Simulation and Visualization Enhanced Engineering Education- Development and Implementation of Virtual Experiments in a Laboratory Course

This paper presents results from a National Science Foundation grant titled Simulation and Visualization Enhanced Engineering Education , funded by the EEC division. Although the scope of the project is quite broad, embracing a wide range of courses in three engineering disciplines, the present work describes the results obtained from application of simulation and visualization for development and implementation of web-based virtual engineering laboratories. The present work leverages the advancement in hardware and software technologies to map physical experiments into web-based virtual experiments that can be used to enrich student\u27s laboratory experience. Four physical experiments in the thermo-fluids laboratory course have been mapped into virtual experiments, and the newly created virtual experiments have been used by students to conduct pre-lab practice sessions prior to performing corresponding physical experiment sessions. By performing virtual experiments, students learn in more detail about the objectives, procedure and expected outcomes ahead of scheduled physical experiments. Use of virtual experiments in the supplementation mode makes students better learners, and the assessment results show that students are better prepared and get more out of physical laboratory sessions. To test the efficacy of the proposed pre-lab practice session pedagogy, assessment instruments and statistical experimental designs have been developed and implemented to objectively determine whether implemented virtual experiments, used in supplementation mode, enhance student learning compared to the pre-implementation setting (without virtual experiments) and to test if the learning gains are statistically significant or not. The pedagogy of supplementation of physical experiments with pre-lab practice sessions with virtual experiments shows promise, based on results obtained in this project. Impact of various demographic factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, student level etc. on student learning was also analyzed

A rare case of aggressive angiomyxoma of vulva since childhood

Aggressive angiomyxoma is a locally invasive benign mesenchymal tumour usually occurring in women of reproductive age and is rare in children. It carries a high risk of recurrence and hence needs to be differentiated from other masses. The diagnosis is difficult clinically and is almost always histological. Here is a rare case of aggressive angiomyxoma of vulva in a 15 year old female presented with presented with mass in vulva on left side since birth and increased to the present size since 3 years. The swelling was painless, no local rise of temperature, no visible veins. Attained menarche 2 years ago and cycles are regular with normal flow

State owned enterprises as bribe payers: the role of institutional environment

Our paper draws attention to a neglected channel of corruption—the bribe payments by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This is an important phenomenon as bribe payments by SOEs fruitlessly waste national resources, compromising public welfare and national prosperity. Using a large dataset of 30,249 firms from 50 countries, we show that, in general, SOEs are less likely to pay bribes for achieving organizational objectives owing to their political connectivity. However, in deteriorated institutional environments, SOEs may be subjected to potential managerial rent-seeking behaviors, which disproportionately increase SOE bribe propensity relative to privately owned enterprises. Specifically, our findings highlight the importance of fostering democracy and rule of law, reducing prevalence of corruption and shortening power distance in reducing the incidence of SOE bribery

A Speaker Recognition System Using Gaussian Mixture Model

Automatic speaker recognition system identifies a person from the information contained in the speech signal. These systems are the most user-friendly means of biometric recognition and are being used in applications like teleconferencing, banking, forensics etc. The accuracy of these depends on the methods used to extract features from the speech signal, modeling methods, classifiers used to identify the speaker and the size of data available for modeling and verifying. Here, the Mel-Scale Frequency Cepstral Coefficient is one of the methods to grab features from wave file of spoken sentences. The Gaussian Mixture Model is a technique applied in the MARF (Modular Audio Recognition Framework) framework to increase outcome estimation. We have presented a Gaussian selection medium for MFCC

Colorectal Cancer in Younger Adults

Contrary to decreasing incidence rate of colorectal cancer (CRC) in older adults, incidence rates have nearly doubled in younger adults (age <50 years) in the United States since the early 1990s. A similar increase has been observed across the globe. Despite overall population trends in aging, about 15% of CRCs will be diagnosed in younger adults by 2030. The mechanisms and factors contributing to early-onset CRC (EOCRC) remain puzzling, especially because most young adults diagnosed with CRC have no known risk factors or predisposing conditions, such as family history of CRC or polyps or a hereditary syndrome (eg, Lynch syndrome, polyposis). In this up-to-date review, we discuss the current knowledge of EOCRC, including epidemiology, risk factors, clinical and molecular features, treatment and survival, and recognition and screening strategies

Solid-phase mixing in three-phase sparged reactors

Solid-phase mixing time was measured in a 0.2 m i.d. three-phase sparged reactor using a radioactive tracer technique. Air and water formed the gas and liquid phases. Spherical glass beads with an average size of 58, 92.5, 250, 600, 900, 1300 and 2100 microns were used as the solid phase. Glass particles were coated with radioactive gold and used as a tracer. The superficial gas velocity was varied in the range of 0.07-0.366 m/s and the solid loading was varied in the range of 0-10 vol.%. The effect of physical properties such as surface tension, liquid viscosity and the presence of electrolyte on solid phase mixing was investigated. A mathematical model has been developed which successfully correlates data on mixing time