Small Gifts

This poem touches on a perfect moment where the world stands still and you take everything in. This precious moment is one that is taken for granted and one that we don't recognize or even care for in the moment and watch as it passes us by. It also touches on the loss of a loved one and letting go and the bliss that comes with it

Effects of Dialogue Journal Writing and Quickwriting on Language Anxiety and Writing Performance

The purpose of this study is to compare the effects of dialogue journal writing to that of quickwriting in the teaching and learning of the English language. The effects of the treatments on language anxiety and writing performance were assessed. This ten week quasi-experimental study involved 96 matriculation college students. Data was derived from questionnaires and writing performance test administered prior to and after the treatments. Descriptive statistics, ANCOVA and t-test were employed to analyse the data. The findings of the study revealed that dialogue journal writing group's performance on language anxiety and writing showed significant improvement than that of the quickwriting group. Significant differences between the two groups in terms of communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation levels were also noted. In addition, the dialogue journal writing group was also seen to have significantly higher scores in the writing assessment categories namely content, organization, language use, vocabulary and mechanics compared to that of the quickwriting group. In sum, dialogue journal writing showed favourable effects on language anxiety and writing performance. The findings of the present study were in accordance with theoretical assumptions of dialogue journal writing, language anxiety and writing performance. The results provided support for the view that dialogue journal writing has the potential to bring about a non-threatening language-learning atmosphere necessary to reduce language anxiety and improve writing performance. The implication of the study suggests that dialogue journal writing could be beneficial in lowering language anxiety and improving writing quality in the second language classroo

Innovative Non-Thermal Food Processing Technologies Used By The Food Industry In The United States

This thesis discussed the non-thermal food processing technologies being used within the United States of America. The technologies discussed in this thesis are High- Pressure Processing (HHP), Pulsed Electric Field, Pulsed Light, Irradiation, Ultra Sound, Oscillating Magnetic Fields, and Cold Atmospheric Plasma. A survey was designed and conducted to study the major reasons behind a preference for a particular technology by the organization, and the limitations for not implementing specific technologies. The survey participants were management level, food scientists and, food technologists employed by food processing companies. The questionnaire consisted of ten questions related to demographics, current technology, barriers from other technologies, and research and development of new technologies. There were a total 223 respondents from various regions of the United States. The respondents had a wide array of industry experience. Of the respondents, 91% of the respondents had either a Bachelor’s Degree, Master’s Degree or Ph D. Thirty-six percent of the participants chose high pressure processing and 20 % chose pulsed electric as the most commonly used non-thermal food processing technologies. Rapidly increasing technologies included cold atmospheric plasma and oscillating magnetic fields. Seventyone percent mentioned the main driver for them to choose non-thermal food processing was better nutrient and sensory properties. As per the results, 41% of respondents believed the major limitations in implementing non-thermal food processing technologies was high investment. The results indicated the main drivers for innovation were equipment manufacturers and research. These researches were either academic or government funded

Study of Mechanical Properties of Hybrid Natural Fiber Composite

The present experimental study aims at learning the mechanical behaviour of hybrid natural fiber composites. Samples of several Jute-Bagasse-Epoxy & Jute-Lantana camara-Epoxy hybrids were manufactured using hand layup method where the stacking of plies was alternate and the weight fraction of fibre and matrix was kept at 40%-60%.Specimens were cut from the fabricated laminate according to the ASTM standards for different experiments. For Tensile test & flexural test samples were cut in Dog-bone shape and flat bar shape respectively. After that experiment is performed under Universal testing machine (UTM). ILSS (flexural strength) & Tensile strength were observed and compared to base values of epoxy polymer to perceive the change in strength. SEM analysis was done to ascertain the mode of failure

DESAIN TATA RUANG TERHADAP MINAT PENGUNJUNG SISWA DI PERPUSTAKAAN SEKOLAH

This study aims to determine the spatial layout of the interest of visitors in the Library of SMA Negeri 1 Ciwidey. The research uses descriptive qualitative methods. This study involved three informants, namely one librarian and two users. The results showed that the spatial design which includes furniture, air circulation, sound system, and comfort in the SMA Negeri 1 Ciwidey Library is good. This makes the interest of students visiting to take advantage of the high library. However, in terms of lighting and color management, the lighting is still dim and the paint color used is dark. This affects the activities of users in their activities in the library. In addition, the building area that is not in accordance with the number of users makes the room look cramped.Keywords: school library, spatial design, visitor interestABSTRAKPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui tata ruang terhadap minat pengunjung di Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 1 Ciwidey. Penelitian menggunggakan metode kualitatif deskriptif. Penelitian ini melibatkan tiga orang informan, yaitu satu orang pustakawan dan dua orang pemustaka.  Hasil Penelitian menunjukkan bahwa desain tata ruang yang meliputi perabot, sirkulasi udara, tata suara, dan kenyamanan di Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 1 Ciwidey sudah baik. Hal ini menjadikan minat kunjungan siswa untuk memanfaatkan perpustakaan tinggi. Namun, pada aspek pencahayaan dan tata warna masih kurang karena pencahayaan masih redup dan warna cat yang digunakan gelap. Hal ini berpengaruh dalam aktivitas pemustaka dalam beraktivitas diperpustakaan. Selain itu, adanya luas gedung yang belum sesuai dengan jumlah pemustaka menjadikan ruangan terlihat sempit

Urine Drug Screening at the Sleep Disorder Center

Aim Introduce UDS for all patients undergoing MSLT or MWT Eliminate false positive and negative results Optimize management of disorder Goal To have 100% of patients undergoing an MSLT or MWT to have a UD

Teacher Job Satisfaction and School Leadership

Teacher Job Satisfaction and School Leadership by Saroya N. Pendleton-Brown MSA, Fayetteville State University, 2011 BBA, Baker College, 1993 AAS, Jordan College, 1991 Doctoral Study Completed in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education August 2019 The problem in a middle eastern school was the high annual rate of teacher attrition, which is above 25% per year. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine teacher perceptions of the attrition rates as they relate to the school leadership style at this study site. Herzberg\u27s theory of motivation, which provides insights regarding job satisfaction, served as the conceptual framework that guided this study. The research questions were developed to examine teacher perceptions about administrative influences on teachers\u27 job satisfaction and the programs and services they believe may enhance morale. A case study design was used to capture the insights of 10 purposefully selected teachers from the target school to conduct semi-structured interviews. Emergent themes were identified through open coding, and the findings were developed and checked for trustworthiness through member checking and a process to identify convergence and divergence. The findings revealed that participants preferred leadership styles that were supportive, and they placed a high value on teacher input. A professional development program was designed to educate participants on the connection between leadership styles and teacher attrition. This program may contribute to positive social change by guiding educational leaders to establish an enhanced learning environment that is responsive to the social, cultural, and ethnic differences of the teachers in the middle east

Topological Learning for Robotic Exploration and Navigation in Uncertain Environments

The effectiveness of robot autonomy is governed by the ability to make decisions based on online sensor measurements and a prior belief of the environment. Uncertainty in the environment introduces challenges to robotic decision making. This thesis address two key robot decision making problems: exploration and navigation. The robotic exploration problem requires a robot to maximally observe an unknown environment. A key challenge of robotic exploration is dealing with prior map uncertainty that arises due to partial knowledge of the world at the beginning of the mission. Since the map is unknown, it is difficult to determine which action gains the most information. The robot navigation problem is to determine a sequence of states in a given environment to move the robot from a start to goal state while avoiding collisions. Sensors mounted on real robots have measurement noise which leads to uncertainty in the mapping of obstacles. This uncertainty in obstacle location makes it challenging to find collision free paths. Real-world environments consist of interesting topological structures such as rooms, corridors, connections, intersections, and loops. These topological structures can be exploited to address uncertainty in the environment. Computational topology methods can be utilized to robustly extract environment topology. In this thesis, we resolve robot decision-making challenges due to environment uncertainty by leveraging topological methods that are robust to noise. We first address prior map uncertainty by predicting unknown regions of subterranean environments. Our method involves a convolutional neural network and a novel loss that combines image inpainting features and topological features via persistent homology. Simulation results on four real mines and a dataset of procedurally-generated networks show our algorithm can exploit subtle topological structural cues in subterranean environments for efficient exploration. We then address sensor measurement uncertainty by constructing a topologically accurate roadmap from a probabilistic occupancy map.We propose an unsupervised topological learning technique with biased sampling in topologically important regions. Simulation results show a robot can search a collision-free and cost-effective path over the topological roadmap in low runtime. The proposed topological learning is a significant contribution to the two key problems of robot decision making. Our experimental results show a robot can successfully learn to exploit topological structures for online exploration of subterranean environments.Further we show that through topological biased sampling, a robot can construct a topologically accurate roadmap for robot navigation tasks

Facilitating ESL Students with Autism Learn Sight Vocabulary: Teachers

Teacher