SCHOOL TEACHERS’ VIEWS TOWARDS THE EFFECTS OF A CRISIS ON CONFLICTS: THE CASE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The investigation of conflicts and their management in primary school units emerges as extremely important, given that the educational process must be conducted within a positive working environment. This paper examines the phenomenon of conflict in primary schools at a time of crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. This is for the reason that the above period is likely to have reshaped the relationships of cooperation and, by extension, the number, intensity and impact of the inevitable conflicts in social organizations such as schools. According to the research results, the school conflicts were found to concern existing issues prior to the pandemic and to a lesser extent reflected problems that arose as a result of health protection measures against the new coronavirus, the extensive use of ICT, distance teaching and the new conditions of organization and operation to which schools had to adapt. Also, they contributed decisively to the tackling of issues that emerged regarding the operation of the school as a consequence of the new health and social conditions. This finding demonstrates to school management that the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, just like any other crisis, in fact, takes on both negative and positive qualities.  Article visualizations

Medication Versus Mindfulness Meditation on Symptoms of ADHD in Adult Women

AbstractA recent spike has occurred in women diagnosed with less common and often overlooked ADHD symptoms. Using the mindfulness to meaning theory as the foundation, this study was conducted to explore how mindfulness meditation (MM) and medication affected three related factors commonly found in women with ADHD, self-concept, risky behaviors, and familial relationships. The research questions were formulated to determine if there was a difference in subscale scores of each variable based on the type of treatment the participant was using, either mindfulness meditation (MM) or prescription medication, to deal with ADHD symptoms. A pre-experimental static group comparison design was used. The target population was women between ages 18 and 65 who were biologically female, had an ADHD diagnosis, and used either MM as a form of treatment, or medication as a form of treatment. Data were collected from 109 women via an online survey and once assessed, it was determined that some surveys could not be used in the final analysis. Ultimately, there were 52 participants in the prescription medicine group and 51 in the MM group (N = 103). An ANOVA analysis was used to examine the data. The study found that women using MM had lower Likert scale scores, than did women using medication. This could imply that MM is an effective treatment option for women dealing with negative symptoms of ADHD. The study’s analysis has potential implications for positive social change because it encourages the examination and use of other treatments to assist women in successfully dealing with symptoms of ADHD. For the large number of women that do not want to use medication to treat these symptoms, this study shows that alternative treatments may be an effective approach

Process intensification and process scale-up: Gaps and opportunities

Process intensification (PI) has gained traction in modern chemical engineering and process technology with its potential for drastic improvements in equipment size, efficiency and carbon footprint. Technologies that exert greater control of process fluid dynamics, heat and mass transfer, and reaction kinetics offer the ability to achieve step changes in performance over conventional technology. Process intensification has already found commercial success exploiting these phenomena in niche separations and reactions, prominently in the area of specialty chemicals and products. In large-scale industrial processes such as refining and commodity chemicals, effective process scale-up is required to capture economies of scale for large production volumes. The current paradigm for rapid scale-up uses small-scale studies to decouple the relevant process physics and use models to integrate these physical effects for confident commercial design. Translating this paradigm presents challenges and opportunities for process intensification to address. The complex and closely-coupled physics in PI technologies (e.g., dynamic absorption) require deeper understanding than conventional technologies in order to scale up with confidence. This physical coupling may require larger process demonstration testing that significantly increases development time and cost relative to conventional technologies. This paper will present an assessment of the unique challenges for scale-up of PI technologies addressing both the technical complexity of scale-up as well as the applicability for large-scale commodity processes. Where scale limitations of current PI technologies exist, it highlights tradeoffs between scale-up and “number-up” approaches to commercial design. The authors will present examples to illustrate these opportunities, including commodity processing areas where new PI solutions are still needed (e.g., solids handling, bio-processes)

Reductive electrosynthesis of crystalline metal-organic frameworks

Electroreduction of oxoanions affords hydroxide equivalents that induce selective deposition of crystalline metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) on conductive surfaces. The method is illustrated by cathodic electrodeposition of Zn[subscript 4]O(BDC)[subscript 3] (MOF-5; BDC = 1,4-benzenedicarboxylate), which is deposited at room temperature in only 15 min under cathodic potential. Although many crystalline phases are known in the Zn[superscript 2+]/BDCsuperscript 2–] system, MOF-5 is the only observed crystalline MOF phase under these conditions. This fast and mild method of synthesizing MOFs is amenable to direct surface functionalization and could impact applications requiring conformal coatings of microporous MOFs, such as gas separation membranes and electrochemical sensors.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Energy Initiative (Seed Fund Program)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant CHE-9808061)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DBI-9729592)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DMR- 0819762