Lessons taught and learned from the operation of the solar energy e-learning laboratory

The solar energy e learning laboratory (solar e-lab) in Cyprus is a good example of a web-based, remote engineering laboratory. It comprises a pilot solar energy conversion plant which is equipped with all necessary instrumentation, data acquisition, and communication devices needed for remote access, control, data collection and processing. The impact that the solar e-lab had during its nearly 5 years of operation is indeed high. Throughout this period, the solar e-lab has been accessed by users from over 500 locations from 79 countries spread all over the world. In the period of November 2004 to October 2008, more than a million visits were recorded, out of which 25000 have registered on the site and surfed through studying the supplied material. Around 1000 hits concerned registered users that passed the pre-lab test and performed the experimentation part. The four years of operation of the solar e-lab demonstrated how the Internet can be used as a tool to make the laboratory facilities accessible to engineering students and technicians located outside the laboratory, including overseas. In this way, the solar energy e-learning lab, its equipment and experimental facilities were made available and shared by a number of interested people, thus widening educational experiences. Judging from the online evaluation reports that were received from the solar e-lab users during the last 2 years of operation, it can be concluded that there is nearly excellent satisfaction by the users

The use of learning management platforms in school context - a national study

This report results from a national study carried out under the Project “Educational application of learning management platforms”, supported and funded by the Computers, Networks, and Internet in Schools department of the Portuguese Ministry of Education- General Directorate for Innovation and Educational Development. This report has been developed by the ICT Competence Centre of the Faculty of Sciences- University of Lisbon, during the school year 2007/2008

The Internet Opens Its Doors for .BIZ-ness

Starting on October 1, 2001, .BIZ will become active as the Internet\u27s newest top-level domain; its space reserved solely for businesses engaging in bona fide commercial activities. This space has the potential to reinvigorate, at least partly, the immense economic potential of the Internet by stimulating a multitude of e-commerce transactions so common only a few years ago. This iBreif explores the history of how and why this new top-level domain came into being. Following this history lies a discussion of the current .BIZ registration process as well as an analysis of the corresponding Intellectual Property Claims system

Terminology Extraction for and from Communications in Multi-disciplinary Domains

Terminology extraction generally refers to methods and systems for identifying term candidates in a uni-disciplinary and uni-lingual environment such as engineering, medical, physical and geological sciences, or administration, business and leisure. However, as human enterprises get more and more complex, it has become increasingly important for teams in one discipline to collaborate with others from not only a non-cognate discipline but also speaking a different language. Disaster mitigation and recovery, and conflict resolution are amongst the areas where there is a requirement to use standardised multilingual terminology for communication. This paper presents a feasibility study conducted to build terminology (and ontology) in the domain of disaster management and is part of the broader work conducted for the EU project Sland \ub4 ail (FP7 607691). We have evaluated CiCui (for Chinese name \ub4 \u8bcd\u8403, which translates to words gathered), a corpus-based text analytic system that combine frequency, collocation and linguistic analyses to extract candidates terminologies from corpora comprised of domain texts from diverse sources. CiCui was assessed against four terminology extraction systems and the initial results show that it has an above average precision in extracting terms

Adaptive hypermedia for education and training

Adaptive hypermedia (AH) is an alternative to the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach in the development of hypermedia systems. AH systems build a model of the goals, preferences, and knowledge of each individual user; this model is used throughout the interaction with the user to adapt to the needs of that particular user (Brusilovsky, 1996b). For example, a student in an adaptive educational hypermedia system will be given a presentation that is adapted specifically to his or her knowledge of the subject (De Bra & Calvi, 1998; Hothi, Hall, & Sly, 2000) as well as a suggested set of the most relevant links to proceed further (Brusilovsky, Eklund, & Schwarz, 1998; Kavcic, 2004). An adaptive electronic encyclopedia will personalize the content of an article to augment the user's existing knowledge and interests (Bontcheva & Wilks, 2005; Milosavljevic, 1997). A museum guide will adapt the presentation about every visited object to the user's individual path through the museum (Oberlander et al., 1998; Stock et al., 2007). Adaptive hypermedia belongs to the class of user-adaptive systems (Schneider-Hufschmidt, Kühme, & Malinowski, 1993). A distinctive feature of an adaptive system is an explicit user model that represents user knowledge, goals, and interests, as well as other features that enable the system to adapt to different users with their own specific set of goals. An adaptive system collects data for the user model from various sources that can include implicitly observing user interaction and explicitly requesting direct input from the user. The user model is applied to provide an adaptation effect, that is, tailor interaction to different users in the same context. In different kinds of adaptive systems, adaptation effects could vary greatly. In AH systems, it is limited to three major adaptation technologies: adaptive content selection, adaptive navigation support, and adaptive presentation. The first of these three technologies comes from the fields of adaptive information retrieval (IR) and intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). When the user searches for information, the system adaptively selects and prioritizes the most relevant items (Brajnik, Guida, & Tasso, 1987; Brusilovsky, 1992b)

Water level monitoring and controlling of water treatment plants using wireless sensors in LabVIEW

Monitoring and controlling systems are taken as the main entity of any field which can ensure for the effective performance, hence its importance is rising exponentially in industry field. There can be many factors which can bring variations in those systems. This may cease the efficiency of the industry and destruction of industrial equipment. Therefore, monitoring, evaluation and controlling of the variables of any system is significantly important. The main objective of this research is to investigate the process of combining monitoring and controlling of the water level in the distribution tanks of water treatment plants by using wireless sensors network. The design and developed prototype of remote monitoring and controlling system of water levels in various tanks can be used in different parts of the water treatment plants. We have proposed, developed and tested hardware module based on two Arduino Mega2560 boards linked wirelessly by using two NRF transceivers. Remote Arduino is designed to monitor the water flow and the level of the distribution tank besides controlling the water level whenever is necessary. The real time sensors readings obtained are observed by specially designed LabVIEW application using graphical user interface running on a PC connected directly to the local Arduino. The application displays and analyses sensors reading on the front panel. Water level is controlled based on preset values entered by the user. The experimental result and percentage error curve endorse the reliability and feasibility of the proposed system to provide a solution for similar problems in industrial liquids treatment process applications

Sir epidemic and predator - prey models of fractional-order

Recently, many deterministic mathematical models such as ordinary differential equations have been extended to fractional models, which are transformed using fractional differential equations. It was believed that these fractional models are more realistic to represent the daily life phenomena. The main focus of this report is to extend the model of a predator-prey and the SIR epidemic models to fractional model. More specifically, the fractional predator-prey model which depend on the availability of a biotic resources was discussed. On the other hand, fractional SIR epidemic model with sub-optimal immunity, nonlinear incidence and saturated recovery rate was also discussed. The fractional ordinary differential equations were defined in the sense of the Caputo derivative. Stability analysis of the equilibrium points of the models for the fractional models were analyzed. Furthermore, the Hopf bifurcation analysis of each model was investigated . The result obtained showed that the model undergo Hopf bifurcation for some values. Throughout the project, the Adams-type predictor-corrector method to obtain the numerical solutions of the fractional models was applied. All computations were done by using mathematical software, Maple 18

Incorporation of two terminology projects into a system for information retrieval using NLP for term expansion

In this paper, we will discuss two medical terminology projects at the University College of Ghent, Faculty of translation studies, and the benefits of combining them to provide Dutch professionals and laymen with better access to information in biomedical databases. Our first project, the MeSH Termbase Project (MTB) is aimed at health care professionals, medical translators and also patients in need of language support. The main aim of our second project, the Multilingual Glossary of Technical and Popular Medical Terms, is the simplification of the terminology used in patient information leaflets

Prototype development of mobile app for trilingual Islamic banking and finance glossary of terms via iOS and android based devices

The existing use of mobile technology nowadays can be integrated with various forms of learning materials such as electronic books and digital references in a form of dictionary or encyclopaedia. The expansion of Islamic banking practices through various local financial institutions which received vast attention nowadays by educationists and learners for instance, leads to the need in understanding the terminologies used in the industry. In view of this scenario, the paper shed some light on using a workable model for developing a purposeful mobile Islamic banking terminology glossary application in a more convenient way via mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad or any Android-based smart gadgets. The mobile terminology glossary app was designed by using a developmental research design using via rapid prototype instructional design model. The process begun with a need analysis conducted among 225 respondents in International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) It further explored the prototype development and its implementations for mobile accessibility by providing multilingual glossary of Islamic banking and finance terminologies (Malay-Arabic-English). This paper reports the findings design and development prototype based on the need analysis stage, inclusive of mapping users’ device type, Internet accessibility, reasons for owning mobile devices, delivery and user interface, and preferred features to be embedded in the mobile app