Children's Health: Evaluating the Impact of Digital Technology. Final Report for Sunderland City Council.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Children’s Health project sponsored by the City of Sunderland Digital Challenge project examined the impact of providing health-focused digital technologies to children aged 11-15 years, in terms of their usage and requirements of such technologies, and their subsequent behavioural changes. The empirical study ran with three groups of six children over a period of seven weeks for each group. A console-based exercise game and an exercise-focused social website were used in the study and the focus was on opportunistic (unstructured/unplanned) exercise. The emergent findings are: • Data collected about physical activity must be more extensive than simple step counts. • Data collection technologies for activities must be ubiquitous but invisible. • Social interaction via technology is expected; positive messages reinforcing attainments of goals are valued; negative feedback is seen as demotivating. • participants were very open to sharing information (privacy was not a concern). • Authority figures have a significant impact on restricting adolescents’ use of technologies. This document reports the how the study was conducted, analyses the findings and draws conclusions from these regarding how to use digital technologies to improve and/or maintain the physical activity levels of children throughout their adolescence and on into adulthood. The appendices provide the detailed (anonymised) data collected during the study and the background literature review

Microplastic effects on soil properties: direct and indirect effects as a single factor and interaction with other global change factors

Microplastic pollution in terrestrial ecosystems has attracted increasing concern regarding possible impacts on soil functionality. Microplastics can affect soil physicochemical properties, such as aggregation, bulk density, water holding capacity, porosity, pH, etc., and also soil microbial activity measured as respiration and enzymatic activities, with ensuing consequences on plant performance. This doctoral work firstly summarized the sources, migration, and distribution of microplastics in the soil, their effects on soil physicochemical properties, soil biota and plant performance based on previous studies. Then this work investigated the microplastic effects on soil physicochemical properties and microbial activity. The effects included both direct and indirect effects of microplastics as a single factor, as well as a study including the combined effects of microplastics with other global change factors. The review study (chapter 2) summarized the microplastic pollution in terrestrial ecosystems including the sources and distribution of microplastics in soil, and the potential migration pathways. Microplastic effects on soil physicochemical properties such as aggregation, water dynamics, pH, and organic matter contents were also included. Finally, this review provided a general understanding of the impacts of microplastics on soil biota including soil fauna and microbes, and their known consequences on plant performance. The first laboratory study (chapter 3) explored the direct impacts of microplastics with different shapes and polymer types on soil pH and microbial activity, and how these effects may change over incubation time. This work revealed the influences of twelve microplastics (four shapes made of three different polymer types) on soil pH and microbial activities. We specifically found that microplastics could affect soil pH, respiration, and enzymatic activities depending on their shape, polymer type, and incubation time. Specifically, soil pH increased with foams and fragments, and overall soil pH reduced initially and increased afterwards over time. Soil respiration increased with foams, and soil respiration declined with time. Enzymatic activities were impacted by microplastic shapes and polymer types, and fluctuated with incubation time. They were negatively correlated with soil pH, and the presence of microplastics weakened this correlation. The second laboratory work (chapter 4) revealed the indirect effects of microplastic-contaminated soil layers on water distribution, soil aggregation, and microbial activities of adjacent soil layers without microplastics. This research indicated that microplastic-contaminating soil layers could affect the water flow and distribution, the proportion of different-sized aggregates, and microbial activities in adjacent soil layers. Specifically, microplastic-contaminating soil layers impacted the vertical water flow along the soil profile surrounding soil layers, with consequences on water contents and distribution in adjacent soil layers. In addition, microplastic-contaminating soil layers changed the proportion of different-sized aggregates in different depths of the adjacent soil layers. These physical changes contributed to the alterations in soil respiration in adjacent soil layers, but not translated to soil enzymatic activities. Interestingly, microplastic fibers showed more pronounced effects than microplastic films on such soil properties. The third laboratory research project (chapter 5) examined the combined effects of microplastics and drought on a soil-plant system. This study evaluated the microplastics direct effect, and its interaction with drought on soil ecosystem functions and multifunctionality. We found that these effects varied with soil water conditions. That is, microplastic fibers (1) inhibited microbial activity (respiration and enzymatic activities) under well-water conditions, while enhanced microbial activities under drought conditions; (2) promoted litter decomposition under well-water conditions, whereas suppressed it under drought conditions; (4) diminished leachate SO42- irrespective of the soil water conditions, decreased leachate NO3- only when microplastics combined with drought, increased leachate PO43- under well-watered conditions; (5) and increased soil aggregation and soil pH regardless of water conditions; (6) microplastic fibers and drought negatively affected not only single ecosystem functions, but also soil ecosystem multifunctionality

Switching of both local ferroelectric and magnetic domains in multiferroic Bi0.9La0.1FeO3 thin film by mechanical force

Cross-coupling of ordering parameters in multiferroic materials by multiple external stimuli other than electric field and magnetic field is highly desirable from both practical application and fundamental study points of view. Recently, mechanical force has attracted great attention in switching of ferroic ordering parameters via electro-elastic coupling in ferroelectric materials. In this work, mechanical force induced polarization and magnetization switching were investigated in a polycrystalline multiferroic Bi0.9La0.1FeO3 thin film using a scanning probe microscopy system. The piezoresponse force microscopy and magnetic force microscopy responses suggest that both the ferroelectric domains and the magnetic domains in Bi0.9La0.1FeO3 film could be switched by mechanical force as well as electric field. High strain gradient created by mechanical force is demonstrated as able to induce ferroelastic switching and thus induce both ferroelectric dipole and magnetic spin flipping in our thin film, as a consequence of electro-elastic coupling and magneto-electric coupling. The demonstration of mechanical force control of both the ferroelectric and the magnetic domains at room temperature provides a new freedom for manipulation of multiferroics and could result in devices with novel functionalities

Study on Hypertext Reading in Students’ Autonomous Learning

The study was conducted on 100 non-English major sophomores for one semester in a University of Shanxi Province in China with the purpose to explore the variation of sophomore’s learning achievements through hypertext English reading based on Schematic Theory and Constructionist Theory. The results show that hypertext reading is beneficial to improve students’ learning, which is consistent with the conclusion that hypertext reading model is relatively a feasible and efficient way to improve students’ autonomous learning and achievement

Scalable Algorithms for Power Function Calculations of quantum states in NISQ Era

Quantum computing stands at the vanguard of science, focused on exploiting quantum mechanical phenomena like superposition and entanglement. Its goal is to create innovative computational models that address intricate problems beyond classical computers' capabilities. In the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era, developing algorithms for nonlinear function calculations on density matrices is of paramount importance. This project endeavors to design scalable algorithms for calculating power functions of mixed quantum states. This study introduces two algorithms based on the Hadamard Test and Gate Set Tomography. Additionally, a comparison of their computational outcomes is offered, accompanied by a meticulous assessment of errors inherent in the Gate Set Tomography based approac