Abstract: The impacts of near-campus student housing, or offcampus
students accommodation cannot be ignored by the
universities and as well as the community officials. Numerous
scholarly studies, have highlighted the substantial economic impacts
either; direct, indirect or induced, and cumulatively the roles of the
universities have significantly contributed to the local economies.
The issue of the impacts of off-campus student rental housing on
neighbourhoods is one that has been of long-standing but increasing
concern in Malaysia. Statistically, in Malaysia, there was
approximately a total of 1.2 - 1.5 million students in 2009. By the
year 2015, it is expected that 50 per cent of 18 to 30 year olds active
population should gain access to university education, amounting to
120,000 yearly. The objectives of the research are to assess the
impacts off-campus students on the local neighbourhood and
specifically to obtain information on the living and learning
conditions of off-campus students of Universiti Teknologi MARA
Shah Alam, Malaysia. It is also to isolate those factors that may
impede the successful learning so that priority can be given to them
in subsequent policy implementations and actions by government and
the higher education institutions.
Abstract: This paper analyses the structural changes in
education sector since the introduction of liberalization policy in
India. This paper explains how the so-called non-profit trusts and
societies appropriated the liberalization policy and enhanced
themselves as new capitalist class in higher education sector. Over
the decades, the policy witnessed the role of private sector in terms
of maintaining market equilibrium. The state also witnessed the
incompatibility of the private sector in inculcating the values of
social justice. The most important consequence of the policy is to
witness the rise of new capitalist class and academic capitalism.
When the state came to realize that it no longer cope up with
market demands, it opens the entry of private sector in higher
education. Concessions and tax exemptions were provided to the
trusts and societies to establish higher education institutions. There
is a basic difference between western countries and India in
providing higher education by the trusts and societies. In western
countries the big business houses contributed their surplus
revenues to promote higher education and research as a
complementary service to society and nation. In India, several
entrepreneurs came up with business motive using education
sector. Over the period, they accumulated wealth at the cost of
students and concessions from the government. Four major results
can now be identified: production of manpower in view of market
demands; reduction of standards in higher education; bypassing the
values of social justice; and the rise of new capitalist class from the
business of education. This paper tries to substantiate these issues
with the inputs from case studies.
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to examine the effects of laser
radiation on the skin wound healing using infrared thermography as
non-invasive method for the monitoring of the skin temperature
changes during laser treatment. Thirty Wistar rats were used in this
study. A skin lesion was performed at the leg on all rats. The animals
were exposed to laser radiation (λ = 670 nm, P = 15 mW, DP = 16.31
mW/cm2) for 600 s. Thermal images of wound were acquired before
and after laser irradiation. The results have demonstrated that the
tissue temperature decreases from 35.5±0.50°C in the first treatment
day to 31.3±0.42°C after the third treatment day. This value is close
to the normal value of the skin temperature and indicates the end of
the skin repair process. In conclusion, the improvements in the
wound healing following exposure to laser radiation have been
revealed by infrared thermography.
Abstract: This paper presents an evolutionary method for designing
electronic circuits and numerical methods associated with
monitoring systems. The instruments described here have been used
in studies of weather and climate changes due to global warming, and
also in medical patient supervision. Genetic Programming systems
have been used both for designing circuits and sensors, and also for
determining sensor parameters. The authors advance the thesis that
the software side of such a system should be written in computer
languages with a strong mathematical and logic background in order
to prevent software obsolescence, and achieve program correctness.
Abstract: Code mobility technologies attract more and more developers and consumers. Numerous domains are concerned, many platforms are developed and interest applications are realized. However, developing good software products requires modeling, analyzing and proving steps. The choice of models and modeling languages is so critical on these steps. Formal tools are powerful in analyzing and proving steps. However, poorness of classical modeling language to model mobility requires proposition of new models. The objective of this paper is to provide a specific formalism “Coloured Reconfigurable Nets" and to show how this one seems to be adequate to model different kinds of code mobility.
Abstract: This study was an investigation on the suitability of Lahar/HDPE composite as a primary material for low-cost smallscale biogas digesters. While sources of raw materials for biogas are abundant in the Philippines, cost of the technology has made the widespread utilization of this resource an indefinite proposition. Aside from capital economics, another problem arises with space requirements of current digester designs. These problems may be simultaneously addressed by fabricating digesters on a smaller, household scale to reach a wider market, and to use materials that may accommodate optimization of overall design and fabrication cost without sacrificing operational efficiency. This study involved actual fabrication of the Lahar/HDPE composite at varying composition and geometry, subsequent mechanical and thermal characterization, and implementation of Statistical Analysis to find intrinsic relationships between variables. From the results, Lahar/HDPE composite was found to be feasible for use as digester material from both mechanical and economic standpoints.
Abstract: This paper presents a predictive model of sensor readings for mobile robot. The model predicts sensor readings for given time horizon based on current sensor readings and velocities of wheels assumed for this horizon. Similar models for such anticipation have been proposed in the literature. The novelty of the model presented in the paper comes from the fact that its structure takes into account physical phenomena and is not just a black box, for example a neural network. From this point of view it may be regarded as a semi-phenomenological model. The model is developed for the Khepera robot, but after certain modifications, it may be applied for any robot with distance sensors such as infrared or ultrasonic sensors.
Abstract: This paper presents a new compact analytical model of
the gate leakage current in high-k based nano scale MOSFET by
assuming a two-step inelastic trap-assisted tunneling (ITAT) process
as the conduction mechanism. This model is based on an inelastic
trap-assisted tunneling (ITAT) mechanism combined with a semiempirical
gate leakage current formulation in the BSIM 4 model. The
gate tunneling currents have been calculated as a function of gate
voltage for different gate dielectrics structures such as HfO2, Al2O3
and Si3N4 with EOT (equivalent oxide thickness) of 1.0 nm. The
proposed model is compared and contrasted with santaurus
simulation results to verify the accuracy of the model and excellent
agreement is found between the analytical and simulated data. It is
observed that proposed analytical model is suitable for different highk
gate dielectrics simply by adjusting two fitting parameters. It was
also shown that gate leakages reduced with the introduction of high-k
gate dielectric in place of SiO2.
Abstract: Utilizing echoic intension and distribution from different organs and local details of human body, ultrasonic image can catch important medical pathological changes, which unfortunately may be affected by ultrasonic speckle noise. A feature preserving ultrasonic image denoising and edge enhancement scheme is put forth, which includes two terms: anisotropic diffusion and edge enhancement, controlled by the optimum smoothing time. In this scheme, the anisotropic diffusion is governed by the local coordinate transformation and the first and the second order normal derivatives of the image, while the edge enhancement is done by the hyperbolic tangent function. Experiments on real ultrasonic images indicate effective preservation of edges, local details and ultrasonic echoic bright strips on denoising by our scheme.
Abstract: Certain sciences such as physics, chemistry or biology,
have a strong computational aspect and use computing infrastructures
to advance their scientific goals. Often, high performance and/or high
throughput computing infrastructures such as clusters and computational
Grids are applied to satisfy computational needs. In addition,
these sciences are sometimes characterised by scientific collaborations
requiring resource sharing which is typically provided by Grid
approaches. In this article, I discuss Grid computing approaches in
High Energy Physics as well as in bioinformatics and highlight some
of my experience in both scientific domains.
Abstract: Mostly, pedestrian-car accidents occurred at a
signalized interaction is because pedestrians cannot across the
intersection safely within the green light. From the viewpoint of
pedestrian, there might have two reasons. The first one is pedestrians
cannot speed up to across the intersection, such as the elders. The other
reason is pedestrians do not sense that the signal phase is going to
change and their right-of-way is going to lose. Developing signal logic
to protect pedestrian, who is crossing an intersection is the first
purpose of this study. Another purpose of this study is improving the
reliability and reduce delay of public transportation service. Therefore,
bus preemption is also considered in the designed signal logic. In this
study, the traffic data of the intersection of Chong-Qing North Road
and Min-Zu West Road, Taipei, Taiwan, is employed to calibrate and
validate the signal logic by simulation. VISSIM 5.20, which is a
microscopic traffic simulation software, is employed to simulate the
signal logic. From the simulated results, the signal logic presented in
this study can protect pedestrians crossing the intersection
successfully. The design of bus preemption can reduce the average
delay. However, the pedestrian safety and bus preemptive signal will
influence the average delay of cars largely. Thus, whether applying the
pedestrian safety and bus preemption signal logic to an isolated
intersection or not should be evaluated carefully.
Abstract: An accurate prediction of the minimum fluidization
velocity is a crucial hydrodynamic aspect of the design of fluidized
bed reactors. Common approaches for the prediction of the minimum
fluidization velocities of binary-solid fluidized beds are first
discussed here. The data of our own careful experimental
investigation involving a binary-solid pair fluidized with water is
presented. The effect of the relative composition of the two solid
species comprising the fluidized bed on the bed void fraction at the
incipient fluidization condition is reported and its influence on the
minimum fluidization velocity is discussed. In this connection, the
capability of packing models to predict the bed void fraction is also
examined.
Abstract: The software evolution control requires a deep
understanding of the changes and their impact on different system
heterogeneous artifacts. And an understanding of descriptive
knowledge of the developed software artifacts is a prerequisite
condition for the success of the evolutionary process.
The implementation of an evolutionary process is to make changes
more or less important to many heterogeneous software artifacts such
as source code, analysis and design models, unit testing, XML
deployment descriptors, user guides, and others. These changes can
be a source of degradation in functional, qualitative or behavioral
terms of modified software. Hence the need for a unified approach
for extraction and representation of different heterogeneous artifacts
in order to ensure a unified and detailed description of heterogeneous
software artifacts, exploitable by several software tools and allowing
to responsible for the evolution of carry out the reasoning change
concerned.
Abstract: The objective of this project is to study the corrosion
behaviour and hardness based on the presence of martensite in dual
phase steel. This study was conducted on six samples of dual phase
steel which have different percentage of martensite. A total of 9
specimens were prepared by intercritical annealing process to study
the effect of temperature to the formation of martensite. The low
carbon steels specimens were heated for 25 minutes in a specified
temperature ranging from 7250C to 8250C followed by rapid cooling
in water. The measurement of corrosion rate was done by using
extrapolation tafel method, while potentiostat was used to control and
measured the current produced. This measurement is performed
through a system named CMS105. The result shows that a specimen
with higher percentage of martensite is likely to corrode faster.
Hardness test for each specimen was conducted to compare its
hardness with low carbon steel. The results obtained indicate that the
specimen hardness is proportional to the amount of martensite in dual
phase steel.
Abstract: Uniqueness and distinctiveness of localities (referred to as genius loci or sense of place) are important to ensure people-s identification with their locality. Existing frameworks reveals that the affective dimension of environments is rarely mentioned or explored and limited public participation was used in constructing the frameworks. This research argues that the complexity of sense of place would be recognised and appropriate planning guidelines formulated by exploring and integrating the affective dimension of a site. Aims of the research therefore are to (i) explore relational dimensions between people and a natural rural landscape, (ii) to implement a participatory approach to obtain insight into different relational dimensions, and (ii) to concretise socio-affective relational dimensions into site planning guidelines. A qualitative, interdisciplinary research approach was followed and conducted on the farm Kromdraai, Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site. In essence the first phase of the study reveals various affective responses and projections of personal meanings. The findings in phase 1 informed the second phase, to involve people from various disciplines and different involvement with the area to make visual presentations of appropriate planning and design of the site in order to capture meanings of the interactions between people and their environment. Final site planning and design guidelines were formulated, based on these. This research contributed to provide planners with new possibilities of exploring the dimensions between people and places as well as to develop appropriate methods for participation to obtain insight into the underlying meanings of sites.
Abstract: In this paper we propose a new classification method for automatic sleep scoring using an artificial neural network based decision tree. It attempts to treat sleep scoring progress as a series of two-class problems and solves them with a decision tree made up of a group of neural network classifiers, each of which uses a special feature set and is aimed at only one specific sleep stage in order to maximize the classification effect. A single electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is used for our analysis rather than depending on multiple biological signals, which makes greatly simplifies the data acquisition process. Experimental results demonstrate that the average epoch by epoch agreement between the visual and the proposed method in separating 30s wakefulness+S1, REM, S2 and SWS epochs was 88.83%. This study shows that the proposed method performed well in all the four stages, and can effectively limit error propagation at the same time. It could, therefore, be an efficient method for automatic sleep scoring. Additionally, since it requires only a small volume of data it could be suited to pervasive applications.
Abstract: Heterogeneous repolarization causes dispersion of the T-wave and has been linked to arrhythmogenesis. Such heterogeneities appear due to differential expression of ionic currents in different regions of the heart, both in healthy and diseased animals and humans. Mice are important animals for the study of heart diseases because of the ability to create transgenic animals. We used our previously reported model of mouse ventricular myocytes to develop 2D mouse ventricular tissue model consisting of 14,000 cells (apical or septal ventricular myocytes) and to study the stability of action potential propagation and Ca2+ dynamics. The 2D tissue model was implemented as a FORTRAN program code for highperformance multiprocessor computers that runs on 36 processors. Our tissue model is able to simulate heterogeneities not only in action potential repolarization, but also heterogeneities in intracellular Ca2+ transients. The multicellular model reproduced experimentally observed velocities of action potential propagation and demonstrated the importance of incorporation of realistic Ca2+ dynamics for action potential propagation. The simulations show that relatively sharp gradients of repolarization are predicted to exist in 2D mouse tissue models, and they are primarily determined by the cellular properties of ventricular myocytes. Abrupt local gradients of channel expression can cause alternans at longer pacing basic cycle lengths than gradual changes, and development of alternans depends on the site of stimulation.
Abstract: We explore entanglement in composite quantum systems
and how its peculiar properties are exploited in quantum
information and communication protocols by means of Diagrams
of States, a novel method to graphically represent and analyze how
quantum information is elaborated during computations performed
by quantum circuits.
We present quantum diagrams of states for Bell states generation,
measurements and projections, for dense coding and quantum teleportation,
for probabilistic quantum machines designed to perform
approximate quantum cloning and universal NOT and, finally, for
quantum privacy amplification based on entanglement purification.
Diagrams of states prove to be a useful approach to analyze quantum
computations, by offering an intuitive graphic representation of the
processing of quantum information. They also help in conceiving
novel quantum computations, from describing the desired information
processing to deriving the final implementation by quantum gate
arrays.
Abstract: The residue number system (RNS) is popular in high performance computation applications because of its carry-free nature. The challenges of RNS systems design lie in the moduli set selection and in the reverse conversion from residue representation to weighted representation. In this paper, we proposed a fully parallel reverse conversion algorithm for the moduli set {rn - 2, rn - 1, rn}, based on simple mathematical relationships. Also an efficient hardware realization of this algorithm is presented. Our proposed converter is very faster and results to hardware savings, compared to the other reverse converters.
Abstract: One of the major features of hypermedia learning is its non-linear structure, allowing learners, the opportunity of flexible navigation to accommodate their own needs. Nevertheless, such flexibility can also cause problems such as insufficient navigation and disorientation for some learners, especially those with Field Dependent cognitive styles. As a result students learning performance can be deteriorated and in turn, they can have negative attitudes with hypermedia learning systems. It was suggested that visual elements can be used to compensate dilemmas. However, it is unclear whether these visual elements improve their learning or whether problems still exist. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of students cognitive styles and visual elements on students learning performance and attitudes in hypermedia learning environment. Cognitive Style Analysis (CSA), Learning outcome in terms of pre and post-test, practical task, and Attitude Questionnaire (AQ) were administered to a sample of 60 university students. The findings revealed that FD students preformed equally to those of FI. Also, FD students experienced more disorientation in the hypermedia learning system where they depend a lot on the visual elements for navigation and orientation purposes. Furthermore, they had more positive attitudes towards the visual elements which escape them from experiencing navigation and disorientation dilemmas. In contrast, FI students were more comfortable, did not get disturbed or did not need some of the visual elements in the hypermedia learning system.