Persepsi Guru Terhadap Penggunaan Komputer dalam Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran di Sek. Ren. Keb. Cina

Objektif kajian adalah untuk meninjau persepsi guru di Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan Cina terhadap penggunaan komputer dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran. Persepsi guru dikaji dari aspek kesediaan, pengalaman dan penglibatan dalam menggunakan komputer untuk pengajaran dan pembelajaran serta kesesuaian mengguna komputer dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran. Responden kajian terdiri daripada seratus dua puluh lima guru sesi pagi dari lima buah Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan Cina. Data dikumpulkan dengan menggunakan soal selidik yang dibina khusus bagi tujuan kajian. Data dianalisis dengan menggunakan taburan frekuensi, peratusan, min, sisihan piawai dan mod. Hasil kajian menunjukkan guru mempunyai persepsi yang positif terhadap penggunaan komputer dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran. Oleh itu dicadangkan supaya pihak kementerian Pendidikan lebih proaktif dalam mendedahkan guru-guru yang sedang berkhidmat dangan latihan berasaskan komputer untuk menangani cabaran era siber pendidikan di sekolah bistari nanti

Web Services for forward integration in international tourism supply chains: A case study of tourism in Thailand

International tourism is a highly competitive and information-intensive industry. Customers need volumes of information for decision aids. Moreover, the decision-making processes are quite sensitive to the variables of personal preferences, the tourist industrial ecosystem, the legal regulations and political environments of destinations, the regional or global economic situations, the natural matters, and so on. Hence, the owners of tourism are motivated to upgrade the competitiveness of their businesses with information technologies. This paper intends to design the architecture of Web Services in international tourism, which can contribute to the forward integration in international tourism supply chains. First, the authors conduct an in-depth case study of a regional tour operator in Thailand. In the case study, we examine the strength, weakness, challenges visions, and strategic approaches of international tourism, and their relationships with the information systems in the tourist business. Then, this paper designs the architecture of Web Services in international tourism. The architecture is expected to improve the information transparency through the global tourism supply chain, construct business-to-business collaboration mechanism, provide efficient and effective information to tourists, and consequently contribute to forward integration in international tourism supply chains

Critical Neurons: optimized visual recognition in a neuronal network

In the past few decades, there have been intense debates whether the brain operates at a critical state. To verify the criticality hypothesis in the neuronal networks is challenging and the accumulating experimental and theoretical results remain controversial at this point. Here we simulate how visual information of a nature image is processed by the finite Kinouchi-Copelli neuronal network, extracting the trends of the mutual information (how sensible the neuronal network is), the dynamical range (how sensitive the network responds to external stimuli) and the statistical fluctuations (how criticality is defined in conventional statistical physics). It is rather remarkable that the optimized state for visual recognition, although close to, does not coincide with the critical state where the statistical fluctuations reach the maximum. Different images and/or network sizes of course lead to differences in details but the trend of the information optimization remains the same. Our findings pave the first step to investigate how the information processing is optimized in different neuronal networks and suggest that the criticality hypothesis may not be necessary to explain why a neuronal network can process information smartly.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures in the main text and 3 figures in the Supplementary Informatio

Multi-Operator Fairness in Transparent RAN Sharing by Soft-Partition With Blocking and Dropping Mechanism

Radio access network (RAN) sharing has attracted significant attention from telecom operators as a means of accommodating data surges. However, current mechanisms for RAN sharing ignore the fairness issue among operators, and hence the RAN may be under- or over-utilized. Furthermore, the fairness among different operators cannot be guaranteed, since the RAN resources are distributed on a first come, first served basis. Accordingly, the present study proposes a “soft-partition with blocking and dropping” (SBD) mechanism that offers inter-operator fairness using a “soft-partition” approach. In particular, the operator subscribers are permitted to overuse the resources specified in the predefined service-level-agreement when the shared RAN is under-utilized, but are blocked (or even dropped) when the RAN is over-utilized. The simulation results show that SBD achieves an inter-operator fairness of 0.997, which is higher than that of both a hard-partition approach (0.98) and a no-partition approach (0.6) while maintaining a shared RAN utilization rate of 98%. Furthermore, SBD reduces the blocking rate from 35% (hard partition approach) to almost 0%, whereas controlling the dropping rate at 5%. Notably, the dropping rate can be reduced to almost 0% using a newly proposed bandwidth scale down procedure.This work was supported in part by H2020 collaborative Europe/Taiwan research project 5G-CORAL under Grant 761586, and in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan under Contract MOST 106-2218- E-009-018

THE INFLUENCE OF TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING AND AUDIO-LINGUAL TEACHING APPROACH ON MANDARIN LANGUAGE LEARNING OUTCOMES

The aim of this study is to look into the influence of Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) and audio-lingual teaching approaches on Malaysia tertiary level non-native Mandarin learners’ learning outcomes in the teaching of Mandarin as a global language. A quasi-experimental study was carried out on 43 Universiti Malaysia Kelantan students, where they were divided into two groups. Group A contained 21 students, while Group B had 22 students. The two groups were studied to compare the influence of the two different teaching approaches: TBLT (Group A) and audio-lingual teaching approach (Group B). Willis’ (2006) Task-based Learning Framework was applied as the teaching framework in Group A (TBLT), while dialogue memorisation was applied in Group B (audio-lingual teaching approach). The results of the teaching approaches were analysed using simulated oral test, where language fluency, language accuracy and language pronunciation were the elements the researcher looked into. The results of the findings showed that Group A indicated a drop in the learning outcomes’ mean score in the first cycle of the post-treatment test, but the condition changed in the second cycle post-treatment test and delayed post-treatment test, where the learning outcomes of Group A (TBLT) outperformed the control group’s (audio-lingual teaching approach). The finding of the research provides suggestions towards teachers to apply communicative task between non-native learners and native speakers to improve learners’ learning outcomes. It also advises teachers to apply TBLT in a longer term rather than in a short term.&nbsp

The Effects of Green Energy Production on Farmland: A Case Study in Yunlin County, Taiwan

Taiwan enacted the Act of Renewable Energy in the year 2009 which promotes energy safety, green economy, and a sustainable environment, and with that the government envisages a contribution of photovoltaic energy of up to 20% by the year 2025. In this study we look into the motivation and background of this energy policy, plans for implementation and associated challenges, and its actual consequences for farmland use and farmers. In addition, we take a look into the implementation of mixed-use farmland in which agricultural activity and photovoltaic installations are planned to coexist in order to increase land value and productivity. We furthermore report on some of our findings related to a field survey conducted in Taiwan’s corn chamber of Yunlin County which has been facing a number of socioeconomic challenges

2-(2H-Benzotriazol-2-yl)-6-[(diethyl­amino)meth­yl]-4-methyl­phenol

In the title compound, C18H22N4O, the dihedral angle between the planes of the benzotriazol unit and the phenyl ring of the phen­oxy group is 6.4 (2)°. There is an intra­molecular O—H⋯N hydrogen bond between the phenol and benzotriazol groups