Since the founding of the PRC to the present, the period was due to the transitions in political and economic institutional factors made the differences of the developmental pattern of China¡¦s regional economy, and the development of regional economy become more and more diverse with China expanded the extent of the Open Door Policy. In particular, the founding of the Southern-West Regional Economic Cooperation is the breakthrough of the developmental pattern of China¡¦s regional economy after China¡¦s Decentralization Policy. Thus, the research focuses on analyzing the development of the Southern-West Regional Economic Cooperation to treat about the developmental pattern of China¡¦s regional economy. The research uses the systematic analyzing process (Input-output analysis) to treat about the building and development of the economic cooperation from three systematic levels of national, regional and provincial respectively. The input factors of the research focuses on national policy, it includes China¡¦s foreign trade policy, foreign direct investment policy and regional economic development policy respectively. It is treated about how the factors influenced the development of China¡¦s regional economy in Chapter Three? The output factors are treated about how does the building and development of the economic cooperation in Chapter Four and Five? The feedback and revision of the research treat about how to improve the derivational problems through the collaboration with GMS in Chapter Six? Finally, Chapter Seven treats about what does the effects and findings to the present developmental pattern of China¡¦s regional economy through analyzing the development of the economic cooperation?

abstract: Online learning communities have changed the way users learn due to the technological affordances web 2.0 has offered. This shift has produced different kinds of learning communities like massive open online courses (MOOCs), learning management systems (LMS) and question and answer based learning communities. Question and answer based communities are an important part of social information seeking. Thousands of users participate in question and answer based communities on the web like Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers and Wiki Answers. Research in user participation in different online communities identifies a universal phenomenon that a few users are responsible for answering a high percentage of questions and thus promoting the sustenance of a learning community. This principle implies two major categories of user participation, people who ask questions and those who answer questions. In this research, I try to look beyond this traditional view, identify multiple subtler user participation categories. Identification of multiple categories of users helps to provide specific support by treating each of these groups of users separately, in order to maintain the sustenance of the community. In this thesis, participation behavior of users in an open and learning based question and answer community called OpenStudy has been analyzed. Initially, users were grouped into different categories based on the number of questions they have answered like non participators, sample participators, low, medium and high participators. In further steps, users were compared across several features which reflect temporal, content and question/thread specific dimensions of user participation including those suggestive of learning in OpenStudy. The goal of this thesis is to analyze user participation in three steps: a. Inter group participation analysis: compare pre assumed user groups across the participation features extracted from OpenStudy data. b. Intra group participation analysis: Identify sub groups in each category and examine how participation differs within each group with help of unsupervised learning techniques. c. With these grouping insights, suggest what interventions might support the categories of users for the benefit of users and community. This thesis presents new insights into participation because of the broad range of features extracted and their significance in understanding the behavior of users in this learning community. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2015

The microdots are very small object. The microdots are applied in protection object. The project purpose is to find and to analyze the microdots. The project consists from two parts. A first part describes the hardware sensor construction and a second part describes the software solution. I selected the optics, camera module and illumination in the hardware part. I’m analyzing of the microdots on a picture in software part.

The study undertaken sets out to explore if there is any difference in English comprehension when viewing TV-programs with or without subtitles, in the classroom. The research which has been executed prior to ours shows that lots of people spend more time watching television than they do reading books in their native language. Still, there is more research in reading than in the field of television and comprehension. Furthermore, there are very few studies in the area of subtitling. Media use in today’s society is unavoidable and we believe that future teachers should use television as an educational tool and incorporate multimedia in lesson plans in an effective way. It is our belief that the visual and oral input of television with subtitles can aid students in their ability to memorize and comprehend the content.The research was carried out in the south of Sweden with a class of ninth graders. Firstly, we tested their vocabulary skills through a word knowledge test. Secondly, we proceeded to divide the class into two groups. These groups later saw the same episode of an American TV series. One group saw the show with subtitles, and the other one without. After the show they answered questionnaires on the content of the program and later on six students were selected to be interviewed. These target students were questioned on their thoughts and attitudes towards subtitles, as well as tested on their ability to analyze the content of the show. Although no definite answers can be given from this degree paper, we came to some conclusions. The students’ attitudes towards subtitles differed. Four out of six students were negative towards the usage of subtitles in an educational setting, because they felt more challenged to comprehend the plot without them. The two remaining were positive to subtitles and would use them at all times as support to aid them in their English comprehension.

This study focuses on civics in Japanese upper secondary education. A new curriculum reform was implemented in 2022, and a new subject named Public [kokyo] became a subject on civics, which aims to nurture students to actively contribute to a peaceful and democratic society. The aims of this study are to examine textbook descriptions of democracy and the potential incorporation of deliberative communication, before and after curriculum reform. Ultimately, this comparative study over a curriculum reform seeks to identify the similarities and differences between the previous subject, Contemporary Society, and the new subject of Public. Employing qualitative content analysis, descriptions of democracy in the textbooks, moreover, the composition and the additional contents of the textbooks are analyzed, in order to examine the potential incorporations of deliberative communication. This study reveals that democracy is often conceptualized in textbooks as a limited idea of a government and political system, and the content includes less extended descriptions in relation to how the concept of democracy should be exercised in everyday life. That tendency can be seen in textbooks both in Public and Contemporary Society. On the other hand, in contrast to Contemporary Society textbooks whose composition is explanatory-oriented emphasizing understanding rather than practice in everyday life situations, Public textbooks incorporate more content that proposes deliberative communication. In Japan, which has been struggling with low social participation among the youth and knowledge-centered learning, it is significant to transform an understanding of the concept of democracy to root in daily life. Therefore, the promotion of deliberative communication in education has great potential to foster democratic values in individuals and society through daily mutual communication.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / Please refer to full text for abstract.

In this dissertation, I report new information that is necessary for future mating system studies in a little studied species, the marbled salamander (Ambystoma opacum). I studied female mating behavior, sexual selection, and the consequences of polyandry for individual females and salamander populations. I also compared the performance of several statistical approaches for analyzing genetic mating system data. The first chapter summarizes the characteristics of several novel microsatellite DNA loci as well as cross-amplified loci for marbled salamanders and mole salamanders that may be used for future studies. In the second chapter, I report estimates of sire number for 13 marbled salamander clutches based on microsatellite data from 32 hatchlings per clutch. Females mated with as many as three different males as indicated by conservative techniques. Less than half of females mated with multiple males. Based on comparative analyses, I recommend the parental reconstruction approach with the computer program GERUD for assessing multiple paternity. The third chapter describes an experiment designed to study sexual selection. As expected, in breeding mesocosms, the potential for sexual selection was much higher for males than for females. Size was unrelated to variance in male reproductive fitness. Only opportunity for selection and Morisita’s index conformed to theoretical expectations of the relationship between operational sex ratio and the potential for sexual selection among males. Because opportunity for selection has intuitive links to formal sexual selection theory, I recommend its continued use. In the fourth chapter, I compared polyandrous and monandrous females to explore the potential fitness consequences of multimale mating. No fitness measure at the egg or hatchling stage (clutch size, hatching success, hatchling size, etc.) differed between the two types of clutches. Size of metamorphs was not different, but polyandrous clutches had significantly higher survival to metamorphosis. In the fifth chapter, I analyzed effects of increased polyandry and male availability on genetic diversity, effective population size (Ne), and fitness of experimental populations. Although no analyses were significant, some effects were moderate to high in size. Ne was higher when estimated from hatchlings than with metamorphs.

No description available.

Monitoring academic progress to guide instructional practices is an important role of teachers in a small rural school district in the Southern United States. Teachers in this region were experiencing difficulties using the approved school district model to implement data-driven instruction. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to identify elementary- and middle-level teachers' perceptions about using the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) model to analyze data in the classroom and use it to inform classroom instruction. Bambrick-Santoyo's principles for effective data-driven instruction was the conceptual framework that guided this study. The research questions were focused on teachers' perceptions of and experiences with the PDSA. A purposeful sampling was used to recruit 8 teachers from Grades 3-9 and their insights were captured through semistructured interviews, reflective journals, and document analyses of data walls. Emergent themes were identified through an open coding process, and trustworthiness was secured through triangulation and member checking. The themes were about using data to assess students, creating lessons, and collaborating with colleagues. The three findings revealed that elementary- and middle-level teachers acknowledge PDSA as an effective tool for guiding student learning, that teachers rely on assessment data, and that teachers need on-going collaborative engagement with their colleagues when using the PDSA. This study has implications for positive social change by providing a structure for improving classroom instructional practices and engaging teachers in more collaborative practices.

Residual compressive stresses can be used to increase the lifetime of parts under cyclic stress as they negate the applied tensile stresses that cause crack initiation and propagation in the material. The goal of this project was to investigate methods to induce stresses, their advantages and disadvantages as well as depth and magnitude of induced stresses, and also to find methods of analyzing the induced residual stresses. This was done on behalf of Epiroc Drilling Tools AB in order for them to induce stresses on the insides of their long, narrow and hollow rods, where stress induction is difficult. Shot peening was used as a reference as that is the method currently in use by the company. The results show that the two most promising methods are cavitation peening and laser shock peening; two relatively new methods with large magnitudes and depth of induced stress as well as a great capability of inducing stresses on the hard-to-reach insides of the rods. Ultrasonic needle peening, ultrasonic shot peening as well as induction hardening, cryogenic treatment and friction stir processing were also investigated. Methods of analyzing the stresses include X-ray diffraction and slitting, hole drilling and ultrasonic methods.