Open Access Books

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), posing a new challenge to the medical care of solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients. Due to the relatively small number of studies in SOT recipients suffering from COVID-19, the natural course of the SARS-CoV-2 infection, optimal treatment strategies including modification of immunosuppressive therapy and the prognosis in COVID-19 in these patients is incompletely understood. The current Special Issue aimed to fill some of the knowledge gaps and highlight some recent advances in the management of SOT patients during the pandemic. The call for manuscripts had been addressed to healthcare professionals involved in SOT patient care. We welcomed comprehensive reviews, original studies, interesting case series or case reports and commentaries relating to this topic.

With reference to the 14th and 15th centuries, the essay analyses the specific characteristics of the rural lordships of the Val di Non and Val di Sole, territories of the Episcopal principality of Trento, particularly subject to Tyrolean influence.

The expansion of all-day schools should lead, among other things, to a changed teaching and learning culture that promotes motivational-affective competencies in students. But even after 20 years, all-day elementary schools do not seem to fulfill this. Scientific quality criteria are too rarely implemented in elementary schools. The aim of this dissertation was to investigate the effect of an (interlocked) extracurricular science program on elementary school students regarding their motivational-affective characteristics. For this purpose, an (interlocked) offer was implemented in the intervention study, whereby this was linked to physical education in half of the schools. The analysis of the questionnaires of 236 pupils showed that participation in a science offer can be profitable, but that the interlocking is not as highly effective as expected. The study suggests changing the intra-school structure and revising the understanding of interlocking.

This open access book offers a comprehensive overview of available techniques and approaches to explore large social media corpora, using as an illustrative case study the Coronavirus Twitter corpus. First, the author describes in detail a number of methods, strategies, and tools that can be used to access, manage, and explore large Twitter/X corpora, including both user-friendly applications and more advanced methods that involve the use of data management skills and custom programming scripts. He goes on to show how these tools and methods are applied to explore one of the largest Twitter datasets on the COVID-19 pandemic publicly released, covering the two years when the pandemic had the strongest impact on society. Specifically, keyword extraction, topic modelling, sentiment analysis, and hashtag analysis methods are described, contrasted, and applied to extract information from the Coronavirus Twitter Corpus. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in fields that make use of big data to address societal and linguistic concerns, including corpus linguistics, sociology, psychology, and economics.

If we want a socially and environmentally just future, do we need a radical new theory of change – or to radically change theory? It’s this question Gary Hall and his collaborators have been addressing for over twenty years with experimental publishing projects such as Open Humanities Press, Liquid and Living Books, and the Culture-Led Re-Commoning of Cities. Unsettling received ideas of the author and the book, originality and copyright, real and artificial intelligence, these uncommon communities of theorist-mediums are testing the ‘non-modernist-liberal’ modes of creating and sharing knowledge enabled by various media technologies, from writing and print, through photography and video, to computers and GenAI. By thinking outside the masked black box that renders Euro-Western knowledge-making practices invisible – keeping the human ontologically separate from the nonhuman, be it animals, the planet or algorithmic machines – they show there’s no such thing as the human, the nonhuman already being in(the)human.

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact

Open Networked Learning is an open online professional development course for educators in higher education who wish to investigate and discuss the design and teaching of collaborative online courses. The course is organised in a unique partnership between 14 institutions in six countries and is both an institutional professional development course and an arena for virtual exchange between educators from different cultures, institutions and disciplines. This chapter describes how the course successfully implements problem-based learning in facilitated groups in an online environment. The course employs a multi-layered approach to openness and allows learners to participate on three levels: as part of the course community, within the problem-based learning group and with individual reflection in a learning blog. This chapter examines the opportunities and challenges that have arisen and points to possible solutions.

Renewable energy is the answer for future energy demand. Renewable energy is the energy that occurs in a natural manner and utilizes unlimited resources. It is the solution for reducing the dependence on fossil fuels and diminishing greenhouse gas emission. It is the key for cleaner, greener, and sustainable energy. In today's world, increased energy needs and environmental and health concerns associated with traditional energy systems have made way for rapid progress in producing energy from renewable resources. However, large-scale integration of current technologies and newer approaches are still required for more efficient and cost-effective systems. This small book is a collection of single research chapters dealing with biofuel generation and some recent methods for grid integration and storage problems. The editors would like to record their sincere thanks to the authors for their contributions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods for education have been a topic of AI research since many decades with focus on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). ITS typically address a specific knowledge domain with a focus on individual learning support based on learning by problem solving, identification of misconceptions, and tailored feedback. Methods often are a combination of knowledge-based and machine learning approaches. Since the emergence of technologies based on Large Language Models (LLMs), the use of LLMs in educational contexts has received much attention, resulting in novel approaches. The Second Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Artificial Intelligence Education (AI4AILearning) has been held on September 24, 2024, in conjunction with the 47th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Würzburg, Germany. The workshop has a focus on research of AI methods for teaching AI competencies including programming skills. It provides a platform for exchange of ideas and experiences under the general theme of AI for education, specialising on university education in AI. The workshop includes interdisciplinary contributions from cognitive science and education technology.

Die hier durchgeführte Querschnittsstudie evaluiert erstmalig, ob Schulen sich erfolgreich eigenständig – wie bildungspolitisch gefordert –, in sogenannte «problemlösende» Organisationseinheiten transformieren können, um ihren Unterricht im Rahmen der Schulentwicklung kontinuierlich weiterzuentwickeln. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie stellen hierbei vor allem die Nachhaltigkeit von Schulentwicklung in Frage, da weder die Lehrpersonen noch Schulleitungsmitglieder an den evaluierten Berufsfachschulen der Meinung waren, dass Schulentwicklung den Unterricht und die beruflichen Fähigkeiten der Einzellehrperson überhaupt beeinflusst. Begründet liegt dieses Ergebnis u.a. in der von den Schulen vorgenommenen Implementierungsstrategie. So wird das Lehrerkollegium allgemein zu wenig in Entscheidungsprozesse involviert und beispielsweise nur unzureichend über den Zielerreichungsgrad und Maßnahmen abgeschlossener Schulentwicklungsprojekte informiert.

Die Publikation untersucht die Spracheinstellungen gegenüber Dialekt- und Standardsprechenden im österreichischen Schulkontext. Ausgangspunkt der Untersuchung ist die ausgeprägte Dialektlandschaft im bairischsprachigen Teil Österreichs. Dort spricht der Großteil der Bevölkerung im Alltag einen Dialekt oder eine Umgangssprache. Die Einstellung zu den verschiedenen Sprachvarietäten ist jedoch ambivalent - auch unter Lehrkräften. Im Rahmen des Projekts "Sprachliche Vielfalt verstehen, wertschätzen und ausbauen" wurden Materialien für den Deutschunterricht entwickelt und deren Wirkung in sechs Partnerschulen getestet. Eine Untersuchung der Spracheinstellungen zeigte etwa geschlechtsspezifische sowie regionale Unterschiede in der Wahrnehmung von Dialekt- und Standardsprechenden. Die Intervention führte zu einer signifikanten Verbesserung der Kompetenzeinschätzungen von Dialektsprechenden. Ziel der Publikation ist es, Sprachvariation als wesentlichen Gegenstand des Deutschunterrichts zu betrachten und Möglichkeiten der bewussten Bearbeitung aufzuzeigen.

This book is inspired by, and dedicated to, Jill Rubery. Jill is a major figure in international debates on inequalities in work and employment. Her intellectual contributions are renowned for both their critical questioning of mainstream theoretical approaches, whether in economics, management, industrial relations or comparative systems, and their attention to real-world empirical detail. Jill’s intellectual roots are with the influential Cambridge economics group researching labour market segmentation in the late 1970s and 1980s during a period when Keynesian economic thought was being eclipsed by neoclassical economics modelling. The research was inter-disciplinary, grounded in data (mostly involving case studies of firms) and driven by an ambitious intellectual agenda that developed theory while also illuminating practical matters of relevance to policy-makers and practitioners.

Une dynamique nouvelle des mobilités et des reconversions professionnelles est aujourd’hui à l’œuvre. Les besoins du marché du travail, notamment sous l’effet des transitions écologique et numérique, en sont le premier moteur. Les aspirations des salariés - à de meilleures conditions d’emploi et de travail, à un équilibre plus harmonieux vie professionnelle/vie personnelle ou à davantage de sens du travail - en constituent le second. Mais comment se concrétisent ces mobilités et ces reconversions ? La réalité des choix qui s’offrent aux salariés répond-elle à leurs aspirations ? Quel rôle jouent les pratiques de recrutement et de gestion des entreprises ? Quel soutien apporte la politique publique ? L’ouvrage avance un ensemble de données issues des grandes enquêtes du Céreq et en propose des analyses. Il identifie les inégalités d’opportunité et de destin sur un marché du travail en pleine transformation.