PROSPECTIVE PHILOLOGISTS’ TRANSLATION ASSESSMENT TRIANGULATION: SCREEN VIDEO RECORDING AND THINK ALOUD PROTOCOL COMBINATION

Purpose. The article strives for the enhancement of the efficiency of translation competence assessment in philologists’ university training with the help of the triangulation method. It is deemed in the concurrent involvement of different assessment agents (teacher, peer and self) into integrated and collaborative translation performance evaluation from two perspectives, i.e. translation product quality and process workflow, with the use of diversified methods based on different theoretical approaches. This research aims at the study of students’ video screen recording contribution combined with think-aloud protocols (TAPs) to increase the assessment objectivity and reliability of the received translation product. Method. A mixed research design was developed and implemented. It involved 40 third-year university students majoring in Philology, who were asked to perform a written translation of the excerpt of English popular science article in Marketing (c. 250 words) into Ukrainian in MS Word using any reference sources at hand, video record the process of their translation and accompany it with their comments. The research was completed with the questionnaire on students’ attitude to the screen recording and TAP involvement into translation task performance and assessment. Findings. The findings of this study reported on the positive impact of screen recording on the assessment accuracy, informative value of the collected data and formative effect of triangulated assessment method on students’ translation competence acquisition. Implications for research and practice. The received results can serve for the optimisation of the procedures of translation task difficulty measurement and competence assessment in the translation classroom.

DISTANCE EDUCATION AND LEARNING PROCESSES. A SURVEY AT UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The emergency situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic required all Italian universities to implement alternative teaching strategies to traditional face-to-face lessons. At the University of Catania, this situation prompted the start of distance learning paths in a synchronous mode at the very beginning of the emergency. At the same time, the lecturers were encouraged to video-record the lessons in order to make them available to students also in asynchronous mode. On the basis of this emergency situation, an investigation was immediately launched to identify the consequences of the new teaching methods on student learning processes; the research began in the first phase of the lockdown in Italy (March 2020) and ended in January 2021. The aim of this contribution is to present the results of the research conducted on a sample of 300 students following bachelor degree courses of the Department of Education at the University of Catania. The research aims to detect the students’ points of view on the strengths and weaknesses of the synchronous and asynchronous ways of presenting lessons and their respective impact on learning processes. The results of the research could provide useful insights to rethink university teaching even when the emergency situation comes to an end.

Energy Absorption in Actual Tractor Rollovers with Different Tire Configurations

In order to better understand the complexities of modern tractor rollover, this paper investigates the energy absorbed by a Roll-Over Protective Structure (ROPS) cab during controlled lateral rollover testing carried out on a modern narrow-track tractor with a silent-block suspended ROPS cab. To investigate how different tractor set-ups may influence ROPS and energy partitioning, tests were conducted with two different wheel configurations, wide (equivalent to normal ‘open field’ operation) and narrow (equivalent to ‘orchard/vineyard’ operation), and refer to both the width of the tires and the corresponding track. Dynamic load cells and displacement transducers located at the ROPS-ground impact points provided a direct measurement of the energy absorbed by the ROPS cab frame. A trilateration method was developed and mounted onboard to measure load cell trajectory with respect to the cab floor in real-time. The associated video record of each rollover event provided further information and opportunity to explain the acquired data. The narrow tire configuration consistently subjected the ROPS cab frame to more energy than the wide tire arrangement. To better evaluate the influence of the ROPS cab silent-blocks in lateral rollover, static and dynamic tests were performed. The results confirm that tires influence the energy partition significantly and that further understanding of silent-blocks’ dynamic performance is warranted.

FREQUENCY FEATURES FOR DETECTING EVENTS IN VIDEO SEQUENCE OF VIDEO-EEG MONITORING DATA

The work is devoted to the study of the frequency features of the optical flow obtained from the video record of long-term video-electroencephalographic (video-EEG) monitoring data of patients with epilepsy. It is necessary to obtain features to recognize epileptic seizures and differentiate them from non-epileptic events. We propose to analyze the periodograms of the smoothed optical flow calculated from the fragments of the patient's video recordings. We use Welch's method to obtain periodograms. The values of the power spectral density of the optical flow at the selected frequencies will be used as features. Using the clustering algorithm, four groups of events were identified in video recordings.

Application of Geoinformatics for Site Assessment of Large Scale Organic Agriculture Plot

To enhance organic agriculture promoted by the Governmental policy, Nong Wang Sok Phra Sub-district, Phon District, Khon Kaen Province, Thailand has designated an organic agriculture plot covering the area of 681.50 hectare. It is, however, necessary to identify the suitable organic agriculture in conjunction with large scale by integrating Geoinformatics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The study process consisted of creating a boundary study area map by topography, georeferencing and Land use classification, validating the study area to verify Land use by video record and field observation, assessing the validated study area/Land use map plot by vector analysis through QGIS to create the potential suitable large scale organic agriculture categorizing as the moderate and the least suitable area 151.82 hectare, 89.93 hectare and 34.05 hectare, being equivalent to 55.05%, 32.61% and 12.35% of total suitable area, respectively; validating the potential suitable large scale organic agriculture plot by focus group interview based on the most suitable area, processing UAV imagery and parcel maps. The output was the suitable organic agriculture plot accepted by the organic agriculture members, located at Ban Kok Lam Village no.3, covering the area of 20.64 hectare, where was only 13.60 %of the most suitable agriculture area. The large scale criteria could not be attained due to the accepted organic agriculture area was lower than the large scale standard of 48 hectare. By the mean of this study, the most suitable organic agriculture plot of151.82 hectare was available for the large scale organic agriculture plot. That would enable Nong Wang Sok Phra Sub-district to carry on for enhancement of the large scale organic agriculture plot.

In-Motion-App for remote General Movement Assessment: a multi-site observational study

ObjectivesTo determine whether videos taken by parents of their infants’ spontaneous movements were in accordance with required standards in the In-Motion-App, and whether the videos could be remotely scored by a trained General Movement Assessment (GMA) observer. Additionally, to assess the feasibility of using home-based video recordings for automated tracking of spontaneous movements, and to examine parents’ perceptions and experiences of taking videos in their homes.DesignThe study was a multi-centre prospective observational study.SettingParents/families of high-risk infants in tertiary care follow-up programmes in Norway, Denmark and Belgium.MethodsParents/families were asked to video record their baby in accordance with the In-Motion standards which were based on published GMA criteria and criteria covering lighting and stability of smartphone. Videos were evaluated as GMA ‘scorable’ or ‘non-scorable’ based on predefined criteria. The accuracy of a 7-point body tracker software was compared with manually annotated body key points. Parents were surveyed about the In-Motion-App information and clarity.ParticipantsThe sample comprised 86 parents/families of high-risk infants.ResultsThe 86 parent/families returned 130 videos, and 121 (96%) of them were in accordance with the requirements for GMA assessment. The 7-point body tracker software detected more than 80% of body key point positions correctly. Most families found the instructions for filming their baby easy to follow, and more than 90% reported that they did not become more worried about their child’s development through using the instructions.ConclusionsThis study reveals that a short instructional video enabled parents to video record their infant’s spontaneous movements in compliance with the standards required for remote GMA. Further, an accurate automated body point software detecting infant body landmarks in smartphone videos will facilitate clinical and research use soon. Home-based video recordings could be performed without worrying parents about their child’s development.Trials registration numberNCT03409978.

Determination of a Criminal Suspect Using Environmental Plant DNA Metabarcoding Technology

Background: There are criminal cases that no frequently used evidence, for example, DNAs from the criminal, is available. Such cases usually are unresolvable. With the advent of DNA metabarcoding, evidences are mined from environmental DNA and such cases become resolvable. This study reports how a criminal suspect was determined by environmental plant DNA metabarcoding technology. A girl was killed in a rural wet area in China without a witness or video record. Pants with dried mud was found from one of her boyfriend’s house. The mud was removed from the pants and 11 more mud or soil samples surrounding murder scene were collected. DNA was extracted from the soil. Chloroplast rbcL gene fragments were amplified and sequenced on a next generation sequencing platform. Results: After bioinformatics analysis, of the 2980 ZOTUs in total obtained from the 12 samples, 1495 ZOTUs were identified to species, genera or families based on the existing public database. The feast analysis based on either taxa or taxa plus abundance data demonstrated that the mud on the suspect’s pants was from the criminal scene. Conclusions: The suspect finally made a clean breast of his crime. This case implies that plant DNA in the environment soil is a new source of evidence in determination of suspects using DNA metabarcoding technology and has high potentials of extensive applications in criminal cases.

The Intercultural Approach in Japanese Speaking Learning Activities

The aim of the study was to get deeply the implementation intercultural approach in Japanese speaking learning activities at senior high school. The research method is qualitative using direct observation. While the process of collecting data used documentation, video record, field note, the interview is appropriate with the research setting. The result of research found that Japanese speaking activities inside and outside the classroomhave some components, namely learning method implementation, the role of teacher and students, the role of native speaker teacher, and the material of learning. It has combined the linguistics aspect and culture to increase students’ comprehension of Japanese language and culture. Keywords: Intercultural Approach, Japanese Speaking, Learning Activities

ANALYSIS STUDENT’S SPEAKING FLUENCY IN SPEAKING CLASS PERFORMANCE

Speaking skill becomes one of the most fundamental skills in this era; however English learners need to develop their capability to show their language skill through speaking practice. This research aims to investigate students speaking fluency level toward speaking practice. The qualitative descriptive method is used to describe data analysis. The sample of this research is single sample, English language program students at semester 5. The video record towards speaking practice and professional feedback are became the data collection technique. The video records duration is about 10 minutes and during that presentation, researcher tried to analysis based on the vocabulary used, voice, and speech fluency. The result of the research showed that student’s speaking fluency level is still low, and it needed to treat and drill more, could be through watching a YouTube or practice among English learners.