Abstract: The reported study focuses on pre-service teachers’ professional development during the teaching practice. The cohort studied comprised participants in their final year in the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science with Graduate Certificate in Education programmes of a university in Fiji. Analysis of the data obtained using a survey questionnaire indicates that overall, the pre-service teachers were satisfied with the practicum experience. This is assumed to demonstrate that the practicum experience contributed well towards their professional preparation for work expected of them in Fiji secondary schools. Participants also identified some concerns as needing attention. To conclude, the paper provides suggestions for improving the preparation of teachers by strengthening the identified areas of the practicum offered by the university. The study has implications for other teacher education providers in small developing island states and even beyond for the purpose of enhancing learning in student teachers’ for future work.
Abstract: In Fiji, notable among the recent spate of educational reforms has been the Ministry of Education’s (MoEs) requirement that all schools undertake a process of school strategic planning. This preliminary study explores perceptions of a sample of Fijian teachers on the way this exercise has been conducted in their schools. The analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data indicates that school leaders’ lack of knowledge and skills in school strategic planning is a major limitation. As an unsurprising consequence, the process(es) schools adopted did not conform to what the literature suggests as best planning practices. School leaders need more training to ensure they are better prepared to carry out this strategic planning effectively, especially in widening the opportunities for all who have a stake in education to contribute to the process. Implications of the findings are likely to be pertinent to other developing contexts within and beyond the Pacific region for the training of school leaders to ensure they are better equipped to orchestrate and benefit from educational reforms thrust upon them.
Abstract: Micro-reading is a new way of reading depended on short messages of mobile phones, network articles and short literary forms, which impacts greatly on traditional way of reading. The effect of "micro-reading" is deeper especially for those growing middle school students and college students. Aiming at the problem with the development of college students' micro-reading and based on the influence of schema theory on the research of cognition of reading, this paper is to analyze the comparison between micro-reading and traditional reading and explore reading strategies in micro-era based on the negative and positive effect which schema theory has on micro-reading.
Abstract: This paper carries out a performance analysis based on
the first and second laws of thermodynamics for heat recovery vapor
generator (HRVG) of ammonia-water mixture when the heat source is
low-temperature energy in the form of sensible heat. In the analysis,
effects of the ammonia mass concentration and mass flow ratio of the
binary mixture are investigated on the system performance including
the effectiveness of heat transfer, entropy generation, and exergy
efficiency. The results show that the ammonia concentration and the
mass flow ratio of the mixture have significant effects on the system
performance of HRVG.
Abstract: The work delineates the threats of maladjustment of the capacity of rain canals, designed and built in the early 20th century, in connection to heavy rainfall, especially in summer. This is the cause of the so called 'urban floods.' It directly relates to fierce raise of paving in the cities. Resolving this problem requires a change in philosophy of draining the rainfall by wider use of retention, infiltration and usage of rainwater.
In systemic approach to managing the safety of urban drainage systems the risk, which is directly connected to safety failures, has been accepted as a measure. The risk level defines the probability of occurrence of losses greater than the ones forecast for a given time frame. The procedure of risk modelling, enabling its numeric analysis by using appropriate weights, is a significant issue in this paper.
Abstract: In this paper, a sliding mode control method based on the passivity approach is proposed to control the position of surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs). Firstly, the dynamics of a PMSM was proved to be strictly passive. The position controller with an adaptive law was used to estimate the load torque to eliminate the chattering effects associated with the conventional sliding mode controller. The stability analysis of the overall position control system was carried out by adopting the passivity theorem instead of Lyapunov-type arguments. Finally, experimental results were provided to show that the good position tracking can be obtained, and exhibit robustness in the variations of the motor parameters and load torque disturbances.
Abstract: This research aims to study the species, feeding behavior and activity characteristics of birds which reap benefits from the research area in boat touring routes in Klong Kone Sub-district, Muang District, Samut Songkram Province, Thailand from October 2013 – May 2014. The results from the survey of birds on all three routes found that there are 11 families and 22 species. Route 1 (Klong Kone canal) had the most species, 20 species. According to feeding behavior, there were insectivorous, piscivorous and aquatic invertebrate feeder birds. Activity characteristics of birds which reap benefits from the research were finding food, nesting and raise nestlings along boat touring routes.
Abstract: This research aims to study species, abundance, status
of birds, the similarities and activity characteristics of birds which
reap benefits from the research area in boat touring routes in Tha Ka
sub-district, Amphawa District, Samut Songkram Province, Thailand.
from October 2012 – September 2013. The data was analyzed to find
the abundance, and similarity index of the birds. The results from the
survey of birds on all three routes found that there are 33 families and
63 species. Route 3 (traditional coconut sugar making kiln – resort)
had the most species; 56 species. There were 18 species of commonly
found birds with an abundance level of 5, which calculates to 28.57%
of all bird species. In August, 46 species are found, being the greatest
number of bird species benefiting from this route. As for the status of
the birds, there are 51 resident birds, 7 resident and migratory birds,
and 5 migratory birds. On Route 2 and Route 3, the similarity index
value is equal to 0.881. The birds are classified by their activity
characteristics i.e. insectivore, piscivore, granivore, nectrivore and
aquatic invertebrate feeder birds. Some birds also use the area for
nesting.
Abstract: The objectives of this research were to develop and find the efficiency of integrated online lessons by investigating the usage of online lessons, the relationship between learners’ background knowledge, and the achievement after learning with online lessons. The sample group in this study consisted of 97 students randomly selected from 121 students registering in 1/2012 at Trimitwittayaram Learning Center. The sample technique employed stratified sample technique of 4 groups according to their proficiency, i.e. high, moderate, low, and non-knowledge. The research instrument included online lessons in integration model on the topic of Java Programming, test after each lesson, the achievement test at the end of the course, and the questionnaires to find learners’ satisfaction. The results showed that the efficiency of online lessons was 90.20/89.18 with the achievement of after learning with the lessons higher than that before the lessons at the statistically significant level of 0.05. Moreover, the background knowledge of the learners on the programming showed the positive relationship with the achievement learning at the statistically significant level at 0.05. Learners with high background knowledge employed less exercises and samples than those with lower background knowledge. While learners with different background in the group of moderate and low did not show the significant difference in employing samples and exercises.
Abstract: Historically, actuators’ redundancy was used to deal
with faults occurring suddenly in flight systems. This technique was
generally expensive, time consuming and involves increased weight
and space in the system. Therefore, nowadays, the on-line fault
diagnosis of actuators and accommodation plays a major role in the
design of avionic systems. These approaches, known as Fault
Tolerant Flight Control systems (FTFCs) are able to adapt to such
sudden faults while keeping avionics systems lighter and less
expensive. In this paper, a (FTFC) system based on the Geometric
Approach and a Reconfigurable Flight Control (RFC) are presented.
The Geometric approach is used for cosmic ray fault reconstruction,
while Sliding Mode Control (SMC) based on Lyapunov stability
theory is designed for the reconfiguration of the controller in order to
compensate the fault effect. Matlab®/Simulink® simulations are
performed to illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the
proposed flight control system against actuators’ faulty signal caused
by cosmic rays. The results demonstrate the successful real-time
implementation of the proposed FTFC system on a non-linear 6 DOF
aircraft model.
Abstract: Wetlands are one of the most important ecosystems on
Earth. Nevertheless, various challenges threaten these ecosystems
and disrupt their ecological character. Among these, the effects of
human-based threats are more devastating. Following mass
degradation of wetlands during 1970s, the Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971) was concluded to conserve wetlands
of international importance and prevent destruction and degradation
of such ecosystems through wise use of wetlands as a mean to
achieve sustainable development in all over the world. Therefore, in
this paper, efforts have been made to analyze threats to wetlands and
then investigate solutions in the framework of the Ramsar
Convention. Finally, in order to operate these mechanisms, this study
concludes that all states should in turn make their best effort to
improve and restore global wetlands through preservation of
environmental standards and close contribution and also through
taking joint measures with other states effectively.
Abstract: In this paper, Backstepping method is proposed to synchronize two fractional-order systems. The simulation results show that this method can effectively synchronize two chaotic systems.
Abstract: String matching also known as pattern matching is
one of primary concept for network security. In this area the
effectiveness and efficiency of string matching algorithms is
important for applications in network security such as network
intrusion detection, virus detection, signature matching and web
content filtering system. This paper presents brief review on some of
string matching techniques used for network security.
Abstract: The conventional rectangular horn has been used for microwave antenna a long time. Its gain can be increased by enlarging the construction of horn to flare exponentially. This paper presents a study of the shaped woodpile Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) to improve its gain for conventional horn without construction enlargement. The gain enhancement synthesis method for shaped woodpile EBG that has to transfer the electromagnetic fields from aperture of a horn antenna through woodpile EBG is presented by using the variety of shaped woodpile EBGs such as planar, triangular, quadratic, circular, gaussian, cosine, and squared cosine structures. The proposed technique has the advantages of low profile, low cost for fabrication and light weight. The antenna characteristics such as reflection coefficient (S11), radiation patterns and gain are simulated by utilized A Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software. With the proposed concept, an antenna prototype was fabricated and experimented. The S11 and radiation patterns obtained from measurements show a good impedance matching and a gain enhancement of the proposed antenna. The gain at dominant frequency of 10 GHz is 25.6 dB, application for X- and Ku-Band Radar, that higher than the gain of the basic rectangular horn antenna around 8 dB with adding only one appropriated EBG structures.
Abstract: This paper proposes the development and design of
double layer metamaterials based on electromagnetic band gap
(EBG) rods as a superstrate of a resonator antenna to enhance
required antenna characteristics for the mobile base station. The
metallic rod type metamaterial can partially reflect wave of a primary
radiator. The antenna was designed and analyzed by a simulation
result from CST Microwave Studio and designed technique could be
confirmed by a measurement results from prototype antenna that
agree with simulation results. The results indicate that the antenna
can also generate a dual polarization by using a 45˚ oriented curved
strip dipole located at the center of the reflector plane with double
layer superstrate. It can be used to simplify the feed system of an
antenna. The proposed antenna has a bandwidth covering the
frequency range of 1920 – 2200 MHz, the gain of the antenna
increases up to 14.06 dBi. In addition, an interesting sectoral 60˚
pattern is presented in horizontal plane.
Abstract: In a perfect secret-sharing scheme, a dealer distributes
a secret among a set of participants in such a way that only qualified
subsets of participants can recover the secret and the joint share of the
participants in any unqualified subset is statistically independent of
the secret. The access structure of the scheme refers to the collection
of all qualified subsets. In a graph-based access structures, each vertex
of a graph G represents a participant and each edge of G represents a
minimal qualified subset. The average information ratio of a perfect
secret-sharing scheme realizing a given access structure is the ratio
of the average length of the shares given to the participants to the
length of the secret. The infimum of the average information ratio
of all possible perfect secret-sharing schemes realizing an access
structure is called the optimal average information ratio of that access
structure. We study the optimal average information ratio of the
access structures based on bipartite graphs. Based on some previous
results, we give a bound on the optimal average information ratio
for all bipartite graphs of girth at least six. This bound is the best
possible for some classes of bipartite graphs using our approach.
Abstract: The inhibition of SH2 domain regulated protein-protein interactions is an attractive target for developing an effective chemotherapeutic approach in the treatment of disease. Molecular simulation is a useful tool for developing new drugs and for studying molecular recognition. In this study, we searched potential drug compounds for the inhibition of SH2 domain by performing structural similarity search in PubChem Compound Database. A total of 37 compounds were screened from the database, and then we used the LibDock docking program to evaluate the inhibition effect. The best three compounds (AP22408, CID 71463546 and CID 9917321) were chosen for MD simulations after the LibDock docking. Our results show that the compound CID 9917321 can produce a more stable protein-ligand complex compared to other two currently known inhibitors of Src SH2 domain. The compound CID 9917321 may be useful for the inhibition of SH2 domain based on these computational results. Subsequently experiments are needed to verify the effect of compound CID 9917321 on the SH2 domain in the future studies.
Abstract: This paper presents the design and implementation of a sliding-mod controller for tracking servo of optical disk drives. The tracking servo is majorly subject to two disturbance sources: radial run-out and shock. The lateral run-out disturbance is mostly repeatable, and a model of such disturbance is incorporated into the controller design to effectively compensate for it. Meanwhile, as a shock disturbance is usually non-repeatable and unpredictable, the sliding-mode controller is employed for its robustness to abrupt perturbations. As a result, a sliding-mode controller design based on the internal model principle is tailored for tracking servo of optical disk drives in order to deal with these two major disturbances. Experimental comparative studies are conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the specially designed controller.
Abstract: Cloud outsource storage is one of important services in cloud computing. Cloud users upload data to cloud servers to reduce the cost of managing data and maintaining hardware and software. To ensure data confidentiality, users can encrypt their files before uploading them to a cloud system. However, retrieving the target file from the encrypted files exactly is difficult for cloud server. This study proposes a protocol for performing multikeyword searches for encrypted cloud data by applying k-nearest neighbor technology. The protocol ranks the relevance scores of encrypted files and keywords, and prevents cloud servers from learning search keywords submitted by a cloud user. To reduce the costs of file transfer communication, the cloud server returns encrypted files in order of relevance. Moreover, when a cloud user inputs an incorrect keyword and the number of wrong alphabet does not exceed a given threshold; the user still can retrieve the target files from cloud server. In addition, the proposed scheme satisfies security requirements for outsourced data storage.
Abstract: This study examined the predictive effects of moral competence, prosocial norms and positive behavior recognition on school misbehavior among Chinese junior secondary school students. Results of multiple regression analysis showed that students were more likely to misbehave in school when they had lower levels of moral competence and prosocial norms, and when they perceived their positive behavior being less likely recognized. Practical implications were discussed on how to guide students to make the right choices to behave appropriately in school. Implications for future research were also discussed.