The shape of a memorised random walk

We view random walks as the paths of foraging animals, perhaps searching for food or avoiding predators while forming a mental map of their surroundings. The formation of such maps requires them to memorise the locations they have visited. We model memory using a kernel, proportional to the number of locations recalled as a function of the time since they were first observed. We give exact analytic expressions relating the elongation of the memorised walk to the structure of the memory kernel, and confirm these by simulation. We find that more slowly decaying memories lead to less elongated mental maps.Comment: In the journal published version, there is a misprint in the statement of Theorem 1 p.6, one should take the limit with $c \to \infty.

Effect of Oral Corrective Feedback on Language Skills

Corrective feedback is an important element in the language learning process. The issue of corrective feedback in language classrooms has been investigated by numerous scholars who believe that the strategy can effectively be used to improve the language skills of students. Though many forms of feedback approaches are used in learning, oral corrective feedback is the commonly used strategy in teaching languages. This is mainly because it captures the diverse elements of language lessons such as pronunciations and spelling. Oral corrective feedback presents a broad field which assists both teachers and students in error identification and eradication. It mainly focuses on highlighting the common errors and mistakes and addressing them enabling the students to avoid them in the future. This paper mainly explores the impact of oral corrective feedback on the language skills of learners. It generally analyses articles that address the issue of oral corrective feedback and derives information regarding the impact of the strategy in language learning outcomes

An Inherent Trade-Off in Noisy Neural Communication with Rank-Order Coding

Rank-order coding, a form of temporal coding, has emerged as a promising scheme to explain the rapid ability of the mammalian brain. Owing to its speed as well as efficiency, rank-order coding is increasingly gaining interest in diverse research areas beyond neuroscience. However, much uncertainty still exists about the performance of rank-order coding under noise. Herein we show what information rates are fundamentally possible and what trade-offs are at stake. An unexpected finding in this paper is the emergence of a special class of errors that, in a regime, increase with less noise

Crowding perception: A case study of developed systematic literature review procedure with multiple software programs as management and synthesis tools

The aim of this paper is to presents a case study that implements a proposed procedure for conducting a systematic literature review (SLR). The case study is in the field of crowding perception. Following the traditional data processing model, the proposed procedure consists of seven stages: 1) planning the review, 2) conducting the review, 3), organization and preparation for synthesis, 4) actual coding, 5) data extraction & organization, 6) data synthesis, and 7) reporting the review. In addition, the proposed procedure includes the usage of four software programs as supporting tools. The paper includes detailed steps on how each stage has been implemented to systemati-cally review the crowding perception literature. The proposed SLR procedure and the case study presented in this paper offer an effective process of literature review. A specific contribution of this study to SLR is expanding the tools usage to include other software programs

The Questions Technique in Guided Paragraph Writing

Writing has always been an onerous task for ESL learners, especially those in the beginner - and elementary phases of English language acquisition. Teaching ESL writing has always been viewed and implemented using the L1 framework. This may account for the frustrations experienced by both teacher and students in ESL classes. New techniques and strategies have to be devised taking into account the unique circumstances of ESL learners. Using an experimental design, this study compared the number of writing errors made in a control and experimental group. The control group was taught paragraph writing in the conventional way incorporating elements of the product and process approaches to writing. The experimental group was given a pre-arranged set of questions to which they had to respond in a specific manner. It was found that the number of errors committed by the experimental group were significantly lower than the control group, thus suggesting that the Questions technique does have merit in teaching writing to ESL learners. It is versatile in the sense that it can be adapted for different ability levels and types of paragraphs

IDENTIFYING ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEEDS OF RELIGIOUS GUIDES AT THE GENERAL PRESIDENCY OF THE GRAND MOSQUE AND PROPHET’S MOSQUE

This study aims at identifying English language needs for religious guides at The General Presidency of The Grand Mosque and Prophet’s Mosque. This study adopted a quantitative approach methodology using needs analysis questionnaire. The quantitative data collection instrument was a questionnaire with (51) participants. SPSS was used as the quantitative data analysis method. Findings showed that listening and speaking were the most important skills, and reading was moderately important, while writing is not important at all. Also, English is greatly rated as a tool to effectively perform their tasks in term of preaching and advising guests and pilgrims. Difficulties are embodied in lacking English language, accents, and proper religious expressions and vocabulary. This study highlights an urgent need for English for Religious Purposes. The study proposes a general guideline for a course design framework based on participants’ needs

Size and shape of tracked Brownian bridges

We investigate the typical sizes and shapes of sets of points obtained by irregularly tracking two-dimensional Brownian bridges. The tracking process consists of observing the path location at the arrival times of a non-homogeneous Poisson process on a finite time interval. The time varying intensity of this observation process is the tracking strategy. By analysing the gyration tensor of tracked points we prove two theorems which relate the tracking strategy to the average gyration radius, and to the asphericity -- a measure of how non-spherical the point set is. The act of tracking may be interpreted either as a process of observation, or as process of depositing time decaying "evidence" such as scent, environmental disturbance, or disease particles. We present examples of different strategies, and explore by simulation the effects of varying the total number of tracking points.Comment: 12 pages of the main article followed by the supplementary materia

Channel-aware and Queue-aware Scheduling for Integrated WiMAX and EPON

By envisioning that the future broadband access networks have to support many bandwidth consuming applications, such as VoIP, IPTV, VoD, and HDTV, the integration of WiMAX and EPON networks have been taken as one of the most promising network architecture due to numerous advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness, massive-bandwidth provisioning, Ethernet-based technology, reliable transmissions, and QoS guarantee. Under the EPON-WiMAX integration, the development of a scheduling algorithm that could be channel-aware and queue-aware will be a great plus on top of the numerous merits and flexibility in such an integrated architecture. In this thesis, a novel two-level scheduling algorithm for the uplink transmission are proposed by using the principle of proportional fairness for the transmissions from SSs over the WiMAX channels, while a centralized algorithm at the OLT for the EPON uplink from different WiMAX-ONUs. The scheduler at the OLT receives a Report message from each WiMAX-ONU, which contains the average channel condition per cell, queues length, and head-of-line (HOL) delay for rtPS traffic. The EPON data frame is then scheduled based on these Report messages. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme could satisfy the end-to-end real-time QoS requirements. In addition, the centralized scheduler at the OLT can achieve high throughput in presence of traffic load variation

The Political Participation of British Muslims

This thesis investigates the political participation of British Muslims. I proposed three questions as follows: Paper 1) To what extent does the political participation of British Muslims vary across time and space (Chapter 2)? Paper 2) To what extent does the religious institution ‘mosque’ impact the political participation of British Muslims (chapter 3)? Paper 3) How the political environment associated with key institutions, such as the two major political parties, impact British Muslim political participation (Chapter 4). Methods: I explore the political participation of British Muslims across time and space using the British Elections Panel Study (BEPS) between 2014 to 2020, the Euro-Islam dataset and Pippa Norris’s Westminster constituency dataset. I investigate the impact of mosque attendance on electoral and protest participation by using the British Election Study Ethnic Minority Booster sample 2010 (EMBES). I explore the impact of the two major parties of government on participation by British Muslims by drawing on evidence from various sources, including biographical accounts of Muslims and reports in the media. Findings: British Muslims are very similar to other religious groups in their response to political events. There is no difference between them and other groups in terms of political integration. At aggregate level constituencies with higher proportions of Muslim constituencies have a higher rate of turnout compared to otherwise identical constituencies. Mosques play a significant role in their participation, whether electoral or other forms of participation. These institutions encouraged protest activities such as boycotts, petitions, and demonstrations. This may be because British Muslims receive less attention, especially in tackling Islamophobia and discrimination from the mainstream political parties “Conservative and Labour”. This creates a negative political environment, this may a tendency to protest activities were among British Muslims in 2010