SELECTION AND REVIEW OF MEASUREMENT ITEM OF STUDENTS’ LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

The learning environment plays important roles in the cognitive, effective and social students. Reviewing the learning environment is given due attention to this day because of its importance in helping to improve learning outcomes. This study will look at the selection and review of the measurement items of learning environment factors in Technical Institutions in the country. Variables to be examined in this study are assessment, teaching approaches, learning community, learning resources, work load, the clear objectives. Respondents consisted of 455 final semester engineering students. Data were analyzed descriptively for reliability (Cronbach Alpha values) and factor analysis was used to obtain 6 factor solutions (Eigenvalues and KMO) using SPSS 17 software. Results showed that 6 factor solutions with Eigen values above 1.0. The value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy 0.868> 0.6 is adequate for inter-correlation while Barlett Test was significant(Chi Square = 5962.485, p <0.05). The anti-image correlation matrix by The Measure of Sampling Adequacy (MSA) is more than the value of 0.5. Items O2, PP6, PP7, PP5, P1, SP3 and SP4 dropped based on the criteria by Hair et al (2006), where each item should exceed the value of 0.50. Total variance explained for this loading was 61.51%assessment, teaching approach, learning community, learning resources, work load, clear objectives

Pattern Recognition

A wealth of advanced pattern recognition algorithms are emerging from the interdiscipline between technologies of effective visual features and the human-brain cognition process. Effective visual features are made possible through the rapid developments in appropriate sensor equipments, novel filter designs, and viable information processing architectures. While the understanding of human-brain cognition process broadens the way in which the computer can perform pattern recognition tasks. The present book is intended to collect representative researches around the globe focusing on low-level vision, filter design, features and image descriptors, data mining and analysis, and biologically inspired algorithms. The 27 chapters coved in this book disclose recent advances and new ideas in promoting the techniques, technology and applications of pattern recognition

A model for colour naming and comparing based on conceptual neighbourhood. An application for comparing art compositions

A computational model for Qualitative Colour Description, named the QCD model, is defined using the Hue, Saturation and Luminance colour space. This model can name rainbow colours, pale, light and dark colours, and colours in the grey scale, and it has been parameterised by participants of a study in two universities in Spain: University Jaume I and University of Sevilla. The relational structure of the QCD model is analysed by means of a conceptual neighbourhood diagram and it is used to formulate a measure of similarity for solving absolute and relative comparisons of qualitative colours. Moreover, a similarity measure between colour compositions, called SimQCDI, is also developed. A survey test on several art compositions is carried out and the results obtained by the participants are analysed and compared to the computational results provided by the SimQCDI. Also, a comparison to the standard RGB Colour Histogram similarity method is carried out, which shows that the proposed similarity is more intuitive and that the results obtained are similar with respect to quantification. Finally, the cognitive adequacy of the QCD model is also analysed.This work was supported by European Commission through FP7 Marie Curie IEF actions under project COGNITIVE-AMI https://sites.google.com/site/zfalomir/projects/cognitive-ami (GA 328763), the Research Centre on Spatial Cognition at the University of Bremen, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), Andalusian Regional Ministry of Economy (project SIMON TIc-8052), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project TIN2011-24147), Generalitat Valenciana (project GVA/2013/135) and Universitat Jaume I (Project P11B2013-29)

A STUDY IN THE INFORMATION CONTENT, CONSISTENCY, AND EXPRESSIVE POWER OF FUNCTION STRUCTURES IN MECHANICAL DESIGN

In engineering design research, function structures are used to represent the intended functionality of technical artifacts. Function structures are graph-based representations where the nodes are functions, or actions, and the edges are flows, or objects of those actions. For the consistent description of artifact functionality, multiple controlled vocabularies have been developed in previous research. The Functional Basis is one such vocabulary that provides for a set of verbs and a set of nouns, organized in the three-level hierarchy. This vocabulary is extensively studied in design research. Two major application of this vocabulary are the Design Repository, which is a web-base archive of design information of consumer electro-mechanical products obtained through reverse engineering, and the functional decomposition grammar rules that synthesizes sub-functions or elementary actions of a product from the overall function or goal of the product. However, despite the Functional Basis\u27 popularity, the usefulness of its hierarchical structure has not been specifically tested. Additionally, although this vocabulary provides the verbs and nouns, no explicit guideline for using those terms in function structures has been proposed. Consequently, multiple representational inconsistencies can be found in the function structures within the Design Repository. The two research goals in this thesis are: (1) to investigate if the hierarchy in the Functional Basis is useful for constructing function structures and (2) to explore means to increase the consistency and expressive power of the Functional Basis vocabulary. To address the first goal, an information metric for function structures and function vocabularies is developed based on the principles of Information Theory. This metric is applied to three function structures from the Design Repository to demonstrate that the secondary level of the Functional Basis is the most informative of the three. This finding is validated by an external empirical study, which shows that the secondary level is used most frequently in the Design Repository, finally indicating that the hierarchy is not useful for constructing function structures. To address the second research goal, a new representation of functions, including rules the topological connections in a function structure, is presented. It is demonstrated through experiments that the new representation is more expressive than the text-based descriptions of functions used in the Functional Basis, as it formally describes which flows can be connected to which functions. It is also shown that the new representation reduces the uncertainty involved in the individual function structures

Quantum Mechanics Unscrambled

Is quantum mechanics about 'states'? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to 'classical' instantiations of a probability calculus. Its providing a general framework for prediction accounts for its distinctive traits, which one should be careful not to mistake for reflections of any strange ontology. The suggestion is also made that quantum theory unwittingly emerged, in Schroedinger's formulation, as a 'lossy' by-product of a quantum-mechanical variant of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. As it turns out, the effectiveness of quantum theory qua predictive algorithm makes up for the computational impracticability of that master equation.Comment: 25 pages, no figures, final versio

A theory of concepts and their combinations I: The structure of the sets of contexts and properties

We propose a theory for modeling concepts that uses the state-context-property theory (SCOP), a generalization of the quantum formalism, whose basic notions are states, contexts and properties. This theory enables us to incorporate context into the mathematical structure used to describe a concept, and thereby model how context influences the typicality of a single exemplar and the applicability of a single property of a concept. We introduce the notion `state of a concept' to account for this contextual influence, and show that the structure of the set of contexts and of the set of properties of a concept is a complete orthocomplemented lattice. The structural study in this article is a preparation for a numerical mathematical theory of concepts in the Hilbert space of quantum mechanics that allows the description of the combination of concepts

Statistical inference in brain graphs using threshold-free network-based statistics

The description of brain networks as graphs where nodes represent different brain regions and edges represent a measure of connectivity between a pair of nodes is an increasingly used approach in neuroimaging research. The development of powerful methods for edge-wise grouplevel statistical inference in brain graphs while controlling for multiple-testing associated falsepositive rates, however, remains a difficult task. In this study, we use simulated data to assess the properties of threshold-free network-based statistics (TFNBS). The TFNBS combines thresholdfree cluster enhancement, a method commonly used in voxel-wise statistical inference, and network-based statistic (NBS), which is frequently used for statistical analysis of brain graphs. Unlike the NBS, TFNBS generates edge-wise significance values and does not require the a priori definition of a hard cluster-defining threshold. Other test parameters, nonetheless, need to be set. We show that it is possible to find parameters that make TFNBS sensitive to strong and topologically clustered effects, while appropriately controlling false-positive rates. Our results show that the TFNBS is an adequate technique for the statistical assessment of brain graphs

Epistemic Modality, Mind, and Mathematics

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality relates to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality; the types of mathematical modality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal profile of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a modal mental state. Chapter \textbf{2} argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. Chapter \textbf{3} provides an abstraction principle for epistemic intensions. Chapter \textbf{4} advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter \textbf{5} applies the fixed points of the modal $\mu$-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). Chapter \textbf{6} advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's "criterial" identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter \textbf{7} provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapter \textbf{4} is availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. Chapter \textbf{8} examines the modal commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic modality and the epistemology of abstraction. Chapter \textbf{9} examines the modal profile of $\Omega$-logic in set theory. Chapter \textbf{10} examines the interaction between epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, epistemic set theory, and absolute decidability. Chapter \textbf{11} avails of modal coalgebraic automata to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction of the interpretational and objective modalities thereof. The hyperintensional, topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapter \textbf{2} is applied in chapters \textbf{7}, \textbf{8}, \textbf{10}, and \textbf{11}. Chapter \textbf{12} provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides four models of hyperintensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{13} examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter \textbf{14} examines, finally, the modal semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory