7,823 research outputs found
Gamification Elements in the Process of Ukrainian Language Training of Pedagogy Specialists
The article studies the problem of using gamification elements in the process of training future preschool and primary school teachers on the example of the methodology of teaching Ukrainian Language for Professional Purposes. The necessity of improving the methodology of teaching the language to students of different age groups while taking into account the main educational trends and public demand has been substantiated. According to the goal, the essence of the "gamification" concept has been defined regarding the modern education sector. The peculiarities of using gamification, which have a great impact on the effectiveness of teaching students at pedagogical institutions of higher education, have been determined.
It is emphasized that the growth of the number of game means in the methodology of teaching Ukrainian Language for Professional Purposes is not always directly proportional to the increase of success. Since gamification is impossible without using information and communications technology, consideration of the factor of appropriate technological support is necessary. The age factor manifests itself rather in the information and technological skills and abilities of certain age groups than the effectiveness of completed tasks on the condition of unhindered mastery of the technology. In the process of gamification, the element of novelty has a significant impact, as well as the temporal and motivational dependence of the interest of the performers on the duration or algorithmization of the tasks. The psychological factor is manifested through gender, which substantiates the inefficiency of using gamification with elements of competition or open ranking of results for female audience. In the context of training pedagogy specialists, the process of gamification during the study of a certain discipline has a dual purpose: increasing the motivation and therefore the effectiveness of training, formation of necessary competencies of future teachers; mastering completed gamified tasks as possible ways and means of teaching the Ukrainian language in future professional activity.
Based on the analysis of the information space of the problem, a system of tasks with gamification elements has been developed and adapted to the content of the Ukrainian Language for Professional Purposes academic discipline
More Than Machines?
We know that robots are just machines. Why then do we often talk about them as if they were alive? Laura Voss explores this fascinating phenomenon, providing a rich insight into practices of animacy (and inanimacy) attribution to robot technology: from science-fiction to robotics R&D, from science communication to media discourse, and from the theoretical perspectives of STS to the cognitive sciences. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, and backed by a wealth of empirical material, Voss shows how scientists, engineers, journalists - and everyone else - can face the challenge of robot technology appearing »a little bit alive« with a reflexive and yet pragmatic stance
Identification and Functional Assessment of Novel Neuromuscular Disease-Causing Genes
Inherited neuromuscular diseases comprise a highly heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by the impairment of the neural structures or motor unit components responsible for the generation of movement.
While as single gene-associated disorder the majority of them are rare, taken together their estimated prevalence reaches 1 â 3 cases / 1000 individuals. Due to their elevated morbidity and mortality, they represent a significant health burden for the affected individuals, their families, and the healthcare systems. Moreover, their clinical and genetic heterogeneity makes their diagnosis a long and complex process, which often requires specialized diagnostic procedures and poses a challenge in about half of the cases. However, thanks to decreasing costs and increased availability of next-generation sequencing technologies, the last years had witnessed a rise in the number of novel genes associated to neuromuscular disorders.
In this study, we identified three novel neuromuscular disease-causing genes: PIEZO2, whose biallelic loss-of-function mutations cause distal arthrogryposis with impaired proprioception and touch; VAMP1, whose biallelic loss-of-function mutations cause a novel presynaptic congenital myasthenic syndrome; CAPRIN1, whose specific p.Pro512Leu mutation causes a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by ataxia and muscle weakness.
For PIEZO2, we identified biallelic loss-of-function mutations using exome sequencing, SNPchip-based linkage analysis, DNA microarray, and Sanger sequencing in ten affected individuals of four independent families showing arthrogryposis, hypotonia, respiratory insufficiency at birth, scoliosis, and delayed motor development. This phenotype is clearly distinct from distal arthrogryposis with ocular anomalies which characterize the autosomal dominant distal arthrogryposis 3 (DA3), distal arthrogryposis 5 (DA5), and Marden-Walker syndrome (MWKS). While these disorders are caused by heterozygous gain-of-function mutations in PIEZO2, the novel reported mutations result in the loss of PIEZO2, since they lead to nonsense-mediated mRNA decay in patient-derived fibroblast cell lines. PIEZO2 is a mechanosensitive ion channel playing a major role in light-touch sensation and proprioception. Mice ubiquitously depleted of PIEZO2 die postnatally because of respiratory distress, while individuals lacking PIEZO2 develop a neuromuscular disorder, likely due to the loss of proprioception inputs in muscles.
For VAMP1, we identified biallelic loss-of-function mutations using exome or genome sequencing in two pairs of siblings from two independent families affected by a novel congenital myasthenic syndrome. Electrodiagnostic examination showed severely low compound muscle action potentials and presynaptic impairment. The two described homozygous mutations are a frameshift and a missense mutation of a highly conserved residue, therefore are likely to result in the loss of VAMP1 function. Indeed, the phenotype is resembled by VAMP1lew/lew mice, which carry a homozygous VAMP1 truncating mutation and show neurophysiological features of presynaptic impairment.
For CAPRIN1, we identified the identical de novo c.1535C>T (p.Pro512Leu) missense variant using trio exome sequencing in two unrelated individuals displaying early-onset ataxia, dysarthria, cognitive decline and muscle weakness. This mutation causes the substitution of a highly conserved residue and in silico tools predict an increase in the protein aggregation propensity. Overexpression of CAPRIN1-P512L caused the formation of insoluble ubiquitinated aggregates, sequestrating proteins associated with neurodegenerative disorders, such as ATXN2, GEMIN5, SNRNP200, and SNCA. Upon differentiation in cortical neurons of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines where the CAPRIN1-P512L was introduced via CRISPR/Cas9, reduced neuronal activity and altered stress granules dynamics were observed in the lines harboring the mutation. Moreover, nano-differential scanning fluorimetry revealed that CAPRIN1-P512L adopts an extended conformation, and fluorescence microscopy demonstrated that RNA greatly enhances its aggregation in vitro.
Taken together, this study associates: (1) biallelic loss-of-function mutations in PIEZO2 with the autosomal recessive distal arthrogryposis with impaired proprioception and touch; (2) biallelic loss-of-function mutations in VAMP1 with an autosomal recessive presynaptic congenital myasthenic syndrome; (3) a recurrent de novo p.Pro512Leu mutation of CAPRIN1 with a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by ataxia and muscle weakness
The Failure of Market Efficiency
Recent years have witnessed the near total triumph of market efficiency as a regulatory goal. Policymakers regularly proclaim their devotion to ensuring efficient capital markets. Courts use market efficiency as a guiding light for crafting legal doctrine. And scholars have explored in great depth the mechanisms of market efficiency and the role of law in promoting it. There is strong evidence that, at least on some metrics, our capital markets are indeed more efficient than they have ever been. But the pursuit of efficiency has come at a cost. By focusing our attention narrowly on economic efficiency concernsâsuch as competition, friction, and transaction costsâwe have lost sight of other, deeper values within our economic system, including wider conceptions of duty, fairness, and morality. And while regulators sometimes pay lip service to these values, they often treat them as merely a subset of efficiency: the best way to treat investors fairly, to promote equality, and to prevent immoral, exploitative behavior, in this view, is simply to create an efficient market. We have seen the consequences of this emphasis play out in spectacular fashion in the last decade. New market structures and technologiesâfrom special purpose acquisition companies to social-media oriented trading apps to cryptocurrenciesâhave emerged to eliminate barriers to trade and compete with institutional incumbents. These strategies may well lead to more efficient markets insomuch as they facilitate access to capital, but they also have the side effect of placing unsophisticated individuals into complex contractual arrangements with sophisticated market actors. The result is an âefficientâ market, but one with steep moral and social costs. This Article examines the limits of market efficiency as a regulatory goal and suggests a set of structural and substantive reforms aimed at better balancing efficiency with the other goals of markets. It concludes that regulators, courts, and scholars alike need to adopt a more comprehensive understanding of the proper ends of market regulation, one that emphasizes the purpose and spirit of finance over the false promise of efficiency
Essays in Ńomputational macroeconomics and public finance
This dissertation applies advanced and novel computational tools to two major classes of economic simulations â large-scale, multi-region overlapping generations (OLG) models and models of lifetime consumption optimization. Chapters one and two develop large-scale, global OLG models to simulate, respectively, the future of automation and consequences of major corporate tax reform. Chapters three and four utilize The Fiscal Analyzer (TFA), a lifetime consumption smoothing algorithm, to estimate lifetime marginal tax rates of American workers and evaluate the impact of the Tax Cuts and Job Act (TCJA) on residents of red and blue states
Tourism and heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone
Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) uses an ethnographic lens to explore the dissonances associated with the commodification of Chornobyl's heritage.
The book considers the role of the guides as experience brokers, focusing on the synergy between tourists and guides in the performance of heritage interpretation. Banaszkiewicz proposes to perceive tour guides as important actors in the bottom-up construction of heritage discourse contributing to more inclusive and participatory approach to heritage management. Demonstrating that the CEZ has been going through a dynamic transformation into a mass tourism attraction, the book offers a critical reflection on heritagisation as a meaning-making process in which the resources of the past are interpreted, negotiated, and recognised as a valuable legacy. Applying the concepts of dissonant heritage to describe the heterogeneous character of the CEZ, the book broadens the interpretative scope of dark tourism which takes on a new dimension in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone argues that post-disaster sites such as Chornobyl can teach us a great deal about the importance of preserving cultural and natural heritage for future generations. The book will be of interest to academics and students who are engaged in the study of heritage, tourism, memory, disasters and Eastern Europe
Interdisciplinarity as a political instrument of governance and its consequences for doctoral training
UK educational policies exploit interdisciplinarity as a marketing tool in a competitive educational world by building images of prosperous futures for society, the economy, and universities. Following this narrative, interdisciplinary science is promoted as superior to disciplinary forms of research and requires the training of future researchers accordingly, with interdisciplinary doctoral education becoming more established in universities.
This emphasis on the growth of interdisciplinary science polarises scholarsâ views on the role of academic research between the production of knowledge on the one hand and knowledge as an economic resource at the other end of the spectrum. This research asks: what is the rationale behind the perceived value of interdisciplinary research and training, and how does it affect graduate studentsâ experiences of their PhD?
Based on a practice theory perspective for its suitability in generating insights into how universityâs social life is organised, reproduced and transformed, the doctorate is conceptualised as sets of interconnected practices that are observable as they happen. This current study, therefore, comprised two stages of data collection and analysis; the examination of documents to elucidate educational policy practices and an educational ethnography of an interdisciplinary doctoral programme.
This study found interdisciplinary doctoral training is hindered by the lack of role models and positive social relationships, which are crucial to the way interdisciplinary students learn. Furthermore, it is argued that interdisciplinarity is sometimes applied to research as a label to fit with fundersâ requirements. Specifically, in this case, medical optical imaging is best seen as an interdiscipline as it does not exhibit true interdisciplinary integration.
Further insights show that while interdisciplinarity is promoted in policy around promises and expectations for a better future, it is in tension with how it is organisationally embedded in higher education. These insights form the basis for a list of practical recommendations for institutions. Overall, interdisciplinary doctoral training was observed to present students with difficulties and to leave policy concerns unaddressed
The Death of the Legal Subject
The law is often engaged in prediction. In the calculation of tort damages, for example, a judge will consider what the tort victimâs likely future earnings would have been, but for their particular injury. Similarly, when considering injunctive relief, a judge will assess whether the plaintiff is likely to suffer irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction is not granted. And for the purposes of a child custody evaluation, a judge will consider which parent will provide an environment that is in the best interests of the child.
Relative to other areas of law, criminal law is oversaturated with prediction. Almost every decision node in the criminal justice system demands a prediction of individual behavior: does the accused present a flight risk, or a danger to the public (pre-trial detention); is the defendant likely to recidivate (sentencing); and will the defendant successfully reenter society (parole)? Increasingly, these predictions are made by algorithms, many of which display racial bias, and are hidden from public view. Existing scholarship has focused on de-biasing and disclosing algorithmic models, but this Article argues that even a transparent and unbiased algorithm may undermine the epistemic legitimacy of a judicial decision.
Law has historically generated truth claims through discursive and dialogic practices, using shared linguistic tools, in an environment characterized by proximity and reciprocity. In contrast, the truth claims of data science are generated from data processing of such scale and complexity that it is not commensurable with, or reversible to, human reasoning. Data science excludes the individual from the production of knowledge about themselves on the basis that âunmediatedâ behavioral data (not self-reported or otherwise subject to conscious manipulation by the data subject) offers unrivaled predictive accuracy. Accordingly, data science discounts the first-person view of reality that has traditionally underwritten legal processes of truth-making, such as individual testimony.
As judges turn to algorithms to guide their decision making, knowledge about the legal subject is increasingly algorithmically produced. Statistical predictions about the legal subject displace qualitative knowledge about their intentions, motivations, and moral capabilities. The reasons why a particular defendant might refrain from recidivism, for example, become less important than the statistical features they share with historical recidivists. This displacement of individual knowledge with algorithmic predictions diminishes the participation of the legal subject in the epistemic processes that determine their fundamental liberties. This produces the death of the legal subject, or the emergence of new, algorithmic practices of signification that no longer require the input of the underlying individual
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