An Investigation of Three Subjective Rating Scales of Mental Workload in Third Level Education

Mental Workload assessment in educational settings is still recognized as an open research problem. Although its application is useful for instructional design, it is still unclear how it can be formally shaped and which factors compose it. This paper is aimed at investigating a set of features believed to shape the construct of mental workload and aggregating them together in models trained with supervised machine learning techniques. In detail, multiple linear regression and decision trees have been chosen for training models with features extracted respectively from the NASA Task Load Index and the Workload Profile, well-known self-reporting instruments for assessing mental workload. Additionally, a third feature set was formed as a combination of the two aforementioned feature sets and a number of other features believed to contribute to mental workload modeling in education. Models were trained with cross-validation due to the limited sample size. On the one hand, results show how the features of the NASA Task Load index are more expressive for a regression problem than the other two feature sets. On the other hand, results show how the newly formed feature set can lead to the development of models of the mental workload with a lower error when compared to models built with the other two feature sets and when employed for a classification task

Phosphoprotein analysis of soybean root hairs in response to Bradyrhizobium japonicum inoculation

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 4, 2013).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisors: Dr. Gary Stacey, Dr. Henry T. Nguyen and Dr. Dong XuIncludes bibliographical references.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2012."December 2012."The nitrogen fixing symbiosis in soybean (Glycine max) is initiated by colonization of root hairs by the symbiotic bacterium Bradyrhizobium japonicum. Specificity in this symbiosis is determined very early during the initial stages of host-symbiont recognition which involve specific receptor kinases and subsequent kinase cascades. We characterized the phosphoproteome of isolated root hair cells colonized by B. japonicum and quantify the phosphorylation changes using isobaric tag 8-plex ITRAQ coupled to LC-MS/MS analysis. 273 phosphopeptides corresponding to 240 phosphoproteins were found to be significantly regulated in response to B. japonicum inoculation. By using in silico proteolytic digestion, we showed that the palaeopolyploid soybean genome has less unique peptides making it a challenging organism for quantitative proteomic analysis. Trypsin was shown to be the best choice for digestion of soybean proteins to maximize the number of unique peptides. To screen for the protein kinases that can phosphorylate the 240 phosphoproteins above, a synthetic peptide cocktail derived from 273 phosphopeptides significantly regulated by B. japonicum inoculation was developed. This peptide cocktail was shown to work well in a solution-phase, label-free peptide kinase assay in conjunction with MS/MS analysis. Using a RNAi-mediated gene silencing approach, GmRIN4a and GmRIN4b, the two RPM1-interacting proteins whose phosphorylation status increased upon B. japonicum inoculation, were shown to play an important role in the rhizobium-legume symbiosis. Efforts are now underway to investigate the function of GmRIN4 in more detailed.Includes bibliographical reference

Simulation modeling for designing and evaluating a new flexible manufacturing system. Case study: Cylinder gas industry

The production utilization and costs reduction are critical factors to be considered in a highly competitive environment, especially when the demand of variety of products has been increasing gradually. Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) is designed to attain the key of cost effective production because it is a good combination between variety and productivity. FMS is defined as an integrated, computer controlled complex of automated material handling devices. Correspondingly, the cost for constructing the FMS is positively correlated with its flexibility. For that reason, the design of FMS requires an intensive work on designing, planning and operating. The objective of this thesis is to study and evaluate the Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) by simulation modeling. Furthermore, the experiment and analysis of production performance measures which are inclusive of cost, machine utilizations, production rates, and inventory levels, help the company studying the system and avoiding a potential future problem before implementing a new system. The methodology used in this study is simulation modelling which is presented as a tool that can capture the complexities of the FMS. The auxiliary use of the advanced simulation tool available in the ARENA software allows mimicking the designed system as well as providing an environment in which experiment of the system can be performed. By analysing various possibilities, the simulation model is able to lead to a high performing "Advanced planning and Scheduling" instrument, which attempts to provide for all contingencies of production system's rate. Excessively, simulation can help to find the optimal solution so that the production costs are minimized and the service level rate is ensured to be respected. As a result, the utilization of the system with different operation strategies are presented as well as the service level and the holding cost under each scenario. The potential bottlenecks of the system are analysed from the simulation reports. In addition, the optimal solution for the buffer stock level is given based on the current demand rate. Last but not least, another significant contribution of the study is to interpret the simulation and simulation optimization technique that will enable the management to make better decisions

Éléments d’information contribuant à la formation de l’image d’un établissement universitaire

L’image institutionnelle, considérée comme un outil de promotion efficace en milieu concurrentiel, peut aussi être mise à profit par les universités dans leur stratégie de positionnement. Contrairement à la plupart des études antérieures sur l’image des établissements scolaires, qui sont de nature descriptive et souvent dénuées de vérification empirique, cette étude se propose d’identifier un ensemble de facteurs explicatifs de cette image perçue chez la population étudiante. Une enquête effectuée dans une université canadienne a fait ressortir six éléments d’information utilisés par l’étudiant dans son processus de formation de l’image de l’institution fréquentée, à savoir, en ordre d’importance, l’identité de l’institution, sa politique de communication, son offre de services, son support physique, la recherche et les services à la collectivité réalisés par son corps professoral, et ses dirigeants. Ces résultats présentent donc aux gestionnaires scolaires un défi de taille en matière de marketing, celui de bien gérer l’image de leur institution respective en privilégiant, entre autres, les éléments tangibles et visibles dans la création et la diffusion de cette image pour la rendre plus concrète et plus facilement saisissable. Universities may see their institutional images as effective and profitable promotional devices in competitive times. Research on the question of image has often been descrip- tive and empirically weak. By contrast, this study elicits six factors that explain how students form their image of a Canadian university. They are, in order of importance, the institution’s identity, its communications policy, its services, its physical support system, the research and community service of its professoriate, and its leadership. Academic administrators thus face a marketing challenge, that of building an image based on tan- gible and visible elements which are easily grasped.

Factors Affecting Credit Access of Individual Business Households in ho chi Minh City, Vietnam

Purpose: The study studies the factors affecting access to credit of individual business households in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. The authors proposed policy implications based on research results that improve access to credit for individual business households.   Theoretical framework: Access to formal credit can be understood in many ways. This article considers that access to proper credit is the ability of a customer to use the capital of a traditional credit institution based on meeting financial obligations - emphasizing the ability to repay both principal and interest.   Design/methodology/approach: The authors chose a mixed method to conduct the study. This is a suitable research method to answer the research questions raised. Mixed methods include both qualitative and quantitative methods. However, this combination is the implementation of interlacing, replacing the two approaches to solve each problem, the research design's specific goal. The authors analyzed Data from May 2022 to December 2022 in HCMC based on the EFA and CFA, using the structural equation model analysis (SEM) method with SPSS 20.0 software and Amos.   Findings: The article's findings showed five factors affecting access to credit of individual business households in HCMC, Vietnam. In particular, the loan procedure factor substantially impacts the five factors affecting credit access.   Research, Practical & Social implications: The study has provided empirical evidence on the factors affecting formal credit access by a linear structural model and provides evidence that factors such as the loan procedure affect traditional credit affecting access to credit.   Originality/value: The authors give some policy implications for state management agencies, credit institutions, customers, and mass organizations, such as increasing the role of local Government and increasing the ability to use banks, E-commerce, design new loan products to help individual business households access more formal capital, and at the same time, reduce black credit

Social Influence in Technology Adoption Research – A Scientometric Study over two Decades Behavior

Research on the impact of social influence on the individual Information Systems (IS) user represents one of the major challenges of technology adoption research since the introduction of Technology Acceptance Model in 1989. As several IS researchers still struggle from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective to determine how social influence can be explained and measured, this approach contributes to existing adoption research by providing the findings of a literature analysis of all journal and conference articles of the JAIS journal ranking and the AIS proceedings since 1989. The results based on 149 relevant papers reveal that social influence is more significant using a individualized measurement and more important for the usage of utilitarian IS. Additionally it is shown that the point of adoption (pre-adoption vs. post adoption) and the degree of free decision-making (mandatory vs. voluntary) do not affect the impact of social influence

Herd behaviour in Southeast Asian stock markets — An empirical investigation

This study examines herd behaviour in four Southeast Asian stock markets, namely Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Empirical results indicate that except for the Philippines, herding exists in the other three markets. Stronger evidence of herding has been detected in these markets when the market is up. When the market is down, it is only the Malaysian market that exhibits significant herding. The study further investigates herding by dividing the entire sample period into two sub-periods: pre-crisis and during economic crisis. We find strong evidence of the existence of herding in Indonesia and Malaysia in both sub-periods. However, the findings are mixed when we additionally examine herding in up and down market scenarios during the two sub-periods by using modified models

Array CGH data modeling and smoothing in Stationary Wavelet Packet Transform domain

Background: Array-based comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH) is a highly efficient technique, allowing the simultaneous measurement of genomic DNA copy number at hundreds or thousands of loci and the reliable detection of local one-copy-level variations. Characterization of these DNA copy number changes is important for both the basic understanding of cancer and its diagnosis. In order to develop effective methods to identify aberration regions from array CGH data, many recent research work focus on both smoothing-based and segmentation-based data processing. In this paper, we propose stationary packet wavelet transform based approach to smooth array CGH data. Our purpose is to remove CGH noise in whole frequency while keeping true signal by using bivariate model. Results: In both synthetic and real CGH data, Stationary Wavelet Packet Transform (SWPT) is the best wavelet transform to analyze CGH signal in whole frequency. We also introduce a new bivariate shrinkage model which shows the relationship of CGH noisy coefficients of two scales in SWPT. Before smoothing, the symmetric extension is considered as a preprocessing step to save information at the border. Conclusions: We have designed the SWTP and the SWPT-Bi which are using the stationary wavelet packet transform with the hard thresholding and the new bivariate shrinkage estimator respectively to smooth the array CGH data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through theoretical and experimental exploration of a set of array CGH data, including both synthetic data and real data. The comparison results show that our method outperforms the previous approaches

Perceptions of Local Residents toward Impacts of Agro-tourism in Da Lat, Vietnam

Master of Science (Community Ecotourism Management), 2018Vietnam has the abundant potential of tourism similar to some countries of the South-east Asia region and most the population living in rural areas based on agriculture production as a primary livelihood, however, the local authorities and scholars have paid less attention to participate in agro-tourism development. Meanwhile, most studies within the situation are done in developed countries, the developing countries have not had much attention paid to them, a few studies were carried out in Malaysia, Thailand, China. There are no sufficient studies investigating residents’ perceptions toward agro-tourism impacts, and its effects on community participation in support of agro-tourism. Therefore, to address an aforementioned notable gap, the study about perceptions of local residents toward the impacts of agro-tourism was conducted in Da Lat, Vietnam. The aimed study was to identify the perceptions of local residents toward agro-tourism impacts on the economy, socio-culture, environment; as well as their community participation in support of agro-tourism. Moreover, to determine the effects of socio-demographic factors on the residents’ perceptions toward impacts of agro-tourism, and on their community participation in support of agro-tourism; to explore which factors of residents’ perception toward agro-tourism impacts influenced on their community participation in support of agro-tourism. Data obtained from a survey of 300 samples in Thai Phien village, Phuong 12 sub-district, Da Lat district, Lam Dong province, Vietnam based on the random sampling method. This study used descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA analysis, and linear regression to analyze the data. Results revealed that agro-tourism mostly brings positive impacts that outweigh the negative ones on the local community. In terms of residents’ perception toward positive economic impacts, for instances, offering new livelihood chances to locals, attracting investment to infrastructure improvement, contributing to diversifying local economic activities, providing an opportunity for direct sales of agricultural products to tourists. As regards positive socio-cultural impacts, local residents perceived that agro-tourism provides more recreational areas, opportunities for cultural exchange and educating visitors about agriculture, the motivation for the preservation of cultural identify and the pride of community in agricultural production. Concerning positive environmental impacts, residents also perceived that agro-tourism enhances the appearance of the community’s landscape and influences positively on the perceptions of both local community and local authorities to preserve the natural environment and community resources as well. Notwithstanding agro-tourism contributes significantly to the well-being of the community, also brings negative impacts. Most revenues of agro-tourism end up with the tour operators and individuals outside the locality, while the community has received a low salary from these activities. In addition, the increasing number of agro-tourists, leading to putting pressure on infrastructures and public services, in particular, resulting in overcrowding, traffic congestion, and lack of parking lot in the community. This study also pointed out that there were significant differences between the socio-demographic characteristics of residents and the residents’ perceptions of local residents toward impacts of agro-tourism, and the community participation in support of agro-tourism development as well. Particularly, level of education, net household income, farm size, farm type, number of family member participated in agricultural production were significant differences with both the residents’ perception toward agro-tourism impacts and their community participation in support of agro-tourism. Moreover, the findings of linear regression model indicated that the residents’ perceptions toward the positive impacts of agro-tourism on both economic and socio-culture influenced positively on their community participation in support of agro-tourism, whereas the residents’ perceptions toward the negative impacts of agro-tourism on socio-culture showed a negative effect. Therefore, the residents’ perceptions toward agro-tourism impacts played a crucial role, thereby affecting on perceptions of local residents toward impacts of agro-tourism and their community participation in support of its development in the area