Abstract

Abstract
The authors present a framework for developing intercultural competence (IC) and use tridimensional digital virtual worlds (3DVW) as environments for developing IC. They developed an artifact, via design research, constituted by an educational method using the 3DVW Second Life® as the place for a virtual exchange program between 92 Brazilian and Portuguese master students. The results of the study indicate that the 3DVW can be used for the development of IC because it allows rich experiential and relational/conversational learning opportunities, especially due to the affordances of immersion/sense of presence, social interaction, content production, and knowledge sharing. The students involved in the virtual exchange inside Second Life® had to practice a set of attitudes and skills such as communication skills; culture-specific knowledge; understanding others' worldviews; skills to analyze, evaluate, and relate; skills to listen, observe, and interpret; respect, openness; tolerance for ambiguity, among other, that are all attributes of IC.

Abstract
Antibiotic resistance is a major health concern of the 21st century. The misuse of antibiotics over the years has led to their increasing presence in the environment, particularly in water resources, which can exacerbate the transmission of resistance genes and facilitate the emergence of resistant microorganisms. The objective of the present work is to develop a chemosensor for screening of sulfonamides in environmental waters, targeting sulfamethoxazole as the model analyte. The methodology was based on the retention of sulfamethoxazole in disks containing polystyrene divinylbenzene sulfonated sorbent particles and reaction with p-dimethylaminocinnamaldehyde, followed by colorimetric detection using a computer-vision algorithm. Several color spaces (RGB, HSV and CIELAB) were evaluated, with the coordinate a_star, from the CIELAB color space, providing the highest sensitivity. Moreover, in order to avoid possible errors due to variations in illumination, a color palette is included in the picture of the analytical disk, and a correction using the a_star value from one of the color patches is proposed. The methodology presented recoveries of 82-101% at 0.1 mu g and 0.5 mu g of sulfamethoxazole (25 mL), providing a detection limit of 0.08 mu g and a quantification limit of 0.26 mu g. As a proof of concept, application to in-field analysis was successfully implemented.

Abstract
Video games have become one of the predominant forms of entertainment in our society, but they have also impacted many other of its social and cultural aspects [...]

Abstract

Abstract
The large-scale introduction of distributed photovoltaic (DPV) increases the need for retailers to consider and quantify the differences in monthly electricity consumption of customers to maximize their interests in trading in the forward electricity market. For customers with DPV, retailers need to predict net electricity consumption (NEC), which is actual electricity consumption (AEC) minus DPV generation. However, the DPV is behind the meter and DPV generation data is invisible to retailers. Therefore, the issue of how to distinguish the transition of customers from no DPV to with DPV and their DPV installation information needs to be addressed. To better capture the additions of DPV timely under high penetration of DPV, a decoupling-based monthly NEC prediction model considering the DPV installation update is proposed. Firstly, the features are extracted from the hourly NEC data of known customers with DPV to distinguish other customers whether installing DPV. Secondly, an online update framework of DPV installation evaluated by two validations is proposed. Thirdly, based on the difference in the electricity consumption series before and after the installation of DPV, the NEC is decoupled into AEC and DPV generation. Finally, the monthly DPV generation prediction results are subtracted from the monthly AEC prediction results to obtain the final monthly NEC results. Different scenarios of DPV penetration are set in case studies to test the performance between the proposed model and other direct models. The results indicate the superiority of the proposed method under high penetration of DPV.