清朝封赠文书的制度、颁给、功能：世祖、圣祖、世宗三朝的诰敕

以往对清朝诰命、敕命这类封赠文书的研究或较为抽象,且仅涉及相关制度在某一时间点的形态,或虽具体,却少见个案所处的历史脉络。因希望立体、生动地展示清朝的诰敕,故以世祖、圣祖、世宗三朝为时限,既研究诰敕制度的变迁,又呈现诰敕授予的趋势。由此发现,多民族的清朝有意以多种语言书写诰敕;在政局紧张时大量颁发以笼络人心,局势缓和后则修改制度、少量颁给以减少拥有者,以使诰敕珍贵;诰敕是清朝重要的政治工具。     

Determining the levels of Professional competence of counsellor candidates in Turkey

International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling - This study examined the level of professional competence of counsellor candidates through their solution strategies against the cases they...     

Facilitating Conceptual Change in Gases Concepts

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of conceptual change oriented instruction (CCOI) over traditionally designed chemistry instruction (TDCI) on overcoming 10th grade students’ misconceptions on gases concepts. In addition, the effect of gender difference on students’ understanding of gases concepts was investigated. The subjects of this study consisted of 74 10th grade students from two chemistry classes. One of the classes was assigned as experimental group and the other group was assigned as control group. The experimental group was instructed with CCOI and the control group was instructed by TDCI. Gases Concept Test (GCT) was administered to both groups as pre- and post-tests to measure the students’ conceptual understanding. The results showed that students in the experimental group got higher average scores from Gases Concept Test. Also, a significant difference was found between the performance of females and that of males in terms of understanding gases concepts in favor of males.     

A study of medical and health queries to web search engines

This paper reports findings from an analysis of medical or health queries to different web search engines. We report results: (i). comparing samples of 10000 web queries taken randomly from 1.2 million query logs from the AlltheWeb.com and Excite.com commercial web search engines in 2001 for medical or health queries, (ii). comparing the 2001 findings from Excite and AlltheWeb.com users with results from a previous analysis of medical and health related queries from the Excite Web search engine for 1997 and 1999, and (iii). medical or health advice-seeking queries beginning with the word 'should'. Findings suggest: (i). a small percentage of web queries are medical or health related, (ii). the top five categories of medical or health queries were: general health, weight issues, reproductive health and puberty, pregnancy/obstetrics, and human relationships, and (iii). over time, the medical and health queries may have declined as a proportion of all web queries, as the use of specialized medical/health websites and e-commerce-related queries has increased. Findings provide insights into medical and health-related web querying and suggests some implications for the use of the general web search engines when seeking medical/health information.     

ARGUMENTATION AND STUDENTS’ CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF PROPERTIES AND BEHAVIORS OF GASES

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of argumentation-based pedagogy on college students?? conceptual understanding of properties and behaviors of gases. The sample consists of 108 students (52 in the control group and 56 in the intervention group) drawn from 2 general chemistry college courses taught by the same instructor. Data were collected through pre- and post-tests. The results of the study show that the intervention group students performed significantly better than the control group students on the post-test. The intervention group students also showed significant increase in their test scores between pre- and post-test. While at least 80?% of the students in the intervention group abandoned their initial ideas on all of the 17 alternative conceptions that were identified by the authors but one, the percent of student abandoning their initial ideas in the control group was less than 50. The discussion focuses on the implications of these results for addressing students?? alternative conceptions, promoting the argumentation?Cpedagogy in college science courses and the challenges associated with the use of argumentation in college science classrooms.     

Character n-gram application for automatic new topic identification

The widespread availability of the Internet and the variety of Internet-based applications have resulted in a significant increase in the amount of web pages. Determining the behaviors of search engine users has become a critical step in enhancing search engine performance. Search engine user behaviors can be determined by content-based or content-ignorant algorithms. Although many content-ignorant studies have been performed to automatically identify new topics, previous results have demonstrated that spelling errors can cause significant errors in topic shift estimates. In this study, we focused on minimizing the number of wrong estimates that were based on spelling errors. We developed a new hybrid algorithm combining character n-gram and neural network methodologies, and compared the experimental results with results from previous studies. For the FAST and Excite datasets, the proposed algorithm improved topic shift estimates by 6.987% and 2.639%, respectively. Moreover, we analyzed the performance of the character n-gram method in different aspects including the comparison with Levenshtein edit-distance method. The experimental results demonstrated that the character n-gram method outperformed to the Levensthein edit distance method in terms of topic identification.     

Exploring the effectiveness of engagement in a broad range of disciplinary practices on learning of Turkish high-school chemistry students

This study examines the influence of laboratory instruction that engages students in a wide range of the practices of science on Turkish high-school students’ chemistry learning. In this mixed methods study, student learning in two different laboratory settings was compared, one that featured an instruction that engaged students in a wide range of disciplinary practices (through Argument-driven Inquiry – ADI) and similar laboratories in which a more traditional Structured Inquiry (SI) approach was employed. The data sources included a Chemistry Concept test, an Argumentative Writing Assessment, and Semi-structured interviews. After seven weeks of chemistry instruction, students experiencing ADI instruction scored higher on the Chemistry Concept test and the Argumentative Writing Assessment than students experiencing SI instruction. Furthermore, girls who experienced ADI instruction scored higher on the assessments than their majority peers in the same class. The results suggest that Turkish students can substantially improve their chemistry proficiency if they have an opportunity to engage in instruction featuring a broad array of the practices of science.     

Automatic new topic identification using multiple linear regression

The purpose of this study is to provide automatic new topic identification of search engine query logs, and estimate the effect of statistical characteristics of search engine queries on new topic identification. By applying multiple linear regression and multi-factor ANOVA on a sample data log from the Excite search engine, we demonstrated that the statistical characteristics of Web search queries, such as time interval, search pattern and position of a query in a user session, are effective on shifting to a new topic. Multiple linear regression is also a successful tool for estimating topic shifts and continuations. The findings of this study provide statistical proof for the relationship between the non-semantic characteristics of Web search queries and the occurrence of topic shifts and continuations.     

Time-frequency channel modeling and estimation of multi-carrier spread spectrum communication systems

In wireless communications, the channel is typically modeled as a random, linear, time-varying system that spreads the transmitted signal in both time and frequency due to multi-path propagation and Doppler effects. Estimated channel parameters allow system designers to develop coherent receivers that increase the system performance. In this paper, we show how time-frequency analysis can be used to model and estimate the time-varying channel of a multi-carrier spread spectrum (MCSS) system using a complex quadratic sequence as the spreading code. We will show that for this spreading code, the effects of time delays and Doppler frequency shifts, caused by the mobility of environment objects, can be combined and represented effectively as time shifts. The discrete evolutionary transform (DET), as a time-frequency analysis method, enables us to estimate the effective time shifts via a spreading function and to use them to equalize the channel. Using the effective time shifts, the time-varying channel can be represented simply as linear-time invariant system by embedding the Doppler shifts that characterize the time-varying channel into effective time shifts. The channel parameters are used to estimate the data bit sent. To illustrate the performance of the proposed method we perform several simulations with different levels of channel noise, jammer interference, and Doppler frequency shifts.     

The effects of a game-enhanced learning intervention on foreign language learning

Educational technology research and development - The rich multimedia-enhanced language content offered by modern commercial off-the-shelf games and students’ interest in playing such games...