Jury Of Experts Research Articles

Cover Picture: Steel Construction 4/2024

AbstractThe European Steel Bridge Awards are given by ECCS every two years to encourage the creative and outstanding use of steel in construction of bridges. Among 16 projects received from all over Europe, a winner per category was selected by the expert jury and awarded during the 2024 ESBA Ceremony on 12 September 2024 in Prague. In the category Road and Railway Bridges the “U81 Brücke Nordstern in Düsseldorf/Germany”, submitted by Austria (© MCE GmbH), was awarded. More information regarding the awarded projects are in the ECCS News, p. 242.

The Correlation between Syntactic Awareness of EFL University Teachers and Students' Writing Performance

The current study is aimed at finding out the correlation between syntactic awareness level of EFL university teachers and students' writing performance. The problem of this study is most of teachers as language teachers do not recognize the importance of syntax in teaching their students . Accordingly, students' problems in writing lie in their lack of understanding the nature , process, and requirements of academic writing . The problems of the current study are best identified by answering the following research question : To what extent can an efficient writing of college students be affected by the level of syntactic awareness of EFL university teachers? The sample of the study consists of (30) teachers from different specializations , and (100) students from fourth year at University of Tikrit , College of Education for Women , English Department. The current study includes three instruments after being validated and approved by a jury of experts. These are: 1) a questionnaire and a diagnostic test are applied to measure teachers' syntactic awareness , and 2) a diagnostic test is used to measure the performance of students in writing. The obtained results have shown that there is a positive correlation between teachers' syntactic awareness and the performance of students in writing . In the light of the obtained results , some conclusions are drawn .

Tournament rituals and experiential competence development in higher education: A case of a unique conference series

The Hungarian Student Research Society (HSRS) movement is a unique, experience-based tournament ritual promoting student-centered learning via instructors working as facilitators. Within the framework of this 70-year-old conference series, students conduct mentor-supported research activities on self-chosen topics, prepare academic papers, and present their research work to peers and expert juries within their institutions. The best research is included in the National Student Research Conference (NSRC), organized by discipline. The present study reviews and analyzes this process from the perspective of tournament rituals, skill development, and student experience. The study utilizes student opinions, perceptions, and feedback from a Student Research Conference in Economics to illustrate the method's effectiveness. Findings suggest that such conference event series – which function as tournaments, professional conferences, and festivals via community events – effectively develop the soft skills that are becoming increasingly important in the 21st century. In addition to professional competencies, Student Research Conferences (SRC) provide student participants with positive experiences.

Do experts and laypersons differ? Some evidence from international classical music competitions

Do experts and laypersons differ in their judgments of quality? We investigate this question in the context of classical music performance, taking advantage of the fact that in many international music competitions, lay audiences as well as expert juries award prizes. Using novel data on 370 competition-editions held between 1979 and 2021, we find that jury and audience preferences match only 38% of the time. We then explore gender bias and host country bias as possible explanations for the divergence between jury and audience judgments by comparing first prizewinners and audience prizewinners with other finalists. Additionally, we use the fact that many musicians compete repeatedly to examine the predictive value of prizewinning on success in future competitions. We find that being female and being from the competition host country are negatively correlated with the likelihood of being the jury's top choice but have no relationship with the likelihood of winning an audience prize. Additionally, winning an audience prize predicts winning future competitions but being ranked first by the jury does not. Importantly, our findings extend the literature on the value of expert opinion to a new setting, using an explicitly non-expert counterfactual.

Exploring Novel Innovation Strategies to Close a Technology Gap in Neurosurgery: HORAO Crowdsourcing Campaign

Scientific research is typically performed by expert individuals or groups who investigate potential solutions in a sequential manner. Given the current worldwide exponential increase in technical innovations, potential solutions for any new problem might already exist, even though they were developed to solve a different problem. Therefore, in crowdsourcing ideation, a research question is explained to a much larger group of individuals beyond the specialist community to obtain a multitude of diverse, outside-the-box solutions. These are then assessed in parallel by a group of experts for their capacity to solve the new problem. The 2 key problems in brain tumor surgery are the difficulty of discerning the exact border between a tumor and the surrounding brain, and the difficulty of identifying the function of a specific area of the brain. Both problems could be solved by a method that visualizes the highly organized fiber tracts within the brain; the absence of fibers would reveal the tumor, whereas the spatial orientation of the tracts would reveal the area's function. To raise awareness about our challenge of developing a means of intraoperative, real-time, noninvasive identification of fiber tracts and tumor borders to improve neurosurgical oncology, we turned to the crowd with a crowdsourcing ideation challenge. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility of a crowdsourcing ideation campaign for finding novel solutions to challenges in neuroscience. The purpose of this paper is to introduce our chosen crowdsourcing method and discuss it in the context of the current literature. We ran a prize-based crowdsourcing ideation competition called HORAO on the commercial platform HeroX. Prize money previously collected through a crowdfunding campaign was offered as an incentive. Using a multistage approach, an expert jury first selected promising technical solutions based on broad, predefined criteria, coached the respective solvers in the second stage, and finally selected the winners in a conference setting. We performed a postchallenge web-based survey among the solvers crowd to find out about their backgrounds and demographics. Our web-based campaign reached more than 20,000 people (views). We received 45 proposals from 32 individuals and 7 teams, working in 26 countries on 4 continents. The postchallenge survey revealed that most of the submissions came from single solvers or teams working in engineering or the natural sciences, with additional submissions from other nonmedical fields. We engaged in further exchanges with 3 out of the 5 finalists and finally initiated a successful scientific collaboration with the winner of the challenge. This open innovation competition is the first of its kind in medical technology research. A prize-based crowdsourcing ideation campaign is a promising strategy for raising awareness about a specific problem, finding innovative solutions, and establishing new scientific collaborations beyond strictly disciplinary domains.

Investigating Motivational Teaching Strategies used by Iraqi EFL Primary School Teachers

Motivation is one of the most important factors that influence students learning and has a great effect on their success and achievement. For this reason, in this paper, the researcher is going to investigate the motivational teaching strategies used by EFL Iraqi school teachers. To achieve the aim of the study, the researcher adapted a questionnaire with some changes and modification’s. This questionnaire with five point scale (always, often, sometimes, rarely and never). To achieve face validity, the questionnaire items are given to a jury of experts. Alpha Cronbach formula is used to achieve the questionnaire reliability. After that, the questionnaire was applied on a sample of 38 teachers during the academic year 2019-2020. Then, the questionnaire items were analyzed using weighted mean score and percentages. At the end, recommendations, suggestions for further studies are presented.

Fish AI

Sustainable Commercial Fishing is the second challenge at the Nordic AI Meet following the successful MedAI, which had a focus on medical image segmentation and transparency in machine learning (ML)-based systems. FishAI focuses on a new domain, namely, commercial fishing and how to make it more sustainable with the help of machine learning. A range of public available datasets is used to tackle three specific tasks. The first one is to predict fishing coordinates to optimize catching of specific fish, the second one is to create a report that can be used by experienced fishermen, and the third task is to make a sustainable fishing plan that provides a route for a week. The second and third task require to some extend explainable and interpretable models that can provide explanations. A development dataset is provided and all methods will be tested on a concealed test dataset and assessed by an expert jury.
 
 artificial intelligence; machine learning; segmentation; transparency; medicine

Fourth Year Students’ Perception about Moodle Platform: A Case Study of University of Misan

This study aims to identify the fourth stage students' perspectives on Moodle Platform. In order to achieve the above aim, a questionnaire has been constructed. It contains (17) items. This questionnaire has been exposed to a jury of experts in the field of English teaching methods to show its validity and reliability. The reliability of the questionnaire is ensured by applying the spilt-half method. It yields (0.90). The fourth stage English language students of the English department/ college of Basic Education academic year 2020-2021 are chosen. The results showed that the students' perspective about "Moodle Platform" was negative towards most items considered as disadvantages, whereas the students' perspective about "Moodle Platform" was positive towards the rest items which are considered as advantages. In the light of the obtained results, recommendations and suggestions for further studies are introduced.

Development of a customized booklet of foot-ankle exercises for people with diabetes mellitus as a management and prevention tool for musculoskeletal complications: A customized booklet of foot-ankle exercises for people with diabetes

BackgroundDiabetes mellitus (DM) and diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) compromises the structures of the musculoskeletal system, especially in the foot-ankle complex. Foot-related exercises can be a promising tool to be incorporated in health care programs to manage and prevent musculoskeletal complications resulting from DM and DPN progression. ObjectiveTo present the development, validation, and usability evaluation of a booklet that directs training and personalizes the progression of a home-based program of foot-ankle exercises. MethodsThe booklet containing a foot-ankle exercise program developed in a previous clinical trial was validated using the Delphi technique, with a multi-professional jury of experts who assessed the content of the material, language, individual education, exercise execution, exercise quality, and material implementation. The validated version was evaluated through telephone interview by a convenience sample of 10 individuals with DPN regarding its relevance, health education, comprehension, and usability. ResultsThe validation process with experts was performed in two rounds achieving 100% agreement in the second round. During the usability evaluation process the main complaint of users was that performing all the exercises was very tiring and took too much time out of their daily routine. Thus, the number of repetitions for each exercise was changed from 30 to 12. ConclusionThe booklet is a material for prevention and management of the impacts of DM and DPN progression by improving the musculoskeletal function of the foot-ankle. This material provides an exercise regime with a personalized progression based on the perceived effort of the users.

The Italian consensus conference on psychological therapies for anxiety and depressive disorders: findings and recommendations.

A Consensus Conference of clinicians, researchers, public health specialists and users was convened in Italy to review efficacy, effectiveness, treatment appropriateness and access to care for anxiety and depression, and to consider the role of psychological therapies. Expert opinion was sought concerning identification of people requiring psychological therapies according to levels of symptom severity matched to corresponding levels of treatment intensity, suitability of psychological therapies for subclinical anxiety or depression, definition of a minimum level of information on evidence-based psychotherapies to be provided by university medical and psychology courses, initiatives to raise awareness among potential users and decision makers on the role and effectiveness of psychological therapies in healthcare. The expert jury concluded that a number of psychological therapy models endorsed by most authoritative guidelines are supported by research showing their effectiveness at least equal to the drugs used in common mental disorders (CMDs). Such therapies are under-represented in the Italian public health system, leading many people to resort to the private sector, resulting in unacceptable wealth discrimination. The difficulty of accessing psychological treatments often entails the use of drug therapies in cases where they are not indicated. Starting from these assumptions, the experts recommended the promotion of better and timely recognition of anxiety and depressive disorders and their classification in terms of symptom intensity and functional impairment, differentiating subthreshold mood swings from clinical forms, to foster outcome studies of psychotherapies in CMDs in Italy, to introduce a stepped care model structured according to levels of intensity of treatment, based on wellbeing support strategies in nonmedical contexts for subthreshold situations, self-help, support and psychoeducation as frontline interventions in mild clinical forms, evidence-based psychotherapies in moderate and severe forms, with the option of combining psychological treatment and appropriate drug therapy in the most severe cases.

Data Science Meets High-Tech Manufacturing \u2013 The BTW 2021 Data Science Challenge

For its third installment, the Data Science Challenge of the 19th symposium “Database Systems for Business, Technology and Web” (BTW) of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) tackled the problem of predictive energy management in large production facilities. For the first time, this year’s challenge was organized as a cooperation between Technische Universität Dresden, GlobalFoundries, and ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig. The Challenge’s participants were given real-world production and energy data from the semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries and had to solve the problem of predicting the energy consumption for production equipment. The usage of real-world data gave the participants a hands-on experience of challenges in Big Data integration and analysis. After a leaderboard-based preselection round, the accepted participants presented their approach to an expert jury and audience in a hybrid format. In this article, we give an overview of the main points of the Data Science Challenge, like organization and problem description. Additionally, the winning team presents its solution.

Selecting Good Practices to Advance towards a European Network of Experts Fighting Against Chronic Pain

In continuation with the second edition of the research project “European Civic Prize on Chronic Pain – Collecting Good Practices”, the third edition of the initiative led by Active Citizenship Network, whose term has spanned from 2020-2021, has recently selected several good practices in the fight against chronic pain in the European Union [1]. The value of this EU project is not only to collect and promote the experiences related to chronic pain, but also to strengthen collaboration and encourage the exchange of information and knowledge on chronic pain among different actors. This is crucial for ensuring longer life to good practices and for being able to identify conditions to replicate or implement them in other contexts. This article will focus on three of the winning good practices of the categories of patients’ empowerment, clinical practices, and Covid-19 special actions, that have been selected by the Jury of experts and emphasizes the need for an advancement towards the establishment of a European network of good practices’ managers fighting against cancer and non-cancer related chronic pain.

Psychoacoustic evaluation of internal combustion engine noises

When buying a car, the acoustic impression of quality of a vehicle drive train is becoming more and more relevant. The perceived sound quality of the engine unit plays a key role here. Due to the nature of individual background noises, that sound quality is negatively influenced. These noise components, which are perceived as unpleasant, need to be further reduced in the course of vehicle development with the identification and evaluation of disruptive noise components in the overall engine noise being a prerequisite for effective acoustics optimization. In particular, the pulsed ticker noise is classified as particularly annoying in Otto DI engines, which is why this article aims to analyze and evaluate the ticking noise components from the overall noise. For this purpose, an empirical formula was developed which can classify the ticking noise components in terms of their intensity. This is purely perception-based and consists of the impulsiveness, the loudness and the sharpness of the overall engine noise. As with other psychoacoustic evaluation scales, the rating was made from 1 (very ticking) to 10 (not ticking). The ticker noise evaluation formula was then verified on the basis of hearing tests with the help of a jury of experts. According to this, it can be predicted precisely in which engine map areas the ticker noise undermines the pleasantness of the overall engine noise.

Presenting a Seminar: Factors Influencing Student's Performance in Higher Education Institutes

Modern day Universities/ Degree Colleges/ Higher Education Institutes have made SC as mandatory curriculum for those pursuing UG/ PG degrees. SCR necessitates presentation for course credit. Seminar is evaluated by jury of experts. Clinical formulations of CDC Zoology (PG) students were studied in context with factors influencing student's performance in SCR presentation. Parameters like behavior, presentation, communication skills and viva-voce were monitored. Clinical psychology of 193 CDC students were studied over a period of 10 years in batches. The excellent performance in presentation of 50% students of 2014 batch was due to guide's involvement. SCR of 2 students of 2018 is referred as benchmark documents in CDC. Overall 44% shew good communication skills and 25% students shew excellent communication skills during seminar presentation. Study found semi forward correlation between poor performance in presentation and viva-voce. Overall 19 students gave poor presentation and 11 students performed poorly in question-answer session. Guides were suggested to arrange mock SCR presentation to counter EP disorder. Test period witnessed 8 students suffering from exams phobic disorder. Few students complained about forgetfulness after the presentation. Performance of all the students of 2020 batch who presented online webinar was VG on Fruition scale. Demography analysis was not done due to insignificant strength of male students. Male to Female ratio of CDC in Zoology (PG) is below 1:10. Present study found that performance of HEI student in presentation of SCR is directly proportional to guidance, presentation, communication skill, viva-voce, hard work and confidence, interest and grasping, and time management. Whereas the same has inversely proportional functional relationship with EP, forgetfulness, temporary hearing, attention loss disorders and family woes. A new concept of HEI - Community Engagement is introduced with an objective to make the research understandable to the remotest individual entity of community. Instead of focusing on complex available techniques of analyzing students performance in presentation of seminar, a simplified basic clinical formulation for CDC students involving psychological factors is studied without the help of statistical tools

Diagnosis and treatment of Chiari malformation and syringomyelia in adults: international consensus document.

Syringomyelia and Chiari malformation are classified as rare diseases on Orphanet, but international guidelines on diagnostic criteria and case definition are missing. to reach a consensus among international experts on controversial issues in diagnosis and treatment of Chiari 1 malformation and syringomyelia in adults. A multidisciplinary panel of the Chiari and Syringomyelia Consortium (4 neurosurgeons, 2 neurologists, 1 neuroradiologist, 1 pediatric neurologist) appointed an international Jury of experts to elaborate a consensus document. After an evidence-based review and further discussions, 63 draft statements grouped in 4 domains (definition and classification/planning/surgery/isolated syringomyelia) were formulated. A Jury of 32 experts in the field of diagnosis and treatment of Chiari and syringomyelia and patient representatives were invited to take part in a three-round Delphi process. The Jury received a structured questionnaire containing the 63 statements, each to be voted on a 4-point Likert-type scale and commented. Statements with agreement <75% were revised and entered round 2. Round 3 was face-to-face, during the Chiari Consensus Conference (Milan, November 2019). Thirty-one out of 32 Jury members (6 neurologists, 4 neuroradiologists, 19 neurosurgeons, and 2 patient association representatives) participated in the consensus. After round 2, a consensus was reached on 57/63 statements (90.5%). The six difficult statements were revised and voted in round 3, and the whole set of statements was further discussed and approved. The consensus document consists of 63 statements which benefited from expert discussion and fine-tuning, serving clinicians and researchers following adults with Chiari and syringomyelia.

Methods of Mathematical Proof and Logic in Mathematics Courses at the Faculty of Education – Sana'a University

This study aimed to identify the extent to which mathematical proof and logic methods are achieved in mathematics courses for student-teachers at the University of Sana'a. To achieve this objective, the descriptive and analytical method was used. Checklists for analyzing mathematical content according to methods of mathematical proof and logic were developed, and a questionnaire was used to verify the validity of the checklists. The tools were validated by a jury of experts, and the degree of agreement was (98.1%) (85.82%). The tools were applied to a sample of mathematics courses, including mathematical analysis, real analysis and abstract algebra (1), (2). The findings revealed that the most frequent proof methods found in mathematical courses were proof by deduction and transgression (65.86%) of the total methods, followed by proof by mathematical induction (11.75%), and the least frequent was proof by contradiction (9.61%). The courses did not include method of evaluative, critical and reversed proof. The direct method of proof was (82.93%), whereas the occurrence of the indirect proof method was (17.07%). The course content also did not include method of evaluative, critical and reversed proof, and there were statistically significant differences at (0.01), between the weights of the methods of mathematical proof and logic, which were included in the current courses, and the weights that should be included.

Methods of Mathematical Proof and Logic in Mathematics Courses at the Faculty of Education – Sana'a University

This study aimed to identify the extent to which mathematical proof and logic methods are achieved in mathematics courses for student-teachers at the University of Sana'a. To achieve this objective, the descriptive and analytical method was used. Checklists for analyzing mathematical content according to methods of mathematical proof and logic were developed, and a questionnaire was used to verify the validity of the checklists. The tools were validated by a jury of experts, and the degree of agreement was (98.1%) (85.82%). The tools were applied to a sample of mathematics courses, including mathematical analysis, real analysis and abstract algebra (1), (2). The findings revealed that the most frequent proof methods found in mathematical courses were proof by deduction and transgression (65.86%) of the total methods, followed by proof by mathematical induction (11.75%), and the least frequent was proof by contradiction (9.61%). The courses did not include method of evaluative, critical and reversed proof. The direct method of proof was (82.93%), whereas the occurrence of the indirect proof method was (17.07%). The course content also did not include method of evaluative, critical and reversed proof, and there were statistically significant differences at (0.01), between the weights of the methods of mathematical proof and logic, which were included in the current courses, and the weights that should be included.

Diacritics: An Important Strategy for Proper Validation of the Arabic Version of the Critical Care Family Needs Inventory.

Researchers studied the needs of family members using different tools particularly the Critical Care Family Needs Inventory (CCFNI). The purpose of current study was to validate the Arabic version of the CCFNI. A jury of experts helped establish content validity of best translated version. Live testing of the revised instrument with a sample of nurses and family members helped ensure its validity and internal consistency reliability. The Content Validity Index indicated an acceptable relevancy and clarity of the translated version. After introducing diacritic to wordings, clarity and readability were ensured by a pilot test with a sample of 22 critical care nurses and 21 family members. Live testing the instrument asserted its discriminant validity where family members (n = 227) ranked total needs higher than nurses (n = 217) (t = 124.2 (df = 442), p < .001). After using of diacritics, the new modified Arabic version can be used confidently as a valid and reliable measure of family needs.

Awarded innovative and educational good practices against chronic pain across Europe

In continuation with the second edition of the research project “European Civic Prize on Chronic Pain – Collecting Good Practices”, the third edition of the initiative led by Active Citizenship Network, whose term has spanned from 2020-2021, has recently selected several good practices in the fight against chronic pain in the European Union. This year’s edition of the Prize has been extremely significant, as it has taken place in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a diverse approach has been taken in the collection and implementation of good practices. The project has included practices stemming from healthcare professionals, institutions, civic and patient organizations, and other advocative entities for patients in Europe. This article will focus on two of the winning good practices that have been selected by the Jury of experts and will examine initiatives related to Professional Education and Innovation.

A Cognitive Poetic Schema Interpretation of Selected Poems by EFL University Students

College students have problems in studying literature in general and poetry in particular. They depend fully on the lectures of their instructors and the internet notes and Wikipedia sources that are widely spread via internet. Hence, the present study is an unprecedented one that seeks to find some solutions to this problem that faced both the instructors and the students. Its aims are as follows: identifying the cognitive poetic schema (henceforth, CPS) used in the interpretation of the poems involved in the study ; finding whether there are any differences among the three selected poems in students' CPS; Finding whether there are any differences among the four levels of the college students in the six components of the CPS rubric. To fulfill the aims of the study, the following procedures are carried out: first, a thorough and comprehensive survey of old and modern related literature to both fields of study, schema and cognitive poetics. Second, a model of CPS management is pinpointed and adopted from Stockwell’s well-known book Cognitive Poetics (2002). Third, three poems are selected from the poems of Liverpool poets by a jury of experts. Fourth, questions and their rubric are exposed to a jury of specialists. Fifth, a pilot study and later a final application of the test to the four levels of college students at the Department of English, College of Education for Women, are carried out. Results show that there are significant differences among college students in the four levels of the college. In the light of these findings, the study ended with some conclusions and recommendations.