The U.S.-Iran Track II Dialogue (20022008): Lessons Learned and Implications for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Grantmaking Strategy

From 2002 through 2008, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) supported a Track II dialogue involving influential American and Iranian citizens, co-organized and co-facilitated with the UnitedNations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA), under the able leadership of Ambassador William Luers. Recognizing that the U.S.-Iranian relationship presents perhaps the most important and troubling foreign policy challenge facing both countries, the Track II dialogue was launched in December 2002.The purpose of this paper is to examine the RBF's experience with the practice of Track II dialogues in light of other experiments with similar dialogues both as a conflict prevention and management tool and as an important component of a peacemaking strategy

Improving Ministerial Effectiveness in a Multi-Site Church

In the modern church, it is not uncommon for churches to be comprised of congregations that worship at multiple locations offering several worship times and some even offering a virtual worship experience. In order to effectively manage Sunday worship along with other church activities, churches rely heavily on their congregants to volunteer in the various church ministries. The need for actively engaged volunteers is only amplified when the resources are spread across multiple campuses. The Park Church is one of those churches presented with the challenge of Improving Ministerial Effectiveness at a Multi-Site Church. The Park Church desired to improve ministerial effectiveness by targeting two areas: ministry leadership/accountability and new member engagement. Through numerous surveys, interviews with ministry and church leaders, and ministry observations, The Park Church discovered the need for a dedicated team with a focus on member engagement and creating a highly relational interaction between the church and members. The Step Up Engagement Ministry, led by Minister Kim Morrison, was created to support these efforts. The central focus of the ministry was to increase volunteerism and improve ministry impact. The ministry team was strategically selected and is comprised of individuals from various professional backgrounds that include volunteer support, leadership development, and marketing. Throughout the duration of this project, Randa M. Ross (January 2015) and Lyndon Robinson (June 2016) served as members of the Step Up Engagement Ministry in a consultancy capacity and conducted interviews, observations, and surveys to gather data from active ministry leaders and new church members. The evidence of this work resulted in the creation of an action plan that will serve as the fundamental work of the Step Up Engagement Ministry

Learner needs and ESP

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how ESP learner needs have been perceived and answered in contemporary ESP programmes. It aims at providing some suggestions and implications regarding needs analysis, course design and the development of language skills. The first chapter introduces the concept of 'ESP ' and, therefore, attempts to unfold the debate which has surrounded its definition and its practices. This involves viewing the factors which have led to its development and which have set it apart of General Purpose English (GPE); investigating the theoretical background against which it has developed and, thus, questioning the validity of equating ESP with the learner's specialized subject-matter or specialist register; and considering the major types of ESP courses which have branched off ESP. The second chapter is concerned with the main changes that have occurred in ESP course design. It argues for a process-oriented approach since this type of syllabus, in its balanced form, accommodates the learner's real-world needs and process-learning needs. The process oriented movement has revolutionized the concept of 'learner needs'. The needs of the learner are not only viewed in terms of language items or course content but also in terms of the psychological aspects of the learning process and classroom learning behaviours. Chapter Three establishes a view of needs analysis and course design which takes the learner's perception of her needs as a starting point. This view is opposed to the needs analysis associated with Munby 's work (1978). It proceeds from the concept of 'need' and is built upon the ideas emerging from the process- oriented movement. It emphasises the centrality of the learner’s role in the needs analysis and course design procedures. Chapter Four represents a case study conducted at Dublin City University (D.C.U.). The study arose from a concern about how adult learners envisaged their needs and, thus, the extent to which they could act as informants regarding the content of the language course and the teaching-learning methodology. It was inspired by a belief that EAP learners are not necessarily instrumentally motivated and, therefore, their needs cannot be met by a course which proceeds from a target-situation needs analysis. In addition to supporting our assumption, the study has provided some insights into the nature of learner needs and learning styles and perceptions of teacher-learner role. Chapter Five aims at highlighting some of the subskills and strategies involved in each of the four skills with reference to specialized needs. It provides suggestions for selecting learning materials and some teaching implications. The final chapter discusses some conclusions about the implications which this research provides for ESP instruction and course design

ANN for English Alphabet Prediction

Abstract: In this paper an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model, for predicting the Letters from twenty dissimilar fonts for each letter. The character images were, initially, based on twenty dissimilar fonts and each letter inside these twenty fonts was arbitrarily distorted to yield a file of 20,000 distinctive stimuli. Every stimulus was transformed into 16 simple numerical attributes (arithmetical moments and edge amounts) which were then ascended to be suitable into a range of numeral values from 0 to 15. We naturally chose, arbitrarily, 1,000 distinctive stimuli for this research. We made certain that the scattering remnants the similar after selecting the one thousand stimuli. In this research, a neural network tool (Just NN) was used for the purpose of predicting to classify every of a huge number of black and white four-sided pixel displays as one of the 26 capital letters in the English language

Rekondisi Mesin Bubut DoALL LT 13 BU01 di Laboratorium Mekanik Politeknik Manufaktur Negeri Bangka Belitung

This paper discusses the process of restoring the original condition (recondition) of DoAll LT 13 Bu01 by focusing on electrical system improvements, geometric precision and machine performance. Direct observation methods are applied to solve problems that include cause and effect relationships using 5 (five) why analyzes. The reconditioning stage starts from the initial data collection of damage obtained by visual inspection, function testing and geometric testing on the machine; then proceed with analyzing the damage; and corrective actions based on the results of the analysis. Functional testing methods, geometric deviation tests, machine performance tests are performed to see the achievement of recondition goals. Based on the results of the tests performed, the function of the electrical system returned to normal, the average value of geometric deviation still satisfied based on ISO-1708 standard and machine performance for spindle rotation value with 5% deviation, the value of the roundness and taper work-piece results of 0 and 0.004mm / 255mm, respectively and spindle vibration in the range of 0.33 - 0.66 mm / s RMS for speed 50 - 2500 RPM is still considered normal based on ISO 10816 standards

Virtual Machines Embedding for Cloud PON AWGR and Server Based Data Centres

In this study, we investigate the embedding of various cloud applications in PON AWGR and Server Based Data Centres

Aktivitas Ekstrak Kulit Bawang Merah (Allium Ascalonicum L.) terhadap Pertumbuhan Bakteri Streptococcus Mutans Penyebab Karies Gigi

Onion (Allium ascalonicum L.) is one of the most commonly used spices other than as a cooking spice as well as traditional medicine. The use of red onions is restricted to the meat alone, while the skin contains many chemical compounds that can be used as antibacterials such as flavonoids, saponins, tannins, glycosides and steroids or triterpenoids regarded as waste. This study aims to determine the inhibition power of onion skin extract (Allium ascalonicum L.) on the growth of Streptococcus mutans bacteria. The type of research used was experimental research consisting of three treatments, two controls: positive control and negative control with three repetitions. This research is done by cylinder cup method. Onion skin extract was obtained from maceration using 96% ethanol solvent. The test sample in this study was made with concentrations of 10%, 20% and 30%. The results showed that onion skin extracts with concentrations of 10%, 20% and 30% had mean inhibitions of 1.33 mm, 2.12 mm and 2.51 mm. The result of ANOVA test showed that F count (205,098 > F table (3,478) so that BNT further test showed that there is real effect difference of onion skin extract on the growth of Streptococcus mutans bacteria

3D-FDTD Method for Analysis of Rectangular Waveguide Loaded with Anisotropic Dielectric Material

One of the most popular techniques to solve electromagneticproblems numerically is using finite-difference timedomain(FDTD) method. The method has been successfullyapplied to an extremely wide variety of electromagnetic problems.The essential reason resides in the fact that the FDTD methoditself is extremely simple even for analyzing in a three-dimensional(3D) system. In this paper, the analysis of resonant frequencyfor a rectangular waveguide which is loaded with anisotropicdielectric material is numerically investigated based on 3D-FDTDmethod. The wave equations and modes that appear in thewaveguide are analyzed theoretically in which the results areapplied to validate the numerical result obtained from 3D-FDTDmethod. For comparison, an empty rectangular waveguide anda rectangular waveguide fully loaded with isotropic dielectricmaterial are also analyzed both theoretically and numerically.From the result, it shows that a good agreement has been achievedbetween theoretical calculation and 3D-FDTD numerical resultswith their discrepancies of 0.26–2.32%

Improving Teacher Performance using Data Mining

This study examines the factors associated with the assessment of teacher's performance. To improve the teacher performance, good prediction of training course that will be obtained by teacher in one way to reach the highest level of quality in Teacher performance, but there is no certainty if there are accurately determine Teacher advantage and increase its efficiency through this session. In this case the real data is collected for teachers from the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Gaza City. It contains data from the academic qualifications for teachers as well as their experience and courses. The data includes three years and questionnaire contains many questions about the course and length of service in the ministry. We propose a model to evaluate their performance through the use of techniques of data mining like association, classification rules (Decision Tree, Rule Induction, K-NN, Naïve Bayesian (Kernel)) to determine ways that can help them to better serve the educational process and hopefully improve their performance and thus reflect it on the performance of teachers in the classroom. In each tasks, we present the extracted knowledge and describe its importance in teacher performance domain