Should I Play or Should I Go?

A pervasive application of gamification in many areas of everyday life has arguably yet to happen. For instance, despite much commercial interest in and a potentially huge market for successful gamification products in the areas of education and health, much of the excitement is still based on speculation, and reception in parts of the academic community remains sceptical. The chapter aims to collate observations from multiple empirical studies and meta-studies and collect and highlight issues that need to be resolved or mitigated for gamification to progress. Such issues include unclear definitions, a limitation on small sets of elements employed with unclear effects, unintentional side-effects of competition, a confusing variety of operationalizations, the erosion of intrinsic motivation through extrinsic incentives, a disconnect between theoretical understandings and practical realizations, a strong focus on a behaviorist paradigm, studies' mixed, partial, and inconclusive results, a lack of attention to moderating factors, and methodological limitations.

Nano-scale Insights Regarding Coke Formation in Zeolite SSZ-13 Subject to the Methanol-to-Hydrocarbons Reaction

The methanol-to-hydrocarbons (MTH) process, commonly catalyzed by zeolites, is of great commercial interest and therefore widely studied both in industry and academia. However, zeolite-based catalyst materials are notoriously hard to...

Legal regulation of gene editing procedure: USA and EU experience

The problem of legal regulation of gene editing in recent years has obviously become global in nature due to the lack of unified systematic legislation in the world. The authors set a goal to study the main existing regulatory legal acts and determine whether there is currently an array of legislation that protects and at the same time establishes responsibility for the editors of the genome and persons who have given consent to it, before future generations, who will receive the edited gene, but who did not actually ask for it. The authors analyzed the most known general public cases related to patent disputes for the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology and came to the conclusion that the strong desire to obtain the legal status of the author of the CRISPR/Cas9 genome modification technology is explained not by scientific ambitions but by commercial interest in a promising technology.

Microalgae Polysaccharides: An Overview of Production, Characterization, and Potential Applications

Microalgae and cyanobacteria are photosynthetic microorganisms capable of synthesizing several biocompounds, including polysaccharides with antioxidant, antibacterial, and antiviral properties. At the same time that the accumulation of biomolecules occurs, microalgae can use wastewater and gaseous effluents for their growth, mitigating these pollutants. The increase in the production of polysaccharides by microalgae can be achieved mainly through nutritional limitations, stressful conditions, and/or adverse conditions. These compounds are of commercial interest due to their biological and rheological properties, which allow their application in various sectors, such as pharmaceuticals and foods. Thus, to increase the productivity and competitiveness of microalgal polysaccharides with commercial hydrocolloids, the cultivation parameters and extraction/purification processes have been optimized. In this context, this review addresses an overview of the production, characterization, and potential applications of polysaccharides obtained by microalgae and cyanobacteria. Moreover, the main opportunities and challenges in relation to obtaining these compounds are highlighted.

Homoeopathic medical education in Maharashtra: growth and challenges

The growth of homoeopathy medical colleges in Maharashtra state has been very rapid post-1985. This has resulted in the state’s having the largest number of homoeopathy colleges in the country. However, not even a single government college of homoeopathy exists in the state, creating a significant gap in the health services system. It is in this context that the pattern and growth of homoeopathy medical education in the state and the contribution of government policies towards their growth is examined in this article. Government policies have facilitated the growth of homoeopathy colleges exclusively in the private sector. This growth is rapid, driven by commercial interest and does not match professional opportunities. The article raises some of the key problems of homoeopathy medical education in the state and calls for efforts towards the improvement of the medical system.

Indoor Positioning and Navigation

Recently, the social and commercial interest in location-based services (LBS) has been increasing significantly [...]

Demonizing Africa: A Bend in the River and Naipaul’s Comprador Intellectuality

This paper establishes V.S. Naipaul’s position as a comprador intellectual for his essentialist representation of Africa in A Bend in the River. The position (of comprador intellectual) has been ascribed by Hamid Dabashi to the array of highly feted non-Western writers who justify the Western orientalist (mis)appropriation of the East. The unrelenting orientalist bashing of the imperialized world (Africa in this case) legitimizes the civilizational responsibility of the West to mend the situation of the supposedly inferior Africans. The violent colonial intervention to provide order and stability to the place shows Naipaul’s orientalist world view regarding the colonized Africans. The alleged, all-pervading darkness of Africans can thus be illuminated by the White colonizer’s masterful exercise of power. Naipaul, as an author, functions as a comprador intellectual who appears serving the colonial commercial interest. The West needs to destroy all the cultures that may be potential sites of resistance, so, Naipaul offers a systematic denigration of African culture to sabotage the potential culture of resistance. The narrative of African demonization justifies the colonial machinery and its exercise of violence against the natives. The paper, therefore, calls into question Naipaul’s role as a cultural intermediary, since his 'point of enunciation' (a concept given by Stuart Hall) seems to be resting on an overtly colonial trajectory of the West.

VOLUME ESTIMATE FOR THREE TIMBER SPECIES WITH COMMERCIAL INTEREST FROM THE DIAMETER OF THE STUMP

The commercial volume of trees can be calculated directly and indirectly. However, in areas of illegal deforestation, the stem is often not available for dendrometric measurements and, consequently, calculation of the commercial volume and the use of the direct method. On the other hand, the use of the indirect method is impossible due to the lack of equations with possible measurement variables. In order to make the volume estimate feasible in these cases, the objective of this work was to estimate the commercial volume of wood from individual trees using regression equations, using measurements made on the stump for three species of commercial interest, in areas of timber forest management, namely: Dipteryx odorata (Aubl.) Willd., Apuleia leiocarpa (Vogel) JFMacbr. and Amburana acreana (Ducke) A.C.Sm. Data were collected in two management areas, located in the municipalities of Sena Madureira and Rio Branco, with a sample of 250 stumps. Statistical tests were carried out to analyze regression and choose the best equations that would estimate the volume of the species selected for the study, based on the diameter of the stump. Tests of accuracy, precision, assumptions, validation and identity model were applied for choice. Models that met the research objectives for both species were tested with R²adj = 87.7% for Dipteryx odorata (Aubl.) Willd., R²adj = 81.8% for Apuleia leiocarpa (Vogel) J.F.Macbr. and R²adj = 70.5% for Amburana acreana (Ducke) A.C.Sm., as well as meeting all the assumptions of the regression resulting in the validation of the equations adjusted by the selected models.