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 that multiple scenarios can be utilized in the context of a multi-level assessment framework for measuring the impacts of learning experiences on students’ argumentation.
This article proposes a new strategy based on a hybrid method that combines the gravitational search algorithm (GSA) with the bat algorithm (BAT) to solve a single-objective optimization problem. It first runs GSA, followed by BAT as the second step. The proposed approach relies on a parameter between 0 and 1 to address the problem of falling into local research because the lack of a local search mechanism increases intensity search, whereas diversity remains high and easily falls into the local optimum. The improvement is equivalent to the speed of the original BAT. Access speed is increased for the best solution. All solutions in the population are updated before the end of the operation of the proposed algorithm. The diversification f
... Show MoreRecently, wireless communication environments with high speeds and low complexity have become increasingly essential. Free-space optics (FSO) has emerged as a promising solution for providing direct connections between devices in such high-spectrum wireless setups. However, FSO communications are susceptible to weather-induced signal fluctuations, leading to fading and signal weakness at the receiver. To mitigate the effects of these challenges, several mathematical models have been proposed to describe the transition from weak to strong atmospheric turbulence, including Rayleigh, lognormal, Málaga, Nakagami-m, K-distribution, Weibull, Negative-Exponential, Inverse-Gaussian, G-G, and Fisher-Snedecor F distributions. This paper extensive
... Show MoreInvestigating gender differences based on emotional changes becomes essential to understand various human behaviors in our daily life. Ten students from the University of Vienna have been recruited by recording the electroencephalogram (EEG) dataset while watching four short emotional video clips (anger, happiness, sadness, and neutral) of audiovisual stimuli. In this study, conventional filter and wavelet (WT) denoising techniques were applied as a preprocessing stage and Hurst exponent
This paper reports on the laser emission properties of the BBQ dye in poly (methyl meth-acrylate)(PMMA). This host material combines the advantages of an organic environment for dye with the thermoptical mechanical properties of an organic dye. A BBQ dye solid solution in PMMA polymer. A nitrogen laser in untuned laser cavity has pumped thin films. We developed the concentration and the thickness to get high efficiency. The laser efficiency had been increased from 7% at thickness 1.5 m to 16.5% at thickness 3.5m, and from 1% to 10% when concentration increased from 1x10-5M to 1x10-3 M
Motives: Baghdad is the capital city and an important political, administrative, social, cultural and economic centre of Iraq. Baghdad’s growth and development has been significantly influenced by efforts to accommodate various needs of its steadily growing population. Uncontrolled population and urban growth have exerted negative effects in numerous dimensions, including environmental sustainability because urban expansion occurred in green spaces within the city and the surrounding areas.Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the planning solutions in Baghdad’s green areas in the past and at present, and to identify the key changes in the city’s green areas, including changes in the ratio of green urban spaces to the tota
... Show MoreAs an important resource, entanglement light source has been used in developing quantum information technologies, such as quantum key distribution(QKD). There are few experiments implementing entanglement-based deterministic QKD protocols since the security of existing protocols may be compromised in lossy channels. In this work, we report on a loss-tolerant deterministic QKD experiment which follows a modified “Ping-Pong”(PP) protocol. The experiment results demonstrate for the first time that a secure deterministic QKD session can be fulfilled in a channel with an optical loss of 9 dB, based on a telecom-band entangled photon source. This exhibits a conceivable prospect of ultilizing entanglement light source in real-life fiber-based
... Show MoreClobetasol propionate (CP) is a super potent corticosteroid widely used to treat various skin disorders such as atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. However, its utility for topical application is hampered due to its common side effects, such as skin atrophy, steroidal acne, hypopigmentation, and allergic contact dermatitis. Microsponge is a unique three-dimensional microstructure particle with micro and nano-meters-wide cavities, which can encapsulate both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs providing increased efficacy and safety. The aim of the current study is to prepare and optimize clobetasol-loaded microsponges. The emulsion solvent diffusion method is used for the preparation of ethylcellulose (EC)-based microsponges. The impact of
... Show MoreThere is various human biometrics used nowadays, one of the most important of these biometrics is the face. Many techniques have been suggested for face recognition, but they still face a variety of challenges for recognizing faces in images captured in the uncontrolled environment, and for real-life applications. Some of these challenges are pose variation, occlusion, facial expression, illumination, bad lighting, and image quality. New techniques are updating continuously. In this paper, the singular value decomposition is used to extract the features matrix for face recognition and classification. The input color image is converted into a grayscale image and then transformed into a local ternary pattern before splitting the image into
... Show MoreIn this article, Convolution Neural Network (CNN) is used to detect damage and no damage images form satellite imagery using different classifiers. These classifiers are well-known models that are used with CNN to detect and classify images using a specific dataset. The dataset used belongs to the Huston hurricane that caused several damages in the nearby areas. In addition, a transfer learning property is used to store the knowledge (weights) and reuse it in the next task. Moreover, each applied classifier is used to detect the images from the dataset after it is split into training, testing and validation. Keras library is used to apply the CNN algorithm with each selected classifier to detect the images. Furthermore, the performa
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