Exploring the importance of vocabulary for English as an additional language learners’ reading comprehension

This exploratory study represents an attempt to investigate the factors that may affect the reading comprehension abilities of English as an additional language (EAL) learners. For this study, we examined a participant group of 31 (25 EAL and 6 first language English) learners studying at an international school in Japan. We assessed the participants according to four factors shown to influence reading comprehension: vocabulary knowledge, word decoding skills, reading fluency, and general linguistic ability. Our results show that differences in vocabulary knowledge show more variance in reading comprehension scores than the other factors examined in this study, highlighting the importance of vocabulary knowledge for reading comprehension. However, other factors such as reading fluency and general linguistic knowledge are also shown to be moderate to strong predictors of reading comprehension. Based on these results, we suggest that EAL learners need targeted language support to enhance academic text comprehension

Low computation vision-based navigation for a Martian rover

Construction and design details of the Mobot Vision System, a small, self-contained, mobile vision system, are presented. This system uses the view from the top of a small, roving, robotic vehicle to supply data that is processed in real-time to safely navigate the surface of Mars. A simple, low-computation algorithm for constructing a 3-D navigational map of the Martian environment to be used by the rover is discussed

Magnetic Structure and Magnetoelectric Coupling in Bulk and Thin Film FeVO\u3csub\u3e4

We have investigated the magnetoelectric and magnetodielectric response in FeVO4, which exhibits a change in magnetic structure coincident with ferroelectric ordering at TN2≈15 K. Using symmetry considerations, we construct a model for the possible magnetoelectric coupling in this system and present a discussion of the allowed spin structures in FeVO4. Based on this model, in which the spontaneous polarization is caused by a trilinear spin-phonon interaction, we experimentally explore the magnetoelectric coupling in FeVO4 thin films through measurements of the electric field-induced shift of the multiferroic phase transition temperature, which exhibits an increase of 0.25 K in an applied field of 4 MV/m. The strong spin-charge coupling in FeVO4 is also reflected in the significant magnetodielectric shift, which is present in the paramagnetic phase due to a quartic spin-phonon interaction and shows a marked enhancement with the onset of magnetic order which we attribute to the trilinear spin-phonon interaction. We observe a clear magnetic field-induced dielectric anomaly at lower temperatures, distinct from the sharp peak associated with the multiferroic transition, which we tentatively assign to a spin-reorientation crossover. We also present a magnetoelectric phase diagram for FeVO4