The effects of teacher feedback on multiple-draft compositions in ESL classrooms

Teacher feedback plays a significant role in helping ESL learners acquire the writing skills. However, many research findings indicated that feedback on single draft essays does not help ESL learners much in improving the essays because these learners do not have the opportunity to revise, rewrite, and resubmit their work. Therefore, this study aims at examining the effects of teacher feedback on ESL learners’ compositions in terms of content, language and organization by instituting the multiple draft procedure. The participants of this study wrote a first draft; revised it after getting the feedback on content and further revised it after receiving feedback on language. The findings showed that there were significant mean differences in the content, language, organization and the total marks when the second and the third drafts were compared to the first draft

SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROFILE OF CYCLE RICKSHAW PULLERS: A CASE STUDY

The present paper is an attempt to analyze the socio-economic characteristics of cycle rickshaw pullers and to find out the causes of rickshaw pulling. The adverse effects of this profession on the health of the rickshaw pullers, the problems faced by them and their remedial measures have been also taken into account. The study is based on primary data collected through the field survey and direct questionnaire to the respondents in Aligarh city. The survey was carried out during the months of February and March, 2010. The overall analysis of the study reveals that the rickshaw pullers are one of the poorest sections of the society, living in abject poverty but play a pivotal role in intra-city transportation system. Neither is their working environment regulated nor their social security issues are addressed. They are also unaware about the governmental schemes launched for poverty alleviation and their accessibility in basic amenities and infrastructural facilities is also very poor

The Limits of Constitutional Deferral: Lessons from the History of the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan

In an important recent work, Rosalind Dixon and Tom Ginsburg noted that constitution writers regularly choose to defer to the future important questions of constitutional design. They argue that an “optimal” level of constitutional deferral might contribute to constitutional stability and help constitutions live longer. This Article argues that although constitution makers might choose to defer on many important questions of constitutional design to promote agreement, certain types of deferral might turn out to be counterproductive, and thus constitution writers’ choice to defer should be limited. The Article highlights that it is risky to defer to future legislatures the powers of institutions (such as apex courts) that are empowered under the constitution to answer other implicit deferrals. Deferring the powers of apex courts is extremely dangerous because such deferrals can potentially politicize the courts’ relationship with the political branches of the government. In response, the political branches of government might choose to resolve deferrals on the powers of apex courts in a retaliatory fashion that could limit the powers of apex courts and undermine the legitimacy and independence. Deferrals on the powers of the judiciary may simply give downstream legislatures a tool to hold apex courts hostage by threatening to amend their laws and strip them of their powers. To highlight this problem, this Article explores the decision of the makers of the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan to defer on the powers of the Supreme Court and the Independent Commission for the Supervision of the Implementation of the Constitution to interpret the Constitution and exercise all types of judicial review. Afghanistan’s experience operating under the 2004 Constitution gives an important example of the limits of constitutional deferral

Restraining Judicial Power: The Fragmented System of Judicial Review and Constitutional Interpretation in Afghanistan

Article published in the Michigan State International Law Review

The Usage of Genomic Selection Strategy in Plant Breeding

Major paradigm shift in plant breeding since the availability of molecular marker technology is that mapping and characterizing the genetic loci that control a trait will lead to improved breeding. Often, one of the rationales for cloning of QTL is to develop the “perfect marker” for MAS, perhaps based on a functional polymorphism. In contrast, an advantage of genomic selection is precisely its black box approach to exploiting genotyping technology to expedite genetic progress. This is an advantage in our view because it does not rely on a “breeding by design” engineering approach to cultivar development requiring knowledge of biological function before the creation of phenotypes. Breeders can therefore use genomic selection without the large upfront cost of obtaining that knowledge. In addition, genomic selection can maintain the creative nature of phenotypic selection which couple’s random mutation and recombination to sometimes arrive at solutions outside the engineer’s scope. Currently, the lion’s share of research on genomic selection has been performed in livestock breeding, where effective population size, extent of LD, breeding objectives, experimental design, and other characteristics of populations and breeding programs are quite different from those of crop species. Nevertheless, a great number of findings within this literature are very illuminating for genomic selection in crops and should be studied and built upon by crop geneticists and breeders. The application of powerful, relatively new statistical methods to the problem of high dimensional marker data for genomic selection has been nearly as important to the development of genomic selection as the creation of high-density marker platforms and greater computing power. The methods can be classified by what type of genetic architecture they try to capture

Comparative Study on Breaking Strength of Burnt Clay Bricks Using Novel Based Completely Randomized Design (CRD)

The aim of this study is to present the results of breaking strength tests for burnt clay bricks from various historical deposits. The native clay bricks production technique is the known method of brick making, particularly in South Asian countries. Numerous studies have been conducted on hand-molded formed bricks. The clay bricks that were considered for the comparative study, were made from four different clays sources. Their breaking strength was determined using for examining the maximum load at failure and the effects were investigated subsequently. The basic objective of this experimental study was to compare the breaking strength of locally fired clay bricks using a novel based completely randomized design via a single factor with four levels of clay sources representing the factors. For this purpose, 24 brick samples were made from four different clay sources while the breaking strength of each sample was measured. Pairwise comparison trials, including Duncan’s multiple range, Newman–keuls, Fisher’s least and Tukey’s tests were conducted. Based on experimental investigations, the results revealed that using analysis of variance at 95% CI, the difference in breaking strength between clay source of Hyderabad (A) and Rawalpindi (B), followed by Kohat (C) and Peshawar (D) was significant and also the difference among the means of these clay courses was significant which clearly exposed that the clay site and chemical composition has a great impression of the breaking strength of the burnt bricks