Learning and Teaching in Yacht Engineering Education

With the implementation of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) in the United Kingdom, efficient learning and teaching strategies that supports student engagement and eventually allow the development of the required employability skills is more than ever paramount. Higher Education institutions must therefore enhance teaching practices, provide innovative delivery methods, and ensure the intended disciplinary learning outcomes are met, while embedding employability skills in the curriculum. This paper illustrates the current practices underpinning the Yacht Engineering courses at Solent University. Firstly, the assessment of the students’ learning styles allows for more refined delivery methods and supporting activities to be adopted. This is fundamental in providing effective teaching and constructively aligning the taught modules, while incorporating innovative practices, such as blended learning. Moreover, to answer the demand for a greater use of learning and teaching technologies, an action research into the benefits of micro-lecture captures has been undertaken, revealing very a positive impact on student engagement. Finally, careful considerations for employability have been made and influenced the curriculum design to ensure students can access professional positions upon graduating, thus being able to positively impact the industry from day one

eVentos 3 – Desenvolvimento de controlador difuso para navegação autónoma de veleiro

Controlar a navegação de uma embarcação, neste caso de um veleiro, pode ser fácil quando controlada por um humano. Mas, quando falamos em embarcação autónoma, existem algumas dificuldades relativas à programação da rota a que a embarcação deve seguir. Nesta dissertação foram feitas diversas análises referentes às técnicas de velejar, bem como a caracterização de um controlador utilizando lógica difusa, com a colaboração de sensores e atuadores. Para este estudo foi necessário equipar um veleiro com diversos sensores, atuadores e controladores. Por fim, foram realizados testes e análises que possibilitaram o aperfeiçoamento das técnicas de controlo. O objetivo é transformar um veleiro telecomandado num capaz de navegar autonomamente, por forma a ser introduzido posteriormente num de maior escala

An Exciting Time of Transition: 2022 Annual Report

The Annual Report you are about to read recaps the year that was 2022, and our team stepped up in remarkable ways - working together to emerge from a global pandemic, raising more than $75 million and making$84 million in grants to approximately 2,400 nonprofit organizations. We remain ranked among the nation's 20 largest community foundations by asset size, and in a year when the S&P 500 was down 18.1 percent, our endowment return was down only 10.6 percent, which ranked in the top quartile of endowments nationwide.Most importantly, in 2022, we were laser focused on ways to aid Rhode Islanders who have been historically marginalized, and those struggling to make ends meet - by battling inequity, hunger, surging housing prices, educational gaps, behavioral health challenges, economic insecurity, and more, through our grantmaking and civic leadership efforts.The year 2022 also launched the Foundation into an exciting time of transition. While our dedicated staff, under the inspired leadership of Neil Steinberg, stayed focused on fundraising and grantmaking, the Board of Directors took on the search for the Foundation's next President and CEO. After a thoughtful, thorough national search that included significant community input, our next President and CEO, David Cicilline, was unanimously appointed.Times of transition can be both exciting and challenging. Committed to continuity, we are stewards of a 107-year-old legacy of generosity and impact. We have flourished though more than one global pandemic, economic ups and downs, war times, and times of peace and prosperity, a continuous source of hope and a community resource. We will continue to be so.We are humbled by the generosity of our donors and the incredible dedication of our nonprofit partners, and we know you will feel the same as you read through these pages

Annual General Assembly of the International Association of Maritime Universities

978-84-947311-7-

Oceanus.

v. 34, no. 1 (1991

The impact of Dubai’s architectural wonders on the daily indigenous performance in light of cultural modernity: A comparative case study between Burj Khalifa and Burj Al-Arab

In order to decrease the reliance on oil and create more economic opportunities, the UAE has witnessed a development boom over the last few decades in an effort to promote tourism. Dubai specifically has purposefully undergone dramatic architectural evolutions with the aim of transforming the city into a tourist hub and a global attraction. Over the last few years, iconic buildings including Burj Al Arab and Burj Khalifa have been built at different times to become prominent landmarks that promote the city’s global image and combine traditional/local elements in such a way as to form completely new unrecognizable forms i.e. a new genre of design. Those architectural spectacles attract not only visitors from outside but also Emirati citizens/residents as well. However, one is bound to ask: How does the indigenous Emirati population ‘receive’ and ‘perceive’ these major architectural developments and what kind of identity implications do they pose on the Emirati on a daily basis? This research is a qualitative ethnographic comparative case study that explores the Emirati voices and feedback on Burj Al Arab. Based on the findings of Bleibleh’s and Al-Saber’s (2014) previous research on Burj Khalifa titled Cultural Modernity in Urban Space: Indigenous Performance of the Everyday in Dubai’s Architectural Wonders, this research borrows the methodology, theoretical framework and explores the same research question in an attempt to compare the perception of the indigenous Emiratis of the two sites of Burj Al Arab and Burj Khalifa in the light of cultural modernity. Relying on the Driving Forces of Everyday Life as a base for comparison, the study explores the similarities, differences and patterns between the two sites. The study also examines whether the research outcome could be extended and generalized to other iconic buildings in Dubai or elsewhere

Planeamento de rotas para veleiros autónomos utilizando campos potenciais artificiais

O desenvolvimento de projetos na área da robótica móvel, nomeadamente a navegação autónoma de embarcações não tripuladas para aplicações civis, tem aumentado nos últimos anos, tendo como objetivo tornar os navios autónomos mais eficientes sem a necessidade da intervenção humana. As embarcações autónoma, nomeadamente os veleiros, começaram a ganhar importância e destaque em diversas tarefas, como a exploração de vastas áreas do oceano sem colocar a vida humana em risco, na redução do número de acidentes ou ainda numa vertente mais competitiva. Nesta dissertação é apresentada uma estratégia responsável pelo planeamento de rota de um veleiro autónomo de pequena escala, evitando obstáculos estáticos e móveis. Trata-se de uma abordagem baseada em campos potenciais artificiais, onde, a partir de dados recebidos em tempo real como a direção do vento, a posição atual do veleiro, o próximo ponto de destino e ainda informação enviada por obstáculos presentes no ambiente marítimo, é calculado o próximo rumo de navegação, garantindo o planeamento de uma rota segura e livre de colisões. São inicialmente apresentados os diferentes elementos do sistema proposto, tendo como referência trabalhos prévios, fazendo um enquadramento do algoritmo desenvolvido assim como os formatos de mensagens enviadas pelos diferentes tipos de obstáculos. São depois definidos os campos potenciais artificiais associados a cada elemento da navegação (ponto de destino, obstáculos) e estratégias para lidar com as zonas não navegáveis devidas à direção do vento, assim como para evitar colisões com obstáculos em diferentes situações. O algoritmo foi desenvolvido em Python, utilizando o IDE Visual Studio Code, onde depois de implementado, foi submetido a diferentes testes, realizando o cálculo do trajeto para diferentes cenários, recorrendo ainda a um Arduino para emular o comportamento dos obstáculos.The development of projects in the mobile robotics area, namely the autonomous navi- gation of unmanned ships for civil applications, has been rapidly growing over the past years in order to make these autonomous ships more efficient without the necessity of human intervention. In this dissertation, a strategy responsible for the path planning of a small-scale autonomous sailboat is introduced, avoiding colissions with static and mobile obstacles. The approach presented is based on artificial potential fields, where, thru real-time data received, such as wind direction, sailboat position, next destination point, and mes- sages from obstacles in the environment, calculates the next goal alignment, guaranteeing a safe route free of collisions. The different elements of the proposed system are initially described, taking previ- ous works as reference, presenting the proposed algorithm, as well as the format of the messages sent by the different types of obstacles. The artificial potential fields associated with the different elements present in the navigation are computed (namely goal point and obstacles), and adequate strategies to deal with the no-go zone associated with the wind direction and to avoid collisions in different scenarios are defined. The algorithm was developed in Python using Visual Studio Code IDE. After being implemented, it was submitted to different tests calculating the path in different scenarios and using an Arduino to simulate the behavior of an obstacle by sending messages