Influence of home and school environments on the academic performance of Chinese-Australian and Anglo-Australian students studying at an academically-oriented high school in Perth, Western Australia

Although minority status has been associated with low academic achievement, the “high Asian achieving syndrome remains as one of the unresolved sociological puzzles. Consistent evidence suggests that regardless of the family status, children from the Asian migrant families, settled in the industrialised countries, tend to perform academically better than their counterparts from the dominant group. This disparity is attributed to a number of factors, which taken separately, do not address this complex issue. In Australia little research has been done to compare the home environment and school experiences of children coming from Chinese-Australian and Anglo-Australian families even though the number of children from the Southeast Asian region has steadily increased. This thesis investigates the influence of home and school on the academic performance of high school students coming from Chinese-Australian and Anglo-Australian families who resided in a predominantly middle class suburb and their children attended one particular state school in Perth, Western Australia. By studying children in their homes and classrooms I have attempted in this ethnographic study to construct some theoretically coherent explanations to understand the disparity in academic performance of Chinese-Australian and Anglo-Australian high school students. In order to capture what teachers, parents, and children say and do as a product of how they interpret the complexity of their world this study explores how macro and micro processes are linked to children\u27s academic performance. As this study aims to understand social events from each individual\u27s point of view it assumes that human behaviour is the result of indispensable and continuous interactions between persons and the situations they encounter. The findings of this study, with no claim to generalise beyond these families, suggest that the reason why Chinese-Australian and Anglo-Australian children have different educational outcomes is that these families socialise their children differently. From this study emerge two different models: and academic oriented Chinese-Australian model and a sports oriented Anglo-Australian model. At the start of high school there was no marked difference in ability and performance based on ethnicity. By the time they completed lower secondary school all Chinese-Australian students had improved in English and enrolled in a normal stream in English. Except for one student, they had selected TEE subjects with a university education as their main goal. At this stage, Anglo-Australians, with the exception of two students (who had selected TEE subjects), had decided to study either a mixture of TEE and TAFE subjects or easier TEE subjects. At the end of Year 12 all Chinese-Australian, except for one, had qualified to study at university. From Anglo-Australian group, only two students had qualified to study at university. This pattern of performance is consistent with the high Asian achieving syndrome and lack lustre performance of Anglo-Australian students. However, this study serves some sober reminder about the narrow focus by Chinese-Australians and lack of effort by Anglo-Australian students

Selected Experimental Results from Heavy Ion Collisions at LHC

We review a subset of experimental results from the heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility at CERN. Excellent consistency is observed across all the experiments at the LHC (at center of mass energy of 2.76 TeV) for the measurements such as charged particle multiplicity density, azimuthal anisotropy coefficients and nuclear modification factor of charged hadrons. Comparison to similar measurements from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at lower energy (center of mass energy of 200 GeV) suggests that system formed at LHC has a higher energy density, larger system size, and lives for a longer time. These measurements are compared to model calculations to obtain physical insights on the properties of matter created at the RHIC and LHC.Comment: 19 pages and 26 figures. Accepted for publication in the special issue of Advances in High Energy Physics dedicated to Physics of Quark Gluon Plasma: An Update and Status Repor

UNRUPTURED INTRACRANIAL ANEURYSM AND FIRST EPISODE PSYCHOSIS: THE MYSTERY WAS FINALLY SOLVED

Incidental findings on Head MRI and CT scans are common in the general population as well as in patients presenting with first episode of psychosis (FEP). Though unruptured intracranial aneurysms (UICAs) are among the incidental findings, they are rare in those under the age of 30. We present a case of a young man (28) who presented with FEP and unruptured intracranial aneurysm. The implications to treating physicians are discussed given the rareness of the two to be found together in the given age group. Following physical examination and several physical tests including both CT and MRI scans, it was established that in addition to psychosis, the young man had an unruptured intracranial aneurysm on the right anterior communication artery. The psychosis continued despite successful treatment of the aneurysm. It was concluded that the aneurysm was an incidental finding. UICs under the age of 30 in patients presenting with FEP are more likely to be coincidental findings rather than the underlying cause of psychosis. However, clinicians need to remain vigilant by conducting physical examination including neurological examination for patients presenting with FEP. The need for brain CT or MRI scan should be informed by clinical presentation and the findings on physical examination

MRGM: An Adaptive Mechanism for Congestion Control in Smart Vehicular Network

Traffic flow on roads has increased manifolds from past few decades due to increase in number of vehicles and rise in population. With fixed road infrastructure and more vehicles on traffic routes lead to traffic congestion conditions especially in urban areas of developing nations. Traffic jams are normal in major cities which ultimately cause delay in travel time, more fuel consumption and more pollution. This manuscript propose a Multi-metric road guidance mechanism(MRGM) which considers multiple metrics to analyze the traffic congestion conditions and based on the conditions effective optimal routes are suggested to the vehicles. The Simulation of the proposed mechanism is performed with the SUMO by using the python script and the results show that proposed mechanism i.e MRGM outperforms other mechanism in terms of traffic efficiency, travel time, fuel consumption and pollution levels in the smart vehicular network

Improvement of Mosfet Characteristics

By inclusion of a semi-dielectric layer, a novel MOSFET Structure, the T-MOSFET, and its integrated circuit version are presented. Both for the enhancement mode and the depletion mode, equivalent circuit models are developed. Also, the high frequency behaviour is explained by a model and the behaviour of a T-MOSFET under different conditions is given

STRENGTHENING EDUCATION TO GENERATE EDUCATIONAL GRADUATES (TEACHER PREPARATION AND CERTIFICATION IN AUSTRALIA)

ABSTRACT Considering that education has become the engine room for modern economies and the backbone for prosperity of any nation, there is a massive drive on a global scale to upgrade the quality of education a nation provides to its citizens. The top performing education systems have demonstrated that the quality of teacher training and raising the social status of teachers is a pre-requisite to improve the quality of education the citizens of a nation receive. This paper focuses on (a) the attributes of quality teacher training and quality teachers, (b) discussion of Australian and Singaporean approach to teacher training, and (c) need for Indonesian teacher training institutes to upgrade their strategies to provide quality training. Since teachers are the most valuable to schools investment in teacher professionalism is vital to ensure that they are equipped with an evidence-based repertoire of pedagogical skills that are demonstrably effective in meeting the developmental and learning needs of all students. Keywords: teacher professionalism, education system, teacher trainin

Service vs Protection: A Bayesian Learning Approach for Trust Provisioning in Edge of Things Environment

Edge of Things (EoT) technology enables end-users participation with smart-sensors and mobile devices (such as smartphones, wearable devices) to the smart devices across the smart city. Trust management is the main challenge in EoT infrastructure to consider the trusted participants. The Quality of Service (QoS) is highly affected by malicious users with fake or altered data. In this paper, a Robust Trust Management (RTM) scheme is designed based on Bayesian learning and collaboration filtering. The proposed RTM model is regularly updated after a specific interval with the significant decay value to the current calculated scores to update the behavior changes quickly. The dynamic characteristics of edge nodes are analyzed with the new probability score mechanism from recent services’ behavior. The performance of the proposed trust management scheme is evaluated in a simulated environment. The percentage of collaboration devices are tuned as 10%, 50% and 100%. The maximum accuracy of 99.8% is achieved from the proposed RTM scheme. The experimental results demonstrate that the RTM scheme shows better performance than the existing techniques in filtering malicious behavior and accuracy

HOME-SCHOOL LINK A KEY FACTOR TO EXPLAIN AN IMPRESSIVE PERFORMANCE OF CHINESE-AUSTRALIAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

This study focused on congruency of culture of home and school of children from Chinese- Australian families as a major factor in their academic success. Qualitative approach was used for uncovering three key things, namely, 1) conditions and interactions at home; 2) children’s behavior and interaction in classroom; 3) children’ activities after school hours and at weekends. The approach considered to be appropriate to capture what teachers, parents and children say and do as a product of how they interpret the complexity of their world. Data collected by using ethnographic techniques, mainly participant observation and conversational interviews. There were seven children from five Chinese-Australian families residing in Perth metropolitan area involved in the study. The families immigrated from Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Analysis indicated that Chinese-Australian parents pushed their children far beyond their limits in their drive for academic excellence. They made their home suitable for studying and ensured continuity between homes and school. Impulse control, deferment of short term gratification, effort/hard work, and scholastic achievement were Chinese cultural values implanted by the parents. Chinese- Australian children met most of their teachers’ demands. Consequently, their interactions with their teachers were in more positive ways. Key words: Chinese-Australian families, impressive performance student

Effects of Urbanization on Channel Morphology of Three Streams in the Central Redbed Plains of Oklahoma

This research evaluates the impact of urbanization on channel morphology of three streams in the Central Redbed Plains geomorphic province (Central Great Plains ecoregion) of Oklahoma. The Deep Fork Creek watershed is largely urbanized; the Skeleton Creek watershed is largely rural; and the Stillwater Creek watershed is experiencing a rapid transition from rural to urban land cover. Each channel was divided into reaches based on tributary junctions, sinuosity, and slope. Field surveys were conducted at transects in a total of 90 reaches, including measurements of channel units, channel cross-section at bankfull stage, and riparian vegetation. Historical aerial photographs were available for only Stillwater Creek watershed, which were used to document land cover in this watershed, especially changes in the extent of urban areas (impervious cover). The three streams have very low gradients (< 0.001), width-to-depth ratios < 10, and cohesive channel banks, but have incised into red Permian shales and sandstone. The riparian vegetation is dominated by cottonwoods, ash, and elm trees that provide a dense root mat on stream banks where the riparian vegetation is intact. Channels increased in the downstream direction as is normally expected, but the substrate materials and channel units remained unchanged. Statistical analyses demonstrated that urbanization provides minimal explanation for spatial patterns of changes in any variables. These three channels in the Central Redbed Plains are responding as flumes during peak flows, funneling runoff and the wash-load sediment downstream in major runoff events without any effect on channel dimensions. Therefore, local geological conditions (similar bed rock, cohesive substrates and similar riparian vegetation) are mitigating the effects of urbanization.Department of Geograph