Utilization of Educational Games in the Implementation of Strengthening Character Education

Educational games are simulation-based media designed to simulate existing problems so that the essence of knowledge is obtained that can be used to solve problems. This study aims to produce a Character Education Strengthening device product in the form of a syllabus, teacher guide book, student guide book assisted by appropriate educational games, which have a level of product validity and practicality. Obtaining the product begins with conducting a preliminary study through literature studies, learning observations, testing to validators, limited-scale trials, revisions, products, main-scale trials, and final products. This study uses the type of research and development with the flow of Borg & Gall with stages from preliminary studies to field trials. The data collection instruments used were validation sheets, student response questionnaires, teacher responses, and observation sheets for the teacher's ability to use the product. The results showed that the product development in the form of a syllabus supplement obtained a score of 82.75%. At the same time, the product development of the Character Education Strengthening guidebook for teachers got a validation value from the validator of 84.66%. It obtained a validation value from the validator of 81.23%. Experimental test data for student responses scored 83.80%, and teacher responses reached 86.90%. It means that the development product falls into the very valid, very practical, and feasible.

TGTDCL Prepaid Domestic Gas Metering System & Reduction of System Loss in the Energy Sector of Bangladesh

Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited (TGTDCL) is the largest gas transmission and distribution company in Bangladesh. The company undertook a pilot project in July 2005 to implement pre-paid metering on a limited scale. The outcomes of the pilot project are analyzed and presented in this paper. Most of the customers under the project appear to be indifferent to the new system. The revenue of TGTDCL was less compared to the same number of un-metered customers. The pilot project has a lack of design, planning, and implementation errors. Calculations are therefore made based on the assumed parameters. Clear and conclusive results regarding the reduction of gas wastage and financial benefits are hard to determine.

Size Effect on Mechanical Behaviors of Intact Rocks Based on Enlarged Digital Models

The size effect on mechanical behaviors of rock materials has been a challenging topic. The previous research is mainly to study the relationship between known large-scale models and representative element volumes. However, only limited scale models can be obtained in situ or laboratory in many cases, so tests or simulations of mechanical response behaviors of large-scale models cannot be carried out. In order to obtain large-scale models, this paper proposes a multi-scale enlarged digital modeling method to synthesize granite models based on texture self-similarity. The representational ability of synthetic granite is analyzed by using mathematical statistics and finite-difference numerical method. The results show that synthetic granite can characterize the natural rock well in terms of texture morphology, geometric characteristics, and mechanical behaviors. Then, the size effect on mechanical behaviors of intact granite is performed based on an enlarged digital model. The results show that the uniaxial compressive strength of intact granite increases with the increase of model size. In addition, the relationship between heterogeneity and homogeneity is established at different unit scales by using the synthetic digital granite model. The enlarged digital rock model has great potential in studying size effects with rock heterogeneity.

Disenchanting Socialist Internationalism: Polish Workers in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, 1962−91

This article seeks to paint a more nuanced picture of the role plaid by socialist internationalism in East Germany and Czechoslovakia regarding the employment of foreign labour, focusing on Poles. The long-term cooperation with Warsaw provides a suitable perspective on how to interpret particular periods and milestones of the schemes as a whole. The article partly dissociates from contemporary writing on the subject, which perceives socialist internationalism either as an instrument of propaganda, masking ruthless exploitation, or as a genuine value that inspired and permeated foreign labour recruitment. Based on documents from archives of all three countries in focus, it is argued that the schemes were clearly driven by the economic needs from the very beginning. Except for limited-scale cooperation with countries of the Global South, socialist internationalism came largely to the fore during the 1970s as a substitutional objective, when the economic goals of the foreign labour recruitment proved unreachable, and policymakers were at pains to reshape the meaning of the schemes (running already in full gear). However, with growing and unmanageable economic difficulties, the idealist rhetoric of internationalism plaid an ever more important role in framing the labour force cooperation until the end of communist regimes.

Development of curriculum design evaluation instruments in strengthening Al-Irsyad ideology in Indonesia

The purpose of this research was to develop a curriculum design evaluation instrument in strengthening Al-Irsyad ideology. The research activity began with a literature review on the curriculum then continues with the development of the instrument. The results of the development of the instrument items were validated by 11 experts and tested on a limited scale by involving 17 teachers from Al-Irsyad Junior High School, Surakarta, Cirebon, and Purwokerto, Indonesia. The next activity was an expanded trial involving 53 teachers from Al-Irsyad schools in West Java, Central Java, and East Java, the territory of the Republic of Indonesia. Data from expert reviews were analyzed by using Aiken's formula. Limited trial data were analyzed with the EFA model using the help of the SPSS program, and data from the extended trial results were analyzed by CFA using the help of the Smart PLS version 2.0 program. The results indicated that the instrument has a good validity guarantee because the loading factor value ranges from 0.5571-0.9463 (>0.5), and the AVE value ranges from 0.5901-0.8051 (>0.5), and has guaranteed reliability because of the CR value ranges from 0.8394-0.9397 (>0.7) and Cronbach alpha ranges from 0.7692-0.9286 (>0.7). The instrument feasible to be used as a measurement tool in evaluating the Al-Irsyad curriculum design in Indonesia.

Automated Chinese Essay Scoring using Pre-Trained Language Models

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) aims to assign a proper score to an essay written by a given prompt, which is a significant application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the education area. In this work, we focus on solving the Chinese AES problem by Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) including state-of-the-art PLMs BERT and ERNIE. A Chinese essay dataset has been built up in this work, by which we conduct extensive AES experiments. Our PLMs-based AES models acquire 68.70% in Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK), which outperform classic feature-based linear regression AES model. The results show that our methods effectively alleviate the dependence on manual features and improve the portability of AES models. Furthermore, we acquire well-performed AES models with a limited scale of the dataset, which solves the lack of datasets in Chinese AES.

Bottleneck Removal of Paclitaxel Biosynthetic Pathway By Overexpression of DBTNBT Gene Under Methyl- β- Cyclodextrin and Coronatine Elicitation in Taxus Baccata L.

Paclitaxel is a highly functionalized diterpenoid that is broadly used for the treatment of several cancer types. This valuable specialized metabolite naturally exists in the inner bark of Taxus species in low amounts. The limited-scale production of paclitaxel in Taxus cell cultures has necessitated the use of several elicitors. Recently, methyl-β-cyclodextrin (CD) and coronatine (COR) have been considered to be highly effective elicitors in producing plant specialized metabolites. Given the limited production of paclitaxel due to the rate limiting enzymes' function, bottleneck removal is conducive to the production of more significant amounts of paclitaxel. In the present study, the full length of DBTNBT coding sequence (CDS), as one of the paclitaxel pathway bottlenecks, was integrated downstream of the CaMV 35S promoter (pCAMBIA1304-DBTNBT) and transiently expressed in Taxus baccata leaves via Agrobacterium tumefaciens and vacuum infiltration method. Paclitaxel production and the expression level of several involved genes were evaluated through different treatments. The transient overexpression of the DBTNBT gene, associated with dual elicitation, resulted in 7.4-fold more paclitaxel production compared with the no-inoculation/no-elicitation control. These ratios were 2.1 and 1.8 in the CD+COR and pCAM treatments, respectively. Among T13αH, T14βH, DBAT, BAPT, DBTNBT, and ABC genes, the most increased expression level belonged to the DBTNBT gene, followed by ABC and BAPT genes. It seems as though in the near future, bottleneck removal could be used on a large scale in Taxus metabolic engineering, resulting in the relative removal of some other bottlenecks and an increase in the final paclitaxel production.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and extension advisory service (EAS) stakeholders' prioritisation: a case study of Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, India

Several climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions are promoted by public, private and civil societies in India. However, there is a considerable variation among them. Therefore, to understand the different CSA interventions supported and prioritised by the public and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as their impacts at the farmer level, a case study was undertaken in Anantapur district, as it is highly vulnerable to climate change risks due to the increase in temperature, delayed monsoon, erratic rainfall and frequent occurrence of droughts. A case study research method was followed to assess the CSA interventions promoted by Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Department of Agriculture, Accion and Adarsha. The findings showed that KVK has prioritised its extension advisory services towards the promotion of field crop (e.g. groundnut)-based CSA. The extension services of NGO-Accion was aimed at promoting horticulture, and Adarsha was prioritised promoting millet-based CSA interventions. Whereas the CSA priority of the department of agriculture was driven by the prevailing zero-budget natural farming project. However, interventions of KVK and NGOs were implemented on a limited scale. Therefore, the recommendations that emerged from the study will help the stakeholders to ensure convergence and foster synergy in implementing CSA interventions at scale. Some challenges faced during the research study were difficulties in the identification of the right stakeholders who were promoting CSA, also their technologies and services related to CSA. However, after a thorough discussion with the extension officers of Anantapur district, the stakeholders were identified and their CSA interventions were ascertained through focus group discussions and secondary data reviewed from magazines and other publications. Furthermore, the present study focused only on the CSA interventions promoted by two public sectors and two NGOs, and there is a wider scope for identifying more stakeholders, e.g. private sector, FPOs and entrepreneurs, and assessing their extent of involvement in the promotion of CSA and prioritisation.

Pengembangan Media Pembelajaran Kuis Interaktif Pilihan Ganda Bahasa Mandarin Sekolah Menengah Pertama ( SMP )

Penelitian ini didasari dari hasil observasi dan wawancara kepada mahasiswa PPL yang mengajar Bahasa Mandarin di SMP Tritunggal Semarang pada tahun 2019. Didapatkan data bahwa media pembelajaran yang digunakan oleh guru kurang interaktif dan cenderung satu arah. Hal ini mengakibatkan siswa merasa bosan dan kurang termotivasi dalam pembelajaran yang berdampak kurangnya pemahaman materi oleh siswa dalam pengusaan kosakata bahasa Mandarin. Berdasarkan permasalahan di atas, maka penelitian ini bertujuan 1) menganalisis kebutuhan siswa berbasis Adobe Flash dalam pembelajaran bahasa mandarin; 2) mengembangkan media pembelajaran berbasis Adobe Flash dalam pembelajaran bahasa mandarin.; dan 3) mendeskripsikan validitas ahli dan guru terhadap produk media pembelajaran berbasis Adobe Flash. Hasil penelitian ini adalah guru dan siswa menghendaki media yang berisi beberapa komponen seperti: memuat SK/KD dalam media, materi kosa kata diambil dari HSK, pengantar dalam media menggunakan bahasa Indonesia, dll. Selain itu dalam pengembangan media pembelajaran ini menggunakan Adobe Flash CS6 yang dikembangkan menjadi aplikasi android agar dapat dioperasikan di manapun dan kapanpun. Hasil validasi oleh ahli media menunjukkan bahwa kuis interaktif pilihan ganda bahasa Mandarin mendapat nilai rata – rata 82,53 yang berarti media masuk dalam kategori layak/sesuai dengan skor 3 (rentang nilai 71-85). Hasil uji coba media tersebut menggunakan skala terbatas dengan jumlah responden 10 orang dari peserta didik SMP Tritunggal Semarang menyatakan bahwa media kuis interaktif pilihan ganda bahasa Mandarin yang dikembangkan diminati oleh peserta didik.This research is based on the results of observations and interviews with PPL students who teach Mandarin at SMP Tritunggal Semarang in 2019. Based on a preliminary study, it is found that the learning media used by the teacher is less interactive and tends to be one-way. This results in students feeling bored and less motivated in learning which results in a lack of understanding of the material by students in mastering Mandarin vocabulary. Based on the above problems, then The purpose of this study is 1) to analyze the needs of students based on Adobe Flash in learning Mandarin; 2) developing learning media based on Adobe Flash in Chinese language learning; and 3) describe the validity of experts and teachers for learning media products based on Adobe Flash. The results of this study are that teachers and students want media that contains several components such as: covering SK / KD on the media, vocabulary material taken from HSK, introduction to the media using Indonesian, etc. Besides the development of instructional media using Adobe Flash CS6 developed into an android application so that it can be operated anywhere and anytime. The results of the validation by media experts showed that the Chinese multiple choice interactive quiz got an average score of 82.53, which means that the media was included in the category according to the score of 3 (range 71-85). The results of the media trial using a limited scale with 10 respondents from Tritunggal Junior High School Semarang students stated that the Chinese multiple choice interactive quiz media developed was of interest to students.

Quantum Error Mitigation using Symmetry Expansion

Even with the recent rapid developments in quantum hardware, noise remains the biggest challenge for the practical applications of any near-term quantum devices. Full quantum error correction cannot be implemented in these devices due to their limited scale. Therefore instead of relying on engineered code symmetry, symmetry verification was developed which uses the inherent symmetry within the physical problem we try to solve. In this article, we develop a general framework named symmetry expansion which provides a wide spectrum of symmetry-based error mitigation schemes beyond symmetry verification, enabling us to achieve different balances between the estimation bias and the sampling cost of the scheme. We show that certain symmetry expansion schemes can achieve a smaller estimation bias than symmetry verification through cancellation between the biases due to the detectable and undetectable noise components. A practical way to search for such a small-bias scheme is introduced. By numerically simulating the Fermi-Hubbard model for energy estimation, the small-bias symmetry expansion we found can achieve an estimation bias 6 to 9 times below what is achievable by symmetry verification when the average number of circuit errors is between 1 to 2. The corresponding sampling cost for random shot noise reduction is just 2 to 6 times higher than symmetry verification. Beyond symmetries inherent to the physical problem, our formalism is also applicable to engineered symmetries. For example, the recent scheme for exponential error suppression using multiple noisy copies of the quantum device is just a special case of symmetry expansion using the permutation symmetry among the copies.