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This study examined online disciplinary discussion by university students to determine how their shared ideas from personal experiences of conceptual change influenced the conceptual development of others. Collected messages in the resulting community were classified according to previously reported criteria. Subsequently, a dataset was analyzed using exponential random graph models to identify connection patterns in their communication. A state of connectedness provided students with a pathway that promote the acquisition of integrated concept types through access for shared content tailored to students’ academic curiosity.

As part of an applied activity of a university course in Japan, a total of 65 students posted messages on Twitter regarding global issues to expand the scope of scholarly communication with social users on Twitter. The students’ motivations to learn about world issues were evaluated using a standard questionnaire developed under the attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (ARCS) model. Thereafter, students’ connections were categorized into three types: crossing, private, and isolation. A one-way analysis of variance test and multiple comparison test showed a significant result—students with higher levels of motivation could communicate with users in other communities of the crossing type. In this study, we tried for the first time to utilize social network analysis and exponential random graph models to investigate the motivation and structures of scholarly connections on Twitter. Although students selected social users as targets for tweeting, most students who had reciprocal ties with these users did not contribute to the expansion of the community. Since the requirement to be a popular user was explicated by focusing on a remarkable student in the community, the inner-community enhancement of increasing ties among students was concluded for developing social capital in the community.

This study proposes a method for improving lesson revision using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), which is a structured technique for organized group decision-making. As a fundamental pedagogical principle of the proposed lesson improvement approach, we utilized collaborative action research theory, which involves applied action research, and focused on group-based lesson improvement. Furthermore, this study demonstrates a practical method that enables the incorporation of diverse assessment opinions from itinerant supervisors of educational boards to flow into a common conclusion to improve the lesson. We simulated a discussion case that involves informational avoidance actions. The consistency index of AHP could promote group decisions by presenting scores of consistency value across decision scenes. Furthermore, we present the effect of this method, in which a group produced a written document to transfer the record of the discussion process. This study is the first to illustrate the improvement of lesson design through collaboration among individuals with varied areas of expertise.

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) have limited network resources such as node battery capacity and wireless frequency bands. Therefore, to ensure efficient broadcast communication in such networks, it is critical to reduce unnecessary packet transfers and maximize the use of network resources and power. Network coding (NC) is a technique for reducing the number of transmitted packets over a network and maximizing the use of devices and network resources. The packet-reduction benefits obtained using NC depend considerably on network topology. In this study, we propose an NC method particularly designed for MANETs. In our approach, the nodes switch the type of transmission between an uncoded transmission (simple broadcast) and a coded transmission (NC) based on the estimated neighboring node’s proximity. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated using computer simulations. Our evaluations demonstrated that the proposed method can reduce the number of packets in the network without decreasing the packet delivery rate.

Blackhole (BH) attacks are among the most significant threats in mobile ad-hoc networks. A BH is a security attack in which a malicious node absorbs data packets and sends fake routing information to neighboring nodes. BH attacks have been widely studied. However, existing defense methods wrongfully assume that BH attacks cannot overcome the most common defense approaches. A new wave of BH attacks is known as smart BH attacks. In this study, we used a highly aggressive type of BH attack that can predict sequence numbers to overcome traditional detection methods that set a threshold to sequence numbers. To protect the network from this type of BH attack, we propose a collaborative defense method that uses local information collected from neighboring nodes. We evaluated the performance of our defense method against a smart BH attack and a collaborative attack that uses the collaboration of another malicious node. Our results show that the proposed method successfully detects and contains these threats to some degree. Consequently, the smart BH attack success rate decreases.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, online technologies have been introduced to facilitate students' engagement in education. Online discussion has been used to provide them a communal learning environment. This investigation examined online scholarly discussions conducted by university students with a view to ascertaining how they demonstrated critical thinking (CT). Course participants were tasked with submitting research reports related to assignments to the Moodle discussion forum. These were subsequently shared with their student peers. After the ensuing discussions were recorded, the statements made by the students were coded using subskill indicators of CT. A code sequence analysis was subsequently conducted, with CT and altruism serving as dependent variables. In total, 121 students contributed 310 messages to the Moodle forum. In cases involving CT, lower-level skills were found to be predominant among the code sequences. In contrast, cases involving altruism displayed sequences that transitioned from higher to lower skills. When both dependent variables were active, the highest count of sequences was recorded for self-regulation skill, indicating higher-order cognitive skill activities. The students recognized their cognitive limitations, actively sought additional information, and re-evaluated the topic. This study establishes a novel analytical methodology for evaluating critical thinking skills. Received: 18 February 2023 / Accepted: 21 April 2023 / Published: 5 May 2023

We conducted an investigational study of the formulation of the heterarchical online knowledge-based community among university students, which also involved users outside a course. As an exercise in a course, students were assigned to post their opinions regarding global issues on Twitter to connect with social actors. The emerging all connections were collected by Twitter’s application programming interface. Dataset was categorised into types of behaviourgraphics, which were styles of online users’ individual behaviour, as proposed by Solis. There were 954 tweets by 197 users, and 13 within 20 types of behaviourgraphics were exhibited in the Twitter community. However, students’ isolated tweets without any connection occupied 74% of all tweets. The tweets of social actors counted for merely 14% of students’ tweets, and connections in the community proved to be sparse. Compared with the types of behaviourgraphics in the results of our previous study, we could identify the following problems in students’ messages: content without relational cues, inhibition points in the content, lack of communicative behaviour, insufficient consideration of timeline, and lack of likeability. The results indicate the need to cultivate students’ sociability skills and their pre-investigation of other communities in order to expand their knowledge-based community. In terms of future studies, we discuss the importance of promoting a bridge to enhance connections with another community.

In our previous study, we proposed socialized creation competency as an advanced media information literacy The competency involves four pillars: socialized creation, collaborative creativity, a critical eye and building affordance The characterisation of this competency consists of all the component processes that make up social capital in ICT society In this study, we extracted a concrete example to explain the socialised creation and to promote the sustainable development of society The case we investigated was one in which civic IT engineers collaborated to develop program codes for a COVID-19 website We collected and analysed related documents and communication records on Twitter The results provided a deeper understanding of the importance of collaboration among diverse citizens, IT engineers, corporate workers and members of public sectors Those players worked using a new style of production regarding Civic Tech and GovTech Their activities blurred the borders of various organisations Online services, GitHub, and other SNS were used for both creation and opinion exchanges, and emerging heterarchical communication was interrelated The creators accepted the engagement of any citizen to vet opinions for purposes of improving the website Records demonstrated the substantial potential for the needs of advanced MIL competency to understand civil society and collaborative creation by the public sector and citizens © 2021 by the authors

This study aims to identify the formulation differences of groups in two online activities in a university course with different strategies by using social network analysis. Specifically, the conne...

The promotion and dissemination of a government’s basic policy are essential to implement innovative public services to establish sustainable country development and to ensure that the benefits are shared among citizens. This study focused on the MOOCs project in Thailand, and five courses were selected for exploration. Qualitative content analysis and sentiment analysis were applied to understand how information and communications technology in government services was promoted in the courses. These methods also explained the differences in the content of each course. It turned out that the strategy of improving service quality was the most-emphasized strategy in courses with an explanation of positive sentiment. The number of users who received a positive explanation of improving service quality was estimated at 711 and rated as a satisfactory result. The result of the qualitative content analysis was assembled into groups that could reveal the government’s pleiotropic orientation in their work on basic policy. All of these groups are involved in the international criteria for a government’s digital transformation, and other activities have also been highlighted as future challenges. The possibility of using MOOCs for policy promotion and education is suggested to bridge the gap between Thailand and other countries.

This study examined the effects of introducing a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) in global education at the university lesson. The indexes of GPI were organised using dashboard indexes of the Unit...

In recent years, vehicle tracking using a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), where vehicular connectivity is supported by both vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, has attracted considerable attention. Vehicle tracking is useful in a variety of applications, such as traffic management, collecting vehicle trajectory data, stolen car recovery and in the pursuit of an illegal runaway vehicle. Some of these applications require real-time and uninterrupted vehicle tracking. The unpredictable movement of the target vehicle and uneven spatial distribution of vehicles that participate in the tracking process make real-time and uninterrupted vehicle tracking challenging.In this paper, we propose a cooperative method to track target vehicles in real time by using VANETs. In our method, vehicles and road side units (RSUs) cooperate to track the location of target vehicles. In order to achieve the uninterrupted tracking of a target vehicle, a tracker broadcasts a handoff request message to its surrounding vehicles before losing the target. We implement the proposed method in a network simulator and evaluate its effectiveness and performance. Our simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve efficient and uninterrupted real-time vehicle tracking.

In this study, we investigated the driver's fatigue reduction effect at multiple support positions in order to reduce the driver's fatigue during long driving.We examined each posture change when supporting the lumbar at these multiple support positions.Then, the long time driving experiments using a driving simulator were conducted to evaluate the driving fatigue.Based on these results, we clarified the difference in fatigue reduction effect due to the difference in support position based on biological information and subjective evaluation.

Communication using Twitter by educators who attended a conference of a centralized position was investigated to better understand the possibility to expand their Twitter communication in the backchannel of the conference. As a target, conferences for ICT educators organized by Ministry of Education, Thailand were selected. Data were collected through an application programming interface (API) by NodeXL, and a social-graph analysis was executed. Extensional investigation was continuously introduced to include personal tweets history of educators by tracing Twitter accounts, which appeared in their profiles as keys of data collection. Results were compared with the findings of preceding studies. The results showed rather inactive Twitter communication of participants during conference days. However, from the result of extensional investigation, integral bridge and hub users, who were expected to enlighten rural educators, were found. Finally, we present three feasible strategies using social group graph analysis that challenged enhancement of awareness regarding the cutting-edge movement in ICT education of rural educators who could not attend a conference. Bridge users were able to forward messages from the conference organizer using deliberate modification of content to adapt their group culture.

In this study, to reduce the driver fatigue increasing for a long time driving, we examined the reduction effect of driver fatigue by the two back support part that were the pelvis support and the lumber support. From the results of the long time driving experiment by using the driving simulator, we evaluated the driver fatigue and clarified the difference of the reducing effect between two support mechanisms based on the biological information and the subjective evaluation.

In the recent movement towards smart societies, smart governments supported by GovTech and smart cities developed through Civic Tech have become known as dominant structures enabled by information and communications technology. Since GovTech and Civic Tech share the goal of giving citizens better and safer lives through their engagement with government and technology, the development of online public services is characterized by the use of collaborative production methods involving various stakeholders and players. Open data, collaboration, and systematic teamwork are key to understanding this production of heterarchical structures. This study reviews previous cases of collaboration between GovTech and Civic Tech, identifies the dominant mechanisms of the smart society, and summarizes existing pedagogical and industrial theoretical systems, mindsets, and skillsets with the aim of developing content for a university course. Double loop learning, design thinking, the Agile methodology, and the lean principle are identified as theoretical systems. Our findings are arranged so that they can be applied in the content of a university-level educational technology course, which we designed to develop students’ transformative competencies to enable them to become active citizens. In addition, we compared the processes involved in observed theoretical systems and conventional pedagogical theories to clarify the differences in their mechanisms. We conclude with a discussion of the need to recognize frameworks of different paradigms to prepare students for transformative social activities.

Iron is an essential metal for all living organisms that is absorbed in the intestinal cells as a heme-chelated or free form. It is unclear how important plant-derived chelators, such as nicotianamine (NA), an organic small molecule that is ubiquitous in crops, vegetables, and various other foods, contribute to iron bioavailability in mammals. We performed electrophysiological assays with Xenopus laevis oocytes and radioactive tracer experiments with Caco-2 cells. The findings revealed that the proton-coupled amino acid transporter SLC36A1 (PAT1) transports iron in the form of NA-Fe (II) complex in vitro. Decreased expression of hPAT1 by RNA interference in Caco-2 cells reduced the uptake of NA-59Fe (II) complex. The uptake of inorganic 59Fe (II) was relatively unaffected. These results imply that PAT1 transports iron as a NA-Fe (II) complex. The rate of 59Fe absorption in the spleen, liver, and kidney was higher when mice were orally administered NA-59Fe (II) compared with free 59Fe (II). The profile of site-specific PAT1 expression in the mouse intestine coincided with those of NA and iron contents, which were the highest in the proximal jejunum. Orally administered NA-59Fe (II) complex in mice was detected in the proximal jejunum by thin layer chromatography. In contrast, much less 59Fe (or NA) was detected in the duodenum, where the divalent metal transporter SLC11A2 (DMT1) absorbs free Fe (II). The collective results revealed the role of PAT1 in NA-Fe (II) absorption in the intestine and potential implication of NA in iron uptake in mammals.

Original Article, Background: Psoriasis is associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS), and both psoriasis and MetS are associated with abnormal adipokine secretion. Much is unknown regarding the association between adipokine gene expression in subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and levels of circulating adipokines in psoriasis patients with or without MetS. We examined messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) expression levels in SAT and circulating levels of 4 major adipokines, namely, tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), adiponectin, leptin, and interleukin 6 (IL-6). Methods: Twenty-nine psoriasis patients and 25 control patients were studied; 27 of the psoriasis patients and controls did not undergo systemic therapy. One psoriasis patient was treated with TNF-α antagonist and another was treated with retinoids (etretinate). Among the 29 psoriasis patients, 24 were treated with topical therapies (topical steroids and vitamin D analogues) and 5 were not. The participants were subdivided into 4 groups based on the presence of psoriasis and MetS. Serum concentrations of adipokines were measured in all participants, and SAT samples were collected from 18 psoriasis patients and 9 controls. Topical therapies were avoided for at least 1 week before collecting biopsy specimens. Adipokine mRNA expression in SAT was measured using quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (real-time RT-PCR) amplification. Results: Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score, serum leptin concentration, and leptin mRNA expression in SAT were significantly higher in psoriasis patients with MetS than in those without MetS. IL-6 mRNA expression in SAT was significantly higher in controls than in psoriasis patients. Conclusions: The association of psoriasis activity, adipokines, and MetS was confirmed. SAT from psoriasis patients was involved in increased leptin and decreased IL-6 mRNA expression. This is the first indication that SAT adipokines are involved in the pathophysiology of psoriasis.

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) improve the survival of patients with lung adenocarcinoma, and determine the EGFR mutation status before treatment is necessary. In contrast to biopsy samples, cytological specimens are obtained less invasively and are useful for EGFR mutation analyses. Recently, novel antibodies against two major EGFR mutations were developed: SP111, which is specific for the E746-A750 deletion in exon 19; and SP125, which is specific for the L858R mutation. To the best of our knowledge, no study has evaluated cytological specimens using the two novel antibodies, thus their specificity and sensitivity were examined in surgical resection, and cytological lung adenocarcinoma samples in the present study. Previous screening for EGFR mutation status by molecular testing identified delE746-A750 in 3 cases and the L858R mutation in 7 cases; the other cases did not have the L858R or the delE746-A750 mutation. Using a four-grade scoring system (score 0 to 3+), the immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunocytochemistry (ICC) results were compared with those of molecular testing. Using a score of ≥2 as positive, IHC and ICC using SP111 demonstrated sensitivities of 100 and 33.3%, and specificities of 100 and 100%, respectively. IHC and ICC using SP125 revealed sensitivities of 100 and 71.4%, and specificities of 100 and 100%, respectively. Therefore, screening for EGFR mutations by ICC may facilitate therapeutic decision-making, particularly in medical centers that are unable to perform molecular testing.