Στρες γονέων παιδιών προσχολικής, σχολικής και εφηβικής ηλικίας και αντιλήψεις για την εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευση κατά την περίοδο της πανδημίας COVID 19

Στόχος της παρούσας έρευνας ήταν η διερεύνηση του αντιλαμβανόμενου στρες των γονέων και των αντιλήψεών τους για την εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευση των παιδιών τους, σε συνάρτηση με ατομικές μεταβλητές όπως το φύλο, η ηλικία τους, ο αριθμός των παιδιών στην οικογένεια, η ηλικία των παιδιών και αν αυτά είχαν διάγνωση . Το δείγμα περιλάμβανε 794 γονείς, 665 γυναίκες και 129 άνδρες. Για τη διερεύνηση του στρες χορηγήθηκε η κλίμακα του αντιλαμβανόμενου στρες «Perceived stress scale, PSS» (Cohen et al., 1983) και για τη διερεύνηση των αντιλήψεων σχετικά με την εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευση χρησιμοποιήθηκαν ερωτήσεις από το ερωτηματολόγιο των Dong et al.,(2020) και κλειστές ερωτήσεις σχετικά με την τηλεκπαίδευση. Όσον αφορά τα ευρήματα της έρευνας, βρέθηκε ότι οι συμμετέχοντες ανέφεραν θετικότερες αντιλήψεις για το ρόλο της εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευσης στην οικογενειακή εκπαίδευση, που αφορά τον αντίκτυπο της εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευσης στην εκπαίδευση όλης της οικογένειας, ενώ αρνητικότερες ήταν οι αντιλήψεις τους για την αξία της και για το ρόλο σε σχέση με τον παραδοσιακό τρόπο διδασκαλίας. Ακόμη όσο μεγαλύτερα ήταν τα επίπεδα εμπλοκής των γονέων παιδιών πρωτοβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης τόσο υψηλότερα ήταν τα επίπεδα αντιλαμβανόμενου στρες και αρνητικότερες οι αντιλήψεις των γονέων για την εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευση και αντίστροφα. Ως συχνότερες δυσκολίες αναφέρθηκαν η έλλειψη χρόνου για ενασχόληση με την εκπαίδευση των παιδιών και η αργή σύνδεση στο διαδίκτυο. Βρέθηκε επίσης πως όσο αυξάνεται το στρες τόσο αρνητικότερες είναι οι αντιλήψεις των γονέων και αντίστροφα. Οι συμμετέχοντες είχαν ουδέτερη στάση προς την τηλεκπαίδευση και τέλος οι συμμετέχοντες διαφοροποιήθηκαν στην κλίμακα του αντιλαμβανόμενου στρες, αλλά και στις αντιλήψεις τους για την εξ αποστάσεως εκπαίδευση ως προς ορισμένα συναισθήματα κατά το άνοιγμα και κατά το κλείσιμο των σχολείων.The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between parents' perceived stress and their perceptions of distance education. The sample consists of 794 parents, 665 women and 129 men. The «Perceived Stress Scale PSS» (Cohen et al., 1983) was used to investigate stress and questions from the Dong et al. (2020) questionnaire were used to explore perceptions about distance education. Regarding the research findings, it was found that the participants reported more positive perceptions about the role of distance education in family education, while their perceptions about its value and role were more negative in relation to the traditional way of teaching. The higher the levels of parental involvement in distance education, the higher the levels of perceived stress and the more negative the parents' perceptions of distance education. The most frequent difficulties were limited time for dealing with children's education and slow internet connection. Moreover, the higher the stress, the more negative the parents' perceptions were and vice versa. Participants were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with distance learning and finally levels of perceived stress and perceptions about distance education varied as a function of emotion at school opening and closure

Editorial: Congenital and perinatal infections: How to prevent sequelaes in neonates and children

The current severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has overwhelmingly absorbed attention and health resources for 2 years, allowing us to reflect that infections are a permanent health and social problem, causing morbidity and mortality. They require organization, important prevention measures, and containment. This is particularly true in the neonatal age, where infections remain a complex problem with serious consequences

Nova: Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes

We introduce a new approach to realize incrementally verifiable computation (IVC), in which the prover recursively proves the correct execution of incremental computations of the form $y=F^{(\ell)}(x)$, where $F$ is a (potentially non-deterministic) computation, $x$ is the input, $y$ is the output, and $\ell > 0$. Unlike prior approaches to realize IVC, our approach avoids succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs) entirely and arguments of knowledge in general. Instead, we introduce and employ folding schemes, a weaker, simpler, and more efficiently-realizable primitive, which reduces the task of checking two instances in some relation to the task of checking a single instance. We construct a folding scheme for a characterization of $\mathsf{NP}$ and show that it implies an IVC scheme with improved efficiency characteristics: (1) the recursion overhead (i.e., the number of steps that the prover proves in addition to proving the execution of $F$) is a constant and it is dominated by two group scalar multiplications expressed as a circuit (this is the smallest recursion overhead in the literature), and (2) the prover\u27s work at each step is dominated by two multiexponentiations of size $O(|F|)$, providing the fastest prover in the literature. The size of a proof is $O(|F|)$ group elements, but we show that using a variant of an existing zkSNARK, the prover can prove the knowledge of a valid proof succinctly and in zero-knowledge with $O(\log{|F|})$ group elements. Finally, our approach neither requires a trusted setup nor FFTs, so it can be instantiated efficiently with any cycles of elliptic curves where DLOG is hard

Transparency Dictionaries with Succinct Proofs of Correct Operation

This paper introduces Verdict, a transparency dictionary, where an untrusted service maintains a label-value map that clients can query and update (foundational infrastructure for end-to-end encryption and other applications). To prevent unauthorized modifications to the dictionary, for example, by a malicious or a compromised service provider, Verdict produces publicly-verifiable cryptographic proofs that it correctly executes both reads and authorized updates. A key advance over prior work is that Verdict produces efficiently-verifiable proofs while incurring modest proving overheads. Verdict accomplishes this by composing indexed Merkle trees (a new SNARK-friendly data structure) with Phalanx (a new SNARK that supports amortized constant-sized proofs and leverages particular workload characteristics to speed up the prover). Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that Verdict scales to dictionaries with millions of labels while imposing modest overheads on the service and clients

Strategies for preventing group B streptococcal infections in newborns: A nation-wide survey of Italian policies

Background: There are no Italian data regarding the strategies for preventing neonatal group B streptococcal (GBS) infection. We conducted a national survey in order to explore obstetrical, neonatal and microbiological practices for the GBS prevention. Methods: Three distinct questionnaires were sent to obstetricians, neonatologists and microbiologists. Questionnaires included data on prenatal GBS screening, maternal risk factors, intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis, microbiological information concerning specimen processing and GBS antimicrobial susceptibility. Results: All respondent obstetrical units used the culture-based screening approach to identify women who should receive intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis, and more than half of the microbiological laboratories (58%) reported using specimen processing consistent with CDC guidelines. Most neonatal units (89 out of 107, 82%) reported using protocols for preventing GBS early-onset sepsis consistent with CDC guidelines. Conclusions: The screening-based strategy is largely prevalent in Italy, and most protocols for preventing GBS early-onset sepsis are consistent with CDC guidelines. However, we found discrepancies in practices among centers that may reflect the lack of Italian guidelines issued by public health organizations

Smectite clays as solid supports for immobilization of beta-glucosidase:Synthesis, characterization, and biochemical properties

Nanomaterials as solid supports can improve the efficiency of immobilized enzymes by reducing diffusional limitation as well as by increasing the surface area per mass unit and therefore improving enzyme loading. In this work, beta-glucosidase from almonds was immobilized on two smectite nanoclays. The resulting hybrid biocatalysts were characterized by a combination of powder X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, thermogravimetric. analysis, differential thermal analysis, and infrared spectroscopy. Biochemical studies showed an improved thermostability of the immobilized enzyme as well as enhanced performance at higher temperatures and in a wider pH range

Doubly-efficient zkSNARKs without trusted setup

We present a zero-knowledge argument for NP with low communication complexity, low concrete cost for both the prover and the verifier, and no trusted setup, based on standard cryptographic assumptions. Communication is proportional to $d\cdot\log G$ (for $d$ the depth and $G$ the width of the verifying circuit) plus the square root of the witness size. When applied to batched or data-parallel statements, the prover\u27s runtime is linear and the verifier\u27s is sub-linear in the verifying circuit size, both with good constants. In addition, witness-related communication can be reduced, at the cost of increased verifier runtime, by leveraging a new commitment scheme for multilinear polynomials, which may be of independent interest. These properties represent a new point in the tradeoffs among setup, complexity assumptions, proof size, and computational cost. We apply the Fiat-Shamir heuristic to this argument to produce a zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (zkSNARK) in the random oracle model, based on the discrete log assumption, which we call Hyrax. We implement Hyrax and evaluate it against five state-of-the-art baseline systems. Our evaluation shows that, even for modest problem sizes, Hyrax gives smaller proofs than all but the most computationally costly baseline, and that its prover and verifier are each faster than three of the five baselines