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Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) has been used to combat reading challenges, namely reading accuracy and rate for learners with intellectual, developmental and learning disabilities (IDLD). Whilst most reading CAI effectiveness has been studied in English, other transparent languages have less evidence. This study provides a systematic review and meta-analysis of CAI effectiveness for transparent language reading for K-3 learners with IDLD.

This study systematically reviews academic peer-reviewed studies from 2010 to 2023 with either randomised controlled treatment (RCT) or single-case treatments. Articles were searched from the ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, ERIC, PsychINFO and Science Direct databases, references and systematic review articles. Reading component skills effect sizes were computed using the random effect sizes model.

11 RCT studies of reading CAI for transparent languages with 510 learners with IDLD were found. A random effect sizes (Cohen’s d) of CAI on individual reading component skills were d = 0.24, p-value = 0.063 and confidence interval (CI) 95% (−0.068–0.551) for phonics and phonemic awareness d = 0.41, p-value = 0.000 and CI 95% (0.175–0.644). Given an average intervention dosage of 1.8 h weekly for a maximum of 16 weeks, CAI had better retention with d = 1.13, p-value = 0.066 and CI 95%(−0.339–2.588). However, these results must be interpreted with a concern of only using published studies.

The study contributes to quantitative CAI effectiveness for transparent language reading components for learners with IDLD.

Literacy research in Norway has focused on many areas. Dyslexia has been one main area for many years. The last years’ many approaches have been taken to understand how reading disabilities can be prevented and to understand the connection between the spoken and written language. A school reform reducing the age of admission to school from seven to six from 1997 has had the effect of stimulating research in the field of reading development.

Norwegian orthography is described as semi-transparent. Studies of Norwegian children show that even children with dyslexia break the alphabetic code rather easily. Also, Norway is an advanced, rich country with a clear commitment to equity. These are some reasons why Norway should get good results on international reading achievement tests. The results from different international reading assessments, however, have worried the Norwegian Government. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has clearly stated that Norway has a job to do in terms of equity. In most reading achievement tests, Norway shows a wider spread of outcomes than many other OECD countries. The Norwegian school reform of 1997 has not been a great success in the area of children's literacy development. The international results and the evaluation of the reform have led to a range of initiatives from the Government and to yet another reform with a new curriculum. In this new curriculum, there is a somewhat clearer focus on benchmarks to be achieved. There is, however, little concentration on what to do when children fall behind their peers for no apparent reason. The school authorities hope, however, that the initiatives that are taken will make a difference.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the possibility for the galleries, libraries, archives and museums sector to employ playful, immersive discovery interfaces for their collections and raise awareness of some of the considerations that go into the decision to use such technology and the creation of the interfaces.

This is a case study approach using the methodology of research through design. The paper introduces two examples of immersive interfaces to archival data created by the authors, using these as a springboard for discussing the different kinds of embodied experiences that users have with different kinds of immersion, for example, the exploration of the archive on a flat screen, a data “cave” or arena, or virtual reality.

The role of such interfaces in communicating with the audience of an archive is considered, for example, in allowing users to detect structure in data, particularly in understanding the role of geographic or other spatial elements in a collection, and in shifting the locus of knowledge production from individual to community. It is argued that these different experiences draw on different metaphors in terms of users’ prior experience with more well-known technologies, for example, “a performance” vs “a tool” vs “a background to a conversation”.

The two example interfaces discussed here are original creations by the authors of this paper. They are the first uses of mixed reality for interfacing with the archives in question. One is the first mixed reality interface to an audio archive. The discussion has implications for the future of interfaces to galleries, archives, libraries and museums more generally.

Leadership insight describes the importance of and approach to reflection for leaders, using traditional journal writing, leadership wisdom statements, and art work.

The article introduces the multiple ways in which the Leadership Insight journal supports leaders' most profound aspirations.

It explains the ways in which paintings help leaders to go beyond the dehydrated, and limiting, conventional language of management.

Based on the article, managers will be able to use the Leadership Insight journal and reflection process to support their own most important aspirations for contributing to their organization, community, and the world. The article stresses the ability of mangers, by reflecting on a daily basis, to do well by doing good.

In the context of American institutions of higher education, the practical implementation of strategies associated with the development of L3+ or multilingual education often remain difficult to implement. Furthermore, students who reach the university level with pre-acquired bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural skills may perceive their competencies as trivialized and undervalued due to the lack of linguistically relevant opportunities available to them.

By contrast, the recent implementation of a multilingual course titled “Intercomprehension of the Romance languages: a pathway to Multilingualism,” at California State University, Long Beach (2014–2018) and St. Lawrence University (2018) offers bi/multilingual students the tools to develop skills geared toward language learning in a continuous effort to appraise, nurture, and upraise the ever-growing linguistic diversity present among students and faculty members in universities across the United States. This course and its iterations specifically benefit students’ pre-existing bi/multilingual competencies while offering them opportunities to reinforce and expand their multilingual repertoire. Students learn how to read in 5+ Romance languages, reinforce their knowledge of English, as well as of their Romance language, all while strengthening their metalinguistic awareness by learning how to navigate a larger repertoire of either foreign or unknown related languages.

In addition to discussing the pedagogical and theoretical framework of the course, the authors propose to explore how this innovative approach favors the development of multilingualism among students in North-American universities by examining course demographic data collected from several of these courses and key results relating certain aspects of students’ initial contact with new languages through intercomprehension.

Attention to infrastructure issues has increased in recent years. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA)and its reauthorization in the Transportation Efficiency Act of 1998 (TEA 21 ) have focused stronger attention on the need to encourage innovation, identify and facilitate partnerships, identify core research and provide assessment criteria. This has resulted in increased awareness that information is key to accomplishing these goals. The importance of international materials is now seen as critical to efficient utilization of knowledge. Reports a survey of 12 European transportation centers in nine countries during 1998. Information was gathered on local characteristics of researchers, areas of research specialization, formats and languages of resources used/borrowed by the researchers, local publications and their dissemination patterns, the utilization of US materials, and the role of the World Wide Web by the librarians, researchers and other staff at the transportation facility.

Within the context of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance), environmental sustainability has taken on increased global importance in recent years. Similarly, real estate investment managers in developing their global real estate investment portfolios need a fuller understanding of the ESG and environmental sustainability dimensions of these global real estate markets for more informed real estate investment decisions. Using the JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index, this paper examines the environmental sustainability transparency status of 99 global real estate markets over 2016–2020 and explores various strategic issues regarding ESG and environmental sustainability; particularly the critical issues relating to climate risk mitigation, climate resilience and zero-carbon. The current status of environmental sustainability in these 99 real estate markets is assessed, with areas for “best practice” improvement identified to the benefit of real estate investment managers; particularly the improvements needed in ESG to support real estate investment in the emerging real estate markets.

The JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index is analysed to examine strategic issues relating to environmental sustainability transparency. 99 real estate markets are assessed globally for a range of critical ESG issues over 2016–2020. Differences between the developed and emerging real estate markets are highlighted.

Considerable variation was seen in the ESG and environmental sustainability practices, procedures and frameworks across these 99 real estate markets. This was particularly evident amongst the emerging real estate markets. Compared to the other five dimensions for real estate market transparency, environmental sustainability was seen to be well behind these other dimensions in most markets. Progress has been made in recent years, but it has been slow and steady rather than at a dynamic level. Clearly, more is needed globally to enhance the stature of environmental sustainability in the context of an increasing focus on ESG and specifically on climate risk mitigation, climate resilience and zero-carbon in real estate investment.

With ESG and environmental sustainability taking on increased importance across the international real estate markets, it is important that real estate fund managers have a full understanding of the ESG and environmental sustainability status of these real estate markets where they may be considering real estate investment opportunities; this includes both the developed and emerging real estate markets. This is essential to ensure future capital raising for new funds, as well as supporting the global ESG agenda by the real estate investment community. Specific strategies are also identified for emerging real estate markets to improve their environmental sustainability practices and ESG status.

This is the first paper to use the JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index to assess the environmental sustainability status of 99 real estate markets globally; providing strategic insights for real estate investment managers as they develop their global real estate portfolios and more fully embrace the challenges of ESG and environmental sustainability in the real estate space going forward. Specific strategies are clearly identified for all markets to improve their environmental sustainability ratings to the benefit of both global real estate investment and the broader communities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the coupled effect of magnetic field and radiation on convective heat transfer of low electrically conductive dielectric oxide melt.

The 3D Navier–Stokes equations are formulated using the vector potential-vorticity formulation and solved using the finite volume method (FVM). The radiative heat transfer equation is discretized using the FTnFVM method. A code was written using FORTRAN language.

The obtained numerical results are focused on the effect of the different parameters on the heat transfer and the flow structure with a special interest on the 3D transvers flow. It is found that the flow is developing in inner spirals and the magnetic field intensifies this 3D character. The radiation acts mainly at the core of the enclosure and causes the apparition of the merging phenomenon near the front and back walls.

The effect of magnetic field on convective heat transfer of highly electrically conductive fluids has been intensively studied. Reciprocally, the case of a fluid with low electrical conductivity is not so much investigated, especially when it is coupled with the effect of radiation. These two effects are studied in this paper for the case of a low-conductive LiNbO3 oxide melt.

Changes in file format specifications challenge long-term preservation of digital documents. Digital archives thus often focus on specific file formats that are well suited for long-term preservation, such as the PDF/A format. Since only few customers submit PDF/A files, digital archives may consider converting submitted files to the PDF/A format. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors evaluated three software tools for batch conversion of common file formats to PDF/A-1b: LuraTech PDF Compressor, Adobe Acrobat XI Pro and 3-Heights^TM Document Converter by PDF Tools. The test set consisted of 80 files, with 10 files each of the eight file types JPEG, MS PowerPoint, PDF, PNG, MS Word, MS Excel, MSG and “web page.”

Batch processing was sometimes hindered by stops that required manual interference. Depending on the software tool, three to four of these stops occurred during batch processing of the 80 test files. Furthermore, the conversion tools sometimes failed to produce output files even for supported file formats: three (Adobe Pro) up to seven (LuraTech and 3-Heights^TM) PDF/A-1b files were not produced. Since Adobe Pro does not convert e-mails, a total of 213 PDF/A-1b files were produced. The faithfulness of each conversion was investigated by comparing the visual appearance of the input document with that of the produced PDF/A-1b document on a computer screen. Meticulous visual inspection revealed that the conversion to PDF/A-1b impaired the information content in 24 of the converted 213 files (11 percent). These reproducibility errors included loss of links, loss of other document content (unreadable characters, missing text, document part missing), updated fields (reflecting time and folder of conversion), vector graphics issues and spelling errors.

These results indicate that large-scale batch conversions of heterogeneous files to PDF/A-1b cause complex issues that need to be addressed for each individual file. Even with considerable efforts, some information loss seems unavoidable if large numbers of files from heterogeneous sources are migrated to the PDF/A-1b format.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a participatory library service based on artificial intelligence (AI).

AI technologies and various technologies for facilitating the use of the currently existing libraries and the third-party resources are combined in the new mobile and social networking environments to provide an innovative real-time virtual reference service. Special aesthetic design and library marketing measures are adopted to expand the gains of the service. Questionnaire survey, in-depth interview, and statistical analysis are conducted to evaluate the effects of the service.

A smart talking robot called Xiaotu (female) is developed. This robot is regarded as a promising new online reference service modus operandi. Four factors contribute to the success of the robot, namely, AI, self-learning, vivid logo and language, and modular architecture.

Xiaotu presents a participatory library service, in which users participate in the resources collection and become content co-creators. Her presence at anytime and anywhere on any kind of terminal maximizes her potential for the delivery of virtual reference services. Xiaotu has the potential to be a general reference robot or a costumed institute robot.

AI is adopted in libraries to form an innovative online reference service. The participatory library service is practiced through a high-featured interactive communication. The aesthetic design of Xiaotu and the related promotions are new in libraries as well.