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The main purpose of this paper is to bring pioneering insights into the core line of sustainable education research by investigating the multi-dimensional aspects of teachers’ readiness to design technology-enhanced learning environments. In order to achieve this goal, this study documents the experiences of pre-service English teachers in instructional Virtual Reality (herein, VR) content design of K–12 English digital textbooks. Furthermore, it examines how their VR creation can be linked to a metaverse platform for learning adaptivity and sustainable education. The data are collected by pre-/post-surveys as well as reflective papers. The pre-/post-survey responses are analyzed with a t-test to determine significance; the reflective paper entries are scrutinized with sentiment analysis and text mining. The study findings suggest that such transformative experiences of VR-Making (herein, VRM) for instructional contents are conducive to capacitate pre-service teachers’ technological readiness, 4Cs (Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication) in digital citizenship, and perceived pedagogical benefits. Based on findings, this study continues to support the need for providing teaching practitioners with hands-on learning-to-teach opportunities with emerging technology as a tool to fulfill sustainable education.

The amount and form of aid distributed to foreign countries may depend on the contexts and characteristics of the recipient countries. Donors who have aid relations with poorly governed countries, while emphasizing good governance, may have to adjust aid tools to circumvent weak institutional environments. In keeping with the literature on aid in contexts of weak governance, the paper analyses donors' strategies in Tajikistan - an understudied country with geostrategic importance to traditional donors - showing how bilateral donors provided controlled aid. Donors disbursed aid mainly in the form of projects, a highly controllable aid type. Donors, while clearly interested in Tajik governance, appeared to sidestep politically sensitive areas probably fearing uncalled-for diplomatic frictions with the Tajik leadership. Nonetheless, donors did touch on some politically sensitive issues via non-state channels, enabling them to avoid direct interactions with Tajik authorities. Operating in poorly governed countries can be complicated for bilateral donors: they are accountable to their domestic taxpayers; they have to devise sophisticated aid strategies to achieve aid efficacy, especially in countries also deemed strategically important; and they cannot risk compromising bilateral relations.

Aid allocations choices bilateral donors make can be influenced by the institutional environment of a recipient government and the way this environment is perceived. This study examines bilateral donors' approaches to their aid allocations in Uganda. Uganda provides an interesting case study since the government's control over the aid funds decreased considerably over the past decade-with donors significantly tightening aid fungibility while the total aid funds Uganda received increased compared with the previous decade, 2002-2009. The donors seemed to control aid fungibility through aid modalities, sectors and/or channels; most aid was carried out as projects, in health-related sectors and through non-state actors, leaving small leverage for the Ugandan government over the aid funds. These might be the donors' tactical responses to the cloudy political environment of Uganda by increasing their supervision over the aid funds, instead of cutting them. The largest donor, the United States, mostly shaped the aid portfolio of Uganda showing specific preferences in aid modalities, sectors and channels. Uganda should refine its effort towards an improvement of the national political context. This would increase donors' confidence and willingness to loosen aid fungibility and lead better use of aid resources.

Reactive control is the cognitive ability to adjust thoughts and behaviors when encountering conflict. We investigated how this ability to manage conflict and stress distinguishes suicidal from nonsuicidal individuals. The hypothesis was that suicidal individuals would show poorer reactive control when faced with conflict generated by emotional than neutral stimuli. Hence, individuals with a lifetime history of suicide ideation or attempt and nonsuicidal controls were tested in cognitive and emotional Simon tasks. We examined the congruency sequence effect (CSE) in the Simon tasks as an indication of the efficiency of reactive control in resolving conflict. Whereas controls demonstrated significant CSEs in both tasks, suicide attempters showed a significant CSE in the cognitive task but not in the emotional task. Suicide ideators, on the other hand, displayed marginally significant CSEs in both tasks. Comparing groups with pairwise comparison demonstrated that the difference in CSE was significant only in the emotional task between attempters and controls. Our findings of attempters’ inefficiency in adjusting reactive control during the emotional task reflect cognitive inflexibility in coping with conflicting situations during which suicidal individuals become vulnerable to suicide attempts in states of negative emotion.

Visual working memory (VWM) for faces is facilitated when they display negative facial expressions. The present study manipulated the emotional heterogeneity of the encoding display in a change detection task to examine whether VWM is enhanced by having a separate memory store or by a bias in the allocation of limited attentional resource. When the encoding display was emotionally heterogeneous, regardless of whether happy or fearful facial expressions were presented, memory for emotional faces increased while memory for neutral faces decreased, indicating a memory trade-off. To investigate whether this occurred as a result of preferential allocation of attentional resource towards emotional expressions over neutral ones, faces were shown sequentially in different quadrants of the display. The memory trade-off between happy and neutral faces disappeared but persisted between fearful and neutral faces at trailing serial positions. When blank intervals were inserted between faces to prevent fearful faces from having prolonged processing that consumes attentional resource that should be shared with neutral faces, the memory trade-off disappeared. Findings support the argument that emotional expressions facilitate VWM due to their bias in obtaining attentional resource but the exact mechanisms through which limited resource is allocated between happy and fearful expressions may differ.

The multi-bi aid from donor governments has been increasing due to its unique attributes. It allows the donors to control their aid spending and potentially influence the multilateral activities. Of the current members of the Development Assistance Committee, this study focuses on Korea and its multi-bi contribution to the World Food Programme (WFP). The contribution portfolio of Korea is analyzed and compared with that of France. The two countries are comparable for their similar size of the total contribution to WFP during the study period. This analysis observes differences in Korean and French approaches to their WFP multi-bi and the results indicate Korea spread its multi-bi across various aid types, sectors and regions through a multi-agency implementing channel. Korea showed little preferential aid towards its bilateral priority countries with its WFP multi-bi. On the other hand, France focused on a specific aid type, sector, and region through a unified implementing channel. France indicated its preference towards its bilateral priority countries with its WFP multi-bi. Given the current contribution size, Korea can be more efficient with its WFP multi-bi by prioritizing aid types, sectors and regions and unifying its implementing channel.

This study aimed to identify knowledge measurement tools for kidney transplantation (KT) and confirm their assessment methods, domains, and validity to provide useful information. An integrative review based on Whittemore and Knafl's (2005) framework and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. An integrative search was conducted using four English databases (PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library) and the top three Korean databases (RISS, DBpia, and KISS). Search terms and strategies included (\"kidney transplant*\" OR \"renal transplant*\" OR \"kidney replace*\" OR \"renal replace*\" OR \"kidney graft\" OR \"renal graft\") & (knowledge OR awareness) & (scale OR tool OR instrument OR questionnaire OR inventory). The time limit was set to February 2022. The extracted data included the content of the tools, participants, and psychometrics. Quality of life was assessed using a psychometric grading framework. A total of 15 studies and 13 tools were reviewed. Of these, seven studies (46.7%) targeted KT patients, five (33.3%) targeted KT candidates, and three (20.0%) included both groups. The number of items in the tools ranged from five to 33 items. Furthermore, seven tools comprised true-false questions and eight multiple-choice questions. The domains of the KT knowledge measurement tool used in each study differed across study participants. Both reliability and validity were confirmed in six tools, and only two showed a grade of \"adequate\" or higher. A validated tool is required to measure KT knowledge. These tools can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions in promoting self-management after KT. CRD42022334559.

Since patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have an increased risk of cardiovascular events, interventions addressing risk factors reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. This study aimed to evaluate the difference in the incidence of CVD events according to risk factor control in patients with diabetes with and without cardio-renal disease. We analyzed 113,909 patients with diabetes and 290,339 without diabetes using data released by the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS). Among patients with diabetes with four or five poorly controlled risk factors, hazard ratio for CVD events was 1.19 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.06-1.34) in patients with cardio-renal disease and 2.31 (95% CI, 1.95-2.74) in patients without cardio-renal disease compared to patients with diabetes without risk factors. In subjects with diabetes and cardio-renal disease, patients with four or five poorly controlled risk factors had a higher risk of CVD mortality compared to subjects without risk factors (hazard ratio, 1.64; 95% CI, 1.18-2.30). Controlling cardiovascular risk factors reduced the incidence of CVD events in patients with diabetes, especially those without cardio-renal disease. The degree of risk control was strongly associated with CVD mortality in patients with diabetes with baseline cardio-renal disease.

Obesity is associated with cardiovascular diseases and is a risk factor for all-cause mortality. Until now, the associations between abdominal obesity and mortality or cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence have not been conclusive. We aimed to evaluate the associations between waist circumference (WC) and mortality or CVD incidence in a general Korean population. We analyzed a total of 204,068 adults older than 40 years of age who had undergone a national health examination at least once from 2009 to 2018 in the Korean National Health Insurance Service Cohort. WC was divided into five categories (< 80, 80-84.9, 85-89.9, 90-94.9, ≥ 95 cm). Hazard ratios for death and CVD incidence were calculated using Cox proportional hazards models. In men, WC and overall mortality showed a reverse J-shaped association. In women, the association between WC and overall mortality was not significant. For both men and women, WC was not associated with the risk of cardiovascular mortality. Contrary to the mortality trend, CVD incidence was positively associated with WC in both men and women, and the risk of the CVD incidence was the lowest in subjects with a WC < 80 cm. WC exhibited a significant J-shaped association with overall mortality in men, where subjects who had central obesity showed a lower rate of mortality than those in the lowest or highest WC group. The risk of incident CVD showed a positive association with central obesity, where the lowest risk was observed for subjects in the lowest WC group in a general Korean population.

Extensive evidence links Glutamate receptor, ionotropic, NMDA2B (GRIN2B), encoding the GluN2B/NR2B subunit of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), with various neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In addition, it remains unknown whether mutations in GluN2B, which starts to be expressed early in development, induces early pathophysiology that can be corrected by early treatments for long-lasting effects. We generated and characterized Grin2b-mutant mice that carry a heterozygous, ASD-risk C456Y mutation (Grin2b+/C456Y). In Grin2b+/C456Y mice, GluN2B protein levels were strongly reduced in association with decreased hippocampal NMDAR currents and NMDAR-dependent long-term depression (LTD) but unaltered long-term potentiation, indicative of mutation-induced protein degradation and LTD sensitivity. Behaviorally, Grin2b+/C456Y mice showed normal social interaction but exhibited abnormal anxiolytic-like behavior. Importantly, early, but not late, treatment of young Grin2b+/C456Y mice with the NMDAR agonist D-cycloserine rescued NMDAR currents and LTD in juvenile mice and improved anxiolytic-like behavior in adult mice. Therefore, GluN2B-C456Y haploinsufficiency decreases GluN2B protein levels, NMDAR-dependent LTD, and anxiety-like behavior, and early activation of NMDAR function has long-lasting effects on adult mouse behavior.