Discourse Awareness And Issues In Est Materials Design

Understanding text structure (knowledge of discourse and genre) within specific contexts plays a very important part in EST materials development for language teaching and learning. It is argued that for students to comprehend particular texts and to learn a language well, language teaching should begin with an understanding of text structure. It is thus essential for EST teachers to be aware that linguistic patterns exist across stretches of text within different text types and an understanding of these patterns would make text comprehension and reading to learn in the content area easier. Thus, teachers need to be trained to develop discourse-based materials as an understanding of different text types can enhance language learning. This paper discusses the importance of discourse awareness and issues of design, development and application in the development of EST materials in relation to written texts by introducing frameworks for designing discourse-based materials

Household decision-making about delivery in health facilities: evidence from Tanzania.

This study investigated how partners' perceptions of the healthcare system influence decisions about delivery-location in low-resource settings. A multistage population-representative sample was used in Kasulu district, Tanzania, to identify women who had given birth in the last five years and their partners. Of 826 couples in analysis, 506 (61.3%) of the women delivered in the home. In multivariate analysis, factors associated with delivery in a health facility were agreement of partners on the importance of delivering in a health facility and agreement that skills of doctors are better than those of traditional birth attendants. When partners disagreed, the opinion of the woman was more influential in determining delivery-location. Agreement of partners regarding perceptions about the healthcare system appeared to be an important driver of decisions about delivery-location. These findings suggest that both partners should be included in the decision-making process regarding delivery to raise rates of delivery at facility

The impact of security bollards on evacuation flow

Individual bollard and bollard arrays (BA) have become a common design of Vehicle Security Barriers surrounding crowded spaces, in particular busy rail and underground stations, airports and many key commercial and public buildings. While guidance on the general installation of BA is available this earlier advice did not take into consideration the potential impact a BA may have on pedestrian flow during emergency evacuation. To address this issue, FSEG in collaboration with the CPNI and DfT investigated the potential impact that security bollards may have on evacuation flows through a series of full-scale experiments. In total 50 trials were conducted over three days on two weekends in March 2013. The experiment for each unique trial set up was repeated three times in order to ensure that the collected data was repeatable and representative of the trial conditions. The trials took place in the Queen Anne Courtyard of the University of Greenwich. Some 630 participants were recruited to take part in the trials, of which 458 actually participated. The trials were designed to capture the conditions produced as the population left a simulated station exit: at the point of exit (Exit flow trials) and when this population is incident upon the BA (BA flow trials). These trials were designed to control a number of key parameters in order to explore two specific questions: How does BA stand-off distance impact exit flow? And how does the BA impact flow passing through the BA? A key finding from these trials is that if the BA stand-off distance is greater than 3m there is not expected to be any adverse impact on exit flow due to the presence of the BA. However, it is essential that the BA is sufficiently wide so that it does not restrict the natural diffusion of the crowd as it exits

Axial position estimation of conical shaped motor for green taxiing application

This paper considers the possibility of adopting a conical shaped motor for Green Taxiing (GT) application. This topology of motor has been selected in order to obviate the presence of external declutching system (i.e. mechanical or electromagnetic clutch) interposed between the electric actuator and the wheel. An axial force contributes to move the rotor inside-out of the stator (principle of sliding-rotor). The axial movement of the rotor can be monitored acting on the magnetizing current. The axial sensor-less position estimation method described hereafter envisages the possibility of evaluating the axial position of the rotor during the engaging and disengaging movement from the wheel. The axial position calculation is dependent on the inductance of the motor. An “on¬line” computation of the position has been implemented through the use of high-frequency injection signals

Creativity and Entrepreneurial Tendencies Among Form Two Malaysian Students

The aim of this study is to design a reliable and valid instrument to assess entrepreneurial tendency and to investigate the relationship of entrepreneurial tendency and creative personality among form two Malaysian students. A sample of 174 form two students taking entrepreneurship as a subject were chosen randomly from the four zones in Malaysia. The validated Entrepreneurship Tendency Inventory (ETI) and a measure of creative personality characteristics, Khatena Torrance Creative Perception Inventory (KTCPI) were administered. Factor analysis revealed the existence of eight factors namely, self-employed, business confidence, business intention, business anxiety, people dependent, forced decision, low self-confidence and contingent decision with internal consistencies ranging from 0.80 (self-employed) to 0.23 (low self-confidence). Self-employed, business confidence, business intention and people dependent are found to relate positively to entrepreneurial tendency. Business Anxiety has a very low correlation with entrepreneurial tendency. Students who perceive themselves as creative based on past creative performances have high levels of initiative, place more importance on what close relatives think and prefer challenging tasks and tend to have higher entrepreneurial tendencies. Further replication of this study is recommended to confirm the reliability and validity of ETI and to further elucidate the relationship between entrepreneurial tendencies and creative personality characteristic

Fatigue Crack Growth And Piezoelectric Property Decay Induced By Cyclic Electric Fields For An Actuation Piezoceramic

Degradation of piezoelectric properties of piezomaterials has long been a concern in the applications of actuators and sensors. In this work, alternating electric field induced fatigue crack growth and effect of cyclic electric field on piezoelectric property decay were characterized for a polarized PZT-PIC151. The results show that a relatively high alternating electric field drives the pre-existing microcracks to grow very fast initially due to the superposition of electrostriction induced stress and residual stress at the crack tip, then slow down gradually to becoming dormant. The butterfly loop evolution shows that cyclic electric field strongly degrades the piezoelectric properties due to the frequent domain switching. The output strain decays more than 50% after 106 electric cycles at 0.9 Ec for PIC 151 pellet bonded on an aluminum beam

Evacuation response behaviour of occupants in a large theatre during a live performance

This paper presents the results of an unannounced theatre evacuation involving 1200 occupants. The evacuation took place towards the end of a live theatre performance in the Marlowe Theatre in Kent, UK. In particular, Response Phase behaviours are discussed, and response time data is presented. A significant finding of this work which is different to other reported work is that the occupant response time distribution, while following the typical log-normal distribution is related to the geometrical positioning of the occupants relative to proximity to exit aisles and exits. Response time is found to increase relative to seat distance from the exit aisles and distance of the seat row to an exit. The identified trends in response time distribution will have a profound impact on the analysis of evacuation times and congestion levels determined using agent based evacuation models and so should be represented within these models. Based on these findings, a generalised methodology is proposed to distribute response time within a theatre for use in evacuation simulation applications. Further experimental analysis is required to determine whether these observations can be generalised and applied to other seated venues such as cinemas, music venues and sports arenas

Esl Writing Variability: Writing Tasks, Gender And Proficiency Level

Research focusing on L1 (native speakers of English) writers has shown that students tend to perform differently on different writing tasks. L1 students perform better on narrative and descriptive writing tasks than argumentative. In fact, some scholars have suggested that L1 students lack a schema for argumentative writing, which perhaps contribute to their poor performance on argumentative writing tasks. This tendency seems also applicable to L2 (non-native speakers of English) writers. This paper reports the findings of a study on the impact of narrative and argumentative writing tasks, gender and proficiency level on the quality of Malaysian English as a second language (ESL) learners\u27 writing. The findings of this study are discussed in the light of variability in ESL writing. Their implications for writing assessment practices are also highlighted

Quantification of Alterations in Cortical Bone Geometry Using Site Specificity Software in Mouse models of Aging and the Responses to Ovariectomy and Altered Loading.

Investigations into the effect of (re)modeling stimuli on cortical bone in rodents normally rely on analysis of changes in bone mass and architecture at a narrow cross-sectional site. However, it is well established that the effects of axial loading produce site-specific changes throughout bones' structure. Non-mechanical influences (e.g., hormones) can be additional to or oppose locally controlled adaptive responses and may have more generalized effects. Tools currently available to study site-specific cortical bone adaptation are limited. Here, we applied novel site specificity software to measure bone mass and architecture at each 1% site along the length of the mouse tibia from standard micro-computed tomography (μCT) images. Resulting measures are directly comparable to those obtained through μCT analysis (R (2) > 0.96). Site Specificity analysis was used to compare a number of parameters in tibiae from young adult (19-week-old) versus aged (19-month-old) mice; ovariectomized and entire mice; limbs subjected to short periods of axial loading or disuse induced by sciatic neurectomy. Age was associated with uniformly reduced cortical thickness and site-specific decreases in cortical area most apparent in the proximal tibia. Mechanical loading site-specifically increased cortical area and thickness in the proximal tibia. Disuse uniformly decreased cortical thickness and decreased cortical area in the proximal tibia. Ovariectomy uniformly reduced cortical area without altering cortical thickness. Differences in polar moment of inertia between experimental groups were only observed in the proximal tibia. Aging and ovariectomy also altered eccentricity in the distal tibia. In summary, site specificity analysis provides a valuable tool for measuring changes in cortical bone mass and architecture along the entire length of a bone. Changes in the (re)modeling response determined at a single site may not reflect the response at different locations within the same bone