This study aims to examinet he changesin students'p erceptionso f and attitudes towards learning English in a Malaysian college. Firstly, it aims to investigate how the attitudes of students towards learning English changes during the critical transition period from secondary school, where the medium of instruction is in Malay, to college, where the medium of instruction is English. Then, it examines students' perceptions of their English language classroom environment and teaching methodologies used, the relationship of students with their teachers in both secondary school and college. It also investigates their perceptions of the influence of home background on learning English. Finally, it considers the influence of teacher attitudes on students' attitudes towards learning English. The study focuses on 100 students enrolled in a first level English course during their first semester in Petra College (a pseudonym), and the lecturers teaching these students. Data for this study were collected by student's weekly journals and interviews with students and lecturers. Analysis of the data was done qualitatively using an interpretive approach. The aim of using this approach was to provide a view of the second language learning process that is focused on perceptions of the learners. The findings revealed that there was a difference in students' perceptions of and attitudes towards learning English in secondary school and in college. Students' attitudes towards learning English seemed more positive in college. The students perceived that the environment in college was more conducive for learning English, and they noticed difference between the strategies used by their secondary school teachers and college lecturers. The findings suggest that secondary school teachers used a more structured audio-lingual approach and were not empathetic towards their students' language needs. On the other hand, the lecturers in college used more cooperative and interactive approaches and were perceived to be more empathetic towards students' language needs. The home background of students seemed to considerably influence their perceptions and attitudes towards learning English as well. The implications from the study suggest that teaching methodologies, the classroom environment, the school social environment, and the family background could influence students' perceptions of and attitudes towards learning English.

As a part of loyalty programs in marketing or as incentive plans in companies, mediums have attracted considerable interest from marketing and organizational behavior researchers. Previous studies focused mainly on the effects of mediums on people’s choices and not on the role of moderators of a medium effect. The goal of the present thesis is to study two such moderators namely the numerosity of a medium and the cognitive complexity of mediums. In this study, after a thorough theoretical analysis, experimental data is analyzed to explore the relation between numerosity and cognitive complexity of a medium on individuals’ efforts. Our findings suggest that the medium effect is stronger when a medium is more numerous. Also, a more cognitively complex medium makes the mediums more effective.

Zugl.: München, Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Netherlands), 2009.

Thesis--Philosophische Fakültät, Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 517-542).

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No description available.

We study the cluster of H I and O VI absorption systems and the claimed detection of O vin absorption from the intergalactic medium at z ≈ 0.0567, associated with a group of galaxies toward the BL Lac object PKS 2155-304. As measured by spectrographs on the Hubble Space Telescope, Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, and Chandra, this system appears to contain gas at a variety of temperatures. We analyze this multiphase gas in a clumpy-infall model. From the absence of C IV and Si in absorption in the Lyα clouds, we infer metallicities less than 2.5%-10% of solar values. The only metals are detected in two O VI absorption components, offset by ±400 km s -1 from the group barycenter (cz ≈ 16,600 km s-1)- The O VI components may signify "nearside" and "backside" infall into the group potential well, which coincides with the claimed O VIII absorption. If the claimed O VIII detection is real, our analysis suggests that clusters of strong Lyα and O VI absorbers, associated with groups of galaxies, may be the "signposts" of shock-heated metal-enriched baryons. Through combined UV and X-ray spectra of H I and O VI, O VII, and O VIII, one may be able to clarify the heating mechanism of this multiphase gas.

The cycle of star formation is the key to galaxy evolution. Stars form in massive collections of extremely dense cold gas. Stellar feedback will inject turbulence into the interstellar medium (ISM) and regulate the availability of more star-forming gas. This gas is an integral component in the cycle of star formation but is very difficult to model in numerical simulations. We have investigated the interplay between star formation and the structure of the ISM in numerical simulations. These simulations were done using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code Gasoline. For this work we introduce a new treatment for photoelectric heating in Gasoline. We first explore the impact of numerical parameter choices for the star formation threshold density, star formation efficiency and feedback efficiency. Of these three parameters, only the feedback efficiency plays a large role in determining the global star formation rate of the galaxy. Further, we explore the truncation of star formation in the outer regions of galactic discs and its relation to the presence of a two-phase thermal instability. In the outer regions of the simulated discs, gas exists almost exclusively in one warm phase, unsuitable to host large-scale star formation. We find that the disappearance of two-phase structure in the ISM corresponds to the truncation of star formation. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Comets and Centaurs are icy remnants from the formation of the solar system. Analyzing the physical properties of their nuclei and their production rates can serve as powerful tools for tracing primitive solar system material. The four research projects in this dissertation examine these properties in comets and Centaurs. The first project focuses on observations of main belt comet 176P/LINEAR that were obtained with the Kepler space telescope. Optical lightcurves were used to constrain models of the nucleus's spin pole axis, shape and activity level. The second project used millimeter-wavelength spectra from the Arizona Radio Observatory Submillimeter Telescope and infrared photometry of Spitzer images to derive production rates of CO and CO2 from Oort Cloud comet C/2016 R2 (PANSTARRS). The third project is a compendium of CO, CO2, and H2O production rates in more than 25 comets and Centaurs that were obtained with a variety of space-based and ground-based telescopes and which were analyzed to test models of comet formation and evolution. CO, CO2, and H2O are the most abundant molecules observed in comets. The combination of these three molecules are likely the largest sources of elemental oxygen in the gas comae of comet and therefore a close approximation of the oxygen released in the comae. One key result of the survey is that CO/CO2 production rate ratios appear largely heliocentric dependent, with more CO produced the farther the comet is from the Sun. One exception is dynamically new comets which typically produce more CO2 than CO which is in predicted by models of significant cosmic-ray processing over time. The fourth project produced the first CO2 detection in a Centaur (39P/Oterma), which shows significant differences between the CO/CO2 in 39P and 29P, another Centaur, which may be partly due to different heating and processing histories.