Abstract: Many factors influence the educational outcome of
students. Some of these have been studied by researchers with many
emphasizing the role of students, schools, governments, peer groups
and so on. More often than not, some of these factors influencing the
academic achievement of the students have been traced back to
parents and family; being the primary platform on which learning not
only begins but is nurtured, encouraged and developed which later
transforms to the performance of the students. This study not only
explores parental and related factors that predict academic
achievement through the review of relevant literatures but also,
investigates the influence of parental background on the academic
achievement of senior secondary school students in Ibadan North
Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria. As one of the criteria
of the quality of education, students’ academic achievement was
investigated because it is most often cited as an indicator of school
effectiveness by school authorities and educationists. The data
collection was done through interviews and use of well-structured
questionnaires administered to one hundred students (100) within the
target local government. This was statistically analysed and the result
showed that parents’ attitudes towards their children’s education had
significant effect(s) on students’ self-reporting of academic
achievement. However, such factors as parental education and socioeconomic
background had no significant relationship with the
students’ self-reporting of academic achievement.
Abstract: The iron environment in Fe-doped Vycor Anode was
investigated with EXAFS using Brookhaven Synchrotron Light
Source. The iron-reducing Shewanella oneidensis culture was grown
in a microbial fuel cell under anaerobic respiration. The Fe bond
length was found to decrease and correlate with the amount of
biofilm growth on the Fe-doped Vycor Anode. The data suggests that
Fe-doped Vycor Anode would be a good substrate to study the
Shewanella oneidensis nanowire structure using EXAFS.
Abstract: The arsenic and iron environments in different growth
stages have been studied with EXAFS and XANES using
Brookhaven Synchrotron Light Source. Collard Greens plants were
grown and tissue samples were harvested. The project studied the
EXAFS and XANES of tissue samples using As and Fe K-edges. The
Fe absorption and the Fourier transform bond length information
were used as a control comparison. The Fourier transform of the
XAFS data revealed the coexistence of As (III) and As (V) in the As
bonding environment inside the studied plant tissue samples,
although the soil only had As (III). The data suggests that Collard
Greens has a novel pathway to handle arsenic absorption in soil.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present the concept of an
agile enterprise model and to initiate discussion on the research
assumptions of the model presented. The implementation of the
research project "The agility of enterprises in the process of adapting
to the environment and its changes" began in August 2014 and is
planned to last three years. The article has the form of a work-inprogress
paper which aims to verify and initiate a debate over the
proposed research model. In the literature there are very few
publications relating to research into agility; it can be concluded that
the most controversial issue in this regard is the method of measuring
agility. In previous studies the operationalization of agility was often
fragmentary, focusing only on selected areas of agility, for example
manufacturing, or analysing only selected sectors. As a result the
measures created to date can only be treated as contributory to the
development of precise measurement tools. This research project
aims to fill a cognitive gap in the literature with regard to the
conceptualization and operationalization of an agile company. Thus,
the original contribution of the author of this project is the
construction of a theoretical model that integrates manufacturing
agility (consisting mainly in adaptation to the environment) and
strategic agility (based on proactive measures). The author of this
research project is primarily interested in the attributes of an agile
enterprise which indicate that the company is able to rapidly adapt to
changing circumstances and behave pro-actively.
Abstract: With the flourishing development of online shopping,
an increasing number of customers see online shopping as an
entertaining experience. Because the online consumer has a double
identity as a shopper and an Internet user, online shopping should offer
hedonic values of shopping and Internet usage. The purpose of this
study is to investigate hedonic online shopping motivations from the
perspectives of traditional hedonic value and flow theory.
The study adopted a focus group interview method, including two
online and two offline interviews. Four focus groups of shoppers
consisted of online professionals, online college students, offline
professionals and offline college students. The results of the study
indicate that traditional hedonic values and dimensions of flow theory
exist in the online shopping environment. The study indicated that
online shoppers seem to appreciate being able to learn things and grow
to become competitive achievers online. Comparisons of online
hedonic motivations between groups are conducted. This study serves
as a basis for the future growth of Internet marketing.
Abstract: Edge is variation of brightness in an image. Edge
detection is useful in many application areas such as finding forests,
rivers from a satellite image, detecting broken bone in a medical
image etc. The paper discusses about finding edge of multiple aerial
images in parallel. The proposed work tested on 38 images 37
colored and one monochrome image. The time taken to process N
images in parallel is equivalent to time taken to process 1 image in
sequential. Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Open Computing
Language (OpenCL) is used to achieve task and pixel level
parallelism respectively.
Abstract: This paper is aimed at proposing a rhombus shaped
wearable fractal antenna for wireless communication systems. The
geometrical descriptors of the antenna have been obtained using
bacterial foraging optimization (BFO) for wide band operation. The
method of moment based IE3D software has been used to simulate
the antenna and observed that miniaturization of 13.08% has been
achieved without degrading the resonating properties of the proposed
antenna. An analysis with different substrates has also been done in
order to evaluate the effectiveness of electrical permittivity on the
presented structure. The proposed antenna has low profile, light
weight and has successfully demonstrated wideband and multiband
characteristics for wearable electronic applications.
Abstract: All current experimental methods for determination of
stress intensity factors are based on the assumption that the state of
stress near the crack tip is plane stress. Therefore, these methods rely
on strain and displacement measurements made outside the near
crack tip region affected by the three-dimensional effects or by
process zone. In this paper, we develop and validate an experimental
procedure for the evaluation of stress intensity factors from the
measurements of the out-of-plane displacements in the surface area
controlled by 3D effects. The evaluation of stress intensity factors is
possible when the process zone is sufficiently small, and the
displacement field generated by the 3D effects is fully encapsulated
by K-dominance region.
Abstract: Due to the increasing efforts on saving our natural
environment a change in the structure of energy resources can be
observed - an increasing fraction of a renewable energy sources.
In many countries traditional underground coal mining loses its
significance but there are still countries, like Poland or Germany, in
which the coal based technologies have the greatest fraction in a total
energy production. This necessitates to make an effort to limit the
costs and negative effects of underground coal mining. The longwall
complex is as essential part of the underground coal mining. The
safety and the effectiveness of the work is strongly dependent of the
diagnostic state of powered roof supports.
The building of a useful and reliable diagnostic system requires
a lot of data. As the acquisition of a data of any possible operating
conditions it is important to have a possibility to generate a demanded
artificial working characteristics. In this paper a new approach of
modelling a leg pressure in the single unit of powered roof support.
The model is a result of the analysis of a typical working cycles.
Abstract: The grain quality of chickpea in Iran is low and
instable, which may be attributed to the evolution of cultivars with a
narrow genetic base making them vulnerable to biotic stresses. Four
chickpea varieties from diverse geographic origins were chosen and
arranged in a randomized complete block design. Mesorhizobium sp.
cicer strain SW7 was added to all the chickpea seeds. Chickpea seeds
were planted on October 9, 2013. Each genotype was sown 5 m in
length, with 35 cm inter-row spacing, in 3 rows. Weeds were
removed manually in all plots. Results showed that Analysis of
variance on the studied traits showed significant differences among
genotypes for N, P, K and Fe contents of chickpea, but there is not a
significant difference among Ca, Zn and Mg continents of chickpea.
The experimental coefficient of variation (CV) varied from 7.3 to
15.8. In general, the CV value lower than 20% is considered to be
good, indicating the accuracy of conducted experiments. The highest
grain N was observed in Hashem and Jam cultivars. The highest grain
P was observed in Jam cultivar. Phosphorus content (mg/100g)
ranged from 142.3 to 302.3 with a mean value of 221.3. The negative
correlation (-0.126) was observed between the N and P of chickpea
cultivars. The highest K and Fe contents were observed in Jam
cultivar.
Abstract: A simple adaptive voice activity detector (VAD) is
implemented using Gabor and gammatone atomic decomposition of
speech for high Gaussian noise environments. Matching pursuit is
used for atomic decomposition, and is shown to achieve optimal
speech detection capability at high data compression rates for low
signal to noise ratios. The most active dictionary elements found by
matching pursuit are used for the signal reconstruction so that the
algorithm adapts to the individual speakers dominant time-frequency
characteristics. Speech has a high peak to average ratio enabling
matching pursuit greedy heuristic of highest inner products to isolate
high energy speech components in high noise environments. Gabor
and gammatone atoms are both investigated with identical
logarithmically spaced center frequencies, and similar bandwidths.
The algorithm performs equally well for both Gabor and gammatone
atoms with no significant statistical differences. The algorithm
achieves 70% accuracy at a 0 dB SNR, 90% accuracy at a 5 dB SNR
and 98% accuracy at a 20dB SNR using 30d B SNR as a reference
for voice activity.
Abstract: The objectives of this study are to study Chinese
tourist’s Behaviors towards travel and shopping in Bangkok. The
research methodology was a quantitative research. The sample of this
research was 400 Chinese tourists in Bangkok chosen by the
accidental sampling and the purposive sampling. Inferential Statistics
Analysis by using the Chi-square statistics. As for the results of this
study the researcher found that differences between personal, social
and cultural information, i.e., gender, age, place of residence,
educational level, occupation, income, family, and main objectives of
tourism with behaviors of Chinese tourists in Bangkok towards travel
and shopping in Bangkok.
Abstract: Margin-Based Principle has been proposed for a long
time, it has been proved that this principle could reduce the
structural risk and improve the performance in both theoretical
and practical aspects. Meanwhile, feed-forward neural network is
a traditional classifier, which is very hot at present with a deeper
architecture. However, the training algorithm of feed-forward neural
network is developed and generated from Widrow-Hoff Principle that
means to minimize the squared error. In this paper, we propose
a new training algorithm for feed-forward neural networks based
on Margin-Based Principle, which could effectively promote the
accuracy and generalization ability of neural network classifiers
with less labelled samples and flexible network. We have conducted
experiments on four UCI open datasets and achieved good results
as expected. In conclusion, our model could handle more sparse
labelled and more high-dimension dataset in a high accuracy while
modification from old ANN method to our method is easy and almost
free of work.
Abstract: Fruit juices play important roles in human health as
being a key part of nutrition. Juice and nectar are two categories of
drinks with so many variations for consumers, regardless of age,
lifestyle and taste preferences, which they can find their favorites.
Juices contain 100% pulp when pulp content of ‘nectar’ changes
between 25%-50%. In this study, potassium (K), magnesium (Mg),
and phosphorus (P) contents in orange juice and nectar is determined
for conscious consumption. For this purpose inductively coupled
plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) is used to find out
potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), and phosphorus (P) contents in
orange juices and nectar. Furthermore, the daily intake of elements
from orange juice and nectar that affects human health is also
investigated. From the results of experiments K, Mg and P contents
are found in orange juice as 1351; 73,25; 89,27 ppm and in orange
nectar as 986; 33,76; 51,30 respectively.
Abstract: This work studied the isomerization of 1-butene over
hydrotalcite catalyst. The experiments were conducted at various gas
hourly space velocity (GHSV), reaction temperature and feed
concentration. No catalyst deactivation was observed over the
reaction time of 16 hours. Two major reaction products were trans-2-
butene and cis-2-butene. The reaction temperature played an
important role on the reaction selectivity. At high operating
temperatures, the selectivity of trans-2-butene was higher than the
selectivity of cis-2-butene while it was opposite at lower reaction
temperature. In the range of operating condition, the maximum
conversion of 1-butene was found at 74% when T = 673 K and GHSV
= 4 m3/h/kg-cat with trans- and cis-2-butene selectivities of 54% and
46%, respectively. Finally, the kinetic parameters of the reaction
were determined.
Abstract: In this paper the problem of the application of
temporal reasoning and case-based reasoning in intelligent decision
support systems is considered. The method of case-based reasoning
with temporal dependences for the solution of problems of real-time
diagnostics and forecasting in intelligent decision support systems is
described. This paper demonstrates how the temporal case-based
reasoning system can be used in intelligent decision support systems
of the car access control. This work was supported by RFBR.
Abstract: Kidney cancer is the most lethal urological cancer
accounting for 3% of adult malignancies. VHL, a tumor-suppressor
gene, is best known to be associated with renal cell carcinoma
(RCC). The VHL functions as negative regulator of hypoxia inducible
factors. Recent sequencing efforts have identified several novel
frequent mutations of histone modifying and chromatin remodeling
genes in ccRCC (clear cell RCC) including PBRM1 and SETD2. The
PBRM1 gene encodes the BAF180 protein, which involved in
transcriptional activation and repression of selected genes. SETD2
encodes a histone methyltransferase, which may play a role in
suppressing tumor development. In this study, RNAs of 30 paired
tumor and normal samples that were grouped according to the types
of kidney cancer and clinical characteristics of patients, including
gender and average age were examined by RT-PCR, SSCP and
sequencing techniques. VHL, PBRM1 and SETD2 expressions were
relatively down-regulated. However, statistically no significance was
found (Wilcoxon signed rank test, p>0.05). Interestingly, no mutation
was observed on the contrary of previous studies. Understanding the
molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of RCC has
aided the development of molecular-targeted drugs for kidney cancer.
Further analysis is required to identify the responsible genes rather
than VHL, PBRM1 and SETD2 in kidney cancer.
Abstract: The changes of the optical and structural properties of
Bismuth-Boro-Tellurite glasses pre and post gamma irradiation were
studied. Six glass samples, with different composition [(TeO2)0.7
(B2O3)0.3]1-x (Bi2O3)x prepared by melt quenching method were
irradiated with 25kGy gamma radiation at room temperature. The
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to explore
the structural bonding in the prepared glass samples due to exposure,
while UV-VIS Spectrophotometer was used to evaluate the changes
in the optical properties before and after irradiation. Gamma
irradiation causes profound changes in the peak intensity as shown by
FTIR spectra which is due to the breaking of the network bonding.
Before gamma irradiation, the optical band gap, Eg value decreased
from 2.44 eV to 2.15 eV with the addition of Bismuth content. The
value kept decreasing (from 2.18 eV to 2.00 eV) following exposure
to gamma radiation due to the increase of non-bridging oxygen
(NBO) and the increase of defect in the glass. In conclusion, the glass
with high content of Bi2O3 (0.30Bi) give smallest Eg and show less
changes in FTIR spectra after gamma irradiation which indicate that
this glass is more resistant to gamma radiation compared to other
glasses.
Abstract: The atmospheres in many cities along the coastal lines
in the world have been rapidly changed to coastal-industrial
atmosphere. Hence, it is vital to investigate the corrosion behavior of
steel exposed to this kind of environment. In this present study,
Electrochemical Impedance Spectrography (EIS) and film thickness
measurement were applied to monitor the corrosion behavior of
weathering steel covered with a thin layer of the electrolyte in a
wet-dry cyclic condition, simulating a coastal-industrial environment
at 25oC and 60% RH. The results indicate that in all cycles, the
corrosion rate increases during the drying process due to an increase in
anion concentration and an acceleration of oxygen diffusion enhanced
by the effect of the thinning out of the electrolyte. During the wet-dry
cyclic corrosion test, the long-term corrosion behavior of this steel
depends on the periods of exposure. Corrosion process is first
accelerated and then decelerated. The decelerating corrosion process is
contributed to the formation of the protective rust, favored by the
wet-dry cycle and the acid regeneration process during the rusting
process.
Abstract: In Hungary, the society has changed a lot for the past
25 years, and these changes could be detected in educational
situations as well. The number and the intensity of conflicts have
been increased in most fields of life, as well as at schools. Teachers
have difficulties to be able to handle school conflicts. What is more,
the new net generation, generation Z has values and behavioural
patterns different from those of the previous one, which might
generate more serious conflicts at school, especially with teachers
who were mainly socialising in a traditional teacher – student
relationship.
In Hungary, the bill CCIV of 2011 declared the foundation of
Institutes of Teacher Training in higher education institutes. One of
the tasks of the Institutes is to survey the competences and needs of
teachers working in public education and to provide further trainings
and services for them according to their needs and requirements. This
job is supported by the Social Renewal Operative Programs 4.1.2.B.
The professors of a college carried out a questionnaire and surveyed
the needs and the requirements of teachers working in the region.
Based on the results, the professors of the Institute of Teacher
Training decided to meet the requirements of teachers and to launch
short teacher further training courses in spring 2015. One of the
courses is going to focus on school conflict management through
mediation.
The aim of the pilot course is to provide conflict management
techniques for teachers and to present different mediation techniques
to them. The theoretical part of the course (5 hours) will enable
participants to understand the main points and the advantages of
mediation, while the practical part (10 hours) will involve teachers in
role plays to learn how to cope with conflict situations applying
mediation. We hope if conflicts could be reduced, it would influence
school atmosphere in a positive way and the teaching – learning
process could be more successful and effective.