Social Media is playing an important role in project work. Social Media Tools enable communication to and with stakeholders and support dissemination, thus adding to the sustainability of the ...project's results. The presented study was conducted with the aim to analyze the personal social media preferences and opinions, as well as social media features and their usage within projects. With a sample size of 137 answers from across Europe, all the respondents were employed people who are actively involved and participating in EU projects. The survey questionnaire had two parts: Part 1. Social media preferences and opinions. Part 2. Social media usage for project purposes. The results indicate the importance of social media for project related work and communication. The analysis shows gender differences when using Facebook for project work, but no gender differences were found when using other social media. In addition, we found statistically significant differences of social media usage and opinion in relation to the employment sector of the respondents.
The 3Rs concept, calling for replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experimentation, is receiving increasing attention around the world, and has found its way to legislation, in particular ...in the European Union. This is aligned by continuing high-level efforts of the European Commission to support development and implementation of 3Rs methods. In this respect, the European project called “ONTOX: ontology-driven and artificial intelligence-based repeated dose toxicity testing of chemicals for next generation risk assessment” was recently initiated with the goal to provide a functional and sustainable solution for advancing human risk assessment of chemicals without the use of animals in line with the principles of 21st century toxicity testing and next generation risk assessment. ONTOX will deliver a generic strategy to create new approach methodologies (NAMs) in order to predict systemic repeated dose toxicity effects that, upon combination with tailored exposure assessment, will enable human risk assessment. For proof-of-concept purposes, focus is put on NAMs addressing adversities in the liver, kidneys and developing brain induced by a variety of chemicals. The NAMs each consist of a computational system based on artificial intelligence and are fed by biological, toxicological, chemical and kinetic data. Data are consecutively integrated in physiological maps, quantitative adverse outcome pathway networks and ontology frameworks. Supported by artificial intelligence, data gaps are identified and are filled by targeted in vitro and in silico testing. ONTOX is anticipated to have a deep and long-lasting impact at many levels, in particular by consolidating Europe’s world-leading position regarding the development, exploitation, regulation and application of animal-free methods for human risk assessment of chemicals.
Teachers' wellbeing plays a critical role in their overall job satisfaction, motivation, and effectiveness in building supporting learning environments. In today's dynamic educational settings, where ...teachers often face numerous challenges and stressors, their wellbeing becomes increasingly vital. Consequently, there is an urgent need to innovate and develop targeted training interventions that can support specifically the wellbeing of educators.
This study sought to provide an overview of the "Online Wellbeing Course - OWC," a serious game developed to enhance teachers' wellbeing, and to investigate the participants' feedback after being engaged in the OWC, utilizing a qualitative approach through focus group discussions. A total of 189 in-service teachers took part in the study. To qualitatively explore their experiences with the OWC, participants were involved in focus groups and asked to provide feedback about how and to what extent the course was beneficial for their wellbeing.
Teachers reported enhancements in areas such as emotional competence, self-care strategies, social awareness, relationship skills, decision-making, and school climate.
These outcomes suggested the potential of serious games as an innovative training approach for supporting teachers' wellbeing, offering valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and educators.
There are already many writings on how much the Covid19 pandemic has affected relationships and interpersonal communication. School has been one of the main players in this problematic and painful ...context, leaving many doubts about the quality of learning and relationships, increasingly conditioned by technological and virtual tools. There is already a lot of literature on this issue, but there remains the essential task of continuing to reflect on the future of our school which is struggling to find credibility, especially from a social and educational point of view. Is the school able, today, to respond to the new frailties that have arisen in the phases of the "non-dialogue" imposed by medical isolation? Are there margins for recovery to restore the etymological and narrative centrality of the word linked to emotions and dialogue? Does addressing issues such as "Educational care", "solidarity", "welcome", "mutual knowledge" still have a constructive and phenomenological value for the school and the many activities that should develop within it? Many educational projects have moved in this direction: experimenting with new techniques and practices of inclusion and interpersonal relationships, to rediscover the value of closeness and mutual knowledge. The Erasmus KA2 WIN (Writing for Inclusion) project is about to end, after a two-year course, characterized by the virtual teaching imposed by the pandemic and the primary schools involved, students and teachers, have experimented with digital storytelling as a tool for establishing relationships "a distance" and reflect on the quality of learning. This article reconstructs and attempts a qualitative assessment of two years of "virtual" writings dedicated to school inclusion, conducted by 4 European primary schools, to highlight the lights and shadows of an experiment conducted exclusively at a distance. Keywords. school - distance learning - educational relationship - educational care - European project
The consortium of the European project 16NRM05 designed a novel ionisation vacuum gauge in which the electrons take a straight path from the emitting cathode through the ionisation space into a ...Faraday cup. Compared to existing ionisation vacuum gauges, this has the advantage that the electron path length is well defined. It is independent of the point and angle of emission and is not affected by space charge around the collector. In addition, the electrons do not hit the anode where they can be reflected, generate secondary electrons or cause desorption of neutrals or ions. This design was chosen in order to develop a more stable ionisation vacuum gauge suitable as reference standard in the range of 10−6 Pa to 10−2 Pa for calibration purposes of other vacuum gauges and quadrupole mass spectrometers. Prototype gauges were produced by two different manufacturers and showed predictable sensitivities with a very small spread (<1.5%), very good short-term repeatability (<0.05%) and reproducibility (<1%), even after changing the emission cathode and drop-down tests. These characteristics make the gauge also attractive for industrial applications, because a gauge exchange does not require calibration or re-adjustment of a process.
•A novel ionisation vacuum gauge with well defined electron path length was designed.•The gauge has a predictable sensitivity.•The gauge shows a very high reproducibility and is very robust.
This article takes the form of a feedback on the setting up of European research projects, unfolding the sequences between objectives, constraints and decision-making for two concrete cases. It shows ...how the actors of these projects – scholars and engineers – try to elaborate a scientific, documentary, technological and ethical answer to the requirements of the European Commission in terms of research data management, at a time when these requirements do not correspond to professions and practices integrated into the research structures, nor to routines or needs identified among the research teams. It advocates the joint consideration between researchers and engineers of the ethical issues related to data management as soon as projects are set up.
Few studies have approached children's behaviour during flood disasters, and none of them were in Italy. In this study we performed an analysis of flood‐risk perception in children aged between six ...and 14 years in three Italian regions characterised by diverse typologies of flood phenomena. To perform such an analysis, we collected data using a fictional story which, through identification with the protagonist, allowed for reliable and spontaneous answers from the young respondents. The studied communities were the pilot areas of the European research project LIFE PRIMES, “Preventing flooding RIsks by Making resilient communitiES.” The findings highlighted various expressed behaviours, with some differences between areas. The most unsafe expressed behaviour was “running outside.” Such a reaction becomes proportionally less important from younger to older respondents. The safest expressed behaviour was “reaching a high place,” which appears later in children and becomes more important from younger to older respondents. Not all communities demonstrated a good correlation between those two behaviours and age groups. The analysis suggests the need to implement educational and training activities specifically focused on children's needs during flood emergencies and that take into account the different geographical conditions in which children live.
By using a fictional story simulating a flood emergency, this research analysed the flood‐risk perception of children aged between six and 14 years in nine geographical areas. Findings show that younger children thought the best response was escape or hiding, while older children used more sophisticated reasoning by linking their personal experience with territorial specificities and key characteristics of the flood phenomenon. Such results underline the importance of educational activities specifically designed for flood emergency in the different geographical settings in which children live.
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