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

     Binary relations or interactions among bio-entities, such as proteins, set up the essential part of any living biological system. Protein-protein interactions are usually structured in a graph data structure called "protein-protein interaction networks" (PPINs). Analysis of PPINs into complexes tries to lay out the significant knowledge needed to answer many unresolved questions, including how cells are organized and how proteins work. However, complex detection problems fall under the category of non-deterministic polynomial-time hard (NP-Hard) problems due to their computational complexity. To accommodate such combinatorial explosions, evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are proven effective alternatives to heuristics in solvin

Face recognition is a crucial biometric technology used in various security and identification applications. Ensuring accuracy and reliability in facial recognition systems requires robust feature extraction and secure processing methods. This study presents an accurate facial recognition model using a feature extraction approach within a cloud environment. First, the facial images undergo preprocessing, including grayscale conversion, histogram equalization, Viola-Jones face detection, and resizing. Then, features are extracted using a hybrid approach that combines Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM). The extracted features are encrypted using the Data Encryption Standard (DES) for security

      Products’ quality inspection is an important stage in every production route, in which the quality of the produced goods is estimated and compared with the desired specifications. With traditional inspection, the process rely on manual methods that generates various costs and large time consumption. On the contrary, today’s inspection systems that use modern techniques like computer vision, are more accurate and efficient. However, the amount of work needed to build a computer vision system based on classic techniques is relatively large, due to the issue of manually selecting and extracting features from digital images, which also produces labor costs for the system engineers.       In this research, we pr

Ground-based active optical sensors (GBAOS) have been successfully used in agriculture to predict crop yield potential (YP) early in the season and to improvise N rates for optimal crop yield. However, the models were found weak or inconsistent due to environmental variation especially rainfall. The objectives of the study were to evaluate if GBAOS could predict YP across multiple locations, soil types, cultivation systems, and rainfall differences. This study was carried from 2011 to 2013 on corn (Zea mays L.) in North Dakota, and in 2017 in potatoes in Maine. Six N rates were used on 50 sites in North Dakota and 12 N rates on two sites, one dryland and one irrigated, in Maine. Two active GBAOS used for this study were GreenSeeker and Holl