This study assessed teachers' understanding about the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI) and whether this understanding was reflected in their students' responses. The data were collected through ...the 'Views About Scientific Inquiry' (VASI) questionnaire, a reliable tool for assessing understanding about the NOSI. The sample included science teachers and students of grade X purposively selected from five 'schools affiliated with the local board' (SALB) and five 'schools affiliated with the international board' (SAIB) for external examinations in Pakistan. The responses on the VASI were graded for quality to find the means, frequency count, percentage, and t-test values. The findings revealed no significant difference in teachers' understanding of scientific inquiry (SI) in both school systems. Generally, the teachers had informed views while students held naïve views. The VASI also identified participants' understanding on eight aspects of SI. The SAIB teachers understanding of SI was reflected in their students' responses in some aspects of SI, unlike the SALB teachers. The study recommends incorporating NOSI aspects in teacher education programs and helping science teachers integrate NOSI aspects in their science instruction.
The present study examines the asymmetrical effect of temperature on COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease) from 22 January 2020 to 31 March 2020 in the 10 most affected provinces in China. This study used ...the Sim & Zhou' quantile-on-quantile (QQ) approach to analyze how the temperature quantities affect the different quantiles of COVID-19. Daily COVID-19 and, temperature data collected from the official websites of the Chinese National Health Commission and Weather Underground Company (WUC) respectively. Empirical results have shown that the relationship between temperature and COVID-19 is mostly positive for Hubei, Hunan, and Anhui, while mostly negative for Zhejiang and Shandong provinces. The remaining five provinces Guangdong, Henan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, and Heilongjiang are showing the mixed trends. These differences among the provinces can be explained by the differences in the number of COVID-19 cases, temperature, and the province's overall hospital facilitations. The study concludes that maintaining a safe and comfortable atmosphere for patients while COVID-19 is being treated may be rational.
Display omitted
•Ø This paper examines the interlinkages between temperature and COVID-19 in the top ten coronavirus affected Chinese provinces.•Ø QQ approach of Sim and Zhou is applied to explore some nuanced features of temperature and COVID-19 nexus.•We find mostly positive relationship for Hubei, Hunan and Anhui between temperature and COVID-19.•Zhejiang and Shandong provinces are showing mostly negative impacts between temperature and COVID-19.
With the closure of educational institutions due to COVID-19, the biggest challenge with the universities and the instructors was engaging students in virtual learning. This research aimed at ...supporting university students in Islamabad (Pakistan) for online learning through a collaborative approach. The university started online learning during COVID-19 and had no earlier experience of such mode of learning. The first phase was identifying the problems faced by students during online learning and seeking their suggestions for overcoming them. The next step was working on the students’ opinions with a team of instructors to modify existing instructional practices during online instruction. We measured students’ satisfaction level pre and post-modification to evaluate students’ adoption of online learning. The data for both the phases were collected through a Google Form. The post-modification data revealed students’ greater satisfaction in online learning. The findings offer useful insight related to students’ adoption of online learning and making it a more meaningful, organized, and productive medium for future learning.
•Transfer of cultivated land helps to reduce the intensity of fertilizer and pesticide inputs.•The contribution of cultivated land transfer to the reduction of fertilizer and pesticide input ...intensity is 5.74% and 7.47% respectively.•Reducing fertilizers and pesticides is important to improve the sustainable use of cultivated land.
The ecological protection of cultivated land (EPCL) is of great significance for enhancing its sustainable use and is also a practical material vehicle for maintaining national food security. Using data from a sample of 7,473 rural households from the 2015 China Household Finance Survey, this paper applies an endogenous switching regression model and Fields decomposition method to assess the impact of cultivated land transfer (CLT) on EPCL (i.e., fertilizer and pesticide input intensity, abbreviations is FPII). The empirical results show that farmers' participation in CLT can significantly reduce FPII. When it is assumed that households not participating in CLT participate in CLT, their FPII would be reduced by 52.39% and 17.56% respectively. The study further confirms that CLT has a positive effect on EPCL, contributing 5.74% and 7.47% to the reduction of FPII, respectively. In addition, agricultural subsidies, cultivated land titling, the size of cultivated land, the use of large-scale machinery, pollution of cultivated land, and farm income all positively affect farming households’ participation in CLT. Therefore, based on CLT, promoting large-scale and mechanized cultivated land management and deepening EPCL with the goal of reducing fertilizer and pesticide use are important approaches for enhancing the sustainable use of cultivated land.
Purpose
COVID-19 generated extensive fear and anxiety across the globe. This study aims to explore the psychological dynamics of students during COVID-19 lockdown, its impact and students’ management ...strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper collected data from 891 students in Islamabad (Pakistan) using an online survey consisting of the generalized anxiety disorder scale and items on academic variables. After measuring the anxiety levels, this paper interviewed 20 students diagnosed with severe anxiety. The objective was to seek a deeper understanding of the impact of COVID-19 and students’ management.
Findings
This paper found students with different anxiety levels. Most students had no anxiety; however, 8.2% of students had severe anxiety. These students reported psychological, social and physical problems during the interview. The students shared their activities and avoidance behavior to manage their anxiety levels.
Originality/value
The study helped in understanding the psychological dynamics during the pandemic and students’ management strategies. Some students express their inability to cope with their problems. This paper recommends the intervention of clinical practitioners, policymakers and researchers to work for the mental health of such students.
China is performing a dominant role in the world’s economic growth, but it has mainly been the commencement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that has significantly increased its importance ...around the world. Recently, the emergence of the tourism industry has been considered as an alternative for sustainable economic and ecological development, which is ironic. Although China is promoting tourism in various regions under “The New Normal” phase, it needs to proactively address the challenges of dismantling, for the environment. The fundamental objective of the current study is to determine the long-term affiliation between tourism development, economic progress, transportation, energy consumption, value added hotel catering services, and environmental degradation (CO2) for a panel of thirty (30) provinces of China over the period of 1995–2017. Primarily, we applied the CD test for investigating cross dependence; subsequently, conventional and CD based panel unit root tests (CIPS) were carried out to deal with the puzzle of the stationarity of the panel series. The results of the dynamics panel, DOLS, FMOLS, and PMG, indicated that transportation, energy consumption, and value added hotel and catering services have a strong positive association with carbon emission, but tourism development has mixed links with ecological degradation. Additionally, the causative based test revealed the bidirectional association of tourism development, transportation, economic progress, and energy consumption with environmental quality. The retrieved estimates conferred a few guidelines, concerning the presence of BRI projects, for the Chinese administration at the provincial and national level: initiating the renewable based energy projects and possibly wishing to decrease the use of fossil fuel based energy in the industry, transportation, and hotels and catering sectors. Furthermore, the prevalence of green investment in provinces may motivate economic progress and tourism development, without worsening the atmosphere.
This research aimed at improving sexual education in a society where it is held as a taboo. The study explored parents’ and teachers’ views and practices related to sex education. Thirty individual ...interviews were conducted among twenty parents and ten teachers using a convenient sampling approach. We developed the “Views & Practices in Sex Education” (VPSE) questionnaire to collect data that were thematically analyzed. Most parents and teachers had inadequate knowledge of sex education and viewed it as touch forms, taking a ritual bath, and hijab/veiling. The parents unlike teachers opposed sex education at schools. The participants were more concerned about the risks than the benefits of sexual education. We recommend a gradual societal change through mobilizing social and electronic media, religious scholars, counseling psychologists, educators, and government authorities.
•We analysed the influencing factors of urban eco-efficiency in Western China.•The US-SBM model and spatial econometric models were used for 84 cities’ data.•Urban eco-efficiency showed a fluctuating ...upward trend during 2004–2017.•Economic development and urbanization had U-shaped impact on urban eco-efficiency.•Four explanatory variables showed a positive impact on urban eco-efficiency.
Improving eco-efficiency can promote sustainable development. This study first evaluated the urban eco-efficiency of 84 cities in Western China from 2004 to 2017 by the undesirable-super-slack-based measure (US-SBM) and analysed their spatiotemporal characteristics, and then investigated its influencing factors using spatial econometric models. The results indicated that the urban eco-efficiency in Western China was at a relatively low level and showed a fluctuating upward trend with the highest average value of 0.65; however, capital cities of Western China have improved their eco-efficiency rapidly. Furthermore, there were obvious spatial spill-over impacts of the urban eco-efficiency in Western China. This paper also found that both the economic development level and urbanization level have “U” shaped impacts on Western China’s urban eco-efficiency, which decreases at first and then rises. Similarly, increasing the proportion of secondary industry promotes urban eco-efficiency, and FDI, trade activities, improved environmental regulations as well as technological innovation capabilities have a positive impact on urban eco-efficiency in Western China. This paper also put forward corresponding policy suggestions to promote Western China’s urban eco-efficiency. The present study may be helpful for policy-makers to balance economic development and environmental protection in Western China.
Kung-Traub conjecture states that an iterative method without memory for finding the simple zero of a scalar equation could achieve convergence order 2 d − 1 , and d is the total number of function ...evaluations. In an article “Babajee, D.K.R. On the Kung-Traub Conjecture for Iterative Methods for Solving Quadratic Equations, Algorithms 2016, 9, 1, doi:10.3390/a9010001”, the author has shown that Kung-Traub conjecture is not valid for the quadratic equation and proposed an iterative method for the scalar and vector quadratic equations. In this comment, we have shown that we first reported the aforementioned iterative method.
Energy acts as a catalyst to boost the human development index (HDI) in a country. However, the overuse of energy leads to environmental deterioration, which is a byproduct of economic development. ...Due to the utilization of non-renewable energy sources for a long time, worldwide environmental conditions have become alarming. This study investigates the relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth, environmental sustainability, and the human development index (HDI) in Pakistan. The investigation incorporates population growth and technology variables to form a multivariate framework. We use a fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) approach to time-series data from 1990–2017. To check the robustness of estimations, we apply the Gregory–Hansen test with a causality test under the VECM to confirm this association’s directions. Our findings confirm that non-renewable energy sources have a positive association with economic growth and CO2 emissions. However, human development, technology, and renewable energy boost economic development and reduce environmental pollution in Pakistan. The co-integration results confirmed the long run connectivity among all variables. The causality outcomes support the bidirectional causality between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth, and CO2 emissions, both in the short and long run. These outcomes suggest that Pakistan should focus on energy shifts and gradually increase the share of renewables in its energy mix under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Additionally, the government should increase human and technological development to enhance economic and environmental sustainability.
PDF
