This mixed-method study aimed to investigate the efficacy of an intervention unit that integrates perspectives from Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to foster plant awareness, within the context of botanical lessons for trainee science teachers. Third-year undergraduate students (n = 91) studying to become lower secondary school (grade 7–9) science teachers from a public university in East Java, Indonesia, participated in this study. Data were collected through a self-reported questionnaire, reflective journal entries, and focus group interviews. The findings revealed a statistically significant increase in the participants’ attention and attitude towards plants, relative interest in plants, and self-efficacy in teaching plant-related topics. The triangulation of the analysis results from the reflective journals and focus group interviews demonstrated that through transformative learning, the participants’ experiences, perceptions, and learning evolved throughout the intervention unit, leading to their more comprehensive understanding of plant-related issues and their connection to broader sustainability concerns. These findings imply that the integration of ESD perspectives into botanical education positively affects plant awareness. Future research could further investigate the long-term impact of integrating ESD perspectives on teacher training programs.

Promoting the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) in schools is necessary to educate future generations about sustainability. In cases where ESD is integrated into science lessons or ESD has to be taught by science teachers, science teachers have to integrate ESD teaching competencies with their science teaching competencies. The absence of an instrument to assess science teacher competencies to teach ESD makes it difficult for schools to assign the right science teacher to teach ESD or to support science teachers to integrate ESD into their lessons. This study aims to develop an instrument for measuring science teacher competencies to teach ESD. The instrument was developed by combining frameworks of science teacher competencies and ESD teacher competencies issued by several countries and ESD teacher competencies proposed by Okayama University ESD Promotion Center. A four-scale questionnaire comprising 96 statements was developed to assess seven competencies, i.e., content knowledge, content pedagogy, inquiry, professional practice, professional development, assessment and evaluation, and attitude. The instrument was tested on 234 science teachers nationwide, consisting of 166 females and 68 males from different schools, teaching years, and educational levels. The results show that the Cronbach’s alpha of the instrument is 0.99 (very good category), person reliability 0.96 (good category), and item reliability 0.67 (fairly good category). Based on explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, six competency dimensions are identified. The score of explanatory factor analysis based on Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) was 0.966 and the significance on Bartlett’s test of sphericity was 0.00. This means that there are significant correlations among the items. This suggests that the instrument is suitable to identify science teachers’ competencies as indicators of their readiness to teach ESD.

The extraction of accelerated positrons from the electron-beam-driven nonlinear plasma wakefield is investigated. If the trailing positron beam traverses a plasma density down-ramp at the exit of the plasma, it can become ring-shaped due to the defocusing force of the elongating wake bubble produced by the electron drive bunch. Ionization-induced head erosion process can be used to mitigate this effect because the drive electron beam leaves a hollow plasma channel with zero focusing force along the propagation axis. Particle-in-cell simulations are performed for the case where a drive-trailing electron bunch configuration traverses through a high-$Z$ tantalum target placed at the plasma entrance, during which each bunch generates electron-positron pairs. If the plasma density upstream of this converter foil is correctly chosen such that the bubble length is equal to the inter-bunch spacing then the secondary positrons experience both a focusing and accelerating force and can gain energy from the wake. The simulation results demonstrate that when the uniform plasma length is longer than the beam head erosion distance for the drive electron bunch, the positrons can be extracted with a far smaller divergence than when they are extracted by the usual plasma density down-ramp. The transverse density distribution and the positron spectra of the trailing positrons for various acceptance angles of the spectrometer are presented to discuss the detectability of the accelerated positrons under experimental conditions at FACET-II.

A systematic investigation on the thermodynamic properties of La-based ternary intermetallic superconductors crystallizing in a U(3)Ni(4)Si(4)-type structure is presented. The U(3)Ni(4)Si(4)-type structure consists of a characteristic intergrowth of periodic BaAl(4) (ThCr(2)Si(2))- and AlB(2)-type segments. Pristine low temperature specific heat data for recently discovered members La(3)Ni(4)Si(4) and La(3)Ni(4)Ge(4) with T(c)s of 1.0 and 0.7 K, respectively, are presented as well as La(3)Pd(4)Ge(4) with the highest T(c) of 2.5 K in the U(3)Ni(4)Si(4)-type group. Owing to the higher T(c)s of U(3)Ni(4)Si(4)-type superconductors than the related ThCr(2)Si(2)-type compounds, comparisons are drawn in our investigations of the ternary intermetallics of LaPd(2)Ge(2), LaNi(2)Si(2), and LaNi(2)Ge(2) having a ThCr(2)Si(2)-type structure. Our investigations of the thermodynamic properties show that La(3)Ni(4)Si(4) and La(3)Ni(4)Ge(4) have higher values of γ(n), N(E(F)), and Θ(D) than La(3)Pd(4)Ge(4). The same trend was found in ThCr(2)Si(2)-type compounds of LaPd(2)Ge(2), LaNi(2)Si(2), and LaNi(2)Ge(2). It turns out that the difference in T(c) between La(3)Pd(4)Ge(4), La(3)Ni(4)Si(4), and La(3)Ni(4)Ge(4), as well as the relatively higher T(c) of the U(3)Ni(4)Si(4)-type superconductors than of the related ThCr(2)Si(2)-type compounds, are largely due to the strength of electron-phonon coupling.

素肌の質感表現はコンヒュータグラフィックス (CG: Computer Graphics) の分野や化粧品分野等, 幅広くニーズが存在する．しかしながら, 肌はその構成物質や構造に起因する複雑な物理特性を持つため, 正確な質感表現は困難な技術課題といえる．そこで本研究では, 素肌に対する印象の潜在的な要因を明らかにし, 印象と物理特性の関係性を体系的にモデル化することを目的とする．これにより, 直感的な肌の質感表現が可能になるだけでなく, 素肌に対する人間の認知機序の解明の一助となり得る. モデルを構築するにあたり, まず, 一般的に用いられる形容語の中から, 素肌を評価することに相応しい語を選定した．また, 素肌の物理特性に基づき正確な質感表現を行うことのできる手法について検討し, 素肌のCG画像を作成した．次に, 選定された語と作成したCG画像を用い主観評価実験を行うことで, 素肌の視覚的印象を構成する潜在的な要因を明らかにした．最後に, 主観評価実験によって得られた結果に対して回帰分析を行うことで, 素肌の物理特性から想起される印象を推定する体系的なモデルを構築した．これにより, 物理特性から印象を推定することや, 逆に所望の印象に寄与する具体的な物理量を予測することが可能となった.