A Development of the Multiple Intelligences Measurement of Elementary Students

This research aims at development of the Multiple Intelligences Measurement of Elementary Students. The structural accuracy test and normality establishment are based on the Multiple Intelligences Theory of Gardner. This theory consists of eight aspects namely linguistics, logic and mathematics, visual-spatial relations, body and movement, music, human relations, self-realization/selfunderstanding and nature. The sample used in this research consists of elementary school students (aged between 5-11 years). The size of the sample group was determined by Yamane Table. The group has 2,504 students. Multistage Sampling was used. Basic statistical analysis and construct validity testing were done using confirmatory factor analysis. The research can be summarized as follows; 1. Multiple Intelligences Measurement consisting of 120 items is content-accurate. Internal consistent reliability according to the method of Kuder-Richardson of the whole Multiple Intelligences Measurement equals .91. The difficulty of the measurement test is between .39-.83. Discrimination is between .21-.85. 2). The Multiple Intelligences Measurement has construct validity in a good range, that is 8 components and all 120 test items have statistical significance level at .01. Chi-square value equals 4357.7; p=.00 at the degree of freedom of 244 and Goodness of Fit Index equals 1.00. Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index equals .92. Comparative Fit Index (CFI) equals .68. Root Mean Squared Residual (RMR) equals 0.064 and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation equals 0.82. 3). The normality of the Multiple Intelligences Measurement is categorized into 3 levels. Those with high intelligence are those with percentiles of more than 78. Those with moderate/medium intelligence are those with percentiles between 24 and 77.9. Those with low intelligence are those with percentiles from 23.9 downwards.

Ray Tracing Technique based 60 GHz Band Propagation Modelling and Influence of People Shadowing

The main objectif of this paper is to present a tool that we have developed subject to characterize and modelling indoor radio channel propagation at millimetric wave. The tool is based on the ray tracing technique (RTT). As, in realistic environment we cannot neglect the significant impact of Human Body Shadowing and other objects in motion on indoor 60 GHz propagation channel. Hence, our proposed model allows a simulation of propagation in a dynamic indoor environment. First, we describe a model of human body. Second, RTT with this model is used to simulate the propagation of millimeter waves in the presence of persons in motion. Results of the simulation show that this tool gives results in agreement with those reported in the literature. Specially, the effects of people motion on temporal channel properties.

CMOS-Compatible Silicon Nanoplasmonics for On-Chip Integration

Although silicon photonic devices provide a significantly larger bandwidth and dissipate a substantially less power than the electronic devices, they suffer from a large size due to the fundamental diffraction limit and the weak optical response of Si. A potential solution is to exploit Si plasmonics, which may not only miniaturize the photonic device far beyond the diffraction limit, but also enhance the optical response in Si due to the electromagnetic field confinement. In this paper, we discuss and summarize the recently developed metal-insulator-Si-insulator-metal nanoplasmonic waveguide as well as various passive and active plasmonic components based on this waveguide, including coupler, bend, power splitter, ring resonator, MZI, modulator, detector, etc. All these plasmonic components are CMOS compatible and could be integrated with electronic and conventional dielectric photonic devices on the same SOI chip. More potential plasmonic devices as well as plasmonic nanocircuits with complex functionalities are also addressed.

Microalbuminuria in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a global pandemic with cases reporting from virtually every country and continues to be a common infection in developing country like India. Microalbuminuria is a manifestation of human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy. Therefore, microalbuminuria may be an early marker of human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy, and screening for its presence may be beneficial. A strikingly high prevalence of microalbuminuria among human immunodeficiency virus infected patients has been described in various studies. Risk factors for clinically significant proteinuria include African - American race, higher human immunodeficiency virus ribonucleic acid level and lower CD4 lymphocyte count. The cardiovascular risk factors of increased systolic blood pressure and increase fasting blood sugar level are strongly associated with microalbuminuria in human immunodeficiency virus patient. These results suggest that microalbuminuria may be a sign of current endothelial dysfunction and micro-vascular disease and there is substantial risk of future cardiovascular disease events. Positive contributing factors include early kidney disease such as human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy, a marker of end organ damage related to co morbidities of diabetes or hypertension, or more diffuse endothelial cells dysfunction. Nevertheless after adjustment for non human immunodeficiency virus factors, human immunodeficiency virus itself is a major risk factor. The presence of human immunodeficiency virus infection is independent risk to develop microalbuminuria in human immunodeficiency virus patient. Cardiovascular risk factors appeared to be stronger predictors of microalbuminuria than markers of human immunodeficiency virus severity person with human immunodeficiency virus infection and microalbuminuria therefore appear to potentially bear the burden of two separate damage related to known vascular end organ damage related to know vascular risk factors, and human immunodeficiency virus specific processes such as the direct viral infection of kidney cells.The higher prevalence of microalbuminuria among the human immunodeficiency virus infected could be harbinger of future increased risks of both kidney and cardiovascular disease. Further study defining the prognostic significance of microalbuminuria among human immunodeficiency virus infected persons will be essential. Microalbuminuria seems to be a predictor of cardiovascular disease in diabetic and non diabetic subjects, hence it can also be used for early detection of micro vascular disease in human immunodeficiency virus positive patients, thus can help to diagnose the disease at the earliest.

Dynamic-Stochastic Influence Diagrams: Integrating Time-Slices IDs and Discrete Event Systems Modeling

The Influence Diagrams (IDs) is a kind of Probabilistic Belief Networks for graphic modeling. The usage of IDs can improve the communication among field experts, modelers, and decision makers, by showing the issue frame discussed from a high-level point of view. This paper enhances the Time-Sliced Influence Diagrams (TSIDs, or called Dynamic IDs) based formalism from a Discrete Event Systems Modeling and Simulation (DES M&S) perspective, for Exploring Analysis (EA) modeling. The enhancements enable a modeler to specify times occurred of endogenous events dynamically with stochastic sampling as model running and to describe the inter- influences among them with variable nodes in a dynamic situation that the existing TSIDs fails to capture. The new class of model is named Dynamic-Stochastic Influence Diagrams (DSIDs). The paper includes a description of the modeling formalism and the hiberarchy simulators implementing its simulation algorithm, and shows a case study to illustrate its enhancements.

Developing ESL Students' Writing

Some of the students' problems in writing skill stem from inadequate preparation for the writing assignment. Students should be taught how to write well when they arrive in language classes. Having selected a topic, the students examine and explore the theme from as large a variety of viewpoints as their background and imagination make possible. Another strategy is that the students prepare an Outline before writing the paper. The comparison between the two mentioned thought provoking techniques was carried out between the two class groups –students of Islamic Azad University of Dezful who were studying “Writing 2" as their main course. Each class group was assigned to write five compositions separately in different periods of time. Then a t-test for each pair of exams between the two class groups showed that the t-observed in each pair was more than the t-critical. Consequently, the first hypothesis which states those who utilize Brainstorming as a thought provoking technique in prewriting phase are more successful than those who outline the papers before writing was verified.

A New Model for e-CRM in e-Commerce using Live-Operator

Bythe development of the Internet, e-commerce has got very popular between organizations. E-commerce means buying and selling products and services over the Internet. One of the challenging issues in e-commerce is how to attract the customers and how to satisfy them. Therefore, it is important to keep good relationship with the customers. This paper proposes a new model to increase the customer satisfaction by introducing live-operator. Live-operator is a system which is involved both with the customers and the organization.In this system the customers feelthatthey receive the service directly from the organization. This model decreases the response time and the customer loss. Moreover, it increases customer trust and the ability of organizations.

Development of a Porous Silica Film by Sol-gel Process

In the present work homogeneous silica film on silicon was fabricated by colloidal silica sol. The silica sol precursor with uniformly granular particle was derived by the alkaline hydrolysis of tetraethoxyorthosilicate (TEOS) in presence of glycerol template. The film was prepared by dip coating process. The templated hetero-structured silica film was annealed at elevated temperatures to generate nano- and meso porosity in the film. The film was subsequently annealed at different temperatures to make it defect free and abrasion resistant. The sol and the film were characterized by the measurement of particle size distribution, scanning electron microscopy, XRD, FTIR spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, measurement of the refractive index, thermal conductivity and abrasion resistance. The porosity of the films decreased whereas refractive index and dielectric constant of it `increased with the increase in the annealing temperature. The thermal conductivity of the films increased with the increase in the film thickness. The developed porous silica film holds strong potential for use in different areas.

Learning Objects: A New Paradigm for ELearning Resource Development for Secondary Schools in Tanzania

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and the Wide World Web (WWW) have fundamentally altered the practice of teaching and learning world wide. Many universities, organizations, colleges and schools are trying to apply the benefits of the emerging ICT. In the early nineties the term learning object was introduced into the instructional technology vernacular; the idea being that educational resources could be broken into modular components for later combination by instructors, learners, and eventually computes into larger structures that would support learning [1]. However in many developing countries, the use of ICT is still in its infancy stage and the concept of learning object is quite new. This paper outlines the learning object design considerations for developing countries depending on learning environment.

Wetting Behavior of Reactive and Non–Reactive Wetting of Liquids on Metallic Substrates

Wetting characteristics of reactive (Sn–0.7Cu solder) and non– reactive (castor oil) wetting of liquids on Cu and Ag plated Al substrates have been investigated. Solder spreading exhibited capillary, gravity and viscous regimes. Oils did not exhibit noticeable spreading regimes. Solder alloy showed better wettability on Ag coated Al substrate compared to Cu plating. In the case of castor oil, Cu coated Al substrate exhibited good wettability as compared to Ag coated Al substrates. The difference in wettability during reactive wetting of solder and non–reactive wetting of oils is attributed to the change in the surface energies of Al substrates brought about by the formation of intermetallic compounds (IMCs).

Capacity Optimization for Local and Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

The dynamic spectrum allocation solutions such as cognitive radio networks have been proposed as a key technology to exploit the frequency segments that are spectrally underutilized. Cognitive radio users work as secondary users who need to constantly and rapidly sense the presence of primary users or licensees to utilize their frequency bands if they are inactive. Short sensing cycles should be run by the secondary users to achieve higher throughput rates as well as to provide low level of interference to the primary users by immediately vacating their channels once they have been detected. In this paper, the throughput-sensing time relationship in local and cooperative spectrum sensing has been investigated under two distinct scenarios, namely, constant primary user protection (CPUP) and constant secondary user spectrum usability (CSUSU) scenarios. The simulation results show that the design of sensing slot duration is very critical and depends on the number of cooperating users under CPUP scenario whereas under CSUSU, cooperating more users has no effect if the sensing time used exceeds 5% of the total frame duration.

Structural Integrity Management for Fixed Offshore Platforms in Malaysia

Structural Integrity Management (SIM) is important for the protection of offshore crew, environment, business assets and company and industry reputation. API RP 2A contained guidelines for assessment of existing platforms mostly for the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). ISO 19902 SIM framework also does not specifically cater for Malaysia. There are about 200 platforms in Malaysia with 90 exceeding their design life. The Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd (PCSB) uses the Asset Integrity Management System and the very subjective Risk based Inspection Program for these platforms. Petronas currently doesn-t have a standalone Petronas Technical Standard PTS-SIM. This study proposes a recommended practice for the SIM process for offshore structures in Malaysia, including studies by API and ISO and local elements such as the number of platforms, types of facilities, age and risk ranking. Case study on SMG-A platform in Sabah shows missing or scattered platform data and a gap in inspection history. It is to undergo a level 3 underwater inspection in year 2015.

Process-Oriented Learning Requirements for Employees and for Organizations

Using activity theory, organisational theory and didactics as theoretical foundations, a comprehensive model of the organisational dimensions relevant for learning and knowledge transfer will be developed. In a second step, a Learning Assessment Guideline will be elaborated. This guideline will be designed to permit a targeted analysis of organisations to identify the status quo in those areas crucial to the implementation of learning and knowledge transfer. In addition, this self-analysis tool will enable learning managers to select adequate didactic models for e- and blended learning. As part of the European Integrated Project "Process-oriented Learning and Information Exchange" (PROLIX), this model of organisational prerequisites for learning and knowledge transfer will be empirically tested in four profit and non-profit organisations in Great Britain, Germany and France (to be finalized in autumn 2006). The findings concern not only the capability of the model of organisational dimensions, but also the predominant perceptions of and obstacles to learning in organisations.

SVM-based Multiview Face Recognition by Generalization of Discriminant Analysis

Identity verification of authentic persons by their multiview faces is a real valued problem in machine vision. Multiview faces are having difficulties due to non-linear representation in the feature space. This paper illustrates the usability of the generalization of LDA in the form of canonical covariate for face recognition to multiview faces. In the proposed work, the Gabor filter bank is used to extract facial features that characterized by spatial frequency, spatial locality and orientation. Gabor face representation captures substantial amount of variations of the face instances that often occurs due to illumination, pose and facial expression changes. Convolution of Gabor filter bank to face images of rotated profile views produce Gabor faces with high dimensional features vectors. Canonical covariate is then used to Gabor faces to reduce the high dimensional feature spaces into low dimensional subspaces. Finally, support vector machines are trained with canonical sub-spaces that contain reduced set of features and perform recognition task. The proposed system is evaluated with UMIST face database. The experiment results demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed system with high recognition rates.

Optimization of Acid Treatments by Assessing Diversion Strategies in Carbonate and Sandstone Formations

When acid is pumped into damaged reservoirs for damage removal/stimulation, distorted inflow of acid into the formation occurs caused by acid preferentially traveling into highly permeable regions over low permeable regions, or (in general) into the path of least resistance. This can lead to poor zonal coverage and hence warrants diversion to carry out an effective placement of acid. Diversion is desirably a reversible technique of temporarily reducing the permeability of high perm zones, thereby forcing the acid into lower perm zones. The uniqueness of each reservoir can pose several challenges to engineers attempting to devise optimum and effective diversion strategies. Diversion techniques include mechanical placement and/or chemical diversion of treatment fluids, further sub-classified into ball sealers, bridge plugs, packers, particulate diverters, viscous gels, crosslinked gels, relative permeability modifiers (RPMs), foams, and/or the use of placement techniques, such as coiled tubing (CT) and the maximum pressure difference and injection rate (MAPDIR) methodology. It is not always realized that the effectiveness of diverters greatly depends on reservoir properties, such as formation type, temperature, reservoir permeability, heterogeneity, and physical well characteristics (e.g., completion type, well deviation, length of treatment interval, multiple intervals, etc.). This paper reviews the mechanisms by which each variety of diverter functions and discusses the effect of various reservoir properties on the efficiency of diversion techniques. Guidelines are recommended to help enhance productivity from zones of interest by choosing the best methods of diversion while pumping an optimized amount of treatment fluid. The success of an overall acid treatment often depends on the effectiveness of the diverting agents.

The Influencing Factors and the Approach to Enhance the Standard of E-Commerce for Small and Medium Enterprises in Bangkok

The objectives of this research paper were to study the influencing factors that contributed to the success of electronic commerce (e-commerce) and to study the approach to enhance the standard of e-commerce for small and medium enterprises (SME). The research paper focused the study on only sole proprietorship SMEs in Bangkok, Thailand. The factors contributed to the success of SME included business management, learning in the organization, business collaboration, and the quality of website. A quantitative and qualitative mixed research methodology was used. In terms of quantitative method, a questionnaire was used to collect data from 251 sole proprietorships. The System Equation Model (SEM) was utilized as the tool for data analysis. In terms of qualitative method, an in-depth interview, a dialogue with experts in the field of ecommerce for SMEs, and content analysis were used. By using the adjusted causal relationship structure model, it was revealed that the factors affecting the success of e-commerce for SMEs were found to be congruent with the empirical data. The hypothesis testing indicated that business management influenced the learning in the organization, the learning in the organization influenced business collaboration and the quality of the website, and these factors, in turn, influenced the success of SMEs. Moreover, the approach to enhance the standard of SMEs revealed that the majority of respondents wanted to enhance the standard of SMEs to a high level in the category of safety of e-commerce system, basic structure of e-commerce, development of staff potentials, assistance of budget and tax reduction, and law improvement regarding the e-commerce respectively.

Efficient STAKCERT KDD Processes in Worm Detection

This paper presents a new STAKCERT KDD processes for worm detection. The enhancement introduced in the data-preprocessing resulted in the formation of a new STAKCERT model for worm detection. In this paper we explained in detail how all the processes involved in the STAKCERT KDD processes are applied within the STAKCERT model for worm detection. Based on the experiment conducted, the STAKCERT model yielded a 98.13% accuracy rate for worm detection by integrating the STAKCERT KDD processes.

Extraction of Data from Web Pages: A Vision Based Approach

With the explosive growth of information sources available on the World Wide Web, it has become increasingly difficult to identify the relevant pieces of information, since web pages are often cluttered with irrelevant content like advertisements, navigation-panels, copyright notices etc., surrounding the main content of the web page. Hence, tools for the mining of data regions, data records and data items need to be developed in order to provide value-added services. Currently available automatic techniques to mine data regions from web pages are still unsatisfactory because of their poor performance and tag-dependence. In this paper a novel method to extract data items from the web pages automatically is proposed. It comprises of two steps: (1) Identification and Extraction of the data regions based on visual clues information. (2) Identification of data records and extraction of data items from a data region. For step1, a novel and more effective method is proposed based on visual clues, which finds the data regions formed by all types of tags using visual clues. For step2 a more effective method namely, Extraction of Data Items from web Pages (EDIP), is adopted to mine data items. The EDIP technique is a list-based approach in which the list is a linear data structure. The proposed technique is able to mine the non-contiguous data records and can correctly identify data regions, irrespective of the type of tag in which it is bound. Our experimental results show that the proposed technique performs better than the existing techniques.

Modeling of CO2 Removal from Gas Mixtureby 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) Using the Modified Kent Eisenberg Model

In this paper, the solubility of CO2 in AMP solution have been measured at temperature range of ( 293, 303 ,313,323) K.The amine concentration ranges studied are (2.0, 2.8, and 3.4) M. A solubility apparatus was used to measure the solubility of CO2 in AMP solution on samples of flue gases from Thermal and Central Power Plants of Esfahan Steel Company. The modified Kent Eisenberg model was used to correlate and predict the vapor-liquid equilibria of the (CO2 + AMP + H2O) system. The model predicted results are in good agreement with the experimental vapor-liquid equilibrium measurements.

A Novel Fuzzy Technique for Image Noise Reduction

A new fuzzy filter is presented for noise reduction of images corrupted with additive noise. The filter consists of two stages. In the first stage, all the pixels of image are processed for determining noisy pixels. For this, a fuzzy rule based system associates a degree to each pixel. The degree of a pixel is a real number in the range [0,1], which denotes a probability that the pixel is not considered as a noisy pixel. In the second stage, another fuzzy rule based system is employed. It uses the output of the previous fuzzy system to perform fuzzy smoothing by weighting the contributions of neighboring pixel values. Experimental results are obtained to show the feasibility of the proposed filter. These results are also compared to other filters by numerical measure and visual inspection.