryptographic building blocks of many privacy-preserving security protocols. An important research focus in this area is the development of post-quantum ZKPs. These are ZKPs whose security is reduced to computational hardness assumptions that are assumed to be intractable even by scalable quantum computers. In this paper, we study the post-quantum ZKPs of Jain, Krenn, Pietrzak, and Tentes (Asiacrypt 2012). These are the only ZKPs for proving arbitrary binary statements whose security reduces to the Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) problem-a very conservative post-quantum hardness assumption. We make the following contributions to further develop the potential and understanding of these ZKPs. First, we optimize the efficiency of the verifier by several orders of magnitude, making this part as computationally light as that of the prover. Second, we show that the only open source implementation of these ZKPs does not implement them correctly, allowing a malicious prover to convince the verifier of false statements. Third, we formally verify for the first time the security of these (optimized) ZKPs in EasyCrypt. Fourth, we show how these ZKPs can be used to construct the first code-based ZKP of shuffle and verifiable e-voting protocol

Adaptation of quizzing in learning psychology concepts

peer reviewedBackground: In the domain of psychology, declarative concepts are a core component of the foundational knowledge that is to be learned. A promising means to enhance retention and comprehension of such concepts is to provide learners with open-ended quiz questions and corrective feedback (i.e., practice quizzing). As adapting quiz question complexity to the individual learners can increase the benefits of practice quizzing, in previous research adaptations based on the real-time process measures of cognitive load ratings and of self-assessed quizzing performance during quizzing have been developed. To date, however, it is unclear whether and, if so, why the two types of adaptation differ in their effectiveness. Aims: The main goal of the present study was to compare the two adaptation mechanisms in learning declarative psychology concepts via practice quizzing. Sample: Participants were N = 177 university students. Methods: After watching an e-lecture on new declarative psychology concepts, the learners were randomly assigned to either note-taking or to responding to quiz questions. The complexity of the quiz questions was increased either according to a preset sequence, or dependent on subjective cognitive load, self-assessed quizzing performance, or both. Results: Cognitive-load-adapted quizzing was most effective. These benefits were mediated via higher levels of knowledge whenever increases in quiz question complexity were suggested by the adaptation mechanism/took place in the preset sequence, which fostered quizzing performance, which, in turn, fostered learning outcomes. Conclusions: This study shows that simple cognitive load ratings are a promising basis for adapting practice quizzing in learning declarative psychology concepts.4. Quality educatio

The Question About the Question: Is There Any Relationship Between Formulating an Explicit Research(able) Question and Citation Impact in Engineering-Based Systematic Literature Reviews?

Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) have become essential apparatus for critical appraisal of evidence outside of the medical and healthcare profession. However, although SLRs often require a clearly stated Research Question (RQ), followed by a rigorous protocol for assuring transparency and replicability of findings, misuse has been reported. Using a sample of 400 SCOPUS-indexed engineering-based SLRs (Systematic Literature Reviews), this study investigates the citation impact of formulating an explicit RQ using both parametric and non-parametric statistical tests (p < 0.05). The results suggest a significant positive association with studies proposing a clearly stated RQ (p < 0.01), particularly within top-ranked engineering-based SLRs, suggesting that RQs enhance the clarity and focus of the research, thereby increasing visibility and citation count. Despite the findings, the evidence suggests small effect sizes (φ = 0.138) in terms of the association between RQ and class category and small effect sizes (r = 0.238) in terms of impact difference in citation count, which is no surprise given that extensive number of factors influence the prediction of citation impact.14. Quality education

Wie Sprache unser Denken prägt – und damit unsere Vorurteile

10. Reduced inequalitie

Identifying and Mapping the European Educational Research Field – Approaches, Challenges and Potentials

peer reviewedThe (European) educational research field has been and is undergoing an ever-increasing diversification, specialization and fragmentation, which can also be observed in the diversification of the themes of ECER contributions since 1998 (see Deleye et al., 2024). This is due to the field’s constituting factors of various involved (sub-)disciplines, theoretical and methodological paradigms and heterogenous research questions as well as geo- and local political changes. The diversification gets further reinforced by the strong interdependence of education and educational research with national, inter-national and intranational factors (for example educational policies, school systems, curricula or research traditions). In addition, research of and within each European country also happens substantially in the respective national language, is presented at national conferences and often only available in national databases. All the aforementioned aspects represent lines of fragmentation for the European educational research field. This however shall not imply, that this diversification represents a weakness or problem for European educational research, but rather a strength and a potential challenge. By trying to identify, map and analysis the field, this challenge may be overcome, which may strengthen the field of European educational research in regard to its international visibility and potential cross-national and cross-language collaborations. It may also entail new avenues for research and the development of new research areas. Overcoming the fragmentation of European educational research is easier said than done, as a wide variety of challenges render this endeavour rather difficult. This is where “modern” methods such as natural language processing and machine learning can be applied by processing and clustering contributions of researchers via methods such as topic modelling. The latter is a method to determine the central themes and their trends within corpora by clustering documents alongside their indicative words and word-relations (Blei et al., 2003; Griffiths et al., 2004). The initial input of this session is on the interactive web-app EduTopics: ECER (Christ et al., 2024; url: https://dipf-lis.shinyapps.io/EduTopicsECER/), which harnesses topic modelling to enable users to freely explore the central themes of ECER since 1998 as well as the relevance of those themes differentiated for the different EERA-networks, countries of affiliation and authors. On the basis of the presentation, the invited panel will discuss several questions regarding the identification, mapping and analysis of the European educational research landscape, such as: What are the benefits, challenges and potential pitfalls of trying to map the European educational research field? What is required to stem such an endeavour regarding for example technical infrastructure, scientific personnel or cross-national and cross-institutional cooperation? Which avenues of research may be opened up due to this mapping? During the discussions on the aforementioned and further questions, the participation of the audience members is highly encouraged