Motivating Weak Students: A Critical Discussion and Reflection

The motivation of students is regarded as one of the problems in the higher education. One of the reasons for the increasing number of students with low-level of motivation is that there are many students join universities without adequate level of preparation. consequently, because of complex material delivered to students and their low ability to learn quickly, the motivation of students to learn Computer Aided Design (CAD) and other software packages be decreased significantly during educational process. The means of multimedia can be used in teaching the technology to help in solving this problem. The basic idea of proposed approach is to use the video clips, multimedia applications in the teaching process. The basic material should be accessible by students at any time. In order to do this, the material mentioned above should be published in E-learn. These video clips will help students in doing some exercises on their own time and independently which they may miss and can be used by students at later times when they prepare their design work using CAD. The accessibility of material and its possibility to repeat it a lot of time may increase the level of student’s knowledge gained and have improved their motivation. Keywords: Motivation, Diversity, CAD, Technology, Feedbac

The different grades students’ understanding levels of the concept of religion in turkish elementary education

The aim of this study is to examine the different grades students’ understanding levels of the concept of religion in elementary education. A total of 107 different grades students taken from elementary schools were asked the concept in using open ended question developed by the researcher. Obtained data showed that students couldn’t understand the concept correctly and scientifically and the majority of the students had a misconception about the concept such as worshipping, worships, being ethical, ethical behaviours and obligatory behaviours. Furthermore, some students had specific conceptual confusions about the concept

Development of compact antenna for RFID application

In recent years, microstrip antennas have met commercial requirements. The advent of wireless applications requires a compact antenna, easy to manufacture. The goal of the project is to develop a microstrip monopole antenna for RFID tag applications that reduce size. The purpose of this antenna is to operate at 2.4 GHz. Due to its low-profile, a microstrip monopole antenna was chosen as a design model for the project.CST Microwave studio 2015 has been used to simulate the design of antennas for preliminary design purposes. This can be recognized as being unique to the advantages of the antenna. . The proposed antenna was etched on an FR4 substrate with an overall size of 40 mm × 17 mm × 1.6 mm. The successful implementation of the modified ground plane allows the miniaturization and provides excellent performance. The performance of an antenna shows agreement between both simulation and measurement results

A high performance hardware architecture for one bit transform based motion estimation

Motion Estimation (ME) is the most computationally intensive part of video compression and video enhancement systems. One bit transform (IBT) based ME algorithms have low computational complexity. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a high performance systolic hardware architecture for IBT based ME. The proposed hardware performs full search ME for 4 Macroblocks in parallel and it is the fastest IBT based ME hardware reported in the literature. In addition, it uses less on-chip memory than the previous IBT based ME hardware by using a novel data reuse scheme and memory organization. The proposed hardware is implemented in Verilog HDL. It consumes %34 of the slices in a Xilinx XC2VP30-7 FPGA. It works at 115 MHz in the same FPGA and is capable of processing 50 1920x1080 full High Definition frames per second. Therefore, it can be used in consumer electronics products that require real-time video processing or compression

A Qualitative Method for Assessing the Impact of ICT on the Architectural Design Process

During the last thirty years or so, we have witnessed tremendous developments in information and communication technology (ICT). Computer processing power doubles each 18 months, as Gordon Moore predicted during the mid-1960s. The computer and communications world has been revolutionised by the invention of the Internet. It has changed the way of exchanging, viewing, sharing, manipulating and storing the information. Other technologies such as smartphones, wearable computers, tablets, wireless communications and satellite communications have made the adoption of ICT easier and beneficial to all its users. ICT affects the productivity, performance and the competitive advantage of a business. It also impacts on the shape of the business process and its product. In architectural design, ICT is widely used throughout the design process and its final product. The aim of this research, therefore, is to explore the key implication of using ICT in architectural design and what new changes and forms have occurred on buildings as a result of ICT developments and use by architecture practitioners. To achieve this aim, a qualitative research approach was adopted using a narrative review of ICT usage in the design of buildings. The literature found was subjected to a thematic analysis of how ICT adoption affected the architectural design process. The findings of this research indicate that there is a continuous change in the design process and its final products (buildings) as the technology evolves. The framework proposed provides a foundation for gathering evidence from case studies of the impact of ICT adoption by architectural designers. The research proposes that future empirical work has to be conducted to test and refine the relevance, importance and applicability of each of the components of the framework, in order to detect the impact of ICT on the building design process and its final product

Integrating BIM and Planning Software for Health and Safety Site Induction

Project management software packages have been around for quite a long time to help managers to run construction projects effectively. Building Information Modelling – also known as Object-orientated Modelling technology was used at the beginning in architectural design which has become more widespread in structural and services engineering. The development of BIM modelling has made the tool more users friendly. As a result, BIM became widely used by most practitioners in their specialist areas. For health and safety practitioners within construction project management, This tool has not been fully explored. BIM technology has the potential to be used in safety planning procedures particularly those related to tasks on construction sites. The section of the research presented in this paper intend to explore and review health and safety issues on construction site with the sole intension of using better visualisation software to meet the needs of health and safety site practitioners in understanding such H&S problems. A framework needed for better H&S practice on site that may be used actively by all practitioners will be developed. The intension is to find a way forward in addressing ‘real’ health and safety site issues that may not be easy to be understood by practitioners without the full aid of visualisation. Keywords: Health, Safety, construction site, BIM, 4D Modellin

Suitability of BIM for enhancing value on PPP projects for the benefit of the public sector

Collaborative integrated working and stakeholder’s interest have been among key drivers that underpin and encourage the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) within the AEC industry. BIM is becoming a major means to deliver projects with better improved product, and reduced risk within the construction industry. Furthermore, using BIM in areas like buildability, quality assurance, cost and scheduling can be justified through BIM-nD modelling application. What is not so obvious is how the utilisation of BIM visualisation and knowledge embedment will enhance these areas to refine and achieve better value for PPP procurement projects for the long term benefit especially during post-construction phase for the public sector. As of now there is no well-defined guidance with respect to BIM usage incorporating all of the above. Do we really need to revisit the way we specify projects within the contractual framework under PPP? This paper examines the possibility of how BIM can be utilised in the realisation of augmented formal database information management system under the PPP procurement routes with respect to operation and maintenance support. The paper concludes with additional measures that BIM can offer at the post-construction phase for the public sector at learning organisations

An Overview of the Feasibility of Achieving Level 2 Building Information Modeling by 2016 in the UK

The aim of this study is to investigate the current status and feasibility of achieving Level 2 BIM (building information modeling) usage that is to be made mandatory by the UK government on its projects by the year 2016. This study assesses the level at which organizational and practitioner knowledge of BIM is currently positioned. The UK government, being the largest public stakeholder client, has realized the benefits and advantages of BIM when used in procuring projects across their lifecycle in the built environment. A critical review of the BIM literature was carried out and the evidence base was created in relation to government targets for 2016. At the current stage, Level 2 BIM adoption is achievable by 2016 for large construction firms but not for SMEs (small medium enterprise). Also, from evidence in this study, the technology needs to be properly tailored to meet SME variables if Level 2 status is to be achieved for the entire industry

Achieving Level 2 BIM by 2016 in the UK

The growth and advantage of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has recently gained momentum in the expanding needs of the construction industry, one that varies across disciplines. The UK government is the largest public stakeholder client that has realized the benefits and advantages of BIM when used in procuring projects. The usage and adoption of BIM in all UK government-procured projects with a Level 2 BIM status will be mandatory by 2016. Will this target be achievable by 2016? This study investigates that possibility. A critical review of the BIM literature was carried out and the evidence based on the government target of 2016. At the current stage, it appears that Level 2 adoption is achievable by 2016 for large construction firms. However, the technology needs to be properly tailored to meet SMEs variables, if the Level 2 status is to be achieved for the entire industry

Efficient hardware implementations of high throughput SHA-3 candidates keccak, luffa and blue midnight wish for single- and multi-message hashing

In November 2007 NIST announced that it would organize the SHA-3 competition to select a new cryptographic hash function family by 2012. In the selection process, hardware performances of the candidates will play an important role. Our analysis of previously proposed hardware implementations shows that three SHA-3 candidate algorithms can provide superior performance in hardware: Keccak, Luffa and Blue Midnight Wish (BMW). In this paper, we provide efficient and fast hardware implementations of these three algorithms. Considering both single- and multi-message hashing applications with an emphasis on both speed and efficiency, our work presents more comprehensive analysis of their hardware performances by providing different performance figures for different target devices. To our best knowledge, this is the first work that provides a comparative analysis of SHA-3 candidates in multi-message applications. We discover that BMW algorithm can provide much higher throughput than previously reported if used in multi-message hashing. We also show that better utilization of resources can increase speed via different configurations. We implement our designs using Verilog HDL, and map to both ASIC and FPGA devices (Spartan3, Virtex2, and Virtex 4) to give a better comparison with those in the literature. We report total area, maximum frequency, maximum throughput and throughput/area of the designs for all target devices. Given that the selection process for SHA3 is still open; our results will be instrumental to evaluate the hardware performance of the candidates