The role of physical and functional characteristics of nineveh street, mosul city centre, Iraq, as the sense of place

The street is the most important element which determines the urban pattern of cities by creating its ‘sense of place’. It plays a multi-dimensional function in the city. Its essential role can be seen not only through its function as a channel of movement, commercial, social and cultural place, but also through its physical characteristics such as location, appearance, and views in making the street legible and accessible, and in providing a safe, comfortable and orientated environment. In the face of rapid urbanisation, many of these roles of streets have changed, which affect the users’ feelings and perception of the street, thus disrupting the sense of place of cities. The aim of this study was to establish the role of Nineveh Street in relation to the sense of place. The objectives of the research are to identify the role of two different characteristics of Nineveh Street; firstly physical and secondly functional characteristics in giving the sense of place. Nineveh Street was selected as a case study based on its physical and functional importance as well as its location in the core of Mosul City Centre in Iraq. A mixed methods approach was adopted in this research. The quantitative method was applied by using 330 questionnaire surveys, while the qualitative method was applied by using 30 semi-structured interviews, and direct observation. The data was quantitatively analysed using SPSS version 21 and qualitatively analysed using descriptive and self-interpretation analysis. The results showed that physically the location, appearance, and quality of views of Nineveh Street plays a significant role in making the street accessible, recognizable, visible and oriented respectively. Meanwhile, functionally the street plays an important role as a commercial space, a channel of movement, and some roles as a cultural and social space. The study concludes that these roles represent qualities that distinguish Nineveh Street and make it unique in terms of sense of place of Mosul City Centre. The major implication of the research is that in order to secure the sense of place of Mosul City Centre, the role of physical and functional characteristics of its streets should be considered in the design and redevelopment policy

National review of school music education: Augmenting the diminished

This study included a literature review, call for submissions, site visits, national survey and curriculum mapping to determine the current quality and status of music education in Australian schools. It provides an examination of the challenges facing schools in providing music education and highlights opportunities for strengthening music education in schools

Enhanced Bees Algorithm with fuzzy logic and Kalman filtering

The Bees Algorithm is a new population-based optimisation procedure which employs a combination of global exploratory and local exploitatory search. This thesis introduces an enhanced version of the Bees Algorithm which implements a fuzzy logic system for greedy selection of local search sites. The proposed fuzzy greedy selection system reduces the number of parameters needed to run the Bees Algorithm. The proposed algorithm has been applied to a number of benchmark function optimisation problems to demonstrate its robustness and self-organising ability. The Bees Algorithm in both its basic and enhanced forms has been used to optimise the parameters of a fuzzy logic controller. The purpose of the controller is to stabilise and balance an under-actuated two-link acrobatic robot (ACROBOT) in the upright position. Kalman filtering, as a fast convergence gradient-based optimisation method, is introduced as an alternative to random neighbourhood search to guide worker bees speedily towards the optima of local search sites. The proposed method has been used to tune membership functions for a fuzzy logic system. Finally, the fuzzy greedy selection system is enhanced by using multiple independent criteria to select local search sites. The enhanced fuzzy selection system has again been used with Kalman filtering to speed up the Bees Algorithm. The resulting algorithm has been applied to train a Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network for wood defect identification. The results obtained show that the changes made to the Bees Algorithm in this research have significantly improved its performance. This is because these enhancements maintain the robust global search attribute of the Bees Algorithm and improve its local search procedure.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Enhanced Bees Algorithm with fuzzy logic and Kalman filtering

The Bees Algorithm is a new population-based optimisation procedure which employs a combination of global exploratory and local exploitatory search. This thesis introduces an enhanced version of the Bees Algorithm which implements a fuzzy logic system for greedy selection of local search sites. The proposed fuzzy greedy selection system reduces the number of parameters needed to run the Bees Algorithm. The proposed algorithm has been applied to a number of benchmark function optimisation problems to demonstrate its robustness and self-organising ability. The Bees Algorithm in both its basic and enhanced forms has been used to optimise the parameters of a fuzzy logic controller. The purpose of the controller is to stabilise and balance an under-actuated two-link acrobatic robot (ACROBOT) in the upright position. Kalman filtering, as a fast convergence gradient-based optimisation method, is introduced as an alternative to random neighbourhood search to guide worker bees speedily towards the optima of local search sites. The proposed method has been used to tune membership functions for a fuzzy logic system. Finally, the fuzzy greedy selection system is enhanced by using multiple independent criteria to select local search sites. The enhanced fuzzy selection system has again been used with Kalman filtering to speed up the Bees Algorithm. The resulting algorithm has been applied to train a Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network for wood defect identification. The results obtained show that the changes made to the Bees Algorithm in this research have significantly improved its performance. This is because these enhancements maintain the robust global search attribute of the Bees Algorithm and improve its local search procedure

Design of an E-learning system using semantic information and cloud computing technologies

Humanity is currently suffering from many difficult problems that threaten the life and survival of the human race. It is very easy for all mankind to be affected, directly or indirectly, by these problems. Education is a key solution for most of them. In our thesis we tried to make use of current technologies to enhance and ease the learning process. We have designed an e-learning system based on semantic information and cloud computing, in addition to many other technologies that contribute to improving the educational process and raising the level of students. The design was built after much research on useful technology, its types, and examples of actual systems that were previously discussed by other researchers. In addition to the proposed design, an algorithm was implemented to identify topics found in large textual educational resources. It was tested and proved to be efficient against other methods. The algorithm has the ability of extracting the main topics from textual learning resources, linking related resources and generating interactive dynamic knowledge graphs. This algorithm accurately and efficiently accomplishes those tasks even for bigger books. We used Wikipedia Miner, TextRank, and Gensim within our algorithm. Our algorithm‘s accuracy was evaluated against Gensim, largely improving its accuracy. Augmenting the system design with the implemented algorithm will produce many useful services for improving the learning process such as: identifying main topics of big textual learning resources automatically and connecting them to other well defined concepts from Wikipedia, enriching current learning resources with semantic information from external sources, providing student with browsable dynamic interactive knowledge graphs, and making use of learning groups to encourage students to share their learning experiences and feedback with other learners.Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Telemática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Luis Sánchez Fernández.- Secretario: Luis de la Fuente Valentín.- Vocal: Norberto Fernández Garcí