ABSTRACT
During the covid-19 pandemic, students' online learning quality is imbued with teachers' support strategies while students' learning engagement is another great indicator underlies their learning experiences. Through a questionnaire survey of 500 freshmen who have had their college English class online in 2022 fall, an investigation using exploratory factor analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, stepwise regression analysis and parallel mediator model reveals the impact of teachers' support strategies (the six dimensions of challenge, authentic context, curiosity, autonomy, recognition and feedback) on the learners' online college English learning engagement (the four dimensions of cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, social engagement), thus particular concern is also given to the correlation with students' online learning experiences. It was found that even under diversified and comprehensive guiding strategies from teachers, university students' online college English learning engagement is at the medium level, among which the cognitive engagement should be devoted more. The experimental data also shows that teachers' support strategies have significant influence on learners' engagement, especially teachers' feedback and challenge setting will stimulate students to involve more in their study. In addition, both teachers' support strategies and students' learning engagement involves significant reflection of learning experiences accordingly. Based on this learning concept, related proposals see different degrees of prominence reflected in online instructional design, teachers' and students' feedback literacy, and technology-enabled innovative teaching practice are put forward, in order to effectively play the role of teacher scaffolding, learning experiences enrichment and students' engagement enhancement of online English learning. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
As a critical influencing factor of learning engagement, teacher expectation plays a vital role in ensuring the quality of online teaching under COVID-19. This paper investigates the relationship between teacher expectations (three dimensions of teacher support, teaching interaction, and academic feedback) on students' online English learning engagement (three dimensions of cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, and emotional engagement) in e-learning through a questionnaire survey of 513 college students. Pearson correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were applied as research methods. The results manifest that college students' online English learning engagement was above average, but emotional engagement needs improvement. In addition, teacher expectations of teaching interaction positively and significantly predict English e-learning engagement. Based on this, the article puts forward suggestions on the future of online teaching from the aspects of online teaching design, feedback quality of teachers and students, innovative teaching practice of technology empowerment to effectively play the role of teachers as scaffolding and improve the effectiveness of online English teaching. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Documentation can support design work and create opportunities for learning and reflection. We explore how a novel documentation tool for a remote interaction design course provides insight into design process and integrates strategies from expert practice to support studio-style collaboration and reflection. Using Research through Design, we develop and deploy Kaleidoscope, an online tool for documenting design process, in an upper-level HCI class during the COVID-19 pandemic, iteratively developing it in response to student feedback and needs. We discuss key themes from the real-world deployment of Kaleidoscope, including: tensions between documentation and creation;effects of centralizing discussion;privacy and visibility in shared spaces;balancing evidence of achievement with feelings of overwhelm;and the effects of initial perceptions and incentives on tool usage. These successes and challenges provide insights to guide future tools for design documentation and HCI education that scaffold learning process as an equal partner to execution. © 2023 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
Viruses lacking the capacity to infect mammals exhibit minimal toxicity, good biocompatibility, and well-defined structures. As self-organized biomolecular assemblies, they can be produced from standard biological techniques on a large scale at a low cost. Genetic, chemical, self-assembly, and mineralization techniques have been applied to allow them to display functional peptides or proteins, encapsulate therapeutic drugs and genes, assemble with other materials, and be conjugated with bioactive molecules, enabling them to bear different biochemical properties. So far, a variety of viruses (infecting bacteria, plants, or animals), as well as their particle variants, have been used as biomaterials to advance human disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Specifically, the virus-based biomaterials can serve as multifunctional nanocarriers for targeted therapy, antimicrobial agents for infectious disease treatment, hierarchically structured scaffolds for guiding cellular differentiation and promoting tissue regeneration, versatile platforms for ultrasensitive disease detection, tissue-targeting probes for precision bioimaging, and effective vaccines and immunotherapeutic agents for tackling challenging diseases. This review provides an in-depth discussion of these exciting applications. It also gives an overview of the viruses from materials science perspectives and attempts to correlate the structures, properties, processing, and performance of virus-based biomaterials. It describes the use of virus-based biomaterials for preventing and treating COVID-19 and discusses the challenges and future directions of virus-based biomaterials research. It summarizes the progressive clinical trials of using viruses in humans. With the impressive progress made in the exciting field of virus-based biomaterials, it is clear that viruses are playing key roles in advancing important areas in biomedicine such as early detection and prevention, drug delivery, infectious disease treatment, cancer therapy, nanomedicine, and regenerative medicine. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Materials Science & Engineering: R is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Andrographolide (AG-1) is identified as an attractive scaffold based on in silico/in vitro/in vivo (preclinical and clinical) studies against COVID-19 infection, for which hardly any effective drug is available to date. Due to complexity of its chemical structure, stereoselective and regioselective Heck arylation reactions at C-17 exocyclic double bond of AG-1 is a major challenge and we stepped forward to generate a small focused library of compounds. Among all the molecules, AG-12 and AG-13 were predicted to have better pharmacokinetic profiles than AG-1. Upon evaluation of in vivo efficacy of AG-12 and AG-13 in comparison to AG-1 using an LPS-induced acute lung injury model, AG-13 showed promising action towards reduction of the neutrophil count, minimization of oxidative stress, and inhibition of inflammatory cytokines. Further, lead optimization should be carried out towards developing potential natural product-driven therapeutics to combat acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) situations during COVID-19. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.
ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, universities worldwide quickly adapted to an online teaching setting as an emergency measure. During this rapid adaption, individual academics were given the challenge of teaching online [1]. Due to the vast discrepancies between the usual pedagogical approach to online teaching and to online teaching necessitated by the pandemic, the latter limited itself to instructor-centred knowledge transmission [2]. More recently, learning has moved back to the on-campus setting. This paper reports on one instructor's change to on-campus sessions based on experience in transforming pre-pandemic on-campus sessions, which were explanation centred, to pandemic online sessions, which were activity-centred and therefore more engaging for the students. The post-pandemic on-campus sessions comprised three parts: (1) Whiteboard Centring, (2) Case Study Introduction, and (3) Solution Envisioning. The sessions were strongly student-centred and incorporated a 15 to 20-min break. The material covered in the sessions was examined in the module's unseen 2-h examination. When compared with previous results, the students performed better overall, and inspection of the examination scripts suggested that more of the students had a better understanding of the material. The paper discusses the extent to which the improvement reflects the student-centred approach. In addition, a 70–30 rule is proposed as a way of both characterising the instructor's student-centred approach and offering one guide to instructors as to whether they themselves are adopting a student-centred approach. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Cultivated meat (CM) technology has the potential to disrupt the food industry-indeed, it is already an inevitable reality. This new technology is an alternative to solve the environmental, health and ethical issues associated with the demand for meat products. The global market longs for biotechnological improvements for the CM production chain. CM, also known as cultured, cell-based, lab-grown, in vitro or clean meat, is obtained through cellular agriculture, which is based on applying tissue engineering principles. In practice, it is first necessary to choose the best cell source and type, and then to furnish the necessary nutrients, growth factors and signalling molecules via cultivation media. This procedure occurs in a controlled environment that provides the surfaces necessary for anchor-dependent cells and offers microcarriers and scaffolds that favour the three-dimensional (3D) organisation of multiple cell types. In this review, we discuss relevant information to CM production, including the cultivation process, cell sources, medium requirements, the main obstacles to CM production (consumer acceptance, scalability, safety and reproducibility), the technological aspects of 3D models (biomaterials, microcarriers and scaffolds) and assembly methods (cell layering, spinning and 3D bioprinting). We also provide an outlook on the global CM market. Our review brings a broad overview of the CM field, providing an update for everyone interested in the topic, which is especially important because CM is a multidisciplinary technology.
Subject(s)
Meat Products , Tissue Engineering , Tissue Engineering/methods , Reproducibility of Results , Meat , Biotechnology , Tissue ScaffoldsABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic turned both private and public life upside down. Teaching and learning at higher education institutions worldwide had to move online on very short notice. This means that all the educational process must be converted into a digital format for the transmission of a large array of information through electronic exchange. Online learning has been an important research topic over the past three decades, but online study programs at the universities are still limited. This article tells about the experience of foreign countries in the successful implementation of information and digital technologies in the educational process of universities. Information technologies in training are used in South Korea (Smart education), Switzerland (Wikis), Norway (Mixed learning model and co-education), Serbia (Video on demand), China (Stem - education, Moodle, Block chain). We continue with some initial thoughts on online teaching and learning in higher education in general, and emergency online teaching and learning more specifically. All of these technologies have advantages within a single state. After an overview of the international research compiled in this Special Issue, we derive a number of general insights on online teaching and learning in higher education, emphasizing, for instance, scaffolding of regulation processes or communication platforms as potential artifacts of an online teaching and learning. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, universities worldwide quickly adapted to an online teaching setting as an emergency measure. During this rapid adaption, individual academics were given the challenge of teaching online [1]. Due to the vast discrepancies between the usual pedagogical approach to online teaching and to online teaching necessitated by the pandemic, the latter limited itself to instructor-centred knowledge transmission [2]. More recently, learning has moved back to the on-campus setting. This paper reports on one instructor's change to on-campus sessions based on experience in transforming pre-pandemic on-campus sessions, which were explanation centred, to pandemic online sessions, which were activity-centred and therefore more engaging for the students. The post-pandemic on-campus sessions comprised three parts: (1) Whiteboard Centring, (2) Case Study Introduction, and (3) Solution Envisioning. The sessions were strongly student-centred and incorporated a 15 to 20-min break. The material covered in the sessions was examined in the module's unseen 2-h examination. When compared with previous results, the students performed better overall, and inspection of the examination scripts suggested that more of the students had a better understanding of the material. The paper discusses the extent to which the improvement reflects the student-centred approach. In addition, a 70–30 rule is proposed as a way of both characterising the instructor's student-centred approach and offering one guide to instructors as to whether they themselves are adopting a student-centred approach. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Viruses lacking the capacity to infect mammals exhibit minimal toxicity, good biocompatibility, and well-defined structures. As self-organized biomolecular assemblies, they can be produced from standard biological techniques on a large scale at a low cost. Genetic, chemical, self-assembly, and mineralization techniques have been applied to allow them to display functional peptides or proteins, encapsulate therapeutic drugs and genes, assemble with other materials, and be conjugated with bioactive molecules, enabling them to bear different biochemical properties. So far, a variety of viruses (infecting bacteria, plants, or animals), as well as their particle variants, have been used as biomaterials to advance human disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Specifically, the virus-based biomaterials can serve as multifunctional nanocarriers for targeted therapy, antimicrobial agents for infectious disease treatment, hierarchically structured scaffolds for guiding cellular differentiation and promoting tissue regeneration, versatile platforms for ultrasensitive disease detection, tissue-targeting probes for precision bioimaging, and effective vaccines and immunotherapeutic agents for tackling challenging diseases. This review provides an in-depth discussion of these exciting applications. It also gives an overview of the viruses from materials science perspectives and attempts to correlate the structures, properties, processing, and performance of virus-based biomaterials. It describes the use of virus-based biomaterials for preventing and treating COVID-19 and discusses the challenges and future directions of virus-based biomaterials research. It summarizes the progressive clinical trials of using viruses in humans. With the impressive progress made in the exciting field of virus-based biomaterials, it is clear that viruses are playing key roles in advancing important areas in biomedicine such as early detection and prevention, drug delivery, infectious disease treatment, cancer therapy, nanomedicine, and regenerative medicine. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.
ABSTRACT
Oil industry construction is a very high risk from a safety and health perspective. Thousands of workers die while working in onshore oil refineries and pipeline projects worldwide, and despite many advancements in research and technology, fatal injuries are still happening. Construction products involving oil refineries and pipelines always need successful strategies in mitigating health and safety risks. After the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the industry became more conscious of increasing workers' safety on construction sites. The lack of a comprehensive literature review involving raking and prioritization of critical health and safety risk factors is the reason behind conducting a new secondary study. This study aimed to show the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on risk analysis of health and safety issues construction workers face in onshore oil refineries and pipeline construction projects. The SLR methodology involved searching and reviewing the most relevant research papers from the perspective of safety risk factors and proven mitigation techniques. The SLR involves 30 research papers that are of high significance from 2011 to 2022. Fifteen health and safety risk factors are ranked according to arguments from previous studies, with falling from height at the top and scaffolding failure at the lowest position. The successful mitigation techniques are discussed in the existing literature, and the study provides positive theoretical and practical implications for the workers in oil refinery and pipeline construction projects. © 2022 IEEE.
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In today's world where virtual interaction is becoming more and more important, remote collaborative problem solving has become a promising teaching strategy. The motivation to promote collaborative science learning and the depth of group discussions are key research issues. The use of gamification strategies has the potential to facilitate remote synchronous science instruction. In order to promote learners' collaborative science problem-solving skills, it is critical to design appropriate scaffolds and provide a guiding framework for teachers to integrate cloud-based interactive tools to design remote synchronous gamification activities. Based on years of research on scaffold-based gamified teaching, this study proposes a framework for gamified teaching activities that integrates a cloud-based toolset and a three-dimensional scaffolding (cognitive scaffolding, peer scaffolding, and metacognitive scaffolding). The framework can be used as a reference for science teachers to combine cloud tools for remote gamified teaching and for researchers in this field.
ABSTRACT
Severe emergencies occurred across the globe, beginning with the outbreak of SARSCoV in 2002, followed by MERS-CoV in 2012. In December 2019, an acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was identified in Wuhan, China as the agent responsible for the recent COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The virus rapidly spread throughout the world due to its high transmissibility, leading to enormous health problems and complexities. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected public health, the weak persons were severely affected by this virus. To stop the disease from spreading further, effective remedies are the need of the hour. Although SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaigns are being carried out all over the globe, several new SARS-CoV-2 variants have emerged, and each has caused a wave of infections, highlighting an urgent need for therapeutics targeting SARS-CoV-2. Heterocyclic compounds have been explored extensively for a very long time for their biological activities, namely, anti-inflammatory, antimalarial, antitubercular, anticancer, antiviral, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, and many more bio-activities. Through this review, the author has tried to report the heterocyclic compounds synthesized all over the world over the last 2 years to fight against the SARS CoV-2 coronaviruses. The heterocyclic motifs mentioned in the review can serve as important resources for the development of COVID-19 treatment methods.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Heterocyclic Compounds , Humans , COVID-19/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2 , Pandemics , COVID-19 Drug Treatment , COVID-19 Vaccines , Heterocyclic Compounds/pharmacology , Heterocyclic Compounds/therapeutic useABSTRACT
Background: SARS-CoV-2 is a deadly viral disease and uncounted deaths occurs since its first appearance in the year 2019. The antiviral drugs, benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, and coumarin molecules were searched using different online engines for drug repurposing with SARS-CoV-2 and to investigate the effects on main viral protease (Mpro) upon their bindings. Methods: A database composed of antiviral drugs, benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, and Coumarin molecules was screened through a molecular docking strategy to uncover the interactions of collected molecules with SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. Further, molecular dynamics simulations (MDS) were implemented for 100 ns to calculate the stability of the best complexed molecular scaffold with Mpro. The conformations of the simulated complexes were investigated by using principal component analysis (PCA) and Gibbs energy landscape (FEL) and DSSP together. Next, free binding energy (ΔGbind) was calculated using the mmpbsa method. Results: Molecular docking simulations demonstrate 17 molecules exhibited better binding affinity out of 99 molecules present in the database with the viral protease Mpro, followed ADMET properties and were documented. The Coumarin-EM04 molecular scaffold exhibited interactions with catalytical dyad HIS41, CYS145, and neighboring amino acids SER165 and GLN189 in the catalytical site. The crucial factor RMSD was calculated to determine the orientations of Coumarin-EM04. The Coumarin-EM04 complexed with Mpro was found stable in the binding site during MDS. Furthermore, the free energy binding ΔGbind of Coumarin-EM04 was found to be -187.471 ± 2.230 kJ/mol, and for Remdesivir ΔGbind was -171.926 ± 2.237 kJ/mol with SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. Conclusion: In this study, we identify potent molecules that exhibit interactions with catalytical dyad HIS41 and CYS145 amino acids and unravel Coumarin-EM04 exhibited ΔGbind higher than Remdesivir against Mpro and thus may serve better antiviral agent against SARS-CoV-2.
ABSTRACT
Knowledge management systems enable teachers and students to interact directly in the knowledge transfer process during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, applying the gamification concept in vocational disciplines could enhance the quality of teaching to increase motivation and student learning outcomes which tend to decline. Octalysis Framework, which supports the gamification concept, consists of eight cores that focus on creativity, self-expression, social dynamics, logic, thinking, and ownership depicted in an octagon making an application more fun and helpful to motivate users to enjoy and be involved in an activity. This condition is crucial and urgent in the Covid-19 pandemic that requires online and student-centered learning. This study discussed the application of Octalysis Framework-based Gamification in a Computer Learning Knowledge Management system in Vocational High Schools during the Covid-19 Pandemic. The Gamification concept with the Octalysis Framework was implemented in the Knowledge Management System. Some game mechanics in a non-game context consisting of four phases, namely the Discovery, Onboarding, Scaffolding, and Endgame was applied to improve student performance and motivation in learning. Meanwhile, The Knowledge Management System software achieved an overall quality score of 5.14 out of 6 (85.6 percent of quality achieved) covering functionality, reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability, and portability characteristics of the ISO 9126 quality indicator. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Therapeutic agents being designed against COVID-19 have targeted either the virus directly or the host cellular machinery. A particularly attractive host target is the ubiquitous and constitutively active serine-threonine kinase, Protein kinase CK2 (CK2). CK2 enhances viral protein synthesis by inhibiting the sequestration of host translational machinery as stress granules and assists in viral egression via association with the N-protein at filopodial protrusions of the infected cell. CK2 inhibitors such as Silmitasertib have been proposed as possible therapeutic candidates in COVID-19 infections. The present study aims to optimize Silmitasertib, develop pharmacophore models and design unique scaffolds to modulate CK2. The lead optimization phase involved the generation of compounds structurally similar to Silmitasertib via bioisostere replacement followed by a multi-stage docking approach to identify drug-like candidates. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were performed for two promising candidates (ZINC-43206125 and PC-57664175) to estimate their binding stability and interaction. Top scoring candidates from the lead optimization phase were utilized to build ligand-based pharmacophore models. These models were then merged with structure-based pharmacophores (e-pharmacophores) to build a hybrid hypothesis. This hybrid hypothesis was validated against a decoy set and used to screen a diverse kinase inhibitors library to identify favored chemical features in the retrieved actives. These chemical features include; an anion, an aromatic ring and an H-bond acceptor. Based on the knowledge of these features; de-novo scaffold design was carried out which identified phenindiones, carboxylated steroids, macrocycles and peptides as novel scaffolds with the potential to modulate CK2.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.
ABSTRACT
The ongoing crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic produced major reshuffles on the world map, bringing imbalance, uncertainty, and accumulated stress. Due to supply chain disruptions, the need for innovation has emerged both as a priority and a necessity and three-dimensional printing (3DP) proved to be a primary, smart, effective, and innovative additive manufacturing (AM) method. AM refers to the direct fabrication of complex geometries, using a computer-aided design (CAD) model or a three-dimensional scanner output. This article presents a literature review of AM technologies, chronologically sorted, and proposes a multilevel classification model. The suggested research approach appears a triangular methodology that encompasses the current ISO/ASTM 52900:2021 report. The first objective of this article is to form two double-level classification models of AM processes, depending on the technology and material factors. The second objective is to clarify in which of the proposed categories each AM process is included;and the third one is to investigate if the proposed taxonomy is related to the time spot, in which AM processes were invented. The contribution of this article lies in determining the factors that are crucial for the growth of AM ecosystem. The novelty of the proposed classification lies in the definition of an optimal option for each industrial application based on the different AM processes, the variety of materials, and the evolution of technology over the years. In this way, investing in AM is more systematic and less risky.
ABSTRACT
Promoting epistemic agency in science classrooms benefits student learning. One critical variable in the development of epistemic agency is the activation of intrinsic motivation that can happen when cognitive authority is shared between teachers and students. With the recent pivot to online teaching, opportunities to engage in such learning environments have been challenging using online platforms. We investigate one teacher's implementation of a science unit that was delivered online. While the unit was specifically constructed to build epistemic agency with students in in-person classes, using various instructional design choices, this teacher was able to cede cognitive authority over to his students by engaging them in activities that improved intrinsic motivation. We describe those choices, such as, using unmonitored scaffolds to enable student autonomy, and leveraging familiarity with their local context through peer-led collaborations. We then discuss implications for this research in support of better learning and engagement in online environments. © ISLS.
ABSTRACT
Participant retention in online learning has often been discussed as a challenge in educational research. During 2020-2021, the existing challenges were burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores certain engagement techniques with participants through an online project-based learning mode provided as a part of a nationwide robotics competition during the pandemic. 54 teams (176 participants) from 42 institutions participated in the competition to build a sophisticated Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) architecture. The study aims to understand participant engagement, the effect due to COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, personal development due to competition, and the effect of scaffoldings and guided efforts. Despite the challenges due to the pandemic, additional scaffolding and guided efforts lead to approximately 24% of teams successfully building the architecture. This is similar to an average of 26% in pre-pandemic editions of the competition without these additional scaffolds. These efforts and mode of learning are thus found to successfully engage participants during pandemic. © ISLS.
ABSTRACT
We explore the challenges of teaching "hardware-embedded Robotic Operating System (ROS) skills" online in a lockdown situation to participants through a hands-on competition. Teamwork is a vital skill in solving modern engineering problems. During Covid-19 lockdown situations, the interaction between teammates significantly reduced compared to regular times. This prompted us to design an engineering problem statement with scaffolding that improves engineering education learning efficacy. A total of 465 teams (1860 participants) were introduced to a problem statement comprising of a autonomous robot navigation, manipulation and a perception task for an indoor unmanned ground vehicle. We study the performance of teams based on several factors such as participant's score, task's difficulty level, number of resources given and the nature of online sessions by instructors. We found the scaffolding approach helped teams in implementing a solution by exploring alternative methods and thus their knowledge. © ISLS.