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Assessing gender bias in the software used in computer science and software engineering education
No full textWomen are underrepresented in Computer Science (CS)/ Software Engineering (SE) and other technology related degrees. As undergraduates, they are also less likely to persist with CS/SE studies than men enrolled in those same courses. Gender correlated differences in personal characteristics, behaviour, and preferences mean that course design decisions may introduce unintended bias. To address this issue, we drew inspiration from the GenderMag method. GenderMag uses personas with evidence-based gender differences in problem-solving traits to detect usability issues in software. In this paper we investigate the personal qualities of CS and SE students, and how these influence their CS/SE learning journey. A series of persona development workshops were held to gather an extensive and unique qualitative dataset capturing the prior experiences, preferences, learning styles, motivations, goals, frustrations, and constraints of CS/SE students. Gender differences were used to construct preliminary male and female student personas. These personas were used in cognitive walkthroughs of software applications commonly used in education, and their performance compared to GenderMag's Tim and Abi. While the student personas were less effective and lacked specificity compared to Abi, they were able to identify issues not detectable with GenderMag. Furthermore, the findings show the utility of persona development workshops as a data collection method and introduce a comprehensive list of CS/SE student qualities that may inspire future investigations.</p
Is accounting the English language of business? The role of language in IFRS adoption and information loss
No full textWe examine whether and how language barriers influence a country’s decision to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Our findings reveal that as the distance between a country’s official language and English (i.e., linguistic distance) increases, the likelihood and speed of a country adopting IFRS decrease. Our evidence is consistent with the notion that language barriers impose significant information costs on preparers and users of financial reporting, making IFRS costlier to adopt for countries with severe language barriers. In further analysis, we find that such information costs materialize when these countries eventually adopt IFRS. Specifically, firms in countries with the most severe language barriers experience a worsened post-adoption information environment, as evidenced by increased analyst forecast errors and widened bid-ask spreads. Overall our study suggests that language barriers impede achievement of international accounting harmonization by increasing the costs associated with adopting, understanding, and applying IFRS.</p
Canadian educators' post-pandemic recovery and students’ unmet needs:who is left behind?
No full textWe investigated post-pandemic recovery in education sector employees by role in 2024. The frameworks of the job demands-resources model and ecological systems theory were employed. Canadian educators (N = 243) completed surveys exploring their mental health (well-being, resilience, recovery), intention to leave their jobs, and their perceptions of students' current and post-pandemic needs. Quantitative findings revealed educators who intended to leave their jobs had poorer levels of mental health. Also, they were not meeting their students’ needs adequately. The qualitative data showed that students with complex needs were disproportionally under-served. Theoretical, practical, and policy implications on equitable education are discussed.</p
Life in transit:the work of hyper-mobile gamete couriers in vital mobility infrastructures
No full textReproductive couriers are critical actors within ‘vital mobility infrastructures’ essential to the movement of ‘precious’ gametes that makes assisted reproduction across different places and times possible. Reasons for transporting gametes are varied and range from movements between clinics when patients change clinics through to complex choreographies internationally to bring sperm, oocytes or embryos together for third party assisted reproduction such as in surrogacy. We draw upon interviews with 15 hyper-mobile couriers and courier company managers as well as gamete donor coordinators. Our aim in this paper is to examine the largely invisible ‘mobile work’ undertaken by couriers in shipping gametes and embryos across the world. We examine the dimensions of these vital mobility infrastructures—technologies; companies; regulations; and social dispositions of courier work as part of the complex supply chains of assisted reproductive cycles. External factors and circumstances such as the war in Ukraine or the COVID pandemic may cause disruptions in supply chains which prevent the movement and transfer of the biomaterials. We extend the concept of vital mobilities by drawing attention to the critical infrastructures they depend upon.</p
Visceral afferent training in action:the origins of agency in early cognitive development
No full textThe foetal period constitutes a critical stage in the construction and organisation of the mammalian nervous system. In recent work, we have proposed that foetal brain development is structured by bottom-up (interoceptive) inputs from spontaneous physiological rhythms such as the heartbeat (Corcoran et al., 2023). Here, we expand this 'visceral afferent training' hypothesis to incorporate the development of top-down (allostatic) control over bodily states. We conceptualise the emergence of cardiac regulation as an early instance of sensorimotor contingency learning that scaffolds the development of agentic control. We further propose that the brain's capacity to actively modify and regulate the afferent feedback it receives through interoceptive channels – and to parse these signals into their self-generated (reafferent) and externally-generated (exafferent) components – is crucial for grounding the distinction between self and other. Finally, we explore how individual differences in the ways these training regimes are implemented (or disrupted) might impact developmental trajectories in gestation and infancy, potentiating neurobehavioural diversity and disease risk in later life.</p
Balancing landscape values and tourism choices:integrating participatory mapping and the IPBES Values Typology
No full textThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Biosphere Reserves aim to balance nature and human coexistence, but increasing tourism challenges landscape management. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) stresses the importance of understanding stakeholder values for effective management of natural spaces through a typology of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values. This study applies this IPBES typology to tourism preferences in the Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve (ABR) using Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS). A 2022 survey gathered data from 690 locals, recreationists, and tourists revealing intrinsic values as the most significant. Locals prioritized intrinsic and relational values, while recreationists and tourists emphasized relational and instrumental values. The study highlights a preference for small-scale tourism that preserves landscapes and heritage, illustrating the complexity of aligning stakeholder values in tourism and conservation. Insights from this research guide policymaking to better accommodate diverse values in protected areas.</p
Revisiting ABC Transporters and Their Clinical Significance in Glioblastoma
No full textBackground: The multiple drug-resistant phenomenon has long since plagued the effectiveness of various chemotherapies used in the treatment of patients with glioblastoma (GBM), which is still incurable to this day. ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters function as drug transporters and have been touted to be the main culprits in developing resistance to xenobiotic drugs in GBM. Methods: This review systematically analyzed the efficacy of ABC transporters against various anticancer drugs from 16 studies identified from five databases (PubMed, Medline, Embase, Scopus, and ScienceDirect). Results: Inhibition of ABC transporters, especially ABCB1, improved drug efficacies. Staple GBM phenotypes, such as GBM stem cells and increased activation of the PI3K/Akt/NF-κB pathway, have been implicated in the expression of several ABC transporters. Using the datasets in The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Omnibus, we found upregulated ABC transporters that either negatively impacted survival in univariate analyses (ABCA1, ABCA13, ABCB9, ABCD4) or were independent negative prognosis factors for patients with GBM (ABCA13, ABCB9). Our multivariate analysis further demonstrated three ABC transporters, ABCA13 (Hazard Ratio (HR) = 1.31, p = 0.017), ABCB9 (HR = 1.26, p = 0.03), and ABCB5 (HR = 0.77, p = 0.016), with the administration of alkylating agents (HR = 0.41, p < 0.001), were independent negative prognosis factors for patients with GBM. Conclusions: These findings reinforce the important role played by ABC transporters, particularly by ABCA13, ABCB9, and ABCB1, which could be potential targets that warrant further evaluations for alternate strategies to augment the effects of existing alkylating agents and xenobiotic drugs.</p
“We're already experts in school, right?”:Supporting students’ construction of future school scenarios
No full textRecent interest in education futures amongst policymakers and industry has been accompanied by acknowledgement of the need to better include the voices and views of diverse groups in the production of narratives around what future forms of schooling might look like. This paper explores the issues implicit in engaging school students in anticipating future forms of schooling. Drawing on empirical research with secondary school students (aged 12–14 years), the paper reflects on the strengths and limitations of engaging students in such futuring work. Rather than producing liberatory scenarios of radically different forms of education, the paper reflects on how students’ visions of the future school tended to anticipate the continued core structures of schooling, albeit shaped by changes in the mundane, everyday practices of education related to values of care, security and relationality. The paper also highlights the ways in which students’ uses of digital presentation tools, online content and generative AI tended to limit and flatten-out more imaginative and idiosyncratic futures thinking and instead lead to the replication of popular ‘future school’ tropes. It is concluded that student-produced ‘future school’ scenarios perhaps have most value as: (i) a means of working through what qualities, and (ii) characteristics of the existing school model might be usefully amplified, and as a basis for supporting students to work out forms of action that they might meaningfully engage in developing these aspects of their current school experiences.</p
Can AI support human grading? Examining machine attention and confidence in short answer scoring
No full textLarge language models built upon artificial intelligence (AI) hold great promises to innovate automatic short answer scoring (ASAS) - significantly alleviating educators’ workload in assessing student answers. However, ASAS systems on such basis have seen limited adoption in authentic teaching environments due to the models’ inability to explain the predictions they generate. To address this, we recruited 32 human graders to comparatively analyse the decision-making processes of human graders and AI-driven graders. Specifically, we exploited two types of data to holistically unveil the decision-making processes of human graders throughout grading, namely manual annotation of important words and gaze data of the human graders. The decision-making processes of AI-driven graders were revealed by important words extracted though eXplainable Artificial Intelligence technique and grading confidence reflected by the prediction probability distributions. We measured the alignment in their decision-making regarding their (i) estimated scoring difficulty, (ii) important text segments and (iii) crucial grammatical categories to enhance the transparency and trustworthiness of AI-driven graders. Subsequently, we conducted randomised control studies, presenting machine-extracted insights like important words and estimated scoring difficulty to scrutinise how they affected human grading. Our findings contribute new knowledge regarding the consistency between human and machine scoring and validates machine-extracted insights, such as important words and scoring difficulty, to be valuable in facilitating human grading, encouraging the adoption of ASAS systems and urging the potential collaboration between machine and human grading in pedagogical practices. However, we emphasised the significance of grasping question context and intricacy before leveraging such machine-extracted insights.</p
Tailored text-messaging versus standard Quitline telephone counselling for smoking cessation among people who smoke from a low-socio-economic status background in Australia:a study protocol for a non-inferiority randomized controlled trial (The Quit By Phone Study)
No full textBackground and aims: Signficant inequalities in tobacco smoking exist, with higher smoking rates among people from low-socio-economic status (low-SES) populations. Tailored technology-based programs for low-SES smoking populations have the potential for high reach, but require effectiveness data from large-scale trials. This trial among Australians who smoke from a low-SES background will determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of tailored text-message (TTM) support compared with standard Quitline (SQL) telephone support service. Design, setting and participants: This is a two-arm, parallel group, randomized, non-inferiority trial with allocation concealment and blinded outcome assessment in an Australian population within the greater Sydney region in New South Wales. Participants are adults who smoke daily (n = 1246), are interested in quitting and currently receiving a government pension or allowance, and will be recruited via advertisements. Intervention and comparator: Participants will be randomized (1:1 ratio) to receive either 12 months of TTM quit support or enrolment in SQL telephone support. Measurements: Assessments will be completed at baseline (telephone interview), within 1 month (check-in call), at 3 months (on-line questionnaire) and 12 months (telephone interview) post-randomization. The primary outcome will be 6-month continuous abstinence verified by carbon monoxide breath test at 12-month follow-up. The study will test whether TTM is non-inferior to SQL by a non-inferiority margin of 2%, i.e. the quit rate in the TTM group will be no worse than 2% less than the quit rate in the SQL group. Secondary outcomes will include self-reported continuous and point prevalence abstinence and acceptability and cost-effectiveness of TTM versus SQL. Conclusion: Should the tailored text-message support prove non-inferior and more cost-effective than Quitline for this population, this will provide an opportunity for the upscaling of an effective, inexpensive and tailored quit support service. The trial findings will inform cessation treatment policy for priority populations in Australia and globally.</p