Student Misbehavior: An Exploratory Study Based on Sri Lankan Secondary School Teachers’ Perceptions

Student misbehavior is one of the most common problems affecting schools around the world. The main objectives of this study were to identify common and unacceptable misbehaviors of secondary school students and the reasons behind student misbehaviors from Sri Lankan teachers’ point of view. A qualitative research study was conducted with twelve Sri Lankan secondary school teachers. The findings of the research study revealed that current secondary school students do not respect teachers, show more self-centered behaviors and engage in more problematic behaviors in school which are harmful for themselves as well as for the others, compared to the students that the teachers have taught and been with 10-15 years ago. A list of 17 student classroom misbehaviors and a list of 07 school based student misbehaviors were generated. The highly reported student classroom misbehaviors were disrespecting teachers, engaging in irrelevant tasks during lessons and verbal aggression. The highly reported school based misbehaviors were disrespecting school authority figures, unnecessary involvement with dangerous drugs and developing and supporting inappropriate and harmful relationships. The participants’ responses on the reasons behind student misbehavior were simplified into five main sources: family, education system, teachers, students and society. The findings of the study will be useful to improve the Sri Lankan education system to create well behaving individuals to the society, as so far there has not been sufficient studies addressing this issue. The research study reveals that there is a great need for making some changes in the current education system to change the stressful atmosphere in schools and successfully promote students’ physical, cognitive, personal, social, emotional, moral and spiritual development to reduce and prevent negative behavioral issues of students. Keywords: student misbehavior, secondary school teachers, secondary school students, Sri Lanka DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-17-12 Publication date:June 30th 202

Vallalar's Ethical Principles for Social Renaissance

Even if they are capable of doing all things by infinite divine power, the attainment of perfection by living beings is designed to be self-contained, to lose itself, to hate itself, and to desire that every living being desires to receive its own ascents. There are moral scriptures to give us a shoulder in that endeavour. Thus, there is a lot of evidence that Vallalar has explained clearly in the six Thirumarais of Thiruvarutpa the ethical ideas of Vallalar, which indicates that it is very good to have a renaissance in the society if morality is followed in the way of life of the individual. Such ethical principles can be seen in detail in the article

PLANT MEDIATED SYNTHESIS OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES WITH DIVERSE APPLICATIONS

Objective: Green synthesis of multifunctional silver nanoparticles (SNP) using leaf extracts of Simarauba glauca and Artocarpus altilis, a good alternative to the electrochemical methods were exploited in this study for potential use as biomedical agent in medical field.Methods: Synthesis of silver nanoparticles using leaf extracts of Simarauba glauca and Artocarpus altilis was carried out. The SNPs were characterized by UV-visible spectrophotometry, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersion spectral analysis (EDS) and evaluated for their multifunctionality.Results:The SNP were synthesised from the leaf extracts of Simarauba glauca and Artocarpus altilis using silver nitrate with the reaction time of two min and 10 min respectively. UV-visible absorption scan revealed a characteristic peak at 420nm indicative of the surface plasmon resonance for SNP. The synthesized silver nanoparticles were of size ranges from 33-50nm and 37.9 nm synthesised from the leaf extracts of Simarauba glauca and Artocarpus altilis respectively. Further the synthesized silver nanoparticles have shown excellent antibacterial activity against test pathogens, applicability in sewage water treatment and biofilm degradation and having perfect haemcompatibility. Conclusion: The biologically synthesized silver nanoparticles with these functionalities has transformed it to a multifunctional biomedical agent for potential use in medical field

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Through Sri Lankan Primary School Teachers’ Eyes

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been identified as one of the most common behavioral disorders in childhood. The main objective of this study was analyzing the current situation of supporting children with ADHD in mainstream schools in Sri Lanka; especially how Sri Lankan primary school teachers support such children in overcoming their barriers to learning, behavior, and social relationships. A qualitative research study was conducted with ten Sri Lankan primary school teachers.The main findings of the study showed that all the primary school teachers who took part in the study did not have a satisfactory knowledge and training on educating children with ADHD traits. They currently face many difficulties when teaching children with ADHD traits in the mainstream classroom due to not having enough resources, support and guidance from relevant authorities. The finding of the study will be useful to improve or develop the education system of ADHD children in Sri Lanka, since no research study has been conducted so far regarding this topic. The research study reveals that the need for raising awareness among Sri Lankan primary school teachers on ADHD and providing enough facilities for mainstream schools so that teachers can provide a proper education for such children. Keywords: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD traits, Primary school teachers, mainstream schools, Sri Lank

A GENERIC TRUST MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR HETEROGENEOUS SENSORS IN CYBER PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

Objective: Wireless Technology†is the magic word in today's era. In which, Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) is the booming world which binds the physical world and cyber world together. The CPS is also called as Safety Critical System because of the human life involvement. In this emerging technology, lots of heterogeneous sensors are involved and each sensor will play an important role. If something goes wrong with sensor or sensor data. It will definitely affect the human life involved in it.Methods: In this paper, we proposed a generic trust management framework for heterogeneous sensors which will detect the sensor data falsification (Data Integrity), faulty sensor reading, and packet dropping nodes (Selfish Nodes) through rules and rating concept.Results: The efficiency of the proposed framework is evaluated with the help of Network Simulator 2 (NS-2.35). The maximum numbers of untrusted nodes are identified in point 0.40 than Multi-Level Trust Framework for Wireless Sensor Network (MTF-WSN) and Framework for Packet-Droppers Mitigation (FPDM). It is also evident that Trust Management Framework for Cyber Physical Systems (TRMF-CPS) identifies maximum number of untrusted nodes in the detection range of 0.35 and 0.45. Therefore, 0.35 and 0.45 are considered as maximum and minimum threshold points for effective untrusted nodes. Conclusion:The experimentation results and comparative study shows that, our trust management framework will easily detected sensors which misbehave.Â

Trust-based Selfish Node Detection Mechanism using Beta Distribution in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are placed in open environments for the collection of data and are vulnerable to external and internal attacks. The cryptographic mechanisms implemented so far, such as authorization and authentication, are used to restrict external sensor node attacks but cannot prevent internal node attacks. In order to evade internal attacks trust mechanisms are used. In trust mechanisms, firstly, the sensor nodes are monitored using the popular Watchdog mechanism. However, traditional trust models do not pay much attention to selective forwarding and consecutive packet dropping. Sometimes, sensitive data are dropped by internal attackers. This problem is addressed in our proposed model by detecting selective forwarding and consecutive failure of sending packets using the Beta probability density function model

Effects of second diffusing component and cross diffusion on primary and secondary thermoconvective instabilities in couple stress liquids

Linear and weakly nonlinear analyses are made for the Rayleigh-B´enard convection in two-component couple-stress liquids with the Soret effect. Conditions for pitchfork, Hopf, Takens-Bogdanov, and codimension-two bifurcations are presented. The Lorenz model is used to study the inverted bifurcation. Positive values of the Soret co-efficient favor a pitchfork bifurcation, whereas negative values favor a Hopf bifurcation. Takens-Bogdanov and codimension-two bifurcations are not as much influenced by the Soret coefficient as pitchfork and Hopf bifurcations. The influence of the Soret coefficient on the inverted bifurcation is similar to the influence on the pitchfork bifurcation. The in-fluence of other parameters on the aforementioned bifurcations is also similar as reported earlier in the literature. Using the Newell-Whitehead-Segel equation, the condition for occurrence of Eckhaus and zigzag secondary instabilities is obtained. The domain of ap-pearance of Eckhaus and zigzag instabilities expands due to the presence of the Soret coefficient for positive values. The Soret coefficient with negative values enhances heat transport, while positive values diminish it in comparison with heat transport for the case without the Soret effect. The dual nature of other parameters in influencing heat and mass transport is shown by considering positive and negative values of the Soret coefficient. © 2017, Shanghai University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany

Ferromagnetically correlated clusters in semi-metallic Ru2NbAl Heusler alloy

In this work, we report the structural, magnetic and electrical and thermal transport properties of the Heusler-type alloy Ru2NbAl. From the detailed analysis of magnetization data, we infer the presence of superparamagnetically interacting clusters with a Pauli paramagnetic background, while short-range ferromagnetic interaction is developed among the clusters below 5 K. The presence of this ferromagnetic interaction is confirmed through heat capacity measurements. The relatively small value of electronic contribution to specific heat, gamma (~2.7 mJ/mol-K2), as well as the linear nature of temperature dependence of Seebeck coefficient indicate a semi-metallic ground state with a pseudo-gap that is also supported by our electronic structure calculations. The activated nature of resistivity is reflected in the observed negative temperature coefficient and has its origin in the charge carrier localization due to antisite defects, inferred from magnetic measurements as well as structural analysis. Although the absolute value of thermoelectric figure of merit is rather low (ZT = 5.2*10-3) in Ru2NbAl, it is the largest among all the reported non-doped full Heusler alloys.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figure

Use and Phytochemical Activity of Celosia Argentea Linn

Since ancient time in India. Celosia argentea linn. Is widely used in traditional medicine, to cure several disorders such as fever, diarrhea, mouth sores, itching wound, jaundice, gonorrhea and inflammation. Literaterature survey from books and journal of traditional Indian medicine revealed that celosia argentia linn. has a lot of medicinal properties. Leaves, stem and root have been reported for medicinal activity, the plant has pharmacologically been studied for various cativities like anti-cancer, hepatoprotection, anti-dibetes etc. However too many scientific studies have been carried out on this plant. For exploring these traditional uses. The present report is deals with traditional uses and pharmacological activity of celosia argentea linn. In the treatment of various diseases