Game-Based Assessment of School Readiness Domains of 3-8-year-old-children: A Scoping Review

Precise assessment of school readiness is critical because it has practical and theoretical implications for children’s school and life success. However, school readiness assessment mainly relies on teacher reports and a few direct evaluations requiring a trained examiner. Studies indicate that 80% of games and apps target preschool children and education, suggesting that apps are familiar and fun for this age group. Previous reviews have focused on these apps’ training capability but not on their assessment of school readiness. This Scoping review examines 31 studies published from 2011-2019. The Evidence Centred Design (ECD) framework was used to evaluate game-based assessment (GBA) suitability to assess school readiness domains. Results show that it is possible to assess school readiness using GBA. Most studies assessed cognitive domains in school settings and adopted an external assessment of the tasks. However, most studies only evaluated one competency, and few intervention strategies targeted the enhancement of school readiness. Besides, few studies followed the ECD framework strictly. Implications include expanding the assessment to other school readiness domains with a real-time inbuilt assessment that conforms to the ECD framework. GBA provides a new approach to assess school readiness outside or inside the school settings in this online era.

4d CT to assess spinal instability in developmental anomaly of posterior arch of atlas

Four-dimensional (4D) CT uniquely allows cinematic visualization of the entirety of joint motion throughout dynamic movement, which can reveal subtle or transient internal joint derangements not evident on static images. As developmental anomalies of the posterior arch can predispose to cervical spinal instability and neurological morbidity, precise assessment of spinal movement during motion is of clinical relevance. We describe the use of 4D-CT in a subject with partial absence of posterior C1 arch. This, to our knowledge, is the first such report. In at-risk individuals, 4D-CT has the potential to enable an assessment of spinal instability with a higher level of clarity and, in this sense, its more routine implementation may be a future direction.

Variation of Soil Organic Carbon Density with Plantation Age and Initial Vegetation Types in the Liupan Mountains Areas of Northwest China

Carbon sequestration of plantations formed by three kinds of forestation (natural forest to plantation (NP), grassland to plantation (GP), and cropland to plantation (CP)) greatly depends on the change of soil organic carbon density (SOCD) compared with its initial SOCD before forestation. However, this dependence was rarely studied, especially in semi-humid/arid regions with strong site variation. This limits the precise assessment and management of SOCD. Therefore, the SOCD variations of 0–100 cm soil layers in these three kinds of plantations were studied in the semi-humid/arid Liupan Mountains in northwestern China. The NP with high initial SOCD showed firstly a decrease and then an increase of SOCD up to 293.2 t·ha−1 at 40 years. The CP and GP with low and relatively high initial SOCD showed negligible and slight SOCD decrease after forestation, but then an increase up to 154.5 and 266.5 t·ha−1 at 40 years. After detecting the main factors influencing SOCD for each forestation mode, statistic relationships were fitted for predicting SOCD variation. This study indicates that besides forest age and biomass growth, the effects of initial vegetation, site-dependent initial SOCD, and SOCD capacity, also precipitation and air temperature in some cases, should be considered for more precise assessment and management of SOCD of plantations.

Organic Removal Treatment Using Microbubble Generator (MBG) in Eutrophic Disorder Condition

The Techno Park basin, built as an extension of a small tributary of the Code River primarily acts as a retention basin for runoff during the rainy season. It improves the quality of water that has been degraded by domestic wastewater discharge from the surrounding community. Therefore, this study aims to assess the extent to which water quality of the basin can be improved with aeration technology. The aeration technology is a Microbubble Generator (MBG) built using a 100 Watts submersible pump with three horizontal nozzles at a depth of 40 cm from the water surface. Furthermore, the profiles of dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration were measured at the basin’s inlet and outlet, as well as the depths of 1 m below surface water and the bottom of the basin. Diurnal DO was measured to investigate the causes of supersaturation. The aeration performance was also determined from the COD parameters at the inlet and outlet. Discharge measurements were then conducted on the tributary/drainage channel to the inlet basin. The result showed that the DO supersaturation concentration has been attributed to the contribution of photosynthesis from phytoplankton such as algae. Furthermore, no change in DO concentration was observed in a range of 1 m depth from the surface of the water to the bottom (0.3 - 0.14 mg-DO/l). In this eutrophic state, DO increased exponentially during the daytime hours and then decreased during the night. The daily measurement showed an increase in the average DO of 2.31 mg/l (standard deviation of 1.56 mg/l), with average CODinlet fluctuations of 18.79 mg/l (standard deviation of 13.56 mg/l) and average CODoutlet of 14.38 mg/l (standard deviation 2.94 mg/l). Due to additional DO concentration coming from eutrophication during daylight, it was not possible to make a precise assessment of the effectiveness of the MBG aerator.

Exploration of practitioner experiences of flexibility and transparency to improve BIM-based model checking systems

The use of BIM-based Model Checking (BMC) has the potential to improve building design processes by enabling the automation of building assessments. However, only a few BMC systems are being used in the building design practices. The limited use has been identified to be related to socio-technical challenges that have so far not received much attention in research regarding BMC systems. To explore these challenges, a Design Science Research methodology was used to design a BMC prototype to improve the socio-technical challenges of BMC systems, specifically challenges of transparency and flexibility. The prototype was tested with practitioners to investigate aspects of BMC systems that potentially hinder its use. The results were used to discuss the potential for more practical application of BMC systems in design practices to obtain the benefits of providing a faster, more consistent, and more precise assessment of buildings.

Development of a model for assessing energy consumption of a system

The recent trends in the ICT industry are related to the development and implementation of green software products and practices. The way to seek for energy efcient solutions starts from the proper and precise assessment of the current state of the system in hand. In this paper we present the software-based approach to the energy efciency assessment. We propose machine learning based approach to estimate energy consumed by a computer system. We evaluated our approach on datasets extracted from systems running on Linux and Windows operating system. Using MSE, MAE and R2 our energy consumption estimation model reached 0.0007, 0.0104, 0.9214, respectively.

ANALISIS SURVEI KEPUASAN PELANGGAN TERHADAP E-COMMERCE DENGAN METODE SIMPLE ADDITIVE WEIGHTING

Online shopping is the process of purchasing goods / services by consumers to realtime sellers, without services, and through the internet. The development of online business in Indonesia is now very rapid, one of them by shopping online. Online stores or we often call e-commerce is a form of change that is presented by the internet in terms of innovation in shopping by providing various facilities in the transaction process. The aim of the writer is to determine the best e-commerce, therefore the author uses the SAW (Simple Additive Weighting) method because the method is able to make a more precise assessment because it is based on the value of criteria and preference weights that have been determined, besides that the SAW method also can select the best alternative from a number of alternatives because there is a ranking process after determining the weights for each attribute.

Management of Two Unusual Patients With Vascular Anomalies

Vascular anomalies form a significant portion of congenital defects and venous malformations are the most prevalent type among adults. Multiple imaging modalities have been proposed for pre-operation assessments. Although some studies have reported Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as the most valuable modality, in many situations, CT scan remains the equipment of choice due to its availability. In each case, a precise assessment of the malformation is needed. In two cases mentioned in our study, prior to the operations, only a monophasic CT scan was performed that resulted in missing evidence of severity and extent of venous malformation. One of the imaging procedures is a three-phase CT scan. Although in the monophasic CT scans, a delay of 65 seconds is applied, in three-phase CT, both filling in and washing out are notable, which gives three-phase CT a more predictive value about flow pattern over monophasic CT.

Dietary Phosphorus and Calcium Utilization in Growing Pigs: Requirements and Improvements

The sustainability of animal production relies on the judicious use of phosphorus (P). Phosphate, the mined source of agricultural phosphorus supplements, is a non-renewable resource, but phosphorus is essential for animal growth, health, and well-being. P must be provided by efficient and sustainable means that minimize the phosphorus footprint of livestock production by developing precise assessment of the bioavailability of dietary P using robust models. About 60% of the phosphorus in an animal's body occurs in bone at a fixed ratio with calcium (Ca) and the rest is found in muscle. The P and Ca requirements must be estimated together; they cannot be dissociated. While precise assessment of P and Ca requirements is important for animal well-being, it can also help to mitigate the environmental effects of pig farming. These strategies refer to multicriteria approaches of modeling, efficient use of the new generations of phytase, depletion and repletion strategies to prime the animal to be more efficient, and finally combining these strategies into a precision feeding model that provides daily tailored diets for individuals. The industry will need to use strategies such as these to ensure a sustainable plant–animal–soil system and an efficient P cycle.

Cognitive Functions in Patients after Carotid Artery Revascularization—A Narrative Review

Carotid revascularization may lead to improved cognitive function beyond stroke prevention. This article summarizes the conclusions from available studies on the effects of carotid reperfusion procedures on cognitive function. The papers cited used different neuropsychological tests for cognitive assessment, resulting in different methodologies and the results obtained were not always convergent. However, most studies reported an improvement in neurocognitive abilities after both vascular interventions, but a more precise assessment of the specific benefits is still awaited. Clinical determinants to predict the effects of these treatments on cognitive function are still being sought, but results are not yet satisfactory. In view of these studies, carotid stenosis seems to be an independent risk factor for cognitive deterioration, and the main mechanisms responsible are embolism and cerebral hypoperfusion. The aim of this study is to order the knowledge about the effects of carotid artery stenting (CAS) and endarterectomy (CEA) on neurocognitive functions and to verify the usefulness of using these treatments.