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Background/objectives: Sedentary behavior (SB), defined as sitting (nonexercising), reclining, and lying down (posture), or by low energy expenditure, is a public health risk independent to physical activity. The objective of this systematic literature review was to synthesize the available evidence on amount of SB reported by and measured in older adults. Data source: Studies published between 1981 and 2014 were identified from electronic databases and manual searching. Large-scale population studies/surveys reporting the amount of SB (objective/ subjective) in older adults aged ≥ 60 years of age were included. Appraisal and synthesis was completed using MOOSE guidelines. Results: 349,698 adults aged ≥ 60 within 22 studies (10 countries and 1 EU-wide) were included. Objective measurement of SB shows that older adults spend an average of 9.4 hr a day sedentary, equating to 65-80% of their waking day. Self-report of SB is lower, with average weighted self-reports being 5.3 hr daily. Within specific domains of SB, older adults report 3.3 hr in leisure sitting time and 3.3 hr watching TV. There is an association with more time spent in SB as age advances and a trend for older men to spend more time in SB than women. Conclusion/ implications: Time spent sedentary ranges from 5.3-9.4 hr per waking day in older adults. With recent studies suggesting a link between SB, health, and well-being, independent of physical activity, this is an area important for successful aging. Limitations: Different methodologies of measurement and different reporting methods of SB made synthesis difficult. Estimated SB time from self-report is half of that measured objectively; suggesting that most self-report surveys of SB will vastly underestimate the actual time spent in SB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the scientific production and the contents associated with the sustainable development goals and their integration with universities during the past 21 years. Although many of the topics related to sustainable development goals (SDGs) have been addressed in different studies for decades, it is since 2015 onwards that they gained greater prominence due to the inclusion of higher education as an important actor in the fulfillment of the 2030 agenda and the United Nations SDGs. For the purpose of this paper, a bibliometric analysis of 871 papers, 535 documents in Scopus, and 336 in Web of Science (WoS) from 1998 to 2019 was performed, and the Bibliometrix analysis tool was used. The objective of this mapping is to answer the following research question: Is the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals and Universities a field of study? An analysis of the network of collaborators and trend topics in Scopus and WoS allows us to identify the concurrence and relationships of some keywords, such as sustainable development, sustainability and planning, and some background words, such as humans and global health. In another analysis, the word "higher education" is related to change. This article suggests that the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals in Universities is becoming a field of study under exploration, with a peak of production in 2016 and that has remained stable in the last three years, but thanks to the leading role assigned to Universities, intellectual production should increase in the following years.

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

In this work, a bibliometric analysis of the investigations of the last 54 years focused on the teaching of topology and its applications in the learning of other areas of knowledge was carried out. The articles that appear in the SCOPUS database were taken into account under the search criteria of the words topology and teaching, connected with the Boolean expression AND in the search field ABS. As a result, 329 articles were obtained which, based on the PRISMA methodology, were reduced to 74 papers. In them publication trends, impact of publications, citation frequencies, among others, were compared. In addition, its use was identified for learning topology at different levels of training, areas of knowledge where this discipline is most applied and strategies used to teach these applications.

The guidelines of brain death determination vary across countries. Our aim was to compare diagnostic procedures of brain death determination in adults among five countries. Consecutive comatose patients who received brain death determination from June 2018 to June 2020 were included. The technical specifications, completion rates and positive rates of brain death determination according to criteria of different countries were compared. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of each ancillary test for the identification of brain death diagnosed according to different criteria were investigated. One hundred and ninety nine patients were included in this study. One hundred and thirty one (65.8%) patients were diagnosed with brain death according to French criteria, 132 (66.3%) according to Chinese criteria, and 135 (67.7%) according to criteria of USA, UK and Germany. The sensitivity and PPV of electroencephalogram (92.2% – 92.3%) and somatosensory evoked potential (95.5% – 98.5%) were higher than transcranial Doppler (84.3% – 86.0%). The criteria of brain death in China and France are comparatively stricter than in USA, UK and Germany. The discrepancy in brain death determination between clinical assessments and additional confirmation of ancillary tests is small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the outbreak of a disease caused by a pathogen with unknown characteristics, the uncertainty of its progression parameters can be reduced by devising methods that, based on rational assumptions, exploit available information to provide actionable insights. In this study, performed a few (~6) weeks into the outbreak of COVID-19 (caused by SARS-CoV-2), one of the most important disease parameters, the average time-to-recovery, was calculated using data publicly available on the internet (daily reported cases of confirmed infections, deaths, and recoveries), and fed into an algorithm that matches confirmed cases with deaths and recoveries. Unmatched cases were adjusted based on the matched cases calculation. The mean time-to-recovery, calculated from all globally reported cases, was found to be 18.01 days (SD 3.31 days) for the matched cases and 18.29 days (SD 2.73 days) taking into consideration the adjusted unmatched cases as well. The proposed method used limited data and provided experimental results in the same region as clinical studies published several months later. This indicates that the proposed method, combined with expert knowledge and informed calculated assumptions, could provide a meaningful calculated average time-to-recovery figure, which can be used as an evidence-based estimation to support containment and mitigation policy decisions, even at the very early stages of an outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seamless learning has a significance that has been increasing in recent years, and an increasing number of studies on the subject in the literature draws attention. This study aimed to examine the research on seamless learning between 1996 and 2020 with the bibliometric analysis method. The Scopus database was used in the collection of the data. After various screening processes, a total of 389 publications were included in the analysis. Descriptive analysis and bibliometric analysis were used in the analysis of the data. The distribution of publications by years, types of publications, sources, and languages were analyzed in the research. Additionally, visual maps were created with analyses of co-author, cocitation, and co-word. At the end of the study, it was seen that there has been an increase in the number of publications from the past to the present, articles and papers were predominant, and that most of the studies were carried out in English. As a result of bibliometric analysis, it was concluded that the most efficient countries in seamless learning were the United Kingdom, the United States, and Singapore. Also, it has been determined that the National Institute of Education, Center for International Education and Exchange, and Kyushu University institutions are dominant. The most frequently mentioned authors cited in studies in many different fields are M. Sharples, L.-H. Wong, and H. Ogata. According to the co-word analysis, the keywords seamless learning, mobile learning, ubiquitous learning, and mobile-assisted language learning stand out in the field of seamless learning.

Purpose: This paper aimed to examine moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels in physical education. Method: A review of reviews was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. The screening process, data extraction, assessment of the risk of bias, and analysis of the results were carried out independently by two reviewers. A total of eight systematic reviews from six databases, which included 224 studies, involving more than 80,000 students (elementary, middle, and high school), enrolled in more than 450 schools worldwide were unpacked. Results: Students fail to meet the 50% recommendation of MVPA lesson time, irrespective of country, school stage, gender, or MVPA measures. Physical education-based interventions increased students' MVPA during lessons (range 14.3%-24%) compared with control groups. Conclusion: Physical education is uniquely positioned to provide physical activity opportunities for students, but teachers must target the provision of adequate MVPA levels, which is not currently happening.

Background and purpose: Social engagement is an important active aging strategy to promote older adults' mental health. The purposes of this study were to compare social engagement in older populations around the world and explore associations with mental health outcomes. Materials and methods: An international cross‐sectional survey was conducted from 2017 to 2019. Data were retrieved from The International Social Survey Programme for a secondary data analysis across 30 countries. This study applied the Taxonomy of Social Activities and its six levels as operational definitions for a consistent concept of social engagement for international comparisons. Results: In total, 9403 older adults with a mean age of 72.85 ± 6.40 years responded. The highest levels of older adults' social engagement were found in Switzerland, Thailand, and New Zealand. Older adults of a higher age, with a lower educational level, who were permanently sick or disabled, who had no partner, who were widowed or whose civil partner had died, who lived alone, and who had lower self‐placement in society had significantly lower social engagement than did their counterparts. In the regression model, older adults' social engagement positively predicted general health, self‐accomplishment, and life satisfaction, but negatively predicted loneliness and depression. Conclusions: In aging societies worldwide, encouraging older adults' social engagement would be beneficial to promote mental health. Implications for nursing practice and health policies: Community professional nurses can develop strategies of social engagement based on the needs and sociodemographic factors of older adults to improve their mental health. Developing efficient strategies and local policies by learning from successful experiences in other countries is important to promote social engagement in aging societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the construction of "Double First-class" universities, how to establish an evaluation system of universities' scientific and technological innovation capacity with Chinese characteristics and international standards will determine the direction and level of improvement of Chinese university?s technological innovation capacity. The system of scientific and technological innovation in university is a complex system, and the existing evaluation index and evaluation system may be difficult to meet the actual needs of the national construction of "Double First-class" universities in the new situation, so the evaluation index should be a breakthrough and innovation. This paper probes into the existing problems in the evaluation system of scientific research in China, systematically investigate the common and different features of scientific research evaluation in Britain, America, France and Australia, puts forward the new connotation of the structure dimension of Chinese universities 'scientific and technological innovation capacity, and points out the basic criterion of constructing the evaluation system of university scientific and technological innovation capacity: First, design of indicators should reflect the development trend of the world, and reflect the cultural characteristics and historical background of Chinese universities. Second, it is necessary to according to the "world standard", reflect the value orientation and practice standard of Chinese university construction. Third, taking differentiated design and establishing a classification evaluation standard. Fourth, the evaluative dimension should reflect the diversification of the evaluation's content, especially considering to optimize overall scientific research ecology.

International comparative ethnographic studies of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) are difficult to conduct but worth the effort. Comparative studies featuring thick description and polysemic interpretations can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, expand the menu of the possible, expose the provincialism of national approaches, and illuminate the global circulation of ECEC practices and ideas. Based on reflections on four major comparative international studies I have led, in this paper I describe effective strategies for conducting comparative ethnographic research in ECEC settings, explicate the rationale for doing so, and provide examples of how this approach can impact research, practice, and policy. Issues I address include the rationale for selecting countries for comparison, the formation of a research team, and distributing interpretive voice and power.

Background: With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic across the world, people have suffered an unexpected setback to their mental health. As psychological support is being provided to patients and healthcare workers, the general population and university students go unnoticed. This review aims to present existing literature that reports the effects of COVID-19 on psychological outcomes of the general population and university students in different countries. Methods: A manual search was conducted on PubMed, Google Scholar and Mendeley from inception to 31st January 2021. Articles were selected based on the predetermined eligibility criteria. Results: During COVID-19 pandemic, relatively high rates of depression (4.5% to 72.3%), anxiety (12.7% to 85.7%) and stress (5% to 90.1%) were reported in the general population as well as in university students, depression (3% to 70.5%), anxiety (9% to 63.3%) and stress (61.5% to 25%) in India, Nepal, Pakistan, China, Spain, US, UK, France, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Risk factors associated include female gender, younger age group (≤40 years), unemployment, student status, and frequent exposure to social media/news concerning COVID-19. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with highly significant levels of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety and stress. Alleviating the hazardous effects of COVID-19 on mental health should be given due attention internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2000, the number of students trained abroad has increased 100%. This statistic shows how not only many students but also how future employers value this training. It gives students an additional skill, which can be called "internationality". Accordingly a large number of countries intend to rapidly increase the number of students studying abroad. This trend leads to a model of international student mobility that would be perfect if, first, all students could benefit from it; second, if this model did not create some inequalities; and finally, if it did not cause some distortions in the world that may be economic or academic in nature. This paper shows that this is not the case. It is therefore important to analyse these phenomena in order to find solutions to improve the current model of international student mobility.

Cross-border higher education institutions are considered a main way to fulfill the educational internalization in Mainland China; to some extent they represent the attitude of entering the international market. In this paper, the history, status quo, and future of Chinese-foreign cooperatively-run schools are analyzed and discussed. Cross-border higher education institutions in Mainland China have experienced the process from accidental and disorder to a systematic and quality orientation.

This paper explores the identity of teachers in international schools who are embarking on postgraduate studies in education. Based on semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers starting an international qualification, it establishes key aspects of their identity and notes that they feel distinct from teaching professionals in their passport countries. From this discussion, a tool-box of concepts for understanding the identity of international school teachers is suggested, together with a typology of international school teachers echoing Hayden & Thompson's (2013) typology of international schools. It is suggested that these concepts require further exploration and empirical substantiation in order both to understand their implications for addressing teacher shortages and to understand the knowledge, skills and attitudes that teachers with non-conventional qualifications and backgrounds may offer to schools.

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles published in the Web of Science category "Education and Educational Research" in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). A total of 2091 journal articles published in this category and cited more than 100 times up to the end of the year 2016 were retrieved as highly cited articles. Distributions of highly cited articles per publication year, journals, institutions and countries were analysed, as well as the citation life cycle of the top-cited articles. The USA, its institutions and researchers are the absolute leaders in the category of Education and Educational Research according to the results of the conducted analysis.

As a component of the ongoing development of the mathematics curriculum in China, we compare the country's high school mathematics textbooks with those of several other countries. We base our analysis on the assumption that textbooks, as primary printed teaching resources, are key tools for interpreting educational policy. In this paper, we compare what content is selected and how that content is presented in series of high school textbooks from China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States according to four core domains: algebra, geometry, statistics and probability, and calculus. We then discuss the implications of the analysis for the reform of the high school mathematics curriculum in China, particularly as it applies to the development of textbooks within that process of reform. The comparative results provide us with the opportunity to recognise the distinguishing features of the content and presentation of the Chinese mathematics curriculum and lead to some suggestions for future curriculum development.

Maternal depression can be accounted for one of the most common complications during pregnancy and the postpartum period affecting women all over the world. So far, no detailed map of the worldwide maternal depression research architecture has been constructed, which encompasses aspects of research activity, quality, and also socioeconomic features. Using the NewQIS platform, density-equalizing mapping projections, scientometric techniques, and economic benchmarking procedures were applied to evaluate global maternal depression research for the period between 1900 and 2012. In total, 7330 related publications and 3335 international collaborations were identified. The USA was the most active country concerning collaborations and total research activity. In the socioeconomic analysis of research activity in high-income countries, Australia was ranked first with an average of 412.05 maternal depression-related publications per 1000 billion US$ GDP (Q), followed by the UK (Q = 373.51) and Canada (Q = 306.32). The group of upper-middle-income countries was led by South Africa (Q = 145.67), followed by Turkey (Q = 91.8). China authored 11.95 maternal depression-related publications per 1000 billion US$ GDP. The USA had the highest activity of maternal depression research per GDP in billion US$ per capita (Q = 60.86). When research activity was related to population size (Q = publications per Mio. inhabitants), Australia (Q = 26.44) was leading the field, followed by Norway (Q = 18.48). Gender analysis revealed a relatively high degree of female scientists involved in this field of research with pronounced differences between single subject areas. In summary, we here present the first picture of the global scientific development in maternal depression research over a period of more than 100 years. The research landscape is clearly dominated by North American and Western European countries, with only minor contribution of Asian or South American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the impact of academic research on high-tech manufacturing growth of 28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and emerging countries over the 1991-2005 period. A standard research and development (R&D) expenditure based measure is found to be too general to capture the input in high-tech research. To overcome this problem, a novel proxy for high-tech research investment--the supercomputer capacity--is proposed. Empirical evidence strongly supports this choice of variable. It is also found that academic R&D exerts a larger growth effect on high-tech output than its industry and government counterparts, but only the impact differential between academic and government R&D is statistically significant.

This paper studies the interplay between social distancing and the spread of the COVID-19 disease-a global pandemic that has affected most of the world's population. Our goals are to (1) to observe the correlation between the strictness of social distancing policies and the spread of disease and (2) to determine the optimal adoption level of social distancing policies. The earliest instances of the virus were found in China, and the virus has reached the United States with devastating consequences. Other countries severely affected by the pandemic are Brazil, Russia, the United Kingdom, Spain, India, Italy, and France. Although it is impossible to stop it, it is possible to slow down its spread to reduce its impact on the society and economy. Governments around the world have deployed various policies to reduce the virus spread in response to the pandemic. To assess the effectiveness of these policies, the system's dynamics of the society needs to be analyzed, which is generally not possible with mathematical linear equations or Monte Carlo methods because human society is a complex adaptive system with continuous feedback loops. Because of the challenges with the other methods, we chose agent-based methods to conduct our study. Moreover, recent agent-based modeling studies for the COVID-19 pandemic show significant promise in assisting decision-makers in managing the crisis by applying policies such as social distancing, disease testing, contact tracing, home isolation, emergency hospitalization, and travel prevention to reduce infection rates. Based on modeling studies conducted in Imperial College, increasing levels of interventions could slow the spread of disease and infection. We ran the model with six different percentages of social distancing while keeping the other parameters constant. The results show that social distancing affects the spread of COVID-19 significantly, in turn decreasing the spread of disease and infection rates when implemented at higher levels. We also validated these results by using the behavior space tool with ten experiments with varying social distancing levels. We conclude that applying and increasing social distancing policy levels leads to a significant reduction in infection spread and the number of deaths. Both experiments show that infection rates are reduced drastically when social distancing intervention is implemented between 80% to 100%.

This paper examines the linkages in financial markets during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak. For this purpose, daily stock market returns were used over the period of December 31, 2019-April 20, 2020 for the following economies: USA, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK, China, and Romania. The study applied the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to explore whether the Romanian stock market is impacted by the crisis generated by novel coronavirus. Granger causality was employed to investigate the causalities among COVID-19 and stock market returns, as well as between pandemic measures and several commodities. The outcomes of the ARDL approach failed to find evidence towards the impact of Chinese COVID-19 records on the Romanian financial market, neither in the short-term, nor in the long-term. On the other hand, our quantitative approach reveals a negative effect of the new deaths' cases from Italy on the 10-year Romanian bond yield both in the short-run and long-run. The econometric research provide evidence that Romanian 10-year government bond is more sensitive to the news related to COVID-19 than the index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Granger causality analysis reveals causal associations between selected stock market returns and Philadelphia Gold/Silver Index.