Pokémon GO as a Cognitive and Societal Development Tool for Personalised Learning

The present research develops and tests a theoretical gamification model (GM) that explores the use of mobile learning (ML) and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games to strengthen group prospection of teams and improve retention. The GM used Pokémon GO to enable higher education students to engage in activities and challenges with a view to observe the impacts on health and wellbeing through collection of quantitative and qualitative data. The data that was collected involved a sample set (N = 50) of participants within the general educational sector. The model constructs were measured throughout the first academic semester, from September 2018 to February 2019. There is significant evidence to show that the use of ML in the classroom is beneficial depending on the influences from and engagement with participants. The contributions from these findings should provide the basics for further research into different studies involving MMOs and ML or gamification studies.

Pokémon GO as a Cognitive and Societal Development Tool for Personalised Learning

The present research develops and tests a theoretical gamification model (GM) that explores the use of mobile learning (ML) and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games to strengthen group prospection of teams and improve retention. The GM used Pokémon GO to enable higher education students to engage in activities and challenges with a view to observe the impacts on health and wellbeing through collection of quantitative and qualitative data. The data that was collected involved a sample set (N = 50) of participants within the general educational sector. The model constructs were measured throughout the first academic semester, from September 2018 to February 2019. There is significant evidence to show that the use of ML in the classroom is beneficial depending on the influences from and engagement with participants. The contributions from these findings should provide the basics for further research into different studies involving MMOs and ML or gamification studies.

Is the use of Makey Makey Helpful to Teach Programming Concepts to Primary Education Students?

New computer devices such as Makey Makey are proposed for children in primary education to learn computer programming. That way, students can interact with the computer with any conductive material, such as fruits or Play-Doh. The research question is whether playing with fruits as interactive devices can help primary education students learn concepts of computer programming. An experiment has been performed to answer the question with 62 primary education children. The results gathered provide significant evidence that students can learn more without using the fruits. Psychological factors may explain these results.

The Effects of Service Coordination on Disadvantaged Parents’ Participation in Activation Programs and Employment: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Purpose This randomized controlled study evaluates the effects of coordinated follow-up within a family intervention project on parents’ participation in activation programs and employment. The trial has been registered on Clinicaltrials.gov (Identifier: NCT03102775). Methods Of 2634 families, 1429 families were randomized to be offered follow-up by a family coordinator, while 1205 families participated in ordinary follow-up without a family coordinator. An analysis of longitudinal administrative data was performed to estimate the effects of the intervention on parents’ participation in activation programs and employment by comparing the two follow-up methods. Results Based on fixed effects logistic models, the follow-up with a family coordinator is associated with non-significant effects on participation in activation programs (OR = 1.05, 95% CI [0.81, 1.37]) and employment (OR = 1.11, 95% CI [0.67, 1.82]). Discussion The results provide no significant evidence on the effectiveness of coordination efforts for disadvantaged families on activation and employment.

A summary-statistics-based approach to examine the role of serotonin transporter promoter tandem repeat polymorphism in psychiatric phenotypes

In genetic studies of psychiatric disorders in the pre-genome-wide association study (GWAS) era, one of the most commonly studied loci is the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4) promoter polymorphism, a 43-base-pair insertion/deletion polymorphism in the promoter region (5-HTTLPR). The genetic association signals between 5-HTTLPR and psychiatric phenotypes, however, have been inconsistent across many studies. Since the polymorphism cannot be tested via available SNP arrays, we had previously proposed an efficient machine learning algorithm to predict the genotypes of 5-HTTLPR based on the genotypes of eight nearby SNPs, which requires access to individual-level genotype and phenotype data. To utilize the advantage of publicly available GWAS summary statistics obtained from studies with very large sample sizes, we develop a GWAS summary-statistics-based approach for testing the variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) associations with various phenotypes. We first cross-verify the accuracy of the summary-statistics-based approach for 61 phenotypes in the UK Biobank. Since we observed a strong similarity between the predicted individual-level 5-HTTLPR genotype-based approach and the summary-statistics-based approach, we applied our method to the available neurobehavioral GWAS summary statistics data obtained from large-scale GWAS. We found no genome-wide significant evidence for association between 5-HTTLPR and any of the neurobehavioral traits. We did observe, however, genome-wide significant evidence for association between this locus and human adult height, BMI, and total cholesterol. Our summary-statistics-based approach provides a systematic way to examine the role of VNTRs and related types of genetic polymorphisms in disease risk and trait susceptibility of phenotypes for which large-scale GWAS summary statistics data are available.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and Environmental Consequences

We empirically investigate the effect of the <i>Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership</i> on the per capita emissions of eight air pollutants and municipal waste. By introducing the same explanatory variables and applying the same empirical strategy and methodologies as in Qirjo and Pascalau (2019), we provide robust evidence suggesting that the implementation of the partnership could be beneficial to the environment because it may reduce per capita emissions of CH₄, hydrofluorocarbons/ perfluorinated chemicals/ SF₆, N₂O, NH₃, and SF₆ for a typical partnership member. This result is based on statistically significant evidence showing that, on average, the pollution haven motive based on national per capita income variations is dominated by the factor endowment argument based on the Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory and the pollution haven motive originating from an inverse measurement of national population density differences. However, we also report statistically significant evidence that the implementation of the partnership could denigrate the environment by increasing per capita emissions of SO₂ and municipal waste.

Predilection or Prediction? Country Selection for the President's Daily Intelligence Brief, 1961–1977

A study of the daily briefings of US presidents by the intelligence community offers a useful test of whether governments can surmount intragovernmental influences in the acquisition and processing of information. A finding that the briefs somehow anticipate events would suggest that governments—their leaders and organizations—rise above political incentives and institutional practices to approach the rationality that realist and liberal scholars attribute to states. This study, thus, examines which countries appear in (the now declassified) daily intelligence briefs of the 1961–(January)1977 period, covering the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford years. It not only finds evidence that the selection of countries for the briefs favors countries referenced in prior briefs (per the foreign-policy literature) but also finds significant evidence that the appearance of countries, in the briefs, anticipates their increased activity in the period to follow (per a rational model).

Indonesian Stock’s Influencer Phenomenon: Did Financial Literacy on Millennial Age Reduce Herding Behavior?

In Indonesia's capital market, there was a phenomenon that famous influencers seem to lead to behavioral bias in the stock market. The stock price changed significantly after those stock influencers shared information or recommended certain stocks. This research examined how the stock influencer's credibility affected investors' investment in recommended stock. We collected data from 132 individual investors who participated in the research. We used a questionnaire with a 5-Likert scale. The result showed that an influencer's credibility had a significant influence on investors' herding behavior. However, there was no significant evidence that financial literacy matters in that relationship. Interestingly, we found there was no significant difference in herding behavior between millennial and non-millennial investors.

The impact of text presentation on translator performance

Widely used computer-aided translation (CAT) tools divide documents into segments, such as sentences, and arrange them side-by-side in a spreadsheet-like view. We present the first controlled evaluation of these design choices on translator performance, measuring speed and accuracy in three experimental text-processing tasks. We find significant evidence that sentence-by-sentence presentation enables faster text reproduction and within-sentence error identification compared to unsegmented text, and that a top-and-bottom arrangement of source and target sentences enables faster text reproduction compared to a side-by-side arrangement. For revision, on the other hand, we find that presenting unsegmented text results in the highest accuracy and time efficiency. Our findings have direct implications for best practices in designing CAT tools.

Mechanisms of COVID-19-induced kidney injury and current pharmacotherapies

The COVID-19 pandemic created a worldwide debilitating health crisis with the entire humanity suffering from the deleterious effects associated with the high infectivity and mortality rates. While significant evidence is currently available online and targets various aspects of the disease, both inflammatory and noninflammatory kidney manifestations secondary to COVID-19 infection are still largely underrepresented. In this review, we summarized current knowledge about COVID-19-related kidney manifestations, their pathologic mechanisms as well as various pharmacotherapies used to treat patients with COVID-19. We also shed light on the effect of these medications on kidney functions that can further enhance renal damage secondary to the illness.