Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differences between Boys’ and Girls’ Self-Efficacy, Motivation and Attitudes towards Applying Mobile Devices for Learning ESL

The main purpose of this research was to provide a serious vision of students’ access and use of mobile phone and its peripherals for learning second language skills. The second purpose study was to investigate differences between boys and girls according to their access and usage of Mobile devices for learning English language skills from the Sharkord high school students. Statistical population was included all students in Sharkord high schools. Samples included 600 students that were selected by multi-stage clustering method. Data gathering instruments were included self-made questionnaire that was made according to theoretical background and literature of past research. After determining its validity and reliability it was used in schools. Findings indicated that a majority of students, more than 90% of them had access to some kinds of mobile devices, but less than 10% of them used it for educational purposes especially for learning English as a second language (ESL). Boys had more access to mobile devices than girls and were more knowledgeable about its usage. They were also more motivated and had self-efficacy in learning from mobile tools than girls. There were not any differences between boys and girls regarding to their attitudes toward using mobile devices for ESL. Results also indicated that there were relation between language learning skills and the possibilities of students' Mobile cell phones and also their motivation and self-efficacies for using it. There was significant relation between the type of phone cell usage and language learning skills. According to the results, we conclude that mobile phones and its peripherals could facilitate and help students to learn more language skills. It depends to the student's motivation. Students who had more motivation in learning English language, they have installed more peripherals on their mobile.
Expanding the Action Project Method to Encompass Comparative Analyses

This article is an exploration of the possibility and pragmatics of conducting between-groups comparative analysis in action theory and the action project method of qualitative research. After establishing the need for such a procedure and describing the compatibility of these analyses with the paradigm assumptions of action theory, the authors describe a specific set of procedures for conducting qualitative comparisons within the action project method. They also discuss limitations of the procedure and future directions for continuing the expansion of methods of comparison in qualitative research. Finally, they present a case illustration of the use of this comparative analysis method.
Improving customer satisfaction: changes as a result of Customer Value Discovery

Objective: To identify how interventions, as a result of Customer Value Discovery research, increased student satisfaction in an academic library. The process created a positive environment for ongoing innovation amongst staff to deliver added value to customers. Methods: “Customer Discovery Workshops” were undertaken with academic staff and undergraduate on-campus students to provide managers and library staff with information on what services and resources were of value to customers, and what irritated them about existing services and resources. The impact of interventions was assessed two years after the research by using a university student satisfaction survey and an independent national student satisfaction survey. Results: The findings resulted in significant changes to the way forward-facing customer services were delivered. A number of value adding services were introduced for the customer. Overall customer satisfaction was improved. Conclusions: The customer value discovery research has created a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. The Balanced Scorecard framework was introduced to help track activity and performance against the objectives identified in the customer value research.
Knowledge sharing in the public sector

Knowledge sharing is a characteristic of successful organizations. This study examines the influence of knowledge sharing on organizational performance in the public sector. The institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework is utilized to examine how organizational type (government and non-government) moderates knowledge sharing in the public sector. One hundred and five representatives from organizations, departments, projects, and programs working in the food security and nutrition industry in Cambodia participated in this study. The study results show that information quality, organizational commitment, and top management support influence knowledge sharing within the public sector. Government organizations place a greater emphasis on information quality than non-government organizations. Non-government organizations exhibit greater knowledge sharing and better performance than government organizations. Additional findings that have implications for academics and public sector practitioners are discussed. The study suggests that organizations need to secure top management support and employee commitment to facilitate knowledge sharing and ultimately improve organizational performance.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION:: RESEARCH IN USER BEHAVIOUR IN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

The task of the librarian is to achieve his library's objectives. A simplistic statement, perhaps, but it is rare that a library's objectives are defined in any terms other than the broadest—for example, ‘to meet the needs of its users’. In fact, the definition of objectives in any service organization is likely to be an iterative process, but the explicit commitment to users‘ needs (however mystical this concept may be) requires the librarian to examine users’ behaviour as a first step to determining policy. Since a complete state‐of‐the‐art in user behaviour would fill a substantial book, this survey is restricted to drawing together some threads of research of potential application in university libraries. Methodological problems are not discussed here, since these are adequately reviewed elsewhere.
Your statistical consultant : answers to your data analysis questions

PART ONE: GETTING STARTED WITH STATISTICAL ANALYSIS How Do I Prepare Data for Statistical Analysis? How Do I Examine Data Prior to Analysis? PART TWO: THE LOGIC OF STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: ISSUES REGARDING THE NATURE OF STATISTICS AND STATISTICAL TESTS Traditional Approaches to Statistical Analysis and the Logic of Statistical Inference Rethinking Traditional Paradigms Power, Effect Size and Hypothesis Testing Alternatives What Are the Assumptions of Statistical Testing? How Do I Select the Appropriate Statistical Test? PART THREE: ISSUES RELATED TO VARIABLES AND THEIR DISTRIBUTIONS How Do I Deal with Non-Normality, Missing Values and Outliers? Types of Variables and Their Treatment in Statistical Analysis PART FOUR: UNDERSTANDING THE BIG TWO: MAJOR QUESTIONS ABOUT ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE AND REGRESSION ANALYSIS Questions about Analysis of Variance Questions about Multiple Regression Analysis The Bigger Picture
Protocols for mobile internetworking

We consider the problem of Mobile Internetworking, that is, providing network access to hosts whose physical location changes with time. Such hosts cannot depend on traditional forms of network connectivity and routing, because their location, and hence the route to reach them, cannot be immediately deduced from their network address. The three major points of the thesis, which are a departure from previous approaches, are: (1) Mobility is a network-layer problem, and is best attacked by embedding virtual mobile networks at the proper hierarchical address level. (2) Locality in host mobility, can be taken advantage of in order to yield efficient and practical tracking and routing mechanisms. (3) On-demand acquisition of mobile host location information, which is essentially routing information, yields a system that scales linearly as a function of its size. This dissertation shows the design, implementation and evaluation of IP-based protocols for mobile internetworking. The protocols operate mostly at the data-link and network layers, and seamlessly integrate mobile hosts into the current networking infrastructure. While it may be desirable to completely redesign networking protocols to support mobile systems, this would require changes to both the thousands of routers and the hundreds of thousands of hosts. This is widely viewed as being impractical, thus the thesis presents a method which requires no changes to routers or non-mobile hosts. The key feature is the use of ancillary routers, called Mobile Support Routers (MSRs), to track the location of the Mobile Hosts (MHs) and provide them with network access. Using a combination of caching, forwarding pointers, and timeouts, a minimal amount of state is kept in each MSR. There is no single point of failure, the state information is kept in a distributed fashion, the system scales well, and the overall network reacts quickly to changes.
Examining Factors Influencing Behavioral Intentions to Use Asynchronous Web-Based Language Learning

Over the past few years, the prevalence of web-based applications in school and at home makes learning and teaching through the Internet become an inevitable way in education. With great potentials for enriching all kinds of educational applications, web-based instruction is becoming an impressive apparatus for learning resource delivering. In this study, an asynchronous web-based language learning (AWBLL) system is employed in a vocational-technical college in Taiwan to support undergraduate English as a foreign language (EFL) learning. Drawing on the concepts from theory of reasoned action, technology acceptance model and social cognitive theory, this study proposed a comprehensive model and developed an instrument for measuring students’ intentions to use AWBLL Systems. The research findings indicate that students in EFL show great readiness to and positive intentions towards the system for EFL courses and exposed a possible benefit from its use in the long run. However, they also convey some negative opinions of the AWBLL system, suggesting additional improvement of the relative underlying factors of AWBLL technology. The results can proffer useful suggestions for web-based language learning, as well as serve as instrumental guidelines for web-based system to be effectively implemented with care to avoid attenuating students’ interests and activations.
A new generation 16-bit general purpose programmable DSP and its video rate application

A new generation 16-bit fixed point general purpose DSP (m/spl mu/ PD77016) is developed. A register architecture with 8-general purpose registers is newly introduced to the 16-bit DSP to achieve high performance with low cost. Having enough general purpose registers, fast algorithms which require unregular computation such as fast DCT can be efficiently implemented without overheads of many register load/stores. This reduces the number of instruction cycles to implement these algorithms by the DSP compared with the DSPs having fewer registers. Reductions in the number of instruction cycles in realizing applications enable both reductions in the number of chips or in clock frequency which result in lowering power consumptions. By using fast DCT algorithm suitable for the DSP architecture, an 8-point DCT including I/O operations is realized in 35 instruction cycles which is less than the half of the instruction cycles required for the original algorithm based on a matrix vector multiplication. DCT (IDCT) part of MPEG encoding/decoding for typical sequence (352 pels /spl times/ 240 lines, 30 frames/sec) is realized by one 33 MHz /spl mu/PD77016 (30ns instruction cycle). <<ETX>>
Sampling techniques for forest resource inventory.

A Review of Necessary Statistics and Notation. Elementary Sampling Methods: Selective, Simple Random, and Systematic Sampling. Horizontal Point Sampling. Stratified Random Sampling. Ratio and Regression Estimators. Double Sampling or Two-Phase Sampling. Multistage SamplingInventorying Large Acreages. Inventory Methods for Estimating Stand Growth. 3P and Line Intersect Sampling. Estimating Wildlife Population Sizes. Answers to Assorted Problems for Better Understanding. Index.
Parental modernity and child academic competence: Toward a theory of individual and societal development

A longitudinal study of low income mothers and infants investigated relationships among parent behaviors and characteristics and child adaptive behaviors in kindergarten. Substantial inter‐correlated childrearing and educational beliefs, values, and behaviors that were labelled parental modernity were correlated with parent education and individual modernity. Childrearing beliefs, values for children, and parent behaviors during infancy and the pre‐school years were significantly correlated with child academic competence and motivation. An environmental interpretation of correlations of parental modernity with child academic competence was supported by evidence of historical increases in mean intelligence levels that correspond to progress in education and technology. Parallel increases in societal modernity, individual/ parental modernity, and child academic competence are integrated by a theory of individual and societal development.
A simple design of FIR filters with powers-of-two coefficients

A design algorithm for finite-impulse response (FIR) filters with powers-of-two coefficients (2PFIR filters) is presented. The algorithm enables the design of 2PFIR filters with sharp cutoff. The 2PFIR filters are attractive for high-speed operation and simplification of hardware. However, the optimal or suboptimal design of 2PFIR filters with sharp cutoff have been difficult in the minimax sense. The algorithm proposed is composed of two methods. The first is suboptimal design, which preserves a proportional relation between the coefficients of the conventional FIR filters and the 2PFIR filters. This method is referred to as the proportional relation-preserve (PRP) method. The second is the application of the simple symmetric-sharpening (SSS) method. The SSS method is applied when the PRP method cannot realize the given filter specifications. Using the PRP and SSS methods, the 2PFIR with filter length N>200 can be easily designed. >
Factors Influencing Vocational Teacher's Use of Online Functionalities in Australia.

Robertson (2006b) surveyed Australian vocational teachers to propose that the criteria of newness, complexity, compatibility and locus of control are influential in shaping the frequency of online functionality use. The current paper tests and further refines this proposition by comparing the likelihood that online functionalities will be used at least monthly by vocational teachers whose delivery approaches are primarily face to face and non-face to face. Generally, it is found that the longer an online functionality has been available for use in vocational education, the greater the likelihood of regular use in face to face and non-face to face delivery approaches. However, the increase of regular use over time is not universal. A complex relationship between the functionality's newness, complexity, and compatibility is influential in shaping the likelihood of regular use. Whereas compatibility relates to a teacher's existing practices and needs, locus of control is specifically concerned with a teacher's pedagogic preferences. It is suggested that vocational teachers are more likely to regularly use functionalities that promote teacher control rather than learner control. The implications of the proposed relationship between the four criteria and the likelihood that online functionalities will be used by vocational teachers are discussed, and opportunities for further research identified.
Synthesis of verifiably hazard-free asynchronous control circuits

A synthesis technique for asynchronous sequential control circuits from a high level specification, the Signal Transition Graph (STG) is described. The synthesis technique is guaranteed to generate hazard-free circuits with the unbounded gatedelay model and the bounded wire-delay model, if the STG is live, safe and has the unique state coding property. A proof that STG persistency is not necessary for hazard-free implementation is given.
Integrating genetic algorithms and tabu search for combined heat and power economic dispatch

The paper presents a new, integrated genetic tabu search algorithm based technique to solve the combined heat and power economic dispatch (CHPED) problem. The proposed method is developed in such a way that a simple GA acts as a base level search. to direct the search towards the optimal region and local searches synergistically combined with tabu search is next employed to fine tune the search to reach the optimal solution. The constraint satisfaction technique has been applied to reduce the computation time and improve the quality of the solution. The proposed method is fast, efficient and applicable to all types of non-linear and discontinuous objective functions. In order to prove the validity and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, a test system with four units is considered. Among the four units, the first unit is a conventional power unit, the second and third units are cogeneration units and the fourth is a heat only unit. When the results are compared with those of other methods, it is clear that the proposed method is practical and valid for real time applications.
Applying latent semantic analysis to computer assisted assessment in the Computer Science domain: a framework, a tool, and an evaluation

This dissertation argues that automated assessment systems can be useful for both students and educators provided that the results correspond well with human markers. Thus, evaluating such a system is crucial. I present an evaluation framework and show how and why it can be useful for both producers and consumers of automated assessment systems. The framework is a refinement of a research taxonomy that came out of the effort to analyse the literature review of systems based on Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), a statistical natural language processing technique that has been used for automated assessment of essays. The evaluation framework can help developers publish their results in a format that is comprehensive, relatively compact, and useful to other researchers. The thesis claims that, in order to see a complete picture of an automated assessment system, certain pieces must be emphasised. It presents the framework as a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces join together to form the whole picture. The dissertation uses the framework to compare the accuracy of human markers and EMMA, the LSA-based assessment system I wrote as part of this dissertation. EMMA marks short, free text answers in the domain of computer science. I conducted a study of five human markers and then used the results as a benchmark against which to evaluate EMMA. An integral part of the evaluation was the success metric. The standard inter-rater reliability statistic was not useful; I located a new statistic and applied it to the domain of computer assisted assessment for the first time, as far as I know. Although EMMA exceeds human markers on a few questions, overall it does not achieve the same level of agreement with humans as humans do with each other. The last chapter maps out a plan for further research to improve EMMA.
The Impact of the Internet

Summary The Internet has brought great changes to reference services in academic libraries. One significant impact has been the growth and evolution of the reference librarian's role as teacher. This article reviews the literature on the librarian's increased teaching role with the emergence of the Internet, discusses the changing student populations who require a librarian's instruction and the skills that students need to achieve information literacy, and reviews how the Internet has affected current teaching strategies including classroom instruction, Web-based instruction, and efforts to integrate information literacy instruction into the curriculum. In addition, it also introduces emerging Internet technologies with their potential impact on teaching and instruction. The authors conclude that the reference librarian's teaching role will further increase with the development of information technologies.
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXT BY USING SEQUENCE OF PICTURES

Abstract This study deals with the improvement of the students’ achievement in writing recount text using sequence of pictures. This study was conducted by using action research at second year of SMP N 1 Kualuh Selatan. The sample of this study was just one class namely: VIII-1. The number of this class was 35 students. This study was conducted in two cycles and every cycle consisted three meetings. To collect the data, the instruments of data were used, writing test (quantitative data) and diary notes, interview sheet and observation sheet (qualitative data). In analyzing data, the mean of the students’ score for the first competency test was 60,9, for the second competency test was 69,3, and for the third competency test was 80,0 and total percentage of improvement from the first competency to the third competency test was 85,72%. The conclusion is that using sequence of pictures can improve the students’ writing achievement in recount text. It is suggested that English teacher should apply sequence of pictures as one of media to improve students’ writing achievement in recount text. Key words: Students’ achievement, Writing, Recount text, Sequence of Pictures
Frequency-band complex noninteger differentiator: characterization and synthesis

The state-of-the-art on generalized (or any order) derivatives in physics and engineering sciences, is outlined for justifying the interest of the noninteger differentiation. The problems subsequent to its use in real-time operations are then set out so as to motivate the idea of synthesizing it by a recursive distribution of zeros and poles. An analysis of the existing work is also proposed to support this idea. A comprehensive study is given of the synthesis of differentiators with integer, noninteger, real or complex orders, and whose action is limited to any given frequency bandwidth. First, a definition, in the operational and frequency domains, of a frequency-band complex noninteger order differentiator, is given in a mathematical space with four dimensions which is a Banach algebra. Then, the determination of its synthesized form, by a recursive distribution of complex zeros and poles characterized by complex recursive factors, is presented. The complex noninteger differentiation order is expressed as a function of these recursive factors. The number of zeros and poles is calculated to be as low as possible while still ensuring the stability of the synthesized differentiator to be synthesized. A time validation is presented. Finally, guidelines are proposed for the conception of the synthesized differentiator.