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Distance Tutoring in Chemistry Education : A Qualitative Study of the Usability of Head-Mounted-Displays
No full textThis qualitative study examines the potential of head-mounted displays (HMDs) for providing remote support in a university setting. It focuses on whether immersive technologies, such as HMDs with augmented reality (AR), could be a useful addition to or alternative to traditional remote support formats, particularly for practical, action-oriented activities, such as laboratory work. Three case studies in which students were supervised as part of their final theses or examinations were conducted to document and evaluate user experiences, challenges, and potential. Following initial skepticism regarding the technology, particularly regarding technical aspects, the participants’ attitude turned largely positive with increased use. HMDs proved particularly helpful in laboratory environments, enabling intuitive, present, and context-sensitive support. Key advantages included real-time communication, visual participation from a first-person perspective, support through digital additions to the field of view using AR, and hands-free operation. At the same time, it was demonstrated that the technology is particularly effective in small settings. These results suggest new perspectives for the use of immersive technologies in digital university teaching, particularly for remote supervision of practical activities.publishe
Mapping patterns of trust in science and scientists
No full textPublic trust in science and in scientists is often conflated, yet these are distinct concepts shaped by different factors. This review synthesizes recent scholarship to highlight three insights. First, separating trust in science (confidence in scientific claims) from trust in scientists (judgments of credibility and motives) can help resolve persistent inconsistencies across disciplines. Second, sociocultural and political environments exert stronger influences on trust than commonly acknowledged, explaining cross-national variation. Third, science is not monolithic: trust levels differ across domains and issues, partly due to politicization. The review identifies important gaps, including the need for multi-dimensional measures, globally comparative research, and strategies to convey uncertainty without eroding credibility. Addressing these challenges can help advance both theory and practice.publishe
Remote collaboration in virtual reality induces physiological synchrony comparable to face-to-face interaction
No full textPhysiological synchrony refers to the temporal alignment of bodily signals, such as heart rate variability, between two or more individuals during social interaction. It reflects implicit, often unconscious processes that arise when people share attention, emotions, or behavioral rhythms in close physical proximity. Because these coordinated physiological patterns are linked to social cohesion, rapport, and effective communication, physiological synchrony provides a valuable window into the quality and dynamics of social interaction. Here, we study physiological synchrony during virtual interaction where interaction partners are not physically co-located but remotely connected via technology. This allows us to capture aspects of social connectedness that are not accessible through self-report or behavior alone, making it a powerful tool for understanding how people engage and collaborate across different media. In our study, triads of participants performed a collective creativity task in one of three conditions: face-to-face (F2F) collaboration, remote collaboration using video conferencing (Video), or remote collaboration using immersive Virtual Reality (VR). To quantify social interaction quality, we measured creative group performance, social presence, and heart rate variability synchrony (HRVS) as a marker of social cohesion. As expected, creative group performance and social presence were highest in the F2F condition and significantly reduced in the VR and Video conditions. However, we observed strong HRV synchrony in the VR and F2F conditions and significantly weaker HRV synchrony in the Video condition. Our study supports the idea that VR (unlike video conferencing) supports physiological synchronization processes important for social interactions. Future studies need to identify the underlying physiological and psychological processes.publishe
Examining public support for Ukraine’s defense against autocratic aggression
No full textRussia’s invasion of Ukraine challenges the liberal international order and tests the capacity of Western democracies to maintain long-term military and financial aid for Ukraine in a foreign war. Understanding whether governments’ pledges of resolve are backed by their citizens is crucial for the credibility of these commitments. Here we show, based on survey experiments with 10,011 respondents in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy, that these countries’ publics share a similar pattern of preferences. In all countries, citizens strongly endorse Ukraine’s sovereignty and self-determination while weighing human suffering and conflict escalation risk, but less so economic costs. However, within countries, attitudes are polarized: roughly one quarter of citizens with pro-Western orientations show firm resolve, whereas another quarter with anti-Western views remain largely indifferent to political outcomes for Ukraine. These divisions indicate that democratic party competition could constrain the unity and durability of Western resolve against autocratic aggression.publishe
Exact interior controllability of magnetoelastic plates by means of purely magnetic actuation
No full textWe establish exact interior controllability for a two-dimensional magnetoelastic plate system with control acting solely in the magnetic field equation. The main result shows that exact controllability of the coupled system is achievable in arbitrarily small time , despite the control acting only the magnetic dynamics. This extends the principle of indirect control - previously demonstrated for thermoelastic systems [Avalos-2000] - to the magnetoelastic regime, revealing that steering the mechanical plate displacement through magnetic actuation alone is possible. The analysis employs the operator-theoretic multiplier method adapted to handle vectorial fields with divergence-free constraints and non-self-adjoint coupling. The approach requires several technical components: norm equivalences for divergence-free vector fields, analysis of non-self-adjoint coupling operators, integration by parts identities for \rot\rot systems, and trace regularity results. The proof follows three steps: establishing a trace regularity result for the adjoint system, deriving an energy estimate via the multiplier method, and using a compactness-uniqueness argument to eliminate lower-order terms. This work provides the first controllability result for magnetoelastic systems and extends the indirect control framework from thermoelasticity to this setting. The techniques developed here are applicable to the control-theoretic investigation of magnetically-coupled elastic systems, with potential applications in smart materials, damping devices, and electromagnetic actuators.submitte
Why Are Human Epistemic Agents Not Displaced in Machine Learning Scientific Inquiries? : A Practice Perspective on ML in Science
No full textThis chapter considers machine learning (ML) practices used in science. Because ML practices enjoy increasing degrees of automation at various stages of the process, the question whether human epistemic agents are displaced arises. We first point out that shifting focus from the ML outputs to the practice of designing and using ML models allows one to appreciate the role of different actors in this process, from the human designers and modelers to the algorithms themselves. We illustrate this point with a description of ML-based practices in neuroscience. We then go further with problematizing the role of human epistemic agents in ML and argue that they are not displaced.publishe
Constructively describing orbit spaces of finite groups by few inequalities
No full textLet G be a finite group acting linearly on Rn. A celebrated Theorem of Procesi and Schwarz gives an explicit description of the orbit space Rn//G as a basic closed semi-algebraic set. We give a new proof of this statement and another description as a basic closed semi-algebraic set using elementary tools from real algebraic geometry. Bröcker was able to show that the number of inequalities needed to describe the orbit space generically depends only on the group G. Here, we construct such inequalities explicitly for abelian groups and in the case where only one inequality is needed. Furthermore, we answer an open question raised by Bröcker concerning the genericity of his result.publishe
Rate-Form Equilibrium for an Isotropic Cauchy-Elastic Formulation : Part I: Modeling
No full textpublishe
Trajectory data management : A data model and predicate logic with operators for spatio-temporal query processing
No full textWith recent sensor and tracking technology advances, the volume of available trajectory data is steadily increasing. Consequently, managing and analyzing trajectory data has seen significant interest from the research community. The challenges presented by trajectory data arise from their spatio-temporal nature as well as the uncertainty regarding locations between sampled points. In this paper, we present a formal spatio-temporal predicate logic with configurable strictness parameters and two novel operators: (1) a spatio-temporal selection operator for filtering trajectories, and (2) a spatio-temporal crop operator for extracting relevant sub-trajectories based on spatio-temporal predicates. Furthermore, we integrate a similarity-based join operators for flexible trajectory comparison. Finally, we show that our predicate logic is expressive enough to capture all spatial and temporal relations put forward by previous work.publishe