Grazing behaviour and forage selection pattern of heifers in the range

The grazing behaviour of eight yearling white Fulani heifers was studied in two season of year in the south western zone of Nigeria. Time spent on different activities such as drinking, walking, grazing, resting and ruminating were determined using direct eye observation technique. The types of forage selected in both seasons were identified. Visual observations revealed that behaviour was influenced by seasons. The heifers spent 2, 8, 15, 14 and 62% of their time drinking, ruminating, resting, walking and grazing respectively as overall percentage for the two seasons. The forage selection pattern revealed that forbs were mostly selected in the late dry season and grasses in the early rain season. The forages selected in the late dry season were Panicum maximum, Cynodon dactylon, Ipomea aquatical, Leucaena leucocephela, Centrosema mole and Althernanthera dentata. In the early rain season forages selected include Setaria bartata, Echinochloa stagirina, Pennisetum purpureum and Panicum maximum regrowth. It is therefore concluded that the study provides a quick insight into behavioural and forage selection pattern of heifers. Therefore the study can be used to assess grazing animal nutrition condition.

Pemetaan Spesies Kelelawar Berdasarkan Pola Pemilihan Sarang di Gua Gale-gale Bangkang dan Gua Raksasa Tanjung Ringgit

This study aims to determine the pattern of nest selection in bat species inhabiting the Bangkang Gale-gale Cave in Prabu Village, Pujut District, Central Lombok Regency, and Tanjung Ringgit Giant Cave in Sekaroh Village, Jerowaru District, East Lombok Regency. Nests are an important component of bat life. Most types of bats live in colonies in nesting and foraging for food. This research method is descriptive exploratory by mapping cave zones, making squares, analyzing the richness and abundance of bat species at each bat nesting site. The results showed that the nest selection pattern in Gale-gale Cave, namely: Rhinolopus acuminatus, Rhinopoma microphylum, and Rhinolopus simplex were in the same group in zone / zone I. Whereas Chaerephon plicata could be found inhabiting zone / zone II, and Hipposideros ater. saevus inhabit zone / zone III. The pattern of nest selection in the Giant Cave Tanjung Ringgit, Macroglossus minimus and Eonycteris spelaea was found in both zone zone II and zone III caves. Hipposideros ater saevus and Hipposideros diadema are in the same group, namely on the border between zone II and zone III, namely the left and right sides of zone III, or not far from the water source in the cave ± 2 m above the water source, and Rosettusa amplxicaudatus inhabit zone / zone III Giant Cave Tanjung Ringgit.

Choice of Leisure Activities by Adolescents and Adults With Internet Gaming Disorder: Development and Feasibility Study of a Virtual Reality Program

Background Excessive internet game use frequently leads to various physical, psychological, and social problems, and internet gaming disorder (IGD) has become a serious public health issue worldwide. Recently, virtual reality (VR) therapy has emerged as a promising method to increase psychological treatment motivation and accessibility. However, few studies have examined the potential of VR technology for the management of IGD, and VR content tailored to IGD characteristics remains scarce. Objective This preliminary study aimed to examine the potential of a VR-based program that was designed to help users identify their leisure time use patterns, especially those related to gaming, and to modify their gaming overuse by alternative activities provided in the VR content. Moreover, to investigate whether users’ VR activities reflect various clinical variables of IGD in youth, we examined the relationships among the leisure time activity selection pattern, built-in response, and speech data obtained from the VR program, as well as symptom severity of internet gaming, psychiatric comorbidities, and motivation of participants reported through relevant questionnaire data. Methods Three types of VR content (understanding my daily activities at home, finding an alternative activity to internet gaming at home, expressing contradictory opinions toward a friend’s gaming beliefs) were developed by simulating the daily situations in which patients with IGD can select alternative free-time leisure activities. We examined internet addiction, mental health problems, and motivation for 23 IGD and 29 control participants. Behavioral and self-rated responses from VR, such as alternative activity selection data and speech patterns (speech time, speech satisfaction, and speech accordance), and results from various questionnaires were compared between groups. The correlations between IGD behaviors in VR and real-life behaviors assessed by questionnaire measures were analyzed. Results Significant correlations were found between internet gaming behavior and user activity data, such as speech and activity selection pattern, in our VR program. Our results showed that the IGD group had fewer leisure activities and preferred game or digital activities to other types of activities compared to controls, even in VR. There was a positive relationship between the viability of alternative leisure activities the participants selected in VR and the amount of perceived satisfaction from that activity (r=.748, P<.001). Speech accordance in the IGD group was lower than in the control group and was correlated negatively with Internet Addiction Test and Internet Addiction Test–gaming scores (r=.300, P=.03) but positively with users’ motivation (r=.312, P=.02). Conclusions The results from our VR program can provide information about daily activity patterns of youths with IGD and the relationship between user VR activities and IGD symptoms, which can be useful in applying VR technology to IGD management.

Choice of Leisure Activities by Adolescents and Adults With Internet Gaming Disorder: Development and Feasibility Study of a Virtual Reality Program (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Excessive internet game use frequently leads to various physical, psychological, and social problems, and internet gaming disorder (IGD) has become a serious public health issue worldwide. Recently, virtual reality (VR) therapy has emerged as a promising method to increase psychological treatment motivation and accessibility. However, few studies have examined the potential of VR technology for the management of IGD, and VR content tailored to IGD characteristics remains scarce. OBJECTIVE This preliminary study aimed to examine the potential of a VR-based program that was designed to help users identify their leisure time use patterns, especially those related to gaming, and to modify their gaming overuse by alternative activities provided in the VR content. Moreover, to investigate whether users’ VR activities reflect various clinical variables of IGD in youth, we examined the relationships among the leisure time activity selection pattern, built-in response, and speech data obtained from the VR program, as well as symptom severity of internet gaming, psychiatric comorbidities, and motivation of participants reported through relevant questionnaire data. METHODS Three types of VR content (understanding my daily activities at home, finding an alternative activity to internet gaming at home, expressing contradictory opinions toward a friend’s gaming beliefs) were developed by simulating the daily situations in which patients with IGD can select alternative free-time leisure activities. We examined internet addiction, mental health problems, and motivation for 23 IGD and 29 control participants. Behavioral and self-rated responses from VR, such as alternative activity selection data and speech patterns (speech time, speech satisfaction, and speech accordance), and results from various questionnaires were compared between groups. The correlations between IGD behaviors in VR and real-life behaviors assessed by questionnaire measures were analyzed. RESULTS Significant correlations were found between internet gaming behavior and user activity data, such as speech and activity selection pattern, in our VR program. Our results showed that the IGD group had fewer leisure activities and preferred game or digital activities to other types of activities compared to controls, even in VR. There was a positive relationship between the viability of alternative leisure activities the participants selected in VR and the amount of perceived satisfaction from that activity (r=.748, <i>P</i>&lt;.001). Speech accordance in the IGD group was lower than in the control group and was correlated negatively with Internet Addiction Test and Internet Addiction Test–gaming scores (r=.300, <i>P</i>=.03) but positively with users’ motivation (r=.312, <i>P</i>=.02). CONCLUSIONS The results from our VR program can provide information about daily activity patterns of youths with IGD and the relationship between user VR activities and IGD symptoms, which can be useful in applying VR technology to IGD management.

Research on the influence of balance patch on players' character preference

PurposeThe balance patch is an important but not well studied area to maintain game fairness and improve player entertainment. In this paper, we examine the effect of balance patch on player's character preference and further explore the moderating effect of psychological distance and character selection pattern.Design/methodology/approachIn study 1, a web crawler was used to get server-side data of 40, 974 multi-player online battle arena (MOBA) players through official application programming interfaces (APIs). A paired-T test and a stepwise regression were performed to verify the hypothesis. In study 2, a 2-patch type (buff vs nerf) × 2 psychological distance (near vs distant) × 2 character selection pattern (stable vs variable) between-subjects design was adopted to confirm the empirical conclusions through questionnaire survey design and further explored the mediating effect of patch adjustment perception.FindingsThe analyzed results showed that the buff patch led to an increase in players' character preference, while the nerf patch led to a decrease in players' character preference. Moreover, the main effect was mediated by patch adjustment perception. Furthermore, psychological distance and character selection pattern both moderated the relationship between balance patch and character preference changes. The character preference of the near psychological distance increased more significantly elicited by buff patches and decreased more significantly in an adverse situation. Similarly, players with variable selection pattern of characters were more sensitive to the stimuli, and the character preference of the variable group changed more significantly than that of the stable group caused by balance patch release.Originality/valueThis paper studies the influence of a patch on the balance of character strength on player preference, which expands the research on game balance and fairness. The present results contribute to the theoretical research on consumer behavior of psychological distance and character selection pattern elicited by balance patches. Meanwhile, the results indicate that psychological distance theory can apply to the study of the relationship between players and virtual characters.

The Individual Level: Sorting Effects

This chapter explores what drives the decision of an individual to migrate to a particular place (migrant sorting). The authors do so by studying the mechanisms, empirical evidence, and policy implications of migrant sorting in the context of environmental conflict-induced migration. Predicting the sorting outcome of migration processes is very complex, because many different factors play a role: the type of environmental onset, the type of conflict, the individual propensity to migrate among different groups of society, the selection pattern of migrants, the attractiveness of destinations with respect to various characteristics, as well as national and international migration governance. The authors highlight that this has important implications for governance since host countries can adjust their immigration policies. Such adjustments, in turn, feed back into individual sorting decisions.

A data-driven caption for L2 listening

Partial and Synchronized Caption (PSC) is a tool that automatically detects difficult segments for the second language (L2) listeners and displays them in the caption while omitting easy-to-recognize cases to reduce cognitive load. Given that the number of words to be shown in this caption is limited, the main challenge lies in selecting and prioritizing difficult words. Since partialization is a classifying task, we made a dataset of labeled words in TED talks (easy vs. difficult) for a target proficiency-level. A deep classifier is trained on this dataset to automate the detection of difficult words/phrases without explicitly extracting word features. This proposed data-driven PSC outperforms its feature-based versions by adopting a selection pattern that is more similar to the annotations, capturing more complicated cases, and minimizing the false positives.