Tricky Subject Research Articles

The effectiveness of integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics project-based learning module

<p class="IOPKwd"><span lang="EN-US">Physics is a tricky subject to learn, especially when it comes to students applying physics knowledge to the real world and its application. This paper aims to study the effectiveness of the integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics project-based learning (iSTEM-PjBL) module in physics on students’ belief-specific categories, i.e., real-world connection, conceptual connection and applied conceptual understanding. This research used the quasi-experimental model, employing a two-group pre-survey-post-survey design. Quantitative data were collected using the Colorado Learning Attitude about Science Survey (CLASS) instrument at two selected schools in Sabah, Malaysia, and Seoul, Korea. The sample size was 88 from Malaysia and 66 from Korea who learned classical mechanics. The students were divided into two groups, respectively, i.e., the experimental group (Malaysia=44, Korea=33) and the control group (Malaysia=44, Korea=33). Participants in the experimental group were intervened with the integrated STEM-PBL physics module, whilst participants in the control group learned physics through a conventional approach for eight weeks. Participants in both groups were then administered a pre-survey before and post-survey after the intervention. This research showed that the integrated STEM-PjBL physics module significantly improved students’ real-world connections, conceptual connections, and applied connections after the intervention. The implications and suggestions were also discussed to extend the research further.</span></p>

Why cyber insurance has an image problem

For many organisations, cyber insurance is a tricky subject. The cost can be a disincentive, the process of insuring can be complex and it seems there is an increasing list of circumstances under which insurers will not pay out. But given the threats that all organisations face, can you really risk not being insured?

Social Arithmetics Module Based on Islamic Values and Realistic Mathematics Education to Improve Students’ Problem-Solving Skills

Mathematics learning must be made more exciting and meaningful to overcome the perception that mathematics is a tricky subject. Students must be facilitated to build their knowledge through mathematics learning linked to realistic problems and integrated with Islamic values so that they can solve relevant daily problems. This research aims to develop a Social Arithmetic module based on Islamic values ​​and Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) to help junior high school students improve their problem-solving skills. This research uses R&D with the ADDIE development model. The development of the mathematics module consists of three stages, namely the preliminary, development, and evaluation stages. The resulting module prototype has been assessed as valid by material and media experts. Meanwhile, based on student and teacher responses to the questionnaire, the module was proven suitable for use in mathematics learning. In addition, the results of the paired t-test stated that the module was effective in improving students' problem-solving skills. Therefore, this research concluded that the Social Arithmetics module based on Islamic values ​​and RME that were developed has met the valid and practical criteria and has proven effective in improving the problem-solving abilities of seventh-grade junior high school students.

Are Musicians Being Replaced by Artificial Intelligence?

The use of machine learning in music interpretation is a tricky subject due to human subjectivity and personal preferences. Magenta’s PerformanceRNN provides a benchmark with which musicianship and human performance can be replicated and thus evaluated.

An Idle Heroine in Industrious Times: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis

An Idle Heroine in Industrious Times: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ <i>The Story of Avis</i>

Time Travel to the Past of Bosnia and Herzegovina through Virtual and Augmented Reality

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) has a very picturesque past. Founded in 11th century, it has always been a crossroads of faiths and civilizations. Extended Reality (XR) technologies can finally take us to time travel into this history, enable us to experience past events and meet historical characters. In this paper, we overview the latest applications we developed that use Virtual Reality (VR) video, Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR) for interactive digital storytelling about BH history. “Nine dissidents” is the first BH VR documentary, tackling a still tricky subject of dissidents in the Socialist Yugoslavia, artists and writers falsely accused, persecuted and still forbidden. “Virtual Museum of Old Crafts” aims to present and preserve crafts intangible heritage through Virtual Reality. “Battle on Neretva VR” is recreating a famous WWII battle offering the users to experience it and meet comrade Tito, the commander of the Yugoslav Liberation Army. “Sarajevo 5D” shows the cultural monuments from Sarajevo that do not exist anymore in physical form using Augmented Reality. Through user experience studies, we measure the user immersion and edutainment of these applications and show the potential of XR for the presentation and preservation of cultural heritage.

A Tricky Subject – archaeology in opinion polls on cultural heritage. Recent examples from Poland

Understanding the public by analysing the wants, interests and expectations regarding their involvement in archaeology is one of the strategic aims of Europae Archaeologiae Consilium (EAC). Cultural heritage has been the topic of several public opinion polls in Poland over the past few years. In 2011 and 2015, the Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa (National Institute of Cultural Heritage) carried out two representative surveys. Subsequent polls focusing on more specific issues or groups of respondents were undertaken in 2015, 2017 and 2018. Other data from Poland come from the 2017 Special Eurobarometer survey on cultural heritage. They can be contrasted with archaeology-orientated opinion polls: a Europe-wide survey carried out within the NEARCH project led by Inrap (French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research) and several smaller-scale projects, which might be treated as starting points for more representative research. The scope of these surveys includes: public perception of cultural heritage and archaeology, subjective value of cultural heritage, attitudes towards archaeology, relevance of archaeology for the present (also in terms of the socio-economic potential of archaeological heritage), people's interaction with archaeology and archaeological heritage, sources of information about archaeological heritage etc. Comparison of these data will serve to establish the relevance of surveys for archaeological heritage management. The author will also examine if the specific nature of archaeological heritage is reflected in the surveys and how the public feels about its most hidden heritage. Based on the results of her analysis, the author will look at the desired scope of a survey aimed at filling the identified gaps and shaped to fit the needs of evidence-based archaeological heritage management.

Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography by Pamila Gupta

Portuguese Studies vol. 37 no. 2 (2021), 256–68© Modern Humanities Research Association 2021 Reviews Pamila Gupta, Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). 225 pages. Print and ebook. Reviewed by Paul Melo e Castro (University of Glasgow) A recent growth area in postcolonial studies has involved what one might loosely describe as ‘oceanic perspectives’. The attractions are obvious, in that such perspectives effectively provincialize Europe as one point in a network of exchanges and allow for a renovation of existing topics by recovering interconnections between former colonial spaces that a more national(ist) focus might occlude. Given that the bulk of Portuguese speakers are located around the South Atlantic and that a significant number, if not the majority, are of at least partial African descent, it is no surprise that Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic paradigm of a ‘counterculture of modernity’ emerging in the wake of the middle passage has provided the main inspiration within Lusophone Studies. Lately however, as attested by such works as Fernando Rosa’s The Portuguese in the Creole Indian Ocean (2015), among various articles and research projects, interest has also grown in how Isabel Hofmeyr’s countervailing Indian Ocean paradigm — in which processes of exchange long predate colonial modernity, even if increased and then informed by it — might bring about studies of the peripheral, less integrated, even residual eastern territories of the former Portuguese empire, stretching from Mozambique to India and onwards to Timor Leste. It to this emergent debate that Pamela Gupta’s Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World contributes, asking some searching questions of an original variety of ethnographic materials and historical junctures yet equally showing the risks that working across such a broad scope may entail. GuptahasdoneasignificantamounttointroducetheIndianOceanparadigm, being inter alia one of the editors of Eyes across the Water: Navigating the Indian Ocean (2010). The present work collects a series of articles written subsequently and linking Angola, South Africa, Mozambique and Goa through the lens of decolonization, which the author pegs to two dates: 1961, when Goa was annexed by India, and 1975, when Angola and Mozambique achieved independence after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. While 1975 is uncontroversial, whether 1961 represented decolonialization or recolonialization is a tricky subject, as the various debates put forward by Goa’s Al-Zulaij Collective show. One of this book’s main points of interest is the wide variety of subjects it traverses, taking in references to the work of Ryszard Kapuściński, Mia Couto and Ricardo Rangel alongside the life stories of the Goan fishing community of Catembe and White Portuguese Africans who left Angola and Mozambique Reviews 257 for South Africa. Decolonization becomes a way of discussing the messiness of lives that continued through traumatic breaks in the historical timeline. The section on ‘retornados’ (if I can bend the meaning of this word so much, though many of the ‘retornados’ to Portugal were hardly returning there either) in South Africa is fascinating, the most interesting in the book for me. We see how this exodus, which has been given less attention than the high-profile flux of Whites to Portugal, was driven by a complex mix of self-identification as white Africans and the desire to preserve the prestige that colonial status brought. The fine-grained discussion of these lives is neatly complemented by the inclusion of photographs by Ricardo Rangel detailing the 1975 settler exodus from Lourenço Marques, adding a contrasting viewpoint to the memories of the interviewees. The section on Goans in Mozambique is equally interesting, the interviewees’ recollection of their ambivalent entanglements with whiteness and blackness exemplifying what Cristiana Bastos, quoted, calls their ‘floating position’. When problems arise, it is often in point of detail and partly through the cursory treatment given some issues. Here for brevity I focus on two subjects I know something of. Can we simply discuss Ricardo Rangel’s photographs as ‘visual metaphors’? Does the analysis of such documentary photography not have to engage with its claims on reality as trace or metonymy? What proof is there that many of Rangel’s colonial-era photographs were destroyed by the Portuguese colonial state, rather than their publication simply...

How to ask about bowel problems – and why it matters to patients

When nurses raise the tricky subject of faecal incontinence they’re really talking about quality of life

Apelin enhances the osteogenic differentiation of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells partly through Wnt/\u03b2-catenin signaling pathway

BackgroundManagement of fracture healing with a large bone defect remains a tricky subject in orthopedic trauma. Enhancing osteogenesis of human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hBMSCs) is one of the useful therapeutic strategies for fracture healing. Previous studies have revealed that Apelin may play an important role in bone metabolism. However, its function in the osteogenesis of hBMSCs remains unclear. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the effects and mechanism of Apelin on osteogenic differentiation.MethodsWe investigated the osteogenesis effects of hBMSCs by both exogenous Apelin protein and overexpression Apelin in vitro. Cell proliferation assay was used to assess the effect of Apelin on the proliferation of hBMSCs. ALP staining and Alizarin Red staining were used to evaluate ALP activity and mineral deposition respectively. qPCR and Western blotting analysis were used to detect the expression of target genes and proteins. In vivo, a rat tibial osteotomy model was established; radiographic analysis and histological evaluation were used to confirm the therapeutic effects of Apelin in fracture healing. Statistical significance was determined by two-tailed Student’s t test when 2 groups were compared. When more than 2 groups were compared, one-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni’s post-hoc test was used. And two-way ANOVA, followed by Bonferroni multiple comparisons post-hoc test, was performed when the treatment groups at different time points were compared.ResultsThe addition of exogenous Apelin protein or overexpression of Apelin promoted osteoblast differentiation of hBMSCs in vitro. Increased mineral deposits were observed after treatment with extracellular Apelin protein or after the upregulation of Apelin. Moreover, β-catenin levels were upregulated by Apelin. The enhancement of osteogenic differentiation induced by Apelin was attenuated by specific Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway inhibitors. In a rat tibial osteotomy model, local injection of exogenous Apelin protein improved bone healing, as demonstrated by imaging and histological analyses.ConclusionsTaken together, these findings indicate that Apelin regulates osteogenic differentiation of hMSCs partly via the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway and effectively promotes fracture healing.

Difficult tolerance: A Ricoeurian account and some practical theological reflections

The aim of this article is to present Ricoeur’s view on tolerance, and to reflect on some implications of his view for practical theology in South Africa. I start with a very brief introduction of tolerance as a key principle of liberal democracy and refer to the political use of tolerance in the transition to a democratic South Africa. After clarifying the aims and location of this article, I present Ricoeur’s view on tolerance as an ongoing and challenging task for a capable subject. The last section is a brief reflection on some implications of Ricoeur’s view of difficult tolerance for practical theology as an academic discipline in (South) Africa. “Tolerance is a tricky subject: too easy or too difficult” (Ricoeur 1996b:1)

\u2018Physical activity, that\u2019s a tricky subject.\u2019 Experiences of health care professionals with physical activity in type 2 diabetes care

BackgroundBased on a growing body of epidemiological and biomedical studies, physical activity (PA) is considered a cornerstone in type 2 diabetes treatment. However, it is also a practice embedded in daily life and, as such, may produce certain frictions as a topic in health care. The aim of this article is to give in-depth insight into experiences of health care professionals with the delivery of PA counselling to people with type 2 diabetes.MethodsThis study is based on in-depth interviews with 24 Dutch professionals providing care to people with type 2 diabetes. They were asked to tell about their experiences with PA in different roles, both in their professional and personal lives. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data analysis followed a narrative approach with not only a focus on what was told, but also on how this was constructed in interaction with the interviewer, the cultural resources that were drawn on and inconsistencies or alternatives that were presented. This narrative focus was used to explore how professionals made sense of their experiences with PA counselling within the wider sociocultural context.ResultsWhile the professionals view PA as a foundation of type 2 diabetes treatment, they experience it to be a tricky subject. Two main areas of tension were identified: (1) the understanding of patient behaviour; and (2) professionals’ views on responsibilities, both on their responsibilities as professionals and their notions on who is responsible for behaviour change.ConclusionsHealth care professionals providing PA counselling to people with type 2 diabetes have to navigate between possibilities within the diabetes care framework, options for an embedding of PA in the patient’s lifeworld, and the professionals’ opinions on and experiences with PA and healthy living from their own lifeworld. This makes PA a complex topic of care.

WHEN ARBITRATION AND BANKRUPTCY COLLIDE: REGULATION IN INDONESIA

The growing practice of business in Indonesia directly affects the complexity of business-related disputes. It also often leads to a cross-over between two different legal areas. Settlement of a dispute which have or at least intersect a public nature can become a tricky subject given the contractual nature of arbitration. One of the issues which will then become the basis for this article is the link between arbitration and bankruptcy. More specifically, what if one party in a civil dispute arises from a contract that contain an arbitration clause declared bankrupt? This issue has become so common in the practice, but the jurisprudence shows different views in these matters. The method used in this research is normative juridical research with conceptual approach. The regulations in another countries are also provided to give a comparative value. The conclusion found in this article is that the Core/Non-core Concept adopted in several countries can be applied in Indonesia as the regulation itself supported it.

ISSUES CONTRIBUTING TO LOW PERFORMANCE OF ENGLISH IN A NATIONAL SCHOOL IN SONG, SARAWAK

English is becoming more important in this globalized world. In Malaysia, calls have been made from rulers and commoners alike to use English as the primary medium of instruction in primary schools. Although Malaysia has centralized education system for every state, rural schools might be in danger of losing out to their counterparts in the urban areas. Numerous programmes have been done to bring the standard of English in the school up to par with their counterparts from urban schools and yet English remains a tricky subject to master. In a rural school in the district of Song, Sarawak, English has always been the lowest performing subjects in UPSR year after year. Parallel to UPSR, the pupils for English intervention programme (LINUS BI) has the most compared to Bahasa Malaysia (BM) and Mathematics. This paper will attempt to research and understand the primary issues contributing to low performance of English in the school. At the same time, this paper will attempt to compare the background of pupils with high performance of English and pupils with low and mediocre performance in English and the causes leading to what they are today.

Book Review: Luke Gittos. Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth: From Steubenville to Ched Evans

Book Review: Luke Gittos. Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth: From Steubenville to Ched Evans. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2015. ISBN: 978-1845408374 (Paperback). 140 Pages. $28.96.[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2016 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]When he told friends and colleagues that he was writing a book about rape culture, Luke Gittos was frequently asked 'Why?' After all, what would a man in his late twenties working as a criminal lawyer in London write about such a tricky subject, one where it is often considered verboten for men to offer any sort of view at all?When it comes to questions of women's oppression, and particularly an issue like rape, the views of women, particularly feminists and rape 'survivors', are today to be accepted unquestioningly. When it comes to the experience of rape, that makes sense. But when we look at how society approaches the issue of rape as a political and legal issue, it is legitimate for anyone to ask questions about official policies and the nature of public discussion today. And for Gittos, the implications of the rape culture discussion for important legal principles, freedom of speech, and even our ability to use our own judgement in our intimate lives are extremely troubling.That discussion is dominated by the idea that we live in a 'rape culture.' Essentially, it is argued that society is accepting of rape as normal, something reinforced by a variety of means. Gittos quotes one definition by a campaign group calling itself Force:Rape culture includes jokes, TV music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable. Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as 'just the way things are.'2While this may make perfect sense to many feminists, it jars with most people's view of rape as a heinous crime. It was certainly true in the past that rape was often dealt with very badly by the police and prosecuting authorities. In many jurisdictions, the notion that a married woman could not be raped by her husband was only - shockingly - rejected recently. For example, it was in only in 1993 that all 50 US states had legislated against marital rape, though in South Carolina, there is still an offence of spousal rape that sets a higher bar in terms of the use of force compared to non-marital rape.Women have had to fight hard to have rape taken seriously and to end their treatment as objects to be possessed by men, including the notion that rape cannot, by definition, take place in marriage. But in general, and certainly in the past two or three decades, society's approach to rape has changed in step with the wider liberation of women. For most people, rape is regarded as an extremely serious crime, sometimes on a par with murder, which further begs to question: Where does the idea come from that we are living in a 'rape culture'?Gittos argues that it based on a very individualized subjectivity, one which focuses on and accentuates a feeling of extreme vulnerability. That sense of vulnerability isn't helped by the abuse of statistics. For example, Gittos is critical of a claim made in 2013's Crime Survey for England and Wales that '0.5 percent of females report being a victim of the most serious offences of rape or sexual assault by penetration in the previous 12 months, equivalent to around 85,000 victims on average per year.' As Gittos points out, the survey did not ask women whether they had been raped. Rather, they were asked simply about physical acts of penetration when they had made it clear they did not agree or when they were not capable of giving consent.However, the crime of rape is not simply based on a physical act to which someone did not consent. …

‘That Tricky Subject’: The Integration of Contextual Studies in pre‐Degree Art and Design Education

AbstractContextual studies (CS), ‘theory’, ‘visual culture’ or ‘art history’ (amongst other labels) refer to a regular and often compulsory feature in art and design education. However, this takes many forms and can sit in a variety of relationships with the practical elements of such courses. This article is based on mixed method research on CS in the BTEC Extended Diploma in Art and Design, a course that makes up a substantial proportion of pre‐degree provision in the UK. We describe aspects of the wider study then draw on two cases to illustrate and discuss the implications of different approaches to the curriculum and its integration. Our analysis suggests that a seemingly progressive flight from a discrete CS towards a designed form of integration can have unintended negative consequences, and in the light of this we suggest some ways in which course teams might reflect on their practices.

Bartlebys All!

Few institutions have offered themselves as less promising for the novelist than the modern office. Work of any kind is a tricky subject for representation; office work—gray, gnomic, and unknowable—even more so. After all, what is it that people do in offices? Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” the locus classicus for discussions of early clerical work, begins by depicting strategies for avoiding work at what is nominally a law office. Few of the unnamed narrator’s employees seem to do much lawyering: Turkey works through the morning, but gets drunk at lunch; Nippers never finds an appropriate position to sit at his desk. And then there’s Bartleby, who, unlike his colleagues, works—and does so without fanfare, “silently, palely, mechanically.”

Object of Desire: Meditations on Race and Cannibalism

What do I see when I gaze at an older man? What do I think he sees when he looks at me? In my case, a Chinese American gay man in my 30s, this means that we will have to talk about ethnicity, culture, age, homosexuality, and their intersection. This is a tricky subject because there are no singular ways in which people see these things. Yet it is a necessary one because they inevitably shape our experiences of others and thus our desire for them.

Counting on the Words

This paper assesses the status of "evidence" in studies of religion by attending to its epistemological lineages, its tone and genre, and its sometimes unconscious methodological presumptions. Exploring the implications of authorial constructions of evidence and the inevitability of our complicity in deciding what counts as "religion," this piece suggests productive engagements with the limits of "evidence" - rather than the often futile attempts to surpass them - can yield fresh ways of thinking and writing about the field's tricky subject.

Confidence in preferences

Indeterminate preferences have long been a tricky subject for choice theory. One reason for which preferences may be less than fully determinate is the lack of confidence in one’s preferences. In this paper, a representation of confidence in preferences is proposed. It is used to develop and axiomatise an account of the role of confidence in choice which rests on the following intuition: the more important the decision to be taken, the more confidence is required in the preferences needed to take it. This theory provides a natural account of when an agent should defer a decision; namely, when the importance of the decision exceeds his confidence in the relevant preferences. Possible applications of the notion of confidence in preferences to social choice are briefly explored.