The high-gain teacher

The improvement of teacher performance requires the accurate identification of a teacher\u27s strengths and weaknesses. However, effective teachers, in addition to utilizing certain effective teaching skills, are strengthened by certain affective skills which are difficult to identify and, consequently, to measure. The research has identified a whole host of teacher behaviors that are clearly related to student achievement. This study, in addition to assessing those observable teacher behaviors, sought to particularize their personality characteristics and measured their feelings of self-efficacy, which refers to the extent which teachers believe that they have the capacity to affect student performance;Seventy classes, thus teachers, were involved. A change score report for the entire year in both criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests (pretests in September and posttests in May) was created subsequent to each spring testing. Those teachers whose average change score was greater than that of his/her school organization\u27s average change score were classified as high-gain teachers. In addition, the teachers in the project were evaluated utilizing a research-based performance evaluation instrument. Thus, both reports of individual teacher evaluations and the achievement measures of their students were available;Teachers and their supervisors were asked to complete the SIM Teacher Performance Evaluation Instrument and a comparison of ratings was conducted. To determine the personal characteristics of the high-gain teachers, the Personal Profile System was used. Finally, to assess the feelings of self-efficacy, the Responsibility for Student Achievement Questionnaire was utilized;Findings. (1) High-gain teachers rated themselves significantly higher than their supervisors rated them on 18 out of 25 effective teaching criteria. (2) High-gain teachers exhibited characteristics in all four of the dimensions of behavior assessed by the Personal Profile System: 42% exhibited an influencing of others style of behavior, 29% compliance, 19% steadiness, and 10% dominance. (3) High-gain teachers have a strong belief that they have control of factors that influence students\u27 successes and failures in the classroom. (4) There was no significant difference between male and female high-gain teachers in feelings of self-efficacy

EFFECTIVENESS OF INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE PROGRAM OF BULACAN STATE UNIVERSITY: BASIS FOR PROGRAM ENHANCEMENT

The study dealt with the Effectiveness of International Graduate Programs at BSU as a Basis for Program Enhancement. The research aims to evaluate its purpose, and its standard as indicated by academic standards, such as standards of competence, service standards, and organizational standards. One of the primordial considerations of the Graduate School is its goal to produce balanced, competent, research-oriented, and globally competitive graduates. Thus, the researcher conceptualized the study; to accomplish the needed interactions with the officials and students of BSU – Hong Kong Lifelong Education Organization Limited; to unearth issues and modern trends, policies, and programs for BSU adoption to benefit the local students and; to initiate or trail- blazed foreign researches for the upliftment the Research and Extension Services of Department, where B.S.U. had fallen short during previous evaluation. The study used the descriptive, quantitative design using survey-questionnaire and interviews as the primary data-gathering instruments. Documented data on the demographic profile of students, number of graduates, and ranking of BSU Hong Kong were also utilized. The enrolled graduate students of BSU Hong Kong, faculty, and administrators of BSU Hong Kong were the respondents of the study.  Article visualizations

EXPLORING CULTURAL FORMATION THROUGH COMMUNICATION PRACTICES IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: IDENTIFYING PRACTICES, OVERCOMING BARRIERS, AND IMPLEMENTING SOLUTIONS

The current paper focuses on the qualitative method used that examines the cultural formation in the educational institution, its practices, barriers, and solution. The use of qualitative research in this study reveals insights into how communication becomes an integral part of the culture-shaping process through its focus on the emerging themes and patterns developed over time. Among the methods used included a collection of notes and interviews from three generational participants; and an analysis of the Focus Discussion Group (FGD). FGD were classified on the nature of their inputs as indicated in the foreshadowed problems that seek to identify the characteristics of a culture-shaping process, experiences of communicators, and challenges encountered by members of the organizations in the aspect of behavior, satisfaction, and engagement. The obtained data demonstrate that organizational culture has a significant influence on the performance of the members. Many of the responses reflect the involvement of “cultured” individual perspectives that emerged from their daily work experiences and communication practices that leads to the formation of subgroups. Furthermore, the inclusion of the management, diversity of cultural backgrounds, and expectations also emerged. Based on the findings, the identified pieces of evidence in the approaches of both the management and members towards communicated rules policy have led to the formulation of a long-term sustainable adjustment in culture formation that mainly impacts motivation, communication, improving organizational values, decision-making, and solving conflicts.  Article visualizations

Optimal quantum reservoir computing for the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era

Universal fault-tolerant quantum computers require millions of qubits with low error rates. Since this technology is years ahead, noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computation is receiving tremendous interest. In this setup, quantum reservoir computing is a relevant machine learning algorithm. Its simplicity of training and implementation allows to perform challenging computations on today's available machines. In this Letter, we provide a criterion to select optimal quantum reservoirs, requiring few and simple gates. Our findings demonstrate that they render better results than other commonly used models with significantly less gates and also provide insight on the theoretical gap between quantum reservoir computing and the theory of quantum states' complexit

Lagrangian descriptors for the Bunimovich stadium billiard

We apply the concept of Lagrangian descriptors to the dynamics on the Bunimovich stadium billiard, a two-dimensional ergodic system with singular families of trajectories, namely, the bouncing ball and the whispering gallery orbits. They play a central role in structuring the phase space, which is unveiled here by means of the Lagrangian descriptors applied to the associated map on the boundary. More interestingly, we also consider the open stadium, which in the optical case (Fresnel's laws) can be directly related to recent microlaser experiments. We find that the structure of the emission profile of these systems can be easily described thanks to the open version of the Lagrangian descriptor

SITUATIONAL FACTORS: BASES FOR IMPROVING THE ATTITUDE AND MOTIVATION OF ESL LEARNERS’ SPEAKING SKILLS IN THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND LETTERS

This paper highlights the importance of enhancing the speaking skills among ESL freshmen in the College of Arts and Letters of Bulacan State University. The respondents in this study were Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication Major in Broadcasting Sections A to D. Although this course requires oral communication proficiency for global competitiveness, only a few students participate actively in classroom discussions. Many of them lag behind in terms of speaking skills. The ability to speak English has become the norm in the country and around the world. Graduates who possess such a skill can have better opportunities locally or internationally compared with those who cannot speak fluently. Hence, the researchers looked into the role of attitude and motivation in enhancing speaking skills among the respondents in terms of the following: demographics, the attitude of students toward English, situational factors affecting the attitude of students toward English, the motivation of students in learning English, and students’ beliefs about learning English. The research instrument was administered to the respondents via Google Forms. The 32-item questionnaire was designed to determine the attitudes and motivation of ESL students toward learning English. Each of the respondents was scored from 1-5 on a Likert Scale. Through the use of the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Fisher Z-test, and P-Value in testing the hypotheses, data were analyzed and interpreted. The Likert Scales show the participants had an incredibly positive attitude and behavior toward English in general. Among all motivation items, the top factors affecting students to learn more in English are the Student’s Practical Purpose, Correction of the Teacher during Class, Communication Focused Class Activities, and Positive Atmosphere during class. Based on the findings of the study, language teachers should take advantage of motivation to foster a positive attitude among the students when it comes to speaking skills through the use of authentic materials such as audio, video, printed, and softcopies. Factors such as activities, environment, and teachers’ attitudes should be the point of reference in determining which learning materials work best in enhancing the speaking skills of the students.  Article visualizations

Lagrangian descriptors for the Bunimovich stadium billiard

We apply the concept of Lagrangian descriptors to the dynamics on the Bunimovich stadium billiard, a two-dimensional ergodic system with singular families of trajectories, namely, the bouncing ball and the whispering gallery orbits. They play a central role in structuring the phase space, which is unveiled here by means of the Lagrangian descriptors applied to the associated map on the boundary. More interestingly, we also consider the open stadium, which in the optical case (Fresnel's laws) can be directly related to recent microlaser experiments. We find that the structure of the emission profile of these systems can be easily described thanks to the open version of the Lagrangian descriptor

BIOMedical search engine framework: lightweight and customized implementation of domain-specific biomedical search engines

The Smart Drug Search is publicly accessible at http://sing.ei.uvigo.es/sds/. The BIOMedical Search Engine Framework is freely available for non-commercial use at https://github.com/agjacome/biomsefBackground and Objectives: Text mining and semantic analysis approaches can be applied to the construction of biomedical domain-specific search engines and provide an attractive alternative to create personalized and enhanced search experiences. Therefore, this work introduces the new open-source BIOMedical Search Engine Framework for the fast and lightweight development of domain-specific search engines. The rationale behind this framework is to incorporate core features typically available in search engine frameworks with flexible and extensible technologies to retrieve biomedical documents, annotate meaningful domain concepts, and develop highly customized Web search interfaces. Methods: The BIOMedical Search Engine Framework integrates taggers for major biomedical concepts, such as diseases, drugs, genes, proteins, compounds and organisms, and enables the use of domain-specific controlled vocabulary. Technologies from the Typesafe Reactive Platform, the AngularJS JavaScript framework and the Bootstrap HTML/CSS framework support the customization of the domain-oriented search application. Moreover, the RESTful API of the BIOMedical Search Engine Framework allows the integration of the search engine into existing systems or a complete web interface personalization. Results The construction of the Smart Drug Search is described as proof-of-concept of the BIOMedical Search Engine Framework. This public search engine catalogs scientific literature about antimicrobial resistance, microbial virulence and topics alike. The keyword-based queries of the users are transformed into concepts and search results are presented and ranked accordingly. The semantic graph view portraits all the concepts found in the results and the researcher may look into the relevance of different concepts, the strength of direct relations, and non-trivial, indirect relations. The number of occurrences of the concept shows its importance to the query, and the frequency of concept co-occurrence is indicative of biological relations meaningful to that particular scope of research. Conversely, indirect concept associations, i.e. concepts related by other intermediary concepts, can be useful to integrate information from different studies and look into non-trivial relations. Conclusions The BIOMedical Search Engine Framework supports the development of domain-specific search engines. The key strengths of the framework are modularity and extensibility in terms of software design, the use of open-source consolidated Web technologies, and the ability to integrate any number of biomedical text mining tools and information resources. Currently, the Smart Drug Search keeps over 1,186,000 documents, containing more than 11,854,000 annotations for 77,200 different concepts.This work was partially funded by the [14VI05] ContractProgramme from the University ofVigo and theAgrupamento INBIOMED from DXPCTSUG-FEDER unha maneira de facer Europa(2012/273).The research leading to these results has also received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/REGPOT-2012-2013.1 under grant agreement n° 316265,BIOCAPS.This document reflects only the author’s views, and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herei

Semiclassical basis sets for the computation of molecular vibrational states

In this paper, we extend a method recently reported [F. Revuelta et al., Phys. Rev. E 87, 042921 (2013)] for the calculation of the eigenstates of classically highly chaotic systems to cases of mixed dynamics, i.e., those presenting regular and irregular motions at the same energy. The efficiency of the method, which is based on the use of a semiclassical basis set of localized wave functions, is demonstrated by applying it to the determination of the vibrational states of a realistic molecular system, namely, the LiCN moleculeWe acknowledge financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under Contract Nos. MTM2012-39101 and MTM2015-63914-P and ICMAT Severo Ochoa under Contract No. SEV-2015-055

Using basis sets of scar functions

We present a method to efficiently compute the eigenfunctions of classically chaotic systems. The key point is the definition of a modified Gram-Schmidt procedure which selects the most suitable elements from a basis set of scar functions localized along the shortest periodic orbits of the system. In this way, one benefits from the semiclassical dynamical properties of such functions. The performance of the method is assessed by presenting an application to a quartic two-dimensional oscillator whose classical dynamics are highly chaotic. We have been able to compute the eigenfunctions of the system using a small basis set. An estimate of the basis size is obtained from the mean participation ratio. A thorough analysis of the results using different indicators, such as eigenstate reconstruction in the local representation, scar intensities, participation ratios, and error bounds, is also presentedThis work was supported by MINECO (Spain), under projects MTM2009-14621 and ICMAT Severo Ochoa SEV-2011-0087, and by CEAL Banco de Santander–UAM. F.R. is grateful for the support from a doctoral fellowship from UPM and the hospitality of the members of the Departamento de Física in the Laboratorio TANDAR–Comisión Nacional de la Energía Atómica, where part of this work was don