University of Constantinus the Philosopher in Nitra - Univerzita Konstant’na Filozofa v Nitre

Extreme situations, such as military conflicts, generate interest in how they are perceived by the public, which must process a broad array of media stimuli in a certain way. In this study, we discuss how the basic aspects of the current military conflict (the war in Ukraine) were perceived by young people (Generation Z) in Slovakia, with a focus on the initial part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We argue that the digital resistance of Slovakia’s citizens is currently low, which – in conjunction with the extremely focused activity of the disinformation scene – creates a risky environment. We use the Semantic Selection Test as a psychosemantic method on a sample of Slovak university students. One of our basic findings is the associative closeness of the concept of “Self” in Generation Z and Instagram, popular Internet memes and educational videos in connection with expertise. We also found that the recipients were subject to positive media manipulation (the Ghost of Kyiv) and were able to identify standard linguistic propaganda (negative associations of terms “war in Ukraine” and “special military operation”). The results can help us understand the perception of emergency situations by Generation Z.

Aims Missed nursing care (MNC) significantly affects patient safety and quality of care. It is a widely used concept that has been studied in different settings, but research in paediatric care is quite limited. Therefore, this descriptive cross‐sectional study aimed to report the prevalence, patterns, correlates, factors and predictors of MNC in paediatric care units in two central European countries. Design A cross‐sectional comparative study. Methods Data collection was carried out between June and November 2021 using the MISSCARE Survey‐Pediatric. The study included 441 registered nurses working in paediatric care units in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics in the SPSS 25.0 statistical program. Results Almost all nurses, 92.7% of nurses missed at least one nursing activity during the last shift. The most missed care activity in both countries was the promotion of neuroevolutionary development, and the most prominent reasons were labour resources. MNC was weakly but significantly correlated with nurse experience in the current position and was predicted by the country, nurse education and overtime hours ( p ≤ .05). Differences in prevalence of MNC and reasons for MNC were identified based on several variables ( p ≤ .05). Conclusion The assessment of MNC in paediatric settings is often a neglected area, although the prevalence in this study was moderate. Implications for the Profession and/or Patient Care Nurse staff shortages, as a global problem, have many impacts on patient outcomes in the delivery of nursing care. However, there are also many factors that can reduce the prevalence of MNC. More research should focus on a closer examination of these factors that involve hospital and nurse variables. Reporting Method The study was carried out according to the STROBE checklist and the RANCARE guideline. Patient or Public Contribution No patient or public contribution.

Parallel texts represent a very valuable resource in many applications of natural language processing. The fundamental step in creating parallel corpus is the alignment. Sentence alignment is the issue of finding correspondence between source sentences and their equivalent translations in the target text. A number of automatic sentence alignment approaches were proposed including neural networks, which can be divided into length-based, lexicon-based, and translation-based. In our study, we used five different aligners, namely Bilingual sentence aligner (BSA), Hunalign, Bleualign, Vecalign, and Bertalign. We evaluated both, the performance of the Bertalign in terms of accuracy against the up to now employed aligners as well as among each other in the language pair English-Sovak. We created our custom corpus consisting of texts collected in 2021 and 2022. Vecalign and Bertalign performed statistically significantly best and BSA the worst. Hunalign and Bleualign achieved the same performance in terms of F1 score. However, Bleualign achieved the most diverse results in terms of performance.

During the war, a significant number of Ukrainian universities were tragically destroyed, while others were relocated. The challenging wartime circumstances in which universities operate in Ukraine have increased the use of distance education. University management and academic staff agree that the quality of services offered hinges on the establishment of comprehensive open electronic student campuses. These online campuses will deliver educational content, but also innovative pedagogical technologies for fostering competency development. This can be used for competency development in the use of gamification techniques, promoting entrepreneurship and start‐ups, implementing project methodologies, leveraging research and cognitive technologies, as well as using digital tools for communication and collaboration, and employing formative assessment strategies. The objective of the study on which this article reports was to determine the university ecosystem model most amenable for providing high quality digital education. We describe and analyse current digital education ecosystem models and examine their implementation at three universities: (1) Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (BGKU), Ukraine; (2) University of Silesia (US), Poland; and (3) Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra (UKF), Slovakia. Both strengths and limitations of online campuses are outlined. Our analysis supports the development of key performance indicators to assess the development of university digital education ecosystems and establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for implementation. Insights gained from organising education in remote learning conditions in wartime Ukraine are valuable also for educators in other countries.

Currently, there are various technical solutions as well as methods by which the user’s physiological functions can be obtained. From the point of view of the technical solutions, approaches based on the application of sensors (galvanic skin response, heart rate, temperature, etc.) or the use of a camera for capturing the face and its parts are most often used. The article is devoted to the creation of a system for identifying and classifying the emotional state of the user while maintaining non-invasiveness, which includes an IoT-based (Internet of Things) user interface. It deals with the capture of data about the user and the subsequent evaluation of this data with the help of a web application for visualizing and evaluating the obtained data. The research uses a pulse sensor and a galvanic skin response sensor, which are connected to an Arduino and a computer, for data evaluation. The results of the paper include the design of a portable and affordable device that can be non-invasively attached to the human body and monitor the measured values for a long time.

The paper is focused on the spatial differentiation of the quality of life at a district level, drawing data from the World Value Survey Round 7 (2017–2022). Spatial quality of life research in the traditional sense is based on the premise that quality of life is experienced by the individual in a physical geographical space, and therefore the research focuses on the objective, spatial dimension of quality of life, measured using the objective indicators, usually from statistical sources. The novelty of the paper lies in the premise that a spatial investigation of the subjective dimension of quality of life is also possible, focusing on the question of where people are satisfied with their lives. The indicator of this dimension is a self-related evaluation, obtained using the face-to-face method or the internet. In the case of the World Value Survey 7, data collection was done using the Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) technique. The aim of the paper is to conceptualize the subjective dimension of quality of life, apply the concept using data from WVS 7 and to find out which of the selected variables—also contained in WVS 7—are predictors of quality of life.

Purpose This study aims to further our understanding of prosodic entrainment and its different subtypes by analyzing a single corpus of conversations with 12 different methods and comparing the subsequent results. Method Entrainment on three fundamental frequency features was analyzed in a subset of recordings from the LUCID corpus (Baker & Hazan, 2011) using the following methods: global proximity, global convergence, local proximity, local convergence, local synchrony (Levitan & Hirschberg, 2011), prediction using linear mixed-effects models (Schweitzer & Lewandowski, 2013), geometric approach (Lehnert-LeHouillier, Terrazas, & Sandoval, 2020), time-aligned moving average (Kousidis et al., 2008), HYBRID method (De Looze et al., 2014), cross-recurrence quantification analysis (e.g., Fusaroli & Tylén, 2016), and windowed, lagged cross-correlation (Boker et al., 2002). We employed entrainment measures on a local timescale (i.e., on adjacent utterances), a global timescale (i.e., over larger time frames), and a time series–based timescale that is larger than adjacent utterances but smaller than entire conversations. Results We observed variance in results of different methods. Conclusions Results suggest that each method may measure a slightly different type of entrainment. The complex implications this has for existing and future research are discussed.

Aim The aim of this article is to describe and compare the nurse educator competences in four European countries using three different evaluators: nurse educators (n = 329), heads of a nursing subject (n = 60) and student nurses (n = 1058). Design The study was conducted as a comparative cross-sectional survey in Finland, Malta, Slovakia and Spain between May 2021 and February 2022. Methods The data were collected with an online survey. The instrument used was a 20-item Tool for Evaluation of Requirements of Nurse Teachers, utilizing a 5-point Likert-type scale. The data were analysed statistically and reported according to STROBE guidelines. Results Nurse educators' competence evaluated positively in all the groups of evaluators, with a mean of >3.5. The self-evaluation of nurse educators' competence was higher than the other evaluators' evaluations. Having a degree in nursing, having completed some pedagogical studies and longer work experience as a nurse educator had a positive association with higher self-evaluated competence among nurse educators. Conclusions Nurse educator competence is at a good level in the selected European countries, but further studies are required to find the reasons behind the differences in evaluations. Public Contribution Each participating educational institution named a contact person who distributed the surveys to the participants and returned the study's metadata to the researchers.

The aim of the present study was to examine the applicability of several hormonal indexes for early prediction of puberty and reproductive state in pigs. For this purpose, we have compared the level of hormones leptin, estradiol, progesterone, and IGF‐I in the blood of gilts at 150 days of age and their indexes of puberty and ovarian state at the age of 200 days. The association between blood leptin, estradiol, progesterone, and IGF‐I and indexes of future reproductive state has been demonstrated. High blood concentrations of leptin and IGF‐I levels were associated with relatively low reproductive traits, while high levels of estradiol and progesterone were associated with future high reproductive indexes. These observations are the first demonstration of the applicability of these endocrine indexes for prediction of porcine reproductive traits.

Internet of Things (IoT) technology can be used in many areas of everyday life. The objective of this paper is to obtain physiological functions in a non-invasive manner using commonly available IoT devices. The aim of the research is to point out the possibility of using physiological functions as an identifier of changes in students’ level of arousal during the teaching process. The motivation of the work is to find a correlation between the change in heart rate, the student’s level of arousal and the student’s partial and final learning results. The research was focused on the collection of physiological data, namely heart rate and the evaluation of these data in the context of identification of arousal during individual teaching activities of the teaching process. The experiment was carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic via distance learning. During the teaching process, individual activities were recorded in time and HR was assigned to them. The benefit of the research is the proposed methodology of the system, which can identify changes in students’ arousal in order to increase the efficiency of the teaching process. Based on the results of the designed system, they could also alert teachers who should be able to modify their teaching style in specific situations so that it is suitable for students and provides a basis for better teaching and understanding of educational materials. The presented methodology will be able to guarantee an increase in the success of the teaching process itself in terms of students’ understanding of the teaching materials.

BACKGROUND: The need to develop understanding of the posttraumatic growth (PTG) in the population of cancer survivors has increased in recent years. The daily functioning of cancer survivors involves factors that affect the development of PTG and the process by which it arises. OBJECTIVES: The main objective was to explore PTG process and its influencing factors in cancer survivors. METHODS: Using qualitative research design, the study applied in-depth interviews and the method of life-line drawing with seven female cancer survivors, aged between 49 and 73. Data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. RESULTS: The main category in the process is persistence in consequences associated with two categories of triggers, external and internal. The various outcomes (PTG, acceptance, uncertainty) depend on perceived possibility of taking control over consequences in cancer survivors. PTG is a result of individual accommodation of illness consequences in which taking control and accommodation lead to self-regulation of pain, self-confidence, and positive self-image. CONCLUSION: Possibility of taking control over the disease consequences and active approach to acquiring new skills are central explanatory variables modifying the process of persistence in consequences of illness and the reasons of PTG. The PTG model has the potential to be adapted to other cancer-related outcomes that are relevant to the daily lives of cancer survivors.

The action of buckwheat, rooibos and vitex on healthy female reproductive systems, as well as their ability to mitigate the reproductive toxicity of environmental contaminant toluene have not yet been examined. We analysed the influence of toluene (0, 10, 100 or 1000 ng/mL) with and without these plant extracts (10 μg/mL) on cultured porcine ovarian granulosa cells. Cell viability, proliferation (PCNA accumulation), apoptosis (accumulation of bax) and release of progesterone (P) and oestradiol (E) were measured. Toluene reduced ovarian cell viability and proliferation, increased apoptosis and suppressed E but not P release. Plant extracts, given alone, were also able to directly suppress some ovarian cell functions. The addition of buckwheat promoted toluene action on cell viability, proliferation and P release, but it did not modify other toluene effects. Rooibos mitigated toluene action on cell viability, proliferation and apoptosis but promoted its action on P and E. The addition of vitex mitigated all the tested toluene effects. These observations: (1) demonstrate the direct toxic influence of toluene on ovarian cells, (2) demonstrate the ability of food/medicinal plants to either promote or mitigate toluene effects and (3) suggest that vitex could be a natural protector against the suppressive effect of toluene on female reproduction.

The presented article is dedicated to a new way of teaching substitution in algebra. In order to effectively master the subject matter, it is necessary for students to perceive the equal sign equivalently, to learn to manipulate expressions as objects, and to perceive and use transformations based on defining their own equivalences. According to the results of several researches, these changes do not occur automatically, and the neglect of their development leads to students’ insufficient adoption of substitution. The submitted contribution presents a new way of teaching substitution, the stages of which support the gradual development of the necessary competences of students, so that substitution becomes part of their computing apparatus. The effectiveness of the mentioned method of teaching substitution was also verified experimentally. By conducting a pedagogical experiment, it was confirmed that the application of the substitution teaching method developed by us led to more frequent use of substitution by students from the experimental group (47 students) compared to students from the control group (82 students) who learned substitution in the usual way. It emerged from the interview with experimental group students that they considered the proposed method suitable and that it encouraged them to learn substitution in depth.

Increasing the effectiveness of programming education has emerged as an important goal in teaching programming languages in the last decade. Automatic evaluation of the correctness of the student’s source code saves teachers time and effort and allows a more comprehensive focus on the preparation of assignments with integrated feedback. The study aims to present an approach that will enable effective testing of students’ source codes within object-oriented programming courses while minimising the demands on teachers when preparing the assignment. This approach also supports variability in testing and preventing student cheating. Based on the principles of different types of testing (black-box, white-box, grey-box), an integrated solution for source code verification was designed and verified. The basic idea is to use a reference class, which is assumed to be part of every assignment, as the correct solution. This reference class is compared to the student solution using the grey-box method. Due to their identical interface (defined by assignment), comparing instance states and method outputs is a matter of basic programming language mechanisms. A significant advantage is that a random generation of test cases can be used in such a case, while the rules for their generation can be determined using simple formulas. The proposed procedure was implemented and gradually improved over 4 years on groups of bachelor students of applied informatics with a high level of acceptance.

This paper reviews the current information concerning availability, metabolism of quercetin, its effects on physiological processes and illnesses with focus on the effects, mechanisms of action and areas of possible application of quercetin in control of female reproductive processes, prevention and treatment of their disorders in mammals.The available information demonstrated the ability of quercetin and its analogues to inhibit proliferation and to promote apoptosis, to activate regenerative processes, to treat immune, inflammatory, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, gastric and metabolic disorders and cancer, to suppress microorganisms, to protect bones and liver, to relieve pain, to improve physical and mental performance, and to prolong life span.The positive influences of quercetin on mammalian female reproductive processes are well documented. It can promote ovarian follicullo- and oogenesis, improve quality of oocytes and embryos, increase fecundity in various species. These effects can be mediated by changes in pituitary and ovarian hormones, growth factors and cytokines, in their receptors and post-receptory signaling pathways. Due to these effect, quercetin can be applicable as biostimulator of reproduction, for prevention, mitigation and treatment of several female reproductive disorders, as well as to increase resistance of female reproductive system to adverse effect of chemotherapy, temperature stress and environmental contaminants.

In this paper, a new technique of feature extraction is proposed, which is considered an essential part of natural language processing. Feature extraction is the process of transformation of the unstructured text to a format which is recognizable by computers. This means a transformation to a vector of numbers. The study evaluates and compares the performance of three methods: M1, which is the baseline method TfIdf; M2, which combines TfIdf with POS tags; and M3, a novel technique called MDgwPosF that incorporates weighted TfIdf values based on word depths and the relative frequency of POS tags. The primary focus of the study is to assess and compare the performance of these methods, with particular emphasis on evaluating how M3 performs in comparison with M1 and M2. Two different datasets and feed-forward, LSTM and GRU neural networks were used in this study. The results showed that the feed-forward model with the proposed method MDgwPosF in moderate topology achieved the best performance across various measures. The dataset created automatically performed better than the manual dataset. The differences between methods and topologies were not statistically significant. Statistically significant differences between the classification models were proven. The MDgwPosF method achieved higher accuracy compared to the baseline TfIdf, indicating that incorporating additional information into the vector can enhance the performance of TfIdf.

Machine translation from small into big languages, in our case a transfer from Slovak into German, has not yet undergone thorough research. Our goal is an analysis and comparison of machine translation (MT) and post-edited machine translation (PEMT) errors with human translation (HT) as well as detecting the efficiency rate of post-editing within that mentioned comparison. Hereby we apply a method of automatic and manual metrics by percentages and evaluation numbers. Results indicate that post-editing is more efficient which however does not mean that human translation has a lower quality. A higher degree of freedom of HT allows for more creative solutions contrasting with post-edited MT in the results.

The Finite Element Method (FEM) is used to improve the Extended Dynamic Plane Source (EDPS) method in order to obtain more accurate values of the thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the specimen. A method of the FEM-calculated response transformation into an analytical form that can be used in fitting the measured temperature response has been described and verified. Furthermore, a modification of the EDPS method designated as EDPS1 is designed, where only one piece of specimen is used. Since there is no analytical formula for the new method, the analytical formula for EDPS is used. The initial specimen parameter estimates for EDPS1 are accordingly very rough, and therefore the FEM numerical runs need to be repeated several times until the estimates reach relative errors of around 1%.