Improving students’ use of argumentation is front and center in the increasing emphasis on scientific practice in K-12 Science and STEM programs. We explore the construct validity of scenario-based assessments of claim-evidence-reasoning (CER) and the structure of the CER construct with respect to a learning progression framework. We also seek to understand how middle school students progress. Establishing the purpose of an argument is a competency that a majority of middle school students meet, whereas quantitative reasoning is the most difficult, and the Rasch model indicates that the competencies form a unidimensional hierarchy of skills. We also find no evidence of differential item functioning between different scenarios, suggesting

In this paper a new structure for the AVR of the power system exciter is proposed and designed using digital-based LQR. With two weighting matrices R and Q,  this method produces an optimal regulator that is used to generate the feedback control law. These matrices are called state and control weighting matrices and are used to balance between the relative importance of the input and the states in the cost function that is being optimized. A sample power system composed of single machine connected to an infinite- bus bar (SMIB) with both a conventional and a proposed Digital AVR (DAVR) is simulated. Evaluation results show that the DAVR damps well the oscillations of the terminal voltage and presents a faster respo

Aspect categorisation and its utmost importance in the eld of Aspectbased Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) has encouraged researchers to improve topic model performance for modelling the aspects into categories. In general, a majority of its current methods implement parametric models requiring a pre-determined number of topics beforehand. However, this is not e ciently undertaken with unannotated text data as they lack any class label. Therefore, the current work presented a novel non-parametric model drawing a number of topics based on the semantic association present between opinion-targets (i.e., aspects) and their respective expressed sentiments. The model incorporated the Semantic Association Rules (SAR) into the Hierarchical Dirichlet Proce

A new modified differential evolution algorithm DE-BEA, is proposed to improve the reliability of the standard DE/current-to-rand/1/bin by implementing a new mutation scheme inspired by the bacterial evolutionary algorithm (BEA). The crossover and the selection schemes of the DE method are also modified to fit the new DE-BEA mechanism. The new scheme diversifies the population by applying to all the individuals a segment based scheme that generates multiple copies (clones) from each individual one-by-one and applies the BEA segment-wise mechanism. These new steps are embedded in the DE/current-to-rand/bin scheme. The performance of the new algorithm has been compared with several DE variants over eighteen benchmark functions including sever

In this paper, RBF-based multistage auto-encoders are used to detect IDS attacks. RBF has numerous applications in various actual life settings. The planned technique involves a two-part multistage auto-encoder and RBF. The multistage auto-encoder is applied to select top and sensitive features from input data. The selected features from the multistage auto-encoder is wired as input to the RBF and the RBF is trained to categorize the input data into two labels: attack or no attack. The experiment was realized using MATLAB2018 on a dataset comprising 175,341 case, each of which involves 42 features and is authenticated using 82,332 case. The developed approach here has been applied for the first time, to the knowledge of the authors, to dete

In low-latitude areas less than 10° in latitude angle, the solar radiation that goes into the solar still increases as the cover slope approaches the latitude angle. However, the amount of water that is condensed and then falls toward the solar-still basin is also increased in this case. Consequently, the solar yield still is significantly decreased, and the accuracy of the prediction method is affected. This reduction in the yield and the accuracy of the prediction method is inversely proportional to the time in which the condensed water stays on the inner side of the condensing cover without collection because more drops will fall down into the basin of the solar-still. Different numbers of scraper motions per hour (NSM), that is

          Graphite Coated Electrodes (GCE) based on molecularly imprinted polymers were fabricated for the selective potentiometric determination of Risperidone (Ris). The molecularly imprinted (MIP) and nonimprinted (NIP) polymers were synthesized by bulk polymerization using (Ris.) as a template, acrylic acid (AA) and acrylamide (AAm) as monomers, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as a cross-linker and benzoyl peroxide (BPO) as an initiator. The imprinted membranes and the non-imprinted membranes were prepared using dioctyl phthalate (DOP) and Dibutylphthalate (DBP) as plasticizers in PVC matrix. The membranes were coated on graphite electrodes. The MIP electrodes using

The  thermal  and  electrical  performance  of  different  designs  of  air  based  hybrid photovoltaic/thermal collectors is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The circulating air is used to cool PV panels and to collect the absorbed energy to improve their performance. Four different collectors have been designed, manufactured and instrumented namely; double PV panels without cooling (model I), single duct double pass collector (model II), double duct single pass (model III), and single duct single pass (model IV) . Each collector consists of: channel duct, glass cover, axial fan to circulate air and two PV panel in parallel connection. The temperature of the upper and

The subject of an valuation of quality of construction projects is one of the topics which it becomes necessary of the absence of the quantity standards in measuring the control works and the quality valuation standards in constructional projects. In the time being it depends on the experience of the workers which leads to an apparent differences in the valuation.

The idea of this research came to put the standards to evaluate the quality of the projects in a special system depending on quantity scale nor quality specifying in order to prepare an expert system “ Crystal “ to apply this special system to able the engineers to valuate the quality of their projects easily and in more accurate ways.