Search for: All records

Teaching climate change is difficult. Its complexity spans many subjects, often taught disjointedly. Many climate change effects are not immediately observable, making it hard for students to connect to it personally.

This study investigates how we can spark high school students’ interest in learning about climate change using educational computer games.

We adopted a qualitative case research design to understand how games boost students’ drive and their role in motivating them. We selected a high school teacher and her eight students as our subjects, interviewing them in person. We analyzed their responses were using Keller’s ARCS Theory of Motivation Model and blending deductive and inductive methods.

The findings were encouraging: games positively impacted students’ interest in climate change. They transformed the learning atmosphere into a concentrated, captivating space where the content was seen as tough yet enjoyable. Moreover, the games helped students make real-world connections, enhancing their understanding and appreciation of the topic.

Educational games are a powerful tool in motivating students to learn about climate change science. Hence, educators should be ready to harness the games’ power to create immersive, fun, and stimulating learning environments.

 

Objective: The interaction of ethnicity, progression of cognitive impairment, and neuroimaging biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease remains unclear. We investigated the stability in cognitive status classification (cognitively normal [CN] and mild cognitive impairment [MCI]) of 209 participants (124 Hispanics/Latinos and 85 European Americans). Methods: Biomarkers (structural MRI and amyloid PET scans) were compared between Hispanic/Latino and European American individuals who presented a change in cognitive diagnosis during the second or third follow-up and those who remained stable over time. Results: There were no significant differences in biomarkers between ethnic groups in any of the diagnostic categories. The frequency of CN and MCI participants who were progressors (progressed to a more severe cognitive diagnosis at follow-up) and non-progressors (either stable through follow-ups or unstable [progressed but later reverted to a diagnosis of CN]) did not significantly differ across ethnic groups. Progressors had greater atrophy in the hippocampus (HP) and entorhinal cortex (ERC) at baseline compared to unstable non-progressors (reverters) for both ethnic groups, and more significant ERC atrophy was observed among progressors of the Hispanic/Latino group. For European Americans diagnosed with MCI, there were 60% more progressors than reverters (reverted from MCI to CN), while among Hispanics/Latinos with MCI, there were 7% more reverters than progressors. Binomial logistic regressions predicting progression, including brain biomarkers, MMSE, and ethnicity, demonstrated that only MMSE was a predictor for CN participants at baseline. However, for MCI participants at baseline, HP atrophy, ERC atrophy, and MMSE predicted progression. 

Abstract Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia. The long progression period in Alzheimer's disease provides a possibility for patients to get early treatment by having routine screenings. However, current clinical diagnostic imaging tools do not meet the specific requirements for screening procedures due to high cost and limited availability. In this work, we took the initiative to evaluate the retina, especially the retinal vasculature, as an alternative for conducting screenings for dementia patients caused by Alzheimer's disease. Highly modular machine learning techniques were employed throughout the whole pipeline. Utilizing data from the UK Biobank, the pipeline achieved an average classification accuracy of 82.44%. Besides the high classification accuracy, we also added a saliency analysis to strengthen this pipeline's interpretability. The saliency analysis indicated that within retinal images, small vessels carry more information for diagnosing Alzheimer's diseases, which aligns with related studies.