Educational Leadership in Haiti: A Case Study of Innovative and Exemplary Leadership in a Fragile State

In this study, we consider three school leaders in Haiti who provide examples of innovative and exemplary leadership practices in the midst of challenging circumstances. Using a framework of innovative (Moolenaar, Daly, & Sleeger, 2010; Rogers, 2003) and exemplary leadership practices (Kouzes & Posner, 2006), we examine three themes that emerged from interviews with the three participants, observations of their work in the field, and interviews with other educational stakeholders in their communities. We raise considerations for leadership practices that include: The importance of social and professional networks, barriers and opportunities to innovative practice, and collaborations involving community, regional, national, and international partners. The paper provides suggestions for further exploration in examining educational leadership in fragile states such as Haiti

Turkish words in romanian vocabulary

Background. Throughout its history, the Romanian people have had interferences with various cultures and peoples, which has also influenced the development and enrichment of the Romanian vocabulary with lexemes of different origins, such as the Turkish ones. Objective of the study. Turkish words have entered different spheres of life, some of them being used with the primary meaning, others changing their connotation over time. Material and Methods. In the paper were studied and analyzed words from the usual language, but also from the specialized one, based on lexicographic works and studies of historical linguistics. Results. According to the official structure of the Romanian language vocabulary, 0.73% of the words are of Turkish origin. Considering the long relations of the Romanian people with the Turkish neighbors, through social, political, economic, cultural factors, the percentage seems small enough. However, the Turkish language had a great influence on the Romanian language, and the words penetrated the life of the people and enjoy a great spread. Conclusion. The words of Turkish origin are relatively easy to recognize, because they have a special melodicity, however they have adapted so well to the Romanian vocabulary, that no reference is made to their origin

Perception and reasoning for the automatic configuration of task and motion planning problems

This thesis proposes a framework for configuring Task Planning Problems flexibly in an automatic manner using two main modules which are the Perception Module and the Reasoning Module. In order to automatize the overall process, initially, a knowledge layer is generated manually, in which the information regarding the environment is stored using ontologies, whereas the environmental state where the task is taking place is observed with the help of the Perception Module. The knowledge layer is then reasoned within the Reasoner Module in order to automatically configure task planning problems by filling Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) [1] files. During this reasoning process, the information retrieved from the Perception Module is used. In this paper, both of these modules mentioned above are explained in detail before providing the results separately for each module. Then, in addition to individual results, a scenario is created within a lab environment to test the overall system including both modules. Furthermore, alternative areas where the Reasoning Module implementation can be benefited from is also discusse

Boosted Multiple Kernel Learning for First-Person Activity Recognition

Activity recognition from first-person (ego-centric) videos has recently gained attention due to the increasing ubiquity of the wearable cameras. There has been a surge of efforts adapting existing feature descriptors and designing new descriptors for the first-person videos. An effective activity recognition system requires selection and use of complementary features and appropriate kernels for each feature. In this study, we propose a data-driven framework for first-person activity recognition which effectively selects and combines features and their respective kernels during the training. Our experimental results show that use of Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) and Boosted MKL in first-person activity recognition problem exhibits improved results in comparison to the state-of-the-art. In addition, these techniques enable the expansion of the framework with new features in an efficient and convenient way.Comment: First published in the Proceedings of the 25th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO-2017) in 2017, published by EURASI

ACUTE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT WARM UP PROTOCOLS ON ATHLETE’S PERFORMANCE

The aim of present study was to investigate the acute effect of different warm-up protocols on elite athlete’s performance. Subject group of the study was consisted of twenty volunteer male students from Uludag University Sport Sciences Faculty who have been playing soccer at various leagues for at least seven years. Three different warm-up methods were applied to the subjects at 24 hours intervals. These were (1) stretching exercises protocol (SEP), plyometric exercises protocol (PEP) and suspension exercises protocol (SUEP). Subjects performed general warm up during 5 minutes and after then pre-tests were measured before each warm up protocol. After each warm up protocol, post-tests were measured. All subjects were tested on static balance, vertical jump, 30 m. sprint, reaction time and flexibility performances. All data were analyzed using Paired Sample T-tests using SPSS Statistics v.22 (Chicago, IL, USA), and significance was set at an alpha level of 0.05. As a result of analysis of test data, no significant difference was detected in the static balance test in the three protocols (p<0.05). When the vertical jump test (anaerobic power test) results were analyzed, whilst a statistically significant decrease was detected in SEP, no difference was detected in PEP and SUEP (p<0.05). When the reaction time test results were analyzed, no difference was detected in the three protocols (p<0.05). When the speed test results were analyzed, a statistically significant decrease in SEP and statistically significant increase in PEP and SUEP were detected (p<0.05). When the flexibility test results were analyzed, a statistically significant increase was detected in the three protocols (p<0.05). A statistically significant decrease in the values of anaerobic power and speed, significant improvement in flexibility was observed in GEP. A significant improvement was observed in the values of speed and flexibility in PEP and SEP. According to the results, in sports that require speed and jumping, whilst plyometric and suspension warm up exercises are thought to be beneficial, in sports that require flexibility, the inclusion of static stretching to these exercises is thought to be beneficial.  Article visualizations

English Teachers' Views on the Use of Web 2.0 Tools in Educational Environments

New practices that support the use of technology in education are developed in order to create a modern education-training process within the framework of quality and efficiency standards throughout the world. Web 2.0 tools that help to make the most of technology in educational environments are one of these applications. It has been proven that Web 2.0 tools, which were used in education in Turkey in 2009, increase the motivation of students and increase their academic success. Teachers' professional development accelerates by producing new materials with these tools, and cooperation, communication and coordination among colleagues increase. The aim of the study is to reveal the opinions of English teachers working in Elazig about the use of Web 2.0 tools in educational environments. The study is based on the situation analysis technique, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The interview form developed by the researchers was used as the data collection tool. The working group consists of 30 English teachers working in Elazig province of Turkey. The responses of the participants to the questions in the interview form were subjected to content analysis, categories were created, and frequencies and percentages were determined. According to the results of the research, teachers generally have positive perceptions of Web 2.0 tools, they generally use these tools for content development, Web 2.0 tools provide positive contributions to classroom management and student development

Non-invasive assessment of short and ultra-short heart rate variability during different physical and physiological tests

The main aim of the present study was to determine the short- and ultra-short-term heart rate variability (HRV) during different physical and physiological tests and to compare HRV to different performance levels. The latter aim was to compare participants’ short- and ultra-short-term heart rate variability before-duringpost- tests. Our hypothesis was that there would be a significant difference between test performance and HRV parameters, and the high performing group would have significantly higher HRV parameters than the low performing group. Fifty-three healthy men (Mage=26.9±4 years, Mheight=177.9±5.7 cm; Mweight=77.8±8.7 kg) were recruited in the current study. We completed the data collection procedure for each participant in four consecutive days. On day-1, anthropometric measurements were conducted and then participants performed isokinetic tests. On day-2, participants performed anaerobic tests; on day-3 equilibrium tests, and on day-4 aerobic capacity tests. The HRV records of all participants were obtained before, during and after all these tests. Based on the participants’ performance, they were divided into two groups: participants in G1 had lower performance and those in G2 higher performance. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA yielded significant differences in HRV values obtained in the four different tests. There was a significant difference between fitness test performance and the variation of short- and ultra-short-term HRV parameters. Also, significant differences in HRV values before, during, and after the testing were observed

Relationship between handedness and toothbrush-related cervical dental abrasion in left- and right-handed individuals

AbstractBackground/purposeCervical tooth abrasion is the loss of tooth material at the cementoenamel junction, and is usually related to faulty brushing habits. In this study, we attempted to evaluate the effects of handedness on tooth-brushing abrasion in terms of brushing habits in left- and right-handed adults.Materials and methodsIn total, 488 subjects participating in the study were divided into 2 groups according to hand preference (group I; left-handed and group II; right-handed), and were interviewed about their brushing habits, and their clinical oral conditions such as the plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), and tooth wear index (TWI) were determined. Handedness was determined by a questionnaire that focused on handedness using the Turkish version of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory.ResultsThis study showed that there were no statistically significant differences between groups I and II according to daily tooth-brushing habits, PI, or GI. Statistically significant differences were found between men and women according to the clinical oral scores and brushing habits (P<0.01). However, there were no statistically significant differences between the mean TWI scores of left- and right-handed groups (P=0.12). It was found that an increased frequency and longer duration of tooth-brushing significantly increased the TWI scores in both groups (P<0.01). It was also found that TWI scores were statistically higher in subjects who brushed horizontally rather than vertically (P<0.01). Correlations between clinical oral scores (TWI, PI, and GI) and brushing habits were statistically significant (P<0.01).ConclusionThe oral-hygiene performance of females was better than males. Brushing habits of patients were related to the severity of cervical wear. But no statistically significant relationship was found between hand preference and tooth-brushing abrasion in this study

Studying Black Holes in Superposition Using Unruh-DeWitt Particle Detectors

In quantum gravity, we expect black holes to exist in quantum superposition. However, the measurable effects of black hole superpositions have not been studied widely. In this thesis, we study superpositions of different periodically identified Minkowski spacetimes and different Banados-Teitelboim- Zanelli (BTZ) black hole spacetimes and investigate excited state probabilities of an Unruh-DeWitt particle detector coupling to the superposition of these spacetimes. This thesis is based on two consequent articles on the phenomenology of quantum superpositions of spacetime. The primary research focus is to superpose the mass of the Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) black hole and investigate the quantum-gravitational effects produced by such a spacetime. We start by investigating a cylindrical spacetime superposition to better understand the basic framework for superposing spacetimes and the corresponding effects induced on the quantum matter. We achieve this by superposing a periodically identified Minkowski spacetime (i.e. Minkowski spacetime with a periodic boundary condition that creates a cylindrical topology), for which we develop an operational approach for constructing spacetime superpositions using the notion of nonlocal correlations and automorphic fields in curved spacetime. We then use this method to superpose a black hole of different masses for the nonrotating BTZ spacetime. Following that, we couple quantum matter (which we model using the Unruh-DeWitt (UDW) particle detector model) to these spacetime superpositions. Firstly, we couple it to the cylindrical spacetime to demonstrate for the first time the response of a UDW detector to a scalar field in this superposed spacetime, and its dependence on the energy gap Ω, and γ = lA/lB, where lA and lB are the characteristic lengths of the periodically identified Minkowski spacetimes in superposition. The detector’s response exhibits quantum-gravitational “resonances” at rational ratios of the superposed periodic length scale. Secondly, we couple a UDW particle detector to a scalar quantum field in the spacetime produced by a mass-superposition of the BTZ black hole. We show that the detector’s dynamics exhibit similar resonances to the Minkowski spacetime superposition, now manifesting at rational ratios of the square root of the superposed black hole mass. Such resonances are genuinely quantum-gravitational effects arising from the black hole mass superposition that support and extend Bekenstein’s original conjecture concerning the quantization of black holes in quantum gravity