日本の大学生の英語授業におけるFacebook の利用意識と利用状況 : その意味

本研究では，日本人学生のFacebookに対する態度を調査するとともに，こうした代替ソーシャルネットワークプラットフォームを利用することによる言語学習への影響や授業での活用法についても調査した。本研究には，教育学部，法学部，工学部という英語を専門としない3つの学部の合計163名の日本人学生が2年間に渡り参加した。Facebookに対する態度のデータと実際の利用データは， 2つのアンケートによって収集された。その結果，多くの学生はグローバルで本格的なSNSを使った教室活動に価値を見出していたが，彼らの利用データと照らし合わせると，Facebookは必ずしも最良のプラットフォームとして選ばれていた訳ではないことが明らかになった。参加者のうち，今回のプロジェクト以外でFacebookを積極的に利用していると回答したのはわずか6％であった。他方，学生の回答によれば，約98％の学生はLINEを利用しており，73％の学生もYouTubeを頻繁に利用していた。更に，50％以上の学生がInstagramやTwitterを定期的に利用していた。本稿では，現在の文献を参考にしながら，これらの回答とその背景にある理由を詳細に検討した。This study examines not only Japanese students’ attitudes toward Facebook, but also the language learning implications and in-class teaching applications of utilizing alternative social network platforms. A total of 163 Japanese university students participated in the study, drawn across two years and from three non-English faculties, namely Education, Law, and Engineering. Attitudinal and usage data were collected via two questionnaires. It was found that many students did find global, authentic SNS classroom work to be valuable, but when mapped against their usage data, it was revealed that Facebook may not always be the best platform of choice. Only 6% of participants claimed to actively use Facebook outside of the current project, while approximately 98% of students stated that they use LINE, 73% use YouTube frequently, and more than 50% use Instagram and Twitter regularly. Drawing on current literature, the paper examines these responses in detail and the reasons behind them

Mixed Critical Automotive Embedded Applications on Multicores: A Safe Scheduling Approach for Dependability

International audienceMemory access durations on multicore architectures are highly variable, since concurrent accesses to memory by different cores induce time interferences. Consequently, critical software tasks may be delayed by noncritical ones, leading to deadline misses and possible catastrophic failures. We present an approach to tackle the implementation of mixed criticality workloads on multicore chips, focusing on task chains, i.e., sequences of tasks with end-to-end deadlines. Our main contribution is a Monitoring & Control System able to stop noncritical software execution in order to prevent memory interference and guarantee that critical tasks deadlines are met. This paper describes our approach, and the associated experimental framework to conduct experiments to analyze attainable real-time guarantees on a multicore platform

The Global Fund at a Crossroads: Informing Advocacy on Global Fund Efforts in Human Rights, Support to Middle-income Countries, and Access to Medicines

There is an urgent need to revive and re-energize civil society advocacy to hold the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria accountable to its origins and founding principles. Recent changes in Global Fund policy and practice have taken it away from the country-driven character that set it apart from other aid agencies. It risks becoming less centered on rights-based strategies to support national responses to AIDS, TB, and malaria.In April 2015, the Open Society Public Health Program convened a consultation of experts and advocates concerned about the future of the Global Fund, particularly in these key areas:preserving support to important programs in middle-income countriesrealizing the Global Fund's human rights objectivessupporting access to essential medicinesWithout concerted and well-informed efforts by advocates the Global Fund risks repudiating its own history, undermining its investments, and damaging its stature as a leader in global health. Furthermore, the Global Fund's ambitious strategy to end the epidemics by 2030 will be a pipe dream without a reinvigoration of commitments in these three key areas. This briefing paper summarizes the deliberations of the consultation, and provides recommendations that the Global Fund should undertake in order to uphold its founding values

Digital entrepreneurship from cellular data: How omics afford the emergence of a new wave of digital ventures in health

Data has become an indispensable input, throughput, and output for the healthcare industry. In recent years, omics technologies such as genomics and proteomics have generated vast amounts of new data at the cellular level including molecular, structural, and functional levels. Cellular data holds the potential to innovate therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics, consumer products, or even ancestry services. However, data at the cellular level is generated with rapidly evolving omics technologies. These technologies use scientific knowledge from resource-rich environments. This raises the question of how new ventures can use cellular-level data from omics technologies to create new products and scale their business. We report on a series of interviews and a focus group discussion with entrepreneurs, investors, and data providers. By conceptualizing omics technologies as external enablers, we show how characteristics of cellular-level data negatively affect the combination mechanisms that drive venture creation and growth. We illustrate how data characteristics set boundary conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship and highlight how ventures seek to mitigate their impact

The Effects of Vitamin D Deficiency on Neurodegenerative Diseases

Approximately 90% of the elderly population in the western countries has at least a mild to moderate vitamin D hypovitaminosis. Besides the well-known function of vitamin D in calcium homeostasis, it has been recently found that several enzymes and receptors involved in its homeostasis are expressed in the nervous system and brain suggesting also an important role in the brain homeostasis. Interestingly, epidemiological and clinical studies found reduced vitamin D level associated with an increased risk of several neurodegenerative disorders. In this chapter, we focus on a potential link between vitamin D and Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, prion disease, and motor neuron disease. Epidemiological studies were summarized, an overview of the known potential underlying pathomolecular mechanisms are given, and results from clinical studies dealing with vitamin D supplementation were presented. As an outlook, recent literature suggesting an impact of vitamin D on autism spectrum disease, depression, and schizophrenia are briefly discussed. In conclusion, the identification of an abundant vitamin D metabolism in the brain and the tight link between the increasing number of several neurological and mental disorders emphasize the need of further research making a clear recommendation of the intake and supplementation of vitamin D in a growing elderly population

Investigating the Usability of a Head-Mounted Display Augmented Reality Device in Elementary School Children

Augmenting reality via head-mounted displays (HMD-AR) is an emerging technology in education. The interactivity provided by HMD-AR devices is particularly promising for learning, but presents a challenge to human activity recognition, especially with children. Recent technological advances regarding speech and gesture recognition concerning Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 may address this prevailing issue. In a within-subjects study with 47 elementary school children (2nd to 6th grade), we examined the usability of the HoloLens 2 using a standardized tutorial on multimodal interaction in AR. The overall system usability was rated “good”. However, several behavioral metrics indicated that specific interaction modes differed in their efficiency. The results are of major importance for the development of learning applications in HMD-AR as they partially deviate from previous findings. In particular, the well-functioning recognition of children’s voice commands that we observed represents a novelty. Furthermore, we found different interaction preferences in HMD-AR among the children. We also found the use of HMD-AR to have a positive effect on children’s activity-related achievement emotions. Overall, our findings can serve as a basis for determining general requirements, possibilities, and limitations of the implementation of educational HMD-AR environments in elementary school classrooms

Hubble Space Telescope Planetary Camera Images of NGC 1316

We present HST Planetary Camera V and I~band images of the central region of the peculiar giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. The inner profile is well fit by a nonisothermal core model with a core radius of 0.41" +/- 0.02" (34 pc). At an assumed distance of 16.9 Mpc, the deprojected luminosity density reaches \sim 2.0 \times 10^3 L_{\sun} pc$^{-3}$. Outside the inner two or three arcseconds, a constant mass-to-light ratio of $\sim 2.2 \pm 0.2$ is found to fit the observed line width measurements. The line width measurements of the center indicate the existence of either a central dark object of mass 2 \times 10^9 M_{\sun}, an increase in the stellar mass-to-light ratio by at least a factor of two for the inner few arcseconds, or perhaps increasing radial orbit anisotropy towards the center. The mass-to-light ratio run in the center of NGC 1316 resembles that of many other giant ellipticals, some of which are known from other evidence to harbor central massive dark objects (MDO's). We also examine twenty globular clusters associated with NGC 1316 and report their brightnesses, colors, and limits on tidal radii. The brightest cluster has a luminosity of 9.9 \times 10^6 L_{\sun} ($M_V = -12.7$), and the faintest detectable cluster has a luminosity of 2.4 \times 10^5 L_{\sun} ($M_V = -8.6$). The globular clusters are just barely resolved, but their core radii are too small to be measured. The tidal radii in this region appear to be $\le$ 35 pc. Although this galaxy seems to have undergone a substantial merger in the recent past, young globular clusters are not detected.Comment: 21 pages, latex, postscript figures available at ftp://delphi.umd.edu/pub/outgoing/eshaya/fornax

Digital ink and differentiated subjective ratings for cognitive load measurement in middle childhood

Background: New methods are constantly being developed to adapt cognitive load measurement to different contexts. However, research on middle childhood students' cognitive load measurement is rare. Research indicates that the three cognitive load dimensions (intrinsic, extraneous, and germane) can be measured well in adults and teenagers using differentiated subjective rating instruments. Moreover, digital ink recorded by smartpens could serve as an indicator for cognitive load in adults. Aims: With the present research, we aimed at investigating the relation between subjective cognitive load ratings, velocity and pressure measures recorded with a smartpen, and performance in standardized sketching tasks in middle childhood students. Sample: Thirty-six children (age 7–12) participated at the university's laboratory. Methods: The children performed two standardized sketching tasks, each in two versions. The induced intrinsic cognitive load or the extraneous cognitive load was varied between the versions. Digital ink was recorded while the children drew with a smartpen on real paper and after each task, they were asked to report their perceived intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load using a newly developed 5-item scale. Results: Results indicated that cognitive load ratings as well as velocity and pressure measures were substantially related to the induced cognitive load and to performance in both sketching tasks. However, cognitive load ratings and smartpen measures were not substantially related. Conclusions: Both subjective rating and digital ink hold potential for cognitive load and performance measurement. However, it is questionable whether they measure the exact same constructs