Severe birth prematurity : a case study of a boy’s psychoeducational support needs

Abstract: This study conducted research related to severe premature birth and the neurodevelopmental disorders that may be associated with it. Severely premature born children, born before the gestational age of 28 weeks, are at an increased risk of developmental delays. These delays may manifest as physical difficulties, learning disabilities, attention deficits, hyperactivity, and behavioural and social problems. Learners with barriers to learning present challenges for teachers due to these developmental delays and comorbid disorders associated with premature birth. The challenges are further intensified by large class sizes, and limited resources. Teachers are generally ill-equipped to meet the demands of the learners in an inclusive situation, in diverse classrooms. It is difficult to differentiate the content and the pace of the curriculum. This study explored the psycho-educational support needs of Lebo (pseudonym), who was born severely premature. The study was conducted in a LSEN class in a mainstream primary school in the south of Johannesburg. ..M.Ed. (Inclusive Education

Interactive Exploration of Temporal Event Sequences

Life can often be described as a series of events. These events contain rich information that, when put together, can reveal history, expose facts, or lead to discoveries. Therefore, many leading organizations are increasingly collecting databases of event sequences: Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), transportation incident logs, student progress reports, web logs, sports logs, etc. Heavy investments were made in data collection and storage, but difficulties still arise when it comes to making use of the collected data. Analyzing millions of event sequences is a non-trivial task that is gaining more attention and requires better support due to its complex nature. Therefore, I aimed to use information visualization techniques to support exploratory data analysis---an approach to analyzing data to formulate hypotheses worth testing---for event sequences. By working with the domain experts who were analyzing event sequences, I identified two important scenarios that guided my dissertation: First, I explored how to provide an overview of multiple event sequences? Lengthy reports often have an executive summary to provide an overview of the report. Unfortunately, there was no executive summary to provide an overview for event sequences. Therefore, I designed LifeFlow, a compact overview visualization that summarizes multiple event sequences, and interaction techniques that supports users' exploration. Second, I examined how to support users in querying for event sequences when they are uncertain about what they are looking for. To support this task, I developed similarity measures (the M&M measure 1-2) and user interfaces (Similan 1-2) for querying event sequences based on similarity, allowing users to search for event sequences that are similar to the query. After that, I ran a controlled experiment comparing exact match and similarity search interfaces, and learned the advantages and disadvantages of both interfaces. These lessons learned inspired me to develop Flexible Temporal Search (FTS) that combines the benefits of both interfaces. FTS gives confident and countable results, and also ranks results by similarity. I continued to work with domain experts as partners, getting them involved in the iterative design, and constantly using their feedback to guide my research directions. As the research progressed, several short-term user studies were conducted to evaluate particular features of the user interfaces. Both quantitative and qualitative results were reported. To address the limitations of short-term evaluations, I included several multi-dimensional in-depth long-term case studies with domain experts in various fields to evaluate deeper benefits, validate generalizability of the ideas, and demonstrate practicability of this research in non-laboratory environments. The experience from these long-term studies was combined into a set of design guidelines for temporal event sequence exploration. My contributions from this research are LifeFlow, a visualization that compactly displays summaries of multiple event sequences, along with interaction techniques for users' explorations; similarity measures (the M&M measure 1-2) and similarity search interfaces (Similan 1-2) for querying event sequences; Flexible Temporal Search (FTS), a hybrid query approach that combines the benefits of exact match and similarity search; and case study evaluations that results in a process model and a set of design guidelines for temporal event sequence exploration. Finally, this research has revealed new directions for exploring event sequences

A Lexical Description of English for Architecture: A Corpus-based Approach

Every knowledge community has a distinct type of discourse and a linguistic identity which brings together the ideas of that discipline. These are expressed through characteristic linguistic realizations which are of considerable interest in the study of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) from many different perspectives. Despite the fact that ESP is a recent area of linguistic research, there is already a varied literature on academic and professional languages: English for law, business, computer and technology, advertising, marketing and engineering, just to mention a few. According to Dudley-Evans (1998:19), the development of ESP arose as a result of general improvements in the world economy in the 1960’s, along with the expansion of science and technology. Other relevant factors were the growing use of English as the international language of science, technology and business, and the increasing flow of exchange students to and from the UK, US and Australia

Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy

UID/HIS/04666/2019 This is the 2nd volume of PHI series, published by CRC Press, the 4th published by CRC Press and the 5th volume of PHI proceedings.The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) - INTELLIGENCE, CREATIVITY AND FANTASY were compiled with the intent to establish a multidisciplinary platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of research. The aim is also to foster the awareness and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design, Engineering, Social and Natural Sciences, and their importance and benefits for the sense of both individual and community identity. The idea of modernity has been a significant motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.authorsversionpublishe

Fall 2022 Full Issue

Full Fall 2022 issue of the Pandion Journal, volume 3, issue 1

Q'@gile: quantum agile manufacture of internal combustion engines

Current trends in the automotive industry towards fuel efficient and low emission vehicles, are dictated by more environmental friendly customers, more strict environmental legislation, rising fuel costs and intensive competition. These factors are pressuring vehicle manufacturers to speed up R&D and improve the efficiency and flexibility of their manufacturing operations so that improved products can be introduced over shortened timeframes. Recent advances have been focused on improving the design of internal combustion engines, coupled with research into alternative fuels and related new forms of vehicle propulsion. Natural impacts of these advances have been shorter engine lifetimes, increased pace of engine innovations, and significant changes in propulsion type share: in Europe the diesel engine share is increasing relative to that of petrol engines while in the US and Japan hybrids are becoming popular. In the long-term fuel cell- and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles may largely make internal combustion engines obsolete. [Continues.