Constant Communication Research Articles

Modular Based-Instruction Preparedness of Elementary School Teachers in Santa Cruz District Amidst the Pandemic

Modular learning is employed by all public schools as face-to-face engagements in the Philippines are restricted due to COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the researcher aimed to evaluate the preparedness of Elementary School Teachers in Santa Cruz District for module-based learning. It determined whether the instructors can effectively impart knowledge to their students despite the constraints posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This research used descriptive research design with 42 elementary teachers of Santa Cruz District, Laguna as respondents for this study. The study also sought to determine the status of preparedness of teachers in terms of health, resources, and interaction. It was analyzed using percentage and factor analyses. Findings revealed that the overall mean of the teacher’s health preparedness is 4.65 which accounts for 55.40% variance. The teachers are very prepared with regard to their health. The overall mean of the teacher’s preparedness in terms of resources is 4.65 which accounts for 80.90% variance. The teachers are very prepared in terms of resources. Further support may provide to the teachers in the delivery of learning exemplars and retrieval of learning assessments. The support can be in terms of additional protection or assistance from the local government when they deliver exemplars and retrieve learning assessments. The overall mean of the teacher’s preparedness in terms of interaction is 4.56 which accounts for 59.30% variance. The teachers are very prepared with their interaction with their pupils. Constant communication between the teachers, parents, and students was key to a successful implementation of modular-based instruction. Further support must be provided to the teachers in the delivery of learning exemplars and retrieval of learning assessments. The support can be in terms of additional protection or assistance from the local government when they deliver exemplars and retrieve learning assessments. Even though, teachers are prepared, health, interaction and resource – wise, they still need additional support in order to reduce stress brought upon by the pandemic. Future parallel studies regarding the preparedness of teachers and learning assessments can be conducted. Variables like years of experience of teachers, age, sex, the type of seminars they have attended and the status of submission of learning assessments can be included. The study could focus on the relationship of teachers’ preparedness and other related variables to the status of submission of learning assessments.

Training Management of the Elite Adolescent Soccer Player throughout Maturation.

Professional soccer clubs invest significantly into the development of their academy prospects with the hopes of producing elite players. Talented youngsters in elite development systems are exposed to high amounts of sports-specific practise with the aims of developing the foundational skills underpinning the capabilities needed to excel in the game. Yet large disparities in maturation status, growth-related issues, and highly-specialised sport practise predisposes these elite youth soccer players to an increased injury risk. However, practitioners may scaffold a performance monitoring and injury surveillance framework over an academy to facilitate data-informed training decisions that may not only mitigate this inherent injury risk, but also enhance athletic performance. Constant communication between members of the multi-disciplinary team enables context to build around an individual’s training status and risk profile, and ensures that a progressive, varied, and bespoke training programme is provided at all stages of development to maximise athletic potential.

Fostering Palliative Care Through Digital Intervention: A Platform for Adult Patients With Hematologic Malignancies

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are an emerging paradigm in clinical research and healthcare, aiming to capture the patient's self-assessed health status in order to gauge efficacy of treatment from their perspective. As these patient-generated health data provide insights into the effects of healthcare processes in real-life settings beyond the clinical setting, they can also be viewed as a resolution beyond what can be gleaned directly by the clinician. To this end, patients are identified as a key stakeholder of the healthcare decision making process, instead of passively following their doctor's guidance. As this joint decision-making process requires constant and high-quality communication between the patient and his/her healthcare providers, novel methodologies and tools have been proposed to promote richer and preemptive communication to facilitate earlier recognition of potential complications. To this end, as PROs can be used to quantify the patient impact (especially important for chronic conditions such as cancer), they can play a prominent role in providing patient-centric care. In this paper, we introduce the MyPal platform that aims to support adults suffering from hematologic malignancies, focusing on the technical design and highlighting the respective challenges. MyPal is a Horizon 2020 European project aiming to support palliative care for cancer patients via the electronic PROs (ePROs) paradigm, building upon modern eHealth technologies. To this end, MyPal project evaluate the proposed eHealth intervention via clinical studies and assess its potential impact on the provided palliative care. More specifically, MyPal platform provides specialized applications supporting the regular answering of well-defined and standardized questionnaires, spontaneous symptoms reporting, educational material provision, notifications etc. The presented platform has been validated by end-users and is currently in the phase of pilot testing in a clinical study to evaluate its feasibility and its potential impact on the quality of life of palliative care patients with hematologic malignancies.

Oral-Gut-Brain Axis in Experimental Models of Periodontitis: Associating Gut Dysbiosis With Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Periodontitis is considered a non-communicable chronic disease caused by a dysbiotic microbiota, which generates a low-grade systemic inflammation that chronically damages the organism. Several studies have associated periodontitis with other chronic non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases. Besides, the oral bacteria considered a keystone pathogen, Porphyromonas gingivalis, has been detected in the hippocampus and brain cortex. Likewise, gut microbiota dysbiosis triggers a low-grade systemic inflammation, which also favors the risk for both cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Recently, the existence of an axis of Oral-Gut communication has been proposed, whose possible involvement in the development of neurodegenerative diseases has not been uncovered yet. The present review aims to compile evidence that the dysbiosis of the oral microbiota triggers changes in the gut microbiota, which creates a higher predisposition for the development of neuroinflammatory or neurodegenerative diseases.The Oral-Gut-Brain axis could be defined based on anatomical communications, where the mouth and the intestine are in constant communication. The oral-brain axis is mainly established from the trigeminal nerve and the gut-brain axis from the vagus nerve. The oral-gut communication is defined from an anatomical relation and the constant swallowing of oral bacteria. The gut-brain communication is more complex and due to bacteria-cells, immune and nervous system interactions. Thus, the gut-brain and oral-brain axis are in a bi-directional relationship. Through the qualitative analysis of the selected papers, we conclude that experimental periodontitis could produce both neurodegenerative pathologies and intestinal dysbiosis, and that periodontitis is likely to induce both conditions simultaneously. The severity of the neurodegenerative disease could depend, at least in part, on the effects of periodontitis in the gut microbiota, which could strengthen the immune response and create an injurious inflammatory and dysbiotic cycle. Thus, dementias would have their onset in dysbiotic phenomena that affect the oral cavity or the intestine. The selected studies allow us to speculate that oral-gut-brain communication exists, and bacteria probably get to the brain via trigeminal and vagus nerves.

The importance role and place of online resources in widespread agroinnovation

It has been proven that agricultural micro and small agricultural enterprises are limited in access to the best modern agricultural practices due to the presence of both objective and subjective factors. The online resource center "Best practices of farmer-farmer practices" aims to provide agricultural MMAE with practical knowledge and demonstration base of modern agricultural technologies in Ukraine and the world, which can be implemented in the fruit and vegetable sector, livestock, aquaculture, poultry (except chickens). confectionery and craft products. Such a resource should become a communication platform, first of all, between those who implement modern approaches and technologies and their potential followers. Given that the key beneficiaries of the resource center are business entities, the idea of transforming the center into a business entity that provides services to both such entities and authorities, local governments for the successful implementation of agricultural policy is obviously development of rural entrepreneurship. Thus, the resource center "Best practices of farmer-farmer" will help to solve the problems and challenges not only of producers, distributors and implementers of agricultural innovations, best agricultural practices, but also the executive and local governments. The services provided through the online platform "Best Agricultural Practices for MMAE " will be able to disseminate innovative technologies that have practical application among small and medium-sized businesses in the field of agribusiness. Using the online platform as a communicator, it is planned to ensure constant and effective communication between agricultural producers, scientists, educators and advisors. Creating an information resource on a sectoral basis will allow to concentrate in one place information about the best modern agricultural practices and provide access to them for end users - agricultural producers, using existing channels of information dissemination in the system of agricultural advisory. Key words: innovation, agricultural enterprise, online platform, advisory, agricultural practice.

There and Back Again (Almost)

Library renovation caused the staff of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary to plan a move of library services to a temporary location. The staff selected a subset of books to remain available to users; 90,000 volumes were placed in storage. Records for unavailable volumes were suppressed so that users would only see information about books available to them. The staff chose 6,000 books for a temporary library, based on faculty needs and past usage. Books were moved in January 2020. Staff were continuously involved in refining design and furniture decisions during the construction process, scheduled for completion in September 2021. The new Wright Learning and Information Center will feature a large collaborative space and a digital learning center. Lessons learned include the necessity for constant communication among staff members and keeping in mind that users want normal library services, despite the disruptions of a construction project.

An Open Source LoRa Based, Low-Cost IoT Platform for Renewable Energy Generation Unit Monitoring and Supervisory Control

SCADA provides real-time system monitoring by constant communication and data exchange between various system devices to achieve data visualization and logging. Presently, in industrial systems, commercial SCADA systems are being used for data monitoring and control. These systems can be expensive, and as such can only be afforded by select industries. Even at these costs, the commercial SCADA systems face some challenges, which include interoperability and scalability issues. Research has shown that these problems can be solved by the introduction of low-cost materials and open-source software to achieve data monitoring for all levels of processes. This paper proposes an open source, low-cost Internet of Things (IoT)-based SCADA system that employs the IoT architecture for SCADA functions. The proposed system is an improvement to the existing IoT solutions by eliminating cloud based IoT platforms and introducing a single machine system. This solution increases the robustness of the system while reducing costs. The proposed system prototype consists of voltage and current sensors, Arduino Uno microcontroller and Raspberry Pi. The sensors acquire data from the monitored unit. The Arduino Uno receives the data and processes them for transmission to the Raspberry Pi using the LoRa communication technology. At the Raspberry Pi, the local Chirpstack platform processes the data and displays the measured data using the Grafana dashboard for real-time data monitoring, and the data is stored in an InfluxDB database. For system validation purposes, the prototype is designed, developed, and set up to monitor the panel voltage, current and battery voltage of a solar photovoltaic system. The results obtained from the experimental set-up are compared with the test data from physical digital multimeters. The system presented in this paper is a low-cost, open source, scalable and interoperable system. This, therefore, makes the proposed SCADA system an alternative for commercial SCADA systems, especially for select applications. The system proposed in this paper can be deployed to large industrial systems with appropriate upgrades and customization. The main contribution of this research is the design and development of a SCADA system that performs all the functions of a proprietary SCADA system at a very low-cost with scalable and interoperability features which are the main limitations of the traditional SCADA systems.

Using the microbiome in clinical practice.

Using the microbiome in clinical practice.

Adaptive Neural Network Control of Time Delay Teleoperation System Based on Model Approximation.

A bilateral neural network adaptive controller is designed for a class of teleoperation systems with constant time delay, external disturbance and internal friction. The stability of the teleoperation force feedback system with constant communication channel delay and nonlinear, complex, and uncertain constant time delay is guaranteed, and its tracking performance is improved. In the controller design process, the neural network method is used to approximate the system model, and the unknown internal friction and external disturbance of the system are estimated by the adaptive method, so as to avoid the influence of nonlinear uncertainties on the system.

SOCIAL CAPITAL: EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

Background. The process of social capital formation as a full-fledged scientific theory reflects and explains important social processes. Constant communication and socialization process make new demands on the economy and economic mechanism. Now there are clear periods of technological change for which humanity at the subconscious level is ready and needs it. Most of these processes took place due to the constant functioning of social capital. The aim of the article is to identify and periodize the main stages of evolution of the social capital concept based on the study of its origin nature, and characteristics of key points that influence further theory process, definition of basic features and structure of social capital. Materials and methods. The works of foreign and domestic scholars on social capital were studied to solve this goal. Methods of historical and logical generalization, analysis and synthesis, comparison and generalization were used in the paper. Results. A significant amount of works on this concept has become a prerequisite for identifying and periodizing the evolution stages of the social capital concept: latent, conceptualization, the stage of convergence and pragmatization. The following approaches to the interpretation of social capital were formed in the second stage: sociological, historical, economic, institutional, political science and symbiotic. The study has confirmed the third stage of development of the social capital theory lasts, which is characterized by significant achievements in understanding its content and role in society, practical implementation of certain methodological provisions, on the one hand, and active discourse and pluralism of views on the social capital concept on the other hand. Conclusion. Historical retrospection of the formation process of the social capital concept, analysis of scholars’ views on its essence, their synthesis and development have allowed to determine the following main essential characteristics of the "social capital" concept and form its author’s vision as a set of social institutions, relations, norms, values, mutual trust structure. Its parameters affect the formation of other capital forms, management models and benefits in general, which are characterized by interconnectedness with human capital and the historical and cultural development context and management object. Keywords: social capital, trust, communication network, norms, institutional environment.

Distributed resilient control against denial of service attacks in DC microgrids with constant power load

Recent events have shown that cyber attacks are becoming real threats to the power system reliability and resiliency, and there is no exception to the DC microgrids which would become popular in the future. Currently, most secondary controls in DC microgrids heavily rely on communications, making them specifically vulnerable to cyber attacks. This paper presents a resilient distributed control based on the average consensus algorithm and the proportional-integral (PI) consensus algorithm to enhance the system resilience against denial of service attacks and improve the microgrid stability, particularly in the presence of constant power loads. The proposed control casts the average voltage restoration problem into an optimization problem, and because of this, the voltage control is immune to the communication damage caused by malicious denial of service attacks. Moreover, the small-signal stability model of the DC microgrid with distributed energy storages and constant power loads is established, and the impacts of varying constant power loads, controller parameters and communication topology on the system stability are analyzed. Simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Pilot Application of ‘Invasive Alien Species in Europe’ Smartphone App in the Danube Region

The present pilot study tested and validated the use of the ‘Invasive Alien Species in Europe’ smartphone app (IASapp) in the Lower Danube Region. The study was conducted in three stages: (1) Testing the effectiveness of the app in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia by organizing information and field testing campaigns; (2) Improving and extending the functionality of the app and developing a list of the invasive alien species (IAS) of concern to the Danube River Basin (DRB); and (3) Testing the updated app during the Joint Danube Survey 4 campaign. Overall, 13 campaigns were carried out, during which seven aquatic IAS of EU concern and nine IAS relevant to the DRB were recorded. Currently, the developed new functionality of IASapp allows the recording of 64 IAS of DRB concern. The updated IASapp has an important role in increasing public awareness on IAS issues, as well as in enlarging the participation and output of citizen science in the IAS early detection, monitoring and reporting in the DRB. Therefore, the constant communication with existing stakeholder groups and establishment of new citizen science groups is crucial for increasing the effectiveness of using the IASapp in the Danube Region and tackling the IAS issues.

Readiness of cardiosurgical patients for digital rehabilitation programs

Abstract Introduction To date, the methods of remote rehabilitation using the mobile applications for smartphones are increasingly introduced for a particular category of cardiac patients worldwide. Such programs are of a particular relevance due to a higher accessibility for a patient which is provided by the flexibility of the patients' home training schedule and the possibility of constant communication with a cardiologist and rehabilitation therapist. Purpose To study the readiness of the patients to participate in the remote digital cardiac rehabilitation program. Methods 265 patients (180 (68%) men and 85 (32%) women) undergone a cardiac surgery and staying at the cardiac surgery department were examined. The mean age of the patients was 67±11.9 years. 157 (59%) patients undergone coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), 73 (34%) patients – heart valves surgery, 13 (5%) patients – simultaneous CABG and heart valves surgery and 5 (2%) – hybrid CABG with carotid endarterectomy. Prior to the discharge from the first inpatient rehabilitation stage (10–12 days after cardiac surgery), all the patients underwent a survey. The survey was conducted using a designed questionnaire including 5 questions, the answers to which determined the patients' awareness of the necessity and the structure of postoperative remote rehabilitation using the digital technologies, as well as the willingness and the possibility to participate in these programs. Results Analyzing the results obtained from the survey it turned out that the majority of patients (258 (97%)) believe that they need cardiac rehabilitation. However, only 86 (32%) patients answered positively to the question about their readiness to participate in remote digital rehabilitation programs. When analyzing the reasons for such a low readiness of patients to participate in remote programs it turned out that 98 (37%) patients didn't have smartphones. 10 (4%) patients despite the presence of a smartphone, refused to participate referring to their inability to use considering themselves incapable of learning it. 71 (27%) patients simply refused claiming that they don't understand the necessity for remote cardiac rehabilitation. Conclusions Thus, only a small number of the patients (32%) are ready to participate in remote digital programs of cardiac rehabilitation. A considerable amount of the patients (37%) can't afford to participate in a remote rehabilitation program only due to the absence of the smartphone and 27% of the patients are not ready to participate in a remote cardiac rehabilitation program not understanding the importance of distance cardiac rehabilitation for them. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.

Instant democracy: a look forward to the EU’s digital future

Democracy’s resilience is being put to the test by the 21st century. The impactof globalisation and digitalisation has disenfranchised many but so have traditional democratic practices. In an era of constant and immediate communication, with society embracing technological advances while struggling to cope with its inadvertent effects, democracy is still tethered to traditional practices that limit citizens’ roles to casting their ballots every few years. However, theory is now being put to the test and experiments with digital democracy are popping up across the globe. In this article, we cover three participative democracy instruments, namely the European Citizens Initiative, e-Voting and e-Participatory Budgeting, delving into their potential and identifying their limitations, in the context of the European Union. We also cover the unforeseen threats to democracy posed by information security issues and social media.

Mechanisms for control of skin immune function by the microbiome.

The skin represents the largest area for direct contact between microbes and host immunocytes and is a site for constant communication between the host and this diverse and essential microbial community. Coagulase-negative staphylococci are an abundant bacterial genus on the human skin and are regulated through various mechanisms that include the epidermal barrier environment and innate and adaptive immune systems within the epidermis and dermis. In turn, some species and strains of these bacteria produce beneficial products that augment host immunity by exerting specifically targeted antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, or anti-neoplastic activity while also promoting broad innate and adaptive immune responses. The use of selected skin commensals as a therapeutic has shown promise in recent human clinical trials. This emerging concept of bacteriotherapy is defining mechanisms of action and validating the dependence on the microbiome for maintenance of immune homeostasis.

Обґрунтування ранньої нейрореабілітації в дітей неонатального віку

На підставі катамнестичного спостереження 25 новонароджених із вадами розвитку спинного мозку та постгеморагічною гідроцефалією, яким проводилось шунтування шлуночкової системи головного мозку, обґрунтована необхідність ранньої нейрореабілітації вже в перші дні життя, ще на етапі відділення реанімації та інтенсивної терапії. Вивчена ефективність розробленого комплексу заходів первинної реабілітації новонароджених на етапі виходжування після проведення інтенсивної терапії, з подальшою оцінкою її ефективності за шкалою Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) протягом першого року життя. Запропонована індивідуальна програма реабілітації з комплексом вправ залежно від потреб дитини та її можливостей дає значний позитивний результат щодо становлення моторних і сенсорних навичок дитини та профілактики їх згасання.

Beyond the GFAP-Astrocyte Protein Markers in the Brain.

The idea of central nervous system as one-man band favoring neurons is long gone. Now we all are aware that neurons and neuroglia are team players and constant communication between those various cell types is essential to maintain functional efficiency and a quick response to danger. Here, we summarize and discuss known and new markers of astroglial multiple functions, their natural heterogeneity, cellular interactions, aging and disease-induced dysfunctions. This review is focused on newly reported facts regarding astrocytes, which are beyond the old stereotypes. We present an up-to-date list of marker proteins used to identify a broad spectrum of astroglial phenotypes related to the various physiological and pathological nervous system conditions. The aim of this review is to help choose markers that are well-tailored for specific needs of further experimental studies, precisely recognizing differential glial phenotypes, or for diagnostic purposes. We hope it will help to categorize the functional and structural diversity of the astroglial population and ease a clear readout of future experimental results.

Distributed constrained optimization problem of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems with communication delays

This paper addresses the constrained distributed optimization problem of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems, where the agents with linear dynamics are subject to local set constraints, global nonlinear inequality constraints and heterogeneous communication delays. Agents collaborate to minimize a global objective function by communicating with their neighbors in a graph. Each agent’s decision variable is constrained in a local set. The decision variables of all agents are coupled by global inequality constraints which are modeled by nonlinear functions. To handle the heterogeneous constant communication delays, the scattering transformation between neighbors is employed. We design a new distributed control law to investigate the passivity of systems of individual agents in the presence of constraints and communication delays. Integrating the proposed control law with the scattering transformation, we prove that systems converge to the optimal solution which minimizes the global objective functions. Simulations of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the distributed control law.

Crafting Compliance Regime under COVID-19: Using Taiwan's Quarantine Policy as a Case Study.

One year after the World Health Organization declared COVID‐19 a global pandemic, governments around the world adopt similar practices in containing the COVID‐19 spread. Nevertheless, variation exists in the level of policy compliance, which directly contribute to policy success/failure across countries. As the pandemic continues, pandemic fatigue also decreases the public’s willingness to comply. Increasing policy compliance during the remainder of pandemic has become a transnational concern. Using Taiwan’s quarantine policy as an example, this article illustrates three aspects to craft an effective compliance regime to fight public health crises like COVID‐19: (1) a comprehensive policy mix to reduce heterogeneous compliance barriers that impact different social groups; (2) constant and various policy communication with heterogeneous target audiences; and (3) leveraging and integrating street‐level bureaucrats in the policy implementation stages. Taiwan’s case provides several policy lessons for other countries: compliance regime is not driven by top‐down enforcement but through the integration of policy design and implementation that remove all barriers for compliance. Taiwan’s street level bureaucrats are the glue of the compliance regime. This article bears policy implications for policy makers around the world when aiming for increasing policy compliance.

THE POWERFUL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL SECONDARY EDUCATION IN TURKEY: TEACHERS' VIEWS

<p>This research aims to determine the opinions of vocational high school teachers about the Powerful Learning Environment (PLE) approach in vocational and technical secondary education. This study, which was carried out with the qualitative research method, was designed with the phenomenological pattern. The participants of the research consist of 28 teachers. The data were obtained with a semi-structured interview form, and the descriptive analysis method was used in data analysis. According to the results of the research, the obstacles to creating a PLE in vocational and technical education are the theoretical weight of the course programs, work-orientedness in internship workplaces (rejection of the learning process) and outdated vocational field training program modules and workshop equipment. On the other hand, the suggestions for creating a PLE in vocational and technical education are using an on-the-job learning model and increasing the internship period, reducing the theoretical Intensity in the curriculum and emphasizing the practice and increasing teacher orientation, providing program, equipment and workshop materials suitable for technological development, constant communication and interaction between teacher-student-parent-internship employer, the establishment of commercial relations between vocational high schools and establishment of virtual companies in entrepreneurship clubs, meeting with industry representatives to adapt to the changing expectations of the post-pandemic industry and using the advantages of peer learning in vocational skills education.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0845/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>