Notepad is NOT bad: Employing Yahoo! Notepad as an online research diary in educational enquiry based on a PhD study

Paper presented at the Graduate School of Education Annual Staff Student Conference, 14 May 2011, University of Exeter, UK.Reflective tools have been gaining ground in educational research. Diaries, especially electronic ones, can be effective in enabling researchers to organise and reflect upon their research. Online diaries are flexible Web-based facilities since the recording process can be conducted quickly and smoothly. Here, I report on using Yahoo! Notepad as an online diary in my PhD study. This facility was kept right from the start to record all significant events and updates (e.g., contacts, resources, reminders, must-do tasks, notes, comments, procedures, scripts, and essential readings). This practice organised the research process by enabling me to: (1) organise work into relevant folders based on topic; (2) monitor my progress by, for example, reviewing the tasks I have accomplished, and the tasks remaining ahead; (3) save useful readings and textual resources for future reference on a regular basis; (4) create some preliminary drafts of the ideas I should tackle, and update these drafts when something new comes to my mind; and (5) create reminders to be reviewed on a weekly basis so that nothing is missed or forgotten. Some examples and illustrations are provided to help other researchers to understand the utility of this free online tool.Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter, UK

Automated Target Acquisition, Recognition and Tracking (ATTRACT)

The primary objective of phase 1 of this research project is to conduct multidisciplinary research that will contribute to fundamental scientific knowledge in several of the USAF critical technology areas. Specifically, neural networks, signal processing techniques, and electro-optic capabilities are utilized to solve problems associated with automated target acquisition, recognition, and tracking. To accomplish the stated objective, several tasks have been identified and were executed

Stochastic Qubits

A new concept of qubits is given by considering entanglement of ordinary quibits with quantum measuring devices (micro-detectors). They are called stochastic qubits since they are generalized coherent states used in the stochastic (phase space) quantum theory. Entanglement is realized through the coupling of angular momenta $l$ and $\sigma$, where the micro-detector has $l=0,1$ and the qubit spin is $\sigma=1/2$. In both cases, the stochastic qubit has total spin $J=1/2$ and is entangled only when $l=1$. In this case, Stochastic Bell states have been defined and teleportation has been studied. They resemble conventional ones. When the micro-detecors have only two states, Stochastic qudits have rather been used. Here, Stochastic Bell states have also been defined and teleportation is possible for special states only. In the last step of this teleportation, Bob will have to transform the qubit only, or the micro-detector only, to recover Alice state.Comment: This paper has been withdrawn by the author because of Projection measurement tacit usage (while generalized one should have been used

INTRANASAL MICROEMULGEL AS SURROGATE CARRIER TO ENHANCE LOW ORAL BIOAVAILABILITY OF SULPIRIDE

Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate microemulsion based gel (MBG) of sulpiride "a poorly water soluble antipsychotic with low oral bioavailability."Methods: Gelling polymers such as sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC-Na), hydroxyl propyl methyl cellulose (HPMC K4m), carbopol 940 and Na alginate were evaluated for their potential to gel sulpiride microemulsions (MEs) without affecting the MEs structure. Also, sulpiride solution (SS) and conventional gel (without ME) were prepared and compared with MBG. Gel formulations were checked for their viscosity, pH, spreadability (S), mucoadhesive force (MF), and nasal ciliotoxicity studies. The in vitro release of sulpiride across a cellophane membrane and its permeation through the nasal mucosa in phosphate buffered saline pH 6.8 (PBS) were also performed. In addition, a pharmacodynamic study of optimized formulae compared to SS and microemulsion (ME) was evaluated in rats.Results: CMC-Na and HPMC K4m were not able to gel sulpiride loaded MEs while Na alginate gave an unclear gel with a sticky texture. Results revealed that the viscosity, mucoadhesion force, and spreadability of the MBG increased with increasing carbopol 940 concentrations. The flux was arranged as the following, MBG>conventional gel>sulpiride solution (SS). According to histopathological study, safe and non-irritant MBGs suitable for nasal administration were successfully prepared. Finally, the pharmacodynamic study indicated that intranasal sulpiride MBG had a significant effect (*P<0.001) than SS and ME administered either intravenous or intranasal.Conclusion: MBG provides signiï¬cant enhancement in nasal bioavailability not only by absorption enhancing effect of ME but also, by increasing nasal residence tim

Web-Based New Literacies and EFL Curriculum Design in Teacher Education: A Design Study for Expanding EFL Student Teachers’ Language-Related Literacy Practices in an Egyptian Pre-service Teacher Education Programme

With the dominance of the Web in education and English language learning, new literacies have emerged. This thesis is motivated by the assumption that these literacies need to be integrated into the Egyptian pre-service EFL teacher education programmes so that EFL student teachers can cope with the new reality of language teaching/learning. Therefore, the main objective of the present study is to develop a theoretical understanding of the relationship between Web-based new literacies and the teaching of TESOL in a way that supports the possibility of expanding Egyptian pre-service EFL student teachers’ language-related literacy practices by integrating some Web-based new literacies into their education programme, with specific reference to the context of Assiut University College of Education (AUCOE). This requires accomplishing minor objectives represented in: (1) identifying the range of those Web-based new literacies that Egyptian EFL student teachers need in this ICT-dominated age; (2) identifying those Web-based facilities beneficial to them, and why and how they can be beneficial; and (3) generating framework for EFL curriculum design based on both literature and empirical data. To accomplish this, a design-based research (DBR) methodology drawing on a pragmatic epistemology is developed and employed as the main research paradigm informing this design study. Thus, the research design involves a flexible three-stage research framework: (1) the preliminary phase, which acts as a theoretical and empirical foundation for the whole study, and informs a preliminary design framework; it involves reviewing relevant literature and obtaining empirical data through documentary analysis (100 documents), online questionnaire (n=50), and semi-structured interviews (n=19); (2) the prototyping phase that involves two iterations (36 participants in the first iteration, and 30 in the second) conducted in the Egyptian context to test the proposed design framework. Each iteration acts as a micro-cycle of the whole design study, and thus involves its own objectives, learning design, research methodology and procedures (in line with the main DBR methodology), and results; (3) the assessment/reflective phase which, based on the prototyping phase results, presents a final design framework for expanding EFL student teachers’ language-related literacy practices. This has implications for the EFL curriculum design process within the Egyptian context in general, and AUCOE in particular. Results indicate that throughout the two iterations, it has become evident that the process of expanding EFL student teachers’ language-related literacy practices by integrating some Web-based new literacies into the AUCOE pre-service programme is quite feasible once some design principles are considered. Some significant conclusions and educational implications are provided, along with some main contributions to knowledge in TESOL/TEFL, language-learning theory, research methodology, and educational practice as far as the Egyptian context of pre-service EFL teacher education is concerned.Egyptian government Ministry of Higher Education represented by the Egyptian Culture & Educational Bureau in Londo

Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Ride Sharing Organization for Transferable and Non-Transferable Services

Ride-sharing allows multiple persons to share their trips together in one vehicle instead of using multiple vehicles. This can reduce the number of vehicles in the street, which consequently can reduce air pollution, traffic congestion and transportation cost. However, a ride-sharing organization requires passengers to report sensitive location information about their trips to a trip organizing server (TOS) which creates a serious privacy issue. In addition, existing ride-sharing schemes are non-flexible, i.e., they require a driver and a rider to have exactly the same trip to share a ride. Moreover, they are non-scalable, i.e., inefficient if applied to large geographic areas. In this paper, we propose two efficient privacy-preserving ride-sharing organization schemes for Non-transferable Ride-sharing Services (NRS) and Transferable Ride-sharing Services (TRS). In the NRS scheme, a rider can share a ride from its source to destination with only one driver whereas, in TRS scheme, a rider can transfer between multiple drivers while en route until he reaches his destination. In both schemes, the ride-sharing area is divided into a number of small geographic areas, called cells, and each cell has a unique identifier. Each driver/rider should encrypt his trip's data and send an encrypted ride-sharing offer/request to the TOS. In NRS scheme, Bloom filters are used to compactly represent the trip information before encryption. Then, the TOS can measure the similarity between the encrypted trips data to organize shared rides without revealing either the users' identities or the location information. In TRS scheme, drivers report their encrypted routes, an then the TOS builds an encrypted directed graph that is passed to a modified version of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm to search for an optimal path of rides that can achieve a set of preferences defined by the riders

An Optimization Technique of Airlines\u27 Seat Inventory Management

This study consisted of a simulation to maximize an airline\u27s Origin- Destination revenues. It has been hypothesized that Linear Programming is capable of maximizing airlines\u27 networks revenues. Simulation was performed with Linear Interactive Discrete Optimizer (LINDO). This project was designed to consider different fares and its classes along with multi flight connections. The seats\u27 allocation process came out with the maximum possible revenues, and enough flexibility in terms of changing such allocation to work around competition and trends. Results came supportive to the hypothesis. Sensitivity analysis provided our model with a tool to modify and change different variables, like fares, without affecting the reached goal (maximized network revenues). Although, the utilized network is a portion of a real world one, this study should inspire revenue management departments build their own simulation based on this model. Conclusion and recommendations are submitted

Web Based Post Flood Disaster Missing People Tracking Information System

In the case of large scale disaster, such as earthquake, volcanic explosion, sea wave and flood despite those the horrible phenomenon, website post flood disaster is required not only for governmental supporters but also residents and volunteers to communicate each other. It is possible to track and manage missing people by web based disaster management information system during the post flood disaster circumstances. Thus, this study proposed web based to show information about missing people during and post flood disaster to track and report missing people. This web based has been developed using java programming and JSP which facilitates good design and services

Resource allocation technique for powerline network using a modified shuffled frog-leaping algorithm

Resource allocation (RA) techniques should be made efficient and optimized in order to enhance the QoS (power & bit, capacity, scalability) of high-speed networking data applications. This research attempts to further increase the efficiency towards near-optimal performance. RA’s problem involves assignment of subcarriers, power and bit amounts for each user efficiently. Several studies conducted by the Federal Communication Commission have proven that conventional RA approaches are becoming insufficient for rapid demand in networking resulted in spectrum underutilization, low capacity and convergence, also low performance of bit error rate, delay of channel feedback, weak scalability as well as computational complexity make real-time solutions intractable. Mainly due to sophisticated, restrictive constraints, multi-objectives, unfairness, channel noise, also unrealistic when assume perfect channel state is available. The main goal of this work is to develop a conceptual framework and mathematical model for resource allocation using Shuffled Frog-Leap Algorithm (SFLA). Thus, a modified SFLA is introduced and integrated in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system. Then SFLA generated random population of solutions (power, bit), the fitness of each solution is calculated and improved for each subcarrier and user. The solution is numerically validated and verified by simulation-based powerline channel. The system performance was compared to similar research works in terms of the system’s capacity, scalability, allocated rate/power, and convergence. The resources allocated are constantly optimized and the capacity obtained is constantly higher as compared to Root-finding, Linear, and Hybrid evolutionary algorithms. The proposed algorithm managed to offer fastest convergence given that the number of iterations required to get to the 0.001% error of the global optimum is 75 compared to 92 in the conventional techniques. Finally, joint allocation models for selection of optima resource values are introduced; adaptive power and bit allocators in OFDM system-based Powerline and using modified SFLA-based TLBO and PSO are propose

A Weighted Grid for Measuring Program Robustness

Robustness is a key issue for all the programs, especially safety critical ones. In the literature, Program Robustness is defined as “the degree to which a system or component can function correctly in the presence of invalid input or stressful environment” (IEEE 1990). Robustness measurement is the value that reflects the Robustness Degree of the program. In this thesis, a new Robustness measurement technique; the Robustness Grid, is introduced. The Robustness Grid measures the Robustness Degree for programs, C programs in this instance, using a relative scale. It allows programmers to find the program’s vulnerable points, repair them, and avoid similar mistakes in the future. The Robustness Grid is a table that contains Language rules, which is classified into categories with respect to the program’s function names, and calculates the robustness degree. The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) C language rules with the Clause Program Slicing technique will be the basis for the robustness measurement mechanism. In the Robustness Grid, for every MISRA rule, a score will be given to a function every time it satisfies or violates a rule. Furthermore, Clause program slicing will be used to weight every MISRA rule to illustrate its importance in the program. The Robustness Grid shows how much each part of the program is robust and effective, and assists developers to measure and evaluate the robustness degree for each part of a program. Overall, the Robustness Grid is a new technique that measures the robustness of C programs using MISRA C rules and Clause program slicing. The Robustness Grid shows the program robustness degree and the importance of each part of the program. An evaluation of the Robustness Grid is performed to show that it offers new measurements that were not provided before