Examined in this study were dropout rates for Black, Hispanic, and White middle schools students during the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years. Texas middle school dropout rates were downloaded from the Texas Academic Performance Reports for two school years. Inferential statistical analyses were conducted separately for each ethnic/racial group to determine whether changes had occurred in their dropout rates between the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years. Black and White students did not have a statistically significant difference in their dropout rates between those two school years. Hispanic students, however, had a statistically significantly higher dropout rate in the 2013-2014 school year than in the 2012-2013 school year. Implications of these results are discussed, as well as recommendations for future research.

An ecologically planned greening strategy in an urban landscape helps provide a healthy and wholesome environment for its citizens and, at the same time, promotes biodiversity, offers ecosystem services, raises awareness about environmental conservation, protects the city’s environment (from pollution), and ameliorates climate locally. Designing a greening strategy compatible to local physico-climatic conditions requires consideration and integration of a number of complex factors. The current paper aims to develop a comprehensive framework for a greening strategy based on the principals of ecology. This paper also focuses on deriving benefits from the green cover in the landscape through maximizing the flow of ecosystem services. The outcome of such an ecologically designed greening strategy will be in the form of a customized green plan right from a neighbourhood scale to a community and finally a city scale.

Customer satisfaction is a primary marketing construct in the last three decades. In the past, it was unpopular and unaccepted concept because companies thought it was more important to gain new customers than retain the existing once. However, in this present decade, companies have gained better understanding of the importance of customer satisfaction (especially service producing companies) and adopted it as a high priority operational goal. This review examines with the variety of literature support the relationship of variables with respect to customer satisfaction. To broaden and make possible further studies contextually and empirically, a mind-map is presented to show how these relationship variables relate to customers satisfaction. This would improve the studies related to customer satisfaction in particular.

I am from Singapore and alumni of the University of Tasmania and I am doing an independent study on the current evolutionary patterns of homo sapiens. I have actually met a person with a mysterious medical condition but who refused to see a doctor and was why it is so undocumented. I am unable to find anything like this online and in research archives.

In 2003, the United Nations agency for tourism (UNWTO), established a Panel of Tourism Experts, to collect regular information on the short-term development of tourism. Experts’ opinions are since used to estimate a confidence index, which offers fairly accurate information on the current and future development of the tourism sector worldwide and by macro-regions. The significance of this instrument became evident during the 2008/2009 economic and financial crisis, when indications about the impact and duration of the crisis were scarce, but particularly relevant to a sector having experience virtually uninterrupted growth until then. As the crisis unfolded, the constant revision of key explanatory variables of tourism demand, such as GDP and inflation, jeopardized the accurateness of model-based forecasts, while soft information collected through the Panel provided accurate indications about the evolution of the crisis. This occurrence renewed interest in the value of such a simple, but effective forecasting tool (Croce, Wöber et al. 2015, Croce 2016).

When the scientific need to model geochemical elements in soil, is using geostatistical methodologies, for instance krigings, but we can use a new possibility with Bayesian Inference. The models for the analysis were specified by the authors and estimated using Bayesian inference for Gaussian Markov Random Field (GMRF) through the Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) algorithm. The results allow us to quantify and assess possible spatial relationships between the distribution of lithium and other possible explanatory elements. Are these other elements significant to the study? We believe the methods outlined here may help to find elements such as lithium, as well as contributing to the prediction and management of new extractions or prospection in a region in order to find each chemical element. The application for the modeling is to study the spatial variation in the distribution of lithium and its relationship to other geochemical elements is analyzed in terms of the different possibilities offered by geographical and environmental factors. All in all, Lithium presents many important and meaningful uses and applications such as: ceramics and glass, electrical and electronics standing out lithium ion batteries, as well as a lubricator for greases, in metallurgy, pyrotechnics, air purification, optics, organic and polymer chemistry, and medicine. This study aims to examine the distribution of lithium in sediments from the area of Beceite, in the Iberian Range and the Catalan Coastal Range (Catalànids), within the geological context of the Iberian Plate. The Atlas Geoquímico de España (IGME, 2012) was used as the main geochemical data bank in order to carry out a statistical analysis study.

The particle dynamics conception (mathematical formalism) changes rather rare in the process of the particle dynamics development. It connected with associative delusions in the existing dynamics conception and with the logical reloading which is a means of the associative delusion overcoming. Influence of associative delusions (AD) onto development of physics and mathematics is investigated. The associative delusion (AD) means a mistake, appearing from incorrect associations, when a property of one object is attributed to another one. Examples of most ancient delusions are: (1) connection of the gravitation field direction with a preferred direction in space (instead of the direction to the Earth center), that had lead to the antipode paradox, (2) statement that the Earth (not the Sun) is a center of the planetary system, that had lead to the Ptolemaic doctrine. Now these ADs have been overcame. In the paper one considers four modern and not yet got over ADs, whose corollaries are false space-time geometry in the microcosm and most of problems and difficulties of the quantum field theory (QFT). One shows that ADs have a series of interesting properties: (1) ADs appear to be long-living delusions, because they are compensated partly by means of introduction of compensating (Ptolemaic) conceptions, (2) ADs influence on scientific investigations, generating a special pragmatic style (P-style) of investigations resembling the experimental trial and error method, (3) ADs act on investigations directly and via P-style, ADs direct the science development into a blind alley. One considers concrete properties of modern ADs and the methods of their over coming. From viewpoint of application the paper is an analysis of mistakes, made in the quantum theory development. One analyses reasons of these mistakes and suggests methods of their correction.

The present invention relates to the ProbabilityTesting which is a new testing technique under Software Testing. This invention belongs to Software Testing, especially a new intellectual testing technique. The Probability Testing introduces a new mathematical formula in Software Testing as well as Software Engineering. Probabilistic Testing Architecture which gives a brief idea of Probability Testing before the start of the software testing.

A model for investigating the transport of drug from a half-embedded drug-eluting stent (DES) is developed. Keeping the relevance of the physiological situation in view, the luminal drug transport is considered as an unsteady convection-diffusion process, while the drug transport within the arterial tissue is supposed to commence as a diffusion process. The Marker and Cell (MAC) method has been used to handle numerically the governing equations of motion for the luminal flow and the drug transport through the lumen and the tissue. The effects of quantities of significance such as Reynolds number (Re), Womersley number (α) and interstrut distance on the transport of drug through both the lumen and the tissue are quantitatively investigated. Our simulation predicts that the mean concentration of drug increases with the decreases of Reynolds number and with an increase in the Womersley number. The present results also predict a single peak profile of drug concentration when the pair of struts are placed one-half strut width and also as the interstrut distance increases, distinct peaks form over each strut.

The literal translation of Mahatma, the name which the people of India gave to Gandhiji, is ‘the Great Soul’, maha, great; atma, soul. The word goes back to the Upanishads, where it is used in speaking of the Supreme Being, and, through communion of Knowledge and Love, of those who become One with Him: "He is the One Luminous, Creator of All, Mahatma Always in the heart of the people enshrined, Revealed through Love, Intuition, and Though, Whoever knows Him, Immortal becomes..." The Poet Rabindranath Tagore, on a visit to the Ashram, quoted the above stanza, referring to the Apostle. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, byname Mahatma Gandhi (born October 2, 1869, Porbandar, India—died January 30, 1948, Delhi) Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of the nationalist movement against the British rule of India. As such, he came to be considered the father of his country. Gandhi is internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent protest (satyagraha) to achieve political and social progress.