Building Creativity: Collaborative Learning and Creativity in Social Media Environments

Purpose: Using a systems-based approach to creativity and a sociocultural constructionist approach to learning, this study highlights how creative ideas emerge within a community and spread amongst its members. Design/methodology/approach: Using a design-based approach to research, this study took place within the social media environment, Quest Atlantis. Chat data was collected from 85 participants and screenshots were taken of the virtual architecture designed and built by players in the Quest Atlantis environment, in an effort to explore the nature of creativity and collaborative learning within the context of virtual 3D architectural construction. Findings: Findings illustrate the rise and spread of creativity in online communities and also point to the social and cultural nature of creativity. Research limitations/implications: As this is the first study of its kind, we focus on how creativity operates within a single community in order to draw implications about digital creativity more broadly. Practical implications: Implications for designing virtual and physical communities to promote creativity are discussed. Originality/value: Documenting and analyzing an entire creative system in the everyday world can be a challenging endeavor. Social media, by contrast, offers an opportunity to document, describe, and analyze creativity, extend Csikszentmihalyi’s work into the realm of social media and push back on current conceptions of digital creativity

Assessment of the Social Electricity Online Platform Tools and their Potential Impact on European Citizens

Through the Social Electricity Online Platform (SEOP) European project, four learning modules, educational content and online eco-feedback platforms have been developed, to raise the awareness and knowledge of citizens about energy, the environment and sustainability. The platform allows European citizens to become educated on energy-saving practices and techniques, including the use of renewable technologies at their home. Moreover, through the Social Electricity application, people may become aware of their electrical energy consumption by means of comparisons with the corresponding electrical consumption of their friends, as well as with the total consumption in the street, neighbourhood, village, city and country where they live, in a collaborative and social environment.In this paper, a pilot study performed in eight European countries involving more than 300 European citizens is presented, in order to demonstrate the influence of online learning modules and ecofeedback platforms on the everyday lives of people, in terms of rational energy use and energy savings. In this pilot, participants have been divided into two groups: the former uses the four learning modules available on the SEOP platform and then the Social Electricity application, whereas the latter uses only the Social Electricity application. This paper describes our overall findings after three months, exploring the completeness and educational value of the learning modules, and the potential of Social Electricity as an effective online tool for personal energy management. The results also evaluate the impact, behavioural change and the increase on energy awareness among the two groups, as well as the general effectiveness and acceptance of the platform

UV-254 degradation of nicotine in natural waters and leachates produced from cigarette butts and heat-not-burn tobacco products.

Summarization: Nicotine is an important emerging contaminant widely detected in water resources. The main nicotine sources are human excretions from users and leaching from discarded tobacco product waste, which represents the most commonly littered item in urban areas and coasts. In this study, the UV254 photolytical fate of nicotine in natural water and leachates produced from conventional cigarettes (CCs) and the new generation heat-not-burn (HnBs) tobacco products is examined for the first time. The effect of UV254 irradiation on nicotine depletion in ultrapure water was initially studied. The reaction was pseudo first-order with respect to nicotine concentration at low concentrations and shifted to lower order at higher concentrations, an effect associated to absorption saturation. Although nicotine removal was fast, only 9.5% of the total organic carbon was removed after irradiation due to the formation of by-products. The chemical structures of six photo-products were derived by means of liquid and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. The photodegradation kinetics was found to depend on pH and faster kinetics were recorded when the monoprotonated form of nicotine was dominant (pH = 5–8). The presence of humic acids was found to slightly delay kinetics as they competed with nicotine for lamp irradiance, whereas the presence of salt had no effect on the direct photolysis of nicotine. Direct photolysis studies were also performed using natural waters. Compared to ultra-pure water, photodegradation was found to proceed slightly slower in river water, in similar kinetics in seawater, and relatively faster in rain water. The later was assumed to be due to the lower pH compared to the rest of the natural water tested. Leachates from used HnBs and smoked CCs were also submitted to UV254 irradiation and direct photolysis was found to proceed fast despite the high complexity of these matrices. Nonetheless, the total organic carbon in the system remained the same after irradiation due to the abundance of organics and photo-products formed. We take advantage of the present investigations and report the leaching behavior of nicotine from HnBs and CCs. Among others, we found that in HnBs ~70% of the total and bioavailable nicotine content remains in the tobacco sticks after operation and this percentage drops to 15% in CCs due to the reduction in mass after smoking. This finding demonstrated the importance of properly disposing tobacco product waste to prevent nicotine leaching in water bodies. Presented on: Environmental Researc

RECOVEU Policy and Practice Review: Work Package 3 - Establishing context. Grundtvig Multilateral - EU Lifelong Learning Programme. Project Number: 538955-LLP-1-2013-1-UK-GRUNDTVIG-GMP

A review of the policy relating to drug addiction and treatment in the UK, Ireland, Cyprus, Romania and Italy. This document provides the contextual background for the RECOVEU project : A participative approach to curriculum development for adults in addiction recovery across the European Union. The project has brought together partners from the UK, Ireland, Cyprus, Romania and Italy with the aim of developing access to learning resources for people in addiction recover. The review draws on existing data (for example, from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) and the experiential knowledge of the five partner organisations working in the field of addiction

Diagnosis of Dilated Cardiomyopathy:Patient Reaction and Adaptation-Case Study and Review of the Literature

Objective. Heart failure remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Given that heart failure generally has a chronic course, it is important to appreciate the impact it can have on the quality of life of patients and also their partners or family carers. Method. Questionnaires were given to a patient newly diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, during his hospital admission, as well as after discharge. The responses are summarised and explored in the discussion section, where we used review of the literature to discuss the implications of a new diagnosis of heart failure. Results. The patient's responses to the questionnaires suggest certain anxieties that are part of his adaptation to the diagnosis of heart failure. Conclusion. Depression is a common comorbid condition in patients with heart failure. Various tools can be used to screen for depression in patients with heart failure. Both pharmacological and nonpharmacological options are available. Rapid evaluation of ongoing problems and active participation by a psychiatrist can ensure that the patient receives the best possible clinical care

Hepatocellular Carcinoma: An Uncommon Metastasis in the Orbit

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) represents the most common type of primary cancer of the liver and is associated with poor prognosis. It is the most common cause of death in cirrhotic patients and in different studies was shown as the third most common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Each year, approximately half a million people are diagnosed with HCC. In recent decades, the prognosis of patients with HCC has improved because more cases are diagnosed and treated at early stages; high-risk patients (i.e., with chronic HBV or HCV infection) are followed more often for the possibility of HCC, and novel treatment options such as locoregional therapy are used with better overall results. The extrahepatic metastases represent a poor prognostic factor. The most common sites of metastasis in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma are the lung (44%), portal vein (35%), and portal lymph nodes (27%). Also, intra-abdominal lymph nodes and bones are common sites. Orbital metastases rarely occur, representing the 3-7% of orbital masses. These metastases are usually found in advanced tumor stages. The mechanism of metastasis to the orbit is difficult to determine. A hematogenous route, as for other primary neoplasms of the abdomen, may be suspected. Tumor cells may circulate through the vena cava, beyond the pulmonary filter to the heart, and finally be distributed to the orbital region through the arterial systemic circulation. We describe herein a case of an adult male with liver cirrhosis due to alcohol abuse who presented with concomitant diagnosis of HCC and orbit metastasis

Educational games to support caring and compassion among youth: A design narrative

In this paper, the authors argue that video games offer unique and pervasive opportunities for children to develop social dispositions that are necessary to succeed in the 21st century. To this end, they discuss the design of TavCats—a virtual role-playing game that aimed to engage children (ages 9 to 13) in understanding, acting upon, and coming to value being caring and compassionate. The authors' discussion takes the form of a design narrative through which they explain the connections between their theoretical commitments and design decisions. Specifically, they review four design elements they utilized in their design work: identity claims, boundary objects, profession trajectories, and cyclic gameplay. The authors briefly share their observations from a pilot study with children in an afterschool setting to illustrate how their design work might be realized in the world. They conclude their paper with a discussion of the implications of their work for designing educational video games for supporting social dispositions as well as academic learning, and future directions