Effect Of Water Quality And Marine Phytoplankton Community Structure On Shrimp Production In Tropical Ponds

Production of giant black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) in earthen ponds in the tropical region may vary as the pond matures, depending on water quality and phytoplankton community structure. The objectives of the present study were to determine water quality and marine phytoplankton succession in ponds of different ages, to nutritional value of isolated species of a dominant cyanobacterium in the shrimp ponds in comparison with a beneficial diatom and green alga and to investigate how phytoplankton community structure could be affected by alteration of macronutrient concentrations in mixed cultures. The field study was carried out in an intensive shrimp farm in Kuala Selangor, Malaysia. Phytoplankton and water samples were collected from ponds of different ages categorized as new (<1yr), intermediate (2-5yrs) and old (>10yrs), for 16 weeks of shrimp culture. Fluctuation of nutrient and chlorophyll-a concentrations were not different from other tropical shrimp ponds in the region. Cyanobacteria (five genera), diatoms (24 genera), dinoflagellates (four genera) and green algae (three genera) were four dominant groups of phytoplankton found in all the shrimp ponds. Diatoms were dominant during the early stage of the culture in new ponds whilst blue–green algae dominated intermediate and old ponds throughout the culture period. Shrimp production in new ponds were significantly higher than intermediate and old ponds (p<0.05) probably due to the abundance of diatoms at the beginning of the culture cycle, suitable as live feed for zooplankton and shrimp larvae. Pseudanabaena tenuis was found abundant in all pond categories throughout the culture period. The cyanobacterium was isolated for surface structure and proximate analysis in the laboratory. Result showed that P. tenuis have lower nutritional value in comparison with a common diatom (Chaetoceros calcitrans) and a green alga (Chlorella pyrenoidosa), indicating that is was not part of consumable algae among grazers. All the above microalgae species were used in the nutrient enrichment bioassays in the laboratory to determine the growth and competition among species when grown singly and in mixed cultures. The result showed that the diatom grew well in single cultures and competed successfully over other microalgae in mixed cultures when silica concentrations increased whilst other essential growth nutrients were not limited. This present research gives an idea of how shrimp production in ponds of different ages could be affected by water quality and phytoplankton community structure and how alteration of nutrient concentrations could be use to stimulate growth of beneficial algae and suppress harmful algae in mixed culture systems which need further research for better understandings

Hopelesseness And Pessimism Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgenders (Lgbt): Effect of Counseling on Problem Coping Strategies

The aim of this study is to develop effective counseling approach for the socially deprived and discriminated lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Northern Iraq to enhance  the physical and mental well-being. The study aims to develop effective problem-coping strategies to deal with social, economic, and political setbacks. The problem identified to conduct this study is that the LGBT  people in Northern Iraq are not only inacceptable as normal members of the society but they also face rejection, isolation, and discrimination in society. This consistent hatred and discrimination against  the LGBT people develop many psychological disorders that include anxiety, depression, isolation, pessimism, and hopelessness. These psychological disorders enforce suicide attempts and socially deviated behavior among the LGBT people. The study has a qualitative research design and the researcher conducted 10 interviews with LGBTs in northern Iraq. The results of the study outlined that LGBTs in Iraq have social and psychological issues that contribute to hopelessness and pessimism among LGBTs. The society has zero tolerance in the name of religion and the conservative norms do not allow these people to live their life as normal people. They commit suicide or get into depression because of unending suffering. However, the LGBTs that received counseling improved their condition as compared to those that could not receive counseling services. Counseling helped these people to come out of depression and live a normal life by accepting the reality

INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF BUSINESS STRATEGY AND INTERNAL CONTROL ON AUDIT QUALITY

Purpose: Auditing will improve the quality of financial information. However, in today's audit quality affected by the environment. The purpose of this study to investigate the effect of business strategy and internal control on audit quality in listed companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange. Methodology: This is applied research in terms of its purpose and in terms of its method is correlation analysis with the regression approach. For this inference method, this research is descriptive-analytic. For this important statistical society, companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 2010-2017 for 8 years have the necessary conditions. According to the constraints defined in the research, companies with qualifying conditions of 107 companies and 856 years-company of observation were collected. To test the hypotheses, the multivariate regression technique was used using panel data. Main Findings: The business strategy modifies the relationship between the auditor's specialty in the industry and the internal control of audit quality. Implications: The control structure can provide an understanding of the difference between the business strategy and its diversion, which is necessary for the auditor's expertise in the industry. It is proposed to combine business strategy and audit planning, we can identify the weakness of the internal control of the system in order to improve the quality of the audit and create value for the stakeholders. Novelty: The study considered the effects of business strategy on the relationship between internal control and audit quality

Bioremediation of phenanthrene-polluted soil using Bacillus kochii AHV-KH14 as a halo-tolerant strain isolated from compost

Background: Phenanthrene (PHE) is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) with crystalline structure of C14H10, which was produced from incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons and fossil fuels and can cause harmful biological effects. Bioremediation using halophilic bacteria is payed attention over chemical methods due to considerable benefits. Methods: In the present study, a halo-tolerant bacterium Bacillus kochii strain AHV-KH14 was isolated from municipal compost, and used for the bioremediation of PHE from the contaminated soil. The effects of operational parameters including soil/water ratio, initial inoculum size, PHE concentration, and salinity on the bioremediation performance were investigated. Results: A biodegradation efficiency of about to 98% was obtained for PHE concentration of 50 mg/ kg and salinity level of 1.5%. By increasing salinity content PHE concentration, PHE biodegradation rate decreased significantly. It was found that the bioremediation efficiency decreased with increasing PHE concentration. It was also revealed that for the unwashed soil sample, cumulative concentrations of different hydrocarbons played an important role in decreasing the efficiency of bioremediation. Conclusion: A natural hydrocarbon-contaminated soil sample with total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) concentration of 2350 mg/kg was subjected to bioremediation using the selected conditions of operational parameters, and a biodegradation rate of 17.7% was obtained. Keywords: Biodegradation, Soil pollution, Phenanthrene, Bacillus kochii strain AHV-KH14, Compos

A Study of Quality Assurance Practices in the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia

This article looks at the quality assurance practices amongst three (3) groups of staff in the School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia, i.e. lecturers, resident tutors and support staff. 9 dimensions of the Quality Assurance Practices i.e. Staff Development, Planning, Work Process, Team Work, Prioritise Customers, Performance Evaluation, System For Sending Of Learning Materials, System For Receiving Of Assignments From Students and Management of Students’ Records are identified in this study. The results show that quality assurances practices amongst three groups are different. Profile Analysis used in this research shows that quality assurance practices amongst lecturers and support staff are parallel. Results also show that quality assurance practices of resident tutors have profiles that differ from the lecturers and support staff

AICSD: Adaptive Inter-Class Similarity Distillation for Semantic Segmentation

In recent years, deep neural networks have achieved remarkable accuracy in computer vision tasks. With inference time being a crucial factor, particularly in dense prediction tasks such as semantic segmentation, knowledge distillation has emerged as a successful technique for improving the accuracy of lightweight student networks. The existing methods often neglect the information in channels and among different classes. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a novel method called Inter-Class Similarity Distillation (ICSD) for the purpose of knowledge distillation. The proposed method transfers high-order relations from the teacher network to the student network by independently computing intra-class distributions for each class from network outputs. This is followed by calculating inter-class similarity matrices for distillation using KL divergence between distributions of each pair of classes. To further improve the effectiveness of the proposed method, an Adaptive Loss Weighting (ALW) training strategy is proposed. Unlike existing methods, the ALW strategy gradually reduces the influence of the teacher network towards the end of training process to account for errors in teacher's predictions. Extensive experiments conducted on two well-known datasets for semantic segmentation, Cityscapes and Pascal VOC 2012, validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of mIoU and pixel accuracy. The proposed method outperforms most of existing knowledge distillation methods as demonstrated by both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Code is available at: https://github.com/AmirMansurian/AICSDComment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 table

Pengaruh Penggunaan Kartu Bergambar Bintang Terhadap Motivasi Belajar Pengetahuan Anak Kelompok B Tk Aba 11 Sidokumpul Paciran Lamongan Tahun Pelajaran 2017/2018

Penelitian ini dilatar belakangi oleh rendahnya motivasi belajar pengetahuan anak dalam proses belajar mengajar. Hal itu dapat dilihat dari hasil motivasi belajar pengetahuan anak sebelum adanya kartu bergambar bintang. Anak tidak begitu tertarik dengan pembelajaran yang disampaikan oleh guru ketika proses pembelajaran berlangsung. Penelitian ini mempunyai tujuan untuk mengukur pengaruh penggunaan kartu bergambar bintang terhadap motivasi belajar pengetahuan anak kelompok B di TK Aisyiyah Bustanul Athfal 11 Sidokumpul Paciran Lamongan hasil penelitian ini dapat membantu menumbuhkan motivasi pengetahuan anak. Guru dapat memberikan umpan balik dengan memberikan rangsangan pengetahuan pada anak. Penilitian ini juga dapat membantu guru untuk mempertimbangkan bahwa kartu kartu bergambar bintang efektif untuk motivasi belajar pengetahuan anak. Hasil penelitian ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan metode penelitian kuantitatif pearson product moment berupa angket yang diisi oleh guru sebagai pembuktian yang kongkrit bahwasanya kartu bergambar bintang dapat memberikan pengaruh terhadap motivasi belajar pengetahuan anak. Subyek dari peneliti merupakan populasi anak kelompok B. Berdasarkan dari hasil analisis sebelum adanya kartu bergambar bintang dapat diketahui nilai angket yang telah diisi sangat rendah. Kemudian peneliti membuktikan bahwa kartu bergambar bintang sangat berpengaruh terhadap motivasi belajar pengetahuan anak. Hal ini dapat dilihat dari keofesien korelasi antara variabel x dan y berupa hasil angket yang bernilai 0,93, dimana korelasi ini termasuk korelasi sangat kuat. Hal ini dapat dibandingkan bahwa nilai “rxy” lebih besar dari “r tabel” atau “rtab” baik pada taraf signifikansi 1% yaitu ( 0,93 > 0,463) ataupun taraf signifikansi 5% (0,93 > 0,361). Hal ini, menunjukkan bahwa adanya pengaruh sangat kuat penggunaan kartu bergambar bintang terhadap motivasi belajar pengetahuan anak kelompok B TK ABA 11 Sidokumpul Paciran Lamongan

Enhancing the effectiveness of the balanced scorecard with scenario planning

Purpose: This paper aims to propose the idea of linking the use of the balanced scorecard with scenario planning. Scenario planning emphasizes the development of a strategic plan that is robust across different scenarios. This ensures that the strategy implemented using the balanced scorecard is linked to external conditions and takes into consideration the expected changes in the environment. Design/methodology/approach: This paper examines the criticisms of the balanced scorecard and proposes the use of scenario planning as a way of overcoming some of these limitations. Findings: It argues that the use of scenario planning is capable of overcoming the lack of external orientation in the balanced scorecard. Scenario planning also helps make the balanced scorecard more reflective of changes that may appear in the future. This ensures that the scorecard developed is not merely a linear extension from the present. Research limitations/implications: Studies need to be undertaken to examine whether integrating scenario planning with the balanced scorecard leads to more effective strategy implementation. Practical implications: Adopters of the balanced scorecard need to recognize that developing a balanced scorecard system needs to be preceded by a strategy formulation process that incorporates an understanding of how future events may evolve. This can be achieved using scenario planning. Originality/value: This study is probably the first attempt to link the implementation of the balanced scorecard and scenario planning

Evaluation of lead and cadmium concentrations in lipstick and eye pencil cosmetics

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the concentrations of lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) in lipstick and eye pencil cosmetics of different grades in the markets of Iran. Methods: This descriptive study was conducted in Ahvaz city in 2018. Sixty different samples of lipstick and eye pencil of three common brands were selected and analyzed using the Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) and the results were compared with standard values recommended by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The analysis of lipsticks was based on producer country and colors and producer country only for eye pencil. Results: The mean concentrations of Pb and Cd were 41.86 and 53.42 μg/g, respectively. Concentrations of lead were higher than those of Cd in lipsticks, while for eye pencil, Cd showed higher concentrations. The overall results indicated that in all brands and colors of lipsticks, only 33% of the samples had Pb content less than the FDA limit, and among lipstick samples, 44% had Cd concentration less than the FDA limit of 3 μg/g, however, in 100% of the eye pencil samples, the concentration of Cd was higher than the recommended value of 3 μg/g. Conclusion: Given the health risks of exposure to heavy metals and in order to increase community awareness about the harmful effects of cosmetics, it is necessary to monitor the concentration of these toxic elements in these products and encourage the manufactures to meet the FDA standards. Keywords: Lead, Cadmium, Cosmetics, Environmental pollutio