Affective Computing to Enhance E-Learning in Segregated Societies

According to UN Women, to build stronger economies, it is essential to empower women to participate fully in economic life across all sectors. Increasing women and girls’ education enhances their chances to participate in the labor market. In certain cultures, like in Saudi Arabia, women contribution to the public economy growth is very limited. According to the World Bank, less than 20 percent of the female population participate in the labor force. This low participation rate has many reasons. One of them, is the educational level and educational quality for females. Although Saudi Arabia has about thirty three universities, opportunities are still limited for women because of the restrictions of access put upon them. A mixture of local norms, traditions, social beliefs, and principles preventing women from receiving full benefits from the educational system. Gender segregation is one of the challenges that limits the women access for education. It causes a problem due to the shortage of female faculty throughout the country. To overcome this problem, male faculty are allowed to teach female students under certain regulations and following a certain method of education delivery and interaction. However, most of these methods lack face-to-face communication between the teacher and students, which lowers the interactivity level and, accordingly, the students’ engagement, and increases the need for other alternatives. The e-learning model is one of high benefit for female students in such societies. Recognizing the students’ engagement is not straightforward in the e-learning model. To measure the level of engagement, the learner’s mood or emotions should be taken into consideration to help understanding and judging the level of engagement. This paper is to investigate the relationship between emotions and engagement in the e-learning environment, and how recognizing the learner’s emotions and change the content delivery accordingly can affect the efficiency of the e-learning process. The proposed experiment alluded to herein should help to find ways to increase the engagement of the learners, hence, enhance the efficiency of the learning process and the quality of learning, which will increase the chances and opportunities for women in such societies to participate more effectively in the labor market

Measuring the Engagement of the Learner in a Controlled Environment Using Three Different Biosensors

Irrespective of the educational model, the major challenge is how to achieve maximum efficiency of the education process and keep learners engaged during learning. This paper investigates the relationship between emotions and engagement in the E-learning environment, and how recognizing the learners emotions and changing the content delivery accordingly can affect the efficiency of the E-learning process. The proposed experiment aims to identify ways to increase the engagement of the learners, hence, enhance the efficiency of the learning process and the quality of learning. A controlled experiment was conducted to investigate participants emotions using bio sensors such as eye tracker, EEG, and camera to capture facial images in different emotional states. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test and t-Test was carried out to compare the performance of the three groups and show if there was an effect of using the Affective E-learning system to improve the learners performance. Our findings support the conclusion that using bio sensors as a quantitative research tool to investigate human behaviours and measure emotions in real time can significantly enhance the efficiency of E-learning

Assessing the Effectiveness of Automated Emotion Recognition in Adults and Children for Clinical Investigation

Recent success stories in automated object or face recognition, partly fuelled by deep learning artificial neural network (ANN) architectures, has led to the advancement of biometric research platforms and, to some extent, the resurrection of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In line with this general trend, inter-disciplinary approaches have taken place to automate the recognition of emotions in adults or children for the benefit of various applications such as identification of children emotions prior to a clinical investigation. Within this context, it turns out that automating emotion recognition is far from being straight forward with several challenges arising for both science(e.g., methodology underpinned by psychology) and technology (e.g., iMotions biometric research platform). In this paper, we present a methodology, experiment and interesting findings, which raise the following research questions for the recognition of emotions and attention in humans: a) adequacy of well-established techniques such as the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), b) adequacy of state-of-the-art biometric research platforms, c) the extent to which emotional responses may be different among children or adults. Our findings and first attempts to answer some of these research questions, are all based on a mixed sample of adults and children, who took part in the experiment resulting into a statistical analysis of numerous variables. These are related with, both automatically and interactively, captured responses of participants to a sample of IAPS pictures

Examination of the factor structure of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) among British and Trinidadian adults

Much debate in schizotypal research has centred on the factor structure of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), with research variously showing higher-order dimensionality consisting of two to seven dimensions. In addition, cross-cultural support for the stability of those factors remains limited. Here, we examined the factor structure of the SPQ among British and Trinidadian adults. Participants from a White British sub-sample (n = 351) resident in the UK and from an African Caribbean sub-sample (n = 284) resident in Trinidad completed the SPQ. The higher-order factor structure of the SPQ was analysed through confirmatory factor analysis, followed by multiple-group analysis for the model of best-fit. Between-group differences for sex and ethnicity were investigated using multivariate analysis of variance in relation to the higher-order domains. The model of best-fit was the four-factor structure, which demonstrated measurement invariance across groups. Additionally, these data had an adequate fit for two alternative models: a) 3 factors and b) a modified 4-factor. The British sub-sample had significantly higher scores across all domains than the Trinidadian group, and men scored significantly higher on the disorganised domain than women. The four-factor structure received confirmatory support and, importantly, support for use with populations varying in ethnicity and culture

American skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora): an ancient remedy for today’s anxiety?

Anxiety is a common but potentially serious disorder as it can lead to somatic and social dysfunction. Orthodox anxiolytics are associated with unpleasant side-effects and dependency. American skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) is a popular herb in traditional medicine systems and the western materia medica for anxiety and related disorders. Preliminary clinical and in vitro research provides encouraging support for its potential as a safe, well-tolerated and effective alternative

Sea-quark flavor asymmetry in the nucleon from a relativistic analysis of the Drell-Yan scattering off nuclei

It is shown that accounting for the relativistic structure of the deuteron allows to explain the ratio of the Drell-Yan pair production cross-section at the low Bjorken $x$ off the deuteron and the proton. Thus, the sea quark distributions in the nucleon should be studied with accounting for the effects of the relativistic structure of the deuteron. The suggested approach reduces theoretical uncertainty in extracting the ratio $\bar u/\bar d$ from the data and it is important for the clarification of the nature of the sea quark asymmetry in the nucleon.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figures, Chiral Symmetry in Hadron and Nuclear Physics November 13-16, 2007, Osak

Model of facilitation of emotional intelligence to promote wholeness of neophyte critical care nurses in South Africa

This study was undertaken in order to develop a model of facilitation of emotional intel- ligence to promote wholeness in neophyte critical care nurses in South Africa. A theory- generative, explorative, descriptive, contextual research design was used. The model was developed utilising the four steps of theory generation as proposed by Dickoff, James, and Wiedenbach (1968), Chinn and Kramer (2011) and Walker and Avant (2011). Step one dealt with the empirical phase in which the concepts were distilled. The facilitation of inherent affective and mental resourcefulness and resilience was the main concept of the model. Step two comprised the definition and classification of central and related concepts. Step three provides a description of the model. The model operates in three phases namely the dependent phase, partially dependent phase and the independent phase. Step four entailed the description of guidelines for operationalizing the model. During the three phases of the model a new nurse who starts to work in critical care moves from a latent ability to develop an inherent affective and mental resourcefulness and resilience to a state of developing an inherent affective and mental resourcefulness and resilience. This model provides a structured framework for the facilitation of emotional intelligence (EI) to pro- mote wholeness in nurses who commence to work in critical care units

A bibliometric analysis of missed nursing care research: Current themes and way forward

Background. Missed nursing care adversely affects nurse and patient outcomes in healthcare settings. Comprehensive bibliometric overview of research output in this field is limited, which restricts knowledge of this complex phenomenon in terms of research trends, author’s productivity, and thematic focus of scientific publications. This study aims to examine publications on missed nursing care by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis. Methods. A search was performed in the Scopus database to identify 276 published studies on missed nursing care from inception to 20th February 2022. A bibliometric approach was used to comprehensively analyse retrieved publications based on trend, thematic focus, and scientific production. The R based software was used for data analysis. Results. The result from this bibliometric analysis indicates that the first study performed on the concept of missed nursing care was published in 2006. The United States of America (USA) ranked first in number of publications, and the study by Ball et al. published in 2014 was the most cited paper among the documents analysed. The results also identified names of prolific authors such as Kalisch B.J., Ausserhofer D., Willis E., Papastavrou E., Schubert M., Palese A., Simon M., and Aiken L. H. and relevant institutions in this field. Trending keywords identified included “missed nursing care,” “unfinished nursing care,” “patient safety,” and “care left undone.” In addition, thematic analysis showed emerging themes such as “neonatal intensive care unit,” “patient satisfaction,” “health resources,” “failure to maintain,” and “adverse events.” Conclusion. Findings from this study reveal a lack of bibliometric analysis in missed nursing care research. This study provides significant contribution by presenting a comprehensive overview on thematic focus, hotspots studies, and directions for future research in this field. Findings from this study can guide scholars in defining research focus and aspects of research on missed nursing care for future exploration

Non-Singlet QCD Analysis of the Structure Function F_2 in 3-Loops

First results of a non--singlet QCD analysis of the structure function $F_2(x,Q^2)$ in 3--loop order based on the non--singlet world data are presented. Correlated errors are determined and their propagation through the evolution equations is performed analytically. The value for $\alpha_s(M_Z)$ is determined to be $0.1135 +/- 0.0023/0.0026$ compatible with results from other QCD analyses. Low moments for $u_v(x)$, $d_v(x)$ and $u_v(x) - d_v(x)$ with correlated errors are calculated which may be compared with results from lattice simulations.Comment: 1 Latex file, 1 style file, 2 figures Current World average on alpha_s adde