Assessment of seawater quality: Do public perceptions of seawater quality match indications given by macroalgae?

Determination of seawater quality is an essential activity in coastal areas especially in ones that attract bathers. This study aims to investigate whether the Ecological Quality Status (EQS) of seawater in bathing areas in the Maltese Islands differs across sites. The study also aims to investigate the correlation between public perceptions and objective measures of seawater quality as well as factors affecting perception of seawater quality. Another objective of this study is to investigate the public’s knowledge about macroalgae and opinion on macroalgae. The EQS of seawater in six coastal sites in the Maltese Islands is investigated using the EEI-c method of Orfanidis, Panayotidis and Ugland (2011) by assessing the presence and abundance of macroalgae. Stakeholder perceptions of environmental quality are assessed by polling the opinions of 198 questionnaire respondents in the same study sites. Statistical analysis is used to analyse the data from the questionnaires and the data from the macroalgal fieldworks. The results show that the EQS values differ across the study sites with St George’s Bay scoring lowest and Dwejra scoring highest, with subjective scores given by stakeholders generally being higher than objective assessments based on macroalgal populations, even though there is a correlation between the two. Nitrate levels in seawater do not differ significantly across sites. Stakeholder opinions on seawater quality and on educational activities do not differ with age, gender, level of education, nationality, and bathing frequency. Conversely, seawater quality rating scores are affected by respondents’ preference of bathing site and coastal area type (whether they preferred a rocky coast or a sandy beach). xv The study shows that using macroalgae for rapid assessment of environmental quality is an approach that can give reliable results in the Maltese Islands. Given that it has been calibrated with stakeholder perceptions and other indicators, this approach may be used to inform beach management strategies regarding seawater quality. The public’s opinions may be used to inform educational initiatives to raise awareness of the importance of such habitats amongst other educational activities (since the majority of the respondents wish to see more educational activities on general environmental issues at the coastal areas)

Germling culture and molecular analysis of evasive micro-filamentous green algae growing in the Maltese islands (central Mediterranean)

Acknowledgements This research was partially funded by the ENDEAVOUR Scholarship Scheme (Malta)- Group B – National Funds and by the Fusion R&I Research Excellence Programme through the Malta Council for Science and Technology. The study was also supported by the University of Malta, the Environment and Resources Authority (Malta), the Total Foundation (Paris) and the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland pooling initiative (MASTS), the latter funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. Thanks are due to Akira F. Peters for germling isolation and to Eleni Kytinou for diving assistance.Peer reviewedPostprin

Percepción de desempeño docente y satisfacción académica en estudiantes de Psicología de la Universidad Continental en tiempos de pandemia, Huancayo

En esta investigación el propósito fue “Determinar la relación que existe entre la percepción del desempeño docente y satisfacción académica en estudiantes de la Escuela de Psicología de la Universidad Continental, Huancayo”. Se realizo una investigación con el diseño no experimental del alcance descriptivo – correlacional, en una población de 29 educandos, a la vez se usó cuestionarios de escala Likert de las variables desempeño docente y satisfacción académica. Se obtuvo como resultado que “existe relación entre las variables y a su vez existe relación entre las dimensiones del desempeño docente y la variable satisfacción académica y con respecto al tema descriptivo se obtuvo que el nivel que predomina en el desempeño docente es el nivel alto con el 100% y en la variable satisfacción académica es el nivel alto con el 97%”. Se concluye que la percepción de los estudiantes universitarios es adecuada y se ajusta la relación entre las variables en estudio

RESILIENCIA EN ESTUDIANTES DE SECUNDARIA VÍCTIMAS Y NO VÍCTIMAS DE BULLYING DE DOS INSTITUCIONES EDUCATIVAS DE SAN JUAN DE LURIGANCHO. LIMA, 2016

La investigación realizada tuvo como objetivo conocer el nivel de resiliencia en estudiantes de secundaria víctimas y no víctimas de bullying de dos Instituciones Educativas de San Juan de Lurigancho. Para la realización del proyecto se evaluó a 278 estudiantes de nivel secundaria, de ambos géneros, cuyas edades fluctuaron entre los 11 a 18 años de edad, a quienes se aplicó el Autotest de Cisneros propuesto originalmente por Oñate y Piñuel (2005) y la Escala de Resiliencia de Wagnild y Young (ER), de Wagnild y Young, adaptado por Novella (2002). Al analizar los resultados se encontró que la diferencia entre los niveles de resiliencia en los estudiantes de secundaria víctimas y no víctimas de bullying fue significativa, siendo los estudiantes que no son víctimas de bullying los que poseen mayor nivel de resiliencia en comparación con los estudiantes que sí son víctimas. Además se encontró que la mayoría de estudiantes se ubica en el nivel promedio de acuerdo al test de resiliencia

Laurencia mediterranea sp. nov. (Ceramiales, Rhodophyta) from the central Mediterranean Sea

Acknowledgements This research was funded by an award to GZ (grant REP-2022-001), for the Project ‘GreASE’, financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology, for and on behalf of the Foundation for Science and Technology, through the FUSION: R&I Research Excellence Programme’. AGB was supported by the ENDEAVOUR Scholarship Scheme (Malta)- Group B – National Funds. FCK would like to acknowledge the TOTAL Foundation (Paris) and the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland), which is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011).Peer reviewe

The combined effects of motor and social goals on the kinematics of object-directed motor action

Voluntary actions towards manipulable objects are usually performed with a particular motor goal (i.e., a task-specific object-target-effector interaction) and in a particular social context (i.e., who would benefit from these actions), but the mutual influence of these two constraints has not yet been properly studied. For this purpose, we asked participants to grasp an object and place it on either a small or large target in relation to Fitts' law (motor goal). This first action prepared them for a second grasp-to-place action which was performed under temporal constraints, either by the participants themselves or by a confederate (social goal). Kinematic analysis of the first preparatory grasp-to-place action showed that, while deceleration time was impacted by the motor goal, peak velocity was influenced by the social goal. Movement duration and trajectory height were modulated by both goals, the effect of the social goal being attenuated by the effect of the motor goal. Overall, these results suggest that both motor and social constraints influence the characteristics of object-oriented actions, with effects that combine in a hierarchical way.- This work was funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-11-EQPX-0023) and also supported by European funds through the program FEDER SCV-IrDIVE. MFG was financed by the Region Hauts-de-France and the University of Lille. We are grateful to Anya Attou for her contribution to the data collection, Laurent Ott for his support in the computer programming of the study and Celia Moreira (mathematical researcher at FCUP-CMUP, University of Porto) for her helpful suggestions for statistical analysis

Fear of COVID-19, depression, anxiety, and their association with Internet addiction disorder in a sample of Italian students

Abstract Background The 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a worldwide lockdown which has obliged people to stay confined at home, often resulting in social distancing measures and isolation, which can lead to mental health problems as well as to specific Internet-use disorders. This study aims to investigate fear of COVID-19, anxiety, and depression symptoms, and their impact on Internet addiction disorder, modeled as intrapersonal conflicts and interpersonal conflicts, during the COVID-19 epidemic. Method An online questionnaire was administered to 454 Italian students during the first national lockdown. All the recruited participants completed measures including the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress (DASS-21 ), Fear of COVID-19, and Internet addiction . Results The results of the present study demonstrated that fear of COVID-19 was associated with Internet addiction disorder, and fear of COVID-19 mediated the relationship between anxiety and Internet addiction disorder. Finally, controlling for covariates (age and gender), fear of COVID-19 was linked to Internet addiction disorder. Limitations Limitations include the cross-sectional research design and reliance on data exclusively from Italy. Conclusions Results are discussed in the framework of the Interaction-Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) conceptualization of affective and cognitive responses as strategies for explicating the psycho-pathology of excessive Internet use

The current state of DNA barcoding of macroalgae in the Mediterranean Sea : presently lacking but urgently required

The research work disclosed in this publication is partially funded by the ENDEAVOUR Scholarship Scheme (Malta)-Group B – National Funds. FCK would also like to thank the UK Natural Environment Research Council (grants NE/D521522/1, NE/J023094/1, 2025/WP 4.5), the TOTAL Foundation (Project “Diversity of brown algae in the Eastern Mediterranean”) and the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS) pooling initiative, which is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. AFP was funded by the project IDEALG (France: ANR-10-BTBR-04).Peer reviewedPostprin