Identifying and developing the gifts and talents of students with musical ability in New Zealand primary schools : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education, Massey University

This study was conducted within the New Zealand primary school setting. It sought to address the issue of how to identify musical talent and, once identified, how to nurture that talent. As most primary school teachers are each individually responsible for music education within their classrooms, such teachers need to have the tools to identify, support, motivate and challenge the musically gifted student. This study sought to determine whether Renzulli's (1977) Enrichment Triad Model could be used as a tool to help identify musically talented children and whether it could then be used effectively as a model to implement a gifted music programme. Available literature was explored, looking at explanations and perceptions of musical talent as well as environmental and genetic factors. Renzulli's (1977) Enrichment Triad Model is investigated as are the pros and cons of withdrawal or 'pull-out' programmes. Both quantitative and qualitative data was initially gathered in phase one of the study and the results combined to assist in identifying three musically talented students. Phase one was conducted within three individual school environments. A classroom music creativity programme, a school singing programme, and an after-school keyboard delivery programme. Three students were subsequently identified to participate in phase two. Phase two required the researcher to work individually with these students over a ten week time frame. At the end of the intervention, resulting compositions were performed to a variety of audiences and a Student Product Assessment Form was used to help formerly assess the students' work. This study concluded that the Enrichment Triad Model could he used as an effective model in the delivery of a classroom music programme, the delivery of Types I and II enrichment allowing opportunities to identify musical giftedness while Type III enrichment offered the scope to broaden and develop identified musical talent

Forecasting elections using expert surveys: an application to U.S. presidential elections

Prior research offers a mixed view of the value of expert surveys for long-term election forecasts. On the positive side, experts have more information about the candidates and issues than voters do. On the negative side, experts all have access to the same information. Based on prior literature and on our experiences with the 2004 presidential election and the 2008 campaign so far, we have reason to believe that a simple expert survey (the Nominal Group Technique) is preferable to Delphi. Our survey of experts in American politics was quite accurate in the 2004 election. Following the same procedure, we have assembled a new panel of experts to forecast the 2008 presidential election. Here we report the results of the first survey, and compare our experts’ forecasts with predictions by the Iowa Electronic Market .forecasting; elections; expert surveys; Delphi

Biology in education

Not availabl

Efficacy of Hibiscus Cannabinus L. (kenaf) Crude Seed Powder and its Methanol Extract in Water Purification

The efficiencies of hibiscus cannabinus (kenaf) powder and methanol extract were studied in water purification. Two turbidity levels namely, high (160NTU) and low (49NTU) were considered. The water samples were taken from an open pond used for irrigation farming in Custom area of Maiduguri, Nigeria. In this study, the powdered cannabinus was discovered to be more effective in removing high turbidity water, with an efficiency of 96.0% against the extract with 85.6%. However, in low turbidity water, the methanol extract performed better, with a turbidity removal efficiency of 89.4% compared to 84.4%, if the cannabinus powder is used. Another parameter studied was the pH of the water which remains unaffected after the treatment at 7.0. The outcome of the performance of this natural coagulant and alum when compared indicated that alum also performed better on high turbidity water than low turbid water with a removal efficiency of 98.8% and 95.7% respectively. Alum slightly affected the pH of the water from original value of 7.0 to 5.5, which makes the water more acidic after treatment. It appears that natural coagulants of plant origin remain the best option engineers are left with, if the current emphasis on millennium development goal on clean water supply for all is to be achieved. Keywords: , Cannabinus, Coagulation, Water Purificatio

PARTISIPASI POLITIK GENERASI MUDA PADA PEMILIHAN UMUM LEGESLATIF 2014 DI DISTRIK AYAMARU KOTA

AbstrakPartisipasi politik adalah kegiatan seseorang atau kelompok orang untuk ikut serta secara aktif dalam kehidupan politik, salah satu kelompok partisipan dalam pemilu adalah generasi muda, namun pada kenyataannya partisipasi politik generasi muda masih terjadi adanya intervensi dari pihak internal maupun internal, hal ini yang terjadi pada pemilihan umum legislatif 2014 di Distrik Ayamaru Kota. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui partisipasi politik generasi muda pada pemilihan umum legislatif tahun 2014 di Distrik Ayamaru Kota, dengan menggunakan metode penelitian kualitatif diharapkan penelitian ini dapat lebih mengeksplorasi permasalahan yang ada. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa partisipasi politik pemilih muda di Distrik Ayamaru Kabupaten Maybrat dipengaruhi oleh beberapa faktor diantaranya: faktor pendidikan politik pemilih, lingkungan tempat beraktifitas dan lingkungan tempat tinggal serta lingkungan tempat bergaul. Motivasi para pemilih muda di Distrik Ayamaru masih sangat memprihatinkan karena hanya sekedar ikut-ikutan akibat dari pengetahuan politik yang masih sangat minim, sehingga bentuk partisipasi politik para pemilih muda di Distrik Ayamaru kebanyakan masih bersifat konvensional.Kata Kunci: Partisipasi Politik, Generasi Muda

Automated methods of predicting the function of biological sequences using GO and BLAST

BACKGROUND: With the exponential increase in genomic sequence data there is a need to develop automated approaches to deducing the biological functions of novel sequences with high accuracy. Our aim is to demonstrate how accuracy benchmarking can be used in a decision-making process evaluating competing designs of biological function predictors. We utilise the Gene Ontology, GO, a directed acyclic graph of functional terms, to annotate sequences with functional information describing their biological context. Initially we examine the effect on accuracy scores of increasing the allowed distance between predicted and a test set of curator assigned terms. Next we evaluate several annotator methods using accuracy benchmarking. Given an unannotated sequence we use the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, BLAST, to find similar sequences that have already been assigned GO terms by curators. A number of methods were developed that utilise terms associated with the best five matching sequences. These methods were compared against a benchmark method of simply using terms associated with the best BLAST-matched sequence (best BLAST approach). RESULTS: The precision and recall of estimates increases rapidly as the amount of distance permitted between a predicted term and a correct term assignment increases. Accuracy benchmarking allows a comparison of annotation methods. A covering graph approach performs poorly, except where the term assignment rate is high. A term distance concordance approach has a similar accuracy to the best BLAST approach, demonstrating lower precision but higher recall. However, a discriminant function method has higher precision and recall than the best BLAST approach and other methods shown here. CONCLUSION: Allowing term predictions to be counted correct if closely related to a correct term decreases the reliability of the accuracy score. As such we recommend using accuracy measures that require exact matching of predicted terms with curator assigned terms. Furthermore, we conclude that competing designs of BLAST-based GO term annotators can be effectively compared using an accuracy benchmarking approach. The most accurate annotation method was developed using data mining techniques. As such we recommend that designers of term annotators utilise accuracy benchmarking and data mining to ensure newly developed annotators are of high quality