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Socio-emotional skills are vital for individuals to thrive academically, personally, and socially in the twenty-first century. However, limited attention has been devoted to the factors that might facilitate or hinder the development of socio-emotional skills among university students. To address this gap, we explored the association between the teaching and learning environment and socio-emotional skills using both variable-centered (Study 1) and person-centered (Study 2) approaches. A survey was conducted among 1,136 students in 21 universities. In Study 1, the variable-centered approach showed that active learning, good teaching, and clear goals and standards were positively associated with socio-emotional skills, while feedback and appropriate assessment had no significant or negative influence on socio-emotional skills. In Study 2, the person-centered approach identified three groups of students characterized by low, medium, and high socio-emotional skills. Students who experienced higher levels of active learning and clear goals and standards were more likely to belong to the high socio-emotional skills group. Surprisingly, students who received more frequent feedback from their teachers were more likely to belong to the low socio-emotional skills group, which we speculated might be due to low levels of feedback literacy. These findings underscore the importance of the teaching and learning environment in developing students’ socio-emotional skills in the higher education context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to explore the effects of constant and altered workload sequences on mental fatigue in a thermoneutral environment, experiments and surveys were carried out in this study. n‐back tasks were used to design different workload sequences. Fifteen healthy right‐handed males were required to experience three different workload sequences for 30 min, respectively, including a constant workload (2‐back task) and 2 altered workload sequences that contained an elevating workload sequence (1‐2‐3‐back tasks) and a reducing workload sequence (3‐2‐1‐back tasks). The PANAS, VAS‐F, and NASA‐TLX scales were selected to investigate changes in the mood, the perceived fatigue, and the perceived workload. Meanwhile, the skin temperature during these three workload sequences was continuously collected. Results from the NASA‐TLX scale indicated that no significant difference in total workload was observed among all three workload sequences. Meanwhile, results from the VAS‐F scale showed that no significant changes in self‐reported mental fatigue were observed among these three workload sequences, which meant that mental fatigue was only related to the total workload. However, self‐reported "energy" from the VAS‐F scale did not reduce significantly during the reducing workload sequence, which meant that the reducing workload sequence could conserve more "energy" than that of the elevating and constant workload sequences. Furthermore, both positive and negative moods changed significantly under the constant workload sequence (2‐back task), but they did not show much changes under altered workloads, which meant that the altered workload sequence could attenuate the mood deterioration. What is more, the mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, effort, and the total workload increased significantly after both the constant workload and elevating workload sequence, but no significant changes in all these six items of the NASA‐TLX scale were observed under the reducing workload sequence. Finally, the mean skin temperature under the constant workload sequence was lower than that under the altered workload sequences (p > 0.05), but significant changes in skin temperature at the left hand and neck were only observed between the constant and reducing workload sequences. In conclusion, constant and altered workload sequences contributed equally to the mental fatigue in a thermoneutral environment, but the differences in workload sequence produced some differences in mood, energy, and mental demand, which would affect the working performance. Findings of this study provided implications for the proper planning, assignment, and management of tasks in real working settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate recognition of maize growth stages is crucial for effective farmland management strategies. In order to overcome the difficulty of quickly obtaining precise information about maize growth stage in complex farmland scenarios, this study proposes a Maize Hybrid Vision Transformer (MaizeHT) that combines a convolutional algorithmic structure with self-attention for maize growth stage recognition. The MaizeHT model utilizes a ResNet34 convolutional neural network to extract image features to self-attention, which are then transformed into sequence vectors (tokens) using Patch Embedding. It simultaneously inserts category information and location information as a token. A Transformer architecture with multi-head self-attention is employed to extract token features and predict maize growth stage categories using a linear layer. In addition, the MaizeHT model is standardized and encapsulated, and a prototype platform for intelligent maize growth stage recognition is developed for deployment on a website. Finally, the performance validation test of MaizeHT was carried out. To be specific, MaizeHT has an accuracy of 97.71% when the input image resolution is 224 × 224 and 98.71% when the input image resolution is 512 × 512 on the self-built dataset, the number of parameters is 15.446 M, and the floating-point operations are 4.148 G. The proposed maize growth stage recognition method could provide computational support for maize farm intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method was developed to analytically distinguish between the ventilated (v) and nonventilated (nv) fractions of water‐soluble ions in deposits of particle indoors. The indicative method was based on low‐cost passive outdoor and indoor sampling of the particle and ion deposits and NO2 gas and analysis of the regression values and residuals of the correlations between these parameters. The method was applied to measurements in the Pieskowa Skała Castle Museum in Poland. A dominating source of "soil and building dust" was indicated all year round, probably partly from renovation works of the castle, with larger total infiltration in the winter–spring (W‐S) but with a higher proportion of ventilation ingress in the summer–autumn (S‐A). About 60%–80%, by mass, of the water‐soluble ions in the soil and building dust were calcium and probably some magnesium bicarbonate (Ca(HCO3)2, Mg(HCO3)2) and about 10%–20% sulfates (SO4−−) with calcium (Ca++) and several other cations. The other main source of the ion deposits was indicated to be air pollution, with chloride (Cl−), sulfate (SO4−−), and nitrate (NO3−), from outdoor combustion sources, like traffic, residential heating, and industry. These were mainly v from outdoors in the colder parts of the year, but also to the more open locations in the S‐A. A small source of nv sulfate (SO4−−) was identified inside two showcases in the S‐A. The study showed good enclosure protection of the museum objects against exposure to particle pollution, but also the need to avoid the trapping of particle pollution inside showcases or closed rooms. The identification of the probable different amounts and sources of v and nv ions in the castle aided preventive actions to reduce the pollution exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information regarding the abundance and dissemination of airborne antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in chicken farms and their correlations with airborne bacteria is limited. In this study, we investigated the bacterial communities and quantified the ARGs and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in fecal and air samples in summer and winter. The concentrations of nearly all the airborne ARG and MGE subtypes in winter are three or four orders of magnitude higher than those in summer. Findings reveal that the indoor air of a chicken farm is a reservoir of ARGs. Based on the fecal samples, bacteria might be easily distributed in the air in the intensive chicken farm during winter. The mobility of target ARGs during winter might be stronger than during summer. These results may improve the understanding of airborne ARG transmission and its distribution characteristics and provide a reference for assessing the risks arising from chicken farms. More effort is needed to prevent and control the potential health risks induced by airborne ARGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]