Designing for Student-Directedness: How K–12 Teachers Utilize Peers to Support Projects

Student-directed projects—projects in which students have individual control over what they create and how to create it—are a promising practice for supporting the development of conceptual understanding and personal interest in K–12 computer science classrooms. In this article, we explore a central (and perhaps counterintuitive) design principle identified by a group of K–12 computer science teachers who support student-directed projects in their classrooms: in order for students to develop their own ideas and determine how to pursue them, students must have opportunities to engage with other students’ work. In this qualitative study, we investigated the instructional practices of 25 K–12 teachers using a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews to develop understandings of how they used peer work to support student-directed projects in their classrooms. Teachers described supporting their students in navigating three stages of project development: generating ideas, pursuing ideas, and presenting ideas. For each of these three stages, teachers considered multiple factors to encourage engagement with peer work in their classrooms, including the quality and completeness of shared work and the modes of interaction with the work. We discuss how this pedagogical approach offers students new relationships to their own learning, to their peers, and to their teachers and communicates important messages to students about their own competence and agency, potentially contributing to aims within computer science for broadening participation.

Russian Archival Documents on the Revitalization of Buddhism Among the Kalmyks in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Baatr Kitinov’s paper uses Russian archival documents to examine the late nineteenth century revitalisation of Buddhism among the Russian Kalmyk population. He identifies three stages in this process: 1. 1860–1880, when Mongols wanted to “find” an incarnation of the Seventh Jebtsundamba Khutughtu among the Kalmyks (“Turgut”) in Russia or Olüts in Chinese Xinjiang; 2. 1880–1904, when the Dalai Lama was in Mongolia and Kalmyks traveled to Tibet; and 3. from 1904 to the first years of Soviet power, during which they maintained close contacts with the Dalai Lama. He also identifies three internal factors for the revitalization of Buddhism amongst the Kalmyks: 1. the revival of Tantrism in khurul practices; 2. the presence of Buddhists from other lands among Kalmyks; 3. and the Russian authorities permitting Kalmyks to visit the Dalai Lama in Urga.

Islamic Law Perspective on the Use of Incense in Thanksgiving Events at the Balabe Customs in Kailinese Ethnic

The traditional Balabe or Nolabe in the thanksgiving event is an asset of cultural wealth in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Balebe or Molabe custom is carried out every time there are celebratory activities such as weddings, mourning, childbirth and others. This study aims to provide knowledge and understanding of the process of using incense in the implementation of the Balabe custom and how to review Islamic law on the tradition. This study uses a qualitative approach, namely research procedures that produce descriptive data in the form of written or spoken words from people related to the people in Palupi, especially the Kaili tribe. The data collection techniques used in this research are observation, interview, and documentation techniques. Furthermore, after the data is collected, the data obtained needs to be analyzed in three stages that run in cycles: data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions or verification. The results of this study indicate that basically, the major schools of jurisprudence agree to accept customs as the basis for the formation of law. However, in terms of numbers and details, there are differences of opinion between these schools, so that 'urf is included in the group of disputed arguments among scholars. The research implies that it is hoped that all leaders, the community and local government officials will maintain and preserve the bolabe tradition in order to survive even in the face of today's times.

Effect of different basin materials on the performance of hemispherical distiller with mirrors and energy storage material

Numerous studies are being conducted on solar desalination systems with creating new designs to improve the efficiency and yield of these systems. Hemispherical solar still has a relatively large throughput because of its large exposure and evaporation surface areas compared to the other distiller designs. To get the optimal conditions of the parameters that provide the highest productivity of the hemispherical still, three hemispherical basin stills were fabricated and tested. The experiments were performed in three stages: In the first one, the traditional hemispherical solar still THSS (a reference distiller) was compared by THSS with internal reflective mirrors (THSS-IRM). In the second stage, the effect of using different basin metals (THSS with basin metal of zinc (THSS-IRMZ) and basin metal of copper (THSS-IRMC)) with internal reflective mirrors was studied. In the third stage, the two distillers were investigated under using energy storage medium (30 g/L sand grains for each). The THSS with internal reflective mirrors, basin metal of zinc, and energy storage medium is abbreviated by THSS-IRMZSG. Also, THSS with internal reflective mirrors, basin metal of copper, and energy storage medium is abbreviated by THSS-IRMCSG. Moreover, THSS with internal reflective mirrors and energy storage medium is abbreviated by THSS-IRMSG. The results showed that the combination of using internal reflective mirrors, basin material (copper) and energy storage medium provided the best improvement of hemispherical distillation device. The maximum cumulative yield of THSS-IRMCSG was 11.9 L/m².day, while the reference distillation device gave a total yield of 4.65 L/m².day. So, the productivity was improved by around 156%.

Mindful unlearning in unprecedented times: Implications for management and organizations

Crises trigger both learning and unlearning at both intra-organizational and inter-organizational levels. This article stresses the need to facilitate unlearning for effective crisis management and shows how we could use mindfulness practice to enhance unlearning and transformative learning in a crisis. This study proposes the conceptualization of mindful unlearning in crisis with different mechanisms to foster unlearning in three stages of crisis (pre-crisis, during-crisis, and post-crisis). These mechanisms include mindful awareness of impermanence and sensual processing (pre-crisis stage), mindful awareness of interdependence and right intention (crisis management stage), and mindful awareness of transiency and past experiences (post-crisis stage).

I Am the Robot: Teen Collaboration in an Asymmetric, Virtual Reality Game

Virtual reality (VR) offers potential as a collaborative tool for both technology design and human-robot interaction. We utilized a participatory, human-centered design (HCD) methodology to develop a collaborative, asymmetric VR game to explore teens’ perceptions of, and interactions with, social robots. Our paper illustrates three stages of our design process; ideation, prototyping, and usability testing with users. Through these stages we identified important design requirements for our mid-fidelity environment. We then describe findings from our pilot test of the mid-fidelity VR game with teens. Due to the unique asymmetric virtual reality design, we observed successful collaborations, and interesting collaboration styles across teens. This study highlights the potential for asymmetric VR as a collaborative design tool as well as an appropriate medium for successful teen-to-teen collaboration.

Pattern of Time-to-Surgery in Patients With Breast Cancer at Different Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

BackgroundThe management of cancer surgeries is under unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the breast cancer patients may face a time-delay in the treatment. This retrospective study aimed to present the pattern of time-to-surgery (TTS) and analyze the features of breast cancer patients under the different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsPatients who received surgeries for breast cancers at West China Hospital between February 15, 2020 and April 30, 2020 (the outbreak and post-peak stages), and between March 10, 2021 and May 25, 2021 (the normalization stage) were included. TTS was calculated as the time interval between the pathological diagnosis and surgical treatment of breast cancer patients. And the pandemic was divided into three stages based on the time when the patients were pathologically diagnosed and the severity of pandemic at that time point. TTS, demographic and clinicopathological features were collected from medical records.ResultsA total of 367 patients were included. As for demographic features, it demonstrated statistically significant differences in insurance type (p<0.001) and regular screening (p<0.001), as well as age (p=0.013) and menstrual status (p=0.004). As for clinicopathological features, axillary involvement (p=0.019) was a factor that differed among three stages. The overall TTS was 23.56 ± 21.39 days. TTS for patients who were diagnosed during the outbreak of COVID-19 were longer than those diagnosed during pandemic post-peak and normalization stage (p<0.001). Pandemic stage (p<0.001) and excision biopsy before surgery (OR, 6.459; 95% CI, 2.225-18.755; p=0.001) were markedly correlated with the TTS of patients.ConclusionsTTS of breast cancer patients significantly varied in different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. And breast cancer patients’ daily lives and disease treatments were affected by the pandemic in many aspects, such as health insurance access, physical screening and change of therapeutic schedules. As the time-delay may cause negative influences on patients’ disease, we should minimize the occurrence of such time-delay. It is vital to come up with comprehensive measures to deal with unexpected situations in case the pandemic occurs.

ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF ISLAMIC BANK INCOME AND INCOME CONVENTIONAL BANKS AGAINST BANK PROFITABILITY

Bank Syariah Indonesia has sharia contracts that can make it easier for customers to get consumptive financing such as financing in the purchase of cars/motorcycles, but many people do not know that Islamic banks have such consumptive financing products. Based on the results of research on the mechanism and application of consumptive financing on the Oto iB Hasanah BNI Syariah Banda Aceh product, this can be done in three stages, namely: First, the customer applies for consumptive financing for the Oto iB Hasanah BNI Syariah Banda Aceh product by completing the file, second, checking data or verifying data for completeness and the truth of the file, thirdly, a field survey with the 5C principle (Character, Capacity, Capital, Condition and Collateral). murabahah namely an agreement on profit, payment method, sale and purchase agreement and delivery of goods.

Optimization of an unscented Kalman filter for an embedded platform

The unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is finding increased application in biological fields. While realizing a complex UKF system in a low-power embedded platform offers many potential benefits including wearability, it also poses significant design challenges. Here we present a method for optimizing a UKF system for realization in an embedded platform. The method seeks to minimize both computation time and error in UKF state reconstruction and forecasting. As a case study, we applied the method to a model for the rat sleep-wake regulatory system in which 432 variants of the UKF over six different variables are considered. The optimization method is divided into three stages that assess computation time, state forecast error, and state reconstruction error. We apply a cost function to variants that pass all three stages to identify a variant that computes 27 times faster than the reference variant and maintains required levels of state estimation and forecasting accuracy. We draw the following insights: 1) process noise provides leeway for simplifying the model and its integration in ways that speed computation time while maintaining state forecasting accuracy, 2) the assimilation of observed data during the UKF correction step provides leeway for simplifying the UKF structure in ways that speed computation time while maintaining state reconstruction accuracy, and 3) the optimization process can be accelerated by decoupling variables that directly impact the underlying model from variables that impact the UKF structure.

Evaporative Cracking Characteristics of the Embankment Soil Affected by the Saline Concentration

Embankment soil affected by saline can not only cause roadbed settlement, frosting, and road cracks but also cause corrosion and cracking of roadbed pipelines, which seriously affects the stability of the road. Water evaporation and dry cracking of the saline soil mainly cause soil swelling, poor water stability, and corrosive characteristics of the embankment soil. In this study, the evaporative cracking characteristics of soil with different saline concentrations were investigated. The results showed that the moisture content decreased linearly with the drying time in the early evaporation process, subsequently decreased slow down in the mid-term evaporation, and finally become got and remain a residual moisture content, which are 46.39%, 44.05%, 42.70%, and 40.27% with the increase of the saline concentration. The evaporation process with different saline concentrations in the soil can be divided into three stages: uniform evaporation stage, slow down evaporation stage, and equilibrium evaporation stage, which was consistent with the moisture content change. With the development of the drying time, the cracks gradually appeared on the soil surface, gradually deepened in the soil, and expanded the crack network. The development of cracks can be divided into three stages: the cracking preparation stage, the crack development stage, and the crack stable stage. The cracking began at high evaporation rate under high saline concentration, and the fractal dimension remained stable under similar saline concentration. The fractal dimension was gradually increased with the decrease of the moisture content and the increase of the saline concentration, respectively. The soil began to crack with larger moisture under high saline concentration. The drying cracks in the nature were consistent with the configuration of the cracks formed in the experimental results.