An orthonormalization method for the approximate conformal mapping of multiply-connected domains

We consider the use of an orthonormalization method for constructing approximations to one of the standard conformal maps for multiply-connected domains. The method has been used successfully in [12], but only for the mapping of doubly-connected domains. Our purpose here is to consider its application to the mapping of domains whose connectivity is greater than two

Cross-Cultural Validation of the Inventory of School Motivation (ISM) in the Asian Setting: Hong Kong and the Philippines

Students’ achievement goals in school have received increasing research attention because they have been shown to be important in predicting important outcomes. As such, there has been a growing interest in measuring and comparing them across different cultural groups. However, these comparisons cannot be made until validity evidence has been attained to support the use of an instrument in the new cultural setting. In this study, we investigated the cross-cultural applicability of the Inventory of School Motivation (ISM, McInerney et al. American Educational Research Journal 34:207-236, 1997) in the Hong Kong Chinese and Philippine contexts using both within-network and between-network approaches to construct validation. The ISM measures four types of achievement goals: mastery, performance, social, and extrinsic goals. 1,406 high school students from Hong Kong (n = 697) and the Philippines (n = 709) participated. Results of the within-network test showed that the ISM had good internal consistency reliability and the confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the hypothesized four-factor model. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses supported invariance of factor loadings across the two samples. The between-network test also indicated that these achievement goals correlated systematically with different aspects of students’ self-concepts. These findings support the applicability of the ISM among Hong Kong Chinese and Filipino students

A complete farm management system based on animal identification using RFID technology

In this paper, a platform for livestock management based on RFID-enabled mobile devices is described. The platform is the outcome of a research project named FARMA, and is based on the deployment of mobile computing, combined with RFID technology and wireless and mobile networking. The platform apart from using a data repository through which the RFID tag numbers are associated with animal data records, it introduces the use of rewritable tags, for the storage of information that can be used to identify the animal in case it gets lost, or even recognize some basic information about it (e.g. behavior against other animals) without the need of contacting the related database. An implementation in the context of the FARMA project is also given, together with the corresponding details, while the results of the evaluation that took place in the context of the project are discussed