Hong Kong home economics teachers' adoption of ICT for learning and teaching

The Hong Kong government has implemented policies to increase both the availability of ICT in schools and the capabilities of teachers for using them. This paper reports the responses of Hong Kong Home Economics teachers using a theoretical framework informed by educational change theory and prior research about the adoption of ICT by teachers. A questionnaire distributed to 350 Hong Kong secondary schools elicited 252 responses that appeared to be representative of the population. Data revealed that typical respondents had attained at least the intermediate level on the HK IT competence standards for teachers, held positive attitudes toward the use of ICT in teaching, and had access to ICT in their teaching spaces. However, the mean rate of use of ICT for teaching was 1.5 hours per week and the major uses were for lecturing or explanation. Although most had encountered problems when using ICT in their teaching they generally agreed that technical support was adequate. A large proportion saw a need for additional subject specific ICT resources and professional development in pedagogy

Information theoretic aspects of the two-dimensional Ising model

We present numerical results for various information theoretic properties of the square lattice Ising model. First, using a bond propagation algorithm, we find the difference $2H_L(w) - H_{2L}(w)$ between entropies on cylinders of finite lengths $L$ and 2L with open end cap boundaries, in the limit $L\to\infty$. This essentially quantifies how the finite length correction for the entropy scales with the cylinder circumference $w$. Secondly, using the transfer matrix, we obtain precise estimates for the information needed to specify the spin state on a ring encircling an infinite long cylinder. Combining both results we obtain the mutual information between the two halves of a cylinder (the "excess entropy" for the cylinder), where we confirm with higher precision but for smaller systems results recently obtained by Wilms et al. -- and we show that the mutual information between the two halves of the ring diverges at the critical point logarithmically with $w$. Finally we use the second result together with Monte Carlo simulations to show that also the excess entropy of a straight line of $n$ spins in an infinite lattice diverges at criticality logarithmically with $n$. We conjecture that such logarithmic divergence happens generically for any one-dimensional subset of sites at any 2-dimensional second order phase transition. Comparing straight lines on square and triangular lattices with square loops and with lines of thickness 2, we discuss questions of universality.Comment: 12 pages, including 17 figure

Comparative Appraisal of Multilateral and Bilateral Approaches to Financing Private Sector Development in Developing Countries

private sector development, development cooperation, bilateral aid, multilateral aid

Using Information Filtering in Web Data Mining Process

Web service-oriented Grid is becoming a standard for achieving loosely coupled distributed computing. Grid services could easily be specified with web-service based interfaces. In this paper we first envisage a realistic Grid market with players such as end-users, brokers and service providers participating co-operatively with an aim to meet requirements and earn profit. End-users wish to use functionality of Grid services by paying the minimum possible price or price confined within a specified budget, brokers aim to maximise profit whilst establishing a SLA (Service Level Agreement) and satisfying end-user needs and at the same time resisting the volatility of service execution time and availability. Service providers aim to develop price models based on end-user or broker demands that will maximise their profit. In this paper we focus on developing stochastic approaches to end-user workflow scheduling that provides QoS guarantees by establishing a SLA. We also develop a novel 2-stage stochastic programming technique that aims at establishing a SLA with end-users regarding satisfying their workflow QoS requirements. We develop a scheduling (workload allocation) technique based on linear programming that embeds the negotiated workflow QoS into the program and model Grid services as generalised queues. This technique is shown to outperform existing scheduling techniques that don't rely on real-time performance information

What Goes Around Comes Around: The Circulation of Proverbs in Contemporary Life

In this collection of essays, prominent folklorists look at varied modern uses and contexts of proverbs and proverbial speech, some traditional and conventional, others new and unexpected. After the editors' introduction discussing the history and status of attempts to define proverbs, describing their contemporary circulation, and acknowledging the especially important work of paremiologist Wolfgang Meider, the contributions examine the continuing pervasiveness and idiomatic relevance of proverbs in modern culture

Passive CO₂ removal in urban soils:evidence from brownfield sites

Management of urban brownfield land can contribute to significant removal of atmospheric CO2 through the development of soil carbonate minerals. However, the potential magnitude and stability of this carbon sink is poorly quantified as previous studies address a limited range of conditions and short durations. Furthermore, the suitability of carbonate-sequestering soils for construction has not been investigated. To address these issues we measured total inorganic carbon, permeability and ground strength in the top 20 cm of soil at 20 brownfield sites in northern England, between 2015 and 2017. Across all sites accumulation occurred at a rate of 1–16 t C ha−1 yr−1, as calcite (CaCO3), corresponding to removal of approximately 4–59 t CO2 ha−1 yr−1, with the highest rate in the first 15 years after demolition. C and O stable isotope analysis of calcite confirms the atmospheric origin of the measured inorganic carbon. Statistical modelling found that pH and the content of fine materials (combined silt and clay content) were the best predictors of the total inorganic carbon content of the samples. Measurement of permeability shows that sites with carbonated soils possess a similar risk of run-off or flooding to sandy soils. Soil strength, measured as in-situ bearing capacity, increased with carbonation. These results demonstrate that the management of urban brownfield land to retain fine material derived from concrete crushing on site following demolition will promote calcite precipitation in soils, and so offers an additional CO2 removal mechanism, with no detrimental effect on drainage and possible improvements in strength. Given the large area of brownfield land that is available for development, the contribution of this process to CO2 removal by urban soils needs to be recognised in CO2 mitigation policies

What Goes Around Comes Around: The Circulation of Proverbs in Contemporary Life

In this collection of essays, prominent folklorists look at varied modern uses and contexts of proverbs and proverbial speech, some traditional and conventional, others new and unexpected. After the editors\u27 introduction discussing the history and status of attempts to define proverbs, describing their contemporary circulation, and acknowledging the especially important work of paremiologist Wolfgang Meider, the contributions examine the continuing pervasiveness and idiomatic relevance of proverbs in modern culture.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1032/thumbnail.jp

An adaptive approach to P2P resource discovery in distributed scientific research communities

Resource discovery in a distributed environment is always a challenging issue. It is even more difficult to provide an efficient query routing mechanism while still able to support complex query processing in a decentralised P2P environment. This paper presents an adaptive approach to P2P resource discovery. It separates the routing of queries from query matching mechanism so that an effective combination could be explored. Three properties of scientific research communities provide the grounding for the method: the existence of common interest groups, the willingness to share resources of common interests and the transitive relationship in the sharing behaviour. By exploiting these properties, search queries can be efficiently forwarded to those who are more likely to have the answers to improve the quality of search results and to reduce the network traffic. Experimental results have provided some evidence to confirm the efficiency of this adaptive approach