While the use of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been adopted in different contexts all over the world and many textbook designers and also administrative executives recommend this approach to the teachers. Different researches show that teachers can rarely apply CLT perfectly in different secondary schools especially in non-native classroom contexts. Education reformations in Malaysia assigned different teachers to apply learner-centered environment for the students, but in most of the cases instructional practices remained the same according to traditional teacher-centered eastern contexts where teachers have the dominant role in the classroom context. CLT has been received a significant attention as an offspring leaner-centered approach and it has been emphasized to apply in the Malaysia. In this study researchers attempted to evaluate implementation of CLT in the Malaysian secondary schools through several observations. Observations have been implemented by using an observation scheme based on CLT principles. 30 secondary school classes in the Johor district, Malaysia have been observed. During the observations researchers found that in the CLT classes, teachers had several problems to apply CLT in the Malaysian secondary schools such as the culture of Malaysia, in which teachers have the dominant role and also students’ proficiency in English which has been considered as the prerequisite of CLT implementation in educational contexts. Hopefully results of the current study, seems to be useful for several people who can benefit from the results like students and teachers as the main role makers of CLT implementation in Malaysia and also administrative executives in the ministry of education of this country to know the CLT implementation challenges in the Malaysian contexts.
Odontobuthus odontrous is one of the medically important and dangerous scorpions belonging to family Buthidae. Present study was aimed to evaluate the presence of low molecular weight peptides in the venom of the O. odontrous. Low molecular weight peptides are therapeutically important and they have significant role in ion channel blocking and tumor growth impairing. For this purpose High Performance Liquid Chromatography was performed. The results of present study confirmed the presence of at least five low molecular weight peptides in the range of 2-8kDa.The recognition of these low molecular weight peptides can not only be an important step in producing effective antivenom against such dangerous scorpion species, but also these peptides are probes for identifying specific types of ion channels. These peptides can also be the important tools for understanding ion channel physiology. Moreover, this study can be helpful in more advancement in drug development, cancer treatment, or other pharmaceuticals.
The present study was undertaken to assess the resistance status of Musca domectica against malathion in Sargodha City. The activities of insecticide detoxifying enzymes (i.e., Esterases, Glutathione S-transferases and Monooxygenases) between control and malathion treated and fed and unfed flies were also compared. Flies from all populations were found resistant to the tested concentrations. The activity of β esterases among melathion treated flies was inhibited among all populations. The activities of GST and Monooxygenases were higher among treated flies of all populations compared to control flies. Significantly higher activity of β esterases was recorded in fed flied of Rehman Pura population, while in Sultan Colony and Chak No, 75-A, SB populations, difference in activity of β esterases between fed and unfed flies, was statistically non significant. Similarly significantly higher activity of Glutathione-S-transferases was recorded in fed flies of Sultan Colony and Chak No, 75-A, SB populations. No difference in activity of Monooxygenases was recorded among starved and fed flies. We concluded from the study that higher level of GST and Monooxygenases in the treated flies indicate the involvement of these enzymes in the resistance. As the high level of melathion resistance is recorded in the flies from all populations of Sargodha, so it is recommended that malathion shouldn’t be used any more for control of housefly in the area.
Maize is negatively affected by many environmental factors during growth, with drought stress being one of the most common causes for reduction in maize yield world-wide. There is wide variation in stand establishment for various maize cultivars to water deficit condition, such as occur in in arid and semiarid regions of the world. An experiment was carried out to evaluate five cultivars of maize viz; EV-1097, Agaiti-2002, Sawaan-3, Islamabad Gold and EV-1098 for tolerance to water deficit based on their cell wall plasticity characteristics. The crop was sown in pots; each treatment consisted of five pots having three plants each, and each pot was watered uniformly up to soil capacity from germination to the three leaf stage as required. Then, the water supply was reduced to half soil capacity level for one week, and then to one-third capacity for the coming two weeks. After 35 days, irrigation was stopped for one week. After one week without water, the plants showed symptoms of drought stress, at which time data was recorded on leaf growth rate, chlorophyll content, leaf water potential, protein content, proline content, relative water content, specific leaf weight, and sugar content. Control plants were maintained at full soil capacity. The experiment was laid out by using Completely Randomized Design with three replications and five treatments (cultivars). The response of the five cultivars examined under these water deficit stress treatments differed dramatically. Cultivars EV-1097 and Agaiti-2002 were amongst the best performers, showing maximum cell wall plasticity, having the highest leaf growth rate, proline, protein, sugar and relative water contents, as well as the highest specific leaf weight, leaf water potential, and chlorophyll content when compared with other cultivars. EV-1097 and Agaiti-2002 were thus the most tolerant cultivars to these water deficit treatments. The Islamabad gold and EV-1098 cultivars were the least tolerant to water stress conditions.
Background: The inappropriate endodontic treatment is the single most frequent cause for tooth extractions. The final goal of the endodontic treatment and the re-treatment (following inappropriate endodontic treatment) is retaining the functionality of the tooth. So far, the most promising materials in these indications were the calcium-silicate cements. \nMethod: Biodentinetm, a new dental biomaterial based on calcium-silicate technology, with excellent handling characteristics and biocompatibility, has been used in patients with complications during the endodontic therapy, traumatic injuries and as a dentin substitute for restorations in complex situations. \nResults: The clinical cases demonstrated the excellent healing potential after the treatment with Biodentinetm. \nConclusions: The bio-silicate technology is highly promising, mostly due to its chemical properties and easy clinical manipulation. The short working time and the high mechanical strength makes Biodentinetm a material with easy handling, highly biocompatible and with wide range of indications (such as endodontic procedures and as a dentin substitute in restorations).
Character Recognition (CR) has been an active area of research and due to its diverse applicable environment it continues to be a challenging research topic in the handwritten recognition process. Feature extraction plays an important role in different classification based problems such as face recognition, signature verification, optical character recognition (OCR) etc. Different feature extraction methods are designed for different representations of the characters. In this paper a comparative analysis for feature extraction using principal component analysis (PCA) and Eigen feature regularization and extraction (ERE) is proposed. The ERE algorithm reduce the occurrence of false detection. Back propagation neural network is combined with ERE features for recognition of characters. The proposed algorithm has been successfully implemented and has the added advantage of obtaining the extraction and recognition result the same time
In the introduction of this paper some definitions of the fiscal pressure are highlighted, also known as tax rate or tax level, as well as some means to determine it at the level of the country, economic entity or individual. In the following lines, a case study is presented on determining the tax pressure to a commercial company between 2008 - 2012. The conclusions have focused on highlighting the influence that the tax pressure may have on the economic entity’s financial decisions.
A large number of interactive queries are being executed day by day. The user expects for an answer without no time after the execution. Even in scientific executions the user needs the intial query results for analysis without waiting for the entire process to complete. The state-of-art join algorithms are not ideal for this settings as most of the algorithms are hash/sort based algorithms, which requires some pre-work before it can produce the results. We propose a new join algorithm, Maximized Result Rate Join Algorithm (MRR), which produces the first few results without much delay. It also produces the maximum join query results during the early stage of the join operation; this is achieved by exploiting the histogram, which is available in database statistics. Histogram provides the frequency of the attribute in a table. The tuples which have high frequency of occurances are joined during the early stages of the join operation. Further using the histogram, the join operation can be terminated when the required matching tuples are obtained. This improves the overall join performance. Experiment results shows that the new MRR join algorithm produces 60% more resultant tuples than the hash and sort-merge join algorithms. It also produces the result 30%-35% early than the traditional join algorithms.
More than 2 million tons of agricultural wastes are produced annually in\nMalaysia. These agricultural wastes provide feedstock for biochar production, which\ncontributes insignificant net carbon dioxide to the atmosphere after soil incorporation.\nThree kinds of primary biochar were used in this study, namely, empty fruit bunch\nbiochar (EFB), wood biochar (WB), and rice husk biochar (RHB). EFB and WB were\nproduced by slow pyrolysis, whereas RHB was produced by gasification. This study\naimed to investigate the influence of slow pyrolysis and gasification methods on\nbiochar chemical characteristics and short-term soil stability. Results showed that the\nkinetic parameters of C mineralization, which was calculated by fitting the three-pool\nkinetic model to evolved CO2–C under field conditions, suggested a tri-phasic Cmineralization\nprocess (labile, unstable, and recalcitrance carbon). Our estimates\nreflected the existence of a very labile C fraction in RHB with a very small decay\nconstant K3. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction showed the\nthree phase transitions of the biochars from the microcrystalline C of the labile\nfraction to the largely amorphous intermediate C of the unstable fraction and\nformation of turbostratic crystallite C in the recalcitrant fraction. We concluded that\nEFB and WB decomposed faster than RHB. Therefore, RHB was a suitable option for\nC sequestration in soil.
The paper is focused on the identification of Marketing Intelligence techniques implemented in order to achieve a superior positioning on the eco-label food products niche market. The research is performed on a sample of Romanian retailers of eco-label food products. The empirical study analyzes the main sources of gathering data about their competitors, the reasons for monitoring the strategic options of their competitors, the specific instruments of Marketing Intelligence used within the framework of differentiation strategies as well as the results of the relationship marketing policies application with a view to improving their performances. The research outlines several positioning opportunities based on a relevant dataset which can be used with the view of making the target consumers aware of the added-value of these products as concerns a healthier nutrition.