Effects of parental home-based and school-based involvement on child's grades : comparing Asian and Hispanic parents

Parental involvement takes an important role in child's education and parental involvement in a child's education generally benefits child's learning and school success. Parents' motivation and knowledge affect parent's decision to become involved in their child's education. In addition, cultural background is one of important factor that influences parental involvement. The number of immigrant students in the United States is increasing however, only a few studies have examined the immigrant parents' involvement in their child's education. The present study examined the effects of parental home-based and school-based involvement on child's grades, especially for Asian parents and Hispanic parents by examining whether parents' behaviors of checking for child's homework completion, helping with child's homework, and participating in school activities affect students' academic achievement. The results showed that checking for homework completion had a positive association with parental school-based involvement for Asian parents, and helping with homework had a positive association with parental school-based involvement for Hispanic parents. Parental school-based involvement had a positive effect on child's grade for Hispanic parents. However, there was no mediation effect of school-based involvement between parental home-based involvement and child's grade.Dr. Stephen Whitney, Thesis Supervisor.Includes bibliographical references (pages 40-43)

A Comprehensive Evaluation of Possible RNSS Signals in the S-Band for the KPS

Recently, the Korean government has announced a plan to develop a satellite-based navigation system called the Korean Positioning System (KPS). When designing a new Radio Navigation Satellite Service (RNSS) signal, the use of the S-band has emerged as an alternative to avoiding signal congestion in the L-bands, and South Korea is considering using the S-band with the L-bands. Therefore, this study proposed possible S-band signal candidates and evaluated their performance, such as the radio frequency (RF) compatibility, spectral efficiency, ranging performance, and receiver complexity. Several figures-of-merit (FoMs) were introduced for quantitative performance evaluation for each candidate. Each FoM was calculated using an analytical equation by considering the signal design parameters, such as the center frequency, modulation scheme, and chip rate. The results showed that the outstanding candidate signal was different depending on the signal performance of interest and the reception environments. Therefore, we discuss and summarize the signal performance analysis results considering the whole FoMs together. Under the assumptions given in this paper, the binary phase shift keying (BPSK)(1), sine-phased binary offset carrier (BOCs)(5,2), and BPSK signals were superior for the spectral efficiency, ranging performance, and receiver complexity, respectively

Effect of Incorporation of TiO2 Nanoparticles into Oriented TiO2 Nanotube Based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

The authors present the first reported use of vertically oriented titanium oxide nanotube/titanium oxide nanoparticle nanocomposites to improve the efficiency of T102 based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Titanium oxide nanotubes incorporating titanium oxide nanoparticles were prepared to harvest more solar light, and their solar-to-electric conversion efficiency was characterized. The incorporation of the titanium oxide nanoparticles increased the visible light absorption of the titanium oxide nanotube based DSSC system because of the increased light absorption resulting from the increased surface area. However, the photocurrent enhancement was more obvious under the illumination of visible light with a wavelength longer than 550 nm owing to the light scattering effect of the titanium oxide nanoparticles.open111