Abstract: Sunflower oil with high oleic acid content is most desirable because of its high oxidative stability. Screening sunflower of high oleic acid using conventional method is laborious and time consuming. Therefore, the use of molecular markers as a screening tool is promising. The objective of this research was to evaluate SSR primers for high oleic acid content in sunflower. Two sunflower lines, 5A and PI 649855 were used as the representative of low and high oleic acid sunflowers, respectively, and thirty seven SSR markers were used to identify oleic acid content trait. The results revealing 10 SSR primers showed polymorphic between high and low oleic acid lines and thus were informative. With these primers, therefore, it is possible to identify the genetic markers associated with high oleic acid trait in sunflower genotypes.
Abstract: We investigate sonic cues for binaural sound localization within classrooms and present a structural model for the same. Two of the primary cues for localization, interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) created between the two ears by sounds from a particular point in space, are used. Although these cues do not lend any information about the elevation of a sound source, the torso, head, and outer ear carry out elevation dependent spectral filtering of sounds before they reach the inner ear. This effect is commonly captured in head related transfer function (HRTF) which aids in resolving the ambiguity from the ITDs and ILDs alone and helps localize sounds in free space. The proposed structural model of HRTF produces well controlled horizontal as well as vertical effects. The implemented HRTF is a signal processing model which tries to mimic the physical effects of the sounds interacting with different parts of the body. The effectiveness of the method is tested by synthesizing spatial audio, in MATLAB, for use in listening tests with human subjects and is found to yield satisfactory results in comparison with existing models.
Abstract: Current proposals for E-passport or ID-Card is similar to a regular passport with the addition of tiny contactless integrated circuit (computer chip) inserted in the back cover, which will act as a secure storage device of the same data visually displayed on the photo page of the passport. In addition, it will include a digital photograph that will enable biometric comparison, through the use of facial recognition technology at international borders. Moreover, the e-passport will have a new interface, incorporating additional antifraud and security features. However, its problems are reliability, security and privacy. Privacy is a serious issue since there is no encryption between the readers and the E-passport. However, security issues such as authentication, data protection and control techniques cannot be embedded in one process. In this paper, design and prototype implementation of an improved E-passport reader is presented. The passport holder is authenticated online by using GSM network. The GSM network is the main interface between identification center and the e-passport reader. The communication data is protected between server and e-passport reader by using AES to encrypt data for protection will transferring through GSM network. Performance measurements indicate a 19% improvement in encryption cycles versus previously reported results.
Abstract: Descriptive statistics was performed with the aim to achieve research objective of to investigate lecturers- usage of the mobile technology for teaching. A representative sample of 20 lecturers from the Faculty of Industrial Art & Design Technology of Universiti Industri Selangor (UNISEL), Malaysia was selected as the respondents. The result attested that lecturers fully accept the concept of mobility in learning and game play is appealing concept to support classroom learning. Subsequently, analogous experience on small size of keypad, screen resolution, and navigation could be the major problematic factors to students and affect their mobile learning process. Recommendation for future research is also presented.
Abstract: This qualitative, quantitative mixed-method study explores how students- motivation and interest in creative hands-on activities affected their conceptual understanding of science. The objectives of this research include developing a greater understanding about how creative activities, incorporated into the classroom as instructional strategies, increase student motivation and their learning or mastery of science concepts. The creative activities are viewed as a motivational tool, a specific type of task, which have an impact on student goals. Pre-and-post tests, pre-and-post interviews, and student responses measure motivational-goal theory variables, interest in the activity, and conceptual change. Implications for education and future research will be discussed.
Abstract: Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of the student
centered approaches and has been considered by a number of higher
educational institutions in many parts of the world as a method of
delivery. This paper presents a creative thinking approach for
implementing Problem-based Learning in Mechanics of Structure
within a Malaysian Polytechnics environment. In the learning
process, students learn how to analyze the problem given among the
students and sharing classroom knowledge into practice. Further,
through this course-s emphasis on problem-based learning, students
acquire creative thinking skills and professional skills as they tackle
complex, interdisciplinary and real-situation problems. Once the
creative ideas are generated, there are useful additional techniques
for tender ideas that will grow into a productive concept or solution.
The combination of creative skills and technical abilities will enable
the students to be ready to “hit-the-ground-running" and produce in
industry when they graduate.
Abstract: The concepts of knowledge creation and innovation
have a strong relationship but this relationship has not been examined
systematically. This study examines the utilization of knowledge
creation processes of the Theory of Knowledge Creation in Higher
Education Institutions. These processes consist of socialization,
externalization, combination and internalization. This study suggests
that the utilization of these processes will give impacts on innovation
in academic performance. A cross-sectional study was conducted
using survey questionnaires to collect data of the utilization of
knowledge creation processes and classroom-s innovation. The
samples are Business Management students of a Malaysian Higher
Education Institution. The results of this study could help Higher
Education Institutions to enrich the learning process of students
through knowledge creation and innovation.
Abstract: This research was aimed to develop and determine the
quality of online learning activities kit as well as to examine the
learning achievement of students and their satisfaction towards the kit
through authentic assessment. The tools in this research contained
online learning activities kit on plant in Thai literature in compliance
with the School Botanical Garden of Plant Genetic Conservation
Project under the Royal Initiative of Her Royal Highness Princess
Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, the assessment form, the learning
achievement test, the satisfaction form and the authentic assessment
form. The population consisted of 40 students in the second range of
primary years (Prathomsuksa 4 to 6) at Ban Khao Rak School,
Suratthani Province, Thailand. The research results showed that the
content quality of the developed online learning activities kit as
assessed by the experts was 4.70 on average or at very high level.
The pre-test and post-test comparison was made to examine the
learning achievement and it revealed that the post-test score was
higher than the pre-test score with statistical significance at the .01
level. The satisfaction of the sampling group towards the online
learning activities kit was 4.74 or at the highest level. The authentic
assessment showed an average of 1.69 or at good level. Therefore,
the online learning activities kit on plant in Thai literature in
compliance with the School Botanical Garden of Plant Genetic
Conservation Project under the Royal Initiative of Her Royal
Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn could be used in real
classroom situations.
Abstract: The paper describes ergonomics problems trend of
student at B5101 classroom building 2, Suranaree University of
Technology. The objective to survey ergonomics problems and effect
from use chairs for sitting in class room. The result from survey
method 100 student they use lecture chair for sitting in classroom
more than 2 hours/ day by RULA[1]. and Body discomfort survey[2].
The result from Body discomfort survey contribute fatigue problems
at neck, lower back, upper back and right shoulder 2.93, 2.91, 2.33,
1.75 respectively and result from RULA contribute fatigue problems
at neck, body and right upper arm 4.00, 3.75 and 3.00 respectively
are consistent. After that the researcher provide improvement plan
for design new chair support student fatigue reduction by prepare
data of sample anthropometry and design ergonomics chair prototype
3 unit. Then sample 100 student trial to use new chair and evaluate
again by RULA, Body discomfort and satisfaction. The result from
trial new chair after improvement by RULA present fatigue reduction
average of head and neck from 4.00 to 2.25 , body and trunk from
3.75 to 2.00 and arm force from 1.00 to 0.25 respectively. The result
from trial new chair after improvement by Body discomfort present
fatigue reduction average of lower back from 2.91 to 0.87, neck from
2.93 to 1.24, upper back 2.33 to 0.84 and right upper arm from 1.75
to 0.74. That statistical of RULA and Body discomfort survey
present fatigue reduction after improvement significance with a
confidence level of 95% (p-value 0.05). When analyzing the
relationship of fatigue as part of the body by Chi – square test during
RULA and Body discomfort that before and after improvements were
consistent with the significant level of confidence 95% (p-value 0.05)
. Moreover the students satisfaction result from trial with a new chair
for 30 minutes [3]. 72 percent very satisfied of the folding of the
secondary writing simple 66% the width of the writing plate, 64% the
suitability of the writing plate, 62% of soft seat cushion and 61%
easy to seat the chair.
Abstract: After the Terengganu state government decided to give a boost in teaching and learning through the allocation of free ebooks to all Primary five and six students; it was time to examine the presence of e-books in the classrooms. A survey was conducted on 101 students to determine how they felt about using the e-book and their experiences. It was discovered that a majority of these students liked using the e-book. However, although they had little problems using the e-book and the e-book helped to lighten the schoolbags, these new-age textbooks were not fully utilized. It is implied that perhaps the school administrators, teachers and students may not be able to overcome the unfamiliar characteristics of the e-book and its limitations.
Abstract: This study was a part of the three-year longitudinal
research on setting up an math learning model for the disadvantaged
students in Taiwan. A target 2nd grade class with 10 regular students
and 6 disadvantaged students at a disadvantaged area in Taipei
participated in this study. Two units of a market basal math textbook
concerning fractions, three-dimensional figures, weight and capacity
were adapted to enhance their math learning motivations, confidences
and effects. The findings were (1) curriculum adaptation was effective
on enhancing students- learning motivations, confidences and effects;
(2) story-type problems and illustrations decreased difficulties on
understanding math language for students from new immigrant
families and students with special needs; (3) “concrete –
semiconcrete – abstract" teaching strategies and hands-on activities
were essential to raise students learning interests and effects; and (4)
curriculum adaptation knowledge and skills needed to be included in
the pre- and in-service teacher training programs.
Abstract: Whit the increasing of traffic, noise emanated from
motor vehicles increases as well, which subsequently causes adding
to the stress of modern city. Thus, it is needed to look for most
critical areas in terms of environmental and social impact of noise.
There are several critical situations for noise emanated from motor
vehicles such as stop and go situation which usually occurs near
junctions or at-grade intersections. This study was conducted in two
locations, most common types of intersections, crossroads and Tjunctions.
The highest average noise levels are recorded during Go
phase for T-junction, 64.4 dB, and Drive phase for crossroad, 64 dB.
It implies that the existence of intersection caused the noise level to
increase. The vehicles starting to move produce more sound than
when they travel at a constant speed along the intersection. It is
suggested that special considerations and priority of allocating funds
should be given to these critical spots.
Abstract: Personnel protection devices are cardinal in safety hazard applications. They are widely used in home, office and in industry environments to reduce the risk of lethal shock to human being and equipment safety. This paper briefly reviews various personnel protection devices also describes the basic working principle of conventional ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) or ground fault isolator (GFI), its disadvantages and ways to overcome the disadvantages with solid-state relay (SSR) based GFI with ultrafast response up on fault implemented in printed circuit board. This solid state GFI comprises discrete MOSFET based alternating current (AC) switches, linear optical amplifier, photovoltaic isolator and sense resistor. In conventional GFI, current transformer is employed as a sensing element to detect the difference in current flow between live and neutral conductor. If there is no fault in equipment powered through GFI, due to insulation failure of internal wires and windings of motors, both live and neutral currents will be equal in magnitude and opposite in phase.
Abstract: Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments bring
significant potential to exploit sophisticated computer technology in
everyday life. In particular, the educational domain could be
significantly enhanced through AmI, as personalized and adapted
learning could be transformed from paper concepts and prototypes to
real-life scenarios. In this paper, an integrated framework is
presented, named ClassMATE, supporting ubiquitous computing and
communication in a school classroom. The main objective of
ClassMATE is to enable pervasive interaction and context aware
education in the technologically augmented classroom of the future.
Abstract: The purposes of this paper are to (1) promote
excellence in computer science by suggesting a cohesive innovative
approach to fill well documented deficiencies in current computer
science education, (2) justify (using the authors- and others anecdotal
evidence from both the classroom and the real world) why this
approach holds great potential to successfully eliminate the
deficiencies, (3) invite other professionals to join the authors in proof
of concept research. The authors- experiences, though anecdotal,
strongly suggest that a new approach involving visual modeling
technologies should allow computer science programs to retain a
greater percentage of prospective and declared majors as students
become more engaged learners, more successful problem-solvers,
and better prepared as programmers. In addition, the graduates of
such computer science programs will make greater contributions to
the profession as skilled problem-solvers. Instead of wearily
rememorizing code as they move to the next course, students will
have the problem-solving skills to think and work in more
sophisticated and creative ways.
Abstract: Emotions are related with learning processes and
physiological signals can be used to detect them for the
personalization of learning resources and to control the pace of
instruction. A model of relevant emotions has been developed, where
specific combinations of emotions and cognition processes are
connected and integrated with the concept of 'flow', in order to
improve learning. The cardiac pulse is a reliable signal that carries
useful information about the subject-s emotional condition; it is
detected using a classroom chair adapted with non invasive EMFi
sensor and an acquisition system that generates a ballistocardiogram
(BCG), the signal is processed by an algorithm to obtain
characteristics that match a specific emotional condition. The
complete chair system is presented in this work, along with a
framework for the personalization of learning resources.
Abstract: In Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) systems, it is
more difficult to locate and recognise aircrafts in the neighbourhood of civil airports since aerial traffic becomes greater. Here, we propose to apply a recent Blind Source Separation (BSS) algorithm based
on Time-Frequency Analysis, in order to separate messages sent by different aircrafts and falling in the same radar beam in reception. The above source separation method involves joint-diagonalization
of a set of smoothed version of spatial Wigner-Ville distributions.
The technique makes use of the difference in the t-f signatures of the nonstationary sources to be separated. Consequently, as the SSR sources emit different messages at different frequencies, the above fitted to this new application. We applied the technique in simulation to separate SSR replies. Results are provided at the end
of the paper.
Abstract: There have been many variations of technologies that helped educators in teaching & learning. From the past research it is evident that Information Technology significantly increases student participation and interactivity in the classrooms. This research started with a aim to find whether adoption of Wi-Fi environment by Malaysian Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) can benefit students and staff equally. The study was carried out in HEI-s of Klang Valley, Malaysia and the data is gathered through paper based surveys. A sample size of 237 units were randomly selected from 5 higher educational institutions in the Klang Valley using the Stratified Random sampling method and from the analysis of the data, it was found that the implementation of wireless technologies in HEIs have created lot of opportunities and also challenges.
Abstract: Although, all high school students in Japan are required to learn informatics, many of them do not learn this topic sufficiently. In response to this situation, we propose a support package for high school informatics classes. To examine what students learned and if they sufficiently understood the context of the lessons, a questionnaire survey was distributed to 186 students. We analyzed the results of the questionnaire and determined the weakest units, which were “basic computer configuration” and “memory and secondary storage”. We then developed a package for teaching these units. We propose that our package be applied in high school classrooms.
Abstract: At the time where electronic books, or e-Books, offer
students a fun way of learning , teachers who are used to the paper
text books may find it as a new challenge to use it as a part of
learning process. Precisely, there are various types of e-Books
available to suit students- knowledge, characteristics, abilities, and
interests. The paper discusses teachers- perceptions on the use of ebooks
as a paper text book in the classroom. A survey was conducted
on 72 teachers who use e-books as textbooks. It was discovered that a
majority of these teachers had good perceptions on the use of ebooks.
However, they had little problems using the devices. It can be
overcome with some strategies and a suggested framework.