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It is almost 30 years since Morris Kline published his wide-ranging critique of undergraduate education in his book, "Why The Professor can't Teach" [1]. In 1999, Steve Krantz, in his book, "How to Teach Mathematics" [2] reported that academics were paying much more ...

Service-orientation represents a new wave of features and solutions by bringing closer information technology to the industrial domain, particularly factory shop floors. The service-oriented automation software entities (designated here by bots) used in such approach requires a short set of methodologies and software targeting their specification for both computer systems and embedded automation devices. The present work explains the adopted methodologies and software developments for the engineering of service-based ...

Abstract: How to design effective learning opportunities? Why is learning by experience often more efficient than learning by studying? How to provide the learning experiences needed to respond to current challenges? Using computer games and games in general for ...

This paper presents an analysis of the performance impact of two generic group communication APIs, namely Hedera and jGCS. The analysis was carried out in a four-node cluster by comparing the performance of different configurations of two well-known group communication middleware systems (i.e., JGroups and Spread), under different message sizes, both in standalone mode and when used as plug-ins for the two generic APIs. The results show that there are significant variations in the performance overhead imposed by each generic API on both JGroups and Spread, and that those differences are strongly related to variations in message size and the way each generic API is implemented. The paper also discusses whether it would be worth migrating from a standalone group communication implementation to a generic API.

... Embedded System Chihhsiong Shih1*, Chien-Ting Wu1, Cheng-Yao Lin1, Pao-Ann Hsiung2, Nien-Lin Hsueh3, Chih-Hung Chang4, Chorng-Shiuh Koong5, William C. Chu1 1Tunghai University, 2National Chung Cheng University, 3Feng Chia University, 4Hsiuping Institute of ...

The linear sampling method is a fast inversion technique for visualizing the profile of a scatterer from measurements of the far-field pattern. The mathematical result at the basis of this method is that, given a spatial grid of points covering the scatterer, for each grid point there is an approximate solution of a linear integral equation whose L norm blows up when the point approaches the boundary of the scatterer from inside and stays large when the point is outside the scatterer. According to a recent formulation, the linear sampling method requires the regularized solution of a single functional equation where the unique optimal value of the regularization parameter is fixed by means of the generalized discrepancy principle. Within this framework in this paper we first show that the introduction of an incompatibility measure in the generalized discrepancy function provides more reliable maps of the scatterer. Then we apply active contour techniques to the visualization maps in...

Service-orientation represents a new wave of features and solutions by bringing closer information technology to the industrial domain, particularly factory shop floors. The service-oriented automation software entities (designated here by bots) used in such approach requires a short set of methodologies and software targeting their specification for both computer systems and embedded automation devices. The present work explains the adopted methodologies and software developments for the engineering of service-based ...

Abstract The effect of changing the image resolution over a biometric system based on hand geometry is analyzed in this paper. Image resolution is progressively diminished from an initial 120 dpi resolution up to 24 dpi. The robustness of the examined system is analyzed with 2 databases and two identifiers. The first database acquires the images of the hand underneath whereas the second database acquires the images over the hand. The first classifier identifies with a multiclass support vector machine whereas the second classifier ...

Abstract Hardware co-processors are used for accelerating specific compute-intensive tasks dedicated to video/audio codec, encryption/decryption, etc. Since many of these data-processing tasks already have efficient software algorithms, one could reuse those to synthesize the co-processor IPs. However, such software algorithms are usually sequential and written in C/C++. High-level Synthesis (HLS) helps in converting software implementation to register transfer level (RTL) hardware design. Such co-processor based ...

In VLSI interconnect buffers are used to restore the signal level affected by the parasitics. However buffers have a certain switching time that contributes to overall signal delay. Further the transitions that occur in interconnects also contribute to crosstalk delay. Thus the overall delay in interconnects is due to combined effect of both buffer and crosstalk delay. In this work a replacement of buffers with Schmitt trigger is proposed for the same purpose of signal restoration. Due to lower threshold voltage of Schmitt trigger signal can rise early and the large noise margin of Schmitt trigger helps in reducing the noise glitches as well. Simulation results shows that the Schmitt trigger approach gives 20% delay reduction as compared to 10.4% in case of buffers.

Regular lidar operation and data acquisition were done in Manila at the Manila Observatory (14.64N, 121.07E) , Ateneo de Manila University from 1997 to 1998. These years coincided with the occurrence of the El Niño episode that started in the first quarter of 1997 and ended in the first half of 1998. From the lidar data gathered during this time interval, the optical depth of clouds was measured using Klett’s algorithm [1]. The results showed that the computed average cloud optical depth values in 1998 were 7% to 76% smaller compared to 1997 values. The smaller values can be deduced as the effect of the El Niño event based on the rainfall rate and southern oscillation index (SOI) data.

In this study photocatalytic oxidation of toluene, used as model VOCs in the gas phase on different types of Ti-based catalytic materials was investigated. The objective of this work was to find out additional information regarding activity and stability of catalyst during photocatalytic treatment of the polluted air. Two designs of the photoreactor were used: classical type of an annular reactor and annular reactor with recirculation. All measurements were performed at room temperature, atmospheric pressure and at constant initial toluene concentration, relative humidity and total flow rate of the reaction mixture. Some experiments were carried out with catalysts thermally treated on different temperatures (350–450 °C). It was found out that thermal treatment of deactivated photocatalyst at higher temperature is efficient method of TiO2 reactivation. According to results presented in this paper problem of catalyst deactivation can be partially solved by using annular reactor with r...

Abstract The collaborative project management is becoming popular in West. China is acutely aware of the need to improve its management skills in all field. Collaborative project management are developed for better dealing with those complex projects that often consist of many dissimilar, highly interdependent components and involve many different disciplines. This paper reports on recent study the aim of which was to apply the collaborative project management in preconstruction planning, in which an analytical ...

The context of this research is the Department of Education, Science and Training's (DEST) initiative to introduce the Values Education Programme (VEP) into all Key Learning Areas (KLA)s. This paper reports on the first stages of a research project in progress aimed at exploring educationalists', teachers', and student teachers' perceptions and conceptions of the teaching of values in Brisbane secondary schools, in particular the idea of teaching or 'inculcating' students with 'values' as described in the DEST report. Interview transcripts were analysed using Leximancer and phenomenographic techniques. To date two major categories of description of conceptions of the VEP have been identified from the data pool, an institutionalisation discourse and a pragmatism discourse. Within these two major categories a dichotomy of conceptions exists. Key dimensions of the meaning that teaching the VEP holds for high school teachers show a primary focus towards: ...

In this paper we investigate the automatic acquisition of Arabic Multiword Expressions (MWE). We propose three complementary approaches to extract MWEs from available data resources. The first approach relies on the correspondence asymmetries between Arabic Wikipedia titles and titles in 21 different languages. The second approach collects English MWEs from Princeton WordNet 3.0, translates the collection into Arabic using Google Translate, and utilizes different search engines to validate the output. The third uses ...

The rising use of RFID has been stimulating the world market through strong financial investments heading for the adoption of RFID as a standard identification technology. Such initiative has been fomenting the necessity of an infrastructure able to deal with the restrictions and ...

Service-orientation represents a new wave of features and solutions by bringing closer information technology to the industrial domain, particularly factory shop floors. The service-oriented automation software entities (designated here by bots) used in such approach requires a short set of methodologies and software targeting their specification for both computer systems and embedded automation devices. The present work explains the adopted methodologies and software developments for the engineering of service-based automation systems. The main contents focus on the specification of a framework for the development of bots and supporting engineering tools that are part of the Continuum project. The paper also does an overview over the engineering steps from the system design to the operation, and focuses the importance of the maintenance of automation bots. Such applications will contribute to decrease the development time and reduce the components' interdependency, offering enough flexibility for automatic reconfiguration of shop-floor layouts.