rstream: Streams of Random Numbers for Stochastic Simulation

The package rstream provides a unified interface to streams of random numbers for the R statistical computing language. Features are: * independent streams of random numbers * substreams * easy handling of streams (initialize, reset) * antithetic random variates The paper describes this packages and demonstrates an simple example the usefulness of this approach.Series: Preprint Series / Department of Applied Statistics and Data Processin

Improving course related information of computing degree courses for enhancing learner development

In this paper, I present action research based on Norton's ITDEM model (Norton, 2009), which I applied to investigate an observed course related information problem in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire. The data collection was a combination of both interviews and surveys. Three lecturers and 100 students from the department participated in the action research. The collected data was analysed using thematic and content analysis. The findings of the investigation identified a problem in course related information integration and presentation. Both the lecturers and some students thought that the problem has impacted on the students' learning and development. In an effort to tackle the problem, useful approaches proposed by other universities and the valuable suggestions made by the participants have been collected for further investigation and adaptation. Overall, action research is found to be a helpful methodology to improve course related information of computing degree courses, which will not only help prospective students' course selection and enhance existing students' learning and development, but also build up the department's and university's reputation

The unperceived boon and bane of Cloud Computing: End-user Computing vs. Integration

Cloud Computing is predicted to bring the next revolution in IT. Easy availability and the intuitive usability enable IT-professionals but also less IT-skilled people deploying IT-services. This encourages End-user Computing, where the end-user is able to solve business issues by designing the service as needed. But with end-users establishing such services, problems of integration occur due to the end-user’s lack of IT-knowledge and insufficient skills of conceptual IT-development. By conducting a case study following the design science approach, we pointed out that with establishing cloud services the degree of End-user Computing is increased and moreover influenced by the services applied. Furthermore we constrained that the independency from an IT-department ends up with the integration of end-user designed services in the existing IT-infrastructure. In order to solve this issue, we manually integrated IT-systems by the use of the Enterprise Architecture Integration approach

Determination of Unit Weights of Aggregates in the Laboratory and at the Source

As a result of meetings with producers, a committee of Highway Department engineers recommended that a study be made of various type of aggregates from statewide sources; the objective being to arrive at a standard of evaluating unit weight of aggregates of various but commonly recognized characteristics. It was further desired that a factor be determined which could be applied to a given aggregate for computing its unit weight with reasonable accuracy; taking cognizance of specific gravities and densities as influenced by particle shapes and gradation

Fuzzy model of the computer integrated decision support and management system in mineral processing

During the research on the subject of computer integrated systems for decision making and management support in mineral processing based on fuzzy logic, realized at the Department of Applied Computing and System Engineering of the Faculty of Mining and Geology, University of Belgrade, for the needs of doctoral thesis of the first author, and wider demands of the mineral industry, the incompleteness of the developed and contemporary computer integrated systems fuzzy models was noticed. The paper presents an original model with the seven staged hierarchical monitoring-management structure, in which the shortcomings of the models utilized today were eliminated

An architecture for message exchange in pervasive healthcare based on the use of intelligent agents

Aims: This paper proposes an architecture for the exchange of context-aware messages in Pervasive Healthcare environments.\ud \ud Materials and methods: In Pervasive Healthcare, novel information and communication technologies are applied to support the provision of health services anywhere, at anytime, and to anyone. Ubiquitous Computing technologies allow efficient and safe information exchange amongst caregivers and their patients in communities, homes and hospitals. Since health systems may offer their health records in various electronic formats, the openEHR foundation has proposed a dual model to achieve semantic interoperability between such systems. Intelligent Agents is a technology that has been applied to simulate human skills in healthcare procedures. This architecture is based on technologies from Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligent Agents, and complies with the openEHR dual model.\ud \ud Results: This architecture was demonstrated and evaluated in a controlled experiment that we conducted in the cardiology department of a hospital located in the city of Marília (São Paulo, Brazil).\ud \ud Conclusion: An application was developed to evaluate this architecture, and the results showed that the architecture is suitable for facilitating the development of healthcare systems by offering generic resources and powerful solution to integrate these systems

Model pengurusan kualiti bagi perkhidmatan teknologi maklumat: Fokus kepada bahagian perkhidmatan pengguna sektor awam

This study is about quality management in the computing services department in the public sector focussing on the IT Services Division (BPTM), User Services Division and Computing Services Division (BPP/BPK). The purpose of this study is to discuss and reveal the concept of quality management where the definitions of the quality and quality management have been elaborated. This study also develops a model of quality management for the organisations and investigates whether the elements that are included in the model are able to be fully applied in these departments. In order to fulfil the requirements the study, of 100 sets of questionnaires were distributed to the 50 randomly selected public sector department as respondents to get their opinions and perceptions. From the 100 sets of questionnaires, 86 were collected and used for data analysis using the SPSS package. As a result, this study has revealed the quality management elements and aspects to be looked into. Furthermore, based on the results of the discovery of theories and research data, this study has developed a practical quality management model to be executed in BPTM. A detailed discussion about research methodology, data processing and data analysis has been explained in this study. As a conclusion, this study has revealed the principles and the aspects that are needed to upgrade the quality management, more specifically for BPTM

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Department of Mehcanical EngineeringUnmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in various areas such as exploration, transportation and rescue activity due to light weight, low cost, high mobility and intelligence. This intelligent system consists of highly integrated and embedded systems along with a microprocessor to perform specific task by computing algorithm or processing data. In particular, image processing is one of main core technologies to handle important tasks such as target tracking, positioning, visual servoing using visual system. However, it often requires heavy amount of computation burden and an additional micro PC controller with a flight computer should be additionally used to process image data. However, performance of the controller is not so good enough due to limited power, size, and weight. Therefore, efficient image processing techniques are needed considering computing load and hardware resources for real time operation on embedded systems. The objective of the thesis research is to develop an efficient image processing framework on embedded systems utilizing neural network and various optimized computation techniques to satisfy both efficient computing speed versus resource usage and accuracy. Image processing techniques has been proposed and tested for management computing resources and operating high performance missions in embedded systems. Graphic processing units (GPUs) available in the market can be used for parallel computing to accelerate computing speed. Multiple cores within central processing units (CPUs) are used like multi-threading during data uploading and downloading between the CPU and the GPU. In order to minimize computing load, several methods have been proposed. The first method is visualization of convolutional neural network (CNN) that can perform both localization and detection simultaneously. The second is region proposal for input area of CNN through simple image processing, which helps algorithm to avoid full frame processing. Finally, surplus computing resources can be saved by control the transient performance such as the FPS limitation. These optimization methods have been experimentally applied to a ground vehicle and quadrotor UAVs and verified that the developed methods offer an optimization to process in embedded environment by saving CPU and memory resources. In addition, they can support to perform various tasks such as object detection and path planning, obstacle avoidance. Through optimization and algorithms, they reveal a number of improvements for the embedded system compared to the existing. Considering the characteristics of the system to transplant the various useful algorithms to the embedded system, the method developed in the research can be further applied to various practical applications.ope