Segmentation of Tertiary Non-Native English Speaking Students’ Language Learning Strategies

The purpose of this study was to segment a sample from a population of non-native Englishspeaking university students into several distinct clusters based on the six dimensions of theStrategy Inventory of Language Learning. Results indicated four clusters (Strategic, Moderate,Low, & Unstrategic) based on the respondents’ tendencies to use various strategies.Furthermore, there were no differences found by gender or class level. However, a differencewas found based on major with Business and Education majors being significantly more likelyto be in the Unstrategic cluster than the Strategic cluster. The implication of this is that non-English majors need additional support in developing language-learning skills

Alliances as a Vehicle for eBusiness Transformation: An Empirical Study of the Antecedents and Outcomes of eBusiness Alliances

Since the commercialization of the World Wide Web, web technologies and the Internet have enabled companies to perform digital business operations more efficiently and effectively than ever before. These apparent gains in business performance have transformed e-Business operations from an exploratory action to a competitive necessity for most organizations. However, this e-Business transformation requires specific skills, capital, information, technology, access to markets, and core resources that many firms lack. Relatively little is known about how firms obtain these e-Business-specific resources and capabilities. One increasingly common approach appears to be the use of alliances. We know that firms engaging in e- Business transformation use a range of alliance forms to enhance their e-Business operations, however little is known about the nuances of e-Business alliance formation and the resultant effects. Drawing upon resource-based view, social exchange and institutional theories, our research objective is to: 1) identify the antecedents to e-Business alliance formation, 2) understand why firms choose a specific alliance form over other alternatives when participating in an e-Business alliance and 3) capture the firm performance outcomes of an e-Business alliance

On minimal support solutions of underdetermined systems of linear equations

This paper explores the nature and application of minimal-support solutions of underdetermined systems of linear equations. First, methods for directly solving the problem are evaluated for effectiveness, and cases are shown to demonstrate that these direct methods are unreliable for finding minimal support solutions. The NP-Hardness of minimal-support solution recovery is then demonstrated over any field for the first time in the literature, and further NP-Hardness results are explored after this presentation. Following these expositions, a summary of current techniques in the practice of Compressive Sensing is given, and a novel method for comprehensively solving minimal-support solutions of underdetermined systems over any field is stated, discussed and proven. A summary of findings and avenues for future opportunities concludes the dissertation

The Relationship of Academic Dishonesty and Procedural Justice among University Students in Thailand

This study investigate the relationship between students‟ perception of procedural justice andacademic dishonesty among students at a Thai university. A cross-sectional survey designwas employed that utilized a correlational analysis. The sample size derived from theuniversity consisted of 133 respondents. Results indicated that there were no difference in thestudents‟ perception between procedural justice and academic dishonesty when compared bygender, program, class, or faculty. A weak positive relationship was found between students‟perception of procedural justice and academic dishonesty (n = 133, r=.27). Implications forthis are discussed within the article

Segmentation of Tertiary English Second Language Students Language Learning Strategies

Understanding the characteristics of University ESL students in terms of how they apply language-learning strategies has not been extensively studied. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to segment a sample population of ESL university students into several distinct clusters based on the six dimensions of the Strategy Inventory of Language Learning. Results indicated four clusters (Strategic, Moderate, Low and Unstrategic) based on the respondents’ tendencies to use the various strategies. Furthermore, there were no differences found by gender or class level. However, a difference was found based on major with Business and Education majors being over three times more likely to be in the Unstrategic cluster when compared to the Strategic cluster. The implication of this is that non- English majors need additional support in developing language-learning skills, as the purpose of their studies is to acquire content knowledge primarily and English skills secondarily. In particular, support in affective and social learning skills are of the greatest need

The Relationship of Social Integration and Personal Development among University Students in Thailand

Social integration is a key component of the goals of higher education. Personal growth is often a result of pursuing higher education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the students' perceptions of social integration and personal growth. A cross-sectional survey design using a sample of 129 students revealed that the students have a low perception of their social integration while having a moderately high perception of their personal growth. There was no difference in perception of the variables of this study when comparisons were made by class level, gender, or major. A weak correlation was found between social integration and personal growth (n = 124, r = .20, p < 0.05).Keywords: personal Development, university students, social integratio

Molecular and fossil evidence place the origin of cichlid fishes long after Gondwanan rifting.

Cichlid fishes are a key model system in the study of adaptive radiation, speciation and evolutionary developmental biology. More than 1600 cichlid species inhabit freshwater and marginal marine environments across several southern landmasses. This distributional pattern, combined with parallels between cichlid phylogeny and sequences of Mesozoic continental rifting, has led to the widely accepted hypothesis that cichlids are an ancient group whose major biogeographic patterns arose from Gondwanan vicariance. Although the Early Cretaceous (ca 135 Ma) divergence of living cichlids demanded by the vicariance model now represents a key calibration for teleost molecular clocks, this putative split pre-dates the oldest cichlid fossils by nearly 90 Myr. Here, we provide independent palaeontological and relaxed-molecular-clock estimates for the time of cichlid origin that collectively reject the antiquity of the group required by the Gondwanan vicariance scenario. The distribution of cichlid fossil horizons, the age of stratigraphically consistent outgroup lineages to cichlids and relaxed-clock analysis of a DNA sequence dataset consisting of 10 nuclear genes all deliver overlapping estimates for crown cichlid origin centred on the Palaeocene (ca 65-57 Ma), substantially post-dating the tectonic fragmentation of Gondwana. Our results provide a revised macroevolutionary time scale for cichlids, imply a role for dispersal in generating the observed geographical distribution of this important model clade and add to a growing debate that questions the dominance of the vicariance paradigm of historical biogeography

Text Mining Analysis of the Conflict of the Ages Series

Research regarding the writings of Ellen White has primarily relied on qualitative measures to develop insights and themes. Consequently, quantitative measureshave been largely left unused in this regard. The purpose of this study was to helpfill this gap through quantitative text mining analysis of Ellen White’s Conflict ofthe Ages series utilizing an exploratory design that used word frequencies, wordclouds, and topical models to discover themes. Themes were created using topicmodels derived from the latent Dirichlet allocation (DLA) algorithm. Resultsrevealed the word frequencies of each of the five books in the series as well as anaggregation of the word used in the Conflict of the Ages series as a whole. A fourthememodel was developed which included 1) God and His people, 2) Evangelism, 3) Old Testament concepts, and 4) Prophecy. Further findings showed that words such as “Christ”, “Lord”, and “God” were the most frequently used terms in the series, making the Conflict of the Ages series primarily Christcentered in terms of word frequency. Continuing text mining analysis on writings of Ellen White is suggested for further study and validation of these results