The Effect of Using Digital Storytelling on Students' Reading Comprehension and Listening Comprehension

The purpose of this study was to find out the effect of using digital storytelling strategy on students' reading comprehension and listening comprehension. The design of this study was Quasi-Experimental with pretest and post-test. Thus, two classrooms containing the total of 60 students of level II at Language Development Center of UIN Suska Riau were selected as the sample based on their similar characteristics and were assigned into an experimental and a control group. In collecting the data, reading and listening tests as well as observations were utilized to assess participants' comprehension abilities prior to and after the treatment. In analyzing the data, the t-tests (paired sample, and independent sample) were run in SPSS. In addition, Cohen D formula was applied to determine the effect size. The results showed that there were no significant differences (p > 0.05) between the means of the pretests scores, and there were significant differences (p < 0.05) between the means of both groups post-tests scores, reading comprehension (p=0.02), and listening comprehension (p=0.04). In other words, the students' comprehension levels were similar prior to the treatment, and the students of the experimental group outperformed the control group after the treatment. In addition, the values of the effect size obtained, reading (0.5), and listening (0.5), were categorized into the moderate effect size. Thus it was inferred that the use of digital storytelling had a significant effect on students' reading and listening comprehension at Language Development Center of UIN Suska Riau

Stellar parameters of Be stars observed with X-shooter

Aims. The X-shooter archive of several thousand telluric star spectra was skimmed for Be and Be-shell stars to derive the stellar fundamental parameters and statistical properties, in particular for the less investigated late type Be stars, and the extension of the Be phenomenon into early A stars. Methods. An adapted version of the BCD method is used, utilizing the Balmer discontinuity parameters to determine effective temperature and surface gravity. This method is optimally suited for late B stars. The projected rotational velocity was obtained by profile fitting to the Mg ii lines of the targets, and the spectra were inspected visually for the presence of peculiar features such as the infrared Ca ii triplet or the presence of a double Balmer discontinuity. The Balmer line equivalent widths were measured, but due to uncertainties in determining the photospheric contribution are useful only in a subsample of Be stars for determining the pure emission contribution. Results. A total of 78 Be stars, mostly late type ones, were identified in the X-shooter telluric standard star archive, out of which 48 had not been reported before. The general trend of late type Be stars having more tenuous disks and being less variable than early type ones is confirmed. The relatively large number (48) of relatively bright (V > 8.5) additional Be stars casts some doubt on the statistics of late type Be stars; they are more common than currently thought: The Be/B star fraction may not strongly depend on spectral subtype.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

MaaSim: A Liveability Simulation for Improving the Quality of Life in Cities

Urbanism is no longer planned on paper thanks to powerful models and 3D simulation platforms. However, current work is not open to the public and lacks an optimisation agent that could help in decision making. This paper describes the creation of an open-source simulation based on an existing Dutch liveability score with a built-in AI module. Features are selected using feature engineering and Random Forests. Then, a modified scoring function is built based on the former liveability classes. The score is predicted using Random Forest for regression and achieved a recall of 0.83 with 10-fold cross-validation. Afterwards, Exploratory Factor Analysis is applied to select the actions present in the model. The resulting indicators are divided into 5 groups, and 12 actions are generated. The performance of four optimisation algorithms is compared, namely NSGA-II, PAES, SPEA2 and eps-MOEA, on three established criteria of quality: cardinality, the spread of the solutions, spacing, and the resulting score and number of turns. Although all four algorithms show different strengths, eps-MOEA is selected to be the most suitable for this problem. Ultimately, the simulation incorporates the model and the selected AI module in a GUI written in the Kivy framework for Python. Tests performed on users show positive responses and encourage further initiatives towards joining technology and public applications.Comment: 16 page

Light-Scattering, Intrinsic Viscosity, and Gold Number Relationships for Some Dextran Fractions

Author Institution: Departments of Bacteriology and Chemistry, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohi