Turning the focus from ‘Other’ to science education: exploring the invisibility of Whiteness

This paper provides another way to gaze upon Brad’s story as presented by van Eijck and Roth (2010). It raises questions about infrastructural racism in contemporary science education by exploring its association with Whiteness and White privilege. To explore the racial positioning inherent in Western science education specific attention is given to the positions of power that accompany Western ways of knowing the world (i.e., science education) in comparison to Other ways of knowing the world (i.e., First Nations Ways of Knowing). The paper suggests the power relationships inherent within this dualism are asymmetrical due to the implications of Whiteness within colonial societies. Even though power relations were not discussed in Brad’s story, the paper suggests the implications were visible. The paper concludes by advocating for a re-imagining in science education where the traditional ontological and epistemological foundations are deconstructed and spaces are created for enacting practical ways of resisting oppression.

When empathy hurts: Modelling university students’ word of mouth behaviour in public vs. private universities in Syria

This study examines and compares word of mouth (WOM) behaviour among university students in Syria. To date, little is known about this important phenomenon which is surprising given the deregulated education market in Syria that allows for private universities to compete for students alongside public universities. Using a mixed methods research design and structural equation modelling, our results show faculty individualised attention and student satisfaction were found to be positively related to university image. Further, student satisfaction and university image were found to be direct sources of students’ positive WOM behaviour. We found a moderating effect of university ownership type on university image. Interestingly, we identified six themes showing how support staff empathy could be seen as a source of low student satisfaction. These were defined as deception/credibility/soft‐soapers/suspiciousness: when support staff coax something out of students; confusion/role conflict: resulting from the diverse roles played by support staff while interacting with students; unfairness: when a student notices discrimination in the level of empathy between their peers; privacy: when support staff empathy can be perceived as a kind of intrusion; self‐congratulatory: when a support staff member shows off or praises their empathy; and support staff/student ratio: when this ratio is seen to be small, the empathy effect reverses.     

From information seeking to information avoidance: Understanding the health information behavior during a global health crisis

Individuals seek information for informed decision-making, and they consult a variety of information sources nowadays. However, studies show that information from multiple sources can lead to information overload, which then creates negative psychological and behavioral responses. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, we propose a model to understand the effect of information seeking, information sources, and information overload (Stimuli) on information anxiety (psychological organism), and consequent behavioral response, information avoidance during the global health crisis (COVID-19). The proposed model was tested using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for which data were collected from 321 Finnish adults using an online survey. People found to seek information from traditional sources such as mass media, print media, and online sources such as official websites and websites of newspapers and forums. Social media and personal networks were not the preferred sources. On the other hand, among different information sources, social media exposure has a significant relationship with information overload as well as information anxiety. Besides, information overload also predicted information anxiety, which further resulted in information avoidance.     

Scale-free collaborative protocol design for state and regulated state synchronization of multi-agent systems with arbitrary fast convergence

In this paper, we design scale-free collaborative protocols for state and regulated state synchronization of homogeneous multi-agent systems (MAS) with arbitrary fast convergence. The protocol design solely depends on the knowledge of the agents’ model and does not require any information about the communication network and the number of agents. Moreover, our protocols can achieve synchronization with any desired convergence rate by simply tuning a design parameter.     

雪上技巧项目运动员心理训练监控体系的建立——以自由式滑雪空中技巧和单板U型场地为例

以自由式滑雪空中技巧和单板U型场地滑雪项目为例,在综述已有研究的基础上,构建雪上技巧项目运动员心理训练监控体系,以期为提高运动员训练和比赛的技战术水平,在比赛中创造优异的运动成绩提供心理保障与服务。     

A novel technique for optimal placement of piezoelectric actuators on smart structures

The problem of positioning of actuators and sensors on smart materials has been a point of interest in recent years. This is due to the fact that in many practical applications there are limitations in space, weight, etc. of the smart structures, which make the problem of positioning more complex. In addition, it is required that the actuators/sensors have the best possible performance. The development of smart structures technology in recent years has provided numerous opportunities for vibration control applications. The use of piezoelectric ceramics or polymers has shown great promise in the development of this technology. The employment of piezoelectric material as actuators in vibration control is beneficial because these actuators only excite the elastic modes of the structures without exciting the rigid-body modes. This is important since very often only elastic motions of the structures are needed to be controlled. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel approach developed for optimizing the location of piezoelectric actuators for vibration suppression of flexible structures. A flexible fin with bonded piezoelectric actuators is considered in this study. The frequency response function (FRF) of the system is then recorded and maximization of the FRF peaks is considered as the objective function of the optimization algorithm to find the optimal placement of the piezoelectric actuators on the smart fin. Three multi-layer perceptron neural networks are employed to perform surface fitting to the discrete data generated by the finite element method (FEM). Invasive weed optimization (IWO), a novel numerical stochastic optimization algorithm, is then employed to maximize the weighted summation of FRF peaks. Results indicate an accurate surface fitting for the FRF peak data and an optimal placement of the piezoelectric actuators for vibration suppression is achieved.     

Control vector optimization and genetic algorithms for mixed-integer dynamic optimization in the synthesis of rice drying processes

Rice drying synthesis is an essential operation that has to be done carefully and cost-effectively. Rice is harvested at high moisture content and hence must be dried within 24 h for safe storage. However, improper drying can cause fissuring in the rice grain, and thus greatly reduce its market value. Multi-pass drying systems are therefore used to gradually bring moisture content to desired level.The problem of rice synthesis, considered in this study, seeks the configuration of units and their corresponding operating conditions that maximize rice quality. This problem is formulated as a mixed-integer dynamic optimization problem. The integer part of the problem reflects process alternatives while the dynamic part originates from nonlinear differential-algebraic equations describing the drying behavior of a rice grain.Clearly such a formidable problem is not easy to solve. Hence, we propose an approach that makes use of two algorithms: a genetic algorithm to search for the best configuration of units and a control vector parameterization approach that optimizes the operating conditions for each configuration. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach on a case study.     

Production and Purification of Rabbit’s Polyclonal Antibody Against Factor VIII

The attempt is made to produce recombinant factor VIII but the first step in producing such product is production and purification of rabbit’s polyclonal antibody against factor VIII. The second and third steps involve monoclonal antibody and recombinant factor VIII production. Factor VIII is one of the most important coagulating factor where its deficiency leads to diseases like hemophilia type A or classic. It is an inherited disease. Previously, it was obtained through fractionation of blood plasma of blood donors. After processing, factor VIII could be used to manage such patients. Due to transfer of viral disease like hepatitis and HIV through factor VIII obtained by fractionation, high cost of production, insufficiency of the donors and the process of virus removal, thus production of factor VIII through recombinant technology can be useful and helpful. The reaction between antibody and antigen is one the most specific reaction; therefore, such reaction can be employed to identify factor VIII. Thereby, rabbits were injected several times with adjuvant-linked antigen to produce antibody. The antibody was separated from the blood sample, purified and used to identify factor VIII in the research.