Exploring the effect of achievements on students attending university orientation

University orientation is a key event for new students that aids in the transition from a school to a university environment. A smartphone orientation application was built to aid students attending the event. Achievements were added to the application in an attempt to engage students further with the orientation activities and application. An exploratory field study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of the achievement system on participants attending orientation. Forty-six new students were recruited to test the orientation application. Twenty-six participants used a gamified version of the orientation application and twenty participants used a non-gamified version. While the gamification was generally well received, no impact on user experience was evident. Some effect on engagement with orientation activities was shown. Participants who used the gamified system reported the game elements as fun, but some negative issues arose, such as cheating.

Re-evaluation of the effect of smoking on the methylation of N-terminal valine in haemoglobin

In view of the established extrapulmonary cancer sites targeted by smoking a multiplicity of compounds, and mechanisms might be involved. It has been debated that smoking caused increased incidence of N-methylvaline at the N-terminus of haemoglobin. Because this could indicate a relevance of methylating nitrosamines in tobacco smoke, data are presented from an industrial cohort of 35 smokers and 21 non-smokers repeatedly monitored between 1994 and 1999. In general, N-methylvaline adduct levels in haemoglobin of smokers were approximately 50% higher than those of non-smokers. The smoking-induced methylation of haemoglobin is likely to be caused by dimethylnitrosamine (N-nitroso-dimethylamine), a major nitrosamine in side-stream tobacco smoke. The biomonitoring data emphasise the potential value of N-methylvaline as a smoking-related biomarker and call for intensified research on tobacco smoke compounds that lead to macromolecular methylation process.

Effects of HNO3 molecular doping in graphene/Si Schottky barrier solar cells

Schottky barrier solar cells based on graphene/n-silicon heterojunction have been fabricated and characterized and the effect of graphene molecular doping by HNO3 on the solar cells performances have been analyzed. Different doping conditions and thermal annealing processes have been tested to asses and optimize the stability of the devices. The PCE of the cells increases after the treatment by HNO3 and reaches 5% in devices treated at 200 °C immediately before the exposition to the oxidant. Up to now our devices retain about 80% of efficiency over a period of two weeks, which represents a good stability result for similar devices.