Search

In a study conducted across an urban school district, we tested a classroom-based intervention in which students were taught online evaluation strategies drawn from research with professional fact checkers. Students practiced the heuristic of "lateral reading": leaving an unfamiliar website to search the open Web before investing attention in the site at hand. Professional development was provided to high school teachers who then implemented six 50-minute lessons in a district-mandated government course. Using a matched control design, students in treatment classrooms (n = 271) were compared to peers (n = 228) in regular classrooms. A multilevel linear mixed model showed that students in experimental classrooms grew significantly in their ability to judge the credibility of digital content. These findings inform efforts to prepare young people to make wise decisions about the information that darts across their screens.

Calculus is traditionally tested, at least in part, by a closed book written examination taken under secure conditions. In March 2020, two-thirds of the way through a vector calculus course, our institution went into lockdown and all teaching and assessment had to shift online. While some teachers insisted that remotely written non-proctored examinations remain closed book, we accepted that this would result in inequity, with some students certainly choosing to flout that rule should it be imposed, to their advantage over their classmates. Driven by circumstance, we were forced to design a vector calculus examination that would be written open book and 'open internet' with access to online calculators and computer graphing packages. Proficiency at vector calculus is exhibited far more in the interpretation of information and effective decision-making than in the computational solving of integrals. In this article, we shall present and discuss our experiences, address the challenge of non-proctored examinations and argue for the merit of open book examinations in an otherwise standard vector calculus course.

The article focuses on latent meanings and semantic nuances in patriotic blogs on the open Zen Internet platform; first, the motivating incentives to enter into communication and, secondly, the verbally manifested emotions and emotional states of the authors of comments and responses to them were revealed. The research task was to obtain data that allows understanding and forecasting trends and the vector of development of socially significant processes that are influenced (may be influenced) by communication interactions in the blogs selected for study. A set of complementary methods was used: motive-target analysis and content analysis. The dominant incentive for the authors of the analyzed blogs to enter into communication was the desire to anal yze in detail the factual and moral aspects of the events and problems covered and to give a personal forecast taking into account the interests of the country. The dominant incentive of the authors of the response comments turned out to be the desire to get an assessment of the problems that concern them, to report their point of view and, most importantly, to get hope for a favorable outcome. A typical latent semantic feature for all participants of communication, which allows positive forecasts and optimism, is confidence in the effectiveness of moral principles, following which will lead to the desired result. The content analysis data recorded a high level of optimism, gaining confidence and relieving anxiety among the authors of comments and responses to them. The complex of the data obtained allows us to conclude that the analyzed blogs have a high potential in optimizing the processes of social adaptation both among the direct participants of communication and within the socio-cultural group that they conventionally represent. The data obtained can be used in making operational managerial, political, socio-cultural and other decisions.

Purpose: to analyze social media messages of patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR), or their careers in order to investigates the patients’ opinion in the condition of real clinical routine. Material and methods. Real-life anonymized stories of patients from Russian-language open Internet sources (forums, social networks in Russia) were processed by artificial intelligence techniques: the technologies of automated analysis of unstructured natural language texts, including semantic technologies. In these messages, patients and their careers (mainly, family members) openly and in an ‘uncensored’ way share their experience in diagnostics and treatment while looking for a second opinion or supporting each other. They use general social networks as well as specific disease-related forums or Q&A portals. We identified 73 098 DR/nAMD-related posts, including 13 138 posts by 844 DR patients and 358 posts by 212 nAMD patients. The posts were analyzed in several steps with the technologies of automated analysis of unstructured natural language texts including semantic technologies aimed at processing large volumes of data. The semantic analysis of texts dealt with the whole meaning rather than individual keywords. Results. We obtained information on the patients’ characteristics and treatment plans of retinal diseases in real practice but also on the patients’ attitude to their condition, diagnostic and curative procedures, their needs and difficulties experienced during treatment. The nAMD and DR patients have a low level of Internet activity and poor awareness of these diseases as compared with the patients suffering from non-ophthalmological diseases with lower prevalence (breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, etc.) or other ophthalmological disorders. Most of the content for DR was produced by the patients’ relatives (82.6 % of messages), and for nAMD — by the patients themselves (65 %). The key item for DR patients was diabetic microvascular manifestations (over 42 000 posts discussed ‘diabetic foot’ and only 681 ‘diabetic retinopathy’). Quality of life (QoL) was shown to be significantly affected with inability to work as a major burden for 30 % of nAMD patients, and diabetes-associated comorbidities as a key factor compromising QoL in 20 % of DR patients. In nAMD patients, the average time-to-diagnosis after disease manifestation was 1 year (35 % patients reported 1–2 months), in DR, over a half of the messages mentioned 1–2 years. The key reasons for visiting the clinics included in-depth eye exams (OCT mentioned by 59 % of nAMD patients) and treatment (24.1 %). Only 33.2 % of nAMD patients and 7 % of DR patients noted that they received anti-VEGFs. Treatment unaffordability is one of the key barriers. The patients lack clear understanding of the prognosis and effective treatment options. Conclusion. The study revealed low activity and awareness of nAMD and DR patients with regard to their diseases. This justifies the need of increasing computer literacy and awareness of effective treatment options and efficacy criteria not only in patients, but also in their younger relatives. The results confirm that, among the studied group of retinal patients, vision-related quality of life is compromised. We need to change at least several aspects of nAMD and DR patients’ management: reducing the time to diagnosis, prescribing effective treatment options and increasing the availability of these options.

The possibility of direct communication between a huge number of non-public people on the open Internet platform, coupled with the ability to observe this process, which is being implemented by even more people, is the catalyst for the emergence of virtual socio-cultural worlds – conditional groups that are united by a single meaning and value field. Motive-target analysis of comments and feedback on comments on the open Internet platform “Zen” showed that one of the key semantic messages, which encourages a huge number of our compatriots to respond on the Internet and thus the manifestation of the most significant, essential points of their worldview, is the leitmotif of the importance of moral values and the requirements of their conformity at all levels of social and personal life. The mass participation of our compatriots in communication interactions on open Internet platforms is a variant of civic participation in its new, modern form, in which optimal conditions for self-determination, social adaptation and socialization arise. The key to the social significance of the meanings “living” here are the key supports for a person and society associated with traditional moral values, ideas and traditions. Control by state regulatory structures over the criteria for assessing blogs that analyze socio-political events and problems seems appropriate and socially significant. The reasons for their closure (“banning”) should be understandable, reasonable and transparent for all participants in communication interactions.

Active control of photosynthetic activities is important in plant physiological study. Although models of plant photosynthesis have been built at different scales, they have not been fully examined for their application in plant growth control. However, we do not have an infrastructure to support such experiments since current plant growth chambers usually use fixed control protocols. In our current paper, an open IoT-based framework is proposed. This framework allows a plant scientist or agricultural engineer, through an application programming interface (API), in a desirable programming language, (1) to gather environmental data and plant physiological responses; (2) to program and execute control algorithms based on their models, and then (3) to implement real-time commands to control environmental factors. A plant growth chamber was developed to demonstrate the concept of the proposed open framework.

In today’s digital era, the demand for uninterrupted and efficient data streaming is paramount across various sectors, from entertainment to industrial automation. While the traditional single-path solutions often fell short in ensuring rapid and consistent data transfers, Multipath TCP (MPTCP) emerges as a promising alternative, enabling simultaneous data transfer across multiple network paths. The efficacy of MPTCP, however, hinges on the choice of appropriate congestion control (CC) algorithms. Addressing the present knowledge gap, this research provides a thorough evaluation of key MPTCP CC algorithms in the context of streaming applications in open Internet environments. Our findings reveal that BALIA stands out as the most suitable choice for MPTCP streaming, adeptly balancing waiting time, throughput, and Head-of-Line blocking reduction. Conversely, the wVegas algorithm, with its delay-centric approach, proves less adequate for multipath streaming. This study underscores the imperative to fine-tune MPTCP for streaming applications, at the same time offering insights for future development areas and innovations.