Understanding, Approaches and Comportments towards Environmental Challenges in South-Eastern Nigeria

This study examines the understanding of scholars towards environmental challenges, as well as the connection between the environmental challenges, approaches and comportments in South-Eastern Nigeria. The Correlational Coefficient Analytical Technique (CCAT) was adopted in this study to ascertain the extent to which the three key variables (environmental understanding, approach and comportment), do correlate with one another and their possible effects on the sampled student population. Data was also elicited via environmental understanding test, environmental approach scale and environmental comportments scale. Furthermore, descriptive statistics and independent t-test were employed. The study among other things showed that environmental understanding did not have a higher correlation with environmental comportments (r = 0.21) than with environmental approaches (r = 0.46). However, environmental comportments were found to influence environmental approaches, by having a significantly stronger correlation (r=0.46) than environmental understanding (r = 0.21). The study, therefore, indicated a statistically positive correlation between the environmental understanding, approach and comportments on the surveyed environmental issues. Therefore, the environmental approach has a moderate relationship with the environmental understanding and comportments, although the relationship between the environmental understanding and comportments seems to be weak. The study, therefore, concluded that environmental understanding, approaches and comportments of participants do not have a significant difference. There is, therefore, the need to review extant curriculum to inquire into extant teaching practices with the hope to facilitate a clear-cut teaching approach geared towards sensitizing the students on the realities of environmental challenges, their consequences and measures to ameliorate, or at most, abating them. Keywords: Environmental understanding, environmental enlightenment, environmental challenges, environmental approaches, environmental comportment.

AR in the Architecture Domain: State of the Art

Augmented reality (AR) allows the real and digital worlds to converge and overlap in a new way of observation and understanding. The architectural field can significantly benefit from AR applications, due to their systemic complexity in terms of knowledge and process management. Global interest and many research challenges are focused on this field, thanks to the conjunction of technological and algorithmic developments from one side, and the massive digitization of built data. A significant quantity of research in the AEC and educational fields describes this state of the art. Moreover, it is a very fragmented domain, in which specific advances or case studies are often described without considering the complexity of the whole development process. The article illustrates the entire AR pipeline development in architecture, from the conceptual phase to its application, highlighting each step’s specific aspects. This storytelling aims to provide a general overview to a non-expert, deepening the topic and stimulating a democratization process. The aware and extended use of AR in multiple areas of application can lead a new way forward for environmental understanding, bridging the gap between real and virtual space in an innovative perception of architecture.

Mapping Morality: Visible and Invisible Geographies

Issues related to morality have been discussed in the geography literature off and on for the past fifty years. Since morality deals with correctness—right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, or correct vs. incorrect—it is not difficult to understand how these value labels also exist in geography contexts. The geography literature often deals with morality questions in a light or superficial way which leaves geographers and others wondering if there are more value questions we might address in studying human actions and behavior. Three major foci are addressed in this discussion. The first is to explore moral questions geographers might address when looking at cultural behavior, economic development, social policies, allocation of resources, environmental understanding and interpretation of places and landscapes. The second focus is on mapping moralities, including examples of maps that display visible and invisible geographies about moral places and spaces. The third discusses how this moral thread is worthy of further study in many fields of human and human/environmental geography. A greater understanding these threads will strengthen our understanding and appreciation of “why things are the way they are” but also “why we make decisions that we do” at local and global scales.

Nurturing Environmental Transformation and Scholastic Success in Northern Manitoba

Effective non-traditional approaches to environmental lesson delivery and enrollee evaluation remain ephemeral in northern Manitoba as indicated by negative local attitudes towards imported and metropolitanized instruction (Martin, 2014; Mercredi, 2009). Current pandemic aside, and as increased attrition and abysmal failure rates have not changed in decades, there is relevance in exploring the experiential context and local implications of an inductive student model intended to improve remote environmental understanding and scholastic performance. To help prevent perpetuating a dis-order in which Indigenous expressions are neither recognized nor developed, learning experiences of University College of the North (UCN) students concerning regional freshwater availability and the calculation of stream flow were documented. Using componential analysis and participatory video as a mediating technology, allied empirical test scores and codified normative elements of self and environmental ‘awareness’ in traditional classrooms versus boreal settings were examined. Three exploratory factor axes explained more than 50% of the variance from an integrated but diverse set of 27 chosen variables. Titled axes declining in order of importance were Environmental Engagement, Scholastic Scoring and Non-Conventional Lesson Delivery. Seventy percent of unsolicited adult student responses suggest moralization and unique meta-ethical quale were undeniably and academically important. Empirical-‘ized’ findings advocate UCN must now ask which aspects of curriculum design, lesson delivery and enrollee assessment might result in greater scholastic success when nurturing personalized transformations in the milieu of ongoing threats to both freshwater sustainability and Cree safeguarding paradigms in northern Manitoba.

Pengembangan Pendidikan Lingkungan Hidup melalui Program Adiwiyata (Studi di Kota Surabaya)

Environmental education (EE) is an integration of environmental understanding with formal or informal education. EE is expected to help students gain understanding on the awareness and knowledge about the environment to further shape student attitudes. From these understanding, skills and abilities will emerge so that students can actively participate and become agents in solving environmental problems. The concept of EE itself can be traced back to the 18th century, although globally, those engaged in the environmental sector began to strive to develop a more measurable EE concept since the 1970s. The legal basis also varies, with application models that adapt to each distinctive environment. Adiwiyata is a form of EE managed by the government through the integration of two important ministries, namely the ministry that deals with environmental issues and the ministry that deals with education. This study was intended to find out whether Adiwiyata was in accordance with the EE concept that was agreed upon globally. In particular, the implementation of the Adiwiyata Program in Surabaya City is the focus of this paper based on the results of research on the environment in 2019 which have been published. The environmental awareness of Adiwiyata School in Surabaya City is quite high and the concept developed by the Surabaya City Government is very solid that involves all parties.AbstrakPendidikan lingkungan hidup (PLH) merupakan pengintegrasian pemahaman lingkungan hidup dengan pendidikan formal atau pendidikan informal. PLH diharapkan dapat membantu siswa memperoleh kesadaran dan pengetahuan mengenai lingkungan hidup untuk selanjutnya dapat membentuk sikap siswa. Dari pemahaman tersebut akan muncul keterampilan dan kecakapan sehingga siswa dapat berpartisipasi aktif dan menjadi agen dalam memecahkan masalah lingkungan. Konsep PLH sendiri dapat ditelusuri sampai abad ke-18, walaupun secara global, mereka yang bergerak di bidang lingkungan hidup mulai berupaya untuk menyusun konsep PLH yang lebih terukur sejak tahun 1970-an. Dasar hukumnya pun beragam, dengan model penerapan yang menyesuaikan dengan lingkungan masing-masing. Adiwiyata merupakan salah satu bentuk PLH yang dikelola pemerintah dengan mengintegrasikan dua kementerian penting, yaitu kementerian yang menangani masalah lingkungan hidup dan kementerian yang menangani pendidikan. Kajian ini dimaksudkan untuk mengetahui apakah Adiwiyata sudah sesuai dengan konsep PLH yang disepakati secara global. Secara khusus, pelaksanaan Program Adiwiyata di Kota Surabaya menjadi fokus dari tulisan ini berdasarkan hasil penelitian tentang lingkungan di tahun 2019 yang telah dibukukan. Kesadaran lingkungan Sekolah Adiwiyata di Kota Surabaya sudah cukup tinggi dan konsep yang dikembangkan oleh Pemerintah Kota (Pemkot) Surabaya sangat solid dengan melibatkan semua pihak.

Air Quality Index and the Urgency of Environmental Education in Kalimantan

As one of the logical consequences of the transformation process from agricultural to industrial societies, human activities contribute some pressures to our environment, especially air quality. Kalimantan Island, as the third-largest island on Earth, expected to be the world’s lungs, transboundary massive haze problems frequently occurred on this island, especially between 2011-2015. Since the fire forest started from the Indonesia side of this island, reliable information about air quality in Kalimantan-Indonesia and environmental education’s urgency toward this result becomes essential to explore. Air Quality Index (AQI) is measured by a passive sampling method with SO2 dan NO2 as pollutants’ parameters. These two parameters are recognized as a valid measurement of air pollutants, strongly affect human health, and are understandable by ordinary citizens, especially middle school level students. AQI reached 94.27, which is categorized as a good-quality index. Among the provinces, the highest AQI was reached by East and North Kalimantan with 97.63, while South Kalimantan has the lowest with 91.41. Furthermore, the NO2 parameter contributed much larger than SO2 parameters in all provinces. AQI Kalimantan tends to increase, although South Kalimantan tended to have a lower air quality index than other provinces from year to year. This result drives comprehensive support from the education sector to build environmental understanding. From an educational perspective, this result shows the urgency of enhancing science education with air quality discussion. We suggest a possible enhancement in substance and its transformation section and the Science-Environment-Technology-Society section in Science for Junior and Senior High School. The procedure of AQI measurement and the urgency of maintaining AQI are needed to be integrated into the science curriculum.

A survey of image semantics-based visual simultaneous localization and mapping: Application-oriented solutions to autonomous navigation of mobile robots

As one of the typical application-oriented solutions to robot autonomous navigation, visual simultaneous localization and mapping is essentially restricted to simplex environmental understanding based on geometric features of images. By contrast, the semantic simultaneous localization and mapping that is characterized by high-level environmental perception has apparently opened the door to apply image semantics to efficiently estimate poses, detect loop closures, build 3D maps, and so on. This article presents a detailed review of recent advances in semantic simultaneous localization and mapping, which mainly covers the treatments in terms of perception, robustness, and accuracy. Specifically, the concept of “semantic extractor” and the framework of “modern visual simultaneous localization and mapping” are initially presented. As the challenges associated with perception, robustness, and accuracy are being stated, we further discuss some open problems from a macroscopic view and attempt to find answers. We argue that multiscaled map representation, object simultaneous localization and mapping system, and deep neural network-based simultaneous localization and mapping pipeline design could be effective solutions to image semantics-fused visual simultaneous localization and mapping.

CalAR: A C++ Engine for Augmented Reality Applications on Android Mobile Devices

With the development of Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore, mobile augmented reality (AR) applications have become much more popular. For Android devices, ARCore provides basic motion tracking and environmental understanding. However, with current software frameworks it can be difficult to create an AR application from the ground up. Our solution is CalAR, which is a lightweight, open-source software environment to develop AR applications for Android devices, while giving the programmer full control over the phone’s resources. With CalAR, the programmer can create marker-less AR applications which run at 60 frames per second on Android smartphones. These applications can include more complex environment understanding, physical simulation, user interaction with virtual objects, and interaction between virtual objects and objects in the physical environment. With CalAR being based on CalVR, which is our multi-platform virtual reality software engine, it is possible to port CalVR applications to an AR environment on Android phones with minimal effort. We demonstrate this with the example of a spatial visualization application.