A Structural Model of the Relationships Between Teacher, Peer, and Parental Support, Behavioural Engagement, Academic Efficacy and Cognitive Engagement of Secondary School Adolescents

The present investigation examined the hypothesized structural relationships between teacher, parental, and peer academic and emotional support on adolescents' cognitive engagement directly and indirectly through academic efficacy and behavioural engagement. A cross-sectional study utilizing survey method, the present study examined perceived academic and emotional support from teachers, classmates and parents via instruments, which were adapted from a number of established measures. A total of 450 adolescents (selected via multistage cluster sampling) from eleven secondary schools in the state of Kedah in Malaysia took part in the survey. The psychometric properties of the instruments were assessed through reliability analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Through the various analysis conducted, the instrument used in the present study is valid to be used in the local educational settings. Utilizing Structural Equation Modeling via AMOS version 16.0, the structural model was tested against the data for its fitness. Results indicated that academic efficacy and behavioural engagement did serve as plausible mediators in the relationships between support factors and cognitive engagement. Specifically, teacher academic support and parental emotional support emerged as two salient predictors in the indirect relationships between support factors and cognitive engagement. Peer academic support was the only variable that had direct association with cognitive engagement. In addition to the preceding findings, results also indicated that the model for male and female differed significantly in that there were limited significant paths for the male model whereas there were a number of significant paths in the female model. Apparently, parental emotional support became the only indirect predictor on cognitive engagement for male adolescents whereas teacher academic and emotional support as well as parental academic and emotional support both contributed towards cognitive engagement indirectly through academic efficacy and behavioural engagement for female adolescents. Female adolescents also perceived significantly higher peer academic and emotional support and their level of cognitive engagement were significantly higher compared with their male counterparts. Additionally, younger adolescents received significantly higher parental academic support compared with older adolescents. On the other hand, older adolescents received significantly higher teacher emotional support compared with younger adolescents. The findings support the assumptions of Social Cognitive theory through its Triadic Determinism Principle whilst at the same time lends support to the Bronfenbrenner Ecological approach, Person Environment Fit theory as well as Social Capital theory. Lastly, theoretical as well as practical implications of the study are also discussed

An Energy-driven Network Function Virtualization for Multi-domain Software Defined Networks

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) in Software Defined Networks (SDN) emerged as a new technology for creating virtual instances for smooth execution of multiple applications. Their amalgamation provides flexible and programmable platforms to utilize the network resources for providing Quality of Service (QoS) to various applications. In SDN-enabled NFV setups, the underlying network services can be viewed as a series of virtual network functions (VNFs) and their optimal deployment on physical/virtual nodes is considered a challenging task to perform. However, SDNs have evolved from single-domain to multi-domain setups in the recent era. Thus, the complexity of the underlying VNF deployment problem in multi-domain setups has increased manifold. Moreover, the energy utilization aspect is relatively unexplored with respect to an optimal mapping of VNFs across multiple SDN domains. Hence, in this work, the VNF deployment problem in multi-domain SDN setup has been addressed with a primary emphasis on reducing the overall energy consumption for deploying the maximum number of VNFs with guaranteed QoS. The problem in hand is initially formulated as a "Multi-objective Optimization Problem" based on Integer Linear Programming (ILP) to obtain an optimal solution. However, the formulated ILP becomes complex to solve with an increasing number of decision variables and constraints with an increase in the size of the network. Thus, we leverage the benefits of the popular evolutionary optimization algorithms to solve the problem under consideration. In order to deduce the most appropriate evolutionary optimization algorithm to solve the considered problem, it is subjected to different variants of evolutionary algorithms on the widely used MOEA framework (an open source java framework based on multi-objective evolutionary algorithms).Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE INFOCOM 2019 Workshop on Intelligent Cloud Computing and Networking (ICCN 2019

Ke arah kebolehpasaran graduan: pertalian antara pendekatan pembelajaran dengan kemahiran insaniah dalam kalangan pelajar IPT berteraskan Islam

Kajian yang dijalankan ini bermatlamat untuk menilai sejauh mana kemahiran insaniah dalam kalangan pelajar di dua buah IPT berteraskan Islam di Malaysia selain melihat sejauh manakah pendekatan pelajaran pelajar menyumbang kepada kemahiran insaniah setelah dikawal faktor gender. Mengambil pendekatan kuantitatif dan kaedah tinjauan, kajian telah mengadaptasi instrumen Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI) (Duff, 1997) untuk mengukur jenis-jenis pendekatan pembelajaran yang diguna oleh pelajar. Kajian juga mengadaptasi instrumen Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) (Wilson & Lizzion, 1997) untuk mengukur kemahiran insaniah selain item soalan yang dibina sendiri oleh pengkaji. Seramai 233 orang pelajar jurusan Pengajian Islam pelbagai cabang telah mengambil bahagian di dalam kajian ini. Menggunapakai persampelan bertujuan, responden terdiri daripada pelajar tahun akhir sahaja. Berdasarkan analisis model persamaan berstruktur, data kajian menunjukkan wujudnya hubungan yang positif antara pendekatan pembelajaran berstrategi dengan kemahiran insaniah. Walau bagaimanapun, terdapat hubungan yang signifikan negatif antara pendekatan luaran dengan kemahiran insaniah. Hasil kajian juga menunjukkan terdapatnya perbezaan pendekatan pembelajaran dan kemahiran insaniah berdasarkan gender. Kemahiran insaniah pelajar lelaki lebih tinggi berbanding pelajar perempuan. Dapatan kajian menyokong model 3Ps Biggs yang menunjukkan kepentingan proses (pendekatan pembelajaran) ke atas hasil pembelajaran (kemahiran insaniah). Beberapa implikasi kajian juga dibincangkan khususnya dalam konteks kemahiran insaniah agar kebolehpasaran pelajar disiplin Pengajian Islam dapat ditingkatkan

Autophagic Cell Death Is Induced by Acetone and Ethyl Acetate Extracts from Eupatorium odoratum In Vitro: Effects on MCF-7 and Vero Cell Lines

Eupatorium odoratum (EO) contains many biologically active compounds, the anticancer effects of which are not well documented. This study evaluates the cytotoxic effects and mechanism of action of EO extracts on MCF-7 and Vero cell lines. Evaluation of the cytotoxic activity using MTT assay, morphological alterations, and apoptosis were carried out. Autophagy was evaluated by LC3-A protein expression. Cytotoxic activity, membrane blebbing and ballooning at 24 hours, replacement by mass vacuolation, and double membrane vesicles mimicking autophagy and cell death were observed in the cancer cells. No apoptosis was observed by DNA fragmentation assay. Overexpression of LC3-A protein indicated autophagic cell death. Cell cycle analysis showed G0 and G2/M arrest. The Vero cells did not show significant cell death at concentrations <100 μg/mL. These results thus suggest that acetone and ethyl acetate extracts of EO induce cell death through induction of autophagy and hold potential for development as potential anticancer drugs

The roles of social support in promoting adolescents' classroom cognitive engagement through academic self-efficacy

Purpose – The main aim of the present investigation was to examine the role of teacher, peer, and parental academic and emotional support in predicting adolescent cognitive engagement, especially within the context of ESL classrooms. Method – The present study examined the availability of academic and emotional support from teachers, classmates and parents as perceived by adolescents, via instruments which were adapted from a number of established measures. This cross-sectional study utilized the survey method, and a total of 450 adolescents from 11 secondary schools in Malaysia, representing early and middle adolescence, took part in the survey. The study assessed each source of support namely teacher, peers and parents within one model. Findings – Findings from the structural equation modelling suggest that both teacher and parental support are significantly related to adolescent cognitive engagement through their academic efficacy, thus lending support for a full mediation model while peer support was directly related to cognitive engagement. Significance – Even though parents and teachers played important roles in influencing adolescent cognitive engagement (as suggested by previous studies), this study suggests that the relationship was through academic efficacy, which had served as a mediating variable. One of the contributions of this study is that its findings supported the inclusion of student motivational beliefs in explaining the relationship between support factors and engagement. This study had also examined the unique contribution of emotional support. Additionally, it was found that research should not disregard the importance of peers in promoting cognitive engagement directly