ATTITUDES OF THE ESTONIAN BORDER GUARD AND POLICE OFFICERS ON IMMIGRATION AND RADICALIZATION

The article in the first part outlines the current discussion of the state of training under cultural intelligence, including definitions and examples of possible interdictions of the bad players. The second part describes the attributes and attitudes of Border Guard and Police officers after cultural intelligence courses, defining and applying the concepts towards internal security with a focus on Cultural Identity, “what makes a person tick.” An empirical study consisting of written reports was conducted over a three-year period and compiled to reflect attitudes towards immigration and radicalization in the EU.

Asymmetrical interdependence in energy relations between the Russian Federation and Baltic States: effects of the Finnish LNG terminal and Balticconnector

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4486293*es

A spotlight on lack of evidence supporting the integration of blended learning in K-12 education

In an effort to highlight the need for, and lack of, quality empirical research in K-12 blended learning environments, this systematic narrative review investigated and reported on the quantity and quality of recent empirical research in K-12 blended learning, published between 2009 and February 2017. In addition to assessing the quality and scope of these studies, the effectiveness of blended learning environments on learning outcomes and potential contributing variables were discussed. Eleven articles were identified and found to meet the inclusionary criteria and measures of quality set by this review, extending the corpus of 5 articles identified by a previous 2009 meta-analysis commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education to 16. Mixed findings regarding the benefit of blended learning in a K-12 setting were reported across the literature, thereby highlighting the need for more extensive research in this domain

Hüdrasiini derivaadi tsükli sulgemise metateesi modelleerimine gaasifaasis.

Grubbsi katalüsaatoreid saab kasutada metateesi reaktsioonide katalüüsiks ning nende hulka kuuluvad ka tsükli sulgemise metateesi reaktsioonid. Tsükli sulgemise reaktsioonides moodustub kahe terminaalse alkeeniga ühendist tsükliliga ühend. Seda meetodit on vähe uuritud hüdrasiini derivaatidest heterotsüklite moodustamises ning selle reaktsioni mehhanismi määramine aitaks Grubbsi katalüsaatorite rakendamist nende tsüklite sünteesis. Selles töös luuakse arvutuslik mudel reaktsioonist, kus Grubbsi II põlvkonna katalüsaatoriga katalüüsitud tsükli sulgemise metateesi teel moodustub etüül- ja tert-butüüloksükarbonüülrühmaga asendatud hüdrasiini derivaadist heterotsükkelühend. Reaktsioonil on kaks potensiaalset reaktsioniteed. Leiti, et reaktsioon on energeetiliselt soodsam, kui seondub esimesena kaksikside, mis on seotud etüül rühmaga lämmastiku külge. Seda reaktsiooniteed limiteerib heterotsükli dissotsiatsion ruteenatsüklobutaanist (ΔG = 11,1 kcal/mol). Kui seondub esimesena tert-butüüloksükarbonüülrühmaga kaitstud lämmastiku küljes olev alkeen, on limiteerivaks etapiks eteeni dissotsiatsion kus üleminekuolekusse on vaja ületada peaaegu kaks korda suurem vabaenergia barjäär (ΔG = 21,1 kcal/mol). Leiti, et katalüütiline tsükkel on summaarselt endotermiline (ΔHtsükkel = 1,1 kcal/mol), aga energeetiliselt suunatud produkti moodustumise poole (ΔGtsükkel = -11,6 kcal/mol)

Massive cortical reorganization in sighted Braille readers

The brain is capable of large-scale reorganization in blindness or after massive injury. Such reorganization crosses the division into separate sensory cortices (visual, somatosensory...). As its result, the visual cortex of the blind becomes active during tactile Braille reading. Although the possibility of such reorganization in the normal, adult brain has been raised, definitive evidence has been lacking. Here, we demonstrate such extensive reorganization in normal, sighted adults who learned Braille while their brain activity was investigated with fMRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Subjects showed enhanced activity for tactile reading in the visual cortex, including the visual word form area (VWFA) that was modulated by their Braille reading speed and strengthened resting-state connectivity between visual and somatosensory cortices. Moreover, TMS disruption of VWFA activity decreased their tactile reading accuracy. Our results indicate that large-scale reorganization is a viable mechanism recruited when learning complex skills

A comparison of sighted and visually impaired children’s text comprehension

Aim: Do children with visual impairments outperform their sighted cohorts in reading and auditory comprehension tasks? Methods: We address this question by applying panel regression techniques on a comprehensive sample of 16 children with visual impairments from a Greek special school for students with visual impairments. Results: By comparing the reader comprehender profile for both children types, we find that the children with visual impairments perform better than their sighted counterparts. The better performance is supported both unconditionally and conditionally on idiosyncratic characteristics, such as age, text complexity, modality, sex and reading ability. Conclusion: Decomposing the reader comprehender profile into a literal, global and local type of questions we find that the results are mainly driven by the superior performance of the children with VI in the literal questions

Perceptual and cognitive underpinnings of braille reading

Anneli Veispak, Perceptual and Cognitive Underpinnings of Braille Reading. Dissertation submitted to obtain the degree of Doctor in Educational Sciences 2012. Supervision: Prof. Dr. Pol Ghesquière, Dr. Bart BoetsLearning to read is a complex task requiring the translation of written symbols, or graphemes, into speech forms, or phonemes. Given that the brain evolved to understand communicative messages conveyed by speech, the pre-existing neural circuitries for spoken language and object recognition have had to adapt to the explicit needs of reading. Reading acquisition is therefore less trivial than it looks. Even though the majority of children will master the reading skill fluently and well, about 5-10% of the population develops a specific reading impairment i.e. developmental dyslexia, which is a neurological disorder resulting in a failure to acquire reading and spelling skills despite adequate intelligence, instruction and remedial efforts. Similarly to the sighted population, a proportion of blind children have specific difficulties related to reading braille, which cannot be easily explained. Very few studies have been conducted to investigate the cognitive and perceptual abilities which are relevant for fluent braille reading and which might be affected in the case of braille reading difficulties. Since braille and print are linguistically identical, the findings from print reading research can be used for testing hypothesis about reading braille. Hence in our research, being inspired by the concepts of the phonological and the temporal processing deficit theories of developmental dyslexia, we have combined auditory, speech and phonological processing as well as tactile spatial resolution measures to gain an understanding of how these perceptual and cognitive processes interact in support of reading braille as opposed to reading print.The participants of the current project were blind braille readers from Belgium (n=12), the Netherlands (n=16) and Estonia (n=12). Thirty-three of the included braille readers were blind from birth, while 7 had lost their vision before the age of 10. Twenty one braille readers are able to perceive light, whereas nineteen have no remaining rest vision. Based on age, sex, nationality and educational level a matched control group of sighted print readers was composed. All participating braille and print readers had normal intelligence as well as hearing and they spoke Dutch and Estonian as their first language respectively. In order to observe possible developmental patterns, the Dutch speaking participants were also divided into groups based on age: a group of young readers (younger than 16 years of age) and a group of adult readers (older than 16 years of age).Differently from visual processing, which enables simultaneous and parallel perception of text, the tactile modality offers a successive input and imposes a sequential nature of reading. Since fingers must necessarily pass over all the characters on a line, braille reading is believed to mirror the grapho-phonological reading strategy (character-by-character) which is prominent in young and inexperienced print readers. While sighted readers apply a direct orthographic route to read frequent or irregular words and the indirect grapho-phonological route to decode infrequent and unfamiliar words or nonwords, braille readers, we hypothesized, should use the same grapho-phonological route indiscriminately. Therefore, we administered word reading, pseudoword reading and story reading tests, measuring accuracy and speed of reading in all conditions. If blind readers are inclined to constant decoding, an effective engagement of various phonological processing skills should be required throughout the reading process. In order to assess these phonological processing abilities we administered phonological awareness tests (phoneme deletion and spoonerism), verbal short term memory tests (digit span and nonword repetition) and tests measuring lexical retrieval speed, i.e. rapid automatic naming (RAN digits and RAN letters). Auditory temporal processing has been suggested to have a crucial impact on the development of adequate phonological representations through speech perception. Thus far, no studies have investigated the relation between auditory processing and braille reading. Considering the postulated association between auditory processing, speech perception and the quality of phonological representations and given the hypothetical role of phonological processing in braille reading, we administered both auditory temporal processing as well as speech perception tasks. Auditory temporal processing was assessed with a frequency modulation detection test and speech perception was measured by the words-in-noise and sentences-in-noise perception tests. A specific aspect pertaining to braille reading is tactile spatial acuity, which plays an essential part in the correct identification of the relative spatial position of the dots in braille characters. In order to measure tactile spatial acuity in the current study, a grating orientation task was administered.The results revealed that the sequential nature of braille does impose constant decoding and effective recruitment of phonological skills throughout the reading process. In addition to the significant item length effect (i.e. reading times increase with the number of constituent syllables of the word) on both word and pseudoword reading speed, phonological awareness and verbal short-term memory correlated substantially with all the reading accuracy measures in both Dutch and Estonian groups of braille readers. In the group of print readers, on the other hand item length effect was only observable on pseudoword reading measures, which in turn also correlated with phonological awareness. Hence, it can be suggested that sighted print readers switch between the use of grapho-phonological and orthographic processing modes depending on the familiarity, length and structure of the words. While braille readers performed equally well as print readers on speech perception tests, they did present slightly better thresholds (though non-significant) on the auditory frequency modulation detection task. Furthermore, both frequency modulation detection and speech perception not only correlated with phonological processing measures in the group of braille readers, but also related directly to braille reading performance. In the group of print readers, conversely, no direct associations between reading performance and auditory as well as speech processing were observed. Tactile spatial acuity correlated significantly with both braille reading accuracy as well as speed. To conclude, it can be suggested that highly developed phonological awareness and verbal short-term memory skills, corroborated by auditory processing and speech perception aptitude, together with adequate tactile spatial acuity determine the level of braille reading achievement.nrpages: 186status: publishe

Could Specific Braille Reading Difficulties Result from Developmental Dyslexia?

A proportion of children with visual impairments have specific reading difficulties that cannot be easily explained. This article reviews the data on problems with braille reading and interprets them from the framework of the temporal-processing deficit theory of developmental dyslexia.status: publishe

Relating Braille reading difficulties to developmental dyslexia: First empirical evidence

status: publishe

Differential cognitive and perceptual correlates of print reading versus braille reading

The relations between reading, auditory, speech, phonological and tactile spatial processing are investigated in a Dutch speaking sample of blind braille readers as compared to sighted print readers. Performance is assessed in blind and sighted children and adults. Regarding phonological ability, braille readers perform equally well compared to print readers on phonological awareness, better on verbal short-term memory and significantly worse on lexical retrieval. The groups do not differ on speech perception or auditory processing. Braille readers, however, have more sensitive fingers than print readers. Investigation of the relations between these cognitive and perceptual skills and reading performance indicates that in the group of braille readers auditory temporal processing has a longer lasting and stronger impact not only on phonological abilities, which have to satisfy the high processing demands of the strictly serial language input, but also directly on the reading ability itself. Print readers switch between grapho-phonological and lexical reading modes depending on the familiarity of the items. Furthermore, the auditory temporal processing and speech perception, which were substantially interrelated with phonological processing, had no direct associations with print reading measures.status: publishe