rf The Great and Powerful Oz By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2019-02-14T05:39:35+00:00 Full Article
rf Suffering CAN Be Perfect! By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2019-08-29T20:20:13+00:00 Full Article
rf 3 Powerful Principles of True Leadership By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2019-12-03T19:00:36+00:00 Full Article
rf Be Ye Perfect By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2024-04-12T05:03:00+00:00 Dr. Rossi explores what Jesus meant when he said, "Be ye perfect." Full Article
rf The “Wonderful and Confessedly Striking” Christian Manner of Life By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2014-05-13T16:08:38+00:00 Examining a passage from the anonymous second-century Epistle to Diognetus, Archimandrite Irenei explores the witness borne by the early Christian community and asks: does it reflect our Christian testimony today? Full Article
rf St. John the Dwarf: A Life of All the Virtues By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2014-05-13T17:10:42+00:00 What has a man whose obedience once caused a barren stick to blossom forth a tree in the desert to tell us today about the life of virtue? Is it possible for man today to partake of all the virtues? In this week’s broadcast, Fr. Matthew examines two sayings of Fr. John the Short of Egypt on the accessibility of all the virtues through the foundation of the love of neighbor. Full Article
rf St. John the Dwarf: A Life of All the Virtues By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2014-05-13T17:11:05+00:00 What has a man whose obedience once caused a barren stick to blossom forth a tree in the desert to tell us today about the life of virtue? Is it possible for man today to partake of all the virtues? In this week’s broadcast, Archimandrite Irenei examines two sayings of Fr. John the Short of Egypt on the accessibility of all the virtues through the foundation of the love of neighbor. Full Article
rf The Wonderful Mountain By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2015-09-06T04:00:32+00:00 Bobby Maddex interviews Chad Marine, the singer songwriter behind the group The Wonderful Mountain, which plays music characterized as Byzanfolk—a style that combines the traditions and teachings of the Orthodox Church with popular music. Full Article
rf Holiness as Gift, Perfection, and Struggle By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2021-06-29T02:55:49+00:00 On the Sunday of All Saints Fr. Pat looks at three aspects of Christian holiness. Full Article
rf A Celebration of Spiritual Warfare By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2021-11-09T22:44:09+00:00 Fr. Pat takes a closer look at the true meaning of Hanukkah. Full Article
rf Overflowing With God's Love By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2016-08-27T05:17:25+00:00 This week we're answering another of your questions! What should we do when we try showing love to people and don't get anything positive in return? Full Article
rf The Cheerful Giver By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2015-12-19T16:52:43+00:00 Scatter the "seeds" the Lord has provided so you may increase the harvest of your righteousness. Full Article
rf Fearful or Faithful? By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2016-08-23T12:29:00+00:00 In both of these Gospels St. Peter gets out of the boat. Would you? Matthew 14:22-34, John 21:7 Full Article
rf Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our Faith By www.ancientfaith.com Published On :: 2017-06-13T01:14:33+00:00 How to become a Saint. Focus on Jesus Christ. Full Article
rf 077: Darrell Vesterfelt – Running a 101,000-Person Online Summit By nathanbarry.com Published On :: Mon, 22 May 2023 09:00:49 +0000 Today, I talk to Darrell Vesterfelt, who is a longtime friend who helped grow ConvertKit in our craziest growth times (from $100,000/mo when he joined to $500,000/mo in just over a year). Darrell is one of the best marketers I know. He is the Founder and former CEO of Good People Digital, the Co-Founder of […] Full Article Podcast
rf Europe's largest inland surf resort opens in disused quarry By www.bbc.com Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:37:34 GMT Lost Shore has a wave pool three times the size of Wembley football pitch - but how does it work? Full Article
rf Scots teenager lands butterfly youth champion role By www.bbc.com Published On :: Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:36:05 GMT Harris McCutcheon, 17, is representing Scotland on a new Butterfly Conservation panel. Full Article
rf Robbie Williams to perform at 'iconic' venue By www.bbc.com Published On :: Mon, 11 Nov 2024 13:23:54 GMT Pop star Robbie Williams will perform at Bath's Royal Crescent in June next year. Full Article
rf Singer 'couldn't leave the house to perform' By www.bbc.com Published On :: Wed, 16 Oct 2024 05:22:41 GMT Singer Catherine Lawless features in a film about agoraphobia, showing at Headfest in Bedford. Full Article
rf Coventry Rugby captain Jordon Poole on perfect start to the Championship By www.bbc.co.uk Published On :: Thu, 17 Oct 2024 17:16:00 GMT BBC CWR's Clive Eakin chats to the 27-year-old ahead of this weekend versus Caldy! Full Article
rf Who does Ben Elton visit in Norfolk? By www.bbc.co.uk Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 11:21:00 GMT Ben Elton is bringing his new tour to the county, but says he visits Norfolk regularly. Full Article
rf What’s your perfect Windows Phone? By liveside.net Published On :: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 17:13:22 +0000 Microsoft is set to announce at least one, and possibly two new phones this week, a successor to the most popular Windows Phone ever made, the Lumia 520, and if rumors are correct, a successor to the 1320, … Full Article Commentary Windows 10 Windows Phone
rf Resurfacing By plasticbag.org Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 00:20:33 +0000 It feels odd, writing your first blog post in seven years. It used to be such a large part of my life—and this blog used to be such a core part of my work and engagement with my community—that you’d think you’d never forget how to do it. I wrote here almost every day for […] Full Article Life Personal Publishing
rf Climb A Canary Wharf Skyscraper For Charity This Christmas By londonist.com Published On :: Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:00:06 +0000 The Santa Stair Climb returns to One Canada Square. Full Article London Things To Do canary wharf charity one canada square CHRISTMAS 2024 DECEMBER 2024 SANTA STAIR CLIMB FELIX PROJECT
rf Canary Wharf Winter Lights: Free Trail Returns In January 2025 By londonist.com Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 10:15:00 +0000 Illuminations to be dotted among the skyscrapers again. Full Article London Free & Cheap Headlines free and cheap canary wharf 2025 JANUARY 2025
rf Interlagos must improve “very bad” new track surface for 2025, say F1 drivers | Formula 1 By www.racefans.net Published On :: Fri, 08 Nov 2024 12:12:39 +0000 Formula 1 drivers urged the operators of the Interlagos circuit to improve the new surface they laid ahead of this year's event. Full Article 2024 F1 season Formula 1 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix interlagos
rf The PerfectMatch… By multifarious.filkin.com Published On :: Tue, 12 Dec 2023 18:05:34 +0000 In the world of translation, Trados Studio’s PerfectMatch feature is like the overachieving student who always gets straight A’s, and its academic partner is the brilliant but slightly disorganised professor. PerfectMatch, with its meticulous and precise matching capabilities, often finds itself patiently sorting through the professor’s vast but somewhat chaotic repository of knowledge. Picture PerfectMatch … Continue reading The PerfectMatch… Full Article Studio Tips localization PerfectMatch powershell Trados Studio
rf Understanding ESB Performance & Benchmarking By pzf.fremantle.org Published On :: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:51:00 +0000 ESB performance is a hot (and disputed topic). In this post I don't want to talk about different vendors or different benchmarks. I'm simply trying to help people understand some of the general aspects of benchmarking ESBs and what to look out for in the results. The general ESB model is that you have some service consumer, an ESB in the middle and a service provider (target service) that the ESB is calling. To benchmark this, you usually have a load driver client, an ESB, and a dummy service. +-------------+ +---------+ +---------------+ | Load Driver |------| ESB |------| Dummy Service | +-------------+ +---------+ +---------------+ Firstly, we want the Load Driver (LD), the ESB and the Dummy Service (DS) to be on different hardware. Why? Because we want to understand the ESB performance, not the performance of the DS or LD. The second thing to be aware of is that the performance results are completely dependent on the hardware, memory, network, etc used. So never compare different results from different hardware. Now there are three things we could look at: A) Same LD, same DS, different vendors ESBs doing the same thing (e.g. content-based routing) B) Same LD, same DS, different ESB configs for the same ESB, doing different things (e.g. static routing vs content-based routing) C) Going via ESB compared to going Direct (e.g. LD--->DS without ESB) Each of these provides useful data but each also needs to be understood. Metrics Before looking at the scenarios, lets look at how to measure the performance. The two metrics that are always a starting point in any benchmark of an ESB here are the throughput (requests/second) and the latency (how long each request takes). With latency we can consider overall latency - the time taken for a completed request observed at the LD, and the ESB latency, which is the time taken by the message in the ESB. The ESB latency can be hard to work out. A well designed ESB will already be sending bytes to the DS before its finished reading the bytes the LD has sent it. This is called pipelining. Some ESBs attempt to measure the ESB latency inside the ESB using clever calculations. Alternatively scenario C (comparing via ESB vs Direct) can give an idea of ESB Latency. But before we look at the metrics we need to understand the load driver. There are two different models to doing Load Driving: 1) Do a realistic load test based on your requirements. For example if you know you want to support up to 50 concurrent clients each making a call every 5 seconds on average, you can simulate this. 2) Saturation! Have a large number of clients, each making a call as soon as the last one finishes. The first one is aimed at testing what the ESB does before its fully CPU loaded. In other words, if you are looking to see the effect of adding an ESB, or the comparison of one ESB to another under realistic load, then #1 is the right approach. In this approach, looking at throughput may not be useful, because all the different approaches have similar results. If I'm only putting in 300 requests a sec on a modern system, I'm likely to see 300 request a sec. Nothing exciting. But the latency is revealing here. If one ESB responds in less time than another ESB thats a very good sign, because with the same DS the average time per request is very telling. On the other hand the saturation test is where the throughput is interesting. Before you look at the throughput though, check three things: 1) Is the LD CPU running close to 100%? 2) Is the DS CPU running close to 100%? 3) Is the network bandwidth running close to 100%? If any of these are true, you aren't doing a good test of the ESB throughput. Because if you are looking at throughput then you want the ESB to be the bottleneck. If something else is the bottleneck then the ESB is not providing its max throughput and you aren't giving it a fair chance. For this reason, most benchmarks use a very very lightweight LD or a clustered LD, and similarly use a DS that is superfast and not a realistic DS. Sometimes the DS is coded to do some real work or sleep the thread while its executing to provide a more realistic load test. In this case you probably want to look at latency more than throughput. Finally you are looking to see a particular behaviour for throughput testing as you increase load. Throughput vs Load The shape of this graph shows an ideal scenario. As the LD puts more work through the ESB it responds linearly. At some point the CPU of the ESB hits maximum, and then the throughput stabilizes. What we don't want to see is the line drooping at the far right. That would mean that the ESB is crumpling under the extra load, and its failing to manage the extra load effectively. This is like the office worker whose efficiency increases as you give them more work but eventually they start spending all their time re-organizing their todo lists and less work overall gets done. Under the saturation test you really want to see the CPU of the ESB close to 100% utilised. Why? This is a sign that its doing as much as possible. Why would it not be 100%? Two reasons: I/O, multi-processing and thread locks: either the network card or disk or other I/O is holding it up, the code is not efficiently using the available cores, or there are thread contention issues. Finally its worth noting that you expect the latency to increase a lot under the saturation test. A classic result is this: I do static routing for different size messages with 100 clients LD. For message sizes up to 100k maybe I see a constant 2ms overhead for using the ESB. Suddenly as the message size grows from 100k to 200k I see the overhead growing in proportion to the message size. Is this such a bad thing? No, in fact this is what you would expect. Before 100K message size, the ESB is underloaded. The straight line up to this point is a great sign that the ESB is pipelining properly. Once the CPU becomes loaded, each request is taking longer because its being made to wait its turn at the ESB while the ESB deals with the increased load. A big hint here: When you look at this graph, the most interesting latency numbers occur before the CPU is fully loaded. The latency after the CPU is fully loaded is not that interesting, because its simply a function of the number of queued requests. Now we understand the metrics, lets look at the actual scenarios. A. Different Vendors, Same Workload For the first comparison (different vendors) the first thing to be careful of is that the scenario is implemented in the best way possible in each ESB. There are usually a number of ways of implementing the same scenario. For example the same ESB may offer two different HTTP transports (or more!). For example blocking vs non-blocking, servlet vs library, etc. There may be an optimum approach and its worth reading the docs and talking to the vendor to understand the performance tradeoffs of each approach. Another thing to be careful of in this scenario is the tuning parameters. Each ESB has various tuning aspects that may affect the performance depending on the available hardware. For example, setting the number of threads and memory based on the number of cores and physical memory may make a big difference. Once you have your results, assuming everything we've already looked at is tickety-boo, then both latency and throughput are interesting and valid comparisons here. B. Different Workloads, Same Vendor What this is measuring is what it costs you to do different activities with the same ESB. For example, doing a static routing is likely to be faster than a content-based routing, which in turn is faster than a transformation. The data from this tells you the cost of doing different functions with the ESB. For example you might want to do a security authentication/authorization check. You should see a constant bump in latency for the security check, irrespective of message size. But if you were doing complex transformation, you would expect to see higher latency for larger messages, because they take more time to transform. C. Direct vs ESB This is an interesting one. Usually this is done for a simple static routing/passthrough scenario. In other words, we are testing the ESB doing its minimum possible. Why bother? Well there are two different reasons. Firstly ESB vendors usually do this for their own benefit as a baseline test. In other words, once you understand the passthrough performance you can then see the cost of doing more work (e.g. logging a header, validating security, transforming the message). Remember the two testing methodologies (realistic load vs saturation)? You will see very very different results in each for this, and the data may seem surprising. For the realistic test, remember we want to look at latency. This is a good comparison for the ESB. How much extra time is spent going through the ESB per request under normal conditions. For example, if the average request to the backend takes 18ms and the average request via the ESB takes 19ms, we have an average ESB latency of 1ms. This is a good result - the client is not going to notice much difference - less than 5% extra. The saturation test here is a good test to compare different ESBs. For example, suppose I can get 5000 reqs/sec direct. Via ESB_A the number is 3000 reqs/sec and via ESB_B the number is 2000 reqs/sec, I can say that ESB_A is providing better throughput than ESB_B. What is not a good metric here is comparing throughput in saturation mode for direct vs ESB. Why not? The reason here is a little complex to explain. Remember how we coded DS to be as fast as possible so as not to be a bottleneck? So what is DS doing? Its really just reading bytes and sending bytes as fast as it can. Assuming the DS code is written efficiently using something really fast (e.g. just a servlet), what this is testing is how fast the hardware (CPU plus Network Card) can read and write through user space in the operating system. On a modern server hardware box you might get a very high number of transactions/sec. Maybe 5000req/s with each message in and out being 1k in size. So we have 1k in and 1k out = 2k IO. 2k IO x 5000 reqs/sec x 8bits gives us the total network bandwidth of 80Mbits/sec (excluding ethernet headers and overhead). Now lets look at the ESB. Imagine it can handle 100% of the direct load. There is no slowdown in throughput for the ESB. For each request it has to read the message in from LD and send it out to DS. Even if its doing this in pipelining mode, there is still a CPU cost and an IO cost for this. So the ESB latency of the ESB maybe 1ms, but the CPU and IO cost is much higher. Now, for each response it also has to read it in from DS and write it out to LD. So if the DS is doing 80Mbits/second, the ESB must be doing 160Mbits/second. Here is a picture. Now if the LD is good enough, it will have loaded the DS to the max. CPU or IO capacity or both will be maxed out. Suppose the ESB is running on the same hardware platform as the DS. If the DS machine can do 80Mbit/s flat out, there is no way that the same hardware running as an ESB can do 160Mbit/s! In fact, if the ESB and DS code are both as efficient as possible, then the throughput via ESB will always be 50% of the throughput direct to the DS. Now there is a possible way for the ESB to do better: it can be better coded than the DS. For example, if the ESB did transfers in kernel space instead of user space then it might make a difference. The real answer here is to look at the latency. What is the overhead of adding the ESB to each request. If the ESB latency is small, then we can solve this problem by clustering the ESB. In this case we would put two ESBs in and then get back to full throughput. The real point of this discussion is that this is not a useful comparison. In reality backend target services are usually pretty slow. If the same dual core server is actually doing some real work - e.g. database lookups, calculations, business logic - then its much more likely to be doing 500 requests a second or even less. The following chart shows real data to demonstrate this. The X-Axis shows increasing complexity of work at the backend (DS). As the effort taken by the backend becomes more realistic, the loss in throughput of having an ESB in the way reduces. So with a blindingly fast backend, we see the ESB struggling to provide just 55% of the throughput of the direct case. But as the backend becomes more realistic, we see much better numbers. So at 2000 requests a second there is barely a difference (around 10% reduction in throughput). In real life, what we actually see is that often you have many fewer ESBs than backend servers. For example, if we took the scenario of a backend server that can handle 500 reqs/sec, then we might end up with a cluster of two ESBs handling a cluster of 8 backends. Conclusion I hope this blog has given a good overview of ESB performance and benchmarking. In particular, when is a good idea to look at latency and when to use throughput. Full Article
rf The Iceberg Effect: Behind the User Interface of Mobile Collaborative Systems By www.jucs.org Published On :: 2011-07-08T12:29:59+02:00 Advances in mobile technologies are opening new possibilities to support collaborative activities through mobile devices. Unfortunately, mobile collaborative systems have been difficult to conceive, design and implement. These difficulties are caused in part by their unclear requirements and developers' lack of experience with this type of systems. However, several requirements involved in the collaborative back-end of these products are recurrent and should be considered in every development. This paper introduces a characterization of mobile collaboration and a framework that specifies a list of general requirements to be considered during the conception and design of a system in order to increase its probability of success. This framework was used in the development of two mobile collaborative systems, providing developers with a base of back-end requirements to aid system design and implementation. The systems were positively evaluated by their users. Full Article
rf A Framework to Evaluate Interface Suitability for a Given Scenario of Textual Information Retrieval By www.jucs.org Published On :: 2011-07-04T16:04:41+02:00 Visualization of search results is an essential step in the textual Information Retrieval (IR) process. Indeed, Information Retrieval Interfaces (IRIs) are used as a link between users and IR systems, a simple example being the ranked list proposed by common search engines. Due to the importance that takes visualization of search results, many interfaces have been proposed in the last decade (which can be textual, 2D or 3D IRIs). Two kinds of evaluation methods have been developed: (1) various evaluation methods of these interfaces were proposed aiming at validating ergonomic and cognitive aspects; (2) various evaluation methods were applied on information retrieval systems (IRS) aiming at measuring their effectiveness. However, as far as we know, these two kinds of evaluation methods are disjoint. Indeed, considering a given IRI associated to a given IRS, what happens if we associate this IRI to another IRS not having the same effectiveness. In this context, we propose an IRI evaluation framework aimed at evaluating the suitability of any IRI to different IR scenarios. First of all, we define the notion of IR scenario as a combination of features related to users, IR tasks and IR systems. We have implemented the framework through a specific evaluation platform that enables performing IRI evaluations and that helps end-users (e.g. IRS developers or IRI designers) in choosing the most suitable IRI for a specific IR scenario. Full Article
rf Ontology-based User Interface Development: User Experience Elements Pattern By www.jucs.org Published On :: 2011-07-20T10:20:36+02:00 The user experience of any software or website consists of elements from the conceptual to the concrete level. These elements of user experience assist in the design and development of user interfaces. On the other hand, ontologies provide a framework for computable representation of user interface elements and underlying data. This paper discusses strategies of introducing ontologies at different user interface layers adapted from user experience elements. These layers range from abstract levels (e.g. User needs/Application Objectives) to concrete levels (e.g. Application User Interface) in terms of data representation. The proposed ontological framework enables device independent, semi-automated GUI construction which we will demonstrate at a personal information management example. Full Article
rf Attention, votre airfryer pourrait produire une substance cancérigène dans vos aliments selon une étude - Yahoo Actualités By news.google.com Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:56:57 GMT Attention, votre airfryer pourrait produire une substance cancérigène dans vos aliments selon une étude Yahoo Actualités3 bonnes raisons de choisir un Airfryer en 2024 La ProvenceNos 30 recettes rapides et faciles au Airfryer, du plat de résistance au dessert Le FigaroLes air fryers sont-ils dangereux pour la santé ? Une étude lance l'alerte Allo DocteursAirfryer : attention aux acrylamides potentiellement cancérigènes Pourquoi Docteur ? Full Article
rf MSI Katana 15 B13VFK-2201FR, PC portable gamer multimédia performant 15" IPS 144Hz sous GeForce RTX 4060 Core i7-H et SSD 1 To - LaptopSpirit By news.google.com Published On :: Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:19:57 GMT MSI Katana 15 B13VFK-2201FR, PC portable gamer multimédia performant 15" IPS 144Hz sous GeForce RTX 4060 Core i7-H et SSD 1 To LaptopSpiritCe PC portable gamer avec une RTX 4070 est en promotion de 500 € jeuxvideo.comMSI Thin 15 B12UCX-2412FR, Ultrabook polyvalent 15" évolutif fin et léger sous Intel Core i5-H avec GeForce RTX 2050 pour jouer à des jeux modestes LaptopSpiritMSI GeForce RTX 4060 : la carte graphique est à son prix le plus bas jamais atteint sur ce site Le ParisienÀ moins de 700 euros ce dimanche, cela serait dommage de ne pas se jeter sur ce PC gamer Ouest-France Full Article
rf Enhanced TCP BBR performance in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) and next-generation high-speed 5G networks By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-07-01T23:20:50-05:00 TCP BBR is one of the most powerful congestion control algorithms. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of BBR analysis, expanding on existing knowledge across various fronts. Utilising ns3 simulations, we evaluate BBR's performance under diverse conditions, generating graphical representations. Our findings reveal flaws in the probe's RTT phase duration estimation and unequal bandwidth sharing between BBR and CUBIC protocols. Specifically, we demonstrated that the probe's RTT phase duration estimation algorithm is flawed and that BBR and CUBIC generally do not share bandwidth equally. Towards the end of the article, we propose a new improved version of TCP BBR which minimises these problems of inequity in bandwidth sharing and corrects the inaccuracies of the two key parameters RTprop and cwnd. Consequently, the BBR' protocol maintains very good fairness with the Cubic protocol, with an index that is almost equal to 0.98, and an equity index over 0.95. Full Article
rf Applying a multiplex network perspective to understand performance in software development By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-11-11T23:20:50-05:00 A number of studies have applied social network analysis (SNA) to show that the patterns of social interaction between software developers explain important organisational outcomes. However, these insights are based on a single network relation (i.e., uniplex social ties) between software developers and do not consider the multiple network relations (i.e., multiplex social ties) that truly exist among project members. This study reassesses the understanding of software developer networks and what it means for performance in software development settings. A systematic review of SNA studies between 1990 and 2020 across six digital libraries within the IS and management science domain was conducted. The central contributions of this paper are an in-depth overview of SNA studies to date and the establishment of a research agenda to advance our knowledge of the concept of multiplexity on how a multiplex perspective can contribute to a software developer's coordination of tasks and performance advantages. Full Article
rf Does smartphone usage affect academic performance during COVID outbreak? By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-10-02T23:20:50-05:00 Pandemic has compelled the entire world to change their way of life and work. To control the infection rate, academic institutes deliver education online similarly. At least one smartphone is available in every home, and students use their smartphones to attend class. The study investigates the link between smartphone usage (SU) and academic performance (AP) during the pandemic. 490 data were obtained from various institutions and undergraduate students using stratified random sampling. These components were identified using factor analysis and descriptive methods, while the relationship of SU and AP based on gender classification was tested using Smart-PLS-SEM. The findings show that SU has a substantial relationship with academic success, whether done in class or outside of it. Even yet, the study found that SU and AP significantly impact both male and female students. Furthermore, the research focuses on SU outside and within the classroom to improve students' AP. Full Article
rf An Investigation of Student Expectation, Perceived Performance and Satisfaction of E-textbooks By Published On :: Full Article
rf Self-regulated Mobile Learning and Assessment: An Evaluation of Assessment Interfaces By Published On :: 2014-12-22 Full Article
rf Girls, Boys, and Bots: Gender Differences in Young Children’s Performance on Robotics and Programming Tasks By Published On :: 2016-08-29 Prior work demonstrates the importance of introducing young children to programming and engineering content before gender stereotypes are fully developed and ingrained in later years. However, very little research on gender and early childhood technology interventions exist. This pilot study looks at N=45 children in kindergarten through second grade who completed an eight-week robotics and programming curriculum using the KIWI robotics kit. KIWI is a developmentally appropriate robotics construction set specifically designed for use with children ages 4 to 7 years old. Qualitative pre-interviews were administered to determine whether participating children had any gender-biased attitudes toward robotics and other engineering tools prior to using KIWI in their classrooms. Post-tests were administered upon completion of the curriculum to determine if any gender differences in achievement were present. Results showed that young children were beginning to form opinions about which technologies and tools would be better suited for boys and girls. While there were no significant differences between boys and girls on the robotics and simple programming tasks, boys performed significantly better than girls on the advanced programming tasks such as, using repeat loops with sensor parameters. Implications for the design of new technological tools and curriculum that are appealing to boys and girls are discussed. Full Article
rf A Comparison of Student Academic Performance with Traditional, Online, And Flipped Instructional Approaches in a C# Programming Course By Published On :: 2017-08-11 Aim/Purpose: Compared student academic performance on specific course requirements in a C# programming course across three instructional approaches: traditional, online, and flipped. Background: Addressed the following research question: When compared to the online and traditional instructional approaches, does the flipped instructional approach have a greater impact on student academic performance with specific course requirements in a C# programming course? Methodology: Quantitative research design conducted over eight 16-week semesters among a total of 271 participants who were undergraduate students en-rolled in a C# programming course. Data collected were grades earned from specific course requirements and were analyzed with the nonparametric Kruskal Wallis H-Test using IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 23. Contribution: Provides empirical findings related to the impact that different instructional approaches have on student academic performance in a C# programming course. Also describes implications and recommendations for instructors of programming courses regarding instructional approaches that facilitate active learning, student engagement, and self-regulation. Findings: Resulted in four statistically significant findings, indicating that the online and flipped instructional approaches had a greater impact on student academic performance than the traditional approach. Recommendations for Practitioners: Implement instructional approaches such as online, flipped, or blended which foster active learning, student engagement, and self-regulation to increase student academic performance. Recommendation for Researchers: Build upon this study and others similar to it to include factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, and previous academic history. Impact on Society: Acknowledge the growing influence of technology on society as a whole. Higher education coursework and programs are evolving to encompass more digitally-based learning contexts, thus compelling faculty to utilize instructional approaches beyond the traditional, lecture-based approach. Future Research: Increase the number of participants in the flipped instructional approach to see if it has a greater impact on student academic performance. Include factors beyond student academic performance to include gender, age, ethnicity, and previous academic history. Full Article
rf The Impact of User Interface on Young Children’s Computational Thinking By Published On :: 2017-07-03 Aim/Purpose: Over the past few years, new approaches to introducing young children to computational thinking have grown in popularity. This paper examines the role that user interfaces have on children’s mastery of computational thinking concepts and positive interpersonal behaviors. Background: There is a growing pressure to begin teaching computational thinking at a young age. This study explores the affordances of two very different programming interfaces for teaching computational thinking: a graphical coding application on the iPad (ScratchJr) and tangible programmable robotics kit (KIBO). Methodology : This study used a mixed-method approach to explore the learning experiences that young children have with tangible and graphical coding interfaces. A sample of children ages four to seven (N = 28) participated. Findings: Results suggest that type of user interface does have an impact on children’s learning, but is only one of many factors that affect positive academic and socio-emotional experiences. Tangible and graphical interfaces each have qualities that foster different types of learning Full Article
rf The Impact of Teacher Gender on Girls’ Performance on Programming Tasks in Early Elementary School By Published On :: 2018-07-03 Aim/Purpose: The goal of this paper is to examine whether having female robotics teachers positively impacts girls’ performance on programming and robotics tasks Background: Women continue to be underrepresented in the technical STEM fields such as engineering and computer science. New programs and initiatives are needed to engage girls in STEM beginning in early childhood. The goal of this work is to explore the impact of teacher gender on young children’s mastery of programming concepts after completing an introductory robotics program. Methodology: A sample of N=105 children from six classrooms (2 Kindergarten, 2 first grade, and 2 second grade classes) from a public school in Somerville, Massachusetts, participated in this research. Children were taught the same robotics curriculum by either an all-male or all-female teaching team. Upon completion of the curriculum, they completed programming knowledge assessments called Solve-Its. Comparisons between the performance of boys and girls in each of the teaching groups were made. Findings: This paper provides preliminary evidence that having a female instructor may positively impact girls’ performance on certain programming tasks and reduce the number of gender differences between boys and girls in their mastery of programming concepts. Recommendations for Practitioners: Practitioners should expose children to STEM role-models from a variety of backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, and experiences. Future Research: Researchers should conduct future studies with larger samples of teachers in order to replicate the findings here. Additionally, future research should focus on collecting data from teachers in the form of interviews and surveys in order to find out more about gender-based differences in teaching style and mentorship and the impact of this on girls' interest and performance in STEM. Full Article
rf Using Educational Data Mining to Predict Students’ Academic Performance for Applying Early Interventions By Published On :: 2021-07-23 Aim/Purpose: One of the main objectives of higher education institutions is to provide a high-quality education to their students and reduce dropout rates. This can be achieved by predicting students’ academic achievement early using Educational Data Mining (EDM). This study aims to predict students’ final grades and identify honorary students at an early stage. Background: EDM research has emerged as an exciting research area, which can unfold valuable knowledge from educational databases for many purposes, such as identifying the dropouts and students who need special attention and discovering honorary students for allocating scholarships. Methodology: In this work, we have collected 300 undergraduate students’ records from three departments of a Computer and Information Science College at a university located in Saudi Arabia. We compared the performance of six data mining methods in predicting academic achievement. Those methods are C4.5, Simple CART, LADTree, Naïve Bayes, Bayes Net with ADTree, and Random Forest. Contribution: We tested the significance of correlation attribute predictors using four different methods. We found 9 out of 18 proposed features with a significant correlation for predicting students’ academic achievement after their 4th semester. Those features are student GPA during the first four semesters, the number of failed courses during the first four semesters, and the grades of three core courses, i.e., database fundamentals, programming language (1), and computer network fundamentals. Findings: The empirical results show the following: (i) the main features that can predict students’ academic achievement are the student GPA during the first four semesters, the number of failed courses during the first four semesters, and the grades of three core courses; (ii) Naïve Bayes classifier performed better than Tree-based Models in predicting students’ academic achievement in general, however, Random Forest outperformed Naïve Bayes in predicting honorary students; (iii) English language skills do not play an essential role in students’ success at the college of Computer and Information Sciences; and (iv) studying an orientation year does not contribute to students’ success. Recommendations for Practitioners: We would recommend instructors to consider using EDM in predicting students’ academic achievement and benefit from that in customizing students’ learning experience based on their different needs. Recommendation for Researchers: We would highly endorse that researchers apply more EDM studies across various universities and compare between them. For example, future research could investigate the effects of offering tutoring sessions for students who fail core courses in their first semesters, examine the role of language skills in social science programs, and examine the role of the orientation year in other programs. Impact on Society: The prediction of academic performance can help both teachers and students in many ways. It also enables the early discovery of honorary students. Thus, well-deserved opportunities can be offered; for example, scholarships, internships, and workshops. It can also help identify students who require special attention to take an appropriate intervention at the earliest stage possible. Moreover, instructors can be aware of each student’s capability and customize the teaching tasks based on students’ needs. Future Research: For future work, the experiment can be repeated with a larger dataset. It could also be extended with more distinctive attributes to reach more accurate results that are useful for improving the students’ learning outcomes. Moreover, experiments could be done using other data mining algorithms to get a broader approach and more valuable and accurate outputs. Full Article
rf Intellectual capital and its effect on the financial performance of Ethiopian private commercial banks By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-10-21T23:20:50-05:00 This study aims to examine the intellectual capital and its effect on the financial performance of Ethiopian private commercial banks using the pulic model. Quantitative panel data from audited annual reports of Ethiopian private commercial banks from 2011 to 2019 are collected. The robust fixed effect regression model has been adopted to investigate the effect of IC and the financial performance measures of the banks. The study results show a positive relationship between the value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) and the financial performance of private commercial banks in Ethiopia. The study also revealed that the components of VAIC (i.e., human capital efficiency, capital employed efficiency, and structural capital efficiency) have a positive and significant effect on the financial performance of banks measured by return on asset and return on equity over the study periods. Practically, the results of the study could be useful for shareholders to consider IC as a strategic resource and hence emphasise these intangibles, and to the bank managers to benchmark themselves against the best competitors based on the level of efficiency rankings. Full Article
rf Nexus between women directors and firm performance: a study on BSE 200 companies By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-10-21T23:20:50-05:00 The present study is a modest attempt to investigate the impact of gender diversity on firm performance of BSE 200 listed companies. The study is based on the secondary data collected from the EMIS database and the corporate governance reports for a period of eight years, i.e., from 2012 to 2019. Sample size of the present study is 174 Indian companies listed in the Bombay Stock Exchange. The study has employed multiple regression models by considering the endogeneity issue to empirically test the impact of gender diversity on firm performance in Indian context. Based on the multiple regression models, we find that the impact of gender diversity is positive and significant on the market-based measure of firm performance. However, the impact becomes negative significant when firm performance was measured by accounting based measure of firm performance. Full Article
rf 'CSR, sustainability and firm performance linkage' current status and future dimensions - a bibliometric review analysis By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-10-21T23:20:50-05:00 Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability are gaining worldwide recognition. The question of whether CSR and sustainability programs benefit an organisation's financial success is still being debated. This study aims to verify this phenomenon by examining the current literature pattern on this relationship using bibliometric and systematic review analysis. It further provides a taxonomy for understanding this association. VOSviewer is used to obtain comprehensive dataset mapping and clustering in the field. The manuscript offers promising insights regarding academia by assessing the pattern of publication trends, the most influential author in the area, and analysing the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of CSR, sustainability and firm performance linkage. The outcome of this study provides exploratory insights into research gaps and avenues for future research. Full Article
rf Effective inventory management among Malaysian SMEs in the manufacturing sector towards organisational performance By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2023-10-23T23:20:50-05:00 In several manufacturing firms, inventory constitutes most of the current assets, and this underscores the importance of inventory management as a fundamental issue for the majority of the firms irrespective of their sizes. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to assess the factors that influence the effectiveness of inventory management of Malaysian SMEs in the manufacturing sector. The study employs PLS-SEM technique to test the hypotheses. The main findings show that documentation and records, inventory control system and qualified personnel have positive effects on effective inventory management of Malaysian SMEs in the manufacturing sector. The study also reveals that effective inventory management has a mediating effect on the relationship between documentation and records, inventory control system, qualified personnel and organisational performance. Therefore, the study recommends that Malaysian SMEs in the manufacturing sector should improve their approaches to embracing effective inventory management practices in order to enhance organisational performance. Full Article
rf Assessing supply chain risk management capabilities and its impact on supply chain performance: moderation of AI-embedded technologies By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-10-10T23:20:50-05:00 This research investigates the correlation between risk management and supply chain performance (SCP) along with moderation of AI-embedded technologies such as big data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality, and blockchain technologies. To calculate the results, this study utilised 644 questionnaires through the structural equation modelling (SEM) method. It is revealed using SmartPls that financial risk management (FRM) is positively linked with SCP. Second, it was observed that AI significantly moderates the connection between FRM and SCP. In addition, the study presents certain insights into supply chain and AI-enabled technologies and how these capabilities can beneficially advance SCP. Besides, certain implications, both managerial and theoretical are described for the supply chain managers along with limitations for future scholars of the world. Full Article
rf Application of artificial intelligence in enterprise human resource management and employee performance evaluation By www.inderscience.com Published On :: 2024-10-03T23:20:50-05:00 With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, significant breakthroughs have been made in its application in many fields. Especially, in the field of enterprise human resource management and employee performance evaluation, AI has demonstrated its powerful ability to optimise and improve performance. This study explores the application of AI in enterprise human resource management and how to use AI to evaluate employee performance. The research includes analysing and comparing existing AI-driven human resource management models, evaluating how AI can help improve employee performance and leadership styles, and designing and developing human resource management computer systems for enterprise employees. Through empirical research and case analysis, this study proposes a new AI-optimised employee performance evaluation model and explores its application and effect in practice. In general, the application of AI can improve the efficiency and accuracy of enterprise human resource management, and provide new possibilities for employee performance evaluation. At present, artificial intelligence technology has been widely used in various fields of daily life, especially in corporate human resource management, providing better support for the development of enterprises. Full Article