General Questions Research Articles

Perceived Effects of Language and Culture Suppression in the Catalan Region of Spain

The Catalan language has had a complex history. The suppression of the Catalan language had a profound impact on the Catalan culture and identity. This study addresses the interaction between language and culture according to students in a Catalan university. The purpose was to evaluate their insights and report the perceived connection between language and culture. An experimental study was conducted to investigate the interrelationship between language and culture and whether it is perceived that language loss affects cultural loss, and both are intertwined. 67 undergraduate university students between the ages of 18 and 22 years participated in this study. They responded to a questionnaire that included general questions on history, language, and culture. The results suggest that the participants feel there is an interdependent connection between language loss and culture loss. This research puts into focus people’s identification with their own language, culture, traditions, and history, which reinforces the difficulty of separating one’s cultural and linguistic history.

Investigation on the Attitudes and Perspectives of Medical and Nursing Staff About Euthanasia: Data From Four Regional Greek Hospitals.

The good and benefit of the patient are the main drivers of the decisions that health professionals are asked to make. However, the definition of the good and the actions required for benefit are not always simple and self-evident. The intractable ethical dilemma of euthanasia has been the subject of extensive debates over the years, and numerous studies have been carried out in an attempt to record the attitudes and opinions of both health professionals and the general population. This research aims to investigate the opinions and perspectives of the medical and nursing staff of the four regional hospitals regarding euthanasia and to detect the factors that advocate for and against it. Two hundred and eighteen medical and nursing staff members from four regional hospitals in Lasithi participated in the research, whose opinions and influencing factors were investigated using a questionnaire consisting of four sections. The first included demographic and general characteristics questions; the second was the Euthanasia Attitude Scale (EAS); the third was the Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R); and the last was the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES). The SPSS software version 25.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY) was used to analyse the data. Of the total, 78.0% of the participants were women, with an average sample age of 44.5 years. 65.1% were married, 23.4% were physicians, while 76.6% were nurses. The mean Euthanasia Attitude score (70.89) is moderate, ranging from 30 to 120, with higher scores suggesting more favourable sentiments. Euthanasia was viewed positively by 24.3% of respondents. There was no significant difference in positive attitudes between medical and nursing staff. However, the nursing staff had significantly lower average levels of General Orientation for Euthanasia, for the Role of Healthcare Professionals in Euthanasia, Values & Ethics, or Daily Spiritual Experience, and conversely higher levels of scores on Patients' Rights Issues for Euthanasia or Death Acceptance. Health professionals were found to have moderate attitudes about euthanasia, with no significant difference between them, as well as moderate degrees of death and everyday spiritual experience. Overall, a more favourable euthanasia attitude was shown to be strongly associated with individuals who were single, divorced, or widowed, with less death acceptance or more neutral acceptance, but not with daily spiritual experience.

(235) Use of Bremelanotide (Vyleesi) in Men with Sexual Dysfunctions

Abstract Introduction Bremelanotide (Vyleesi) is an FDA approved medication for the safe and efficacious treatment of hypoactive sexual desire disorder in premenopausal women, however phase 3 trials revealed it improved arousal and orgasm as well. As a centrally acting drug it was expected to be effective to treat sexual dysfunctions in men and has been prescribed off label routinely in our practice. Objective The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the use of bremelanotide in men with various sexual dysfunctions, the reasons why the medication was prescribed, improvements in sexual function and overall satisfaction, and side effects experienced. Methods This one-group study design involved men from a single clinic with various sexual dysfunctions prescribed bremelanotide beginning May 1, 2021. After signing consent participants answered the Quality of Life (QOL) Dimension of Sexual Quality of Life Questionnaire, the Patient Global Impression of Improvement (PGI-I) and the General Assessment Questions (GAQ) online. After confirming they had used the medication at least twice, participants completed a structured interview over the telephone with a single interviewer. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the study cohort. Adverse events were collected. Results To date a total of 21 men signed consent and 19 completed the online questionnaires. 80% of these men were more satisfied with their lovemaking and duration of lovemaking; 93% reported vaginal insertion was easier and 71% said it was easier to orgasm. With regard to feelings about initiating lovemaking, 86% were more at ease and 79% anticipated it would be more pleasurable and more carefree. 69% believed orgasm was more pleasurable and 73% said that lovemaking was more pleasurable while 79% reported that the partner’s overall experience was more pleasurable. Using the PGI-I, 53% of participants felt that sexual function after using bremelanotide was a little better, much better, or very much better. Additional questions online revealed similar results. Twelve men completed the one-on-one interview: 69% of participants were prescribed bremelanotide for erectile dysfunction. 64% had at least other one sexual health issue, including anxiety about sex (54%), low sexual desire (45%), not enjoying sex (36%), orgasm difficulties (18%), and ejaculation difficulties and sensation loss (9% each). A total of 91% experienced improvements in sexual function, all with improved erectile function. 100% of those with complaints of low sexual desire and/or complaints of anxiety around sex reported improvement; 64% had decreased anxiety around sex; 55% had more enjoyment with sex; and orgasm improved for 36% of participants. Men reported longer erection and ability for additional erection for 18-24 hours after bremelanotide injection, better connection between genitals and brain, improved sensitivity, and increased confidence. Side effects included flushing (36%), nausea (36%), headache (27%), bothersome spontaneous erections without sexual stimulation for about 24 hours after injection (27%), and incontinence, cramping and abdominal burning (9% each). All adverse events were transient. Conclusions While bremelanotide is approved for hypoactive sexual desire disorder in premenopausal women, it has been prescribed and used successfully for men with erectile dysfunction and other concomitant sexual health issues. Disclosure Yes, this is sponsored by industry/sponsor: Palatin Technologies. Clarification: Industry funding only - investigator initiated and executed study. Any of the authors act as a consultant, employee or shareholder of an industry for: Palatin Technologies.

(298) AUA vs AI: An Inquiry into Testosterone Guidelines

Abstract Introduction ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence with an accessible user interface that allows for conversational input. It uses deep learning, a subset of machine learning based on artificial neural networks, to “speak” to the user. Patients and clinicians alike have been querying ChatGPT with medical questions, and recent publications have shown that the validity of responses vary. Limited information is available pertaining to ChatGPT’s capacity to accurately discuss testosterone management and deficiency. It is imperative for the medical community to be aware of potentially accurate or inaccurate information sources. This project is designed to assess ChatGPT’s clinical competency compared to the American Urologic Association (“AUA”) guidelines regarding the evaluation and management of testosterone deficiency. Objective To assess the competency of ChatGPT to answer general and clinical questions related to testosterone deficiency and replacement compared to the AUA guidelines. Methods The AUA guidelines for evaluation and management of testosterone deficiency include 31 main points. Each point was prompted to ChatGPT in the form of a question, accompanied by requests for validation of information, providing further information, or clinical next-step recommendations. The answers were then sorted into 3 categories all relative to the AUA guidelines, being accurate and complete, (AC), accurate but incomplete (AI), and incorrect or misleading (IM). Results Of the 31 guideline-based questions queried, 22/31 (71%) were AC, 4/31 (13%) were AI, and 5/31 (16%) were IM. The highest number of AI answers pertained to treatment related queries. The highest number of IM answers pertained to counseling, particularly on commonly contested topics, such as the relationship between testosterone and prostate cancer or cardiovascular health. Conclusions When queried about the evaluation and management of testosterone deficiency, ChatGPT offered complete and accurate answers in 71% of cases. It had increased accuracy of even up to 100% when answering regarding firmly established or more binary topics, such as diagnosis requirements or recommended adjunct testing. As such, patients and providers may consider using ChatGPT as an ancillary resource for uncomplicated or firmly established testosterone related queries. However, it did much more poorly when discussing more contested topics such as testosterone’s relationship to prostate cancer, or when approaching elements of medicine that require a more personalized human touch, such as counseling. While ChatGPT may be helpful in the base or binary matters, interpersonal and patient specific matters are best handled by experts in the field. Disclosure No.

Performance of GPT-4V in Answering the Japanese Otolaryngology Board Certification Examination Questions: Evaluation Study.

Artificial intelligence models can learn from medical literature and clinical cases and generate answers that rival human experts. However, challenges remain in the analysis of complex data containing images and diagrams. This study aims to assess the answering capabilities and accuracy of ChatGPT-4 Vision (GPT-4V) for a set of 100 questions, including image-based questions, from the 2023 otolaryngology board certification examination. Answers to 100 questions from the 2023 otolaryngology board certification examination, including image-based questions, were generated using GPT-4V. The accuracy rate was evaluated using different prompts, and the presence of images, clinical area of the questions, and variations in the answer content were examined. The accuracy rate for text-only input was, on average, 24.7% but improved to 47.3% with the addition of English translation and prompts (P<.001). The average nonresponse rate for text-only input was 46.3%; this decreased to 2.7% with the addition of English translation and prompts (P<.001). The accuracy rate was lower for image-based questions than for text-only questions across all types of input, with a relatively high nonresponse rate. General questions and questions from the fields of head and neck allergies and nasal allergies had relatively high accuracy rates, which increased with the addition of translation and prompts. In terms of content, questions related to anatomy had the highest accuracy rate. For all content types, the addition of translation and prompts increased the accuracy rate. As for the performance based on image-based questions, the average of correct answer rate with text-only input was 30.4%, and that with text-plus-image input was 41.3% (P=.02). Examination of artificial intelligence's answering capabilities for the otolaryngology board certification examination improves our understanding of its potential and limitations in this field. Although the improvement was noted with the addition of translation and prompts, the accuracy rate for image-based questions was lower than that for text-based questions, suggesting room for improvement in GPT-4V at this stage. Furthermore, text-plus-image input answers a higher rate in image-based questions. Our findings imply the usefulness and potential of GPT-4V in medicine; however, future consideration of safe use methods is needed.

GEC-ESTRO survey of 106Ru eye applicator practice for ocular melanoma – Physicist survey

Aim106Ru eye plaque brachytherapy (BT, interventional radiotherapy) is an eye-preserving treatment for uveal melanoma performed in about 100 clinics worldwide. Despite this relatively low number, there is a considerable variation in clinical practice. In 2022, the BRAPHYQS and Head & Neck and Skin GEC-ESTRO working groups conducted a survey to map the current clinical practice. The survey consisted of a physicist and a physician part. This paper describes the physicist results. However, three physician questions with overlapping interest are included here as well. Materials and MethodsThe survey questions pertained to commissioning and quality control (QC) of the plaques, treatment planning, radiobiological correction, as well as more general questions on practice improvement. The questions overlapping with the physician survey were related to dose prescription and margins. ResultsSixty-five physicist responses were included. A majority of the centres do not perform an independent measurement of the absorbed dose at reference depth, percentage depth dose (PDD) and off-axis data. A lack of calibration services and suitable equipment are the main reasons. About one third of the centres indicated that they do image based treatment planning. The use of margins and dose prescription showed a large variability, despite the availability of guidelines [1]. Many respondents expressed a strong wish for improvement in a wide range of aspects of clinical practice. ConclusionThe physics survey showed a wide variability regarding quality control of the 106Ru sources and treatment planning practice.

Treatment choice for first permanent molars affected with molar-incisor hypomineralization, in patients 7–8 years of age: a questionnaire study among Swedish general dentists, orthodontists, and pediatric dentists

PurposeThe aim of this study was to investigate attitudes and preferred therapy choice for first permanent molars (FPM) with Molar-Incisor Hypomineralization (MIH).MethodsAn online questionnaire was sent out to general dentists (n = 559) working in the Public Dental Service in Region Västra Götaland, orthodontists (n = 293), and pediatric dentists (n = 156) (members from each interest association), in Sweden. The questionnaire contained three parts: general questions regarding the respondents, patient cases, and general questions regarding extraction of FPMs with MIH. Statistics were carried out using Chi-squared tests, with a significance level of 5%.ResultsA response rate of 36% was obtained. Orthodontists and pediatric dentists were more prone to extract FPMs with both moderate and severe MIH, compared to general dentists. When restoring FPMs with moderate MIH, resin composite was preferred. Compared to the general dentists, the pediatric dentists were more prone to choose glass-ionomer cement in the FPMs with severe MIH. The most common treatment choice for FPMs with mild MIH was fluoride varnish. “When root furcation is under development of the second permanent molar on radiographs” was chosen as the optimal time for extracting FPMs with severe MIH, and the general dentists based their treatment decisions on recommendations from a pediatric dentist.ConclusionExtraction of FPMs with moderate and severe MIH is considered a therapy of choice among general dentists and specialists, and the preferred time of extraction is before the eruption of the second permanent molar.

A Delphi Method for Development of a Barrett's Esophagus Question Prompt List as a Communication Tool for Optimal Patient-physician Communication.

The question prompt list content was derived through a modified Delphi process consisting of 3 rounds. In round 1, experts provided 5 answers to the prompts "What general questions should patients ask when given a new diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus" and "What questions do I not hear patients asking, but given my expertise, I believe they should be asking?" Questions were reviewed and categorized into themes. In round 2, experts rated questions on a 5-point Likert scale. In round 3, experts rerated questions modified or reduced after the previous rounds. Only questions rated as "essential" or "important" were included in Barrett's esophagus question prompt list (BE-QPL). To improve usability, questions were reduced to minimize redundancy and simplified to use language at an eighth-grade level (Fig. 1). Twenty-one esophageal medical and surgical experts participated in both rounds (91% males; median age 52 years). The expert panel comprised of 33% esophagologists, 24% foregut surgeons, and 24% advanced endoscopists, with a median of 15 years in clinical practice. Most (81%), worked in an academic tertiary referral hospital. In this 3-round Delphi technique, 220 questions were proposed in round 1, 122 (55.5%) were accepted into the BE-QPL and reduced down to 76 questions (round 2), and 67 questions (round 3). These 67 questions reached a Flesch Reading Ease of 68.8, interpreted as easily understood by 13 to 15 years olds. With multidisciplinary input, we have developed a physician-derived BE-QPL to optimize patient-physician communication. Future directions will seek patient feedback to distill the questions further to a smaller number and then assess their usability.

Irrelevant information enhances a sense of knowledge and curses our understanding of other minds.

This study shows that exposure to topic-related but irrelevant information enhances both estimates of peer knowledge and our own sense of knowledge. In Experiment 1, participants were more confident in their answers to general knowledge questions and gave higher estimates of peer knowledge when such questions were accompanied by short paragraphs containing topic-related yet nondiagnostic information than when they were not. The inflated peer knowledge estimates were independent of the classic curse of knowledge. Experiments 2, 3, 5, and 6 demonstrated that irrelevant information biases knowledge estimation via its semantic relatedness to the test questions; response latencies were measured in Experiments 5 and 6 to examine the possible role of retrieval fluency in the semantic relatedness effect. Experiment 4 attributed the bias to information content (e.g., "it is generally known that keratin is responsible"), not comments on knowledge popularity (e.g., "what is responsible is generally known"). Importantly, the effect of irrelevant information on estimates of peer knowledge was fully mediated by confidence in own knowledge in Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5. Experiment 6 manipulated retrieval fluency and failed to find conclusive evidence for its involvement in the semantic relatedness effect. We conclude that irrelevant information boosts peer knowledge estimation through its semantic relatedness to the problem at hand, and the effect is mostly explained by a corresponding increase in the individual's own sense of knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Disruptive Innovation - A Consolidated Model for the Dissemination of Management Ideas

There is an ongoing debate about the use and scope of Clayton M. Christensen´s idea of disruptive innovation, including the question of whether it is a management buzz phrase or a valuable theory. This discussion considers the general question of how innovation in the field of management theories and concepts finds its way to the different target groups. This conceptual paper combines the different concepts of the creation and dissemination of management trends in a basic framework based on a short review of models for the dissemination of management ideas. This framework allows an analysis of the character of new management ideas like disruptive innovation. By measuring the impact of the theory on the academic sphere using a bibliometric statistic of the number of academic publications on Google scholar and Scopus and a meta-analysis of research papers, we show the significant influence of disruptive innovation beyond pure management fads.

Socio‐psychological barriers preventing people from helping in times of crisis: A scoping review

AbstractA robust field of research has elucidated when and why people are willing to offer help in times of crisis. Yet helping behaviour does not always occur when needed, and the absence of helping during crisis is less well studied. By broadly defining a crisis as an extremely difficult, disruptive and dangerous situation, which may result in possible harm to individuals, groups and societies, this article reviews research focused on the following general question: What factors (psychological, sociological, economic and legal) prevent people from helping others in times of collective crisis? The present work (a) integrates the helping literature, (b) presents new theoretical and empirical perspectives on novel findings concerning failures to help during crises, and (c) suggests recommendations that will enable professionals involved in emergency management to support the public in developing their own capacity to manage and overcome crises. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

The prevalence of child sexual abuse with online sexual abuse added

Background and objectiveResearch efforts are measuring various forms of online sexual abuse. There is a need to incorporate such measures of online sexual abuse into the calculation of overall prevalence rates for child sexual abuse. ParticipantsA sample of 2639 respondents aged 18-to-28 was recruited from a nationally representative online panel. MethodsUsing an online questionnaire, respondents were assessed via self-report about 9 types of online sexual abuse in childhood and were also assessed with 2 questions that have been used to assess generic child sexual abuse prevalence in previous surveys. ResultsThe addition of the online abuse to the generic questions about child sexual abuse raised the overall prevalence rate from 13.5 % to 21.7 %. The rate for females increased from 19.8 % to 31.6 % and for males from 6.2 % to 10.8 %. The largest independent contribution to the overall combined increase were the offenses involving non-consensual image sharing and voluntary online sexual interactions with an impermissibly older adult partner. The inclusion of the online sexual abuse exposures also increased the ability to identify the survivors with the highest levels of current psychological distress. ConclusionThe study highlights the importance of counting and including online sexual abuse in efforts to estimate the overall prevalence of childhood sexual abuse. The paper proposes 2 or 3 questions that could be added to sexual abuse questionnaires to assess these online offenses efficiently.

From ‘Territorial Peace’ to ‘Total Peace’ in Colombia: A Geopolitical Balance

ABSTRACT This forum discusses the concept of ‘total peace’ (paz total) and the notion of ‘peace regions’ (regiones de paz) recently coined by the government of Colombia to advance in the implementation of the Peace Accords signed back in 2016 with the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces FARC. Broadly drawing on a radical and critical geopolitics perspective, the forum’s contributions offer a set of interpretations, exploring a wide range of different aspects, such as the relations with the previous concept of ‘territorial peace’ (paz territorial), the changing geographical dynamics of the armed conflict, the proliferation of unlawful armed structures and drug trafficking, and violent processes of capital accumulation. Moreover, specific themes such as environmental conflict, the political reintegration of the guerrillas, gender and differential approaches, and ethnic and peasant communities’ perspectives are also addressed, without losing sight of the more general question of the country’s territorial reordering.

Incorporating patient-reported outcome data into a predictive calculator for allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation recipients.

The Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) provides a 1-year overall survival calculator to estimate outcomes for individual patients before they undergo allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) to inform risk. The calculator considers pre-HCT clinical and demographic characteristics, but not patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Because pre-HCT PRO scores have been associated with post-HCT outcomes, the authors hypothesized that adding PRO scores to the calculator would enhance its predictive power. Clinical data were obtained from the CIBMTR and the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network. The PRO measures used were the 36-Item Short Form Survey (SF-36) and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Bone Marrow Transplantation. One thousand thirty-three adult patients were included. When adjusted for clinical characteristics, the SF-36 physical component score was significantly predictive of 1-year survival (hazard ratio [HR], 0.88; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.81-0.95; p=.0015), whereas the mental component score was not (HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.95-1.10; p=0.6396). The baseline single general health question on the SF-36 was also significantly associated with mortality (HR, 1.91 for those reporting fair/poor health vs. good, very good, or excellent health; 95% CI, 1.33-2.76; p=.0005). The addition of PRO scores to the calculator did not result in a significant change in the model's predictive ability. Self-reported pre-HCT scores were strongly predictive of self-reported health status (odds ratio, 3.35; 95% CI, 1.66-6.75; p=.0007) and quality of life (odds ratio, 3.24; 95% CI, 1.93-5.41; p<.0001) after HCT. The authors confirmed the significant, independent association of pre-HCT PRO scores with overall survival, although adding PRO scores to the survival calculator did not improve its performance. They also demonstrated that a single general health question was as accurate as the full measure for predicting survival, an important finding that may reduce respondent burden and promote its inclusion in routine clinical practice. Validation of these findings should be performed.

Decision-making concerning involuntary oral care in older individuals with dementia

Many older individuals with dementia show care-resistant behavior for oral care. Providing care despite resistance is considered to be involuntary care. The Dutch law, 'Wet zorg en dwang' (care and coercion), states that care must be ceased in the presence of resistance, unless there is (a risk of) serious harm. This study was conducted to gain insight into the attitudes of healthcare providers with regard to involuntary oral care in older individuals with dementia. An online questionnaire consisting of general questions, case specific questions and knowledge questions about the Dutch law was filled out by 392 care providers. In all cases, a discrepancy was seen between the assessment of oral health problems as potentially harmful and the willingness to provide involuntary oral care. Hence, many healthcare providers are aware of the subsequent potential health risks related to not providing care, but are still reluctant to provide involuntary oral care. A large part of the healthcare providers also has a low level of knowledge with regard to the Dutch law 'Wet zorg en Dwang'.

Melatih Kreativitas Diri Siswa Dasar Melalui Fun Book Dalam Pembelajaran Ma-tematika Dan Bahasa

This article discusses the use of Fun Books as a measuring tool to increase students' creativity at elementary school level in mathematics and language learning. This service is carried out with a focus on measuring students' creativity levels before and after implementing the Fun Book as well as evaluating how to stimulate students' creativity in both subjects. The target of the training is selected students, namely SD Negeri No. 010246 Banjar. The students selected were 16 Grade 2 students. The problem seen at this school is that students are still passive in learning, students are not yet creative and have difficulty answering questions asked by the teacher during each lesson in class, there are even 50% of students who are sleepy when taking part in class lessons. The impact of this training was that 13 students were able to use Fun Book media. Evaluation is carried out at the end of the training by distributing questionnaires to measure the participant's level of understanding. The questionnaire contains questions related to the respondent's identity; general questions related to mathematics and language learning and specific questions related to Fun Book media. The calculation of the questionnaire used the Guttman scale. The evaluation results showed that 89.84% had increased knowledge seen from the calculation of the questionnaire per individual and per question asked and the participation and enthusiasm of students during activities using the Fun Book.Keywords: Fun Book; creativity; student

How experts and novices judge other people's knowledgeability from language use.

How accurate are people in judging someone else's knowledge based on their language use, and do more knowledgeable people use different cues to make these judgments? We address this by recruiting a group of participants ("informants") to answer general knowledge questions and describe various images belonging to different categories (e.g., cartoons, basketball). A second group of participants ("evaluators") also answer general knowledge questions and decide who is more knowledgeable within pairs of informants, based on these descriptions. Evaluators perform above chance at identifying the most knowledgeable informants (65% with only one description available). The less knowledgeable evaluators base their decisions on the number of specific statements, regardless of whether the statements are true or false. The more knowledgeable evaluators treat true and false statements differently and penalize the knowledge they attribute to informants who produce specific yet false statements. Our findings demonstrate the power of a few words when assessing others' knowledge and have implications for how misinformation is processed differently between experts and novices.

The Implementation of a Sustainable Online Course for the Development of Digital Citizenship Skills in Higher Education

This study aims to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a digital citizenship curriculum developed using online teaching for undergraduate students. For this purpose, answers were sought to the following general research questions: “How are students performing their digital citizenship skills?”, “What is the efficiency level of the developed digital citizenship curriculum?”, “What are the students’ self-evaluations during the implementation process of the developed digital citizenship curriculum?” and “What are student opinions about the implemented digital citizenship course?”. A “parallel-simultaneous design”, one of the mixed research methods, was used in this research. The content of the curriculum was determined within the framework of a needs analysis consisting of university students and field experts, and a document review. A quasi-experimental design method was used to implement the programme. A total of 39 teacher candidates, registered in the spring semester of the 2022 academic year, participated in the experimental process. A Moodle learning management system was used as the teaching environment. Participants’ digital citizenship behaviours and attitude levels were measured before and after the experimental application. It was observed that there was a significant (positive) difference between the pre-test and post-test average scores in favour of the post-test scores, and the effect value of this difference was high. It turned out that the teacher candidates’ opinions on the effectiveness of the online digital citizenship programme were positive. It is understood that the digital citizenship teaching curriculum developed for higher education can be used sustainably for similar university student groups as in this study. However, it is anticipated that the developed programme can be updated along with technological evolutions.

Quantifying the distribution of feature values over data represented in arbitrary dimensional spaces.

Identifying the structured distribution (or lack thereof) of a given feature over a point cloud is a general research question. In the neuroscience field, this problem arises while investigating representations over neural manifolds (e.g., spatial coding), in the analysis of neurophysiological signals (e.g., sensory coding) or in anatomical image segmentation. We introduce the Structure Index (SI) as a directed graph-based metric to quantify the distribution of feature values projected over data in arbitrary D-dimensional spaces (defined from neurons, time stamps, pixels, genes, etc). The SI is defined from the overlapping distribution of data points sharing similar feature values in a given neighborhood of the cloud. Using arbitrary data clouds, we show how the SI provides quantification of the degree and directionality of the local versus global organization of feature distribution. SI can be applied to both scalar and vectorial features permitting quantification of the relative contribution of related variables. When applied to experimental studies of head-direction cells, it is able to retrieve consistent feature structure from both the high- and low-dimensional representations, and to disclose the local and global structure of the angle and speed represented in different brain regions. Finally, we provide two general-purpose examples (sound and image categorization), to illustrate the potential application to arbitrary dimensional spaces. Our method provides versatile applications in the neuroscience and data science fields.

On analysis of complex administrative data: neural networks, modelling and prediction

Eco-geographical heterogenicity of countries such as Chile and in cities exhibiting a territorial and demographic important diversity is relevant for the epidemiological studies of the apparition and spread of SARS-CoV-2. That situation is the opposite to countries such as the Czech Republic, with small or less diverse territories where the apparition and spread of SARS-CoV-2 can be correlated mainly to demographic and seasonal variables more than climate, pollution, or other physical and biological variables. It is well visible that there is no simple model for measured active cases and given parameters. This motivates a more general question to develop models that predict the future number of reported COVID-19 cases (by laboratory testing). We tune several neural networks to show the complexity issues of such a problem. These predictions are made for the countries, Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, with the model class used for making these predictions being the artificial neural network, for the data from February 2020 until February 2021. Two different architectures of the neural network are compared the feed-forward network and the recurrent neural network. Ultimately, it is found that there are notable differences between the three countries studied, with the data for the Czech Republic being easier to predict with good accuracy than the data from the other two countries. Likewise, it turns out that the feed-forward approach delivers better results for Austria and the Czech Republic, whereas, for Slovakia, the recurrent approach performs better. Likewise, it is found that combining the data from all three countries does not lead to improved accuracy compared to models using data from only one single country. Both of the findings mentioned above might be related to the relatively small amount of data available.