A Game-Based Content and Language-Integrated Learning Practice for Environmental Awareness (ENVglish)

Increasing human activities in the environment have created severe effects; therefore, handling such effects by raising environmental awareness through several ways has become significant to sustain the environment, which can enhance 21st century skills including critical thinking and information literacy. Digital games can be used for this because they create an environment for learning with higher engagement, motivation, and excitement besides fostering cognitive attainment and retention. Accordingly, a mobile game-based content and language-integrated learning practice (an educational digital game called ENVglish) was developed to raise EFL students' environmental awareness in this qualitative study. During the design and development phases of the game, students' and teachers' perceptions regarding it were collected with semi-structured interviews. The data were content analyzed. The findings indicated that both students and teachers had positive perceptions about the game and that students could improve their English and have environmental awareness with the game.

Player/User Types for Gamification

Gamification has created great expectations for education and has become a trend in education. It is not an easy process to integrate gamification into educational environments. The design and development phases of gamification are very important. Therefore, it is necessary to follow a model that will guide the process in gamification designs. Individual differences among students are an important factor affecting their learning performance. In this context, considering student characteristics will increase the effect of gamification in education. Personalized gamification designs that meet the needs and expectations of students will be more effective than one-size-fits-all designs. It can benefit from player/user types in gamification designs to identify individual differences. This chapter aims to discuss player/user types in relation to gamification in the context of education.

Virtual Reality and Digital Human Modeling for the Physical Ergonomic Analysis in Product Development in Industry: A Systematic Review

The efficacy of the product development process is measured by the ability to launch a project with product and production process specifications that could guarantee that the manufacturing can produce it with the least impact. If a problem is detected late, they bring consequences beyond the high cost of the solution, if related to physical ergonomics, which will influence the well-being of operators, productivity, and quality. Virtual Reality (VR) and Digital Human Modeling (DHM) are ones of the enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 and has already been applied on a large scale in industries such as automotive, construction, and aeronautics. However, even though the huge applications, these technologies are not yet applied by these industries for the analysis of physical ergonomics during product development phases. This study aims to characterize the state of the art and technology about the application of Virtual Reality and Digital Human Modeling for the physical ergonomics analysis in the during product development phases in the industry through a systematic review of the literature and patents. In patent documents recovery, we used Derwent Innovation database. The research is based on searching the selected terms in the title, summary, and claims of the documents through a search strategy containing IPC code and keywords. In articles recovery, we searched ScienceDirect, Springer, and IEEExplore databases for scientific publications. The search resulted in 311 patents documents and 16 articles in the scientific database. This study analyzed the patents to map out the technological progress in this area, where we found in the charts and data an increasing number of publications per year and a spread application with a considerable number of new technologies presented in these recent patents. The literature review indicated that Virtual Reality technology complements the Digital Human Modeling during physical ergonomics analysis for manufacturing process already designed. The majority of research on the use of VR and DHM technologies for physical ergonomics analysis focus on the automotive industry and the ergonomic assessment of workstations and current processes. Further research is needed to investigate how Virtual Reality and Digital Human Modeling might assist in the understanding of physical ergonomics in certain tasks throughout the product development process, such as the simulation of worker posture or effort when assembling parts.

A Prioritized Decision Making Method for Reliability Allocation: in Optimistic and Pessimistic View

Reliability allocation is a very important problem during early design and development phases of a system. There are several reliability allocation techniques which are used to achieve the target reliability. The feasibility of objectives (FOO) technique is one of them that is widely used to perform system reliability allocation. But this technique has two fundamental shortcomings. The first is the measurement scale and the second is that it does not consider the order weight of the reliability allocation factors. The prioritization of the factors is also an important topic in decision making. Practically, all factors in multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) are not in the same priority level. Hence, in decision making situation, it is usual for decision makers to consider different priority factors. So, considering the prioritization of the factors, a reliability allocation method is proposed here to overcome the shortcomings of the FOO technique. Also, a case study on reliability allocation in airborne radar system is considered here to verify the efficiency of the proposed approach. Finally, the results are calculated in different optimistic and pessimistic view point and compared with the FOO technique. This comparison exhibits the advantages and supremacy of the proposed approach.

One of the approaches to modeling the process of insect development to improve the effectiveness of protective measures of fruit crops

Protection of fruit crops from pests is one of the most important tasks of gardening. In turn, the use of protective measures has both positive and negative sides, which makes the issue of improving their effectiveness one of the main ones. Having data on the estimated number of pests and the dates of the beginning of their development phases, it is possible to increase efficiency by choosing the optimal exposure measure and drawing up a more accurate schedule of protective measures. One way to determine such parameters is to use simulation. The article presents one of the approaches to constructing a mathematical model of the insect development process, which is used to build a software simulation model that allows to increase the effectiveness of protective measures of fruit crops. The article describes what is the essence of the modeled process. A mathematical model and methods for determining its parameters are presented. The required initial data for modeling are defined.

Dynamic Analysis over the Changes Impact in Production Process in Automotive Industry

The development of capacities for being flexible is based on top management, helps firms to manage the environmental uncertainty and tends to increase the companies performances. We propose the hypothesis as both environmental factors and internal resources affect directly the production system and also the company performances. In order to create the present paper we have been done statistical analysis based on impact factors over the internal product and processes. The results show in optimization development phases, the customer involvement brings a major impact in change process and means it can have an impact over the final process and product.

Architecting an Advanced Maturity Model for Business Processes in the Gig Economy: A Platform-Based Project Standardization

The business continuity of the gig economy is strongly driven by the operator’s ability to manage the maturity of business processes. Moreover, projects in the gig economy are risky due to the lack of monitoring and involvement of actors’ profiles. When business processes become mature as the target, platform-based project results can satisfy actors’ expectations. To reach targeted maturity, operators need to standardize their business processes. This standardization is actualized in a maturity model as a benchmark and guideline tool. It exposes how mature the current business processes are and the required improvements. This research aims to construct a maturity model systematically and comprehensively to encourage operators in the gig economy (as the model user) to improve the products and services delivered. This research has constructed a new maturity model for business processes using the maturity model development phases initiated by de Bruin et al. It explores the gig economy ecosystem in Indonesia. This research initiates the maturity model by collecting 48 factors in the gig economy. It continues by composing 13 determinant candidates as representations of the factors. After an empirical test involving 200 people (consisting of gig worker, client, and operator) and two iterations of mixed-method validation involving 16 experts, this research generates ten determinants classified into three dimensions: actors, platforms, and transactions. The maturity level of each determinant is measured to indicate its position toward digital business continuity.

How to Identify Potentials and Barriers of Raw Materials Recovery from Tailings? Part II: A Practical UNFC-Compliant Approach to Assess Project Sustainability with On-Site Exploration Data

A sustainable raw materials (RMs) recovery from waste requires a comprehensive generation and communication of knowledge on project potentials and barriers. However, a standardised procedure to capture sustainability aspects in early project development phases is currently missing. Thus, studies on different RM sources are not directly comparable. In this article, an approach is presented which guides its user through a practical interpretation of on-site exploration data on tailings compliant with the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC). The development status of the overall project and the recovery of individual RMs are differentiated. To make the assessment results quickly comparable across different studies, they are summarised in a heat-map-like categorisation matrix. In Part I of this study, it is demonstrated with the case study tailings storage facility Bollrich (Germany) how a tailings mining project can be assessed by means of remote screening. In Part II, it is shown how to develop a project from first on-site exploration to a decision whether to intensify costly on-site exploration. It is concluded that with a UNFC-compliant assessment and classification approach, local sustainability aspects can be identified, and a commonly acceptable solution for different stakeholder perspectives can be derived.

State and Crop Performance of Gossypium in the Salyan Steppe of Azerbaijan

The article presents the results of observations of Gossypium crop performance by development phases. The issues of the development of cotton under different irrigation regimes and levels of mineral nutrition, the state of the aboveground and root systems of the plant on sierozem-meadow soils of the Salyan steppe are considered.

Silicon Changes C:N:P Stoichiometry and Favors Pre-Sprouted Seedling Growth, Yield and the Technological Quality of Sugarcane.

The importance of silicon (Si) in sugarcane is well known, but its effects on changing C:N:P stoichiometry enough to increase pre-sprouted seedling (PSS) and sugarcane development in the field remains unknown. To that end, the present study aimed to assess whether Si fertigation favors its absorption enough to change elemental stoichiometry (C:N:P), physiological attributes and PSS growth, as well as the growth, stem yield and juice quality of sugarcane. Two field experiments were conducted in the PSS formation stage and another in the sugarcane plant development phase. Experiment 1 was carried out in a greenhouse with PSSs under two treatments: in the absence and presence of Si (2 mmol L−1) fertigation. Experiment 2 was performed in the field in red-yellow argisol with the sugarcane plant undergoing the following treatments: absence of Si (No Si); Si supplied by fertigation during the PSS formation and sugarcane plant development phases (Si–C); and Si supplied during the PSS formation and sugarcane plant development phases (Si–M+C). The following were assessed in experiment I: growth, leaf green color index (GCI), chlorophyll fluorescence, C, N, P, and Si content, and C:Si, C:N and C:P stoichiometric ratios. In experiment II, the same stoichiometric ratios were assessed, as well as sugarcane growth, stem yield and juice quality. Si reduced the C:Si, C:N and C:P stoichiometric ratios in PSS. The C:Si ratio in the leaves and stems declined with the supply of Si, while the C:N and C:P ratio in the leaves and stem was higher in plants that received Si in the Si-M+C treatment. Applying Si fertigation in PSS formation to promote changes in C:N:P stoichiometry favored photosynthetic efficiency and growth. The Si–M+C treatment stood out, since it also caused enough C:N:P stoichiometric changes to increase sugarcane growth, yield and juice quality.