Challenge-Hindrance Appraisal Job and Work-Life Balance Among Teachers: A Conceptual Paper

Work-life balance is a prerequisite, in the choice of contemporary work styles, but allegedly has deteriorated in the teaching profession. Affected work-life quality causes serious impacts including work-life conflict, decreased job ability and affects an individual’s psychological state. This distress wave affects on a global scale, due to extreme workloads which cause high job stress that eventually affect quality of life. In the Malaysian context, job stress is currently at a medium level, but workloads are expected to increase, hence, work-life balance is potentially at risk. Investigations into work-life balance among teachers in Sabah is scarce. In addition, studies have not adequately examined the issue with positive integration. Balancing is about strengthening the known gains, and overcoming the identified strains. Thus, present conceptual paper discussed about the relationship of workload, eustress and distress towards work-life balance. Ultimately, a conceptual framework is developed based on the reviewed literature

Agile Autonomous Driving using End-to-End Deep Imitation Learning

We present an end-to-end imitation learning system for agile, off-road autonomous driving using only low-cost sensors. By imitating a model predictive controller equipped with advanced sensors, we train a deep neural network control policy to map raw, high-dimensional observations to continuous steering and throttle commands. Compared with recent approaches to similar tasks, our method requires neither state estimation nor on-the-fly planning to navigate the vehicle. Our approach relies on, and experimentally validates, recent imitation learning theory. Empirically, we show that policies trained with online imitation learning overcome well-known challenges related to covariate shift and generalize better than policies trained with batch imitation learning. Built on these insights, our autonomous driving system demonstrates successful high-speed off-road driving, matching the state-of-the-art performance.Comment: 13 pages, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 201

Exploring the Role of Malaysian Student’s Intrapreneurial Self-Capital in the Relationship between Satisfaction with Life, Academic Performance, and Flourishing

Intrapreneurial self-capital is the construct coined by Di Fabio as a core of individual resources used to cope with career and life construction challenges. In this study, we used the model of Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) to examine the mediating role of intrapreneurial self-capital in the relationship between life satisfaction and flourishing among Malaysian undergraduate students. The Intrapreneurial Self-Capital Scale (ISCS), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), and Flourishing Scale were administered to 665 undergraduate students from one of the public universities in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. The results reported a significant direct effect of student satisfaction with life to flourishing. A significant path coefficient was also found from satisfaction with life and student academic performance to intrapreneurial self-concept providing the support that student satisfaction with life and academic performance has a positive effect on their intrapreneurial self-concept. The coefficients from intrapreneurial self-concept to flourishing was also significant. This provides initial support that an intrapreneurial self-concept may have a positive mediating effect on the relationship between satisfaction with life, academic performance, and flourishing. We found that the indirect effects of satisfaction with life and academic performance on flourishing through intrapreneurial self-concept were significant. These results provided further support for the mediating effect of intrapreneurial self-concept. The analysis also that revealed satisfaction with life was significantly and positively related to flourishing. However, the finding showed no significant direct effect of student academic performance on flourishing

Functional roles of arginine residues in mung bean vacuolar H+-pyrophosphatase

AbstractPlant vacuolar H+-translocating inorganic pyrophosphatase (V-PPase EC 3.6.1.1) utilizes inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi) as an energy source to generate a H+ gradient potential for the secondary transport of ions and metabolites across the vacuole membrane. In this study, functional roles of arginine residues in mung bean V-PPase were determined by site-directed mutagenesis. Alignment of amino-acid sequence of K+-dependent V-PPases from several organisms showed that 11 of all 15 arginine residues were highly conserved. Arginine residues were individually substituted by alanine residues to produce R→A-substituted V-PPases, which were then heterologously expressed in yeast. The characteristics of mutant variants were subsequently scrutinized. As a result, most R→A-substituted V-PPases exhibited similar enzymatic activities to the wild-type with exception that R242A, R523A, and R609A mutants markedly lost their abilities of PPi hydrolysis and associated H+-translocation. Moreover, mutation on these three arginines altered the optimal pH and significantly reduced K+-stimulation for enzymatic activities, implying a conformational change or a modification in enzymatic reaction upon substitution. In particular, R242A performed striking resistance to specific arginine-modifiers, 2,3-butanedione and phenylglyoxal, revealing that Arg242 is most likely the primary target residue for these two reagents. The mutation at Arg242 also removed F− inhibition that is presumably derived from the interfering in the formation of substrate complex Mg2+–PPi. Our results suggest accordingly that active pocket of V-PPase probably contains the essential Arg242 which is embedded in a more hydrophobic environment

TPMD: a database and resources of microsatellite marker genotyped in Taiwanese populations

Taiwan Polymorphic Marker Database (TPMD) (http://tpmd.nhri.org.tw/) is a marker database designed to provide experimental details and useful marker information allelotyped in Taiwanese populations accompanied by resources and technical supports. The current version deposited more than 372 000 allelotyping data from 1425 frequently used and fluorescent-labeled microsatellite markers with variation types of dinucleotide, trinucleotide and tetranucleotide. TPMD contains text and map displays with searchable and retrievable options for marker names, chromosomal location in various human genome maps and marker heterozygosity in populations of Taiwanese, Japanese and Caucasian. The integration of marker information in map display is useful for the selection of high heterozygosity and commonly used microsatellite markers to refine mapping of diseases locus followed by identification of disease gene by positional candidate cloning. In addition, our results indicated that the number of markers with heterozygosity over 0.7 in Asian populations is lower than that in Caucasian. To increase accuracy and facilitate genetic studies using microsatellite markers, we also list markers with genotyping difficulty due to ambiguity of allele calling and recommend an optimal set of microsatellite markers for genotyping in Taiwanese, and possible extension of genotyping in other Mongoloid populations

Investigation of the Transient Behavior of a Cantilever Beam Using PVDF Sensors

In this paper, a PVDF film sensor was used to measure the transient responses of a cantilever beam subjected to an impact loading. The measurement capability of a PVDF sensor is affected by the area of the PVDF film sensor and the signal conditioner (charge amplifier). The influences of these effects on the experimental measurements were investigated. The transient responses for the dynamic strain of the beam were measured simultaneously by the PVDF sensor and a conventional strain gauge. The resonant frequencies of the beam were determined by applying the Fast Fourier Transform on transient results in the time domain of the PVDF sensor and the strain gauge. The experimentally measured resonant frequencies from the PVDF sensor and the strain gauge were compared with those predicted from theoretical and FEM numerical calculations. Based on the comparison of the results measured for these two sensors, the PVDF film sensor proved capable of measuring transient responses for dynamic strain, and its sensitivity is better than that of the strain gauge. Furthermore, almost all the resonant frequencies can be obtained from the results of transient responses for PVDF film

A comprehensive framework for seismic risk assessment of urban water transmission networks

Earthquakes are natural disasters which human beings cannot control, causing significant damage to the economy and society as a whole. In particular, earthquakes affect not only buildings but also lifeline structures such as water distribution, electric power, transportation, and telecommunication networks. The interruption of these networks is critical because it can directly damage the facilities and, at the same time, cause long-term loss of the overall system for society. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the uncertainties of ground motion, deterioration of pipelines, and interdependency of lifelines. Therefore, it is essential to predict the damage through possible earthquake scenarios and accounting for factors affecting lifeline structures. This study proposes a comprehensive framework to quantify the impact of earthquakes on the connectivity of urban water transmissions. The framework proposes the following steps to predict damage from earthquakes: (1) estimate the ground motion considering the spatial correlation, (2) propose a modified failure probability of buried pipelines considering deterioration, and (3) evaluate the seismic fragility curves of network components and the interdependency among water treatment plants, pumping plants, and substations. For numerical simulations, an actual water network system in South Korea was constructed using graph theory, and the magnitudes and locations of the epicenters were determined based on historical earthquake data. Finally, the reliability performance indicators (e.g., connectivity loss and serviceability ratio) were measured when earthquakes of various magnitudes occurred in the urban area. This framework will enable the prediction of damage from earthquakes and enhance decision making to minimize the extent of damage