Employing Concept Mapping as a Pre-writing Strategy to Help EFL Learners Better Generate Argumentative Compositions

The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of employing concept mapping at a pre-writing stage on English as a foreign language (EFL) students\u27 ability to generate better argumentative essays. Thirty-eight participants were randomly assigned to two groups participating in Writing II course at Al-Quds Open University (QOU). Both groups had the same teacher. The control group received instruction as required in the textbook only, and the experimental group were additionally required to construct concept maps at the pre-writing stage and compose essays based on the constructed maps. All participants were required to sit for pre- and post-tests to track their writing performance before and after the experimental group took a tutorial on how to create concept maps. After the implementation of the intervention, comparison of the students’ mean scores of the pre- and post-tests showed a statistically significant improvement in the experimental students’ ability to generate better argumentative essays in terms of point of view, unity and coherence, development, organization, and thinking. The results highlight the effectiveness of employing concept mapping as a focused instructional strategy at the pre-writing stage in developing EFL students’ writing skill. Pedagogical implications for using concept mapping in EFL writing classes are considered

Macro Uncertainty Impacts on ESG Performance and Carbon Emission Reduction Targets

This study examines the impact of three macro uncertainty factors: economic policy uncertainty (EPU), political instability (PIS), and cultural uncertainty avoidance (UA), on corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and carbon emission reduction targets. Additionally, we examine whether these macro factors are affected by the profitability of the company. Using an unbalanced sample of companies located in the USA, China, and the UK during the period 2013-2020, results show that during times of economic uncertainty, companies are more likely to engage in ESG activities, including establishing emission reduction targets. Companies in countries with lower levels of political stability (PS) exhibit greater levels of social and environmental engagement, and companies operating in societies that tolerate risks, including the risk associated with climate change, are more likely to have better ESG performance and be committed to emission reduction targets. The results also suggest that profitable companies are more likely to deal with uncertain environments successfully, as they have the required resources to invest in ESG. The study suggests several practical implications for managers and policymakers. [1

Advancing Wireless Sensor Networks Performance over Radio Trigger Wake-up Capabilities

In this Paper, we enhance the performance of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) by optimizing the Wake-up capabilities within a passive radio-triggered wakeup circuit and then used its applications to manage the power consumption of the WSNs. The architecture of our proposed circuit manages the radio power consumption of WSN by harvesting energy from the radio signals and making the radio-triggered hardware sends a wake-up signal to the microcontroller (MCU) of the node. This harvest process takes only 15μs or less to produce wake-up signals within the wake-up circuit and prolongs the lifetime of the WSN nodes. In addition, the proposed circuit receives the RF signal of the network controller through the antenna node and produces an output voltage (VOLDC) by its rectifier module so that this voltage produces direct current DC of 250 mV with the received power of 0.85uW (-13.85dBm). Most importantly, the proposed circuit can produce an output triggered voltage (VOLTG) by its module of LTC1540 –Nano-power Comparator which works as an amplifier (VOLDC) and only needs 0.3μA of energy for the setting of the threshold detector value within the long distance of 100m or more and radiation source of 2W in free-space. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed circuit can produce VOLDC and VOLTG to trigger the wake-up signal of MCU within the long distance and low duty cycle as well as this circuit can identify the synchronization on WSNs

Universal vortex formation in rotating traps with bosons and fermions

When a system consisting of many interacting particles is set rotating, it may form vortices. This is familiar to us from every-day life: you can observe vortices while stirring your coffee or watching a hurricane. In the world of quantum mechanics, famous examples of vortices are superconducting films and rotating bosonic $^4$He or fermionic $^3$He liquids. Vortices are also observed in rotating Bose-Einstein condensates in atomic traps and are predicted to exist for paired fermionic atoms. Here we show that the rotation of trapped particles with a repulsive interaction leads to a similar vortex formation, regardless of whether the particles are bosons or (unpaired) fermions. The exact, quantum mechanical many-particle wave function provides evidence that in fact, the mechanism of this vortex formation is the same for boson and fermion systems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The Role of Real Estate in Sustainable Development in Developing Countries: The Case of the Kingdom of Bahrain

The construction of real estate has the potential to advance sustainability in terms of meeting economic and social criteria—the Business Case and the Societal Case. This is a crucial aspect in the stated visions and plans in many developing countries. Hence, it is important to understand how real estate can best contribute. Semi-structured interviews with a number of decision-makers involved in the real estate sector in the Kingdom of Bahrain were undertaken to explore perceptions of how the sector could best contribute to sustainable development. The decision-makers came from government bodies, investment banks, real estate developers, investors, constructors, project consultants and auditors. The interviews highlight the importance of having a stated vision and strategy which is highly visible and shared by all stakeholders. In the case of Bahrain this is Vision 2030 and the National Economic Strategy. It is important to ensure that any plans that are put in place to achieve the vision/strategy are adaptable to reflect changes in the external environment. The decision-makers identified three areas of focus in terms of the content of policy in order to meet the economic and social-related sustainability criteria as set out in Vision 2030 and the National Economic Strategy. These are: infrastructure, affordable housing and tourism/leisure. Within these three areas, that of infrastructure is also the key enabler for developments in the other two areas to be realized. In terms of a method of governance, the use of public-private-partnerships (PPPs) was identified as being highly appropriate. Such partnerships are not only useful to leverage private sector investment into specific development projects but also to ensure that such development harnesses innovative and efficient methods

Autonomous Solar Powered Suborbital Satellite

We are going to Launch an autonomous CanSat that consists of a container and a payload. The payload will deploy from the container and will gently descend and safely land one raw hen egg. CanSat will be launched in a rocket then deployed from it at an altitude of about 670 meters or higher. Upon deployment from rocket, container and payload shall descend at 12 meters per second using any passive descent control system. At an altitude of 500 meters, the payload shall be released from the container. Payload will free fall with a descent rate of 10 meters per second or less. Temperature and pressure data will be collected every second in each of the payload and container. Power must be harnessed from the environment. Thin sheets of solar cells will be used to harvest energy. A three-axis accelerometer will be used to measure the stability and angle of descent of the payload during descent. Data will be sent from the transmitter in bursts and retrieved at the ground station through a transceiver. All data will be displayed in real time and saved on a computer in the ground station

Markov modeling of moving target defense games

We introduce a Markov-model-based framework for Moving Target Defense (MTD) analysis. The framework allows modeling of broad range of MTD strategies, provides general theorems about how the probability of a successful adversary defeating an MTD strategy is related to the amount of time/cost spent by the adversary, and shows how a multi-level composition of MTD strategies can be analyzed by a straightforward combination of the analysis for each one of these strategies. Within the proposed framework we define the concept of security capacity which measures the strength or effectiveness of an MTD strategy: the security capacity depends on MTD specific parameters and more general system parameters. We apply our framework to two concrete MTD strategies

Investigation of optical and electrical properties of Cobalt-doped Ge-Sb-S thin film

Amorphous Germanium Antimony Sulphide (Ge-Sb-S) doped with Cobalt (Co) have been deposited on glass substrates by thermal evaporation technique on a glass substrate. The films deposited onto glass substrates are characterized by Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, UV–VIS spectrophotometer, Raman spectroscopy, and Capacitance-Voltage Keithley meter. The optical band gap was calculated from the UV–Visible spectrum and found to be 2.05 eV. Raman spectroscopy measurements reveal that a wide band spectrum from 300 to 410 cm−1 centered at 355 cm−1. The Raman shift peaks at 325 cm−1 and 350 cm−1 are as-signed to the bond stretching mode Sb-S and Ge-S, respectively. In addition, from the obtained Raman spectra it is concluded that the presence of Co doped with Ge-Sb-S. The capacitance and conductance versus voltage measurements were performed at different temperatures. The results show a slight increase in the capacitance with temperature and it reaches a maximum value around 150 °C, and eventually it becomes negative. This behavior is interpreted in terms of the nucleation growth process and the thermally activated conduction process with measured activation energy of 0.79 eV.This work is funded by the University Program for Advanced Research - United Arab Emirates University , (project no. 31S313 ).Scopu