The Heart of Matter

Power line communications technology was developed after the establishment of the power distribution network, it is considered to be one of the promising means of data transfer for home networks, and is a medium of shared transmission. Our study was based on the effectiveness of the CSMA/CA method, the collision occurs when the modems transmit at the same time, the transmitters draw the same backoff (a random waiting time) after another transmission. After the backoff, the modems check, before transmitting, that the channel is free to base themselves on the detection of preamble symbols which identify a competing transmission. The proposed simulation approach is based on the estimation of the power level in the channel between the hybrid and default channel listening process. The solution is based on the transfer function used in the modeling.

New Silk Road, 2024

Author LEE Ming-yen interviews four young conductors: Moses GAY Enhui (top left), LIEN Boon Hua (middle left), CHIANG Chen-Hao (middle right), and CHANG Yu-An (bottom)

CIES, 2011

Western Folklore, 1996

The relationship Tribe/State would often appear to be from the angle of a relationship of opposition, one has perhaps over conveyed, after Ibn Khaldoun, the idea that tribes are expansionist entities, having only one goal, central power. However a quick glance at tribal relations with the State in the15th to 19 th century in the Maghreb enables us to see to what extent they were important but also, and especially complex. In fact the role of the tribes was n’t simply limited to a quest for central power or its refusal. It would vary according to the nature of the State and the places. Far from being essentially a relation of opposition, the relationship tribe/ State would often seem to be complementary and dialectical.

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2016

On 6 December 2016, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) releases its report on the achievements of 15-year-olds from 72 countries and economies around the world. This triennial international survey aims to evaluate education systems across 72 contexts by testing skills in Mathematics, Science and Reading Literacy. This is the sixth cycle of PISA and the OECD suggests countries and economies now have the capability to compare the results over time to 'assess the impact of education policy decisions' 1. Compared to other education studies, the media coverage of PISA must be described as massive (Baird et al., 2016; Meyer & Benavot, 2013) and, as with previous years, it is expected that PISA will attract considerable discussion among policy-makers, educators and researchers (Wiseman, 2014). It is therefore timely to present a thematic issue of Assessment in Education, where we publish four articles that have analysed previous data-sets from the PISA studies each commenting upon the challenges, limitations and potential future assessment research on the PISA data. The articles touch upon issues regarding sampling, language, item difficulty and demands, as well as the secondary analyses of students' reported experiences of formative assessment in the classroom. One important message from the authors in this thematic Special Issue is the need for a more complex discussion around the use and misuse of PISA data, and the importance of pointing to the limitations of how the results are presented to policy-makers and the public. In an area where the media produces narratives on schools and education systems based upon rankings in PISA, researchers in the field of large-scale assessment studies have a particularly important role in stepping up and advising on how to interpret and understand these studies, while warning against potential misuse. In 2014, Yasmine El Masri gave a keynote at the Association for Educational Assessment-Europe conference in Tallinn, Estonia, following her Kathleen Tattersall New Researcher Award. We are pleased to publish the paper based upon her DPhil research: Language effects in international testing: the case of PISA 2006 science items. Together with Jo-Anne Baird and Art Graesser, El Masri investigates the extent to which language versions of the PISA test in Arabic, English and French are comparable in terms of item difficulty and demand (El Masri et al., 2016). As there is an ongoing discussion on whether it is possible to assess in a fair manner and compare science, mathematics and reading performances across countries and cultures, this present study offers important findings for future research. Using released PISA items, El Masri et al. show how language demands vary when comparing Arabic, English and French versions of the same item, and hence could impose different cognitive demands on the students participating in the PISA test in different countries. With the expansion of PISA to other countries through PISA for Development and the need for fair comparisons across countries, El Masri et al. suggest that subsequent research could explore the possibility of investigating computational linguistics approaches in test transadaptation as an alternative to the use of expert judgement which is the current practice in international test development. The next article in this issue by Freitas, Nunes, Reis, Seabra, and Ferro (2016), Correcting for sample problems in PISA and the improvement in Portugese students' performance, reports a

Renewable Energies and Law, 2023

Ensuring a secure, clean, and reliable energy supply for present and future generations has been a prime concern for many governments since medieval times. With the emergence of the COP27 summit in Egypt, this issue has become more critical as world supplies of conventional energy sources face rapid depletion and associated uncontrolled pollution of the environment. For that reason, to realise sustainable consumption, over the recent past, competition for clean, reliable, secure energy supply has proliferated alongside the developments of sustainable climate and energy policy. Consequently, many governments around the globe have focused their attention on energy policies that are primarily anchored on three main goals of the energy trilemma: security of supply, affordability, and environmental sustainability. Even though the energy policy is virtually the same across most African countries, including Kenya, it is important to investigate how such policies can be enhanced and elevated to international standards. For that reason, the primary purpose of this study was to examine the underlying functions of the Kenyan legal framework regarding the implementation of renewable energy policies by focusing on the development of wind power. In simple terms, the purpose of the study is premised on the legal rules and regulations governing the location, operations, installations, and the entire planning procedure of the wind farm projects in both the UK and Kenya and evaluate them concerning their capacities to impede or facilitate the developments of windfarms in both countries. The thesis sets out to answer the following question: is it feasible and desirable to transplant the UK’s legal framework to Kenya? The study seeks to answer the research question by conducting a comparative analysis of the socioeconomic and political environments for renewable energy laws in the UK and Kenya to demonstrate that renewable energy legal frameworks are embedded in socioeconomic and political environments with which they interact and, in the process, facilitate or undercut renewable energy project implementation. For that reason, the study adopted a quantitative research design and a case study research strategy to comparatively analyse three case studies; the Kinangop Wind Park Project (Kenya), Ngong Hills Wind Farm (Kenya), and the Clyde Wind Farm Project (UK). By using the middle ground theory, the study findings reveal that it is desirable to transplant the renewable energy laws from the UK to Kenya owing to the similarities between the two countries, but taking into account the highlighted gaps in the Kenyan legal and policy framework for renewable energy. The significant socioeconomic and political challenges identified in the study are land acquisition and community issues; lack of public participation; overlapping and mismatching mandates among institutions; financing; corruption; conflicts of interests; and clarity on public benefits. Significant predominant gaps include but are not limited to a lack of community engagement and public participation in the development of the RE projects. However, factors such as global climate change, common membership to international agreements, globalisation, the common law system, and the transplantation of laws in other sectors facilitate the transplantation of these legal and policy frameworks. In Kenya, the public sector should enhance the capacity and effectiveness of the energy institutions in the sector, improve legal and policy frameworks for RE Projects, conduct feasibility studies on socioeconomic benefits to communities, and grid expansion and upgrades. Besides, the Kenyan government needs to embrace the legal, policy, and institutional framework and have inbuilt financial incentives. The study also recommends Improvements in wind farm planning and Segmentation of Strategic Wind farm planning by the Kenyan government.