A Study of the Relationship Between Teachers’ Perceptions Towards Leadership Capacity and Their Classroom Management Styles at Kunming Real-E Foreign Language Middle School, Yunnan, China

The main purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between teachers’ perceptions towards leadership capacity and their classroom management styles at Kunming Real-E Foreign Language Middle School, Yunnan, China. A total 73 full-time teachers from the selected school replied the questionnaires adopted by the researcher. The data collection tool for this study was a questionnaire divided into three parts, the researcher used High Leadership Capacity questionnaire by Lambert’s (2003) to assess teachers’ perceptions towards leadership capacity and used Classroom Management Profile (1996) to examine teachers’ classroom management style. Mean and Standard Deviations were used to analyze the teachers’ perceptions towards leadership capacity and their classroom management styles. Pearson Product Moment Coefficient of Correlation was used to test the relationship between the two variables. Results of the Pearson correlation shows there was a weak positive association between teachers’ leadership capacity and classroom management styles in the selected school, (r (73) = .486, p = .000)

Deep Multimodal Speaker Naming

Automatic speaker naming is the problem of localizing as well as identifying each speaking character in a TV/movie/live show video. This is a challenging problem mainly attributes to its multimodal nature, namely face cue alone is insufficient to achieve good performance. Previous multimodal approaches to this problem usually process the data of different modalities individually and merge them using handcrafted heuristics. Such approaches work well for simple scenes, but fail to achieve high performance for speakers with large appearance variations. In this paper, we propose a novel convolutional neural networks (CNN) based learning framework to automatically learn the fusion function of both face and audio cues. We show that without using face tracking, facial landmark localization or subtitle/transcript, our system with robust multimodal feature extraction is able to achieve state-of-the-art speaker naming performance evaluated on two diverse TV series. The dataset and implementation of our algorithm are publicly available online

Plasmonic Nanoantenna Array Design

Recently, wireless optical communication system is developing toward the chip level. Optical nanoantenna array in optical communication system is the key component for radiating and receiving light. In this chapter, we propose a sub-wavelength plasmonic nanoantenna with high gain operating at the standard optical communication wavelength of 1550 nm. The designed plasmonic antenna has a good matching with the silicon waveguide in a wide band, and light is fed from the bottom of the nanoantenna via the silicon waveguide. Furthermore, we design two kinds of antenna arrays with the proposed plasmonic nanoantenna, including one- and two-dimensional arrays (1 × 8 and 8 × 8). The radiation characteristics of the antenna arrays are investigated and both arrays have high gains and wide beam steering range without grating lobes

Sustainable Patterson

The Patterson School Foundation is a nonprofit organization located in Happy Valley, North Carolina. Originally, the Patterson School Foundation operated as a teaching school and farm However, they were forced to discontinue their educational mission in 2009 due to economic difficulties. The Patterson School has partnered with the Nicholas School of the Environment to gain insight regarding development opportunities for their property. Specifically, the Patterson School Foundation has requested an analysis of their property that would investigate the land’s potential for economic and sustainable development. Potential projects must be economical in order to avoid selling parts of their property as debt service. The request for sustainability stems from the Patterson School’s commitment to environmental stewardship. Our team sought to find recommendations that would utilize the preexisting resources at the Patterson School. The foundation has large amounts of land available for development and multiple existing buildings that are currently underutilized. Solutions that could more effectively utilize these resources include renewable energy development and transformation of the school into a sustainability destination. Due to the large amount of land resources available, our team was immediately attracted to renewable energies as a development strategy. However, our research uncovered many possible complications for these projects. First, large-scale solar is not an ideal project for the Patterson School. Large-scale solar energy development would require a large section of land to be dedicated to renewable energy development for multiple decades. The Patterson School is currently not comfortable setting aside large tracts of land for such a long period of time. Similarly, large-scale wind is also not feasible for the Patterson School. The North Carolina Mountain Ridge Protection Act prevents the development of wind turbines larger than 100 feet in height from being developed on mountain ridges. This greatly limits wind power development on mountain ridges, where wind speeds are highest. However, to keep with the sustainability requirement of our task we decided to further investigate small-scale wind and solar development at the Patterson School. We created wind and solar models to provide insight for their decision-making process. Data for the wind model was gathered from the Hickory Regional Airport, which served as a proxy location for the Patterson School. Three years of wind data was analyzed and the observed distribution was used to construct a wind power model. The solar analysis was conducted primarily by using PVWatts, a tool created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The analyses of small-scale wind and solar were revealed to be uneconomic options in isolation. Both the wind turbine and solar arrays had a negative net present value. However, we recommend that the Patterson School Foundation construct a small 1 kilowatt wind turbine and a small 15 kilowatt solar array on their property. These renewable energy plays will be used to increase the overall sustainability of the Patterson School. Additionally, they can be leveraged to bring in revenue streams through the introduction of sustainability classes. Since the sustainable energy projects have negative net present values, other revenue streams needed to be pursued. We examined the possibility of introducing small-scale educational classes at the Patterson School. We chose to examine small-scale educational courses for two reasons. First, the Patterson School has the strong educational background to facilitate this type of project. Additionally, our research suggests that there is a strong demand for small scale courses focusing on sustainability. Our team chose to investigate the logistics of offering classes on permaculture and renewable energy. Permaculture was chosen because the Patterson School has expressed interest in this topic, and because their abundant land resources are ideal for demonstration purposes. Renewable energy was chosen as a course topic because we see a strong demand for these types of courses, and because it can leverage the recommended renewable energy installations. To determine the overall economic benefit of the recommended projects a financial model was created. This model considered all expected costs and revenue streams incurred by the renewable energy projects and small-scale educational classes. The model assumes the fixed costs of the projects would be incurred at year zero. Classes are assumed to begin with an enrollment of 10 students per class and grow at a rate of 20 percent each year, until a predetermined class capacity is reached. The variable cost of the course is calculated to grow alongside the class as capacity increases. Under these assumptions the simple payback period of the portfolio was found to be three years when no discount rate was applied. When discounted at a rate of six percent the simple payback period increased to three and half years. After this point in time revenues will grow until the eighth year. After the eighth year, the revenue stream is expected to be steady and generate 52,038 dollars each year. Due to the strong economic performance of the portfolio we recommend that the Patterson School install small-scale renewable energy systems on their property. Additionally, we recommend that the Patterson School introduce small-scale educational courses, starting with classes on permaculture and renewable energy. Our analysis suggests that if the Patterson School Foundation follows these recommendations they will see an increase in the overall sustainability of their organization. Additionally, the portfolio of projects will pay for itself in under four years. This report will examine each project in detail. The proposed plan for the Patterson School takes into consideration the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks associated with each recommendation

Consumption and savings of migrants in China – social cohesion perspective

Boosting domestic demand is the task of China’s sustainable economic development, and in particular, China has become an important global consumer market and the savings patterns should be more cohesive and without discriminations. Using data of China Migrants Dynamic Survey, the paper provides new evidence on internal migrants’ savings in China from the perspective of homeownership and family migration. We find that migrants’ savings are 5.25–6.60 percentage points higher than hukou population even when controlling for working, social status, and social insurance coverage which means the migrant will save 1019.88–1647.10 yuan in 2010 price more monthly. Furthermore, we discover housing could partly explain the saving gap, while when we take remittance and family migration into account, the saving rate differences between migrants and hukou population disappears, which means migrants may save to consume when they go back to their hometown with their family members instead of consuming later in the resident cities. The research is carried out taking into account the objectives of social cohesion policy identified at national and international level and their involvement in consumption and saving processes. Our empirical results reveal that homeownership, remittance motive and family migration play important roles in shaping saving behaviour of migrants

Biobased nanocomposites for packaging applications — synthesis using melt extrusion of poly (lactic acid), poly (butylene succinate) and/or starch blended with natural nanofillers

Master of ScienceDepartment of Grain Science and IndustrySajid AlaviThere is a renewed focus on biodegradable polymers in packaging applications due to environmental concerns associated with conventional plastics. Melt extrusion was used to synthesize nanocomposites from poly (lactic acid) (PLA) or poly (butylene succinate) (PBS) blended with natural nanofillers — chitin whiskers (CHW, 1-5%), nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC, 1-5%) or lignin-coated nanocrystalline cellulose (LNCC, 3%). Transmission electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction indicated that the natural nanofillers were uniformly dispersed in the polymer matrix. For PLA based nanocomposites, differential scanning calorimetry showed a decrease in change of heat capacity at glass transition (ΔCp) with increased nanofiller addition, indicating greater confinement of polymer chains. For PBS based nanocomposites, nanofillers acted as nucleating agents and promoted recrystallization of polymer as reflected in increase of degree of crystallinity (Xc) from 65.9-66.8 to 75.6%. By addition of NCC and CHW, tensile strength (TS) of PLA based films increased from 50.2 MPa to 70.9 MPa and 52.1 MPa, respectively, while TS of PBS increased from 23.2-24.9 MPa to 32.9 MPa and 43.6 MPa, respectively. Elongation at break (E%) of nanocomposite films ranged from 9.1 to 15.3, and in general decreased with addition of nanofillers. LNCC did not significantly improve mechanical properties of PBS and PLA films. Additionally, 3% NCC addition reduced oxygen transmission rate (OTR) of PLA from 209.9 to 180.8 cc/m[superscript]2/day, which further reduced to 109.3 cc/m[superscript]2/day by adding compatibilizer methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI, 4%). Water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) of PLA also reduced from 44.4 to 28.6 g/m[superscript]2/day with 3% NCC and 4% MDI addition. Similarly OTR and WVTR of PBS decreased from 737.7 to 280 cc/m[superscript]2/day and 83.8 to 49.4 g/m[superscript]2/day, respectively with 3% NCC. Use of 4% MDI further reduced OTR and WVTR to 23.8 cc/m[superscript]2/day and 30.8 g/m[superscript]2/day, respectively. Use of starch can potentially reduce the costs of bio-based nanocomposites films. Up to 40% starch was incorporated during synthesis of PLA and NCC nanocomposites using solution mixing method. Addition of starch decreased TS from 35.8 MPa to 18.4 MPa and E% from 8.3% to 6.0%. Use of NCC (1%) and MDI (4%) improved the mechanical properties to a certain extent