Real-life Circumstances Research Articles

Learning strategies with television series: simple attitudes to improve oral skills

The exposure to authentic materials as TV series provides students with motivating, useful, and contextualized vocabulary, as well as the opportunity to observe language being spoken by natives during real-life circumstances. Though, solely exposure to the language may not be sufficient to improve students’ language abilities. Thereat, this research aimed at investigating how television series can assist students’ oral abilities; by examining what mechanisms (learning strategies) students most use to properly comprehend the dialogues presented in such programs, as well as to observe students' perception of their listening and speaking abilities. The methodology adopted in this study was exploratory, with the approach to the research occurring quantitatively and qualitatively, by field research, through a questionnaire administration, and a literature review examination. This study demonstrated that the importance of exposure to the target language resides thoroughly on students' attitudes towards the material, rather than to the pure amount of exposure on itself, the strategies learners employ to manipulate the information, and to monitor their understanding are primary determinants for language acquisition. In conclusion, the study demonstrated to teachers the necessity of practicing such strategies and to students the relevance of developing control of their language learning process, therefore becoming autonomous learners.

The contribution of the Internet of Things and smart systems to agricultural practices: A survey

The growing demand for agriculture products contradicts the challenges associated with the decline in farming land size and labour workforce. Recent literature acknowledges that the Internet of Things (IoT) plays a crucial role in enhancing the smart aspects already deployed in agriculture. Smart farming is an emerging concept because of IoT sensors capable of aggregating information about their agriculture fields under real-life circumstances. The paper aims to survey the recent implementation of IoT based monitoring systems applied in agriculture worldwide. A systematic literature review carried out to investigate the extent of IoT adoption in agriculture industries. The understanding of Reason to adopt IoT, the Scale of adoption and the cost and benefit of IoT adoption were drawn from papers published in SCOPUS, Web of Science, and DOAJ between 2010 up to early 2020. Twenty-eight most relevant articles extracted from the search. This paper recommends strategies to adopt an IoT-based monitoring tool pertinent to irrigation systems implementation in Indonesia.

Effects of occupational balance on subjective health, quality of life, and health-related variables in community-dwelling older adults: A structural equation modeling approach.

Occupational balance is an important variable associated with health and quality of life. This study aimed to investigate the influence of occupational balance on health, quality of life, and other health-related variables using structural equation modeling. We analyzed data from 208 adults over 55 years old. Mean age of the participants was 70.21 years (SD 7.22). The research model for analysis was based on the results of previous studies addressing occupational balance and related variables such as stress, leisure satisfaction, life satisfaction, subjective health, quality of life, and participation. General fit indices of the final model were acceptable (x2/df = 1.708, p < .001, RMSEA = .058, TLI = .923, CFI = .929, and SRMR = .067). Although the size of effect was small to medium (.157–.249), occupational balance was identified as an independent variable directly or indirectly affecting subjective health, quality of life, and health-related variables in the final model. Our results showed that it is possible to improve subjective health and quality of life by promoting better occupational balance. Further studies developing an intervention program based on occupational balance are required to confirm the feasibility of the intervention and its effect on older adults’ health and quality of life in real-life circumstances.

Non-Targeted Self-Measurement of Blood Pressure: Association with Self-Medication, Unscheduled Emergency Visits and Anxiety.

Background and Objective: The routine practice of self-medication of blood pressure (BP) not oriented with pulse devices may not be precisely useful in the control of BP and can lead the patient to self-medicate in error. Thus, we need to evaluate the non-oriented self-assessment of BP in real-life circumstances in hypertensive patients. The objective of this study was to evaluate in hypertensive patients the association of BP self-measurement with its control, as well as the presence of anxiety disorders, the occurrence of unscheduled visits to the emergency room, and self-medication. Materials and Methods: An observational study was carried out with 1000 hypertensive volunteers (age: 61.0 ± 12.5). Using a questionnaire, sociodemographic and clinical data on BP control were collected. Anxiety was assessed by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Results: The group that performed non-oriented self-measurement of BP, showed that they had higher frequencies of self-medication (57.9%, p < 0.05) and more unscheduled visits to the emergency room (68%, p < 0.05). In addition, a lower level of BP control (46.8%, p < 0.05) was associated with higher levels of anxiety (52.3%, p < 0.05) in the group that performed non-oriented self-measurements of BP. Conclusion: The practice of non-oriented self-assessment of BP was associated with negative factors such as high levels of anxiety and higher frequencies of self-medication and unscheduled emergency visits.

Beyond Frequency

Consumer behavior plays a very important role in economics and targeted marketing. However, understanding economic consumer behavior is quite challenging, such as finding credible and reliable information on product profitability. Different from frequent pattern mining, utility-oriented mining integrates utility theory and data mining. Utility mining is a useful tool for understanding economic consumer behavior. Traditional algorithms for mining high-utility patterns (HUPs) applies a single/uniform minimum utility threshold ( minutil ) to obtain the set of HUPs, but in some real-life circumstances, some specific products may bring lower utilities compared with others, but their profit may offer some vital information. If minutil is set high, the patterns with low minutil are missed; if minutil is set low, the number of patterns becomes unmanageable. In this article, an efficient one-phase utility-oriented pattern mining algorithm, called HIMU, is proposed for mining HUPs with varied item-specific minimum utility. A novel tree structure called a multiple item utility set-enumeration tree (MIU-tree) and the global sorted and the conditional downward closure properties are introduced in HIMU. In addition, we extended the compact utility-list structure to keep the necessary information, and thus this one-phase HIMU model greatly reduces the computational costs and memory requirements. Moreover, two pruning strategies are then extended to enhance the performance. We conducted extensive experiments in several synthetic and real-world datasets; the results indicate that the designed one-phase HIMU algorithm can address the “ rare item problem ” and has better performance than the state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of runtime, memory usage, and scalability. Furthermore, the enhanced algorithms outperform the non-optimized HIMU approach.

Fostering the Reading Experience for Spanish-Speaking Readers: Post-migration Changes in Reading Practices and the Implication for Libraries

ABSTRACT Purpose. This article examines the post-migration changes in reading practices of Spanish-speaking readers in the U.S. and Canada, with a goal of translating the findings into practical guidelines for librarians who engage with Spanish speakers in different types of libraries. Design/methodology/approach. The article draws on a subset of data from the larger bilingual, self-administered, qualitative survey conducted in two large urban areas (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and New York City, NY, USA). These data are used to develop a practice framework by translating the generated empirical knowledge into concrete applications that can benefit librarians who engage Spanish speaking readers. Findings. The study analyzes the changed (or unchanged) amount of leisure reading, the various ways of accessing reading materials, alterations and evolution in reading content, and the choice of language preferred for reading different types of leisure materials. Originality. Reader studies, such as this one, are essential for facilitating the practice of reading experience (RE) librarianship in all types of libraries (public, academic, and special,) because they look beyond information needs and programming ideas into the soul of the people in their real-life circumstances, connecting librarians and readers on a deeper humanistic and cultural level.

On Order and Regime Determination of SETAR Model in Modelling Nonlinear Stationary Time Series Data Structure: Application to Lafia Rainfall Data, Nasarawa State, Nigeria

The linear time series model refers to the class of models for which fixed correlation parameters can fully explain the dependency between two random variables, but many real-life circumstances, such as monthly unemployment results, supplies and demands, interest rate, exchange rate, share prices, rainfall, etc., violate the assumption of linearity. For fitting and forecasting of nonlinear time series data, the self-exiting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) model was suggested. Using R to generate random nonlinear autoregressive data, a Monte Carlo simulation was performed, the SETAR model was fitted to the simulated data and Lafia rainfall data, Nasarawa State, Nigeria to determine the best regime orders and/or scheme number to make future forecast. Using Mean Square Error (MSE) and Akaike Information Criteria (AIC), the relative performance of models was examined. At a specific autoregressive order, regime order, sample size and step ahead, the model with minimum criteria was considered as the best. The results show that the best autoregressive and regime orders to be chosen are 3rd and 2nd [SETAR (3, 2)] respectively for fitting and forecasting nonlinear autoregressive time series data with small and moderate sample sizes. As the sample size increases, the output of the four models increases. Finally, it is shown that when sample size and number of steps forward are increased, the efficiency and forecasting capacity of the four models improves.

Implementing toddler interventions at scale: The case of “We learn together”

The first years of life are characterized by rapid learning in several school readiness domains, including language, math, and social-emotional skills, all of which are important for later childhood outcomes and academic achievement in school. In this research, we investigate the effects of an early-stage evidence-based school readiness intervention and add-on elements to support teachers’ implementation under real-life circumstances to explore the readiness of this intervention for scaling up. We replicated the findings of a prior trial of this intervention, and demonstrated that a 20-week curriculum with instructional content and supportive tools for teachers to be more explicit and intentional in their interactions with children can be implemented successfully under real-life circumstances and result in positive effects on targeted language and math skills.

Precision shielding for COVID-19: metrics of assessment and feasibility of deployment

The ability to preferentially protect high-risk groups in COVID-19 is hotly debated. Here, the aim is to present simple metrics of such precision shielding of people at high risk of...

TO THE QUESTION OF LEGAL CONDITIONS PLACE IN THE SYSTEM OF LEGAL FACTS

The article is devoted to the problems of the formation and positioning of the legal status category in legal science. The relevance of this phenomenon in law is due to the lack of its unambiguous perception, which does not allow to fully determine its place and purpose in the theory of legal facts. The purpose of this article is to determine the philosophical and dialectical basis for the inclusion of this concept in the scientific categorical apparatus of jurisprudence. This will allow with sufficient certainty to identify its main characteristics, place in the classification of legal facts, as well as functional relationships with other elements of the legal-factual system. The methodological basis of the article was made by modern achievements of the theory of knowledge. In the research process, theoretical, general philosophical (dialectic, analysis, synthesis, deduction, systemic method,), as well as traditional legal methods (formal-logical, normative-dogmatic and others) were used. In the process of research, based on the ratio of the dialectic categories of movement and rest, the conclusion was formulated that physical reality is a series of static and dynamic situations. Static circumstances characterizing the stability and sustainability of a phenomenon or object are states. The variability of social relations is due to dynamic circumstances, which serve as the basis for a change of state. This approach allowed us to formulate the conclusion that states are natural elements of physical being. They can be qualified as real life circumstances and, provided that the rule of law associates a certain legal consequence with them, they should be recognized as legal facts. An analysis of the place of the state in the system of legal facts allowed us to conclude that the length of time cannot be considered as qualifying it. States are characterized by length in time, and it is precisely the “fluidity” of the phenomenon that matters for a specific situation. When a certain process takes a long time, but as applied to the social situation, it matters as a single whole, then it should be considered as an instantaneous fact.

Terms of admission to the hospital and performing endovascular procedures in patients with acute myocardial infarction without ST segment elevation in real clinical practice

Aim. To find out the relationship of the severity of patients condition, with acute myocardial infarction without ST segment elevation (NSTEMI), upon admission to the hospital on the basis of the Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) scale with the time interval between the onset of the disease and up to hospitalization (painhospitalization), and to clarify the effect of the GRACE score on the time interval to endovascular procedures (EVP) doorballoon, in real clinical practice.&#x0D; Material and methods. The study included 421 NSTEMI patients. Patients were admitted between 2000 and 2017. All patients underwent coronary angiography followed by EVP. Depending on the clinical condition, at admitted to the hospital, patients were divided into risk groups on the GRACE scale. According to the indicators painhospitalization and doorballoon 3 time intervals were allocated: 6 hours, 624 and 24 hours.&#x0D; Results. At admission, 73.9% (311) patients had an average and high risk on the GRACE scale. Patients with high risk were significantly more often (49.6%) hospitalized during the first 6 hours after onset of the disease than later (p0.05). 2/3 of all patients and 3/4 of patients with high risk had the time interval of painhospitalization up to 24 hours. 51.8% patients in the total group and 65.8% among high-risk patients had a doorballoon interval up to 6 hours. During first 24 hours after hospitalization EVP was successfully completed on 90.7% of patients. One patient had a fatal outcome. At discharge none of the patients were observed the symptoms of angina pectoris and congestive heart failure.&#x0D; Conclusion. In the all group, according to the allocated time intervals painhospitalization, patients were distributed practically equally. The severity of the condition of the studied patients is indicated by the fact that almost 3/4 of them had a high and average risk on the GRACE scale. It is encouraging that in the first 6 hours from the onset of the disease, high-risk patients were significantly more often hospitalized. Almost 2/3 of high-risk patients and more than half of all patients had a doorballoon indicator-up to 6 hours. It is important that in the first 24 hours, successful EVP was performed in 90.7% of patients. Thus, our results (low mortality, absence of angina and heart failure after EVP) indicate the correct management and treatment of NSTEMI patients, which is close to the latest world recommendations, comes from real life circumstances and can be recommended for real clinical practice.

The prevalence of RAASi uptitration limiting hyperkalemia and the suitability of potassium binders among patients suffering from heart failure with reduced ejection fraction

Abstract Background The use of the renin-angiotensin-aldosteron-system inhibitor (RAASi) regime is crucial to reduce the mortality and morbidity of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). However, it is well known that among real life circumstances it is challenging to reach the guideline-recommended target doses (TDs) of RAASi-s, due to the occurrence of side effects (e.g. hyperkalemia). Based on the ESC expert consensus document, it is recommended to reduce the RAASi dosages or discontinue the therapy when significant hyperkalemia (HK) occurs (serum potassium &amp;gt;5.0 mmol/l or &amp;gt;6.0 mmol/l, respectively). Within the last years, trials of patiromer and zirconium cyclosilicate demonstrated dose-dependent effect of these drugs enhancing potassium level lowering. The ongoing DIAMOND study examining the effect of patiromer among patients with previous HK (se potassium &amp;gt;5mmol/l) in the effect of RAASi-s in HFrEF hopefully will answer the question whether the use of a potassium binder and in its effect the use of TD-s of RAASi translates to significant mortality benefit in HFrEF. Aim To assess the prevalence of RAASi uptitration limiting HK and to assess the potential suitability of potassium binders among HFrEF patients followed-up regularly at a heart failure outpatient clinic (HFOC). Methods Data of 557 consecutive HFrEF patients (NYHA: 3.1±0.8; LVEF: 27.4±6.6%; age: 61.2±13.0 years; male: 76.3%; ischemic: 47.2%; atrial fibrillation: 27.3%; diabetes: 35.7%; hypertension: 72.7%, systolic blood pressure: 124.3±24.3mmHg, eGFR: 65.6±23.6 ml/min/1.73m2) was analyzed. At baseline ACEi/ARBs in 33.6%, BBs in 40.9%, MRAs in 37.9% of the total cohort (TC) were used. Results After therapy optimization (TO) ACEis/ARBs were applied in 97.5% and TD (equivalent to at least 10 mg of enalapril b.i.d.) was reached in 59.4% of the TC. BBs in 90.7%, TDs of BBs in 48.3%, MRAs in 64.3%, TDs of MRAs in 24.6% of the TC were applied. In 100 patients (17.9%) the TDs of ACEi/ARBs and MRAs were reached simultaneously. Among those 457 patients not reaching the TD of ACEi/ARBs and/or the TD of MRAs the occurrence of HK (se potassium &amp;gt;5 mmol/l) was quite frequent (45.3%, 207 patients), the prevalence of HK with the need of permanent dose reduction of RAASi regime (se potassium&amp;gt;5.5 mmol/l) was 10.5% (48 patients) and the prevalence of HK resulting permanent discontinuation of RAASi (se potassium &amp;gt;6.0 mmol/l) was 2.8% (13 patient) during the TO. Conclusions The current ESC guidelines recommend the use of TDs or maximal tolerated doses of RAASi-s in HFrEF. In a real-world patient cohort when every effort was made to reach the TDs, the TD of ACEi/ARBs and the TD of MRAs was reachable only in 17.9% of patients due the side effects observed during the TO. The occurrence of HK preventing to reach the TD, resulting down-titration or temporary/permanent discontinuation of RAASi-s and representing potential suitability for potassium binders is significant among optimally treated HFrEF patients. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: None

Developing a scenario-based video game generation framework for computer and virtual reality environments: a comparative usability study

Serious games—games that have additional purposes rather than only entertainment—aim to educate people, solve, and plan several real-life tasks and circumstances in an interactive, efficient, and user-friendly way. Emergency training and planning provide structured curricula, rule-based action items, and interdisciplinary collaborative entities to imitate and teach real-life tasks. This rule-based structure enables the curricula to be transferred into other systematic learning platforms. Although emergency training includes these highly structured and repetitive action responses, a general framework to map the training scenarios’ actions, roles, and collaborative structures to serious games’ game mechanics and game dialogues, is still not available. To address this issue, in this study, a scenario-based game generator, which maps domain-oriented tasks to game rules and game mechanics, was developed. Also, two serious games (i.e., Hospital game and BioGarden game) addressing the training mechanisms of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNe) domain, were developed by both the game developers and the scenario-based game generator for comparative analysis. Finally, the outcomes of these games were mapped to the virtual reality environment to provide a thorough training program. To test the usability, immersion, presence, and technology acceptance aspects of the proposed game generator’s outcomes, 15 game developer participants tested a complete set of games and answered the questionnaires of the corresponding phenomenon. The results show that although the game generator has higher CPU time and memory usage, it highly outperforms the game development pipeline performance of the game developers and provides usable and immersive games. Thus, this study provides a promising game generator which bridges the CBRNe practitioners and game developers to transform real-life training scenarios into video games efficiently and quickly.

Optimisation of Casting Geometries for A356 Alloy Composites Reinforced with Organic Materials using Box-Behnken Design Methodology

In an earlier article, the central composite design was applied to the determination of geometrical features of casts in a two-phase transformation process to produce the wheel covers of automobiles whereby the A356 alloy is reinforced with organic substances for composite property enhancement. This article reexamines the assumptions in that circumstance to revise and expand the optimisation through the response surface methodology to a new method, Box-Behnken design (BBD), to facilitate a comprehensive treatment of the sand casting product parameters. Casting geometrical optimisation can be modelled to involve lengths, breadths, widths, heights, densities of casts and weight loss, varied at three discrete levels. The parameters are translated into codes (–1,0,1) with specified actual, minimum and maximum values. The framework, validated by published literature data, indicates its feasibility in a real-life circumstance. This article assessed the effects of the casting geometry parameters on the responses. Besides, it examined the accuracy of the parameters to predict in the regression models deployed. It was concluded that the BBD and the regression models are adequate and predict correctly. The BBD can be applied by composite developers to improve casting dimensional accuracy and economics.

Soft multi-rough set topology with applications to multi-criteria decision-making problems

Rough set theory introduced by Pawlak (Int J Comput Inf Sci 11:341–356, 1982), multi-set theory proposed by Blizard (Notre Dame J Form Log 30:36–65, 1989) and soft set theory introduced by Molodtsov (Comput Math Appl 37(4–5):19–31, 1999) are fundamental concepts in computational intelligence, which have a myriad of applications in modeling uncertainties and decision making under uncertainty. In this paper, the idea of soft multi-rough set (SMRS) is introduced as a hybrid model of soft set, multi-set and rough set. The SMRS provides roughness of a multi-set in terms of soft multi-approximation space. The novel concept of soft multi-rough topology (SMR-topology) is defined to discuss topological structure of SMRSs by using pairwise SMR-approximations. The proposed models of SMRS and SMR-topology are suitable for modeling uncertainties in the real-life circumstances. SMR-topology is the generalization of crisp topology, soft topology and soft rough set topology. Some fundamental properties of SMR-topology and their related results are studied. Some algorithms for are developed for multi-criteria decision making based on soft multi-sets, soft multi-rough sets and soft multi-rough topology. Based on proposed algorithms, the applications of SMRSs and SMR-topology toward diagnosis of depression and diabetes are illustrated by the numerical examples. A comparison analysis of proposed methods with some existing methods is also given to justify their reliability, feasibility and flexibility.

Towards multilingualism

There has been a development in both scholarly and popular attention to language capabilities and their alleged cognitive consequences. Emphasis, both theoretical and applied, was initially given to monolingual fluencies. Indeed, the sense that monolingualism is still somehow the default norm remains in some ‘large-language’ contexts. A second stage, as it were, arose when serious consideration began to be given to bilingualism—a phase surely long overdue, given the real-life circumstances that have always prevailed around the world. One of the most interesting aspects of this phase has been the apparent empirical demonstration that bilingualism correlates with cognitive advantage. Although this seems a welcome corrective to earlier and quite opposite views, the evidence turns out to be far from unequivocal. It now appears likely that, while expanded linguistic repertoires are of course beneficial, there are no simple correspondences between languages known and cognitive capacities. Research on bilingualism and multilingualism, at both individual and social levels, is now routine.

Μεγαλώνοντας παιδί/ά στο φάσμα του αυτισμού: Η ταξική διάσταση

The focus of the present qualitative study is the contextualization of the lived experience of mothers raising one or more children with autism, examining specific aspects, the real socio-economic life circumstances and their role on mothers’ access to resources, their mental health and overall quality of life. The initial main findings generated from the qualitative analysis of the interviews collected from 83 mothers from contrasting/opposite socio-economic positions, working class and economically privileged, are presented across four thematic nodes: a) the type and quality of the diagnostic experience, b) the quality of marriage, the support networks and social responses, c) the motherhood role and coping skills, and d) the explanatory models for the causation of autism and the experiences from “therapeutic pathways”. The qualitative analysis of the empirical material illustrated that factors directly relevant to the context of this experience, such as social position and access to resources, exert a critical influence on the biographic trajectories of these mothers, their psychological state and their overall quality of life.

Forms of Realization of the Law in the Aspect Relations of Unconditional and Conditional

The article is devoted to consideration of specifics and features of realization of the law in various forms in a context of a ratio conditional and unconditional in the law. The author comes to the conclusion that all forms of the law implementation, in varying degrees, whether conditional or unconditional, because, on the one hand, embodied in a specific situation, in relation to individuals, accompanied by a compilation of individual legal act, but, on the other hand, faced with the extrapolation quite dogmatically posilioned as binding rules of law to real life circumstances, mainly through public-imperious peremptory effect. For each of the forms of realization of the law, only the nature of the ratio and the degree of dominance of one of the two principals will differ, which, in the end, serves the presence of a wide range of ways and means of satisfying people’s needs and protecting interests in the law.

Implementation of a targeted mastitis therapy concept using an on-farm rapid test: antimicrobial consumption, cure rates and compliance

BackgroundAim of the present study was to investigate the implementation of a targeted therapy (tLCT) concept under real-life circumstances, taking both pathogen-related and animal-related factors into account. The reduction of...

New fractional approaches for n-polynomial P-convexity with applications in special function theory

Inequality theory provides a significant mechanism for managing symmetrical aspects in real-life circumstances. The renowned distinguishing feature of integral inequalities and fractional calculus has a solid possibility to regulate continuous issues with high proficiency. This manuscript contributes to a captivating association of fractional calculus, special functions and convex functions. The authors develop a novel approach for investigating a new class of convex functions which is known as an n-polynomial mathcal{P}-convex function. Meanwhile, considering two identities via generalized fractional integrals, provide several generalizations of the Hermite–Hadamard and Ostrowski type inequalities by employing the better approaches of Hölder and power-mean inequalities. By this new strategy, using the concept of n-polynomial mathcal{P}-convexity we can evaluate several other classes of n-polynomial harmonically convex, n-polynomial convex, classical harmonically convex and classical convex functions as particular cases. In order to investigate the efficiency and supremacy of the suggested scheme regarding the fractional calculus, special functions and n-polynomial mathcal{P}-convexity, we present two applications for the modified Bessel function and mathfrak{q}-digamma function. Finally, these outcomes can evaluate the possible symmetric roles of the criterion that express the real phenomena of the problem.