Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Science Process Skills Teaching Strategy on Boys and Girls' Achievement in Chemistry in Nyando District, Kenya

Science process skills are central to the acquisition of scientific knowledge which is useful in solving problems in our society. This study was intended to compare the effect of science process skills teaching strategy (SPSTS) on boys and girls’ achievement in chemistry. The study employed quasi-experimental design. The target population consisted of students in the secondary schools in Nyando District. Purposive sampling was used to obtain two district secondary schools to ensure that the number of boys and girls in each school was about the same. The samples consisted of 90 Form Three students drawn from two district secondary schools. The study covered two topics selected from the KCSE Chemistry syllabus, that is, Volumetric analysis (Titration) and Qualitative analysis. Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) consisting of simple calculations, True and False items, and Fill in blanks were used as a pre-test. After the administration of treatment, which lasted five weeks, the same test was administered to the two groups as a post-test. The CAT was adapted from the KCSE Chemistry practical past papers. The reliability coefficient of 0.88 was estimated for the CAT using Kuder-Richardson (K-R21). The data generated were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, ANCOVA at a = 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that SPSTS made significant difference on achievement in chemistry between boys and girls. Keywords: science process skills, achievement, chemistry, gender
Design and Implementation of a Mixed Method Research Study in Project Management

This article presents a mixed methodological approach in project management research and details the terms and the conditions of its design and implementation. Assuming, on the one hand, that qualitative methods allow the study of complex processes and phenomena in their idiosyncrasy, and, on the other hand that quantitative methods produce a nomothetic science based on statistical regularities (Miles, Huberman and Saldana 2013). We argue that mixed methods research allows, under certain conditions and trade-offs in the design and the implementation, the achievement of these two objectives. Mixed methods research remains underutilised in the management sciences despite the advantages in comparison to mono methods (Molina-Azorin and Cameron, 2010). This underutilization is linked to the tendency of certain discipline traditions and preferences for quantitative approaches as opposed to qualitative approaches. This opposition is also linked to the incompatibility thesis of the epistemological paradigms combined with the exclusive links between paradigms and methods. The theoretical foundations of mixed methods is relatively young and there remains many questions relative to the process of design, implementation and integration of qualitative and quantitative research to which researchers new to mixed methods may be confronted with. This article presents research which was carried out in two stages and focuses on the comprehension and the explanation of the diversity and the evolution of project manager’s roles. The paper discusses and demonstrates the objectives of a research strategy based on a mixed methodological approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods and specifies the type of mixed method research according to the implementation order, the degree of combination of the two methods and the relative weight of the qualitative and quantitative methods. We propose a practical application of the theory of mixed methods that can assist and inspire project management researchers in the design and the implementation of their own mixed methods research.
Ecosystem management based on natural disturbances: hierarchical context and non-equilibrium paradigm

Summary 1. Maintenance of ecological integrity and biodiversity must be based on well-grounded principles of disturbance ecology. However, non-equilibrium aspects of ecosystems, such as unpredictability, instability and stochasticity due to various natural disturbances, have not been satisfactorily integrated into practical application. Failure to acknowledge the dynamic nature of systems will inevitably lead to unexpected changes and unachieved conservation goals. 2. This review discusses non-equilibrium ecology in terms of natural disturbances and the conservation and management of terrestrial ecosystems and landscapes. 3. Several key components, which require further ecological consideration, are specifically discussed. These include the hierarchical disturbance regime, disturbance legacy, multiple post-disturbance pathways, climate instability, spatial and temporal variability, and resilience. 4. Natural disturbance regimes are complex and difficult to define. This is because some disturbances can be nested, and they interact with other qualitatively and quantitatively different disturbances, constituting a hierarchy of natural disturbances. Large temporal and spatial perspectives are therefore required to incorporate the hierarchical context of natural disturbance regimes into regional management plans. 5. Conservation managers may often seek some kind of dynamic equilibrium based on protection of species and seral stages from extinction. However, because climate instability interrupts any shift toward an equilibrium, most terrestrial vegetation systems are inherently prone to large environmental changes and diverse disturbances, and thus, are dynamic and non-equilibrating. 6. Synthesis and applications. Resiliency is the key to conserving ecological integrity via the ability to cope with inevitable changes. As long as ecosystems are resilient and disturbances are natural, we should not impede natural shifts in disturbance regimes and resultant ecosystem changes, even if changes are abrupt and unpredictable and thus have large consequences. If ecological resilience has already been eroded by humans, it is important that resilience should be enhanced by restoring keystone features of vegetation systems to prevent disturbance-induced undesirable ecosystem degradation.
Traditional Chinese medicine for intestinal adhesion: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

For many years, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to treat patients with intestinal adhesion. However, no meta-analysis has been previously conducted to investigate the benefits of TCM therapy in patients with such disorder. This paper aims to summarize the beneficial effects of applying TCM as an adjuvant in patients with intestinal adhesion through conducting a meta-analysis. Until October 2016, seven databases have been retrieved to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and investigate the effects of applying TCM as an adjuvant treatment in patients with the mentioned disorder. The risk of bias has been assessed according to Cochrane Handbook guidelines. 24 of the 169 potentially relevant trials met the inclusion criteria. However, their methodological qualities were low. The application of TCM as an adjuvant was associated with a significantly lower incidence of intestinal adhesion, as well as higher total effective rate. Compared with the controls as adjuvant treatment, TCM therapy promoted incision healing and reduced the recovery time of borborygmus, anal exhaust time and first defecation time as well as gastrointestinal decompression duration. However, the pooled data for the studies showed there was no difference in blood plasma fibrinogen (FIB). This meta-analysis suggests that TCM therapy appears to cause additional beneficial effects in patients with intestinal adhesion. However, available studies are not adequate to draw a conclusion on the efficacy of TCM due to the methodological flaws of the included trials. Hopefully this work will provide useful experience for further studies; better designed trials are needed to confirm the findings in this study. Key words: Traditional Chinese medicine, intestinal adhesion, meta-analysis
Unit root tests with level shift in the presence of G A R C H Ala in Hecq

The aim of this paper is to examine, using Monte Carlo experiments, the behaviour of unit root tests with a changing mean at an unknown date (Perron and Vogelsang, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 1992, 10, 301-320), in the presence of IGARCH errors. We find that the empirical sizes of the test statistics are significantly above the nominal ones and that distortions are considerably amplified by a conditional Student's t distribution instead of a normal one.
Microrépartition des algues épilithiques sur les cailloux d'un torrent Corse, le Rizzanèse

L'etude de la composition et de la structure du peuplement algal epilithique, en divers points d'un meme caillou, fait apparaitre deux ensembles : 1) la face orientee vers l'aval et le centre de la face superieure ; 2) la face amont et le centre de la face inferieure. L'analyse statistique montre que le peuplement de la face superieure, du fait de sa plus grande stabilite, est le plus representatif de la communaute algale des substrats caillouteux.
Border tourism: factors affecting self-efficacy of entrepreneurs in northern Malaysia and southern Thailand.

Background: Strategies to attract higher-yielding tourists will be complemented by measures to ensure that local communities benefit from increasing tourist spending.Therefore, it is important to understand factors that drive local entrepreneurs to become successful in their business.Self-efficacy is a concept used in the literature to measure one's belief in his ability to successfully venture into a business. Objective: This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneur demographic factors, environmental forces and entrepreneurial self-efficacy of small business operators at the border towns of Malaysia and Thailand.The research is a cross-sectional study and a survey method is used. Results: Our result reveals that nationality has a significant relationship with entrepreneurial self-efficacy. With regard to the environmental forces, there is also a positive relationship between intensity of competition and entrepreneurial self-efficacy.Conclusion: Our result on environmental forces is not consistent with those studies conducted in western countries. It seems that the small business operators at border town of Malaysia and Thailand have the same belief which is different from those in western countries.
Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin Method for Stress and Crack Analysis in 3-D Axisymmetric FGM Bodies

A meshless method based on the local Petrov-Galerkin approach is presented for stress analysis in three-dimensional (3-d) axisymmetric linear elastic solids with continuously varying material properties. The inertial effects are considered in dynamic problems. A unit step function is used as the test functions in the local weak-form. It is leading to local boundary integral equations (LBIEs). For transient elastodynamic problems the Laplace-transform technique is applied and the LBIEs are given in the Laplace-transformed domain. Axial symmetry of the geometry and the boundary conditions for a 3-d linear elastic solid reduces the original 3-d boundary value problem into a 2-d problem. The geometry of subdomains is selected as a toroid with a circular cross section in the considered (x1,x3)-plane. The final form of the local integral equations has a pure contour-integral character only in elastostatic problems. In elastodynamics an additional domain-integral is involved due to inertia terms. The moving least-squares (MLS) method is used for the approximation of physical quantities in LBIEs. keyword: Meshless method, local weak-form, unit step function, moving least-squares approximation, Laplace-transform, functionally graded materials (FGMs), transient elastodynamics, crack problems
Authentication System for Critical Server Using Three- Dimensional Virtual Environment

Security in the computer is largely supported by the passwords for authentication process. The most common approach for authentication is alphanumeric passwords. Traditionally, alphanumeric passwords have been used for authentication, but they are known to have security and usability problems. The passwords require the following fundamentally requirements so that the problems with passwords arises, (a) Passwords should be easy to remember, and the user authentication protocol should be executable quickly and easily by humans. (b) Passwords should be secure, i.e. they should look random and should be hard to guess. Users tend to choose meaningful words from dictionaries, which make textual passwords easy to break and vulnerable to dictionary or brute force attacks. Many available graphical passwords have a password space that is less than or equal to the textual password space. Now day's graphical passwords are other alternatives. Our paper reports to the comparison study between the different graphical password schemes and the alphanumeric passwords. Through we present and evaluate the 3-D password. The 3-D password is a multifactor authentication scheme. The 3-D password presents a 3-D virtual environment containing various virtual objects. The user navigates through this environment and interacts with the objects. The 3-D password is simply the combination and the sequence of user interactions that occur in the 3-D virtual environment. The 3-D password can combine recognition-, recall-, token-, and biometrics-based systems into one authentication scheme. This can be done by designing a 3-D virtual environment that contains objects that request information to be recalled, information to be recognized, tokens to be presented, and biometrical data to be verified. Index Terms—Authentication, Biometrics, Graphical Passwords, Multifactor, Textual Passwords, 3-D Passwords, 3-D Virtual Environment.
INFLUENCES OF LARGE-SCALE CLIMATIC VARIABILITY ON EPISODIC TREE MORTALITY IN NORTHERN PATAGONIA

In the context of potential global warming, it is critical that ecologists bridge the typically local spatial scale of ecology to the regional scale of climatology by linking ecosystem responses to variations in the large-scale synoptic controls of regional climates. In northern Patagonia, Argentina, we related regional-scale tree mortality events over the past -100 years to annual and decadal-scale climatic variations associated with changes in the major synoptic climatic controls of the southeastern Pacific region, including the El Nifio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In nine stands of Austrocedrus chilensis, a xeric conifer, we used dendrochronological techniques to date the outermost tree ring on dead-standing and fallen trees to estimate the dates of tree death for 336 trees. To evaluate climatic conditions during periods of high tree mortality, we used regional records of precipitation and temperature from six climate stations and also used a regional set of 24 tree ring chronologies from Austrocedrus. Good preservation of the resinous wood of Austrocedrus allowed relatively precise dating of tree deaths over the past -90 years. Episodes of massive tree mortality coincide with exceptionally dry springs and summers during the 1910s, 1942-1943, and the 1950s. Although there is a general regional synchroneity of tree death associated with drought, intra-regional variations in the intensity of droughts, as interpolated and mapped from the regional network of tree ring chronologies, are also reflected by north-to-south variations in tree mortality patterns. Periods of drought and associated tree mortality during the 20th century in northern Patagonia are strongly associated with above average sea level atmospheric pressure off the coast of Chile at the same latitudes. Temperature and precipitation in northern Patagonia are highly influenced by the intensity and latitudinal position of the southeastern Pacific anticyclone, which, in turn, are greatly affected by ENSO. Tree mortality in northern Patagonia appears to be intensified by extreme events of the Southern Oscillation and is more strongly coincident with El Nifio events along the coast of northern Peru. These results, in combination with previously established climatic influences on fire occurrence and tree seedling establishment, strongly link stand-level and regional-scale forest dynamic processes in northern Patagonia with variations in large-scale atmospheric conditions.
Developing proactive communication strategies for a potential pandemic

Communication through the Australian media during a potential avian influenza epidemic could act to inform the public OR misinform, contributing to unnecessary public panic and undesirable responses. This project is part of ongoing research to assess Australians’ knowledge and perceptions of bird flu which will allow the development of public service advertising messages for use by the Australian government in the event of a bird flu outbreak or pandemic. Focus group and CATI survey results on bird flu perceptions were used by an Australian advertising agency to prepare two campaign concepts. The concepts (story boards and print ads) were tested using focus groups by two independent market research companies in July 2006. This paper reports on the results of the ad-testing, and provides recommendations for the development and refinement of a public communication campaign to minimise public panic during a bird flu outbreak or pandemic in Australia. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Life Sciences | Medicine and Health Sciences | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details This conference paper was originally published as Jones, SC, Iverson, D, Waters, L, Bevins, I, Hayes, R and Holland, O, Developing proactive communication strategies for a potential pandemic, Proceedings of the Social entrepreneurship, social change and sustainability: International Nonprofit and Social Marketing Conference, Brisbane, 27-28 September 2007. Authors Sandra C. Jones, Donald C. Iverson, L. Waters, I. Bevins, R. Hayes, and O. Holland This conference paper is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow. edu.au/hbspapers/60
XMM-Newton observation of the enigmatic object WR 46

Aims. To further investigate the nature of the enigmatic object WR 46 and better understand the X-ray emission in massive stars and in their evolved descendants, we observed this variable object for more than two of its supposed cycles. The X-ray emission characteristics are appropriate indicators of the difference between a genuine Wolf-Rayet star and a specimen of a super soft source as sometimes suggested in the literature. The X-ray emission analysis might contribute to understanding the origin of the emitting plasma (intrinsically shocked wind, magnetically confined wind, colliding winds, and accretion onto a white dwarf or a more compact object) and to substantiating the decision about the exact nature of the star. Methods. The X-ray observations of WR 46 were performed with the XMM-Newton facility over an effective exposure time of about 70 ks. Results. Both the X-ray luminosity of WR 46, typical of a Wolf-Rayet star, and the existence of a relatively hard component (including the Fe-K line) rule out the possibility that WR 46 could be classified as a super soft source, and instead favour the Wolf-Rayet hypothesis. The X-ray emission of the star turns out to be variable below 0.5 keV but constant at higher energies. The soft variability is associated to the Wolf-Rayet wind, but revealing its deep origin necessitates additional investigations. It is the first time that such a variability is reported for a Wolf-Rayet star. Indeed, the X-ray emission exhibits a single-wave variation with a typical timescale of 7.9 h which could be related to the period observed in the visible domain both in radial velocities (single-wave) and in photometry (double-wave). The global X-ray emission seems to be dominated by lines and is closely reproduced by a three-temperature, optically thin, thermal plasma model. The derived values are 0.1−0.2 keV, 0.6 keV, and ∼4 keV, which indicates that a wide range of temperatures is actually present. The soft emission part could be related to a shocked-wind phenomenon. The hard tail of the spectrum cannot presently be explained by such an intrinsic phenomenon as a shocked wind and instead suggests there is a wind-wind collision zone, as does the relatively high LX/Lbol ratio. We argue that this scenario implies the existence of an object farther away from the WN3 object than any possible companion in an orbit related to the short periodicity.
UC Irvine Recent Work Title Exploiting Heterogeneous Channel Coherence Intervals for Blind Interference Alignment Permalink

We explore 5 network communication problems where the possibility of interference alignment, and consequently the total number of degrees of freedom (DoF) with channel uncertainty at the transmitters, are unknown. These problems share the common property that in each case the best known outer bounds are essentially robust to channel uncertainty and represent the outcome with interference alignment, but the best inner bounds — in some cases conjectured to be optimal — predict a total collapse of DoF, thus indicating the infeasibility of interference alignment under channel uncertainty at transmitters. Our main contribution is to introduce the idea of blind interference alignment. Specifically, we show that even with no knowledge of channel coefficient values at the transmitters, the knowledge of the channels’ coherence structure can be exploited to achieve interference alignment. In each case, we show that under certain heterogeneous block fading models, i.e., when certain users experience smaller coherence time/bandwidth than others, the transmitters are able to align interference without the knowledge of channel coefficient values. This work was presented in part at IEEE GLOBECOM 2010 [1].
BASEL III: HOW HAVE CZECH BANKS REACHED HIGHER CAPITAL RATIOS?

According to the Czech National Bank, the average c apital adequacy of Czech banks increased from 14.1% in 2009 to 17.1 % in 2013. For the sample of 17 Czech banks we aim to identify the strategies that Czech banks adopted in order to increase their capital ratios. Our analysi s shows that as with the large multi-national banks from advanced economies, retai n d earnings have played a major role in increasing the average capital rati o of Czech banks. In addition, the Czech banks have decreased their risk to streng th the overall ratio. The results of our analysis are useful mainly from a re gulatory point of view as currently the countercyclical buffer is set to its min i um of 0% of risk-weighted assets and the Czech National Bank may increase the buff r up to 2.5% in the medium or long-term.
Community Entrepreneurship in Deprived Neighbourhoods: Comparing UK Community Enterprises with US Community Development Corporations

Through a review of the recent American community development literature, this paper tests the assertion that British community enterprises (CEs) are fundamentally similar to American community development corporations (CDCs), and therefore, that CEs can learn from CDCs. In the context of the current austerity regimes, CEs and community entrepreneurship are increasingly considered as a means to continue small-scale urban regeneration, not only in the UK but also in several other European countries. While the CDC sector has achieved a relatively successful record in affordable housing production in distressed areas, CDCs are fundamentally limited in terms of reversing the processes of community decline. Our comparison of CDCs and CEs reveals similarities, but also differences with regard to organizational characteristics, co-operation on multiple scales, comprehensiveness, targeting and community participation. Apart from outlining lessons that CEs can learn from CDS, we provide recommendations for further research that should cover the lack of empirical evidence in this field.