THE MEDIATING ROLE OF ACADEMIC SELF-CONCEPT IN THE LINKAGE BETWEEN TEACHER SUPPORT AND ACADEMIC PROFICIENCY AMONG SECONDARY EFL LEARNERS

Based on social support theory, this study aims to verify that the relationship between teacher support and academic proficiency is mediated by academic self-concept in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) settings. Seventh-grade students (n = 206) and eighth-grade students (n = 293) in a middle school were invited to participate in the questionnaire survey. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and mediation analysis examined the relationship between teacher support, academic self-concept, and academic proficiency among 499 secondary EFL learners. There are three significant findings. First, teacher support positively predicts academic proficiency. Second, academic self-concept was positively correlated with academic proficiency. Third, academic self-concept fully mediated the relationship between teacher support and academic proficiency. This study contributes to the literature by exploring the mediating mechanism between teacher support and academic proficiency in the EFL context. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.  Article visualizations

HIGH EFFICIENCY SLEEP SCHEDULE FOR BATTERY BASED ENDPOINTS IN LOW-POWER AND LOSSY NETWORKS

Techniques are described herein for a high efficiency sleep schedule method to save energy for Wireless Mesh Network (WMN). Nodes are not distinguished as Full Function Device (FFD) or Reduced Function Device (RFD), as the strategy depends on hop count and the parent node’s sleep schedule. This is an improvement over current WMNs, which do not account for power management for Battery Based Endpoint (BBP) devices

DETECTION AND PREVENTION OF EAPOL-START FLOOD ATTACKS IN LLN ENVIRONMENTS

Due to limited resources in wireless sensors, such sensors are easily attacked by flood joining messages. To address these types of challenges, techniques are presented herein that support making simple nodes (such as wireless sensors) smarter to allow them to identify malicious node(s) from legal neighbors. Aspects of the techniques presented herein leverage, among other things, the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) over local area network (LAN), or EAPOL, protocol and employ, among other things, an EAPOL neighbor status profile, or ENSP. A node may generate an ENSP for each connection rather than for each node based on a unique address. After exchanging ENSPs with neighbors and then analyzing, a node may easily identify a malicious node and detect which is the malicious traffic

TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE THE HIT RATE OF UNICAST NODE-TO-NODE (N2N) DELIVERY IN CHANNEL-HOPPING AND MULTI-HOP LOW-POWER AND LOSSY NETWORKS (LLNS)

In a large scale wireless mesh network, such as a Wireless Smart Utility Network (Wi-SUN), there can be many losses. For example, a transmitter typically does not know the availability of a receiver when transmitting, which can create losses. In another example, link quality measurements, such as expected transmission count (ETX), may not be well represented for every channel. In one instance, this proposal provides an improved scheduling technique that leverages Broadcast Interval (BI) information to determine receive (RX) and transmit (TX) plans for child nodes. Child nodes can select an appropriate parent node according to received schedules, which can facilitate download traffic propagation. In another instance, this proposal provides for the ability to facilitate fine management of ETX evaluation to improve the successful rate of packet delivery. Techniques of this proposal not only leverage a central control method, but also introduce a free contention mechanism through which a central node can announce acceptable time slots to sub-nodes. The central node may avoid assigning smaller slots for each sub-node in order to allow the sub-nodes to compete for communications. Thus, techniques herein may combine various advantages for both deterministic networks and mesh networks

ADJUSTING NETWORK PARAMETERS DYNAMICALLY TO ACCELERATE MESH NETWORK CONVERGENCE

Techniques are described to adaptively adjust network parameters by adjusting the network scale. On one side, a smooth Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) mechanism may adaptively adjust the network scale to take precautions for collision. On the other side, a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) mechanism may also automatically adjust the network scale to detect the collision. This may speed up network formation and convergence significantly, and maintain the network effectively

IMPROVING NETWORK THROUGHPUT OF CONNECTED GRID ROUTER WIRELESS PERSONAL AREA NETWORK FOR MASTER AND SLAVE CASE

Techniques are described herein to cause a Master and Slave Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) to share the same 64-bit Extended Unique Identifier (EUI64) address. In response, the first hop dual-phy node transmits most of the upward data flow to the router via the Radio Frequency (RF) link, and the router transmits most downward data flow via the RF link. Because the RF link has much more bandwidth than the Power Line Communication (PLC) link, this mechanism takes full advantage of network resources and extends the network throughput

NOVEL TIME SYNCHRONIZATION MECHANISM FOR LARGE-SCALE AND ULTRA-LOW DUTY CYCLE WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

As an important new feature in the wireless smart utility network (Wi-SUN) 2.0 protocol, low-power functionality has a range of implementation problems. One of those problems concerns time synchronization (TS) between an ultra-low duty cycle limited function device (LFD) and a central full function device (FFD) using a channel hopping mechanism. Most of the existing TS proposals focus on reducing the total overhead of all of the nodes in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) by improving or enhancing a Reference-Broadcast Infrastructure Synchronization (RBIS) or Timing-sync Protocol for Sensor Networks (TPSN) algorithm, but such algorithms do not consider the ultra-low duty cycle WSN case. To address these sorts of challenges, techniques are presented herein that support a novel TS mechanism whereby, rather than waking up an LFD just for a sync time, the LFD may ‘sleep’ for as long as desired while incurring just a very small energy cost as the LFD awaits a synchronization message

DIGITAL ADDRESSABLE LIGHTING INTERFACE PROTOCOL OVER WIRELESS MESH NETWORK

Techniques are described herein for applying Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) protocol in existing Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). The DALI-based lighting market has experienced a large growth in recent years because of the potential for intelligent lighting systems to cut down many costs of initial investment, energy, and maintenance. However, traditional control systems cannot not meet large-scale Light Emitting Diode (LED) deployments in practice. DALI protocol may provide more stable connectivity among nodes, reduce redundant traffic, and transmitting broadcast commands with high efficiency

CROSS PERSONAL AREA NETWORK COMMUNICATION BY CONNECTED GRID MESH NETWORK IN LIGHTING AREA

Techniques are described herein for broadcast and unicast mechanisms to perform cross Personal Area Network (PAN) communication in a Connected Grid Mesh (CG-Mesh). Neighboring PAN information (e.g., security, PAN, etc.) is stored in a cross-PAN node. A lighting group Identifier (ID) allocation may be used for the broadcast mechanism, and route table creation may be used for the unicast mechanism. This allows a system to meet any lighting timing requirements

MECHANISM TO PROTECT FIELD AREA NETWORKS FROM EAPOL ATTACK

A mechanism is proposed to protect mesh networks from Extensible Authentication Protocol over Local Area Network (EAPOL) attacks in following ways. A Field Network Director (FND) synchronizes a whitelist table to a mesh node periodically, allowing to the mesh node to filter EAPOL messages based on the whitelist table. Further, a supplicant can sign EAPOL messages with its private key, and then a relay node can filter the EAPOL messages base on the signature