Determining the Validity of the Auto Mechanics I Curriculum and Student Competencies at Virginia Peninsula Vo-Tech (South Campus)

The objectives of this study were as follows: 1. Craft committees, consisting of members of the business community, were used to review the curriculum and offer ideas that would help update the curriculum; 2. An employer follow-up was developed to survey the abilities of automotive graduates working in the community and determine the effectiveness of their educational experience at Vo-Tech; 3. By talking to area employees and industry representatives, we were able to determine those work traits most necessary for successful employment

Detection of Non-Random Galaxy Orientations in X-ray Subclusters of the Coma Cluster

This study on the Coma cluster suggests that there are deviations from a completely random galaxy orientation on small scales. Since we found a significant coincidence of hot-gas features identified in the latest X-ray observations of Coma with these local anisotropies, they may indicate regions of recent mutual interaction of member galaxies within subclusters which are currently falling in on the main cluster.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables v2: Rewritten introduction, amendments to the 'Interpretation' sectio

The Impact of Mentorship on the Motivation to Learn: A Phenomenological Study of High School African American Male Students at Risk for Failure

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand how at-risk male African American students who attend Title I inner-city high schools in Central Florida, and are at risk for failure, perceive mentorship impacts their motivation to learn. The theories that guided this study were Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, and Bandura’s social cognitive theory of self-efficacy, as each theory describes the basic needs that must be satisfied before an individual can be motivated to learn, and the role of interaction in developing self-efficacy and the motivation to learn. The central research question that guided this study sought to understand how at-risk African Americans high school students perceive mentoring impacts their motivation to learn. Additional subquestions explored the impact of mentoring on the participants’ self-efficacy and behavior, the impact of mentoring on the participants’ intrinsic motivation, and the impact of mentoring on the participants’ college readiness and career selection process. A final subquestion sought to understand how the participants perceive effective mentoring-related educational intervention strategies impact the achievement gap between African American males and Caucasian males. A transcendental phenomenological research design was used to investigate a convenience sample of 10 to 15 at-risk male African American high school students. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews, observations, and focus groups, at one inner-city middle school. The data were analyzed using traditional phenomenological analysis methods of bracketing, horizonalization, clustering the data into themes, textural and structural descriptions, and synthesis (Moustakas, 1994). The final step in data analysis resulted in a composite description, the essence of the experience for the participants (Creswell, 2013)

A Study to Find the Effectiveness of Thrower’s Ten Exercise Program on Shoulder Performance among Novice Badminton Players

BACKGROUND: Badminton is a sport that requires a lot of overhead motion. With shoulder in abduction/external rotation.Analysing the badminton smash shot biomechanically has revealed that during this phase there is a powerful inward rotation of the arm, followed by inward rotation of forearm and lastly a flexion of the hand. OBJECTIVES: 1. To find out the effectiveness of thrower’s ten exercise program in throwing distance among badminton players. 2. To find out the effectiveness of thrower’s ten exercise program in throwing accuracy among badminton players. METHOD: The study was done in out patient department, Cherran’s College of Physiotherapy, Coimbatore. 20 Subjects were randomly selected who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Males, 15-25 years, Novice badminton players, Subjects being engaged in sport that required athletes arm to be above shoulder height on a repetitive basis during throwing. Duration of sporting activities for 2 year with at least 6 months a year and a frequency of minimum 40 minutes thrice a week. The study design used was pre-test and post-test experimental design. Thrower’s ten program incorporates throwing motion specific exercises and movement patterns performed in a discrete series by using variables of Throwing distance & Throwing accuracy and administered by functional throwing performance index, medicine ball throw test & Thrower’s ten exercise program. RESULTS: Ten no-vice badminton players were taken for the study. The subjects were received thrower’s ten exercise program. The throwing accuracy and throwing distance were measured before and after the treatment. Analysis of dependant variable throwing accuracy, the calculated paired ‘t’ value is 12.10 and the ‘t’ table value is 3.250. Since the calculated ‘t’ value is more than ‘t’ table value, there is significant difference in throwing accuracy following thrower’s ten exercise program among badminton players. Analysis of dependent variable throwing distance, the calculated paired ‘t’ value is 12.45 and the paired ‘t’ table value is 3.250. Hence the calculated ‘t’ value is greater than ‘t’ table value. There is significant difference in throwing distance following thrower’s ten exercise program among badminton players. CONCLUSION: The study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of throwers ten exercise program and throwing accuracy and throwing distance among badminton players

Immobilized mediator electrodes for microbial fuel cells

With the current interest in alternative methods of energy production and increased utilization of existing energy sources, microbial fuel cells have become an important field of research. Microbial fuel cells are devices which harvest electrons from microorganisms created by their enzymatic oxidation of complex carbon substrates or consumed by their reduction of chemical oxidants. Microbial fuel cells with photosynthetic biocathodes are of particular interest due to their ability to simultaneously produce electricity and hydrocarbons while reducing carbon dioxide. Most species of microorganisms including many bacteria and yeasts require exogenous electron transfer mediators in order to allow electron transfer with an electrode. While adding such chemicals is simple enough at a lab scale, problems arise with chemical costs and separation at a larger scale. The goal of this research was to develop electrodes composed of a robust material which will eliminate the need for added soluble electron mediators in a photosynthetic biocathode microbial fuel cell. Electrodes made from stainless steel 304L have been coated in a conductive polymer (polypyrrole) and an immobilized electron transfer mediator (methylene blue) and tested chemically for stability and in a microbial fuel cell environment for use in bioanodes and biocathodes. The use of these immobilized mediator in the photosynthetic biocathode increased the open circuit voltage of the cell from 0.17 V to 0.24 V and the short circuit current from 8 mA/m2 to 64 mA/m2 (normalized to the geometric surface area of the electrode) when compared to using the same mediator in solution. The opposite effect was seen when using the electrodes in a bioanode utilizing Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The open circuit voltage decreased from 0.37 V to 0.31 V and the short circuit current decreased from 94 mA/m2 to 24 mA/m2 when comparing the immobilized mediator to soluble mediators. The impact of the membrane and pH of the anode and cathode solutions were quantified and were found to have much less of an effect on the internal resistance than the microbial factors

Community based local management of fisheries - a paradigm from Minicoy, Lakshadweep, lndia

Traditional practices related to fishing observed by the fishermen of Minicoy, Lakshadweep with a mew to conserve the resource and avoid conflicts among them are detailed here

Feeding habits of skipjack tuna, Katsuwonus pelamis associated with flotsam in Minicoy, Lakshadweep

Feeding habits of skipjack tuna associated with flotsam and those from free schools were studied based on data collected from the pole and line fishery from Minicoy during 1999-2001. The flotsam were found in different months but was more frequent during Sept. to Nov. A preponderance of smaller siz-e groups below 40 cm (48%) was seen around flotsam whereas in free schools size groups above 50 cm (65%) dominated. Stomach contents of 828 individuals were analysed. In flotsam associated skipjack, stomachs were found to be either empty or with natural prey. Caridian shrimps were found to be the main food in all size groups/and were actively fed. The average ration per 1000 g body weight ranged between 17.3 and 39.4 ml suggesting that the flotsam have a function related to feeding rather than refuge

An FPGA-based data acquisition system with embedded processing for real-time gas sensing applications

Real-time gas sensing based on wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) has been widely adopted for several gas sensing applications. It is attractive for its accurate, non-invasive, and fast determination of critical gas parameters such as concentration, temperature, and pressure. To implement real-time gas sensing, data acquisition and processing must be implemented to accurately extract harmonics of interest from transmitted laser signals. In this work, we present an FPGA-based data acquisition architecture with embedded processing capable of achieving both real-time and accurate gas detection. By leveraging real-time processing on-chip, we minimised the data transfer bandwidth requirement, hence enabling better resolution of data transferred for high-level processing. The proposed architecture has a significantly lower bandwidth requirement compared to both the conventional offline processing architecture and the standard I-Q architecture. Specifically, it is capable of reducing data transfer overhead by 25% compared to the standard I-Q method, and it only requires a fraction of the bandwidth needed by the offline processing architecture. The feasibility of the proposed architecture is demonstrated on a commercial off-the-shelf SoC board, where measurement results show that the proposed architecture has better accuracy compared to the standard I-Q demodulation architecture for the same signal bandwidth. The proposed DAQ system has potential for more accurate and fast real-time gas sensing.</div