Foreign Language Aptitude Examined in relation to Implicit and Explicit Grammar Instruction

Language aptitude (LA) is one of the primary individual differences with which the language learning ability of learners can be foreseen. This quasi-experimental study aims to contribute to the LA literature by investigating the role of LA in explicit and implicit grammar instruction. To do so, LLAMA_D aptitude test was administered to 133 participants, and from this cohort group, four subgroups were formed. A one-session course was designed and delivered to participants with a pre and post-test. The results indicated that there is a significant correlation between implicit instruction and the LA level of the participants. However, based on the Pearson Correlation results, it can be concluded that LA is a stronger determinant in the achievement of learners than the type of instruction. It can be suggested, therefore, that taking LA level into consideration before planning implicit or explicit instruction would contribute to the effectiveness of the instruction

FIXED POINT SETS OF SELF-MAPPINGS WITH A GEOMETRIC VIEWPOINT

In this paper, we obtain new fixed point results with the help of various techniques constructed by using auxiliary numbers and some family of functions. In the context of the fixed-circle (resp. fixed-disc) problem, we consider the geometry of the fixed point set of a self-mapping on a metric space. Also, we discuss the effectiveness of our theoretical fixed point results by considering possible applications to the study of neural networks

Enriching Pre-service Teacher Education with Keeping Learning Journals

Investigating the integration of learning journals into a pre-service teacher education course to promote reflection was the overall goal of this study. Studies about evaluating students’ journals have generally analyzed them using a holistic and general approach without examining their content and levels of reflection. This study focuses on both contents, levels of reflection, and their relationship. The participants of the study consisted of 33 senior pre-service elementary teachers. The participants were asked to produce a learning journal entry each week at the end of the Science, Technology, Society, and Environment class, in which they were asked to reflect on what they had learned. A deductive content analysis was utilized to determine the levels of reflection of the pre-service teachers’ journals. Deductive content analysis was used to determine the levels of reflection of the pre-service teachers’ journals. The levels of reflection of the participants were moderate and did not show a pattern of improvement over time; instead, the levels of reflection depended on the content of the related class meeting. The majority of the participants agreed that keeping learning journals improved their self-expression and self-assessment skills and retention. The feedback cycle should be reconsidered for further improvement in the journals

Investigation of the Prevalence of Fasciola hepatica in Small Ruminants in the Siirt Region, Turkey

Background: Fasciolosis is a disease of the liver caused by trematodes in the family of Fasciolidae, particularly by Fasciola hepatica and Fasciola gigantica. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of F. hepatica in sheep using the ELISA method, and in hair goats by post-mortem liver examination in the Siirt region, Turkey. Methods: This study was conducted between Feb-Sep 2018. Five ml of blood samples were taken from the jugular veins of 320 sheep, which were selected from various locations of Siirt region by random sampling method. Fasciolosis seroprevalence in sheep was investigated by the ELISA method, using commercial kits (BIOK 211-Monoscreen AB ELISA F. hepatica test). In order to determine the prevalence of fasciolosis in hair goats, 580 slaughtered goats were examined for F. hepatica by incisions in the liver, gallbladder, and bile ducts. Results: While 24 (7.50%) sheep were seropositive, 296 (92.50%) were seronegative. Regarding the hair goats, on the other hand, 82 (14.14%) were positive, while 498 (85.86%) were negative. Conclusion: F. hepatica infection causes significant economic losses due to the destruction of the liver in small ruminants. Considering zoonotic properties of the disease, it has been concluded that the necessary measures should be taken and anti-helminthic drugs should be applied to the animals that come out of the pasture. Furthermore, periodic examinations should be conducted, and the breeders should be informed about the disease to raise awareness

Sağlıklı boer x kıl keçisi melez ırklarında cinsiyetin bazı hematolojik ve biyokimyasal parametreler üzerine etkisi

The aim of this study was to determine some hematological and biochemical parameters in male and female Boer x hair goat crossbreed (n=34). Blood samples were collected from the jugular vein in sample tubes with and without anticoagulants. A Mindray BC2800 fully-automated device was used to measure the WBC, RBC, Hgb, Hct, MCV, and MCH values and ADVIA 1800 brand auto-analyzer was used to obtain Na, K, Cl, Mg, Ca, Crea, Tp, Alb, Gluo, Chol, Trig, AST, ALT, and ALP values. WBC (p<0.01), RBC (p<0.05), HCT (p<0.01) and MCV (p<0.05) levels were found to be statistically higher in female specimens, while HGB and MCH levels were found to be statistically identical for both sexes. Meanwhile, males had statistically higher levels of K (p <0.001) and Mg (p<0.01) levels compared to females. Crea (p<0.001), Tp (p <0.05), Alb (p<0.05), Gluo (p<0.001) levels were also statistically higher in males, while Chol level was statistically higher in females (p<0.001). No statistically significant variation was detected between the Trig values of the sexes. ALT, ALP activities of males were found to be statistically higher in males than in females (p<0.05). The results of the study revealed that some hematological and biochemical parameters of Boer x hair goat crossbreeds are affected by sex.Bu çalışmada, erkek ve dişi Boer x Kıl keçisi melezlerinde bazı hematolojik ve biyokimyasal parametrelerin belirlenmesi amaçlandı. Hayvanların vena jugularisinden antikoagulanlı ve antikoagulansız tüplere kan örnekleri alındı. WBC, RBC, Hgb, Hct, MCV, MCH değerleri Mindray BC2800 tam otomatik kan sayım cihazında, Na, K, CI, Mg, Ca, Crea,Tp, Alb, Gluo, Chol, Trig, AST, ALT ve ALP analizleri ADVIA 1800 marka otoanalizörde yapıldı. WBC (p<0.01), RBC (p<0.05), HCT (p<0.01) ve MCV (p<0.05) düzeylerinin dişilerde erkeklere göre istatistiksel olarak daha yüksek olduğu, HGB, MCH düzeyleri karşılaştırıldığında ise istatistiksel olarak iki cinsiyet arasında fark olmadığı belirlendi. K (p <0.001) ve Mg (p <0.01) seviyeleri erkeklerde dişilere göre daha yüksek tespit edildi. Erkeklerde Crea (p <0.001), Tp (p <0.05), Alb (p <0.05), Gluo (P<0.001), düzeyleri dişilere göre yüksek, Chol seviyesi ise dişilerde erkeklerden istatistiksel olarak yüksek bulundu (p <0.001). Cinsiyetler arasında Trig değerleri bakımından fark tespit edilmedi. ALT (p <0.05), ALP (p <0.05) aktiviteleri karşılaştırıldığında erkek hayvanların dişilere göre daha yüksek değerlere sahip olduğu belirlendi. Sonuç olarak, Boer x Kıl keçisi melezlerine ait bazı hematolojik ve biyokimyasal parametrelerin cinsiyetten etkilendiği, bazılarında ise cinsiyet faktörünün etkili olmadığı belirlendi

A comparative reliability analysis of ballistic deployments on binary asteroids

Small body missions can significantly benefit from deploying small landing systems onto the surface of the visited object. Despite the potential benefit that they may bring, deployments of landers in small body environments may entail significant mission design challenges. This paper thus addresses the potential of ballistic landing opportunities in binary asteroid moons from a mission design perspective, particularly focusing on reliability aspects of the trajectories. Two binaries that were previously identified as target bodies in several missions/proposals, Didymos and 1996 FG3, are considered in this paper. The dynamics near them are modeled by means of the Circular Restricted Three Body Problem (CR3BP), which provides a reasonable representation of a standard binary system. Natural landing trajectories that allow both minimum-velocity local-vertical touchdown and deployment from a safe distance are investigated. Coefficient of restitution values are used as a design parameter to compute the first touchdown speeds that ensure sufficient reliability of landing trajectories. A simple reliability index, which is derived via uncertainty ellipsoid from covariance analysis, is introduced to create a global reliability map across the asteroid surfaces. Assuming 3σ deployment errors on the order of 90 m and 2 cm/s, the results show that ballistic landing operations are likely to be successful for larger binary moons if the deployments target near equatorial regions within longitude range 320o–20°. It has also been shown that the deployments to smaller binary moons may require higher accuracy in navigation and deployment systems in their mothership, and/or closer deployment distances

Application of Statistical and Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Medium-Term Electrical Energy Forecasting: A Case Study for a Regional Hospital

Electrical energy forecasting is crucial for efficient, reliable, and economic operations of hospitals due to serving 365 days a year, 24/7, and they require round-the-clock energy. An accurate prediction of energy consumption is particularly required for energy management, maintenance scheduling, and future renewable investment planning of large facilities. The main objective of this study is to forecast electrical energy demand by performing and comparing well-known techniques, which are frequently applied to short-term electrical energy forecasting problem in the literature, such as multiple linear regression as a statistical technique and artificial intelligence techniques including artificial neural networks containing multilayer perceptron neural networks and radial basis function networks, and support vector machines through a case study of a regional hospital in the medium-term horizon. In this study, a state-of-the-art literature review of medium-term electrical energy forecasting, data set information, fundamentals of statistical and artificial intelligence techniques, analyses for aforementioned methodologies, and the obtained results are described meticulously. Consequently, support vector machines model with a Gaussian kernel has the best validation performance, and the study revealed that seasonality has a dominant influence on forecasting performance. Hence heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems cover the major part of electrical energy consumption of the regional hospital. Besides historical electrical energy consumption, outdoor mean temperature and calendar variables play a significant role in achieving accurate results. Furthermore, the study also unveiled that the number of patients is steady over the years with only small deviations and have no significant influence on medium-term electrical energy forecasting

4-(Methyl­amino)benzoic acid

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C8H9NO2, contains three crystallographically independent mol­ecules, which are essentially planar, the carboxyl O atoms deviating by 0.091 (3), 0.101 (2) and 0.164 (3) Å from the mean plane through the non-H atoms. In the crystal, all three mol­ecules form O—H⋯O hydrogen-bonded about inversion centers, forming eight-membered rings with graph-set notation R 2 2(8). In addition, N—H⋯O hydrogen bonding and C—H⋯π inter­actions reinforce the packing

Spatially informed voxelwise modeling for naturalistic fMRI experiments

Voxelwise modeling (VM) is a powerful framework to predict single voxel responses evoked by a rich set of stimulus features present in complex natural stimuli. However, because VM disregards correlations across neighboring voxels, its sensitivity in detecting functional selectivity can be diminished in the presence of high levels of measurement noise. Here, we introduce spatially-informed voxelwise modeling (SPIN-VM) to take advantage of response correlations in spatial neighborhoods of voxels. To optimally utilize shared information, SPIN-VM performs regularization across spatial neighborhoods in addition to model features, while still generating single-voxel response predictions. We demonstrated the performance of SPIN-VM on a rich dataset from a natural vision experiment. Compared to VM, SPIN-VM yields higher prediction accuracies and better capture locally congruent information representations across cortex. These results suggest that SPIN-VM offers improved performance in predicting single-voxel responses and recovering coherent information representations

Relación entre la tenacidad a flexión y la energía de impacto en hormigones de alta resistencia reforzados con fibras (HSFRC)

A simple, economical and practical impact resistance test method has been developed for high strength fiber reinforced concrete (HSFRC). The results indicated that there is a logarithmic relation between flexural toughness energy (EFT) and impact energy (El) for FRC In this study, three different aspect ratios of hooked-end fibers, namely, 30/0.50; 60/0.80 and 50/0.60 length/diameter (mm/mm) were used. Fibers were added to concrete in four different volume percentages of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 %. From the results it can be said that fibers in high strength concrete improve impact resistance and flexural toughness of concrete. Also a good correlation between flexural toughness energy and impact energy has been established.Con el fin de confirmar la utilización de una fibra de acero para reforzar un hormigón, se puso en práctica un método consistente en un test de resistencia al impacto, sencillo, práctico y económico. Los resultados obtenidos indicaron que existe una relación logarítmica entre la tenacidad a flexión (EFT) y la energía (El) de impacto para estos hormigones. En la realización de este estudio se tuvieron en cuenta tres factores diferentes en lo concerniente a las fibras, con extremo en forma de gancho, con relación longitud/diámetro (mm/mm): 30/0,50:60/0,80 y 50/0,60. Las fibras se añadieron al cemento en cuatro porcentajes en volumen diferentes: 0,5, 1,0, 1,5 y 2,0 %. A la vista de los resultados obtenidos, puede decirse que las fibras mejoran, tanto la resistencia al impacto, como la flexión en el hormigón, habiéndose establecido, asimismo, una buena correlación entre la energía de resistencia a flexión y la energía de impacto