Enhancing the Students Writing Ability by Using Comic Strips

This article reports on the results of a study aiming to investigate whether the comic strips can help students to enhance their writing skill in English. This study was conducted at the tenth class of SMA Negeri I Tapa 2014/2015 in academic years with 25 students as the participants. The text in focus was narrative. The study used an action research by using Kemmis and Taggart‟ s design that consists of four steps, namely planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The data were collected from observation and written test. The data of observation were obtained the teacher and students‟ activities in teaching learning writing. Whereas, the data of written test were obtained from the students‟ writing task in every cycle. Some aspects used to analyze the students writing ability, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics ones. The results indicates that despite some aspects that still need improvement, the use of comic strips can enhance students writing skill in narrative text. The portraits of students‟ progress in writing English narrative text of some cycles show that in the first cycle, only four of twenty five students (16%) who can write narrative texts as the successful indicator 80%. In the second cycle, ten students (40%) were success, then in the third cycle, twenty two students (88%) could reach the value 80 or more as the criteria of successful. Observation data shows that the students were motivated to write English narrative text by using comic strips both in group and individual works. Whereas, the commitment of English teacher as a model and colleagues to reflect and to renovate the teaching and learning process was running well on each cycle. Based on the results of the study, it is recommended that comic strips be implemented in other genres, notably recount text or other language skills, and other countries

The Study of Serum Complement C3, C4 and Immunoglobulin E IgE in Psoriasis Patients

The present study was aimed to find out the role of humoral immunity in the pathogenesis of psoriasis. Complements C3, C4 and immunoglobulin IgE .The study included 55 Iraqi patients with psoriasis 30 (15 females ,15 males) were untreated with any drugs. The other patient group consisted of 25 (9 female and 16 male) treated with a biological treatment (infliximab) ,and 30 (13 males ,12 females) healthy control group. Blood sample were withdrawn (5) ml of venous blood for both patients and members of the control ,to conduct the Immunological tests to determine the quantitative for each of total IgE by using (ELISA) and C3,C4 by Single Radial Immunodiffuse (SIRD). The results showed significant increase in the level of probability (

Financial Technologies: a Note on Mobile Payment

The financial market is currently disrupted by the rise of new technologies "FinTech” a short form for financial technology, which profoundly reshapes the financial intermediary structure and makes financial services more efficient. Mobile technology with Internet-enabled devices are the next logical phase of the World Wide Web campaign such as mobile phone taking over the mass market and will fundamentally change the way products are buy and sell as well as financial services especially the mobile payment system. This research examines changes payment method in financial services, particularly those involving mobile payments that can create new channels for consumers to purchase goods and services using mobile phone. Mobile payment application is ready to replace traditional cash, checks, credit and debit card throughout the country. In this stage of development, the current situation of mobile payment market, review the previous literature on mobile payment services, analysis use of mobile payment worldwide and various initiatives use mobile phones to offer financial services for those ‘unbanked\u27

Studies of monomer impregnation and polymerised in situ in wood using dynamic mechanical thermal analyser.

Ten tropical hardwoods are impregnated with methyl methacrylate and polymerised in‐situ by use of catalysts and heat techniques. Treatability of the wood, as determined from the fractional volumetric retentions of monomers that are a fraction of voids filled by the impregnant, showed that the mean retention range from 15·03% (Acacia Mangium) to 56·59% (Cratoxylum Arborescens). The penetration of the monomer evaluated using ultrasonic waves showed that the treated wood had higher velocities which indicated significant increase in density. The present paper deals with the viscoelastic relaxation of polymerised treated wood. The efficiency of the monomer as a plasticiser is studied through the temperature dependence of the storage modulus (E′) and loss tangent (tan δ) of treated and untreated wood by dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) over a temperature in the range from −100 to 200°C. The storage modulus E′ decreased with temperature and as the maximum mechanical damping developed, the glass transition temperature (T g) of the plasticised wood decreased with the plasticiser content

A comparative study for estimating the parameters of the second order moving average process

EnMoving Average process is a representation of a time series written as a finite linear combination of uncorrelated random variables. Our main interest is to compare a classical estimation method; namely Exact Maximum Likelihood Estimation (EMLE) with the Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) approach for estimating the parameters of the second order moving average processes. In this paper, in applying EMLE we have to find the exact likelihood function through deriving the probability density function of the series. Differentiating the function with respect to the parameters, we can obtain the exact maximum likelihood estimates. On the other hand, the idea of GME is to write the unknown parameters and error terms as the expected value of some proper probability distributions defined over some supports. We carry a simulation study to compare between the presented estimation techniques

Optical and electrical characteristics of (LiCl)x(P2O5)1-x glass.

Homogeneous (LiCl) x (P2O5)1 − x glasses were synthesised using a melt-quenching method for x = 0.1–0.6 in the interval of 0.05. The amorphous structure of the samples was evident by the X-ray diffraction spectrum. The short range structures of the binary phosphate samples were examined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, whilst the density of the samples was measured as supportive data for the investigations. The results of refractive indices as measured using an ellipsometer reveal the homogeneity of samples and was found to depend on the glass composition. The electrical properties of the glasses were investigated by ac impedance spectroscopy from 10 mHz to 1 MHz for temperatures ranging from room temperature to 573 K. An estimation of the bulk resistivity was obtained by taking the intercepts on the real axis at low frequencies of the complex impedance plot. The dc conductivities derived from the reciprocal of resistivity values were found to obey the Arrhenius relationship, and its activation energy shows a decreasing trend with the increase in LiCl content in the glass. Lastly, an equivalent circuits consisting of real and complex capacitors is proposed to describe the dielectric response of the glass

Bioremediation of maleic anhydride contaminated soil

This paper presents a bench-scale study of bioremediation of soil contaminated with maleic anhydride. A quantity of 300 kg of contaminated soil was collected from a petrochemical plant in Malaysia and divided into three portions in order to investigate the effects of nutrient addition as well as mechanical aeration on the biodegradation rate of the contaminants. Online parameters measured included moisture content, redox potential, temperature and pH. The highest first-order biodegradation rate constant was determined to be 6.658 day-1 for soil pile with addition of nutrients and mechanical aeration

Laboratory investigation of suction distribution in a modified capillary barrier system

This paper investigated the effect of transport layer in the diversion capacity of natural capillary barrier system using laboratory slope model. The slope model was constructed with stainless steel and 5 mm thick acrylic sheets. Grade VI and grade V soils classified as sandy silt of very high plasticity (MVS) and silty gravel of high plasticity (MHG), respectively were arranged in the slope model with sand and gravel transport layers sandwiched at their interface. The model was subjected to different rainfall intensities using rainfall simulator to determine the behaviour of water flow and suction distribution in the slope model. The results obtained show a modification in the suction distribution behaviour and the natural capillary barrier effect was sustained. It was also observed that a transport layer formed with gravel material was more effective in diverting the infiltrating water compared to that of gravelly sand. This occurred because the upper grade VI layer possessed capillary forces due to its finer pore structures and relatively large air entry value, thus, it retained the infiltrating water, and the gravel transport layer possessed relatively larger pore structures compared to the grade VI layer and hence it possessed higher hydraulic conductivity values and small water entry value. This arrangement, provide a capillary break and allowed the infiltrating water to flow above the interface. Therefore, the inclusion of transport layer provides a definite path through which the infiltrating water flows and diverted laterally. Thus, improving the performance of natural capillary barrier effect