The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. The empirical analysis is performed on a sample of 10,092 higher education students from 10 countries across 4 continents during the pandemic’s first wave through an online survey. A structural equation model revealed the quality of e-learning was mainly derived from service quality, the teacher’s active role in the process of online education, and the overall system quality, while the students’ digital competencies and online interactions with their colleagues and teachers were considered to be slightly less important factors. The impact of e-learning quality on the students’ performance was strongly mediated by their satisfaction with e-learning. In general, the model gave quite consistent results across countries, gender, study fields, and levels of study. The findings provide a basis for policy recommendations to support decision-makers incorporate e-learning issues in the current and any new similar circumstances.

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In the present work the case of a chromium Bose-Einstein condensate is considered. The model includes not only the presence of the so-called contact interaction but also a long range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction has been included. Some thermodynamical properties are analyzed. For instance, the size of the condensate, chemical potential, speed of sound, number of particles, etc., are deduced. It will be shown that this dipole-dipole interaction implies the emergence of anisotropy, for example, in the speed of sound. The possible use of this anisotropy as a tool for the analyze of dissipative mechanisms, for instance, Landau's criterion for superfluidity, will be also discussed.

This work addresses the analogy between the speed of sound of a viscous, barotropic, and irrotational fluid and the equation of motion for a non-massive field in a curved manifold. It will be shown that the presence of viscosity implies the introduction, into the equation of motion of the gravitational analogue, of a source term which entails the flow of energy from the non-massive field to the curvature of the spacetime manifold. The stress-energy tensor is also computed and it is found not to be constant, which is consistent with such energy interchange.

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