Factors Affecting Students' Performance

Determinants of students' performance have been the subject of ongoing debate among educators, academics, and policy makers. There have been many studies that sought to examine this issue and their findings point out to hard work, previous schooling, parents’ education, family income and self motivation as factors that have a significant effect on the students GPA. Most of those studies have focused on students' performance in the U.S. and Europe. However, since cultural differences may play a role in shaping the factors that affect students' performance, it is very important to examine those relevant factors to the UAE society. The aim of this study is to investigate the socio-economic characteristics of students of the College of Business and Economics-UAEU in relation to these students' performance and taking into account variables pertaining to the UAE Society. Using a sample of 864 CBE student and regression analysis, our results show that the most important factor that affects student's performance is the student's competence in English. Besides competence in English, students who participate in class discussion and those on leave outperform other students. The factors that negatively affect student's performance the most are missing too many lectures and living in crowded household. The results also show that non-national students outperform national students and female students outperform their male counterpart.class discussion, competence in English, student performance, socio economic factors

Factors Affecting Students' Performance

Determinants of students' performance have been the subject of ongoing debate among educators, academics, and policy makers. There have been many studies that sought to examine this issue and their findings point out to hard work, previous schooling, parents’ education, family income and self motivation as factors that have a significant effect on the students GPA. Most of those studies have focused on students' performance in the U.S. and Europe. However, since cultural differences may play a role in shaping the factors that affect students' performance, it is very important to examine those relevant factors to the UAE society. The aim of this study is to investigate the socio-economic characteristics of students of the College of Business and Economics-UAEU in relation to these students' performance and taking into account variables pertaining to the UAE Society. Using a sample of 864 CBE student and regression analysis, our results show that the most important factor that affects student's performance is the student's competence in English. Besides competence in English, students who participate in class discussion and those on leave outperform other students. The factors that negatively affect student's performance the most are missing too many lectures and living in crowded household. The results also show that non-national students outperform national students and female students outperform their male counterpart

Effect of eccentricity on conjugate natural convection in vertical eccentric annuli

Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 30 June - 2 July, 2008.Combined conduction-free convection heat transfer in vertical eccentric annuli is numerically investigated using a finite-difference technique. Numerical results, representing the heat transfer parameters such as annulus walls temperature, heat flux, and heat absorbed in the developing region of the annulus, are presented for a Newtonian fluid of Prandtl number 0.7, fluid-annulus radius ratio 0.5, solid-fluid thermal conductivity ratio 10, inner and outer wall dimensionless thicknesses 0.1 and 0.2, respectively, and dimensionless eccentricities 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7. The annulus walls are subjected to thermal boundary conditions, which are obtained by heating one wall isothermally whereas keeping the other wall at inlet fluid temperature. In the present paper, the annulus heights required to achieve thermal full development for prescribed eccentricities are obtained. Furthermore, the variation in the height of thermal full development as function of the geometrical parameter, i.e., eccentricity is also investigated.vk201

Effect of Salicylic Acid, Calcium Chloride and Calcium Lactate Applications on Quality Attributes of Minimally-Processed 'Wonderful' Pomegranate Arils

'Wonderful' pomegranate arils were treated with 0.5% and 1% of calcium chloride, 0.5% and 1% of calcium lactate, and salicylic acid (1 and 2 mM), then treated and untreated (control) arils packaged in clean (sterilized) plastic containers. Fresh produce was then stored at stored at 5±1°C. Assessment of arils quality was carried out at 3-day intervals by evaluating the following quality parameters: appearance, decay, off odor, flavor, total soluble solids, acidity, anthocyanin and vitamin C content, firmness, colour development (L* value and hue angle), and microbial load. Pomegranate arils treated with salicylic acid, calcium chloride, and calcium lactate maintained a general good quality and appearance up to 12 days of storage at at 5±1°C, with no visible decay and off odor development. The total microbial population was lower in arils treated with salicylic acid, in comparison to treatments with calcium chloride, calcium lactate and control arils. All treatments scored above the limit of marketability, maintaining good quality of fresh-cut produce during storage. However, the use of salicylic acid and calcium chloride helped to keep a better overall quality of arils at the end of the 12-day storage at at 5±1°C

Conjugate Effects on Steady Laminar Natural Convection Heat Transfer in Vertical Eccentric Annuli

Combined conduction-free convection heat transfer in vertical eccentric annuli is numerically investigated using finite-difference technique. Numerical results are presented for a fluid of Prandtl number 0.7 in an annulus of radius ratio 0.5 and dimensionless eccentricity 0.5. The conjugation effect on the induced flow rate and the total heat absorbed in the annulus is presented for the case of one wall being isothermally heated while the other wall is kept at inlet fluid temperature. The conjugate effects are controlled by solid-fluid conductivity ratio, cylinder walls thickness and dimensionless channel height (i.e. Grashof number). Solid-fluid conductivity ratio is varied over a range that covers practical cases with commonly encountered inner and outer walls thickness. Values of conductivity ratio over which conjugate effect can be neglected have been obtained

Conjugate Effects on Steady Laminar Natural Convection Heat Transfer in Vertical Eccentric Annuli

Combined conduction-free convection heat transfer in vertical eccentric annuli is numerically investigated using finite-difference technique. Numerical results are presented for a fluid of Prandtl number 0.7 in an annulus of radius ratio 0.5 and dimensionless eccentricity 0.5. The conjugation effect on the induced flow rate and the total heat absorbed in the annulus is presented for the case of one wall being isothermally heated while the other wall is kept at inlet fluid temperature. The conjugate effects are controlled by solid-fluid conductivity ratio, cylinder walls thickness and dimensionless channel height (i.e. Grashof number). Solid-fluid conductivity ratio is varied over a range that covers practical cases with commonly encountered inner and outer walls thickness. Values of conductivity ratio over which conjugate effect can be neglected have been obtained

Estimating DNA coverage and abundance in metagenomes using a gamma approximation

Motivation: Shotgun sequencing generates large numbers of short DNA reads from either an isolated organism or, in the case of metagenomics projects, from the aggregate genome of a microbial community. These reads are then assembled based on overlapping sequences into larger, contiguous sequences (contigs). The feasibility of assembly and the coverage achieved (reads per nucleotide or distinct sequence of nucleotides) depend on several factors: the number of reads sequenced, the read length and the relative abundances of their source genomes in the microbial community. A low coverage suggests that most of the genomic DNA in the sample has not been sequenced, but it is often difficult to estimate either the extent of the uncaptured diversity or the amount of additional sequencing that would be most efficacious. In this work, we regard a metagenome as a population of DNA fragments (bins), each of which may be covered by one or more reads. We employ a gamma distribution to model this bin population due to its flexibility and ease of use. When a gamma approximation can be found that adequately fits the data, we may estimate the number of bins that were not sequenced and that could potentially be revealed by additional sequencing. We evaluated the performance of this model using simulated metagenomes and demonstrate its applicability on three recent metagenomic datasets