Friend to Develop an Argumentative Essay

Writing is a process that helps the students develop their ideas and logical thinking. Principally, to write means to try to produce a written message. Because of these facts, it is necessary for teachers and students to master it well as writing plays a very important role in many processes including teaching and learning proc-esses. However, in the real teaching and learning process, junior high students who have been accustomed to LKS (Student Worksheet) consider writing a boring activity. They have to just fill in the blanks, answer the ques-tions, and rearrange jumbled paragraphs in spite of writing their own ideas based on certain topics. This be-comes the drawbacks for them to get actively involved in writing activities. To overcome that, FRIEND standing for Fact, Reason, Point, Elaboration and Decision is considered help-ful to improve learners' ability to develop an argumentative essay. FRIEND helps learners to write well-developed and properly organized essay since it provides systematic ways to do so. Besides, FRIEND actually gives learners an easy way to think, express, and organize their ideas into a good argumentative essay. . Keywords: FRIEND, argumentative essa

INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EARNINGS MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY REPORTING Research on Indonesian Listed Companies in BEI for 2012-2013

This research aims to examine the interrelationship between earnings management (EM) and corporate social responsibility reporting (CSR). This research uses GRI G3.1 Indeces to measure CSR while earnings management is measured with real activities manipulation proxie. Population of this research is all Indonesian Listed Companies in Indonesian Stock Exchange for the year 2012 and 2013. Companies from financial and banking groups are excluded because they have the characteristics of assets which are very different from the other industries. Two-Stages Least Squares (2SLS) Analysis on SPSS22 is used to examine the data. This research indicates that there is simoultanity relationship between earnings management and CSR reporting. But then, only CSR reporting which affects earnings management practices, but it isn’t found prove that earnings management affects CSR reporting

THE QUALITY OF VOLUNTARY SUSTAINABILITY REPORT ASSURANCE STATEMENTS: EVIDENCE FROM FORTUNE GLOBAL 500

Number of companies adopting sustainability report assurance is increasing rapidly. Prior researches have explored factors that might drive companies to voluntary adopt assurance on their sustainability reports. But, few researches focus on the quality of sustainability report assurance statements provided. The first objective of this research is to investigate how the quality of assurance statement differs among different assurance providers. The second objective of the research is to explore whether quality of assurance statement is jointly affected by national legal environment where company is located and the company’s choice of assurance provider. Population of this Research is Fortune Global 500 Companies 2014 list. Final sample of this research is 135 companies. Independent sample t-test is used to test how the quality of assurance statement differs among different assurance providers. Multivariate regression analysis is used to test whether quality of assurance statement is jointly affected by national legal environment and assurance provider. The analysis’ result indicates that national legal environment has a negative and significant effect on assurance statement quality. Assurance provider also has a negative and significant effect on quality of assurance statement, while industry has a negative and slightly significant effect on it

CARBON FOOTPRINTS DISCLOSURE PRACTICES OF AEROSPACE AND AIRLINES COMPANIES: SYMBOLISM OR ACTION?

Carbon footprints disclosure practices of aerospace and airlines companies increase over the time. However, the increase is motivated by many possible motives, not only to inform to stakeholders about firm’s actions, but also to gain certain images. Thus, the aims of the study are three points. First, to analyze whether carbon footprints disclosure practices of aerospace and airlines companies increase over the time. Second, to analyze whether the companies also increase their disclosure using several highlighting device to draw direct attention of the readers. Third, to analyze the tendency of carbon footprints disclosure practices of aerospace and airlines companies listed in Forbes 2000 in 2011 and 2013. To achieve the objectives, the right method used should be content analysis. Content analysis is applied to analyze four type of disclosures; annual reports, sustainability reports, annual reports of annual reporters only, and annual reports of sustainability reporters. There are three set of categories used. The first category is symbolic statement; normative statement, aspirational target, and awards or recognition. Second category is behavioural statement; internal activities, external activities, and assisting others. The third category is any sentence exclude previous categories disclosed in the reports; descriptive statements and other. The sample then selected based on purposive sampling method. The amount of final sample is forty seven companies. The study uses Wilcoxon signed-ranks test as its statistical test. The results showed that generally firms do not increase their carbon footprints disclosure. However, in annual reports of annual reporters only, firms increased their disclosure practices. Companies also did not take a step to signeled their disclosure clearly to stakeholders and generally more like relied on symbolic management approach instead of behavioural management approach, even though there is a small tendency that firms can also rely on behavioural management approach. Further, the study appears to be the first, to the best of author’s knowledges, to provide direct international evidence on favoured impression and legitimacy by analyzing symbolic versus behavioural management

Development of control algorithm for a new 12s-6p single phase field excited flux switching motor

Flux switching motor (FSM) fall into a special category of switch reluctance motors (SRM). One of the key features of FSM is its rotor structure. Generally, it is free from any magnet and winding. Thus, allowing the motor to attain considerably higher speed and more stability then conventional AC motor. However, this simple and robust structure demands more sophisticated driving mechanism mainly due to the absence of rotating magneto motive force (MMF) in the rotor. The main concern of this research is to design algorithms for starting and driving 12 slots and 6 poles (12S-6P) segmental rotor field excited flux switching motor (FEFSM) and evaluate the algorithms efficiency by analyzing motor’s dynamic performance in terms of torque and current consumption. In this research, two algorithms have been proposed in which first algorithm is based on bipolar DC signals while second algorithm is based on field oriented control (FOC) principle. For position detection, algorithms merely need a basic infrared transceiver sensor. Bipolar DC signal algorithm is based on changing the polarity of armature DC voltage on the detection of zero rotor position. On the other hand, FOC algorithm involves detection of rotor zero position to estimate speed and prediction of instantaneous rotor position in real time. Initially, fundamental control principle for 12S-6P FEFSM has been identified through the finite element analysis (FEA) of the model. Afterwards control algorithms have been successfully developed and implemented in the motor control hardware. Compared to Bi-polar DC algorithm, the observations shows that the single phase FOC algorithm results in far less distortion of armature voltage waveforms even at high speed, which results in jittering free motor operation. On the other hand, Bi-polar DC algorithm results in much higher torque production, which is about 50% more than that of the single phase FOC’s yield. In terms of simulation and prototype performance comparison, Bi-polar DC algorithm is about 92% efficient in torque generation in case of initial model of FEFSM and staggering efficiency around 96% in case of optimized motor model

Moderating effects of cross-cultural dimensions on the relationship between persuasive smartphone application's design and acceptance-loyalty

Applying persuasive system design to different cultures has been a focus of many researchers as the global medium of communication has been centered within Smartphone via applications (apps). This is due to the vast proliferation of the Smartphone and the personal attachment of users to this device in various cultures. This led designers to search for ultimate ways to target users in specific regions of the world. The basic purpose of this study was to determine the relevance of cross-cultural factors to persuasive technologies, and the acceptance and loyalty of Smartphone apps. This was achieved by examining the moderating effects of Hofstede’s six cross-cultural dimensions on the relationship between Oinas-Kukkonen and Harjumaa’s Persuasive System Design (PSD), and acceptance and loyalty. By evaluating elements of persuasive systems design and cross-cultural dimensions, from user’s perspective, against a globally popular application like WhatsApp, an instrument was devised to investigate the cross-cultural adoption and continued use of Smartphone apps. Using this instrument, surveys were conducted for this research study to identify the influencing factors that have motivated the users from Malaysia, Netherlands, Germany, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to adopt and continue using this application on a daily basis. These surveys, which included responses from 488 participants, further investigated if there is one cross-cultural dimension that has more moderating effects per country. The findings indicate an agreement among WhatsApp users from all four countries about their reasons for adopting and using this app, namely: social influence (93.7 percent), reliability (83.4 percent), dialog-support via feedback (76.4 percent), ease of use (90.5 percent) and small cost (87.7 percent). The results put new perspective that the gap among cultures is narrowing. Persuasive design strategies are particularly relevant to cultures across the globe. This study can aid the research community in investing efforts into enhancing the persuasive design framework for Smartphone apps

Functional characterisation of constitutive expresser of pathogenesis-related genes 5 : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular Biology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

As reported previously, CPR5 negatively regulates the onset of leaf death, hypersensitive response, disease resistance and early leaf senescence. cpr5 plants contain aberrant trichomes and higher levels of ROS, SA and JA. Cell-cycle, JA/ET, ABA and sugar signalling are also affected in cpr5 plants. These results suggest that CPR5 is a master regulator of multiple processes. However, how CPR5 manages to exert pleiotropic effects is still poorly understood. The first objective of the current study was the purification of the CPR5 protein to solve its crystal structure. Extensive in silico analyses were carried out and the results showed that CPR5 is predicted to be a membrane protein with 4 or 5 transmembrane (TM) domains. Additionally, CPR5 contains intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) at its N-terminus. Proteins containing IDRs and TM domains are often difficult to purify for crystallization studies. Therefore, the undesirable regions of CPR5 such as, IDR and TM domains were deleted and a set of 24 constructs were developed. Despite several efforts, none of the CPR5 recombinant proteins were isolated. In addition to predicting IDR and TM domains, in silico results also predicted three NLS-encoding clusters, casein kinase phosphorylation sites, multiple start codons, coiled-coil domains and glycine motifs. To find out the roles of these putative structural elements on CPR5 functions, firstly a CPR5 cDNA was synthesised and termed as SynCPR5. Subsequently, predicted sites or motifs were mutated in SynCPR5 through sitedirected mutagenesis and a set of 25 mutated CPR5 transgenes (cDNA constructs) were developed. Using a complementation strategy, all the constructs were transformed into cpr5- 2 plants. The results show that the complementation of cpr5-2 plants with SynCPR5, fully restored HR-like lesions, wildtype-like trichomes and leaves on SynCPR5 plants. Further physiological characterization such as, transcript abundance of SynCPR5, PR1, PR5 and PDF1.2, leaf area measurements and ploidy levels showed that CPR5 regulates some of its functions and phenotypes quantitatively as well as qualitatively. When compared with the wildtype, better growth (larger leaves) but enhanced disease susceptibility was found in metCPR5 transgenic lines (in which putative start codons were mutated), indicating that CPR5 regulates a balance between growth and resistance. Functional characterization of NLS mutants (nlsCPR5) showed that NLS-encoding clusters are important for CPR5 proper functions. However, current evidence is insufficient to relate their role in CPR5 localization. Moreover, in silico results show that putative NLS clusters are present in the region of CPR5 which were annotated as intrinsically disordered region (IDR). Similar phenotypes shown by both nlsCPR5 and Del63CPR5 (in which the first 63 amino acids of CPR5 including putative NLS were deleted), indicate that the putative NLS clusters could be part of IDR and may have dual functions. Loss-of-function phenotypes shown by coiled-coil domain mutants (ccdCPR5) reinforce the role of coiled-coil domains in CPR5 homo-dimerization. Moreover, in contrast to previous reports, the downregulation of PDF1.2 in the majority of CPR5 complementation lines proposes CPR5 to be a positive regulator of PDF1.2. Based on the results presented in the current study, putative CPR5 IDRs and coiled-coil domains are proposed to facilitate CPR5 dimerization in order to restrict the entry of deregulated cargos into the nucleus. Moreover, these results uncover a novel role of CPR5 in the regulation of balance between plant growth and resistance. Furthermore, this study, for the first time, reports evidence of the requirement of NLS clusters for CPR5 functions