Suchergebnisse

The United Nations (UN) has launched several initiatives to promote the role of education in sustainable development goals (SDGs) and set Goal 4 for quality education among the 17 SDGs. An integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) approach is a promising framework for sustainable development education and improving the quality of education. In this study, a bibliometric analysis was applied to evaluate the scientific results of the role of integrated STEM education to improve the education quality (SDG 4). A total of 160 publications out of 74,879 "education quality" and 5,430 "STEM education" documents were taken from the SCOPUS database for the period of 28 years 1993-2021. The Number of publications per year, Average citations per year, "Keywords Index" and "Author's Keywords" co-occurrence network, and high ranked papers were analysed by VoSviewer and Bibliometrix-package. The findings show the importance of "early childhood education", "education computing", and "environmental education" roles in the quality of education. The results can be applied to enhance the understanding of integrated STEM education in improving the quality of education and support future work in this area.

Context Habitat loss and fragmentation are major threats to global biodiversity, especially for wide-ranging apex carnivores. The Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) is an endangered species. Although populations of Persian leopards are declining, the species remains widely distributed across large areas of Iran. Aims This study aimed to determine habitat suitability for Persian leopards in the Khaeiz and Sorkh protected area of south-western Iran and to identify the most significant factors influencing their habitat use/selection and spatial distribution. Methods We performed species distribution modelling in two stages: First, we ran the model with three abiotic predictors: slope; aspect; and distance from water resources. In the second stage, modelling was conducted using three ecological predictors: caracal distribution; wild goat distribution; and livestock distribution. Ensemble modelling was applied based on five replicates of eight SDMs (species distribution models; GLM, CTA, FDA, GBM, ANN, MARS, RF and MaxEnt). Key results We observed only minor differences in habitat suitability between the abiotic and ecological models. Habitat suitability for Persian leopards was higher in steeper areas, close to water resources and near the distribution of caracals, livestock and wild goats. The ecological model predicted 2.03% (329 ha) more suitable habitat than the abiotic model did. Conclusions Most habitat suitability models focus on abiotic variables, but we found that ecological variables offer similar predictive power for determining the habitat suitability of Persian leopards. Implications Habitat suitability models for Persian leopards can be used to guide conservation and management decisions. They are also useful indicating where conflicts between predators and humans may occur.