A Comparative Study Of Students’ Attitudes Toward Learning English As A Foreign Language According To Their Instructional Strategies Preferences At Gateway Learning Center, Hpa-An Township, Karen State, Myanmar

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate if there was a significant difference between students’ attitudes toward learning EFL according to their preferences for instructional strategies at Gateway Learning Center, Hpa-an Township, Karen State, Myanmar. This research was a quantitative comparative design utilizing two questionnaires: Attitudes Toward Learning English as a Foreign Language Questionnaire (ATLEFLQ) and Instructional Strategies Preferences Questionnaire (ISPQ) to collect data. The data were collected from 203 students in November and December, 2017. The researcher analyzed the data using descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, frequencies, and percentages) and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for statistical hypothesis testing. The findings indicated that the students had positive attitudes toward learning English as a foreign language and the most preferred instructional strategy for learning EFL was mixed instructional strategy, followed by experiential learning, interactive instruction, indirect instruction, direct instruction and finally independent study. There was no significant difference between students’ attitudes toward learning EFL according to their preferences for instructional strategies. Recommendations for students, teachers, administrators and future researchers are provided. 

An Open-Source WebGIS Platform for Rapid Disaster Impact Assessment

Natural disaster impacts have increased worldwide in the past decades. Earthquake is one of the disasters that have been studied for real-time analysis and crisis management. Disaster-related losses have been examined by the damage extent of the houses, infrastructures, fatalities and injuries converted to financial losses. WebGIS technologies provide a wide range of solutions to map those damages, analyse data and publish the results. Open-Source tools and data have been widely used today because they stay free and facilitate access to data especially significant in developing countries. This research presents a WebGIS prototype using Open-Source Geo-Spatial technologies such as PostGIS, Geoserver, Geoexplorer and OpenStreetMap (OSM) to evaluate the rapid impact of naturally produced disasters for the total damages. For this purpose, expert knowledge, such as earthquake intensities and vulnerability inputs are imported into the system and the loss of the damage is rapidly estimated. This work is part of a project for catastrophe modeling based on Open-Source data and software. We hope that applying Open-Source knowledge and solutions will decrease the time and efforts needed for rapid disaster and catastrophe management

Evaluation Of An Open-Source Collaborative WebGIS Prototype In Risk Management With Students

Over the past decades, advancements in web services and web-based geospatial technologies have led to increasing delivery, access and analysis of rich spatial information over the web. With the use of open access data and open-source technology, it has become possible to make better, transparent and informed decisions for policy and decision makers. Under the framework of the European Marie Curie CHANGES project, a prototype web-based collaborative decision support platform was developed for the evaluation and selection of risk management strategies, mainly targeting flood and landslide hazards. The design of the conceptual framework was based on the initial feedback and observations obtained from field visits and stakeholder meetings of the case study areas of the project. A three-tier client-server architecture backed up by Boundless (OpenGeo) was applied with its client side development environment for rapid prototyping. The developed prototype was tested with university students to obtain feedback on the conceptual and technical aspects of the platform as well as to analyze how the application of interactive tools in the exercise could assist students in studying and understanding risk management. During the exercise, different roles (authorities, technicians, community) were assigned to each group of students for identification and selection of risk mitigation measures in the study area: Cucco village located in MalborghettoValbruna commune of North- Eastern Italy. Data were collected by means of written feedback forms on specific aspects of the platform and the exercise. A subsequent analysis of the feedback reveals that students with previous experience in GIS (Geographical Information Systems) responded positively and showed interests in performing exercises with such kinds of interactive tools for learning, compared to the ones with fewer or no GIS experience. These results also show that the prototype is useful and supportive as a decision support tool in risk management while userfriendliness, interactivity and practical aspects of the platform could be further improved

АДМИНИСТРАТИВНАЯ ПРЕЮДИЦИЯ КАК УСЛОВИЕ УГОЛОВНОЙ ОТВЕТСТВЕННОСТИ В НЕКОТОРЫХ СЛУЧАЯХ ПРИНУЖДЕНИЯ К ВЫПОЛНЕНИЮ ОБЯЗАТЕЛЬСТВ

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a class ofheuristic search algorithms that have beensuccessfully applied to solving combinationaloptimization (CO) problems. The traveling salesmanproblem (TSP) is among the most importantcombinatorial problems. ACO has very good searchcapability for optimization problems. But it still hassome drawbacks such as stagnation behavior, longcomputational time, and premature convergenceproblem of the basic ACO algorithm on TSP. Thoseproblems will be more obvious when the complexitiesof the considered problems increase. The proposedsystem based on basic ACO algorithm based on wellpositionedthe ants on the initiation and informationentropy which is applied to tuning of the algorithm’sparameters. Then, ACO for TSP has been improvedby incorporating local optimization heuristic.Therefore, the proposed system intends to reachsuperior search performance over traditional ACOalgorithms do

An Improved Ant Colony System Based on Dynamic Candidate Set and Entropy for Traveling Salesman Problem

The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is ametaheuristic algorithm used for combinatorialoptimization problems. It is a good choice formany hard combinatorial problems because it ismore efficient and produces better solutions thangreedy algorithms. However, ACO iscomputationally expensive and it can still trap inlocal optima, take a long time to compute asolution on large problem sets and prematureconvergence problem. The main idea of themodification is to limit the number of elementschoices to a sensible subset, or candidate list,which can limit the selection scope of ants ateach step and thus substantially reduce the sizeof search space and to measure the uncertaintyof the path selection and evolution by using theinformation entropy self-adaptively. Simulationstudy and performance comparison on TravelingSalesman Problem show that the improvedalgorithm can converge at global optimum witha high probability. It also shows a fasterconvergence to the solutions than the standardalgorithm

An Approach for Solving Traveling Salesman Problem using Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization

Traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one ofthe most famous combinatorial optimization(CO) problems, which has wide applicationbackground. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) isa heuristic algorithm which has been proven asuccessful technique and applied to a number ofcombinatorial optimization problems and takenas one of the high performance computingmethods for TSP. ACO has very good searchcapability for optimization problems, but it stillhas some drawbacks for solving TSP. Thesedrawbacks will be more obvious when theproblem size increases. The present paperproposes an ACO algorithm with nearestneighbor (NN) heuristic approach andinformation entropy which is conducted on theconfiguration strategy for the adjustableparameters to improve the efficiency of ACO insolving TSP. The performance of ACO alsodepends on the appropriate setting ofparameters. Then, ACO for TSP has beenimproved by incorporating local optimizationheuristic. Algorithms are tested on benchmarkproblems from TSPLIB and test results arepresented. From our experiments, the proposedalgorithm has superior search performance overtraditional ACO algorithms do

Prototype of a Web-based Participative Decision Support Platform in Natural Hazards and Risk Management

This paper presents the current state and development of a prototype web-GIS (Geographic Information System) decision support platform intended for application in natural hazards and risk management, mainly for floods and landslides. This web platform uses open-source geospatial software and technologies, particularly the Boundless (formerly OpenGeo) framework and its client side software development kit (SDK). The main purpose of the platform is to assist the experts and stakeholders in the decision-making process for evaluation and selection of different risk management strategies through an interactive participation approach, integrating web-GIS interface with decision support tool based on a compromise programming approach. The access rights and functionality of the platform are varied depending on the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in managing the risk. The application of the prototype platform is demonstrated based on an example case study site: Malborghetto Valbruna municipality of North-Eastern Italy where flash floods and landslides are frequent with major events having occurred in 2003. The preliminary feedback collected from the stakeholders in the region is discussed to understand the perspectives of stakeholders on the proposed prototype platform

Agroecological initiatives in the Mekong Region: a systematic literature review and mapping reveals their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems

International audienceIn the Mekong Region, agroecological approaches provide a niche alternative to the dominant traditional or intensive farming systems. We conducted a synthesis of current evidence on agroecological interventions by means of a systematic literature review and mapping of case studies in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. The majority of the 271 identified cases focussed on practical and technical support. Interventions using holistic approaches, and such that focused on improving food systems through innovative territorial governance, value chain arrangements, and policy frameworks were scarce. Most cases targeted the agroecological optimization and the modernization of traditional farming systems. A mere 18 of our cases addressed gender in relation to agroecology. To scale agroecological transitions, sectoral barriers have to be overcome. There is an urgent need to put a pronounced focus on the diversification of ecosystem services in commercial agriculture and degraded areas and on women’s contributions to sustainable farming

Potential application of phage vB_EfKS5 to control Enterococcus faecalis and its biofilm in food

Abstract Contaminated food with antibiotic-resistant Enterococcus spp. could be the vehicle for transmitting Enterococcus to humans and accordingly cause a public health problem. The accumulation of biogenic amines produced by Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) in food may have cytological effects. Bacteriophages (phage in short) are natural antimicrobial agents and can be used alone or in combination with other food preservatives to reduce food microbial contaminants. The aim of this study was to isolate a novel phage against E. faecalis and determine its host range to evaluate its potential application. Bacteriophage, vB_EfKS5, with a broad host range, was isolated to control the growth of E. faecalis. The vB_EfKS5 genome is 59,246 bp in length and has a GC content of 39.7%. The computational analysis of phage vB_EfKS5 genome confirmed that it does not contain any lysogenic, toxic, or virulent genes. Phage vB_EfKS5 exhibited lytic activity against most E. faecalis isolates with different multiplicities of infections and it infected 75.5% (22/29) of E. faecalis isolates and 42.3% (3/7) of E. faecium isolates. It was also able to destroy the biofilm formed by E. faecalis with different MOIs. Phage vB_EfKS5 alone or in combination with nisin could control the growth of E. faecalis in broth and milk. Based on its high productivity, stability, short latent period, and large burst size, phage vB_EfKS5 has a high potential for applications both in food and medical applications