Relationships between Pitch-Matching and Grade Level, Gender, Ethnicity, and Classroom Teachers’ Use of Music in Grades K-3,

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between pitch-matching and grade level, sex, ethnicity, and classroom teachers’ use of music among K-3 students (N = 289) taught by the same general music teacher. Portions of the data from a pitch-matching exercise that functioned as the music teacher’s roll-taking procedure during the 2005-06 school year were treated as pre- and posttests. There were no significant pretest differences between ethnic groups (Hispanic, White, Other). There were significant pretest differences among classes taught by different classroom teachers, as well as the female students scoring significantly higher than males. Covariance analysis (pretest as covariate) revealed significant improvement by girls over boys on the posttest. There were no significant pretest differences among grade levels, suggesting a lack of carryover of pitch-matching skills from previous years, despite significant improvement (pre-post) for every grade level during the year under study. The boys performed poorly relative to girls in higher grades, though the interaction was not significant. Finally, the study revealed relationships between classroom teachers’ reported use of music and student gain scores (pre-post) in pitch-matching

The usability of an augmented reality map application on the Microsoft Hololens 2

Abstract. Augmented reality (AR) has seen rapid progress in recent years, especially from a consumer standpoint. Hardware, as well as software, is becoming better, cheaper, and more available. As the technology becomes more mainstream, we will see adaptations for many applications currently used on personal computers and smartphones. This thesis aims to explore the adaptation of one such application further by developing and studying the usability and effectiveness of a map application running on one of the most modern AR headsets available to consumers, the Microsoft HoloLens 2. To develop the application, we chose to use the cross-platform game engine Unity. It would provide us an opportunity to develop the application reliably and fast, as the third-party packages available for it would prove to provide plenty of ready-to-use assets and code. In addition, both of the group members had some previous experience in using Unity. While planning the application we studied many research papers to get an understanding of what makes a good AR application. With the application ready for testing, we recruited test subjects from family members who would give us feedback relating to the efficiency and usability of the system as a whole. The test subjects would perform tasks inside the application but also have the opportunity to explore it however much they liked. After the test, they would fill out a questionnaire and participate in an interview, which would then be analyzed further. From analyzing the questionnaire and interview answers, we were able to conclude several things. Firstly the system in its current state provides no additional value in comparison to traditional browser or mobile based map applications. It is also inconvenient, hard to use and unintuitive. Despite these shortcomings, the test subjects saw future potential in the system and found it to be useful and fun to use. The findings suggest that even if the application is developed further, the experience as a whole would still be lacking as AR technology is not ready for mainstream adaptation quite yet

Evidence for Solar Influences on Nuclear Decay Rates

Recent reports of periodic fluctuations in nuclear decay data of certain isotopes have led to the suggestion that nuclear decay rates are being influenced by the Sun, perhaps via neutrinos. Here we present evidence for the existence of an additional periodicity that appears to be related to the Rieger periodicity well known in solar physics.Comment: Presented at the Fifth Meeting on CPT and Lorentz Symmetry, Bloomington, Indiana, June 28-July 2, 201

Capacity Requirements of Traffic Handling Schemes in Multi-Service Networks

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This paper deals with the impact of traffic handling mechanisms on capacity for different network architectures. Three traffic handling models are considered: per-flow, class-based and best-effort (BE). These models can be used to meet service guarantees, the major differences being in their complexity of implementations and in the quantity of network resources that must be provided. In this study, the performance is fixed and the required capacity determined for various combinations of traffic handling architectures for edge-core networks. This study provides a comparison of different QoS architectures. One key result of this work is that on the basis of capacity requirements, there is no significant difference between semi-aggregate traffic handling and per-flow traffic handling. However, best-effort handling requires significantly more capacity as compared to the other methods. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserve

Modelling and forecasting of catfish species yield from Mangochi artisan fisheries of Lake malawi in Malawi

Most of the wild fish stocks in Malawi either are fully or over exploited. This challenge underpins importance of forecasting using available data to support sustainable fisheries management. The study aimed at modelling and forecasting Catfish (Mlamba) species yield from artisan fishery on Lake Malawi in Mangochi District as they are becoming important food fish due to decline of more important fish species such as Oreochromis(Chambo). The study was based on secondary data on fish catches between1976 and 2012, collected from Fisheries Research Unit of the Department of Fisheries in Malawi. The study considered Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) processes to select an appropriate stochastic model for forecasting the species yield. Appropriate models were chosen based on ARIMA (p, d, q). Autocorrelation function (ACF), Partialautocorrelation (PACF), Akaike Information Criteria (AIC), Box-Ljung statistics, correlogram of residual errors, distribution of residual errors, ME, RMSE, MAPE and MAE. Selected model was ARIMA (0, 0, 1) for forecasting artisan landings of Catfish from Lake Malawi in Mangochi District from 2013 to 2022. Based on the chosen model, forecast for artisan Catfish landings showed mean of 352 tonnes and mean of actual catches was 362 tonnes. However, catches in year 2022 are projected to be 360 tonnes, slightly below the actual catches mean but above 236 tonnes in 2010, assuming other factors remain constant. Confidence intervals of the forecasts included a zero and as such over exploitation of the species cannot be ruled out. Landings of the fishery will increase to 360 tonnes and remain stable through year 2022 necessitating fisheries managementconsideration to improve the trend. Policy makers should secure sustainable exploitation of Catfish species, among artisan fishery in the study area by controlling all fishing effort that lands the species such as gillnets, beach seines, open water seines among others